Daniel Liévano

TDOD have recently been contacted by Daniel Liévano, an illustrator from Bogotá, Colombia. He sent some images across which we thought were stunning.

In the words of the man himself:

I believe I have a project that can be of your interest, it involves what I used to do in my first years and what I do nowadays. It's about Graphic Design and Illustration, respectively.

As a passionate of illustration, I'm always thinking about what makes my job relevant in the world, and this time I thought about the common process of an illustration assignment. Illustrators are often given text-based briefs so they can imagine a visual relationship of the idea behind such brief, and sometimes that simple exercise has made the job of illustrators be seen as a mere technical discipline, which is not at all.

So I created a series of illustrations where the process is simply inverted: The creation of an image happens first, and then I imagine  hypothetical texts that can exist next to the out-of-the-blue illustrations.

To make this more purposeful, I went to my earliest passion, graphic design. I wanted to design covers of many sort of publications as if they seemed real, with real world topics and key terms such as The Observer's Paradox, themes that can be found in psychology  and philosophy. The allusion of these implicit articles, ended being absolute fiction.

Below are the illustrations in their original state, before being used within their respective cover designs.

Original Illustrations

In context

Why we need libraries

A simple re-post of an excellent piece from the Guardian by Neil Gaiman and former children's laureate Chris Riddell.

Enjoy.

Andrea Ucini

Another recommendation from illustration's Steve Wilkin is Andrea Ucini. A regular in the Guardian, Andrea's illustrations convey a strong sense of idea.

I´m a freelance conceptual illustrator living and working in Denmark.

I was born in Italy and graduated in classical piano and composition at the Music Academy of Florence. Music was my first source in a new form of expression. Drawing has been a deeper research in order to discover the different ways a concept or an emotion can be decoded in.

Christoph Niemann

Illustration Course Leader, Steve Wilkin, has recently switched us on to the incredible ideas and work of Christoph Niemann. Slightly perturbed as to how we missed him, the one lesson we can draw from this particular experience is that you must always keep your eyes (and ears) open as even talents like Christoph could somehow pass you by.

Here's the copy (text) from his website, and a few taster images. You could spend many hours on his website and Instagram.

Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, artist, and author. His work has appeared on the covers of  The New Yorker, WIRED and The New York Times Magazine and has won awards from AIGA, the Art Directors Club and The Lead Awards. His corporate clients include Google, St. Moritz, LAMY, and The Museum of Modern Art. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale. In 2010, he was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall Of Fame.

He has drawn live from the Venice Art Biennale, the Olympic Games in London, and he has sketched the New York City Marathon — while actually running it. He created The New Yorker’s first Augmented Reality Cover as well as a hand drawn 360 degree VR animation for the magazine’s US Open issue.

Niemann is the author of many books, including the monograph  “Sunday Sketching” (2016), “WORDS” (2016) and “Souvenir” (2017). With Nicholas Blechman he published the book “Conversations“. With Jon Huang he created the kids’ apps PETTING ZOO and CHOMP. His work is subject of an episode of Abstract, a new original NETFLIX series.

The Chicken Spy

The Chicken Spy has reached a conclusion! Written and illustrated for my daughter Edie, she received it this Christmas. It has taken longer than first envisaged to complete, but the result is a happy little girl with her own book!

All of the final images were screen-printed. The initial drawings were were produced purposely small so that they retained the energy of an initial sketch. Chosen drawings were then resized so that the scale was altered but the energy remained. 

Sketchbook.

Enlarge.

Artwork separation.

Layering. 

Print.

Book.

And finally...

The result.

The Creative Journey

An insightful summation by illustrator Tom Gauld.