Our Best Illustrations of 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?
Illustration by Aisha Franz
Illustration by Javier Jaén
Illustration by Gwendal Le Bec
Illustration by Tomi Um
Illustration by Patrick Kyle
Illustration by Jon Han
Illustration by Daniel Zender
Illustration by Yann Kebbi
Illustration by Roman Muradov
Illustration by Yukai Du
Illustration by John Malta
Illustration by Morgan Elliott
Illustration by Other Means
Illustration by Matt Panuska
Illustration by Jay Daniel Wright
Illustration by Oscar Bolton Green
Illustration by Max Litvinov
Illustration by Andy Friedman
Illustration by Jan Buchczik
Illustration by Jean Jullien
Illustration by Nick Little
Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson
Illustration by David Biskup
Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad
Illustration by Owen Smith
Illustration by Andrea Chronopoulos
Illustration by Marina Muun
Illustration by Sophia Foster-Dimino
Illustration by Tim Peacock
Keep Reading
Most Popular
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.