Rear View Mirror

In the world of smartphone devices, iPads and digital billboards, our visual landscape is changing fast - from static display to moving, time-based displays. Yet traditional illustration often manipulates time with more grace than many of the slightly awkward digital examples, such as those clamouring from screens on cashpoint displays and digital posters on bus stops and London’s rail and tube stations. It must be acknowledged that the occasions where such displays seemingly move for the sake of being able to do so (where the elements of their design move over time but do not always develop the content over time) may be a teething problem. This essay will extract some highly relevant lessons from non-digital illustration in order to encourage a deeper understanding of how illustration negotiates time, as a significant characteristic of the field and one that allows us to explore the work’s relationship with the viewer. Therefore this piece is an exercise in tentative mapping from an illustrator’s perspective, it is an invitation to discussion, and responds to Adrian Holme’s suggestion in his Illustration Research conference paper that illustration can make use of a number of existing theoretical approaches (Holme, 2011). And by starting with practical examples and looking outwards towards relevant ideas the proximity to other disciplines can be gauged, bridged, and used to reflect upon the qualities that might help us to articulate our strengths. The outcome of this can be applied to the shifts in context outlined at the outset; if illustration is a time based activity, then perhaps we can argue for illustration’s place within this landscape with certainty. We can certainly ask for digital illustration to become more sensitive to its content, and to use the possibilities afforded by the technology to enhance the relationship between image and viewer