Runner’s World

I always enjoy an opportunity to work for Runner’s World and not simply because I read the magazine during my undistinguished high school cross country career. The RW art staff seem to appreciate and cultivate good illustration and it’s one of the magazines I snatch from the periodicals rack each month to check out who’s drawing what.

For this particular job the art director came to me with the idea of doing an Eadweard Muybridge inspired illustration about running efficiency. Muybridge, of course, was the slightly eccentric 19th century photographer whose serial images of bodies in motion settled, once and for all, the popular question of whether or not all four of a horse’s legs leave the ground at once during gallop (they do). My first sketch sought to mimic Muybridge’s photo sets by dividing the action into cells but the art director decided this approach was too ridged and I ended up overlapping the figures to create a beautiful wave motion. The grid in the background, however, was retained lest the illustration lose it’s ‘techiness.’