A little peek behind the process of illustrating a magazine cover. This time for House Beautiful Magazine.
Peek Behind the Cover
As many of you keep asking me about my process, you might enjoy this little process story of how the making of the last cover of House Beautiful Magazine went down. It's not exhaustive by any means, but it gives you an idea of the amount of iteration and changes these things go through.
This is the collector’s cover for the 130th anniversary the magazine. Can you imagine what it's like to publish a monthly magazine since 1896 until today? It is a great accomplishment.
The Request
Art directors Jee Lee and Nicolas Neubeck approached my agent Handsome Frank in London for this. Although nowadays photos on the cover are the norm, for decades House Beautiful featured illustrated covers. For this anniversary they wanted a wink to the past by using a drawing again.
From the briefing:
The anniversary presents a unique creative opportunity: to revisit the illustrated covers that defined House Beautiful’s earliest decades and reinterpret them for today. Those hand-drawn covers embodied elegance, warmth, and craft — qualities that still resonate deeply with the brand. Bringing illustration back in 2026 creates a striking connection between past and present, offering a fresh visual language that celebrates our heritage while inspiring a new generation of design lovers.
The title has featured wonderful illustrated covers over the years.
First Drafts
The team wanted to feature a house they had renovated for the occasion and was featured in the inside pages, but they couldn't decide whether to make it an interior or an exterior scene. As they sent me a lot of video and image material, I was able to easily offer them both options:
