Job Number 1: Support the Text

All copy labors in a hostile environment.

There's too much of it in the first place and too much of that is mediocre.

But the good stuff gets illustrated. It's nice that way. And the good stuff deserves to be well served.

How to seduce a person with something better to do into becoming a reader? Give them an image that promises more. Show them a world they want to enter. Give it a tone of its own.

Arrest them and let the writer hog-tie them and finish the job.

If all you are doing is breaking up the gray, give your pencil to somebody who cares.