The Verge art team was busy this year, creating illustrations, photographs, and interactive designs to match stories about underwater sea cables, competitive Excel, parental anxiety, AI companions, and so much more. Here’s a look back at 20 of our favorite projects from 2024, with comments from those of us who worked on the project.
2004 was the first year of the future
In a special issue on the year 2004, The Verge looked 20 years back to examine how 2004 was “the year of the future,” setting in motion the internet as we know and use it today. Cath Virginia absolutely crushed the hub design (with three skins! Remember skins?), Graham MacAree built the smoothest pages, and Amelia Holowaty Krales took the early aughts photos of my dreams. This package is both a love letter to a time we all saw ourselves for the first time online and a capsule of what we hope it can become again: a place for play, creativity, and connection. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Photography by Go Takayama
For Josh Dzieza’s feature on the hundreds of thousands of miles of internet cables at the bottom of the world’s oceans — and the people who fix and tend to them — we created an immersive electric blue world of maps and schematics. It’s great to have an opportunity to mash up data visualizations and maps along with stunning original photography, and Go Takayama’s intimate photos of these seafaring men give a face to an essential but otherwise invisible job. – Kristen Radtke, creative director
Photography by Stormy Pyeatte
The visuals for these pieces are one of my proudest Verge projects. Stormy Pyeatte’s ethereal style of floral photography and projection mapping makes for a rhythmic and mesmerizing feature design — it almost makes you want to fall in love. – Cath Virginia, senior designer