Behind the scenes with The Guardian creative team making all its election artwork by hand
Partly inspired by a ‘Broken Britain’ and in direct response to the rise of AI generative imagery and fake news, the newspaper’s election coverage this year is made with purposely imperfect paper cuttings.
It’s a big year for elections. We’ve already had the UK local elections and EU Parliamentary vote, and both the UK and US are gearing up to choose their next governments and leaders soon. So, expecting a lot of coverage and wanting to give that coverage a distinct but unified visual feel, The Guardian editorial design team landed on an idea they’ll potentially regret later – to create all its election imagery by hand, in-house, out of paper. Here, the team talk us through why, and how it’s going so far…
It’s Nice That:
How did this idea come about and why did you want to do it?
Chris Clarke (creative director):
Whenever we start large editorial branding moments, we look back through similar moments in the past and reflect on how to do something that feels appropriate, and importantly relevant to our audience now. With (then) the general election looming we spoke to senior editors to help us refine a tone that we as The Guardian wanted to project. The main spark of inspiration came from a conversation with a desk editor describing the country as ‘broken’, with nothing fitting or working quite as it should. This in parallel with the rise in disinformation, and fakery either through AI or generative articles really cemented the idea to do the direct opposite and be as honest and transparent in the creative process as we could – to lean into the craft of doing things for real.
Harry Fischer (lead digital designer):
We were also really inspired by this idea of what trust looks like in 2024. We knew this would be an election fought on lies and misinformation, so responded with a real, authentic and approachable look and feel. We explored a variety of ways of depicting a ‘Broken Britain’ and how it could be mended, piece by piece.
Also, The Guardian’s editorial look and feel often pairs clean, graphic typography with hand-rendered illustrations, grit and paper textures. We have spent years digitally recreating analogue results so we thought, why not do it for real?
CC:
There was also the inspiring and unorthodox challenge of seeing if we could respond to live and dynamic news using a tactile and hand-made approach. I have been working in news design for almost 15 years, and never seen anyone attempt something similar. With the team of designers and the pool of talent we currently have, we’ve never been in a stronger, more agile position to attempt this. So we thought, fuck it.
INT:
What does this mean in reality? Who is doing this? When? How are you coming up with the ideas for the compositions? How long does it take to make them? How is the process working?
CC:
We have a team of three to four working across these in rotation at any given time led by Rich and Harry. Each person that works on the coverage brings their own distinct approach and style of crafting unique to them. As the stories have expanded since the local elections, we’ve been broadening on our concepts to involve more variation and depth. We’ve begun to break down the fourth wall, allowing for elements in the real world to weave into the artwork — this we feel is beginning to enhance on the human aspect of this election. The ‘warts and all’.
Rich Cousins (digital design director):
It’s surprisingly fast (and really fun) to come up with ideas for compositions. If anything, the direct nature of cutting and arranging paper is more deliberate and doesn’t allow you to be too fussy. Some of the quickest pieces we’ve done have been ten mins from start to publication. There are artworks where we have time to try ideas out for a concept. But it’s such a great approach and style that we’ve established, which means we can work super quick and it feels really coherent and consistent without too much extra effort – the kind of effort that on a Mac would take a lot of filters and levels to make different kinds of imagery feel like part of a stylistic set.
“The rise in disinformation and fakery cemented the idea to do the opposite and lean into the craft of doing things for real.” Chris Clarke
CC:We’ve been very disciplined with ourselves. It took a while at the beginning to shake off the feeling of re-working something until it’s ‘perfect’ – but in that strive for perfection it was losing emotion. We began by setting ourselves very strict parameters and limitations — one of which being time — using this to force decisions and not being overly precious.
We’re fortunate that we have the full backing of all the editorial desks here. Meaning in practice, they’re very sympathetic to the laborious nature of creating this imagery – desks have been great in getting us pieces either in advance or pre-warning us with potential outcomes to spin up different iterations.
Currently on average we’re producing approximately three to four artworks a day – with some days as much as six. It’s a very cathartic process knowing that the speed of the news agenda will mean that some of these images will only be visible on the front of The Guardian for a matter of hours before being lost to the inevitable news cycle. All of which just adds to the spirit of the whole project.
INT:
Do you have a mini style guide for the collages and their style – how do you regulate colour, type, etc. to make them coherent?
RC:
We have created a style guide which has been the jumping off point for our creative thinking. There aren’t too many specifics in there, as to be honest, most of the consistency is coming through the process itself rather than referencing a specific style. We are using a mix of black-and-white and colour imagery, sometimes cuts, sometimes rips. The process is consistent by its nature but it’s also super flexible, allowing us to create artwork that feels bespoke for the stories.