Here's to 2021: An Illustrated Look Back at the People and Events That Shaped the Year
When was the last time you sang along to a sea shanty? Where were you when Amanda Gorman delivered her poem at President Biden’s inauguration? Do you still think back fondly to your hot girl summer?
2021 was jam-packed with inspiring highs and heartbreaking lows—and everything in between. There were certainly many memorable moments, but do you think you could pick them out of a lineup?
This is your chance to find out! Beutler Ink is back with the latest installment of our “Here’s To” series, an annual illustration of the biggest stories of the year. For 2021, we’re fortunate to partner with the wildly talented illustrator Quincy Ray. Quincy brought our vision to stunning life, drawing over 100 intricately detailed caricatures of the people and events that shaped 2021.
From Drake to Dolly, it’s all here. Click the image below to dive in, or keep scrolling to learn more about the artist and our process, and the answer key!
How we told the story of 2021
Like any year, 2021 had more storylines and characters than we could possibly fit into one single illustration. Throughout the year, our team keeps a running list of people and events for potential inclusion in our year-end project.
In order to make sure the design brief for this graphic wasn’t too overwhelming, we held a series of meetings to whittle down the list, weighing the relative merits of each item on the list. Some, of course, are no-brainers, while some merely hold a soft spot in our hearts. Ultimately, we sought to balance widely recognizable, can’t-miss newsmakers with the smaller stories from the past 12 months. Even though it was gut-wrenching to cut some of our favorites, we had to make the tough choices that best served the project, and in the end we settled on a list of about 100 people and events.
Next, we put our heads together to figure out the perfect backdrop for this year’s illustration. Previous years have been set in far-flung locales, from Jurassic World in 2015 to the Garden of Earthly Delights in 2016 to a future dystopia in 2017 and a museum in 2018.
This year, we wanted a setting that would speak to the ongoing pandemic without that being the central story. We landed on framing the depiction with an Olympic stadium; the cardboard “fans” in the audience are a grim reminder of COVID’s ongoing impact without dominating the illustration. This went into our graphic design brief for Quincy, our featured artist for 2021.
Quincy Ray is a designer, illustrator, and character artist based out of Los Angeles. His career began as a caricature artist at amusement parks and eventually led him to pursue animation. We love Quincy's bold and dynamic illustrations, and knew the personality he puts into each character would really bring this year’s round up to life.
Quincy got right to work, delivering sketches of several of the people from the list. We could see right away this was going to be special.
His ability to capture people’s essential qualities in a few brush strokes was a perfect fit for this project.
Some artists work from the inside out, sketching out the whole scene first and then populating it with individual illustrations, but Quincy, being a portraitist, preferred to work in the other direction. As we saw his sketches grow into a larger composition, our excitement grew as well, culminating in the stunning final image. We think you’ll agree that this year’s illustration is a fitting tribute to an amazing year!
In fact, our strategy was so successful we were recognized with a Davey Award for illustrating for Here’s to 2021!
So, What WERE the Biggest Stories of 2021?
How many did you get? Which ones stumped you? Take a look below to check your work!
