Recently during my Illustration class we were tasked with creaking a magazine cover for an article.

The article that I chose was “An American Emergency” written by Justin Worland with photographs from Adam Ferguson.

The article itself was talking about the effect of the climate crisis, specifically its impact on the west. The extreme heat there was built up to the point where conditions can be considered life threatening and is hindering many people’s quality of life. I really appreciated how rather than the article pulling together everyone’s stories into a brief summary, the author highlights the experiences and quotes he gathered more to make greater impact.

He allows for each photo and account to speak for themselves and to me it makes the impact of the message so much more real and devastating. One of the quotes that really stuck out to me was from William Calvin “Slim” Sterling who said, “It feels like God is holding a magnifying glass to your legs”.

It was just such a visual quote that invoked a level of sadness and frustration that I felt really went well with the overall tone of the article. Which is why I ended up basing my illustration on it.

My focus was primarily around creating a impactful contrast between the vibrancy of the fields and the dull heat of the the land inside of the magnifying glass. I debated making the contrast even more pronounced by making the inside scene black and white. But I ended up deciding on having it take up warm tones so that it references the heat.

I really enjoyed this project, I found the aspect of figuring out how to best embody the message of the article with a design a fun challenge. But I really valued the message and the stories from the article that I chose and I hope that you guys will take a look at the article for yourselves.

Here’s the link to the article if you would like to read it!

https://time.com/extreme-heat-climate-change

Thank You for reading!

Emma 🙂