by Bob Eggleton
This past winter I got to serve as the guest Art Director for the Illustrators of the Future Contest. What a rewarding and fun experience! I’m following a path blazed for this Contest by Frank Kelly Freas in 1987.
In the business of illustration, it’s likely one will deal with an art director. Of course, over the decades the definition of an art director has changed; more and more I have seen the title “Director of Marketing” used, as if the art should be sidelined to something of a commodity.
Art directors typically oversee the way an illustration should look in the context of its use. Many times good art directors are themselves artists.
Serving as the Art Director, I was able to view up to three sketches of ideas submitted by each artist. Some of the “sketches,” I will say, looked like finished works, which tells a lot about the time we live in. In my early career, I did mere scribblings for sketches!
I believe in never telling an artist what to do. I always look for the strongest idea, and I found with a number of people it was also their personal favorite, so I simply said, “Go with it.” I refuse to micromanage, because I have seen art that looks just that: micromanaged. I’ve been the victim of the bad kind of direction myself. My preference is to let the artists shine. For Illustrators of the Future, I sometimes made a nudge or a suggestion that only clarified the idea, trying to take the concept from good to great.
What makes an exceptional artist, to me, is his or her ability to tell a good story with a minimal amount of visual information. I am a big fan of the idea that “less is more.” Something does not have to be overwrought to be “finished.”
Also when an artist is illustrating someone’s story, it is not always necessary to stay totally in structure with the prose. The illustration should augment and bring another dimension to the story, perhaps something that the writer never thought of. I like writers a lot, but they can be “visually illiterate,” which I say in jest, meaning they don’t “see” in the same way an artist sees. The artist’s vision brings a unique perspective to the story, an added dimension. Even the writer often will say, when viewing an illustration, “I never thought of that! What a great idea!”
With illustrations, I like to invite viewers to make up their own story, or imprint something of themselves onto it. The art becomes personal to everyone who views it.
It is said that pictures are worth a thousand words. Well, one picture for a story just adds one thousand words to that story! Overseeing so much of this incredible work with Illustrators of the Future has been an honor and it has added to my own learning and opened my eyes to new ways of thinking.
Onward!