Incentive Magazine Illustration

I recently had a next-day turnaround assignment from Incentive Magazine. Topic: How To Market An Employee Incentive Program. The art director simply sent me the article. I read it and sketched out 5 ideas:

The art director decided she wanted something simpler: “maybe a megaphone coming out of a computer.” I submitted the following sketch:At this point, the editor had an idea: have the megaphone shouting out the 5 key steps in marketing an incentive program. I sketched out 3 more roughs:
The second of these three revisions got the nod, and I did the final in Photoshop, adding a layer style to make the text jump out a bit. Not the most exciting illustration I’ve ever done, but a good example of how an assignment can “evolve,” and how an illustrator has to stay flexible and respond to feedback. Here’s the final: