The New York Times 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

I worked many moons on the 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

for The New York Times. It's a project that has evolved a lot.

I was asked to do 6 illustrations for each category:

Electronics, Books, DVD's and VideoGames,

Dining and Home, Music and Theatre, and Style.

So my idea was to have an illustration encapsulated

inside a special snowflake. For example, the category of

Dining and Home would have a cutlery snowflake.

They turned out way better then I could have hoped for.

The snowflakes are cool and complex enough

that they have a good second read.

They ended up not fitting in their intended space.

So I went back to the drawing board to maximize

and simplify. The three they are using right

now are these (with more to come)

They're different but good.

The pie turned out looking especially neat.

I also ended up doing the header to unify the

entire Gift Guide. They had a preexisting grid they

used so I just cut it and made it my own.

It looks small here but is much bigger on the actual site.

It turned out really nice.

Cutting type out of paper is extremely satisfying.

It took on many different phases and was a fun

project to work on. I think that simplifying everything

really helped it in the end.

It's nice to see a project evolve and all the work that

it took to get the final result.