How I Work: Drew Dzwonkowski, Sports Illustrated Kids, Art Director
Drew Dzwonkowski’s workspace is full of great art. Images: c/o Drew Dzwonkowski.
Dzwonkowski’s style is seen in his work—and pants.
Drew Dzwonkowski has worked in print media his entire career, from Michigan State’s college newspaper The State News, to a Gannett hub in Nashville, to tabloid design for the New York Daily News. As the art director and designer of Sports Illustrated Kids since 2018, he works with a handful of contributors to bring every issue to life. “I design the pages, covers, posters, and am a constant pen pal to a roster of fantastic freelance illustrators,” he says. “Maybe millions of mouse clicks and digital pen marks go into every issue, but that last click is like sliding into a jacuzzi.” The end result is fun for the whole family. People can not only subscribe, but they also participate in the final output. (If you have a child who likes to draw, have them submit a sports drawing to artgallery@si.com and they could see their work in print.)
Dzwonkowski is also active on Instagram. In addition to covers and illustrations from the mag, he posts personal artwork. “I just posted the world’s cleanest pitch for a Hollywood blockbuster, similar to Armageddon or The Meg,” he says. “The tagline: ‘A tidal wave is coming to wipe out planet Earth… and he’s going to ride it.’ The title: Armashreddin’. Just absolutely shredding through the apocalypse. I don’t know the process to getting a big Hollywood surfing movie made but this idea is money on the table.” That passion extends to books as well. “In my free time I spent the last four years illustrating a children’s book written by my cousin Sara Ferry, an elementary school teacher,” he says. “It’s called Brent the Brave and we’re currently trying to figure out the shopping-around process.” Agents, it’s your move.
Here are 10 insights into how Dzwonkowski works.
In an era of dull magazine covers, Sports Illustrated Kids still surprises.
Rise and Shine
I try to sleep as late as society will allow. When COVID hit, SI abandoned our new downtown Manhattan offices and went remote, so now I work from home entirely, sharing a small apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn with my wife Katelyn Gray and our cat Ed. Katelyn wakes up like a metronome a few hours before I do. I usually spend the first hour of the morning in bed answering emails and Slacks with Ed curled next to me. Sometimes I will bribe Katelyn to bring me a cup of coffee in bed. I think since 2020 we’re all still figuring out the best schedule. I am lucky to have a very flexible team who usually doesn’t mind when I Slack an updated layout design at three in the morning. Post-Covid is a wild west for night owls.
Work Uniform
The magazine has one Zoom meeting a week, so I only have to look presentable for a tiny sliver of time. Which is good, as lately I have fallen into a habit of doing my design and email work with an unlit cigarette dangling from my mouth. I don’t smoke cigarettes, but I think I do have some sort of oral fixation. Katelyn thinks it’s dumb, and she is right.
Dzwonkowski illustrated this book written by his cousin.
How I Structure My Day
When it’s warm I love lounging on our front balcony with a coffee and answering emails in the sun before lunch. We moved right after COVID hit and somehow found a place with two balconies, which was an insanely appreciated luxury, especially during quarantine times. InDesign-wise I usually leave something fun and easy for myself to put together in the morning. I think it’s optimal to start with workmanlike stuff in the beginning of the day, like letting the bad water run out of the tap first.
Around 2:30pm I love to have lunch with Kate, and then fall into more serious creative work in the afternoon. I will usually kiss her and our cat on the forehead upwards of 100 times throughout the day. If I want a break from work, I can step out on our back balcony which connects to the bedroom/office. Our neighborhood skyline has pockets of trees framing a view of Manhattan in the distance. I’ve drawn a few plein-airs of it at different times of day.
But the majority of my work is done at my desk in my office, in InDesign designing story layouts and drawing up ideas on the Cintiq tablet. If I’m having fun with a certain layout or drawing, I’ll keep working until 6 a.m. sometimes. I never regret chasing a thing if I get the muse. I have had flying dreams in Adobe Creative Suite, zooming in and out of pasteboards.
Views from the home workspace, including Ed, the watchful cat.
Playlist Favorites
After I do “the final click” on an issue, I get to enjoy a few pleasurable days of winding life back to a slower, more comfortable pace. To help myself relax after an issue is all sent to press, I have a playlist called “Serene Elation” that’s filled with cathartic, sentimental, you-did-it pop songs. “Dog Days Are Over” and “The Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin, and probably a not-cool amount of Enya.
A wonderful aspect of a design career is that your brain can still juggle the work with podcasts and audiobooks in your headphones. I have pirated hundreds of DVD commentaries that add a lot of joy to busywork, and I probably listen to too many podcasts where two white guys talk about movies. But everyone has their passions. If I need to get serious writing done I’ll listen to the Chilled Cow lo-fi girl Youtube channel which has been like a comforting fireplace to me for years and years now. I usually try to lull myself to sleep at night with ASMR videos; like I could just listen to someone crinkle bags for three hours.
Tools of the Trade
The best purchase I ever made in my career was my 27-inch Wacom Cintiq tablet, which, outside of letting me seamlessly swap between mousework in InDesign and stylus-work in Photoshop, is just a good, big monitor to build a desk around. Wacom, with their pens and tablets, have perfected that “drawing on an easel” feeling. It’s so tactile and intuitive. I can’t wait to see what these things look like in 20 or 30 years.
At night I’ll sometimes stretch out on the couch with my iPad Pro, sketching and painting in Procreate. I evangelize Procreate to everyone who has ever even thought about drawing a picture. I’d love for the kids who submit drawings of athletes to the SI Kids Art Gallery Contest to experiment with digital art more. We’re starting to see a few, and it’s very exciting how exponential learning can be with the right tools. Being able to freewheel between pencils, acrylics, watercolors, all with an undo button still feels like living in a sci-fi future.
But I still draw traditionally—one hack I like is just keeping a stack of Post-It notes on your desk at all times. Sometimes my machine pinwheels for a scary long time and sketching out a one-minute coffee cup or hand or something just for pleasure always feels good. For most of my life I’ve usually drawn at least something every single day. All the time my fingers itch to scratch out little sketches. I’m sure a lot of people who make things with their hands can relate. I love to AirDrop a Post-It sketch directly into Photoshop and start elevating it to a final just like that.
What happens when an Art Director and the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse meet.
Dream Studio
I have fantasized about living and working in a gigantic treehouse, like the coziest possible environment, like a Swiss Family Robinson style sandbox grown a thousand feet high that allows for all sorts of wish-fulfillment-kid-fantasy-sports-scenarios and solarpunk architecture. I’ve been obsessed with this image as long as I can remember, and have made all sorts of art trying to capture it. At the magazine we’ve even extended the lore of SI Kids mascot Buzz Beamer by featuring three-page stories set in a giant treehouse where a fictional staff of kids “make” the magazine. It’s illustrated by Brett Parson, who draws Tank Girl and Goon, whose delicious linework can capture both actiony sport poses and cozy environments with ease. Brett’s a genius. I love thumbnailing these scripts with our head writer Sam Page (also a genius) and designing the Treehouse’s many huts and rope bridges with Brett. I’ve been able to live out a lot of my dream studio fantasies through these little three-page comic yarns.
Personal work that will go on Instagram soon.
One Unique Thing About My Work Process
One unique thing about my work process is although I’m immersed in sports every day at the magazine, I don’t naturally get invested in sports in my off-time. I try to know enough about what’s going on in the leagues to be able to pitch and brainstorm in a meeting, but I’m more of a books, movies, and pop culture guy. I think that gives my work an outside-the-box flavor, or at least that’s what I tell myself.
A productivity hack I adore: buy a nice hourglass. Buy a beautiful desk ornament that actually serves a utilitarian purpose. Setting a digital timer sucks. But flipping over a brassy hourglass sets you on a one-hour deep focus session and gives you a calm visual reminder of how long you’ve been working. I’m an hourglass freak. I’ve bought them for dozens of friends and family members, and my friend, freelance lifestyle writer Beau Hayhoe, and I have matching hourglass tattoos on our wrists.
Mantra
I don’t have a word-perfect mantra or anything for it but lately I am trying to be like a stone skipping across a pond, never stopping to dwell on a failure and sink. I think all creative people can relate to the regret when your deadline comes and you feel your project could be more successful in some way. It can ache at you and wake you up in the middle of the night, until you exorcize it in the next issue. I sometimes think I should literally use the entire chunk of time allotted, working late nights, embroidering the magazine to a ridiculous degree, repeating to myself that pain is temporary, but print is forever. Learning when to cut yourself off is huge for maintaining happiness levels.
But ever since I started my print career at Michigan State’s college paper, The State News, I’ve never regretted pulling an all-nighter if it’s going to make me feel better about my finished work. The stone-skipping image reminds me that print media is, in the end, ephemera.
My Bright Idea that Never Saw the Light of Day
Armashreddin.’
This film idea is money on the table.
To-Do List Item That Keeps Me Up At Night
Getting storyboards for Armashreddin’ to Kathryn Bigelow’s office. James Cameron or Michael Bay I would settle for, as well. Get Jason Momoa in there, you’re getting 100 million domestic. It’s a smash, it’s obvious.
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