Barcelona-based creative Javier Jaén spends his days illustrating the world around him. Working hand in hand with The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Time, Harvard University, National Geographic, Greenpeace, Penguin Random House, Vueling Airlines and UNESCO, for the past three years, Javier has been building a steady reputation via weekly collaborations with The New York Times Magazine.

It is work that takes the form photo illustrations for a section called “First Words” which considers the ways language shifts and shapes our understanding of the world. The topics covered are vast and complex, from “The Identity Politics of Whiteness” to “How ‘Political Correctness’ Went From Punch Line to Panic.” For three years, it’s been Javier’s job to make impactful visual images to reduce those arguments into a single image.

Now, as Javier prepares his last image for “First Words”, we caught up with the illustrator to talk about the era.

How did you first become involved in “First Words”?

I’ve been a regular contributor to The New York Times since 2010, but the deputy Art Director of NYT Magazine, Jason Sfetko contacted me proposing me a weekly collaboration with the magazine on a launching section called “First Words”.

As editorial illustrator, almost all projects starts with an unexpected email that can find you in the middle of the day or night. In that case, it was September 2014 and I was with friends in the festivities of Poblenou neighbourhood in Barcelona. When the telephone rang, I had no idea that I was about to start one of the most stimulating, challenging and enriching projects that I’ve ever work on, but I was already celebrating.