This post highlights my process of arriving to a final solution in creating a cover photo for Anne Helen Peterson’s article How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation written for Buzzfeed. This piece was meant to explore and challenge me as an illustrator as I was to work with a medium I am not particularly comfortable in. It is meant to be a visually intriguing and sophisticated piece that subtly hints at what the article will be about.
As I was working and sketching for this piece, I felt that many of my images were not very successful nor was I pushing myself in terms of how I was creating. I took a step back to reconsider my approach. I have always dreaded creating work digitally, do to personal qualms with working through the computer. I came to the conclusion that simply avoiding the use these tools would hinder me in the future. I decided to try working with photoshop and illustrator while recycling a print I had made during an intense burnout for the main image.
I cycled through many different iterations before landing on the final concept.
In the final piece I reference psychedelic posters from fillmore east. The background is simplistic in that it is simply repeating circles, but the colors create a vibrating texture that is agitating to the eye yielding the effect of “background noise”. Although the average millenial does not have anything terribly difficult to deal with, the never ending to do list can be incredibly overbearing.
Sam here! Wow Emerson, that’s a striking image! If I were your art director here, I would have probably insisted that a few of these sketches be finished for this, cause they’re that good! Really great concepts in each sketch. Especially the hopscotch (suggests childhood and the generational connect there) and the room with the demands written everywhere. Really good! Nice that you pushed yourself with the computer stuff. But I also think some of your doodles could look cool as their own style, so keep drawing by hand too!