PREFACE

ILLUSTRATION: A DEFINITION Applied Imagery; a ‘working art’ that visually communicates context to audience.

This book examines the measure of contextual operation regarding contemporary illustration practice. It also seeks to exemplify theoretical and intellectual processes necessary for the production of accomplished work. It does not emphasize matters of commercial or business practice, nor aspects of media or practical concern such as rendering techniques or technical processes. These issues are best served by volumes specific and dedicated to these subjects. Aimed predominantly at final-year undergraduate and post-graduate students, there is assignation to a defined understanding and application of all modes of project development, including research, subject matter, conceptual processing, context and audience, analysis and visual language.

The discipline of illustration was once an exclusive club, with practitioners remaining firmly within the confines of ‘commercial art’. However, the emergence of stock art and the impact and advancement of digital technology have instigated a ‘changing face’ regarding the discipline of illustration, and many illustrators have had to re-evaluate their practice. Today, there is much emphasis on the acquisition of transferable skills and the ability to multi-task. It is not uncommon for individuals to proclaim a status of ‘illustrator–writer’ or ‘illustrator–designer,’ along with some more unusual, varied and disparate combinations.

Illustration practice is not judged purely by visual literacy and technical qualities, but rather is a discipline that engenders the best intellectual engagement with subject matter, problem solving and visual communication. Illustration can also be applied to anything and is not driven purely by fad or trend. The global community is its potential audience.

This book explores the breadth of use for illustration and does not discriminate. It presents a collective of five distinct and separate contextual domains that constitutes the role of illustration: documentation, reference and instruction; commentary; storytelling; persuasion; and identity.

Whilst engaged in what is broadly an objective and pragmatic approach to processes and outcomes, illustrators can and do proactive authorship of and expertise on many aspects of contextual operation. It is this concern that provides a certain platform and underpinning too much regarding an examination of contemporary practice. The notion of illustrator as ‘colouring-in technician’ must be discarded!

The inclusion of a fourth chapter further emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary practice, multi-tasking and the significance of the Polymath Principle . There are also 260 fresh images published in this edition; this is to represent the contemporaneous ‘ebb and flow’ in vogue, context and communication as the discipline of illustration progresses further into the twenty-first century.