NEW YORK TIMES COVER, ARTS & LEISURE BEST OF 2022

The New York Times commissioned this cover for the Arts & Leisure section’s Best of 2022 issue, celebrating the music, film, television, art, theater, dance, podcasts, and comedy that carried us through the year.

Rather than attempting to depict each discipline literally, the cover uses typography as a connective structure, a way to move through the year itself. Elongated typographic forms weave vertically across the page, overlapping, splitting, and rejoining like paths in motion. The shapes function as visual routes, suggesting divergence, redirection, and convergence, mirroring the unpredictable ways culture unfolded throughout 2022.

Color operates as both distinction and accumulation. Each hue references a different creative discipline, initially reading as separate strands. As the forms overlap, those distinctions begin to blur, creating moments of visual density and controlled chaos. From a distance, the composition feels energetic and compressed. With time, the structure reveals itself, allowing the numerals of 2022 to emerge through layers of intersection and transparency.

The result is a cover that does not summarize the year so much as embody it, capturing how disparate forms of art intersected, collided, and ultimately moved us forward together.