It’s been a busy summer! Working with great clients on really interesting projects, teaching my robot intern how to draw, developing my editorial illustration portfolio, and now adding a little polish to this site.
In addition to the sliding showcase above, I’ve also added new work in my Technical Illustration and Infographics portfolios.
Take a look, and stay frosty!
Spring has sprung, so I’ve dusted off some recent work and added it to my technical illustration and infographics portfolios.
Lots more to come—stay tuned!
I got an early start on my spring cleaning and today I debut two new portfolios.
The first is a selection of information graphics, or infographics, I’ve created for various clients. Infographics are any form of visual communication design, regardless of content or style. Since technical illustration might be considered a subset of this broadly defined discipline, I’ll be using it to refer to a flatter, more graphic method of working that places greater emphasis on quantitative information, processes & instructions, and less on surface & materiality. Don’t know what I mean? Check out the portfolio!
The second portfolio is my new alter ego of sorts, Textbook Example. All of my editorial illustrations have moved over there.
Textbook Example is a smart, playful look at science & technology issues and required reading for our increasingly complex world. The work combines a love for crusty cloth bound hardcovers, visions of the future from the past and state of the art bleeding edge technology.
Look forward to new work in all portfolios the coming weeks!
I’d like to wish everyone happy holidays and all the best of the season. I feel very fortunate to have worked with so many amazing people on so many groundbreaking projects in 2010, and I look forward to what 2011 may bring.
I’d also like to announce that I’ve relocated from drizzly Vancouver, British Columbia to my snowy hometown of Toronto, Ontario. Through the wintery magic of the internets I’m still available at info@jamesprovost.com or 416-669-5448, I’ll just be answering calls three hours earlier.
Straight-up technical illustration to accompany an AAA Living article explaining how car batteries work and why they fail. I’ve been working in a variety of styles recently, so it was nice to do something more representational. Being a technical illustrator is like being a designer, in that ‘style’ is just another tool for communication. Thanks to AD Chris Ferguson for the great project!
Popular Mechanics‘ November issue featured a story on the collapse of an 86 foot tall, 406 foot long, steel and tensioned fabric football practice facility due to violent winds and faulty engineering. This story was also released in the magazine’s sophomore iPad edition. I worked with AD John Walker to illustrate what transpired to bring the structure down on top of the 70 players, coaches, staff and media inside at the time.
This was my first time creating content specifically for the iPad, but having previously produced motion & interactive illustrations for the web, the process was smooth. The results can be seen by downloading Popular Mechanics Interactive in the iTunes store and purchasing the November 2010 issue, or right here in my motion graphics portfolio.
The Art Directors Club is a global organization of creative professionals whose mission is to connect, provoke and elevate visual communicators. The ADC holds an annual competition to acknowledge and celebrate the best minds in the creative industries, awarding them with an ADC Cube. To help promote their 90th call for entries ADC invited artists, including myself, to submit artwork based on a cube template to communicate their message, to Connect, Provoke and Elevate.
Having an affinity for things mechanical, I took elevate literally. An elevator suited the cube template perfectly, so I started there.
Next I wanted to find a visual metaphor that spoke to the role art directors play in challenging creatives and editors to up their game. The phrase elevator pitch came to mind, which refers to a speech given to sell someone on an idea, product or project, in the time it takes to ride an elevator. I wanted the piece to have more depth than just two businessmen speaking in an elevator, so I sought other senses of the word pitch. Among other things, it can mean throwing a baseball, or (chiefly British) a soccer field (football pitch).
Though a baseball metaphor would probably go over better with an American audience, soccer seemed to better suit the challenge/cooperation metaphor I was going for. And football is the world’s game.
All the artwork debuted at ADC Gallery in New York City, and the call for entries should be out soon. Big thanks to Tessar, Nimit and Alexei who challenged me to up my game on this one.
Update: This work has been moved to my editorial illustration portfolio, Textbook Example.
For their July/August 2010 issue, AARP The Magazine contacted me again to create an infographic for their AARP & You survey. That month’s survey was about informal volunteering; donating one’s time outside of an organization or association.
Unfortunately, the dataset was rather slim. It consisted of two points that indicated an increase in popularity of informal volunteering. Typically, more interesting stories come out of larger datasets where unforeseen trends and correlations reveal themselves. But I couldn’t let that get in the way of making an engaging illustration.
Hands seemed like the natural choice, expressive and human without getting tangled up with personality.
The data ended up cryptically encoded in the sizes of the hands.To call this an infographic is a stretch, maybe “information illustrated” is more accurate.
The facing page needed a spot for a story on summer reading, so AD Joanna Foucheux asked me to take a shot at it. I put together some sketches and gave her three roughs to choose from. She went with the sunburst book.
Big thanks to Joanna! It still boggles my mind that these images went out to over 24 million people!
Update: This work has been moved to my editorial illustration portfolio, Textbook Example.
In the end, an editorial decision was made to show only the combined first- and second-most popular options, which simplified the chart a bit. Here’s how it turned out:
Update: This work has moved to my editorial illustration portfolio, Textbook Example.
It’s been a busy summer here, and as it comes to a close in the Pacific northwest, I look forward to sharing some of the projects I’ve completed as they roll out over the coming weeks.
Above is a small series done for San Francisco’s 7×7 magazine on the topic of tent-free camping options: lookout tower, cabin and tent-van. I want to camp in a lookout tower someday (and reenact the battle of Endor)…
It’s cold and damp in the Pacific northwest, but hopefully it’s still summer where you are. Have a great weekend!