the edge The art team has been busy this year, creating illustrations, photographs, and interactive designs to match stories about underwater submarine 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.
2004 was the first year of Future
In a special issue for the year 2004 AD. Edge We looked back 20 years to examine how 2004 was the “Year of the Future,” launching the Internet as we know and use it today. Cath Virginia absolutely smashed the Axis design (with three covers! Remember the skins?), Graham Macari created the smoothest pages, and Amelia Holoty Kralis captured the first images of my dreams. This package is a love letter to the time when we first saw ourselves online and a capsule of what we hope it will become again: a place to play, create and connect. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Joe Takayama
For Josh Dziza’s article about the hundreds of thousands of miles of Internet cables at the bottom of the world’s oceans—and the people who repair and care for them—we created an immersive electric blue world of maps and graphs. It’s great to have the opportunity to combine data visualizations and maps alongside stunning original photography, and Go Takayama’s intimate portraits of these sailing men give a face to an essential but unseen function. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Stormy Pyatt
The visuals for these pieces are one of the things I’m most proud of edge Projects. Stormy Pyeatte’s ethereal style of floral photography and display mapping makes for a design that is both rhythmic and enchanting—it almost makes you want to fall in love. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
We started this story trying to figure out how a group of Excel nerds ended up at ESPN. We ended up discovering how powerful, versatile, and important spreadsheets are and the power they give when you can reduce the world to rows and columns. In the process, our amazing design team found another way to create a spreadsheet: using rows and columns to tell the story, and depict its characters, in their natural environment. – David Pearce, editor-at-large
Photography by Amelia Holwaty Kralis
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 show up in 1980s office wear for our gig. Content sprites magazine. It’s an Internet sensation, so I put as much gunk and slime over the design as I could. Our audio and video producer Andrew Marino was the real MVP of this project because he allowed us to turn him into a real goblin. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Smart Homes Today: Hopes and Realities
The resident of a house full of “smart” technology—speakers, lights, robots—sits by the window and ignores the technology in favor of staring at the trees and clouds outside. Adrian Astorgano’s vibrant art gives us a poignant picture (both figuratively and literally) of how today’s smart homes are useful and even desirable, but not an end in themselves. -Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Getting Christine Radtke’s beautiful storyboards on site was an interesting challenge: how do we preserve the artwork and animation without compromising performance? I think the amount of work done to improve the widget ultimately paid off in the user experience. It’s our smoothest comedy yet. – Graham Macari, senior engineer
I love everything Samar Haddad creates, especially the way she breaks down complex topics step by step in clever, visual ways. For this short series about artificial intelligence in sports, she created a huge set of graphics in a wonderful retro setting. I hate sports, and I love this series. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Amelia Holwaty Kralis; Designed by Maeve Sheridan and Cath Virginia
Creating the illuminating images for our gift guides is a big task every year. We source all the products, create distinct collections for each guide, and try to keep things fresh for the entire collection. I love the cheerful scenes that photographer Amelia Holowaty Kralis created this year with costume designer Maeve Sheridan, with the bold, poppy wrapping papers designed by our Senior Designer Cath Virginia. You can even Buy your custom edge Wrapping paper From our commercial store. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Find color in Pantone’s all-brown party
Photography by Amelia Holwaty Kralis
I was so excited to head to a party with her edge Featured Photographer Amelia Holwaty Kralis: One, because it meant we were away from bedtime with our kids, and two, because she could convey the atmosphere so sharply through her lens. Her images from the Pantone Color of the Year party are visual arguments in themselves, and her use of double exposures throughout perfectly convey the brand’s evening splendor. – Christine Radtke, Creative Director
Art by Cath Virginia with images from Getty Images
There’s a lot to say about this wonderful, cohesive collection of images that helped bring our physical media problem to life. But I have to highlight the floppy disk-turned-turntable, which is as clever as it is charming. – Andrew Webster, Senior Entertainment Editor
Art by Cath Virginia, originals from TurboSquid
The most famous part of pitchfork – next to its logo – is its 10-point rating scale. How do you convey the understatement of a solemn musical publication? Simply turn down the volume. – Elizabeth Lobato, Senior Reporter
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Kralis
Wearable devices — especially smart rings — tend to be small gadgets. So when it comes to art, it’s really important to think about how to make it stand out on the page while also standing out from one another. (Let’s be real, watches and rings start to look a lot alike after a while.) Enjoy the toys, colorful props, and sparkly nails! – Victoria Song, Senior Reviewer
The Verge’s guide to the 2024 presidential election
Design by Mr. Nelson with photos from Getty Images
In one of the most disappointing election cycles ever, Wouter Tijink Willink, a.k.a Mr. Nelson has done an adequate job with these uncomfortably messy posters. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
Alexa, thank you for the music
When people grow up, 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 essay explaining how the author’s mother used a smart speaker to enhance the final chapters of her life. – Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Google is cracking down on sites publishing “SEO parasitic” content.
Art by Cath Virginia with images from Getty Images
I’ve spent the last few years writing about all the ways SEO creeps into Google, making for a frustrating experience for both users and website operators. This image perhaps perfectly sums up SEO at its worst: insidious, corrosive, and straightforward. – Mia Sato, Platforms and Communities Reporter
OpenAI is looking for an answer to its copyright problems
Art by Cath Virginia with images from Getty Images
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 felt like I was “all Ohio” when I was writing the story—it’s all copyright law and always has been. And with it went the brain of the galaxy. – Elizabeth Lobato, Senior Reporter
How the Stream Deck rose from the ashes of the legendary keyboard
Richard Barry’s hilarious 3D animation perfectly conveys Optimus Maximus’s infamous keyboard cult status. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
Underworld was never as big and powerful as Shane Smith made it seem, and the story had a cartoonish surrealism that was perfectly captured in Hunter French’s illustrations – whether it was the Buster Keaton-inspired key art or Smith selling the brand in secret deals. Sure, there are a bunch of complicated financial details, but the art gets to the heart of the matter, right? – Elizabeth Lobato, Senior Reporter
Photography by Liam James Doyle and Montenique Munro
Miya Sato’s article about a lawsuit involving two Amazon influencers is stunning, and the photographs of these two are the perfect pairing. The images, taken by Montenik Monroe and Liam James Doyle in Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, respectively, were great individually and worked so well together, it was really difficult to choose which one to use. – Amelia Holwaty Kralis, senior photographer
