Behind the scenes with The Guardian creative team making all its election artwork by hand

INT: How do you make it look authentically handmade?

CC: In not only embracing the imperfections but amplifying them. We’re deliberately not removing any of the damaged paper, worn photocopies or dirty toner, and trying to be as responsive and immediate as possible. We’re often choosing the first composition and giving them very little enhancement from what is captured in the camera. We have a light box (salvaged from the bin of the imaging department!) that gives us a continuous top and side lighting (meaning that there is a degree of consistency across the lighting). However, as was the case with the debate, the coverage around the election doesn’t just sit within office working hours, so we’re having to allow for imagery shot on iphones under the tungsten glow of domestic lighting.

RC: We’ve consciously left mistakes we’ve made in the image, like when the knife rips an edge slightly or the rough cuts we’ve had to do quickly around a tricky outline – there’s no magic wand tool in real life!

We’re also developing and pushing our style guide as we’re going. For example we’re trying to come off the flat surface where relevant, creating depth and shadows to make the imagery feel tactile and real. A recent example was a scrunched up ball of paper made to look like a globe – and by raising the flat globe stand slightly off the background, we got some lovely shadows.

We’ve also been exploring how we can bring our cut-outs to life through animation. For our Election homepage we animated up all the politicians behind the House of Parliament. A big part of what we try to do is create some charm, some delight to our creative – and we’re finding some small elements of animation really help us do this, in a subtle way that doesn’t feel too whimsical or trivial.

CC: Due to the demand and speed we’re working too, we have deliberately refined our process by leaving the images unrefined – which we believe gives them an urgency, rawness and, importantly, integrity. Ultimately we want the image-making to reflect the mood of the country – chopped, broken and divided. Anything that glosses over that would be a disservice to our readers.