The verb “to illustrate” comes from the Latin lustrare, “to shed light on.” Illustration is the art of communicating concise ideas with images in a variety of media. It can both illuminate the meaning of a subject and also create a new context in which to view the world.
An illustration tells a story, in one or a sequence of images, often in relation to text. Whether created for a page, screen, or wall, a successful illustration is both an expression of the illustrator’s point of view and personal approach to his or her medium and techniques, as well as a cogent elucidation of narrative. It is, in a sense, writing with images.
Illustration relies on three crucial skills that are applicable to many fields: conceptualizing ideas (how the world is seen), creative problem solving (how the vision is conveyed), and precise, evocative (>) rendering skills (how it can be accurately depicted). These three skills, in their emphasis on pragmatic approaches to creative production, help define illustration as a medium reliant on a high level of (>) craft in order to facilitate its most basic function: the (>) communication of ideas. Illustration is mostly (but not exclusively) a commercial practice, and frequently acts as a part of a larger commerce-based, massproduced enterprise. It exists at the intersection of graphic design, fine art, and interactive design, and encompasses a wide range of creative activities: illustration for newspapers and magazines, advertisements and product packaging, books for adults and children, short and long-form moving images in motion graphics and animation, and imagery for comics and graphic novels. More recently, illustrators have embraced non-traditional (that is, nonprint media) activities such as toy and (>) textile design, imagery for large and small screens (animated film, web-toons, cell-phone graphics) as well as street-derived forms such as skateboard, sticker, and graffiti imagery. Though illustration has historically existed most often in the context of words, as accompaniment to a text, it has taken on a more autonomous role in recent years as the culture becomes increasingly visual.
Illustrators have employed every medium the history of art has offered, including, but not limited to, oil paint, watercolor, tempera, etching, silkscreen, engraving, collage, scratchboard, pen and ink, sculpture in wood, paper, and moldable mediums, and digital tools such as Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamweaver. And while historically illustration
has been indifferent to the original (>) artifact, even employing ephemeral and non-archival mediums to achieve its effects, increasingly illustrators approach their work as objects to be displayed in gallery settings. There they create work very much of the same sensibility that is employed in commissioned work, but it is instead generated from the illustrator’s own imagination and responsive to the illustrator’s own inner needs.
Whatever medium, motive, or idea is employed, at its best, illustration allows the viewer to see the world in a new light or enter an entirely new world.
> Animation, Graphic Design, Poster Design, Storyboard, Visual Communication, Visualization
