Keep Working

After reading the article How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by
Anne Helen Peterson, I circulated a few ideas for sketches in my head focusing around a few phrases and words. These included ideas about how working hard is reinforced, people are optimized through how they are raised/supervised, debt, and the overwhelming sense of how much needs to be done. I eventually narrowed these phrases and words down into three sketches.

After receiving feedback from my peers, I decided to move forward and refine the third sketch that I created. I chose this one because I wanted to go with the feel that millennials are constantly working, with those in charge dictating what millennials receive from the work that they do. This idea creates a sense of supervision, which is how I came up with the idea for the eye and beam of light. I also, for this project wanted to stay away from the idea of a “never-ending list” as I found that idea cliche. I understand my illustration varies greatly from my peers, and might be a bit harder to read at a glance. However, I wanted to create something that emphasized a darker mood.

I created the illustration in a darker mood because I wanted it to appear more serious. The decision to include more figures in different shades of black and grey, it to represent that the longer a millennial works, the closer they get to burnout. While the tear drops, irritation marks, and sweat drops are to show how those figures feel about working. After more feedback, I scaled back the original gradient I had for the background, fixed the light beam, toned down the brightness of the eye, and worked more with the different emotions on the figures. I did change a few colors in the figures, but they became to bright and did not fit the overall feel I was aiming at. One thing that I could have enhanced was how my illustration worked on a smaller scale, since my figures get cutoff and lost in the post mock-ups.

Also for this assignment, we were tasked with sketching out six more ideas for complimentary illustrations to go along with the front-page illustration.

Overall, I was challenged while working through this project. I took a different route than I normally would by making text a main focal point. Another thing that was challenging was that after reading the article, I realized I was experiencing burnout myself, and found myself in a lull that I struggled to pull myself through. However, through all that, I created an illustration that I am generally pleased with and in a style that appeals to me.