New Look for Actuarial Pioneers
Did you do a double take when you picked up the latest issue of The Actuary? Did you think that maybe you had picked up the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by mistake? Perhaps this happened when you turned to the Pioneer feature and saw a drawing that looked just like the etchings that are well-known for gracing the pages of the WSJ?
The similarity in illustration you may have noticed is not a coincidence. Recently, the SOA hired Noli Novak—a New Jersey-based artist who has been creating these iconic, stylized pictures for the WSJ for nearly 20 years. And now, she will be bringing her signature style of illustration to our Pioneers of the Profession program, which is designed to recognize members of the profession who have blazed a trail for actuaries by creating a new application for actuarial science, or who are among the first to apply actuarial skills in a nontraditional setting. The program is highlighted on ImageoftheActuary.org and in The Actuary magazine.
Novak uses a technique called stippling to create these one-of-a-kind pieces. Stippling involves shading in the outline of a head using mainly dots, whereby the denser the spacing of the dots, the darker the apparent shade. The process of creating a stippled picture takes about three to four hours—Novak starts by first copying the image onto a special vellum paper and then fills it in with dots, lines and crosshatches. Novak’s hand-etched contributions, in comparison to print pictures, fit alongside text blocks more seamlessly.
Novak’s unique drawings will enhance the Pioneers of the Profession program and the supporting literature by adding a new, modern, artistic element. Members of the profession can be proud of the fact that very few publications around the world contain stipple art. Keep an eye out for Novak’s one-of-a-kind drawings in The Actuary and on ImageoftheActuary.org.