Graduation Contest: The Winner!
Graphic and iconic. The color choice and the spare illustration style give gravitas, and the little dangling tassel adds a touch of levity; moving the tassel from one side to the other wouldn’t make much of a difference here. Whatever else it is, leaving college is burying one’s youth.
(Denis won two tickets to this event at the 92Y)
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #1
By Lance Tooks
Graduation Contest: Runners-up #2
By Joseph Farris (left) and Matthew Kalamidas (right)
Both these images play with the idea that college graduates are a faceless mass. Joseph Farris is a long time New Yorker contributor and he probably drew this back when graduation was a purely joyful event while Matthew Kalamidas’s image may be more accurate to some of the boring, funereal aspects of that day.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #3
By Kim Murton
I like the silhouette and the use of black and white here. This graduate is halfway on her way to nowhere.
Graduation Contest: Runners-up #4
By Sarah Romano Diehl (left) and Tim Foley (right)
When we put these two images side by side, we got into an interesting discussion about the direction in which this particular narrative should be told. Should you end with the student who falls or begin there? We think each works in its own way. What’s charming in both of these pictures are the sequential emotions shown on the different students’ faces. From passive, to nervous, to elated, to doomed - each character tells us one piece of a larger story.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #5
By Jean Tuttle
The details in the image (the pointing finger, the hand as a fig leaf, the grey brick wall against the green garden) all serve to tell the same story over and over again - which is an image construction more akin to a Rockwell than to a New Yorker cover. In a New Yorker cover, each detail often serves to tell a different part of the story. Still, this does seem to be how college students feel about their alma maters these days. We admire the artist for putting her finger on that feeling of being kicked out.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #6
By Chee Yang Ong
This is a good, simplified image. We got a few sketches of graduates using their caps to beg for money, but here the idea is reduced to a gesture - one that’s as common in church as it is among pan handlers. The idea reads clearly and fluidly.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #7
By Jamie Carter
This is M.C. Escher’s staircase that wraps back on itself. That’s a very clever metaphor for what you get out of a college education. Wish only that this had been one step more finished so that it was a bit clearer to see.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #8
By Chris Greco
This one made a few people chuckle. I laughed less but that’s because i threw my wallet in the air when Nadja graduated.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #9
By Art by Christina
I like the simplicity of this cartoon. I would take a point off for using the word “bill” to represent the bill - I’m not convinced that that was the only way to do it. But I like images with good cartoon facial expressions, and we have that here.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #10
By Gally Mathias
We got many images of graduates jumping and falling, but this was one of the most succinct. It captures the sensation that graduates have of being thrown out of a plane without a parachute. I wish the main subject had been drawn a little younger - the grey sideburns distract here.
Graduation Contest: Runner-up #11
By Jack Hunter
Behind the scenes atThe New Yorker with art editor