He Edge The art team has been busy this year creating illustrations, photographs and interactive designs to match stories about underwater sea cables, competitive Excel, parental anxiety, ai companions and much more. Here's a look at 20 of our favorite projects of 2024, with comments from those of us who worked on the project.
2004 was the first year of the future
In a special issue from 2004, The edge He looked back 20 years to examine how 2004 was “the year of the future,” launching the Internet as we know and use it today. Cath Virginia completely crushed the center design (with three masks! Remember masks?), Graham MacAree created the smoothest pages, and Amelia Holowaty Krales took my first dream photos. This pack is both a love letter to a time when we all first saw each other online and a capsule of what we hope it can be again: a place for play, creativity and connection. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Go Takayama
For Josh Dzieza's article about the hundreds of thousands of miles of internet cables at the bottom of the world's oceans (and the people who repair and care for them), we created an immersive electric blue world of maps and diagrams. It's great to have the opportunity to combine data visualizations and maps alongside stunning original photography, and Go Takayama's intimate photographs of these sailors give a face to essential but invisible work. – Kristen Radtke, Creative Director
Photography by Stormy Pyeatte
The images of these pieces are some of the ones I am most proud of. Edge projects. Stormy Pyeatte's ethereal style of floral photography and projection mapping creates a rhythmic and mesmerizing signature design – it almost makes you want to fall in love. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
We started this story trying to figure out how the heck a bunch of Excel nerds ended up on ESPN. We ended up discovering exactly how powerful, versatile, and important spreadsheets really are and the power they confer when you can reduce the world to rows and columns. In the process, our brilliant design team found another way to create a spreadsheet: using rows and columns to tell the story and represent your characters in their natural habitat. – David Pierce, Managing Editor
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales
Every once in a while, we go crazy with a special edition print project, and for our subscription launch this year, we somehow convinced our colleagues to pose in '80s office attire for our content elves magazine. It's a thing about internet enshitification, so I basically dumped as much goo and slime on top of the design as possible. Our audiovisual producer Andrew Marino was the true MVP of this project for allowing us to turn him into a literal elf. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Today's smart homes: hopes and realities
The occupant of a home filled with “smart” technology (speakers, lights, a robovac) sits by the window and ignores the technology to gaze at the trees and clouds outside. Adrián Astorgano's vibrant art gives us a moving picture (both figuratively and literally) of how today's smart homes are useful and even preferable, but not an end in themselves. –Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Placing Kristen Radtke's beautiful comic on the site was an interesting challenge: how do we preserve the art and animation without compromising performance? I think the amount of work put into optimizing the part ultimately paid off in the user experience. It's our smoothest comic yet. – Graham MacAree, Senior Engineer
I love everything Samar Haddad does, especially how he breaks down complex topics step by step in a smart visual way. For this short series about ai in sports, he created a huge set of graphics with a cool retro vibe. I hate sports and I love this series. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales; design by Maeve Sheridan and Cath Virginia
Creating the main images for our gift guides is a big job every year. We source all the products, create different sets for each guide, and try to keep things fresh for the entire set. I love the cheerful scenes that photographer Amelia Holowaty Krales created this year with props stylist Maeve Sheridan, with bold, poppy wrapping paper designed by our senior designer Cath Virginia. You can even <a target="_blank" href="https://shop.theverge.com/pages/holiday”>buy your own custom Edge gift paper from our merchandising store. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Searching for color at Pantone's all-brown party
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales
I was so excited to go to a party with Edge senior photographer Amelia Holowaty Krales: one, because it meant we were both free from bedtime with our respective kids, and two, because she can communicate a vibe so clearly through her lens. Their photos from the Pantone Color of the Year party are visual narratives in themselves, and their use of double exposures perfectly communicates the brand's spectacle of the night. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
There is much to note in this large, coherent collection of images that helped bring our physical media problem to life. But I have to put the focus on the floppy disk turned record player, which is as intelligent as it is fascinating. – Andrew Webster, Senior Editor, Entertainment
Art by Cath Virginia, assets by TurboSquid
The most recognizable part of Gallows —in addition to its logo—is its 10-point rating scale. How is the decline of an August music release conveyed? You just turn down the volume. – Elizabeth Lopatto, Senior Reporter
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales
Wearable devices, especially smart rings, tend to be small devices. So when it comes to art, it's very important to think about how to make them stand out on the page while also differentiating them from each other. (Let's face it, watches and rings start to look a lot alike after a while.) Features fun, colorful accessories and sparkly nails! – Victoria Song, Senior Critic
The Verge's guide to the 2024 presidential election
Design by Mr. Nelson with photos from Getty Images
In one of the most depressing election cycles of all time, Wouter Tjeenk Willink, aka Mr. Nelson did a good job with these uncomfortably chaotic collages. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
Alexa, thanks for the music.
When people get older, they do not stop being individuals capable of enjoying themselves. Mojo Wang's imaginative drawing of an older woman celebrating her favorite music beautifully illustrates an article explaining how the writer's mother used a smart speaker to improve the final chapters of her life. – Barbara Krasnoff, Reviews Editor
Google is cracking down on sites that post “parasitic SEO” content
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
I've spent the last few years writing about all the ways search engine optimization infiltrates Google, creating a frustrating experience for both users and website operators. This image perhaps perfectly encapsulates the worst aspect of SEO: insidious, corrosive, and just plain disgusting. – Mia Sato, platform and community reporter
OpenAI seeks an answer to its copyright problems
Art by Cath Virginia with photos from Getty Images
Basically, my favorite part of the story process is finding out what crazy thing our art team has up to this time. In this case, I think I told Cath Virginia that I felt like I was in the “everything is Ohio” meme while reporting the story: everything is copyright law and always has been. And she went galactic cerebral with that. – Elizabeth Lopatto, Senior Reporter
How the Stream Deck rose from the ashes of a legendary keyboard
Richard Parry's fun 3D animations perfectly express the cult status of the infamous Optimus Maximus keyboard. – Cath Virginia, Senior Designer
Vice was never as big and solid as Shane Smith made it out to be, and the story had a cartoonish surreal quality that was captured perfectly in Hunter French's illustrations, whether it was the main art inspired by Buster Keaton or Smith promoting the brand in secret deals . . Sure, there are a lot of complicated financial details, but the art really gets to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? – Elizabeth Lopatto, Senior Reporter
Photography by Liam James Doyle and Montinique Monroe
Mia Sato's article about a lawsuit involving two amazon influencers is amazing, and the photos of these two people are a perfect match. The portraits that Montinique Monroe and Liam James Doyle took in Austin, Texas and Minneapolis, Minnesota, respectively, were fantastic individually and worked so well together that it was really difficult to choose which one to use. – Amelia Holowaty Krales, Senior Photographer
