One of the fun aspects of illustrating for the new basecamp.com marketing site is getting assignments from Jamie, Jason, and Mig. One of my favorite briefs I got was “can you illustrate browser trouble?”

Upon getting art requests, I usually search to see if there’s a standardized image for the concept. In this case I didn’t find any imagery that rose to the level of iconic, or was particularly interesting or clear. I opted to start from scratch.

Hmmm, browser trouble

Broken windows, bugs, injuries, cracked screens, dizzy people? I drew a page of visual brainstorms and posted it on our Basecamp project.

Whoever assigns me a drawing—in this case, Jamie—reviews my explorations and then ask me to flesh out one of the directions. Jamie liked the guy with the computer head and suggested that there be a browser window with a frown face.

I drew up another page with color.

With that, Jamie got back to me with “Awesome.”

I waited to see how the image would be implemented. Working with the Basecamp design team is great for me because I’m not particularly strong in Photoshop or Illustrator—those guys are all ninjas. I like to draw, and that is how my time is spent most efficiently.

Usually I have no idea how the images are going to be used until they are implemented live on the website, which is fine by me. I like the surprise of finding a fully rendered web page with my drawings.

Hopefully it is a page you will never have to find.