Our Best Illustrations of 2016

Melting soldiers, unicorns in the streets: our favorite artists’ takes on emerging technologies.

Jordan Awanarchive page

December 24, 2016

Most current and emerging technologies can’t actually be seen. That’s why the art department here at MIT Technology Review often depicts them with illustrations.

Take deep learning: what on Earth does that look like? Not only is it a complex concept to grasp (for me at least), but there isn't yet a common visual vocabulary for it—no symbolic shorthand, the way an apple and mortarboard can represent education or a money bag and top hat conjures the banking industry.

Thankfully, we work with a world-class group of illustrators who help us bear the conceptual load. Their imagination and hard work are what makes our jobs as art directors possible. (Not to mention it's also what makes our magazine and site look good.)

These are our favorite illustrations from 2016. Each of these pieces strike me as being a small miracle in itself. Now finished, in retrospect, each seems self-evident. But all were tricky to pull off. How would you draw, say, the Internet of things or gene editing?

**Using Patient Fingerprints to Break Down Medical Record Silos**
Illustration by Aisha Franz

**Hot And Violent**
Illustration by Javier Jaén

**Twitter’s Artificial Intelligence Knows What’s Happening in Live Video Clips**
Illustration by Gwendal Le Bec

**10 Breakthrough Technologies: Conversational Interfaces**
Illustration by Tomi Um

**The Internet Is No Place for Elections**
Illustration by Patrick Kyle

**The Road to Solar Fuels Hits a Speed Bump**
Illustration by Jon Han

**As It Searches for Suspects, the FBI May Be Looking at You**
Illustration by Daniel Zender

**Why Startups Are Struggling**
Illustration by Yann Kebbi

**The Nauseating Disappointment of Oculus Rift**
Illustration by Roman Muradov

**Moore’s Law Is Dead. Now What?**
Illustration by Yukai Du

**AI Wants to Be Your Bro, Not Your Foe**
Illustration by John Malta

**35 Innovators Under 35 2016**
Illustration by Morgan Elliott

**The Decline in Chinese Cyberattacks: The Story Behind the Numbers**
Illustration by Other Means

**Why Kickstarter’s Glowing Plant Left Backers in the Dark**
Illustration by Matt Panuska

**Capitalism Behaving Badly**
Illustration by Jay Daniel Wright

**Customer Service Bots Are Getting Better at Detecting Your Agitation**
Illustration by Oscar Bolton Green

**Drone Security Guard Scolds Intruders from the Sky**
Illustration by Max Litvinov

**Elon Musk's House of Gigacards**
Illustration by Andy Friedman

**Ad Algorithms Might Choose You to Be a Paid Product Promoter**
Illustration by Jan Buchczik

**What to Know Before You Get In a Self-driving Car**
Illustration by Jean Jullien

**Security Experts Warn Congress That the Internet of Things Could Kill People**
Illustration by Nick Little

**Mark Zuckerberg’s Long March to China**
Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson

**Who Will Protect You from Drone Surveillance?**
Illustration by David Biskup

**10 Breakthrough Technologies: Robots That Teach Each Other**
Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad

**The All-American iPhone**
Illustration by Owen Smith

**Customer Headaches Could Curtail Apple’s Encryption Push**
Illustration by Andrea Chronopoulos

**WeChat Is Extending China’s School Days Well into the Night**
Illustration by Marina Muun

**Inside Vicarious, the Secretive AI Startup Bringing Imagination to Computers**
Illustration by Sophia Foster-Dimino

**Can We Insure the Internet of Things Against Cyber Risk?**
Illustration by Tim Peacock

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