This article was about the cultural differences with how the Americans and Japanese navigate the pitfalls of investing. I wanted to illustrate it as a journey, with lots of struggles as an American and Japanese mountain climber each get different advice on how to navigate the same dangerous path to reach the summit. Digital illustrations created for this piece by Russ Willms had the casual style I was looking for, and were perfect to lighten the mood of the serious subject matter as well as to add visual interest to the cover and article. Note that the same mountain illustration was used in both spreads, but reversed and mated to a different foreground illustration. This helped keep the cost down, as Russ charged us twice for usage rights of the illustration, but only one charge for creation of a single piece of art. I've included some of the initial concept sketches and assignment notes as a glimpse into the process that led to the final art.