Portfolio

Local Living cover by Tippi Thole for The Washington Post

To illustrate this story, I took one of Metro’s rail maps and stripped away all the text and lines, leaving just the stops. I tried versions where I drew in the lines with crayon, but finger paint was much more effective. The thick, vibrant lines more closely resembled Metro’s recognizable map and quickly got across …

A kid-friendly commute? Read More »

The story offered lots of tips for updating your interiors on the cheap, using what you have. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a photo for the cover, so I started looking through stock photos. When I found a green sofa, I immediately wondered if I could create a recycling symbol with it. I then came up an …

Renew, reuse, refresh Read More »

For our Fourth of July issue, I wanted to do something different than the standard, year-old fireworks picture. I created the illustration to look like a fireworks label using some stock vector drawings. To make the cover work, the text needed to play off the visual metaphor, so I wrote some display type and showed …

Fireworks Read More »

Poem for the holidays

This story didn’t have any obvious photography potential, so I decided to illustrate it using magnetic poetry. I created my own holiday poem and displayed it in the shape of two snowflakes to create an immediate seasonal connection.

Maximum exposure

This column discussed a recent trend of talented female celebrities posing nude or semi-nude in men’s magazines to advance their careers. While there were many photos available, there weren’t any I could use in the newspaper. So I decided to create a playful and suggestive illustration using a silhouetted figure and typography. The headline and …

Maximum exposure Read More »

Keep the wave in Old Glory

Rather than use a generic picture of an American flag, I decided to take an all typography approach for this Fourth of July story about how to care and store the flag.