World War II magazine

World War II magazine will be featuring one of my graphics every month as part of it's July 2007 relaunch.

Stephen Petranek is the Editor in Chief of the Weider History Group. We met at TED a few years ago and I did a talk on information graphics for him and his previous team at Discover magazine. I was asking his advice about the book proposal recently and he suggested we work together. Every month I liase with Stephen Budiansky who is the Editor of WWII and Wendy Palitz who is the art director. I won't go into the process right now but it's great to work with a team who trust each other's judgement.

The graphics that are featured in the magazine will be featured in the book - albeit with some modifications. Working with the magazine is helping me keep to a schedule of research, writing and drawing. It keeps me on my toes editorially but I also feel confident after learning various principles of storytelling from journalists at BBC News where I worked for 10 years.

The subject matter of the graphics in the magazine is weapons and technology. There are other subjects to tackle but we agreed it's good to stick to one area to begin with. I hope that these graphics will go beyond the cutaway, technical diagrams that are a staple of editorial (military) visual information.

I believe that all weapons, tools and technology are developed for a purpose and explaining the context of their development is more important than showing them in their realistic state. There are enough photo books to show you what this stuff looked like - my graphics should explain a few stages deeper.

I will discuss my approach to information graphics elsewhere on this site.

Apologies to folks in the UK who will find it harder to find WWII magazine. I'll be posting jpgs of the work as and when I can. One of the purposes of this site is to get your thoughts about the work, both the work you see and anything else you would like to see.

If you don't want to leave a comment then mail at

maxgadney@googlemail.com