How C.D.C. medical illustrators created the coronavirus pandemic’s most iconic image.

By Cara Giaimo: “How many times have you seen the image? It looms behind newscasters during evening updates, gets handed out on printed fliers and scrolls by in tweet after tweet. It might even show up in your dreams. But for Alissa Eckert — a medical illustrator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who helped to create what has become the iconic representation of the novel coronavirus — it started out as just another assignment.

… Ms. Eckert uses art to make difficult medical concepts more approachable. For instance the dozens of illustrations of birth defects she’s done over the years can be “a little bit easier for people to look at and understand” than photographs, she said.

Often this means bringing the unseeable into view.”

Source: The New York Times