I know how much we all love self congratulatory postings, but I just wanted to say how honored I am to receive the award for Best Cover Illustration from AAN (Association of Alternative News Weeklies) for the 3rd year in a row.  
 
The image selected this year was the "Good Cop, Bad Cop" illustration created for Peter Storch at the New Times in Phoenix.  This one is particularly sweet because the Phoenix paper was the first job out of school that I fell in love with. As a green AD, it was in a large conference room on the second floor of a renovated old school, surrounded with brilliant writers, that I knew I wanted to be a part of bringing social issues to print. 
 
Thanks also go to Michael Shavalier, the Design Director of Village Voice Media (New Times' parent company).  Michael has worked for the last few years building a team of gifted and dedicated AD's. Industry icon, Bob Newman has written a few profiles of these folks on his SPD blog that are worth a long look (articles here).  
 
I've said more than once on this blog that I thrive on the rich topics these publications bring to the table, and In the next few days I'll be posting a handful of more recent collaborations with various papers from the VVM group.
 
Below are the winning images for the last three years.