b.spirit! is Brussels Airlines’ inflight magazine on long haul flights to Africa. AD Marten Sealby contacted me to illustrate a story for the magazine about the re-introduction of ferry service across Lake Victoria which borders Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The ferries to be used are interesting because they would be designed and built in Seattle, then disassembled, packed into containers, shipped to Africa’s interior and then reassembled in Kampala.

Because the ferries had not yet been built, the illustration would be conceptual, emphasizing the design, assembly, disassembly and shipping processes. An inset map would help familiarize the reader with Lake Victoria. Here are the sketches I sent Marten:

Marten gave the green light to the second sketch, showing the rear of the ferry with a section of the bow cutaway and being loaded into a shipping container. Here is the final:

Concept illustration of a ‘ferry in a box’ to be designed and built in Seattle, then disassembled, packed into containers, shipped and reassembled in Uganada for service on Lake Victoria. The ferry is to carry 200 passengers and be powered by locally sourced biofuels.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a huge fan of Mythbusters. I like their “failure is always an option” maxim, meaning if you have an idea you should try it out, what’s the worst that can happen?

While watching the program one day, I noticed something weird about their forklift — it moved sideways. It didn’t just turn on a dime, but actually moved perpendicular to the direction of the wheels. Upon closer inspection, they looked more like worm gears than wheels. The answer was just a Google away: The Mythbusters’ forklift is equipped with Mecanum Wheels, also known as Omni Wheels or Ilon Wheels. These wheels work by rotating independently, depending on the desired direction of travel.

I had an idea that this might make for an interesting motion graphic (above), since still images really don’t do this technology justice. So I tried it out (what’s the worst that can happen?)

What are Mecanum Wheels and how do they work? Mecanum wheels, also known as omni wheels or ilon wheels, consist of a hub with rollers oriented 45° to the axis of rotation. Perfect for tight spaces, they enable conventional forward & backward movement as well as side to side and even rotation. To accomplish this, each wheel turns independently. To move side to side, pairs of wheels oppose one another, acting like a worm gear or screw.

I’ve always been into music but only recently picked up a guitar and started to learn to play. I had seen guitar tablature (or “tabs”) before, but only knew it as some sort of esoteric shorthand musical notation encoded in monospaced gibberish; a specialized language for people who had studied music and practiced guitar to some degree.

When I started browsing for the best approach to learning guitar, the first page of every book, the first image on every site, the first video in every tutorial, was always an image like this:

Whether it takes the form of a drawing or marked-up photograph, this image is the standard starting point for learning to play guitar. Ignoring all other elements, the title and the image of the hand alone clearly communicate “to do this, do this.” To play the G chord, place fingers 1, 2 and 3 on strings A, E and e, in positions (frets) 2, 3 and 3, respectively.

The chord chart to the left abstracts this fingering map, representing the fingers, strings and frets in a simpler, more condensed form. It’s understood that these two images represent the same thing,”to do this, do this,” but without the fingering map the chord chart would mean nothing to the uninitiated.

The tablature (or “tabs”) on the right further abstract and condense the concept. We are presented with a column of our six strings with numbers representing the position (or frets) our fingers need to be in. The specific finger we use for each string/fret is taken for granted and omitted.

Whatever form it takes, this image is a technical illustration. It decrypts esoteric, specialized knowledge into general knowledge that any person could interpret and employ. With one image, I went from looking at a bunch of lines and numbers to music.