The New York Times told an agoraphobia essay through illustration and animation

The New York Times Magazine's own entry to D&AD describes its mission as inventive digital storytelling and sophisticated design inside a print magazine that is classically beautiful yet original. For Sara Benincasa's first-person essay about living with agoraphobia, the magazine chose a treatment to match that ambition: the story was commissioned and designed as a visual feature with original illustration and animation, not laid out as text with stock imagery.

Let the format carry the fear: tell an essay about facing the supermarket through one artist's illustrations and animation, so the art is the story, not decoration.

The piece went online at nytimes.com/magazine on March 14, 2025. Benincasa opens by steeling herself for a supermarket visit she had not made in more than a year, and Nata Metlukh's illustrations and animations carry the reader through the dread that words describe. Kate LaRue designed the feature, with Gail Bichler as creative director, and The New York Times stands as both entrant company and client — the work was produced by the magazine's own team.

D&AD gave the piece a Yellow Pencil in Magazine & Newspaper Design at its 2026 awards, in a category that handed out 28 Pencils of which only four were Yellow. The American Society of Magazine Editors named it Best Illustrated Story in its 2026 awards for design, photography and illustration. Both recognitions went to the magazine itself, which was entrant and client.

The New York Times Magazine published 'An Agoraphobe Goes to the Grocery Store' online on March 14, 2025. Sara Benincasa's essay describes living with agoraphobia and opens with her steeling herself to do something she had not done in more than a year: walk into a supermarket. The subject is intimate and small — one errand, one fear — and the piece could easily have been a text column with a photograph.

Instead the magazine treated the essay as a designed object. Nata Metlukh made both the illustrations and the animation, Kate LaRue designed the feature, and Gail Bichler directed it as the magazine's creative director. The New York Times is listed as entrant company, client and brand, which means the whole project — commissioning, art, animation and design — happened inside the magazine, in line with its stated mission of inventive digital storytelling and sophisticated print design.

The judging community rewarded the format as much as the story. At the D&AD 2026 Awards the piece took a Yellow Pencil in Magazine & Newspaper Design, one of four Yellow Pencils in a category that awarded 28, and the American Society of Magazine Editors named it Best Illustrated Story of 2026. Two different traditions — a design jury and an editorial craft award — converged on the same conclusion: the way the fear was drawn and animated was the idea.

A narrator who lives with the phobia removes distance: the story is told from inside the condition, so the design has something honest to visualise rather than a stereotype to illustrate.

One artist created both the stills and the animation, so print and moving versions of the story share a single visual language instead of two hired hands.

Spending bespoke art and animation on a short personal essay — rather than stock imagery — let the in-house team perform exactly the inventive craft its mission promises.

The same work won a D&AD Yellow Pencil for design and an ASME award for illustrated storytelling, evidence that the treatment read as craft rather than gimmick across two judging traditions.

When the subject is an invisible condition, design can be the journalism: giving the fear a visible form made readers feel what words could only describe — and that craft, not the topic, is what won.

Recognition arrived more than a year after publication. At the D&AD Awards on May 20, 2026 the piece won a Yellow Pencil in Magazine & Newspaper Design — a category with 28 Pencils, only four Yellow — and the American Society of Magazine Editors named it Best Illustrated Story in its 2026 competition. Because The New York Times was entrant and client, the honours went to the magazine's in-house art and design team rather than an outside agency: a documented, award-winning example of an essay treated as a designed object from commission to publication.