Self-taught graphic designer, illustrator, and animator James Victore discovered the text featured in this month's cover design at the bottom of a friend's e-mail. Because he wanted to tell the story to his son Luca, now eight, Victore "threw it into a Quark document and forgot about it until Carla [Rozman, this magazine's art director] called me. I opened the document, found the Chronogram masthead, relaxed, and followed my intuition. I like doing that."

A School of Visual Arts faculty member with a variety of clients—the New York Times, Moet & Chandon, MTV, Target, Shakespeare Project, and Portfolio Center—Victore has won several awards, including an Emmy for television animation, Gold and Silver Medals from the New York Art Directors Club, and the Grand Prix from the Czech Republic Design Biennale. His work is included in permanent collections at the Library of Congress, Zurich Poster Museum, and the Louvre. A book of his work was published in China in 1999.

From 1998 to 2004, Victore lived and worked in Beacon in a "big old Victorian house." Back when he made his move upstate, says Victore, "Beacon was a dumpy little town. I was surprised to find an Adam's Fairacre Farms for my groceries, and to find Chronogram. I thought, 'Oh, somebody else actually does live here.' As a record of what's going on in the Hudson Valley, it's quite good."

Now, however, Victore and Luca are back in Brooklyn, NY. "I lived in Beacon before Dia came and made it all cool and groovy. Now my buddies are all leaving the city and buying houses upstate and asking my advice," he says. "I tend to do things opposite to other people, but that's okay."