The Vanishing greatness of Illustration

An art that is becoming more and more exclusive each day

An article originally written for BlogCritics. This is the original article Jose Aponte For BlogCritics

Illustrations… those beautiful and inspiring visualizations that come as drawings, paintings, photographs or other kinds of art with the idea to deliver sensual information in the most fantastic way possible by providing a visual representation graphically. This kind of information is what makes the fashion world not only magical but possible. Without that, we could not speak about anything in this industry, from designs to cover magazines and editorials, this graphic design could not come any more glamourous and dreamier than the fashion illustration.

 For over 500 years, the fashion illustration has been with us, amusing our eyes and wowing our imagination. Ever since there is an idea that needs to come alive there has been, is and will be a need for fashion illustration. And this interventions are not only functional but present themselves as a kind of art, a dazzling and small part of somebody’s essence that comes from the deepest desires and aspirations of the authors and collaborations.

Today’s technology has allowed the industry’s creative teams to find a great bunch of options to express them selves, in such new, easy and unexpected ways that you do not need to be a master with the pencils or the oils to perfectly communicate your idea. From photos, to computer based collages and graphic design softwares as Adobe Illustrator anyone can easily and successfully graphically place any thought on a piece of paper or a computer screen. Thanks to that fantastic technology, there has been a massive decline in the  fashion illustration, which began in the late 1930s when Vogue began changing its celebrated and iconic illustrated covers with photos.

According to Laird Borrelli – author of Fashion Illustration Now -: “Fashion Illustration has gone from being one of the sole means of fashion communication to having a very minor role. The first photographic cover of Vogue was a watershed in the history of fashion illustration and a watershed mark of its decline. Photographs, no matter how altered or retouched, will always have some association with reality and by association truth. I like to think of them [fashion Illustrations] as prose poems and having more fictional narratives. They are more obviously filtered through an individual vision than photos. Illustration lives on, but in the position of a poor relative to the fashion”.

The real fashion illustration has become some kind of the Haute-Couture of the representative ideas. Some time ago, great designs came with fantastic images, a lot of hard work had to be done in order to prepare those magnificent pieces that could be classified as art. But these days, design students do not even bother to learn how to draw because of the facility of simple softwares that in some cases come with templates which can easily transformed. Mediocre designers feel like they do not need to find a way to cleverly express their ideas in the the most appropriate way possible. Neither design companies nor magazines feel the need to hire magnificent illustrators, they only need somebody who can run the appropriate software. Which is the natural course of the industry, they have to save money and make everything faster, and in the end it all become disposable work.

So, is it ok for the new creative minds to put aside this kind of work? It should not be… finding the best and most personal way to create and sketch can give an unexpected character and uniqueness to your personal work. Some computer based designs lack of personality and emotions that can only be brought to life when you can feel and enjoy what you are doing when you find your own voice. When you design a t-shirt by hand that special stroke that you have is so great that no computer or other human being could possibly reproduce it, and the outcome could be so magnificent that they could become iconic pieces.

 The craftsmanship and the hand made work is something that is so distinctive and beautiful that should be appreciated and valued, so should never be forgotten or replaced by new technologies. And, although it seems that the art of illustration is dying, it is only becoming more exclusive and more appreciated by the connoisseurs and therefore is nowhere near to be extinguished. It has only found a more exclusive and demanding clientele, that places it in the same category as art. From the biggest and most exclusive fashion brands to magazines as Vogue working with the most renown illustrators to create special projects that become the epitome exclusivity and fantasy dreams. The illustration has earned a coveted spot in that marvelous world of luxury.

 It is a shame that the fashion illustration is not what it used to be, that the hand drawing has been somehow replaced by computer based techniques that sometimes lack of personality and emotion. But this new wind that has come to the industry has forced the creatives of this field to work as artists, pushing the few who dare to work in this ultra competitive world to try their best for the creation of master pieces full of emotion and uniqueness that go beyond the imagination and what we could possibly say in more than a thousand or million words.