Friday, November 6, 2009

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.

7 comments:

Katie said...

It looks great, Jared. Really nice job.

Shannon Freshwater said...

I like the snowflake idea, but sometimes simpler is better. They all look great, as usual. Who's the AD on this special section?

JARED ANDREW SCHORR said...

Yeah, I think simpler was better.
I had two AD's on this one. It changed hands halfway through.

Alfonso de la Torre said...

These are great, jared! Love how you executed these, and the snowflake idea is really cool. Hope all is well.
take care and keep creating.

Alfonso

Katie said...

They seem to have put up the rest of your spots! Looks super cool!

Hey, we need new posts. This one is ancient.

Artfulife said...

The snowflakes were amazing! What a bummer they couldn't be used, the second set of illustrations a really great too. What a fun project to work on.

d e b b i e said...

really nice stuff!!