Part 1 of a LinkedIn series describing workflow with in the CNN Art Department for any aspiring editorial illustrators or designers in my network.

Usually, a pitch comes through email and after review, all relevant information is moved into Asana to be assigned and tracked. Those pitches that come in sound sorta like this-

“Looking for a graphic showing the size difference between SpaceX's Starship rocket and a few other heavy lift launch vehicles. Namely: Russia's N1 rocket, NASA's Saturn V Rocket, NASA's SLS rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, SpaceX's Falcon 9. The visual would be used for a live blog and in the body of various stories around the SpaceX Starship launch. We had short notice for this launch so I apologize for the tight deadline! (It is also very possible the Nov 15 date will not hold and the deadline will be extended)”

I always begin with a DropBox Paper doc and start digging through books in my reference library and dropping into that doc any notes and all the important visual references and inspiration I come across. This is my favorite part of a project- learning as much as I can about the topic and getting fired up on all that juicy reference and inspiration. I like Dropbox Paper quite a bit- it does a great job of simply displaying type and images with very limited options. I can start wasting time by fussing with layouts and it's nice when those options to do so are few. With Dropbox Paper you can hotlink anything, like out to my Pinterest Boards where my digital visual archives are, and for url's of articles/videos it even drops in a thumbnail and content brief above the link. Paper docs are quick and easy to build, they live in the Cloud so I always have access, and they're easy to share and have collaborators comment and edit in real time.

Typically, once I have a good idea of what's what, I get to sketching- usually on paper and then in photoshop. In this case, these rocket designs are well established and although the process remains the same, it’s more an exercise in visualizing for the writer how this infographic will look on the 4x3 deliverable. Turn arounds at CNN are fast so while I wait for any feedback on the sketch, I start making a prototype in Figma and if there hasn’t been a draft of copy included in the pitch, I’ll even take a stab at a quick write. I’m not a trained writer but I wouldn’t be the first “non-writer” to have their writing picked up by an editor, and If not this time, I still have a well thought out brief and some accompanying visuals in a functioning prototype to present next time an editor wants to do a deep dive on Super Heavy Lift Class vehicles :-) H/T to Kevin at Chromosphere for the inspiration and Blue Galaxy Designs for all the handy ref.