I’m proud of my article about Apple creating a corporate museum and public space. I’m especially proud of the artwork that Tim van de Vall and I created for it. I collaborated previously with Tim on my book, where we designed the covers and the Special Kickstarter Supporters centerfold.

I thought readers might find it interesting to learn a little of how the two pictures came about. When I first had the idea for the article, I thought it was very important to have some art to go along with my descriptions. I discussed it with Tim, and he was commissioned to work on them.

First I gathered a number of pictures for reference. I got pictures of different museum spaces, galleries and Apple stores. I then wrote out my descriptions of the two rooms that would be pictured. I met with Tim and I narrowed down the basic foundational look of things and gave him copies of all the pictures that I had sourced. He then waited for me to create a rough draft, so I took a foundational background image and I “pasted” a bunch of pictures on it in PhotoShop. Here’s what that looked like.

We discussed it, he took it and created this.

I thought it was great! I really liked what he had done, but I wanted some changes, so I started again in PhotoShop, then decided it was easier and faster to do it the ol’ fashioned way, with multiple copies, scissors and hand-drawn items. Oh, and tape.

Tim came back with almost the great picture below. It just needed very minor tweaks. Here’s the final picture.

Next, I got started on the second room. It wasn’t the best initial concept picture, as far as layout.

Tim then suggested that it might work better if we approached it as viewing from the side, so I broke out the paper, pen and scissors again and created this.

That Tim is one great artist and he came back with an excellent picture. There were a few minor tweaks again, but the final is below.

I’d love to hear your comments about the article and about the pictures. You can email me with the link below.