Inside Carmen Casado’s illustrated takeover of the Guardian’s “How To Start” column

The fashion items scattered across the composition read like a thrift store haul from 1987. It’s the kind of image that makes you want to rummage through it. Casado has been illustrating this column since January 2025.

Forced perspective turns a failed protest into a commanding composition for The New Yorker

You’re above everyone. Below, tactical officers mill about in helmets and camouflage vests. Gamlen positions us forty feet up in a tree and from there the entire operation shrinks to the scale of a board game.

An older woman doing a one-armed handstand on a jungle gym gives this New Scientist cover story about frailty a burst of optimistic joy.

A sunset settles over a playground. Kids hang from the bars, vibing. Above them, an older woman balances inverted on one arm, limbs flung wide. New Scientist’s March 2026 cover story argues that our assumptions about aging and physical decline are upside down. Pete Ryan’s illustration put that thesis on top of a jungle gym and made us laugh.

Yakunova packs a city’s worth of social activities into one image for 5280’s guide to Denver’s best gathering spots

How do you illustrate a list? 5280’s feature on Denver’s 36 best “third places” poses the problem at scale. Tania Yakunova’s answer is in the structure of the composition. She builds a grid, then lifts one woman out of it entirely, positioning her as a guide threading us from vignette to vignette.

For a film review about transferring consciousness into robot animals, Heo ditches Pixar’s CG polish and draws every creature like it might vibrate off the page

Heo’s composition splits along a fallen log that works as a species boundary. A pink wire loops out of a beaver’s consciousness-transfer helmet and spirals across the entire image before disappearing into a hollow log, where a wide-eyed girl peers out. It’s the technology that drives “Hoppers” rendered as a visual device holding together an image that wants to fly apart.