New York Times Op/Ed: The Forgotten Virtues of Tammany Hall

I had the great pleasure doing an Op/Ed for the New York Times last week, which ran the past Saturday. The article dealt with the landmark status for the Tammany Hall, the building that hosted the notorious and highly influential "political machine" that was synonymous with corruption in NY during the 1800s up until 1930s. But this article made the case that Tammany Hall actually helped some of the poor of New York City.

Op/Ed Art Director Matt Dorfman encouraged me to check out some of Thomas Nast's cartoons of that time, often ridiculing "Boss" Tweed and picturing him as a massive, over-sized figure, so I went from there. The first sketch shows the actual building and and a self-righteous Boss Tweed, as well as one of his underlings feeding the poor.

In the second version, I managed to make him more involved and boil the idea down better. And we got rid of the building altogether. All along, Matt and I went back and forth with layout screenshots, as this image plays with the page design in a subtle way, it's kind of open and not boxed in which is fun.

Here is the final result. Thanks again to Art Director Matt Dorfman for the great project and awesome collaboration!