2006 saw the launch of Illustrative, a new festival/exhibition in Berlin that celebrates illustration and graphic art. Having taken place this year in Zurich between the 18th and 26th of October, it drew 35 different artists, and showcased over 400 works.

Its main thrust is described as “documenting the influence of illustration and graphic arts on other disciplines like book illustration, fashion and textile-arts, pottery, and animated movies.” The point is to trace how illustration and graphic art feature in, or are essential parts of, the many facets of ‘contemporary art’.

What this really means is you’re getting a ton of great illustration gathered all in one place. And as an excellent sideline, the exhibition hosts a Young Illustrators Award, in three separate categories that include Illustration, Book Art, and Animation.

A funny thing: even though I’m writing on design all the time, I’m still often in the dark when it comes to the genre terms “illustration” and “graphic art”. That’s fine: part of the point of their recent resurgence is the inability to pin contemporary illustration down into one, specific category, as was possible 100 years ago.

Take a look at this interview with Pascal Johanssen, one of the two Berlin-based curators of Illustrative, who outlines what “contemporary illustrative art” means to him:

It’s a new art movement. Unlike classic illustration it is a mix of influences from comic art, graffiti, fashion, advertisement, set design for computer games or animation. This form of illustrative art is marked by very different creative impulses and thus can be design or art.

He also describes the fundamental differences between what he sees as the previous generation of illustrators and today’s. I’ve never really thought about things in these terms before:

The parent generation for me is represented by illustrators like Tomi Ungerer. These have been willful, charismatic drawers. They were close to political caricatures, which was in accordance with the common operational fields of illustration back then. Today´s illustrators are mainly avant-garde regarding innovative means of design.

And finally, he’s asked in which direction illustration is moving at the moment. His answer is probably prescient, but it’s strange–I’ve been hearing a version of this answer, across several disciplines, for some time now. Read on:

Game Art will come up. This will be an art genre which will not only copy the aesthetics of computer games, like Eboy, but uses the graphical, narrative and technological means emerging from computer games and making them possible. Something new will develop in this field.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read that games are the new, growing, soon-to-be-fundamental frontier for: advertising, literature, interactive experience, socialization, social networking, and entertainment in general. No one actually knows if it’ll happen, but for the moment I see games as still, essentially, games.

Yeah, there are massive networks like World of Warcraft. There are games everyone in the world plays, like Grand Theft Auto 4. There are games like The Sims 2. But they’re still just games. There are still stores that sell only video games, all staffed by the same 5 dudes that ran them when I was 10. Or at least it seems that way.

I’ll save a further exploration of that subject for another day, but it strikes me that Johannson’s answer here is actually not overblown like many of the video-games-are-taking-over-all-media claims: the area in which games and art will strongly converge might indeed be one where the very facility of young designers with video games (and the technologial means that bring them about) could actually create an entirely new field of art, and a big one at that. Just a prediction.

One can’t miss event during the exhibiton–especially for anyone interested in vintage art or just wonderfully detailed design–was Roman Bittner’s talk on his “Ancient Cities of Tomorrow” series. These are e-boy like illustrations taken to another level and really, really captivating. Check out his studio here.

Anyway, if you were lucky enough to be wandering around Zurich in October, staring at mountains and drinking their water straight from the clean, fresh rivers, hopefully you caught up with Illustrative.

Damn does that Obama campaign know what it’s doing. Whether it’s typographic consistency and appeal, unprecendented use of the internet as a fund-raising source, innovative volunteer organization, or even advertising in video games, the general consensus is that this is the best and smartest-run presidential campaign in history.

Obama has an unprecedented amount of art and free publicity being generated by some very talented people on his behalf. Some of the best stuff was actually comissioned by the campaign, who clearly know what they’re doing when picking agencies. Look at this insane blog: it’s a deluge.

Instead of doing a roundup of the billion Obama posters out there, let’s focus on a couple of unique ones in more detail. If you want a big, comprehensive collection, head over to that aforementioned blog, or Design For Obama for a great overview.

First up is this recent example by Larry Roibal, who over the course of several days has posted all the components that go into his word-based poster. Comissioned by the campaign, he made a poster entirely of words–all issues central to the candidacy. Larry says:

An ad agency working on the Obama campaign called me a few weeks ago. They saw my drawings over words and my drawing with words posted here and asked if I would be interested in doing a drawing for a campaign poster. They wanted a portrait of Barack Obama made from a list of issues most important to the Senator written out to form the portrait. I employed this technique once before when I was so frustrated with the media coverage I thought it an appropriate way to show the subtext.

Larry does some good stuff–check out his recent, quick drawing of Colin Powell superimposed over an article about his recent endorsement.

My other favourite example comes from one of the absolute best poster artists working today: Scott Hansen. He’s also known as Tycho when he records, and his whole enterprise goes under the name iso50. He’s got an amazing post on the workflow for his Obama poster, also comissioned by the campaign for a fundraising effort:

The message of the print had to center around a handful of concepts that the campaign was using, “Hope”, “Progress”, “Change”. Shepard Fairey had already created two prints for the campaign that each featured an image of Obama so I knew I wanted to pursue another theme for the imagery. The fact that this was a fund raising poster and not intended as a campaign poster also made it easier to interpret the imagery more liberally. My initial idea was to metaphorically represent the core themes of the campaign in a collage, some more literally than others. I also wanted to vaguely communicate the concept of peace by configuring the main elements into a somewhat subdued peace symbol and working off of that shape for the core structure of the image.

His final result is fantastic, although unfortunately sold out. Besides giving us a great poster, Scott managed to get online something I always love: an in-depth, thorough post about the creative process that goes into a beautiful design.

On that note, if you missed the video on our front page a few days back that linked to Bob Staake’s workflow for the recent New Yorker cover (the politics issue), check it out here. The best thing about it: he’s still proudly using Photoshop 3!