​Graham Smith Illustration
Beer for Data
Illustrations about wartime Afghanistan for Pacific Standard done in a storyboard style, with pen and ink and digital color.
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Pacific Standard Magazine. Art Director Craig Edwards I imagined how Jalalabad looked during the war based on the descriptions in the article, and through lots of research on Google images.
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Inside the tiki bar in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, an operative simply put up a sign that read, Beer for Data. He collected over 4 terrabytes of data for the CIA. I imagined this scene based on the written descrition. The author called me after to say this looked exactly like "The Taj" during the war.
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"He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Burner medallion."
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"We were in an old Toyota Camry, without body armor, travelling into the mountains of Afghanistan."
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This burning event set off a big chain oof events that were not good.
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This was a detail in the story that I had to research on the Google.
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"He said goodbye to his friends that died in the war."