Workflow: Newsletter Header Image

Explaining my workflow within the CNN Art Department for any aspiring editorial illustrators or designers in my network.

We often design illustrations and collages for the top image of newsletters. These projects have very quick turnarounds and we spend a day at the most designing for them.

The process usually starts with a pitch such as “I would love a fresh illustration for this weekend's The Good Stuff. The top section will be basketball themed, so I would love a multipurposes sports themed one. Perhaps one showing different balls? (Including basketballs, of course). Thank you so much! As always, Slack me if you want to chat about it. “

Since time is extremely short I just get straight to work in photoshop coming up with as many concepts as I can. I think I might have just watched Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse and was inspired by all of the animated textures which you might spot nods to in these thumbnails.

Once I have three or four good ones (included below) I share them with the team for feedback. Often that feedback is… we like aspects of these two, and depending on how late into the day it is I’ll do another round of one or two combining the previous concepts .

For this assignment though everyone liked the last concept I presented and from there it was simply executing the final version before everyone signed out for the day.