Today's Indy part 2

The brief I received yesterday began as the Tories v Europe, but quite clearly from the image that was published in today's paper that brief was shelved in favour of the story that broke over the weekend about Professor David Nutt's sacking from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the subsequent resignations (and threat of resignations) from other council members.


It was a really open brief, I was asked to create something about the story that conveyed the notion that the cannabis comments had lit a blue touch paper to a wider issue within the government about advisors and policy. Originally I had the spliff in the image dropping ash onto a 'normal' Houses Of Parliament building (which is just starting to set alight, to suggest the idea that the cannabis issue is going to grow into a full inferno - which judging by today's news reports may just be the case). But at the rough stage the art director asked me to make it more druggie and create a building from cannabis plants and leaves. This took a while and required a lot of pieces in various green tones to create a depth to the shape and make it visually interesting, rather then just being one shape repeated ad infinitum.

You can see a close up of the cannabis plant based Houses of Parliament below:



As you can see in the post below I'm really happy with how the image has appeared in print. I sent the art director both an image with a background and one without, so that if the opportunity arose the illustration could be set into the text a little more and cropped to fit. He took the opportunity to do this and thus there is less dead space in the paper's version and the composition is a little more dynamic. Obviously with the nature of the grid it is not always possible for the images to appear like this so when they do it just gives my work a little extra oomph and takes it away from being a standard rectangle.

The article is online here and the picture in print can be seen below or in more detail over on twitpic