Recently a team of scientists I have a great deal of respect for asked me to clean up and, if needed, "reimagine" an illustration that they had submitted to the journal Nature for a big paper (a paper revisiting a contentious but important topic they had published 20 years before) The original illustrators they hired to make the illustration from a thumbnail sketch from one of the authors was not up to the standards of Nature (can't say as I blame them on that one). Still, Nature just redid it themselves as a fairly sterile engineering-style diagram. So My task was to thread the needle between the two... preserving the layout/feel of the author's sketch but ensuring it met all of Nature's art style and standards and remained legible and reproducible at various sizes/media.
The trick was it had to be turned around ASAP (72 hours), as the journal was about to go to press. I felt I could contribute to this particular team and article, even under these deadlines. Of course, I was neck deep in a major conference website design/implementation, including a ton of video and audio editing. Still, this project served as a very welcomed break from that one. I accepted the job on Friday afternoon and started on it fresh on Saturday morning. I sent the initial comp to the authors Sunday afternoon - made revisions Monday morning, and sent it off to Nature Monday evening. Stressful and hectic, but everyone was happy in the end, so... Success?
It made the deadline and was published in print and online editions and picked up in NYTimes, Boston Globe, Washington Post, etc... Whew. Not my usual style exactly, but the example illustrations were fun to do for me. (Most of my time was spent doing those, of course)
The journal article can be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03308-6
Huge thanks to Rosamond L. Naylor, Ronald W. Hardy, Alejandro H. Buschmann, Simon R. Bush, Ling Cao, Dane H. Klinger, David C. Little, Jane Lubchenco, Sandra E. Shumway & Max Troell for turning to me in the first place, and for trusting me to help get this done in time and within their budget.
