ILLUSTRATIONS

As a member of POLITICO’s visuals team for over a decade, I was instrumental in the evolution of the site's in-house illustration style. If you’ve seen a POLITICO illustration over the past five or six years featuring a beige background, there’s a good chance it was an offshoot of the work I did to craft that signature look.

This aesthetic continued to mature over time through experimentation with shapes and colors, eventually branching into a secondary in-house style for “fun” pieces, such as the illustration of Elon Musk’s brain below.

A foundation of all these styles was a consistent, clean, and crisp approach to cutting out and toning photos. This high-contrast grayscale look gave POLITICO’s illustrations a distinct feel, popping against the warm beige backgrounds and accents of color.