This is a personal view: there are two factionalized divisions within the broad parameters of Illustration: contextualized professional practice (commercial illustration, commissioned by industry) and illustration theory and research. I have concluded that this divide is perpetrated by notions of intellectual elitism generally coming from certain academic communities, mainly within the UK higher education (HE) sector and also those illustrators (usually academics from HE) who subscribe to a position of authorial practice. The perception is that commercial illustration is prescribed, does not carry intellectual gravitas and that any notions of creativity utilized in answering a commissioned brief is restricted by objectives laid down by industry. This is wrong! Commercial illustration underpins the fundamental principles on which the whole discipline is based. Illustration is communication in all of its guises and contexts: it has been in existence since prehistory. It has always had to meet the challenge of directing a positive impact upon its audience – whatever the message, whether promotion and marketing, storytelling, persuasion, propaganda, commentary, documentation, information and new knowledge. Its power and influence has, and still is, massive. This is a premise that demands respect and makes the whole context of commercial illustration a crucial aspect of analysis and inquiry. I am a practitioner (with an international profile) and a senior academic (professor), author and editor, engaging in research and theoretical discourses. As such, I see both sides of these divergent opinions. But, it is my status as professional illustrator that facilitates my obligation to defend commercial, industry-based practice.

Illustrators are frequently asked to depict groups other than those they themselves belong to. When successful, such illustrations can be examples of authentic, nuanced representation, but, without critical thought and research, it is easy to fall into creating reductive repetitions of tropes. How can faculty teach students to view critically and consciously, avoiding pitfalls of subtle stereotype and appropriation? I share assignments I designed that require students to use visual research processes as a tool to combat their own unconscious assumptions about visually underrepresented groups. I also share case studies related to stereotype and appropriation of minorities in illustration. I establish why research is critical to the process of illustrating groups other than those the students’ themselves belong to and why educators should take an active role in teaching students to think critically about representation.

This article explores the evolving nature of authorship and meaning-making in illustration against the backdrop of artificial intelligence (AI)-generative art technologies and image saturation. Moving beyond surface debates around AI obsolescence, it aims to reframe discourse through an interdisciplinary lens of theory, visual culture and futurism. The central hypothesis posits that in our eagerness to declare authorial intent’s ‘death’, we may have failed to recognize how meaning has migrated rather than disappeared. By synthesizing postmodern theory with an altermodernist framework, specifically through the combination of Frederic Jameson’s ‘schizophrenic’ visual culture with Nicolaus Bourriaud’s concept of the ‘Semionaut’. The article claims that authorial significance has shifted into uncharted territories we remain blind to – with critical repercussions for illustrators’ roles as cultural curators, in an era where users of AI can infinitely generate ‘unique’ images of high quality without any illustrative ability. Perhaps the true value for illustrative arts lies in cultivating ‘rareness’ – contextually embedded artefacts imbued with intention that cut through visual noise. This pivot has profound implications for professional practice, ethics and training. The article aims to initiate new dialogues examining these future-facing considerations. This scholarly inquiry emerges from over a decade of critically investigating impacts of computational advances on image production and reception to identify the hidden impact of postmodernism as it accelerates through new technical abilities provided by AI to suggest new authorial mutations.

This study explores a novel approach to food illustration by integrating embodied cognition theory, which emphasizes the deep connection between sensory experiences (particularly taste and smell) and emotional responses. Traditional food illustration has largely relied on visual cues, often prioritizing sight over other senses that play crucial roles in food culture. By shifting focus from a visual-centred approach to a multisensory one, this research proposes a new method where illustrators take on dual roles as both interviewers and co-creators. Using taste and emotional memories provided by participants, the illustrator translates these experiences into documentary illustrations, aiming to capture the deeper emotional and cultural meanings of food. The study is centred around case studies in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, where ten participants from diverse backgrounds were interviewed about their sensory experiences with four traditional local dishes. Through semi-structured interviews, the participants described their taste memories and emotions, which were then used as prompts for creating food illustrations. The study highlights the potential limitations of this translation process, particularly the challenge of conveying taste sensory and emotional feelings through language before they are interpreted visually by the illustrator. Reflecting on the impact of globalization, commercialization and the rise of AI in illustration, this research argues for the irreplaceable value of human sensitivity in capturing emotional and cultural nuances in art. While the language-based translation process introduces subjectivity and potential information loss, the study opens new possibilities for future research in developing more direct forms of multisensory-to-visual translation. Ultimately, this research tries to contribute to the growing discourse on how food, art and culture intersect, offering an innovative framework for food illustration that engages the senses beyond the purely visual.

While students desperately ask how to find it, educators deem it superficial; at times, a sign of artistic personality, it simultaneously indexes market niches; individual property of the artist, it also is not protected by copyright laws. Style is a rich concept whose impact on creatives is only mirrored by the lack of research on it. This paper investigates the history not of different styles but of style as a semiotic device through three key historical moments. From its role in the constitution of authorship in the eighteenth century to The Great Depression aesthetic changes to today’s theft of stylistic labour by artificial intelligence, this article suggests that style, the visual manifestation of the indexical relationship between artists and their work, has long been a tool for creatives to manifest, control and benefit from their work. The meaning and role of style for artists have changed over the centuries, from sign of the intrinsic personhood of an author to superficial sign of commercialism. This pragmatic history of style sheds light on two blind spots. On the one hand, an ethnographic blind spot was created by the illustrators themselves in their ‘theoretical turn’, leaving style to mere commercialism and framing it as the antithesis of artistry. On the other hand, the paper addresses a theoretical blind spot of history of art that has for a long time focused on style as a normative category to be defined and refined (cf. the works of Gombrich, Shapiro, Arnheim, Panofsky, Kubler, etc.) and left under theorized the pragmatics of style, i.e. what people do with the concept to control and regulate the social life of artworks.

Mary Shelley uses the sublime natural environment as a vehicle to narrate the anguish, turmoil and triumph of the characters in Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus ([1818] 2010). This practical research investigates Shelley’s use of the sublime through distant reading, data visualization and abstraction to explore unseen narrative patterns in the text. It explores data collection and visualization to analyse the language in the text through distant reading, a method that seeks to map the text as data as opposed to understanding it as a piece of prose. The circle and triangle are used to infer what Burke identifies as the relationship between ‘the beautiful’ and ‘the sublime’ (1757). I am interested in mapping literature through unorthodox methods and to explore abstract narratives through data visualization. I believe that this mathematical and systematic methodology can illuminate the text in unforeseen ways.

From 2020 onwards, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and significantly altered our familiar way of life. For those experiencing parenthood for the first time, they found themselves adjusting to two new realities. This article asks the question, ‘What can illustrated stories within the gallery offer to uncover, support and unite those with shared but unspoken lived experience?’ More broadly, it looks, via a group exhibition case study, at the opportunities of the gallery space for purposing illustration and its unique qualities, as a gentle invite to engage audiences with hidden and emotionally charged subject matter which benefits from being shared. The Lullabies in Lockdown project began as a month-long group illustration exhibition in Leeds, UK, in October 2022. It featured work by various illustrators addressing new parenthood during the pandemic. This article looks at different illustrative approaches to tell a holistic story of the time, providing an overview of the exhibition and the development of ‘Lullabies’ into a pop-up touring show. Through artist statements and audience feedback, it considers how collectivized illustration validates and processes lived experiences, revealing how public exhibitions can reassure individuals facing hardships alone by acknowledging shared struggles. This discussion emphasizes the illustrators’ role as witnesses and the gallery as a medium and highlights their combined potential to create tonally sensitive aesthetics that invite audiences to engage with challenging experiences. It argues for further research into the overlooked values of illustration, especially amidst cultural polarization and artificial intelligence concerns, as a means of humanizing communication. This article was first presented for conference at Washington University, St Louis, Missouri as part of the ‘Blind Spots’ 2023 Illustration Research Symposium.

This article will consider the recurrence of the black square as an expression of narrative (or visual) absence and its uses and meanings as an illustration. The discussion will pick up on the author’s references to the black square as a non-narrative, illustrative stratum in their paper ‘The nomadic illustration’ (2015). This article will begin with the appearance of the black page in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) which was itself a reference to memorial pages in funeral pamphlets of the 1700s whilst also considering Robert Fludd’s Infinite Square (1617) using these as starting points for a discussion of the importance of attempting to illustrate the impossible. The article will go on to look at Malevich’s Black Square and the use of empty panel’s as narrative devices in comics. These historical examples will be used to inform a discussion of today’s use of the black square as a signifier of mourning and/or protest on social media (particularly during the 2020 Black Lives Matter [BLM] uprisings). The article will examine the illustrative function of the black square and the significance of creating an illustration that refuses to function as one – a blind image. It will go on to examine the problem of representation at scale and the erasure that accompanies depiction. It will ask if the black square is the only truly egalitarian illustration and what this might mean for the discipline more broadly.

Design and How! The history, theory and impact of Virginia Lee Burton’s design pedagogy examines the career, work and design pedagogy of artist and illustrator Virginia Lee Burton. Burton is known for her illustrated children’s books such as Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House. The renown of Burton’s books has reduced her to the role of children’s book illustrator and mother, sequestering her career into a blind spot of illustration history. This article analyses the tensions between the successful aspects of Burton’s unpublished design pedagogy as a systematized practice, and how the classed and raced ideologies that contextualize her lessons complicate her original mission. Through investigating Burton’s successes and shortcomings, this article explores what Burton’s lessons can teach scholars and practitioners today about what it means to make an accessible pedagogy.