When we talk about style, we’re referring to the way an artist visually interprets an object, applying their unique vision and hand without changing the object beyond recognition. An artist’s style reflects his or her personality, and of course everyone’s personality is different. As you hire an artist, designer, (or even a writer or musician), get to know their work to make sure their creative personality fits your brief. Because no one like trying to force a square style into a round project. Take a look at how we styled jazz pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith’s face without losing his likeness.

We created this time-lapse to walk our interns through the process of creating infographics. From initial idea to final product, the video condenses hours of work into a couple of minutes. Follow along to see how we created this educational infographic to supplement Ken Burns’ documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, one of a series of infographics commissioned by PBS.

Most of our projects are drawn with pixels, though many of them start out in graphite. There’s just something about the way a pencil feels on paper. In the video below, we take a sketch from paper to pixels, finding a style along the way. We finished out the sketch in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos.

We prefer drawing with pixels for the way it mimics the feeling of conventional sketching or painting. It’s great for texture and versatility, but it can’t resize infinitely. For that, we turn to vector.

Every day, people ask us how we create illustrations. No they don’t. No one ever asks. But below is a video of us in Adobe Illustrator using a mouse to draw with the vector pen tool. It does the same kind of thing that a French curve used to do in the olden days, but using mathematically based points and lines. That means it can be scaled to any size, which is why it is used for typefaces, logos and most graphics. Vector is superb for creating crisp lines and shapes.