Hasta La Ideas

Expect Obama-mania in the media over the next couple of days as Inauguration Day approaches – ‘the nearest America will come to a coronation,’ as one wag has put it. In one of the more CR-relevant tie-ins, tomorrow’s Guardian G2 section will feature excerpts from a selection of speeches by Almost President Obama as interpreted by a mixture of designers and illustrators

Introducing it all is this cover by David Carson

Contributors inside include Sean Freeman

Peter Horridge

Jonathan Barnbrook

Mario Hugo

And Paula Scher

There is also to be a contribution from Alan Kitching but, as I write this, G2 art director Richard Turley has just emailed to say “we just received the Alan Kitching but it’s still wet (!) so can’t be scanned….. not sure what we’re going to do about it yet other than send the work experience into the toilets to hold it under the hairdryer… guess that demonstrates the kind of timescales we operate to in newspapers.” So that one may not appear.

Under Turley and deputy art director Jo Cochrane, the use of illustration in The Guardian’s G2 section has been a consistent highlight – not just for special projects such as this Christmas cover by Yulia Brodskaya

but also in the regular contributor pages. David Foldvari’s dark, sometimes menacing style is the perfect counterpart for the black humour of the regular Charlie Brooker column on Mondays

while the likes of David Hughes, Belle Mellor and a host of other illustrators – some established, some new – set G2 very much apart from its broadsheet competitors.

The New York Times has long been lauded for its use of illustration on the Op Ed pages. The Guardian’s G2 section deserves to be placed up alongside it for its consistent excellence.

Update: Looks like the work experience person did a good job with the dryer – here’s the Alan Kitching illustration in today’s paper

And the G2 cover