On March 3, 2009, American Illustration's Mark Heflin moderated a panel featuring six of today's most arresting illustrators for the Society of Publication Designers' SPD@FIT Speaker Series. Sharing their experiences and advice were the illustrators Peter Arkle, Juliette Borda, Tim O'Brien, Christopher Silas Neal, Katherine Streeter and Jillian Tamaki — covering everything from finding, accepting, and turning down work to rights and copyright issues, good and bad art directors, editors, dream jobs, nightmare clients, and everything in between, it was a great night, opening with this great short film of their work, created by Grace Martinez and musically accompanied by six other artists who've been, well, under the influence. (Perhaps if they'd been influenced by illustration they wouldn't have had a DWI!)

Our thanks to the amazing illustrators who shared their experiences, and to Mark Heflin for making the conversation so interesting we literallly got kicked out of the space for staying too long!