Okay, this isn't a rodeo, and furthermore, if it was, it would most certainly be my first. But this is the title that got stuck in my head for the draft below which follows from the last post.
The trail of inspiration that led to the bullring
Just because I'm not a natural science illustrator (by that I mean an illustrator of natural science, not a science illustrator who comes by it naturally, which I like to think I am) doesn't mean I'm never inspired by macroscopic nature. A while ago on a trip with our son to the San Diego Zoo, I saw a spiral-horned antelope for the first time, and I had a feeling that I was going to want to invoke this beautiful helical-headed beast at some point. Months later, it popped into my head when I was tasked with creating cover art to highlight a technology in which peptides are conjugated with relatively short strands of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to increase their half-life intracellularly. Adding PEG to increase the half-life of proteins is common enough, but part of what sets this work apart is that exactly two chains are added to the peptide, and they are smaller than the peptide itself. Once on, they protect the peptide from proteases that will mercilessly destroy them should the peptide happen to get in their way (see the animal stampede in the distance?). But I wasn't reminded of the antelope until I was doing a little reading about the structure of PEG for this project, and learned that it takes on a somewhat helical structure in solution. From there, the rest of the analogy fell into place. That said, what this sketch did was to spark an idea in the client's mind to swap the antelope for a bull chasing a matador (the target of the peptide) while itself being chased by picadors (proteases). Which means I can keep the antelope in my back pocket for a little while longer!
In a world, where camaraderie is your only hope...
One is from a small liberal arts college, the other is from Harvard. This summer, these two interns will find out that the crushing disappointment of failed experiments slowly eroding an already fragile self-worth is the one true equalizing force in the beautiful and mysterious world of research.
Or at least, that might be the trailer if this were a movie. It is not. This is a draft of an illustration to accompany a scientist training course on diversity and stereotype threat. The part about their college backgrounds is true. This illustration was a fun trip down memory lane, conjuring up some of the items I might have found on my own bench at any given time (if only it were ever that neat).
Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaal!
Here's another design that I just found out made a journal cover. It's about a chemical linker that brings together two building blocks using two different types of well-established chemistries. The client started with the idea of a picture of the two scientists credited with these strategies holding hands, but didn't want them to necessarily be recognizable as themselves. So first I had the idea of the somewhat cliché silhouette of two people walking on a beach at sunset, both holding hands with a very small child between them. The child would represent the linker but also the "brainchild" of these two scientists. What it evolved to is below. The clients suggested using t-shirts that somehow advertise the names of the scientists, so then I thought, why not soccer jerseys. Then the numbers could represent the order of the steps in the synthetic scheme. Now, I won't lie. I knew this idea would kill. My clients are German. Was I pandering? Maybe. I even considered referring to them as football jerseys but realized that they would probably just be confused as to which sport I was referring to. Anyway, it did kill, and it no longer made any sense at all to have a child between them, hence the trophy. I was instructed on the colors of the jerseys as they are relevant to recent happenings in the German soccer world. And the "immobilization" of blades of grass highlights one of the applications of the linker. I'll give more details about where this is once the paper comes out.
Moo
This week's issue of Angewandte! This is the back cover. The front cover was created for the authors of another article by what seems to be a very sophisticated design firm in Berlin, but since their site is in German I wasn't able to learn much about them. Nevertheless, I enjoyed browsing their werke, in particular the anatomische illustration. Ich bin lost after that.
Just to show you how much a project can evolve even when the authors start with a fairly good idea of what they want, here was the first draft of this project. It was a pleasure working together with them through various ideas.
A nice niche for myself?
When I explain to people what I do, they often point out how niche it is, which is true, sort of. Here are a few in-progress projects that I've been working on this week. From a signaling pathway for a systems biology textbook to illustrations to accompany a training program on stereotype threat for scientists, I think it's safe to say that while, yes, I've found a nice little niche for myself, I don't think I've exactly typecast myself yet.
Come on baby like my flyer
It's not always easy working largely in isolation as a freelancer, but I do bounce a lot of ideas off the ol' hubs. With the heart of a scientist and the keen eye of a designer, I really value his opinion. I find that when I am doing work for myself, as in the ad campaign I'm working on, I won't quit until I come up with something that passes his scrutiny. I simply ask him to answer: a) Yes! (the exclamation point is key), b) No, or c) Maybe, with revision (though I always get more feedback than this).
It wasn't easy, but I finally got an "a)" with this design:
I did it. I quit my day job.
Three years ago I started teaching chemistry as an adjunct while I built the illustration business. It was the perfect complement and I found each career enhancing the other. But it finally got to the point at which I didn't feel like I was improving any more at either of them. I was just trying to keep my head above water. It was time. After mourning a little bit the close to a very rewarding chapter of my life and then getting over the "holy paycheck and benefits what have I done" moment, I got really excited. I'm fortunate to have some outstanding clients to work with, but I'm going to need to grow that list a little, so it's time to do some real old-fashioned advertising! Here is a discarded prototype of a mailer I designed. Now I'm going to get to work on the design that I finally settled on.
Good news!
On top of the fact that I just launched this shiny new website, I found out that I got my clients a cover with this illustration. More details after the issue comes out.
Kill your darlings
This is usually a term that writers use and it means that you shouldn't settle for something even if you think it's good. You should throw it away and write something better. In my latest logo design project, I had to kill a couple of darlings, but it was totally worth it (I think that's the point). I also really enjoyed working as a team with these clients.
The project started with some brainstorming. At this stage the clients were considering embedding the logo into the name of the company.
Some of the ideas in these doodles come from the fact that the company is focused on translation, and how small biochemical perturbations can have a ripple effect on the entire process. After talking some, it was decided to separate the name from the logo, but the option of incorporating the "e" was left open because of the distinctive way in which the name of the company starts with a lowercase "e" and has the rest of the letters in capitals. Another key feature was highlighting the fact that synthetic chemistry is a large part of their strategy.
So then, I thought I had it:
That was the first darling that I killed. Then, after a discussion in which the ideas of ribbons and even mobius strips were being batted around, came this:
But we all agreed that this was, as one member of the company put it, a little too "gothic". Fair enough. Dead.
So then I had this idea while driving and only spent about 10 minutes of actual billable time sketching it out. I thought that this was a good way to combine the chemistry and the translation (ribosome) into one very simple image. I was pretty excited about this one at first.
But I killed it too.
In the end we decided to go with a design in which cleverness took a back seat to coolness. Which is really the best way to go, since you want everyone to think it looks cool even if they don't "get it". And what we ended up with is simpler, cooler, and better. The colors are still being tweaked ever so slightly but this is basically it, and there is no mourning of the dead darlings.
A premature digital sketch
For this project, a website graphic for a biotech company's homepage, I needed to get a draft made in 3 hours or less total. Because I didn't think a pencil sketch would give them a very good idea of what the final product would look like, I had to move to the computer pretty quickly after a few cursory thumbnails on paper. So I wound up with something that looks like it could be a finished product, but a rather poor one, since both the composition and colors need some work. So now my sketchbook is like, "See? I told you so." And it's right. But the clients know that this is just a "sketch" so it's okay. I'll probably go back to the sketchbook before moving on with it. That is, if it'll have me.
Happy Anniversary, sketch blog.
Three years ago today I posted my first entry to this blog. I was still a post doc then and would soon accept a position to teach chemistry at the University of San Diego in the fall as an adjunct while I got my illustration business off the ground. I'm pretty sure that the gift for 3rd anniversaries is a logo, so that's what I went with. Here's a sketch of the design I came up with. I'm replacing my original logo, which is based on the red dye molecule that makes alizarin crimson (but why would anyone know that, unless you happen to be one of those scientists you see on Nova who use IR to analyze old Rennaissance paintings?). I like this new one better and I hope you do too.
This one's for you, J.J Thompson
This interactive animation is a work-in-progress. So far it illustrates how the electron was discovered using a vacuum tube. By the end it will go on to show how the mass/charge ratio of an electron was found.
Some RNA polymerases, just for fun
My first interactive animation!
Move over angry birds. This thing's going viral. Just a draft for now. There is at least one mistake (an unresponsive button on one frame). Can you find it? (Note: the animation may take a few seconds to load)
Enantiomeric perplexcess
syrb2v1 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.
The last video I posted described antibiotic resistance and the proliferation of antibiotic-resistance bacteria, and is the first in a series of three animations that accompany a video describing a post doc's work on a threonine halogenating enzyme. This animation is the third in the series, so the bomb at the end won't make sense until the second one is complete. Once threonine is halogenated, it gets incorporated into an antibiotic via a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. The electronegativity of the chlorine activates the adjacent carbon and it is thought that this enhanced reactivity plays a role in the toxicity of the molecule. That is why the carbon is blinking. Subtle, I know. But the only real hiccup I had with this animation so far was when I realized that I had drawn the enantiomer of threonine in my prototype. Not even just a diastereomer, no, the complete enantiomer. My students would be so disappointed if they knew.
A legit draft
antibioticresistancev2 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.
Here's a more complete draft of this animation about antibiotic resistance for an undergraduate chemistry audience. Obviously still a few gremlins to work out but it was ready to send to the clients. There's no point making the client pay for polishing if there are major revisions in store. This was done in Flash. I'm going to miss you, Flash.
A 5-second trailer
antibioticresistancedraft1 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.
Here is a preview of an animation I'm working on for the HHMI-MIT video series that I've been involved in for the past year or so. There'll be three animations for this particular video, and this first animation is meant to show how even though humans are smart and can design potent antibiotics, the bugs outsmart us and develop resistance. I still need to wipe out the rest of the colony and then re-populate it starting with division of the antibiotic-resistant cell. I should say that the mechanism of resistance is a tad more complicated than the bacterium breaking the arrow over its proverbial knee, but I would need at least one more full animation to do it justice, and that's not really what the video is about. Stay tuned to find out what that is.
More storyboarding
This one's simpler than the last storyboard so not nearly as torturous. And it's fun to use my sketch book for more than thumbnails sometimes. Now I need to turn these into an animation using Adobe's new HTML5 program Edge Animate. I'm not an early adopter, so it's been interesting for me to navigate this program which has very little support, but it's good for me. Between a one-month subscription to lynda.com, which has very brief training in it, and some online tutorials, I've managed to learn how to use it. I just have to keep reminding myself that someday I'll be as comfortable with it as I am with Flash. And hope that Adobe doesn't pull it right when I get to that point.
Got the cover!
Congratulations Weerapana lab and thanks for the great project!
