The Innovation Issue
From the Nominator
For Barnard Magazine’s innovation issue, the magazine team contracted illustrator Jeff Hinchee for the complicated task of visualizing ideas behind cutting-edge programs, classes, and seminars created by a diverse group of constituencies, disciplines, and stakeholders. The challenge for Hinchee was to create a visually harmonious narrative that could thread together a set of six disparate initiatives, including a toddler center that doubles as a child development research lab, a student-led pedagogy conference, and an architecture course on designing for neurodiversity. It was a tall order that Hinchee responded to with whimsy, taking the weighted subject matter to a place of joy. Hinchee’s assemblages combine technology with craft through small-scale sets, photography, paper cutouts, traditional drawing, photo illustrations, found objects, and a healthy dose of humor. The cover art set the tone by presenting Barnard College’s Milbank Hall in cross section, revealing a motherboard on which cutouts of scientists in lab coats adjust a giant CPU under the supervision of another scientist directing from her wheelchair. Inside, the children’s development lab is represented by cutout children playing in a ball pit shaped like a brain. To depict the architecture class on neurodiversity, a design compass doubles as a sun rising over two office chairs. The student-led pedagogy conference is shown by cutouts of students steadying a giant megaphone, with one student expressing an idea into the speaker and an explosion of idea balloons spewing forth from the other side. The end results are not just clever, they’re kind.
From the Judges
The illustrations exhibit a consistent vision with great execution and attention to detail, complementing the topic effectively. The style of combining several media types to tie the stories together was smooth. Each image demonstrates careful composition and consistent quality.