NYTimes: Dealing With Iran on the Nuclear Issue

A Letters illustration in today's New York Times. Read them here and original Op-Ed here. Many thanks to Alexandra for the great assignment and terrific direction.

Sometimes with same-day turnarounds, the very topic you're working on can change due to breaking news. It's happened to me a handful of times. In this case, after I sent in the first round of ideas, Alexandra quickly let me know that Iran's president had sent a letter to the EU offering to resume talks over their nuclear program.

Above are two initial rough sketches that I was happy with before we changed directions. On the left, a dove about to land on Ayatollah Khomeini's turban; and on the right, minarets, power plant smokestacks, and missiles paralleling each other. In the end, neither worked as the editors didn't want to mix symbols of war and religion (smartly so) or to focus on a specific person.

Newyorker.com: I'm Artisanal, He's Hand-pressed, We're Perfect Together

For a post on newyorker.com by Dana Goodyear about "foodie" couples. "In this age of food this, food that, there is a new assumption in the air: compatible couples are couples that eat alike." Read the whole story here!

Bloomberg View: China's Mideast Policy

For today's Bloomberg View: James Dorsey on the need for change in China's foreign policy, particularly in the Mideast. "The question is no longer whether officials in Beijing will abandon the principle of non-interference in other countries’ affairs to protect their expanding interests around the globe. The question is when."
Read the full Op-Ed here. (Click on the image above to enlarge.)
Thanks to Phil Lubliner for the awesome assignment and great direction.

A tight deadline combined with a concept that required a larger scene meant I really had to just speed through every step of this piece. Even though I would have loved more time to work on it, sometimes the really intense projects are the ones that have those nice surprises - those little details that develop their own personality somehow. I'm particularly happy with the small band of rebels in the lower left.

And while I'm on the subject of web spots: another quick one for newyorker.com, about Twitter's announcement that "it would censor tweets on a country-by-country basis." Read the analysis here.