Art director Tommy Washbush's 50th anniversary cover.
Art director Tommy Washbush illustrated the front cover when Isthmus returned to print as a nonprofit in August 2021. He also illustrated the cover for our one-year-back-in-print anniversary in August 2022. There was really no question whether he’d be the illustrator for the cover for our 50th anniversary issue.
Putting this issue together involved a lot of work, and several trips to Isthmus’ storage space to scrounge through old issues, articles, photographs and artwork from the paper’s past. While thinking up a suitable cover illustration, Tommy reflected on all the work involved in publishing for 50 years, the hundreds of people who have toiled over the years, and the audience Isthmus has reached.
This led to an idea based around the often unsung behind-the-scenes effort involved in putting together an issue.
“It’s an ode to the grind. Creating something like this, especially for half a century, involves so much effort from so many people, so I wanted to celebrate that,” Tommy says.
The final design centers around a conveyor belt of freshly printed issues of Isthmus, and touches on every aspect of the process of creating an issue, from transcribing interviews, typing up copy, shooting photography, and creating illustrations. And then the less-celebrated work of physically printing the paper, and packing it up for delivery, and driving it around town.
Of course we also wanted to include the most important person in this whole process, the reader, who we do it for.
Tommy Washbush
Unused cover designs for the 50th anniversary issue.
Other cover designs considered: a newsstand with personalized graffiti, and a map of the isthmus with some hand lettering.
