THE ASSIGNMENT: TIME asked for a visual concept representing the societal impact of Facebook and social media.

After reading the article, the challenge became clear: how do you represent the growing sense that social media and Facebook in particular, has evolved from a tool for connection into something potentially dangerous?

The Concept:

I began by sketching ideas that expressed the darker side of social media’s influence. The goal was to capture the tension between Facebook’s enormous power and the risks it poses to public discourse and society as a whole.

Through a series of sketches, I explored visual metaphors that suggested both scale and threat, imagery that would immediately communicate the underlying message of the story.

The Process:

After a few rounds of sketching, the TIME creative department and I agreed that one concept stood out. It best captured the underlying message of the story and offered the strongest, most immediate visual read.

With the direction established, the selected sketch became the blueprint for the final image. From there the project moved into production, where lighting, composition, and post-production were carefully crafted to translate the original concept into a finished visual.

The result is an image that distills a complex cultural issue into a single, clear metaphor.

The Final:

To stay true to the simplicity of the original sketch, I kept the background clean and minimal so the idea could read instantly. The torn paper and the oversized Facebook “thumbs down” prop helped give the concept a sense of weight, as if the symbol itself was physically dragging through the page. The model was photographed in studio and carefully posed to match the energy of the sketch, with lighting designed to integrate naturally with the scene. Finally, the torn paper, prop, and figure were combined and refined in post-production to create the finished cover image.