The Stranger’s 2019 Sex Issue

July 3, 2019

Roles: Art Director, Editorial Designer, infographic designer, icon illustrator

Contributors: Stevie Shao, Illustrator

In 2018, The Stranger editors decided to resurrect one of their favorite special issues from years past: The Sex Issue. They came up with a VAST array of questions about sex - preferences, positions, locations, kinks, and since the 2018 Midterm elections were right around the corner, we asked readers all about which candidates they would do what dirty deeds with. 8,776 readers of The Stranger responded, and after a successful first year of The Sex Issue, we officially re-introduced it into the special issues cycle.

In 2019, we were looking forward to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, so it was only fitting to survey our readers on their preferred democratic candidate sexual partners! Of course we included all of our favorite questions from 2018, as well as a few more Seattle-centric questions, like what’s the best park to hook up in.

I had hired Stevie Shao to illustrate for several previous features and columns in the paper, and she always sent me work that was creative, fun, and unexpected. I thought this would be a great opportunity to really let her thoughtful approach to illustration come through, bringing all the color and texture into the feature, adding a bit of quirky hilarity to the content. She did not disappoint.

One of the questions (fourth capsule down) was a ‘Fxxx, Marry, Kill’ survey about characters played by actors in popular biopics of the time: Zac Efron as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman. When I asked her if she could illustrate these famous actors as famous characters in her style, she said she could, and I am sorry to say that I ever doubted it. We were worried that you wouldn’t be able to tell who was who. But Stevie NAILED it. These are without a doubt my favorite illustrations in the whole package.

All in all, Stevie contributed seven incredible illustrations to the issue. The Art Direction, Editorial Design, Infographics, and Icon illustrations were done by me, and all the editing was done by Christopher Frizzelle.

Scroll down for some shocking and funny statistics!