Trend! Graphic Illustration

I was recently asked to help compile a list of illustrators for a couple of publications I’m helping put together. We put together a bunch of strong and very current samples of work from a number of talented and note-worthy creative types. Most examples involved some some of ‘craft’ aspect, ie there was a very definite, implied reference to an image being ‘made’ by ‘hand’ and not by machine ie, a very literal interpretation of what it means to ‘illustrate’. It occurred to me that this what has defined illustration over the few years. There seems to have been a flood of young creatives shirking rigid geometric designs in favour of getting back to drawing and making things by hand. We presented said samples but something about them just wasn’t quite right. What we should have been looking for was not what’s current but what’s next. What we needed was something more graphic.

After the last few years of ‘making’ there seems to be a need to turn up the ‘concept’ and present clear and accurate ‘graphic illustrations’. Think old style information graphics [wikipedia] like the sort you used to see in Time magazine in the 1980s [nigelholmes.com] but with a modern twist or the work of Shigeo Fukuda [macauart.net] (who Alan Fletcher once curiously described as a ‘doughnut’ [icm.gov.mo]) or, more recently, Alexander Gelman [designmachine.net] and Christoph Niemann [christophniemann.com] (whose work can been seen above). It’s moving away from ‘interpreting ideas’ to ‘visualising information’. It’s ‘problem solving’ rather than just ‘investigation’. So our hunt has began for these up-and-coming ‘graphic illustrators’. I’ve included a couple of links to creatives that are already heading in this direction, if you have any suggestions be sure to leave a comment or drop me a line.

Holly Wales (Recent Work) [eatjapanesefood.co.uk] / Siggi Eggertsson (Logo Designs) [vanillusaft.com] / Darren Wall (Hot Chip Sleeve Designs) [wallzo.com] / Anthony Burrill [anthonyburrill.com] / Mick Marston [thefutilevignette.com] / …more to come