Alex's Context of Practice Blog: Lecture 4 - Chronologies 2: Illustration

What is illustration?

Strategic image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept.

It's formal qualities; media, composition, become just as important as the image, since the visual quality of the media changes the way we look at an image.

It was stated at the start of this lecture that this isn't a chronology, but rather looking at what illustration is and what makes a good image.

There are three qualities that make up a good illustration: Image, Context, and Concept. If you have an equal combination of all three then you're sorted.

An example of an illustration shown to us was the cereal box of "Frosties". This is because it has a purpose - to sell cereal, a target audience of children, a friendly, likeable character design, and a simple colour pallet.

This was compared with a drawing of someones face. Even though that is art, it isn't considered illustration, since it doesn't have a particular purpose.

The earliest signs of visual communications were pictures drawn by cavemen, which was the only way to communicate at the time since type hadn't been created. We are hardwired to intuitively respond to images.

I think choice of media is also important in communicating the right message in an illustration/advert, as different styles look better for different purposes. E.g. we were shown two different illustrations for two different zoos:

The one on the left is for the National Geographic Magazine, created by Jillian Tamaki. I like the use of ink, and I think placed next to text it would look really nice and stylised.

The right is displayed at U.S National Zoo Washington, created by Lance Wyman; This simple silhouetted imagery looks better in this format at the zoo, as they're clear labels to direct viewers to the exhibitions, and they still look nice. Whereas the illustrations on the left would be too complicated for viewers.

We were shown loads of examples of illustrations, these are the ones that stood out to me because I like the styles that were used: