Illustrations

Illustration was my first encounter with design not the other way around. I was trained as a plastic artist before I was trained as a designer, and that sequence matters. It means I came to design already knowing that an image is never neutral: it carries intention, selects emphasis, and proposes an interpretation of what it depicts. What eventually shifted my understanding was not technique but purpose. Illustration, as I practice it, serves an objective external to the maker it communicates, orients, clarifies, or argues. That is design work, not art work, and the distinction is meaningful. Walter Benjamin wrote about the aura of the original work of art and what mechanical reproduction does to it, the way copies evacuate presence, separating the image from the singular moment of its making. Illustration that is built to function, to be reproduced, to land inside a brief, operates in that evacuated space by choice. The soul, if there ever was one, is replaced by purpose. I find that trade interesting rather than tragic.