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Contents

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“Graphic Design Versus Illustration�

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Army of Cats

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We Three Club

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Gavin Beattie

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Craig Robson

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Horse

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Ben the Illustrator Interview

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Luke Drozd

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Diego Mena

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Doe Eyed

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Delicious design League

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Phantom City

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Invisible Creature

pro·mo·tion /pro-mōSH-on/ :noun: Activity that supports the furtherance of a cause, venture, or aim. The publicization of a product, organization, or venture to increase sales or public awareness

Whereas graphic design is more anonymous, all illustration is sold for its particular and individual style.

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There was a time when graphic design and illustration were indivisible. Many of the great designers of the 20th century were also illustrators and moved effortlessly between image-making and typographic functionalism. Traditionally, most designers viewed illustration with reverence; many even regarded it as inherently superior to design. And with good reason: design was about the anonymous conveying of messages, while illustration was frequently about vivid displays of personal authorship. Like artists, illustrators signed their work, and some were even public figures (no graphic designer ever enjoyed the fame of Norman Rockwell, for example). As Ed Fella, a practitioner with feet in both camps, sagely noted: “Whereas graphic design is more anonymous, all illustration is sold for its particular and individual style.”

But during the 1990s, illustration’s “individual style” became a liability. Visual communication was colonized by tough-minded, business-driven graphic designers who gave their clients what they wanted: branding, strategy and the precision-tooled delivery of commercial messages. Even amongst more

idealistic designers — designers who embraced theory, political activism (no big-name illustrators signed the First Things First manifesto), and notions of self-authorship — it became apparent that highly expressive graphic design could achieve some of the conceptual and aesthetic impact of illustration.

The outcome of all this was that designers seemed to lose the habit of commissioning illustration, and most illustration was relegated to mere decoration.

It’s a much-touted nostrum that we live in a visual world. Sure, the media landscape is saturated with images, but these images are nearly always accompanied by words signposting us to some sort of financial transaction. Graphic design’s eclipsing of illustration is explained by illustration’s lack of verbal explicitness. Graphic design is almost exclusively about precise communication, and its facility to combine words and images makes it a far more potent force than illustration. Milton Glaser has said: “In a culture that values commerce above all other things, the imaginative potential of illustration has become irrelevant... Illustration is now too idiosyncratic.”

I was made aware of the main reason for graphic design’s supremacy in the commercial world from an unlikely source. In his book What Good Are the Arts, the English academic John Carey sets out to discover an absolute measure for artistic worth.

Dealing with the visual arts, Carey concludes that there is no defining yardstick: anything we choose to call art, is art. It’s really a matter of personal choice.

But halfway through his book Carey puts the case for literature. He sets out “to show why literature is superior to the other arts and can do things they cannot do.”

For Carey, literature is the pre-eminent art form: “unlike the other arts,” he writes, “it can criticize itself. Pieces of music can parody other pieces, and paintings can caricature paintings. But this does not amount to a total rejection of music and painting.

Literature, however, can totally reject literature, and in this it shows itself more powerful and self-aware than any other art.”

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The professional world of illustration is widely believed to be in poor shape. As Steven Heller noted recently: “I am an advocate of illustration and saddened by its loss of stature among editors who feel photography is somehow more effective (and controllable).” There are, of course, many reasons for illustration’s fading stature other than the commercial world’s hard-nosed preference for photography over the arty vagueness of hand-rendered imagery. The ubiquity of software that allows graphic designers to generate their own imagery is another factor, as is the rise of illustration stock libraries. Yet perhaps illustration’s current status owes most to its near-total eclipse by graphic design. To understand the contemporary state of illustration, we need to look at its relationship with graphic design.

The attributes Carey applies to literature also apply to commercial communications. Words rule.

Explicit language coupled with explicit images (devoid of ambiguity and nuance) is the lingua franca of advertising and marketing. We seem to have reached a point in Western culture where the abstract is no longer tenable. We demand explicitness in everything, which perhaps explains the contemporary appetite for endless news, reality television, the depiction of graphic violence and hardcore pornography.

Graphic design’s ability to deliver explicit messages makes it a major (if little recognized) force in the modern world: it is embedded in the commercial infrastructure. Illustration, on the other hand, with its woolly ambiguity and its allusive ability to convey feeling and emotion, makes it too dangerous to be allowed to enter the corporate bloodstream. Our visual lives are the poorer for this.

“Graphic Design Versus Illustration” Adrian Shaughnessy

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Army of Cats are a design, illustration and print based studio who workng with identity and promotion, and well known for screen prints and gig posters

ARMY OF CATS

The Illustration and design duo We Three Club work through screen printed images above all else, with most of their work promoting music.

WE THREE CLUB

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GAVIN BEATTIE Beattie is an illustrator who specialises in illustration and screen print as the preferred production process.

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CRAIG ROBSON Craig Robson’s style is reminiscent of original old school tattoo design, incorporating flowers and pastel colours into his illustrations.

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Horse design and illustration studio work foremost with screenprinting and promotional material for music artists across the world.

HORSE

The music videos and various other short animated films kept me going for a couple of years but I was keen to work more as a part of a team and soon became creative director of a small animation/ design studio for a few years. I learnt a lot being part of a studio and got to work on a huge variety of projects; animation, web design, t-shirts, illustration etc etc but after a few years I came to realise that the only projects that were really exciting me were the illustration commissions and so it was time to move on and go freelance. It was deciding to focus solely on illustration and go solo that led me to becoming ‘Ben the Illustrator’ in 2005.

Keep trying new things, keep evolving and keep things exciting, and whatever you do, put it out into the world for people to see, you could be the best illustrator/designer/artist on earth, but if no-one has ever seen your work you will never make a living from it. /Your style has really evolved over a number of years and judging by the work on your blog and recent summer billboard, you seem to be heading down a much more ‘graphical’ illustration route at the moment. Is there any particular reason for that?

Thank you for noticing! I do happily waiver between styles, I always have in a way, I like to work in whatever way best answers the client’s brief. I think my current shifting towards focusing on graphical illustration is firstly because I’m simply enjoying it a lot right now, and I think there’s a real bonus to producing work you enjoy over work you do to follow a trend or being stuck doing an ‘old style’ of work that you should move on from. And secondly right now I’m keen to diversify a little and work on more graphic design projects, branding, typography etc and if I can take ‘illustration’ into those areas then all the better!

/What was the aim behind it?

Over the past decade I have invested a small fortune in my own marketing, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, you don’t know until you try.

I figured that a team of illustrators focused together on promotion could cut out some of the middle-men and do a lot of the work themselves, reducing the costs. So our first project was a book, which we split the costs on, designed, published and had printed, then packaged up, collated a contact list and sent them out to potential clients. I have to credit Steven Bonner and Laura Barnard at this point for doing the bulk of the work in bringing the book into fruition; they did a really wonderful job. /Do you think this type of promotion is a vital part of the job for illustrators?

Yes, in fact all and any type of promotion is vital, whether it’s all solo or alongside others under an umbrella brand. I’ve learnt that you never stop promoting, no matter how long you work successfully, you still need to promote yourself to find new clients. A lot of people make the mistake of not targeting enough of the right people; having a popular profile on Twitter is great, but it probably won’t supply you with full-time work, as The Mighty Pencil our key aim is to take our work to the right people, the general public are never going to commission you much, but an art buyer at a top advertising agency will, and that’s why they’ve got a copy of our first book sitting on their desk.

Ben O’Brien interview with MiddleBoopMag

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/If so, are there any techniques you still use today?

I’m still struggling to explain The Mighty Pencil, it’s not an agency or a collective or a company, essentially it’s a group of professional illustrators who, together, are coming together to promote each other and build our careers. It came together at first as just 5 or 6 of us, all friends through Twitter, and we felt that between us, sharing our own experiences, ideas and advice, we could build some kind of ‘brand’ that could enable us to further ourselves in our careers.

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/When was it that you decided to make the jump into freelance illustration? Did you work for a design or animation company at any point or just move purely into freelance?

Much like with sending out my first video showreel, it’s just a matter of getting your work out there and contacting people, keep active, keep public.

Luckily some clients I’d worked with while part of a studio wanted to keep working with me on illustration projects, but also I was always looking out for opportunities, I found myself pitching for an ad campaign for Smart Cars, which I somehow won and continued working on for a few years.

I also offered myself to design studios as a freelance artworker/illustrator, which led me to working for the always amazing Airside! It perhaps took me a year to get to a point where I felt completely settled and stable freelancing.

/So now that the secret’s out, tell us about the Mighty Pencil, what sparked the idea?

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I still ask myself that today! I think part of it was pure fear of being set off into the big wide world without anything to do. I knew I wanted to try and ‘do my own thing’ but being 22 I was naively confident and purely ignorant about any possible pitfalls, without a doubt I put myself out there.

This was some time ago now, 1999, so before the internet had really become what it is today, there were no easy social networking sites or simple research tools, nowhere to show your work to the world. During my final year I prepared a video showreel of the animation work I had been doing, a lot of which was inspired by music, and sent it to a huge list of record labels, small and large.

I received responses from a handful, including a keen letter from the video commissioner at Skint.

Music videos were a really exciting area at the time, and John Hassey at Skint was super keen to support young talent and produce exciting videos, luckily he gave me my first break and within months I was animating and directing a music video for them. After that, one commission followed another, I was very lucky to have been discovered by John Hassey and welcomed into a very exciting industry at the time.

/How long did it take you to get yourself properly set up in freelance illustration? Do you have any particular techniques you used to bag those first few clients?

having a popular profile on twitter is great, but probably won’t supply you with full-time work.

/Despite being most well known for your illustration and graphic imagery, you gained your first freelance clients through animation for labels such as Skint and Domino, Skint whilst you were still at uni I believe, how did you gain such credible clients so early into your freelance career?

LUKE DROZD Drozd is an illustrator preferring the hand-drawn process of illustration which he incorporates into many styles of promotional solutions.

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DIEGO MENA Diego Mena’s screen printed promotional work often includes abstract contemporary use of typography as shown beow.

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DOE EYED Doe Eyed work predominantly with illustration across a range of applications, but expressly describe their affection for gig poster design.

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The Delicious Design League do not hold an illustrative focus, though clearly enjoy merging contemporary design with traditional illustration.

DELICIOUS DESIGN LEAGUE

Phantom Cuty work predominantly through modern style illustration forms with an aged and traditional illustrative look.

PHANTOM CITY

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INVISIBLE CREATURE Inviisble creature are a fairly corporate style of illustration and design studio, but stick close to long term clients and smaller opportunities.