This document provides an introduction to digital illustration. It defines illustration as visually communicating ideas by simplifying concepts. Illustration mixes concepts to convey complex ideas simply. The history of illustration is intertwined with literature, with artists commissioned to create images that explained texts for hundreds of years. In the industrial era, publishing houses replaced patrons and illustration flourished. A good illustration immediately connects with viewers emotionally and complements its subject. Graphic designers also serve as illustrators by visually simplifying and conveying information through their images.

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Digital Illustration 1 • Introduction
ILLUSTRATION
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein

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Digital Illustration 1 • Defining Illustration
Illustration visually communicates a message.
An illustration conceptually visualizes and summaries
a verbal idea, and simplifies that idea so it is
immediately understood.
An illustration mixes multiple concepts together
to convey complex ideas in a simple and
harmonious way.
An illustration is impactful, powerful and
achieve what a literal picture cannot.
Illustrators think in pictures.

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The discipline of
illustration serves as
a reservoir of our social
and cultural history
and is a significant and
enduring art form.
Its history is filled with
iconic images.
Digital Illustration 1 • Iconic Imagery

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Digital Illustration 1 • Iconic Imagery
james montgomery Flagg

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Illustration is as old
as writing, with both
originating in the
pictograph.
Before the birth of modern
art, aartists created paintings
with the intention of telling
a story or communicating a
particular message.
Digital Illustration 1 • A Brief History of Illustration
Cave Paintings, France

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Digital Illustration 1 • A Brief History of Illustration
Most representational art
was linked with literature
and its visual interpretation.
For seven centuries, artists
were commissioned to
create images that explained
religious texts, legends, and
myths, as well as local and
national historical events.
The artist would work to
specific formats and within
outlined contexts with many
works being produced to
accompany letterforms
and texts (not so different
from the role of today’s
illustration).
Raphael St. George and the Dragon

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Digital Illustration 1 • A Brief History of Illustration
A historic shift came during
the industrial revolution,
when publishing houses
replaced the traditional
patrons of the arts (the
church and court) as
employers of artists.
A golden age of illustration
emerged, as illustrators,
as the end of the 19th
century, publications and
illustrations were the
general public’s major source
of entertainment.
The Illustrator became a
cultural communicator.
Juels CharetTalouse Latrec

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Expressionism

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Plakatstil (poster style)

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Surrealistic

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Art Deco

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Swiss

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Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration–Late Modern

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Digital Illustration 1 • Psychadelic

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Every illustration starts
with a brief by the client.
Digital Illustration 1 • Illustration: A Commercial Artform
Illustration is an applied art that is created for a
commercial client in response to a given brief or text.
Working commercially requires an understanding of
the issues and principles of the commission.
Illustration has a job to do, whether it is to educate,
inform, and entertain persuade, give an opinion, make
a comment, or tell a story.
The initial stages deal with understanding the
problem the context of the illustration and identifying
the audience.

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Digital Illustration 1 • Defining Illustration
What makes an illustration good?
Strong, compelling images that connect immediately and
emotionally with the reader, that complement the subject
matter perfectly, and that are so striking and evocative that
they are also powerful stand-alone works of art.

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Digital Illustration 1 • Evocative Imagery

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Digital Illustration 1 • Evocative Imagery

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Digital Illustration 1 • Defining Illustration
What is a bad illustration?
An illustration is, by definition, bad if it is intentionally
cryptic, self-referential, or so “deep” that you have to read
the article to figure out what the illustration is doing there.
This is called “trying too hard” and earns an immediate
vote of no confidence.
An illustration is bad if it is fussy pretentious, or requires a
magnifying glass to find and identify the internal elements.
This is called “trying to soft” and creates an image
where the effort to look at it is disproportionate to the
satisfaction that the image delivers.

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Digital Illustration 1 • Graphic Designers as Illustrators
Graphic Designers are, in part, illustrators.
The images that Designers create illustrate content
and convey and simplify complex information visually,
metaphorically, and emotionally.
Most (if not all) graphic design these days includes some
type of illustration in it.