Comic Artists– Illustrated Supreme Court Review

Job Type

Contract

The Cato Institute is looking for creative minds with comic-writing experience to help us develop the next Cato Illustrated Supreme Court Review. The Illustrated Supreme Court Review is a graphic-novel-style companion to the Cato Supreme Court Review. Each chapter provides illustrations of a case, including its factual background, relevant context, outcome, and rationale.

As a Comic Artist, you will use emerging technologies to quickly create engaging and accessible illustrations of consequential Supreme Court decisions. Working together with legal scholars at Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies and Project on Criminal Justice, you will help storyboard comic-style pages, use AI to help generate images for each panel, and then finalize a single, coherent chapter for each Supreme Court case using your own illustration skills.

All Comic Artists will be credited for their work in the final publication.

We are looking for experienced designers with a comprehensive understanding of comic layout and composition; strong proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign; and the flexibility to work within tight deadlines. This project runs February–September 2026 and accelerates in June when the Supreme Court’s term ends.

This role is fully remote.

The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization – a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues.

Founded in 1977, Cato owes its name to Cato’s Letters, a series of essays published in 18th-century England that presented a vision of a society free from excessive government power. Those essays inspired the architects of the American Revolution. And the simple, timeless principles of that revolution – individual liberty, limited government, and free markets – turn out to be even more powerful in today’s world of global markets and unprecedented access to information than Jefferson or Madison could have imagined.

We believe that social and economic freedom is not just the best policy for a free people, but an indispensable framework for the future.

The Cato Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

• Help storyboard comic pages for the Illustrated Cato Supreme Court Review together with our scholars.
• Use AI software to rapidly develop panels under tight deadlines.
• Use your illustration abilities to bring panels together with a consistent visual style.
• Prepare the chapter for print publication through a rigorous quality-control process.

• Demonstrated experience drawing comics (print preferred, but not required).
• The creative judgment is necessary to help scholars design a layout that executes their vision.
• Reliable, strong work ethic—consistently completing tasks on time even with minimal supervision.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and an enthusiastic and positive attitude.
• A keen attention to detail, quality, and accuracy, and a willingness to respond to team feedback across multiple revisions.

• Adobe Photoshop (Advanced)

• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe In Design
• Familiarity with AI platforms such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL
  · E

Cato offers a rate of $425 per page
, negotiable based on experience and qualifications. Artists will also receive a budget for expenses, including Adobe Creative Cloud and AI platforms.

Please provide all of the following:

• Your resume (docx or pdf).
• A one-page sample of your comic work (PDF, JPG, PNG, or TIFF).
• A link to your web portfolio, or a download link for your portfolio in PDF form (URL) (in the screener question).