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Dwelling on the Future

Jane Bryant Quinn's article “Plan Ahead for Continuing Care,” in the July-August Bulletin, advised readers to plan ahead for their future living arrangements in their later years. It was the design team's job to help readers picture it.

The challenge: To show what it looks like to “age in place.” "When it comes to illustration, good ideas are foremost important," Art Director Cathy Kelley said. “We always look for an artist who has strong concepts. We previously worked with illustrator Yau Hoong Tang on another project. He did a great job problem solving that assignment so we reached out to him to do this one." The solution: “I sent the article to him and asked him to interpret it,” Kelley said. "Tang sent us several sketches. We went a couple of rounds with the concepts, eventually combining imagery from two separate sketches to make one cohesive illustration."

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July/August 2014 AARP Bulletin

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Engaging with Money Matters

Jean Chatzky’s “It Takes More Than Love When You Marry Later in Life” in the June/July issue of AARP The Magazine lists some special financial considerations that 50-plus newlyweds should take into account. Mulling these money matters takes time, but for illustrator Zohar Lazar creating the art to accompany the article took next to none. "Zohar is so talented—he sent back the final illustration within a day," Art Director Lesley Palmer said. The inspiration behind the lickety-split sketch? “I thought'd be fun to show the minister looking out at the reader with a 'can you believe this!?' expression,” Zohar said.

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Weighing the Options

We can all use a little inspiration when it comes to meeting our fitness goals. In this case, our design team found its inspiration for Jessica Girdwain's “7 Ways to Lose Those Last 5 Pounds,” which appeared in our June/July issue of AARP The Magazine, from a glass scale.

“A scale was an easy way to show what the story’s about,” senior designer Joanna Hagan said. After weighing their options, the design team decided to create a scale “sculpture” to represent the article’s list of weight-loss inhibitors. Since the photo was to represent specific facts from the article, the little details—from the thermostat's temperature to the clock's time to the pills' appearance— mattered. “We try to be as truthful as possible with some license," consulting photo editor Marisa Zanganeh said. After the design team settled on a concept, they passed along the project to photographer Levi Brown and prop stylist Wendy Schelah. “We rely on the aesthetic sensibilities of the photographer and stylist,” Zanganeh said. “Levi Brown is so talented to make something as inanimate as [those] items into something beautiful to look at.”

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Fog machines, suspended cars and bears, oh my! Videographer David Lackey and photographer Brent Humphreys take us behind the scenes of the "Save Your Own Life" photo shoot. The hollywood-style action shots depicting real-life emergency scenarios accompanied Mike Zimmerman's survival guide article in our June/July issue of AARP The Magazine.

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June/July 2014 AARP The Magazine Issue

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A Modest Proposal

What does "companionship for the older guy" look like? Like two retirees kicking back on a beachy isle? Or maybe like two old-timers performing their swan song on the porch? For Bruce Jay Friedman’s humorous article “Friends to the End” in the June Bulletin, it looked like sweeping your cleaning lady off her feet.

The concept came from a punchy statement in the article’s first paragraph: Maybe you marry your cleaning lady. "Illustrator Barry Blitt sent us several sketches and we decided to go with the proposal," Art Director Cathy Kelley explained.   The illustrator took the good idea and made it great. “Barry is an 'old school' illustrator,” Kelley said. “His style had a certain look and panache. He captured the writer's sense of humor perfectly."

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Unmasking an Image

Just like this sneaky figure, the creative process behind the final product is often masked. Illustrator James Steinberg reveals his M.O. for creating the art that accompanied our medical identity theft article in the June 2014 Bulletin: "My process usually begins with jotting down the salient features of the article. In this case they were "theft" and "health care". A conceptual illustrator's job is to find images, usually visual archetypes or clichés that are universally recognizable, and merge or distill them into a picture that is easily read and hopefully fresh and striking. I started with a caduceus as a symbol for health care and a masked figure for the criminal. My first sketches were more narrative. I tried a pickpocket idea and then I tried kind of an art theft idea. Next, I tried to merge the caduceus and the thief's mask, so that he was looking through or hiding behind the victim's medical identity. This is the sketch that was chosen by the art director, and I think it was the right choice."

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June 2014 AARP Bulletin

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Keep on Trucking

Mark Miller’s “Surviving the Jolt” in the April/May AARP The Magazine detailed how three people bounced back from traumatic events. Dave Sanderson, a “Miracle on the Hudson” passenger, was one of the photographed subjects.

Photographer Chris Crisman initially shot Sanderson by water to remind readers of the traumatic plane landing. Later, we decided not to focus on what happened to Sanderson, but instead on what he’s doing with his life now.   “The story is really about what did [the event] push him to, to change his life,” Photo Editor Caitlin Peters said. Sanderson’s gratitude toward his rescuers led him to fundraise and speak on behalf of the Red Cross, so we staged him in front of one of their emergency vehicles. “We went with [that shot] because it was more clearly tied to his [advocacy] now,” Peters said.

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The Dish on Our Menopause Shoot

Not to brag, but sometimes our team has so many great ideas for a photo shoot that choosing the right one almost becomes a toss up. For Sandra Tsing Loh’s personal essay “It’s My Menopause, Darn it!” in the April/May magazine, the photo shoot actually began up in the air—with flying plates, that is.

“We wanted to do something a little more fun for us, something less expected,” Photo Editor Caitlin Peters said. We knew that Loh, a performer, and photographer Jeff Minton would be up for doing something a little different from the standard portrait. The concept came directly from the story. Loh had remarked how cathartic it would be to hurl something at the wall during the throes of menopause, so we decided to try it. Our final image shows the aftermath of the plate-breaking, rather than the action itself. “We loved Sandra's expression in this photograph. It really told the story,” Peters said. But all in all, we think it turned out to be a smashing shot.

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April/May 2014 AARP The Magazine Issue

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Locking in the Creative Process

Our last intern, John T. Robinson, hired Yau Hoong Tang to illustrate a column in the May Bulletin.With his extensive experience, Tang created an eye-catching image for Sid Kirchheimer’s "Scam Alert: How to Cyberproof Your Phone.” 

“When I read the article, the very first idea that came to my mind was a lock,” Tang said. “Then, I needed to come up with a clever, fresh visual to illustrate the idea. This is always the most challenging part.” Tang presented a few sketches and we agreed that one stood out as the final.

“When I was doing my usual sketching and scribbling—I always say "let the pencil do the thinking"—I found that a smartphone looked just like a link in a chain,” Tang said. “It was the perfect shape to incorporate into the concept of the illustration.”

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2014 Summer Interns

Hey there— Jessica and Sarah here.   As a club swimmer and a Divemaster, respectively, it’s safe to say we have an affinity for beneath-the-surface stories. Since you’ve found Page Review, it seems you do too! This summer, Jessica and I will show you how AARP’s creative team takes an idea and transforms it into a polished image. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words—we think it’s time to tell that story.  

Sarah Barchus (pictured right) is the 2014 summer editorial intern at AARP The Magazine as part of the American Society of Magazine Editors program. She is a rising senior at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where she is majoring in journalism and global studies.   Jessica Kusuma (pictured left) is the 2014 summer design intern at AARP Media. She will be helping the designers of the magazine and AARP Bulletin while learning about their creative process. Jessica is a rising senior at the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. She is majoring in Communication Arts and is specifically interested in layout design, illustration and photography.

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We commissioned Ilovedust / Goldenwolf to take Sean's illustration, and develop a video version for tablet and promotion.

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The last of the Baby Boomers turn 50 this year, and the AARP Media creative team kicked off the celebration with a photo collage for our first issue of 2014. Illustrator Sean McCabe took boomer icons and created this piece for the magazine.

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A recent AARP media collaboration with Dan Saelinger. Concept: The Evolution of Retirement.