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WSJ

MARCH 18, 2011
Here are some recent works for The Wall Street Journal. This here cricket was a nice one to work on - for the terrific Christian Drury on 'The Six-Legged Meat of The Future'. Nut-like, Dude! And crispy, if done right. I enjoyed writing my own interpretations of the segment names - glad the editors went along with them.

This was a quick turnaround cover piece for Pete Hausler for The Personal Journal section. 'In Search of Alcoholism Genes'- identifying hidden risks...

This was for a story about a guy who designs web sites for religious organizations (churches, etc...)- and how business is booming because of the built in networking these organizations naturally offer. Art Directors: Dan Smith and Derick Gonzalez.

I was asked if I would take on a weekly column illustration for a bit. These run in the Weekend Journal's Review Section for the Mind & Matter column by Matt Ridley. This one: A Key Lesson of Adulthood: The Need to Unlearn. Things we think are true beyond doubt, many times, turn out to be untrue, which get in the way of new understanding. In addition, as we evolve with science and technology, our brains get bigger. Good news.

I guess I did this backwards... these are roughs for the above illustration. The finals are running in black and white right now - but might go to color soon... (I added color to some of the finals after they ran.)

Throughout the earth's history, there have been pole reversals. It has been 780,000 years since this last happened, so we're due. And doomed. Actually, one of Ridley's points is that we can freak out over things not worth worrying about - mainly due to how some news is reported and not put into proper context. But it would screw up some bird's migration habits. (This ran as 2 spots - I added color later).

‘Hands and Faces Spoke Long Before Our Tongues’ - Ridley says, ‘our prehuman ancestors didn’t say much, but they had a rich and subtle vocabulary of gestures, shrugs and frowns’.

When a technology is new, everybody wants to understand how it works....

When it is mature, nobody is interested in such details. He posits that some day, we will not differentiate how we communicate - whether it be email, text, etc. “My part of the cloud will get a message to a friend’s part of the cloud by whichever method works best, and I will not even know which way it went”.

© 2024 John S. Dykes