Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
U virgin The art team has been busy this year, creating illustrations, portraits and interactive designs to match stories of undersea sea cables, competitive Excel, parental anxiety, AI companions, and much more. Here’s a look at 20 of our favorite projects from 2024, with comments from those of us who worked on the project.
In a special issue about the year 2004, The Virgin looked back 20 years to examine how 2004 was “the year of the future”, setting in motion the internet as we know it and use it today. Cath Virginia absolutely crushed the design of the hub (with three skins! Remember the skins?), Graham MacAree built the smoothest pages, and Amelia Holowaty Krales took the first pictures of my dreams. This package is both a love letter to a time we all saw for the first time online and a capsule of what we hope it can become again: a place for play, creativity and connection. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photograph by Go Takayama
For Josh Dzieza’s feature on the hundreds of thousands of miles of Internet cables at the bottom of the world’s oceans—and the people who fix and tend to them—we’ve created an immersive electric blue world of maps and diagrams. It’s great to have the opportunity to mix data and map visualizations with stunning original photography, and Go Takayama’s intimate photos of these seamen put a face on essential but otherwise unseen work. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photograph by Stormy Pyeatte
The visuals for these pieces are one of my proudest Virgo projects. Stormy Pyeatte’s ethereal style of floral photography and projection mapping creates a rhythmic and mesmerizing feature design – it almost makes you want to fall in love. – Cath Virginia, senior designer
We started this story trying to figure out how on earth a bunch of Excel nerds ended up on ESPN. We ended up discovering exactly how powerful, versatile and important spreadsheets really are and the power they confer when you can reduce the world to rows and columns. In the process, our brilliant design team found another way to build a spreadsheet: use rows and columns to tell the story, and represent its characters, in their natural habitat. – David Pierce, general editor
Photograph by Amelia Holowaty Krales
Every now and then we go bananas on a special edition print project, and for our subscription launch this year, we somehow convinced our colleagues to pose in 1980s office attire for ours. Content Goblins magazine It’s a problem on the enshitification of the internet, so I basically put as much goop and slime on the design as possible. Our A/V producer Andrew Marino was the real MVP of this project for allowing us to turn him into a literal goblin. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
The occupant of a home full of “smart” technology—speakers, lights, a robovac—sits by the window and ignores the technology in favor of looking at the trees and clouds outside. Adrián Astorgano’s vibrant art gives us a moving picture (both figuratively and literally) of how today’s smart homes are useful and even preferable, but not an end in themselves. -Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Adding Kristen Radtke’s beautiful comic to the site was an interesting challenge: how do we preserve the artwork and animation without compromising performance? I think that the amount of work done to optimize the piece has finally paid off in the user experience. He’s our smoothest comedian ever. – Graham MacAree, Senior Engineer
I love everything Samar Haddad does, especially how he breaks down complex subjects step by step in clever visual ways. For this short series on AI in sports, he created a massive graphics suite in a cool retro environment. I hate sports, and I love this series. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales; design by Maeve Sheridan and Cath Virginia
Creating the images for our gift guides is a big job every year. We receive all the products, create separate sets for each guide, and try to keep things fresh for the whole suite. I love the joyful scenes photographer Amelia Holowaty Krales created this year with stylist Maeve Sheridan, with bold wrapping paper and poppies designed by our senior designer Cath Virginia. You can too buy your own custom Virgo wrapping paper from our merchandising store. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photograph by Amelia Holowaty Krales
I was so excited to go to a party with Virgo senior photographer Amelia Holowaty Krales: one, because it meant we were both off the hook for bedtime with our respective children, and two, because she can communicate such a strong vibe through her lens. His photos from the Pantone Color of the Year party are visual arguments in themselves, and his use of double exposure throughout perfectly communicates the brand extravaganza of the evening. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
There is a lot to call for in this great, collection of images that have helped bring our physical media issue to life. But I’m going to focus on the turntable, which is as clever as it is fascinating. – Andrew Webster, senior editor, entertainment
Art by Cath Virginia, asset from TurboSquid
The most recognized part of Pitchfork – in addition to its logo – is its 10-point rating scale. How do you convey the decline of an august music publication? Just turn up the volume. – Elizabeth Lopatto, senior reporter
Photograph by Amelia Holowaty Krales
Wearables – especially smart rings – tend to be small gadgets. So, when it comes to art, it’s really important to think about how to make them stand out on the page, and also differentiate them from each other. (Let’s be real, watches and rings start to look very, very similar after a while.) Cue fun, colorful props and sparkly nails! – Victoria Song, senior editor
Drawing by Mr.Nelson with photos from Getty Images
In one of the most depressing election cycles of all time, Wouter Tjeenk Willink, aka Mr.Nelson, has done an adequate job with these uncomfortably chaotic collages. – Cath Virginia, senior designer
When people grow old, they do not cease to be individuals capable of joy. Mojo Wang’s imaginative drawing of an elderly woman celebrating her favorite music beautifully illustrates an article explaining how the writer’s mother used a smart speaker to enhance the final chapters of her life. – Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
I’ve spent the last few years writing about all the ways that search engine optimization is creeping into Google, making for a frustrating experience for both users and website operators. This image perhaps perfectly encapsulates SEO at its worst: insidious, corrosive and just gross. – Mia Sato, platform and community reporter
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
Basically, my favorite part of the story process is discovering what madness our art team has cooked up this time. In this case, I think I told Cath Virginia that I feel like the “it’s all Ohio” meme as I reported the story – it’s all copyright law and always has been. And went into the brain of the galaxy with him. – Elizabeth Lopatto, senior reporter
Richard Parry’s 3D animations perfectly express the cult status of the famous Optimus Maximus keyboard. – Cath Virginia, senior designer
Vice was never as big and solid as Shane Smith made it out to be, and the story had a cartoonish surreality that was perfectly captured in Hunter French’s illustrations – whether it’s the main inspired art from Buster Keaton or Smith selling the brand in secret deals. . Sure, there are a lot of complicated financial details, but art really gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? – Elizabeth Lopatto, senior reporter
Photography by Liam James Doyle and Montinique Monroe
Mia Sato’s piece on a lawsuit involving two Amazon influencers is amazing, and the photographs of these two individuals are a perfect pairing. The photos that Montinique Monroe and Liam James Doyle took in Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, respectively, were individually fantastic and worked so well together, it was really hard to choose which one to use. – Amelia Holowaty Krales, senior photographer
