We have a job for you.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces introduces the monomyth to structural mythology in 1949. The journey of a narrative’s protagonist begins with a “call to adventure” which leads them to “a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight” (Campbell, 1948: 48). Though answering the call of an illustration agent [or art director] might not necessarily be superhuman, there is something blank and un-worlded in the line that often begins an email from without:

“Hi. Are you up for this?”

“It seems that there are texts without a narrative, such as questions, commands, minimal conversation pieces” says Eco, in Role of the Reader (1979: 28). The discourse to which they refer is more by implication than through the sum of the words used; what Teun A. van Dijk refers to as a macropropositions (van Dijk, 1975 in Eco, 1979: 27) as opposed to the far simpler micropropositions. Like Bruner’s fabula (Bruner, 1986: 19), microprepositions are the raw ingredients of the text, as opposed to the macropreposition’s global meaning(s). In the case of short questions and commands, Eco suggests that the macropreposition “is longer than the microprepositions manifesting it”. The email prefigures a reading of an attached text or communiqué from the client. It simply activates the world-maker, cultivating a sense of action that is as-yet dormant. It preempts the unblanking. The agent infers that there is world-making to be done.

“Some ingredient must be added to the information”, says Neil Cross in 1982’s Designerly Ways of Knowing (Cross, 2007: 25). For Cross (as with Robin Nelson in Practice as Research), the ‘designerly’ codes of knowing are tacit, embodied, intuitive. Cross calls the design process one of “manipulation” (Cross, 2007: 27); an interplay between “concrete objects and abstract requirements”. The call comes from above, a request for a description of an artefact, as Cross describes it (Cross, 2007: 33). Cross refers to the role of designer as product-maker, where the artefact itself must be produced by a fabricator or producer of some kind; but let us consider Paul Ricoeur’s notion of the story as “a model for the redescription of the world” (Ricoeur in Bruner, 1986: 7). Could it be that the artefact, in illustration, implants a world in the reader’s mind? Or perhaps the text achieves this purpose alone, and the illustration guides, concretizes, contradicts or reinforces that mental image. Once again we might ask what the purpose of an illustration is, beyond the unblanking of a page, or the paratextual accompaniment of an arguably superior text in a hierarchy of information. One could read most texts without the provision of an illustration and be “no worse off”, say Biggs & Buchler (2008). The client’s request is “often vague”, suggests Cross (2007: 34), which in turn leads me to consider what, in the exchange between concrete objects and abstract requirements, the illustration represents.

The illustration as concrete object.

I argue that the illustration is the concretization of an abstract thought - the mental image as represented in the copy / story provided by the art director / agent. I could defer here to W.J.T. Mitchell in Iconology: image, text, ideology, referring to “a protracted struggle for dominance between pictorial and linguistic signs” that punctuates our history of culture (Mitchell, 1986: 42-43). On that blank page, of which the illustrator receiving a call knows very very little, a struggle is about to take place. Citing Hugh Kenner, Mitchell describes the “verbal image” as a literal expression of a “concrete object…. A word is an image of an idea, and an idea is an image of a thing” (Mitchell, 1986: 22). But perhaps we can take this model several steps further.

Firstly, following Kenner, a word is an image of an idea that a writer had, in verbally communicating the image of a thing. Next, now that writing is (to an extent) complete, that word is communicated into an idea as image, and that in turn represents the idea of the thing. Or, perhaps, it simply converts the literal text into the literal image: when the copy refers to an apple, an apple is the artefact. It could look like myriad apples, but once fixed, it becomes the apple in the world of the copy. It becomes the apple illustrated. An apple unblanks the page as a verbal image. It unblanks it as representation. The ‘protracted struggle’ can continue (the reader may wish for a red apple where the illustrator has provided a green one, or a Cox where a Braeburn now sits), but I might assume in these cases that the nature of this apple is acceptable, once rendered. If a reader chooses to disagree, they will be “no worse off”, as Biggs & Buchler suggest (2008). Pictures and words battle to claim “proprietary rights on a "nature" to which only either has access” says Mitchell (1986: 42-43). Of course, an apple is a relatively simple thing to draw. More often than not, an abstract concept is being invoked by the world of the copy. Rarely would I be asked to draw an apple on its own, in a piece about apples. It might be drawn into a wider contextual net, suggesting notions of innocence or technological prowess, for example. Citing Lessing once more, Mitchell tells us that “the image of an eagle may depict a feathered predator, but it expresses the idea of wisdom” (1986: 41) - and not only that, of course. For Mitchell, “the dialectic of word and image seems to be a constant in the fabric of signs that a culture weaves around itself” (1986: 43). (Should I get into semiotics here??)

Nick Bell describes graphic design as “doing justice to the materials piled up in front of you”, forming connections between the peculiar circumstances which have intersected to provide a problem, bringing the designer into contact with “so many other fields of practice” (Bell, 2004). In 2020 I was asked to provide an illustration for Harvard Magazine on the musicologist and scientist Alex Rehding, illustrating an interview in its May issue. My agent sent the following from the client:

“For the illustration we are looking to include a drawing/portrait of the professor and then use some of the imagery from the Golden Record and music iconography in general to create a fun and engaging illustration. We think Wesley would be perfect for this assignment.” (Art Director #1, 2020)

I might describe this as a fairly typical request. It immediately implies the world which will be created, suggesting the content which should be included and the subject of the portrait - in this case, a wide-ranging piece that draws in references to space exploration, sound, music and physics, channelled through the polymath Rehding. It posits the tone of the article required, emphasizing that it must be engaging, and states that my style would be suitable. This in turn suggests that the AD has viewed my work, understands the approach I take both stylistically and - to an extent - mentally, and has connected the world of the copy to the world of the illustration-to-come. They have begun the process of unblanking the page. For my part, I have by this point Googled the professor in question, as well as to acquaint myself with the visual signifiers of NASA’s Golden Record. The AD has also attached the text – “not fully edited but getting closer” – and a list of visual references. Umberto Eco, in The Role of the Reader, refers to the “actualization of [a] discursive structure” when reading (1976: 27), referring to our encyclopedic and social “store” of semantic properties. Following an introductory email, the AD qualifies earlier information, and starts to shape the world before I initialize the roughs.

They warn that there is “a paragraph in the article where Rehding is quoted as saying he has concerns about people perceiving him as a lunatic for embarking on [his] line of research so we don't want the illustration to feed into that” (AD#1 to Jackson, 2020). As a result of this concern, the AD also points out that, as this is a piece on NASA’s Voyager mission, it can evoke images of space, but not aliens (“no little green men”). Timely here to return to Marie Laure Ryan’s notion of minimal departure (Ryan, 1991), which I have mentioned elsewhere. A text can create “a new actual world ... imposes its laws on the reader and determines its own horizon of possibilities” (Ryan in Herman et al, 2005), allowing us to buy into a redescription of the world. But until it defines the imagery which can be conjured by such possibilities, we will take our own actual world as referent - apples, for example, are a round crunchy fruit until the text tells us otherwise. Here is where the notion of a copyworld - and the writerliness of the copy - become crucial. An illustration can, of course, extend the actual world and establish a set of rules not initially permitted by the text - this is something I will demonstrate in a chapter around style. In Rehding’s text, there is indeed mention of “intelligent life” but he only speculates on the theoretical possibility, using it to question how a species that “[doesn’t] have ears” might listen to Chuck Berry and Beethoven - more a thought experiment than space opera. I might have considered (and visually outlined) the inclusion of an earless alien species unless directed otherwise - it is a tantalising visual proposition, and one I might be expected to pursue - especially within the boundaries of the stylistic and cognitive approach I take to developing an illustrative worldview. The AD has - conceptually at least - unblanked a page, but is careful to define the actuality of the copyworld-to-come.

In The Role of the Reader, Umberto Eco writes that a text is “a piece of the furniture or the world in which the reader lives” as well as being “a machine for producing possible worlds” (Eco, 1979: 246). The copy the illustrator reads exists in the objective, shared world of art director and illustrator. We share references, ideas, images.

To clarify details, as AD#1 does in the case of the Rehding illustration, frames might be constructed to ensure that those possible worlds remain within a realm of established possibility for the reader. The text may take them toward contemplating aliens, if only implicitly. An illustration that pushes at the realm of possibility might take them too far, distracting them from the world imagined by the editor. Perhaps good art direction isn’t an editing process, but one of implying and explicating frames.

The lexicon of text, says Eco, is “furnished with certain properties”, suggesting that a transition between the world of the text and the “world of [the reader’s] experience” takes place in a “frenzy of lexicological optimism” (Eco, 1979: 17) as content offers “contextual selections” (1979: 19). Good to reign in the illustrator, at the point of reading. Goffman, in Frame Analysis, might refer to this relationship as a “collaborat[ion] in unreality” (Goffman, 1986: 135-136) - an unreality in which the reader will later participate as they view the illustration - but it’s here that the framework for that unreality is delineated. I could, after all, go anywhere with this image. And I often do, certainly at the roughing stage (I will write a section on three-pronged roughing - high, low and middling).

I had also been given the layout for the opener, which allowed me to set the sketch within the grid; this allows me to fix the illustration onto a page, which tends to give it credence, to position it within the jigsaw-like discourse of a gradually-worlded page. Suddenly there is a balance in Mitchell’s “protracted struggle” as the words and image come to rest in something like a final spread.

Screenshot 2021-09-27 at 13.58.41.png

When I sent in the rough, I accompanied it with an email stating that “I was thinking of a psychedelic projection coming from Dr Rehding's computer at his desk - he seems to be a person who travels interstellar distances from the comfort of an office chair” (Jackson to AD#1, 2020). It’s curious that I seek to reinforce a drawn representation of a shared copyworld with added descriptive text, to perhaps further stabilise what is seen to be happening. I also feel it prudent to explain “the idea of his extra long arms, because he talks of human inability to perceive time and space.. I'd like the illo to play with that strangeness” (ibid). I may not be actualizing a world which contains aliens, but I am extending the notion of a speculative quantum space-time into a plane which is recognisably our shared ‘actual world’ - he’s sat at a desk with a cup of coffee, after all. A further discussion with the AD raises questions about the top left of the frame; in roughing the image, I have left this undecided. I anticipate that these details are unnecessary at this stage, and will come into focus as the artwork progresses. However, the AD asks that it be considered as it is “sort of naked” and doesn’t even allow sufficient space for the article title to be “squeezed in” (AD#1 to Jackson, 2020). In this, the AD further unblanks the page; there is space here, which must be occupied by the drawing of more seeable things. It also suggests that the AD considers this space fixed, as I do; nothing can be moved to accommodate the paratext. This is relatively unusual in art direction; it connotes that the AD sees the image as a formed world, where extra content from the copy can be introduced but nothing should be taken away.

In Visualizing Research, Gray & Malins note that “verbal description” is limiting, noting that an explanation of “a Mozart symphony is obviously qualitatively different from hearing the actual music” (2004: 95). Gray & Malins are explaining the limits of language in describing practice, in rendering through words the complexity of practice. They cite Tyler (1986 in: Clifford and Marcus, 1986, p. 137) who calls this “language doing the work of the eyes” (2004: 95). In producing the artwork - my next step - comes a cognitive shift. A kind of rehearsal has been played out through language, and though we have agreed on the fixed nature of the image-to-come, it needs to exist. There are some uncertainties, of course; the image requires what Robin Nelson calls personal research: sifting, finding, understanding what already exists (Nelson, 2013: 25-27). Mäkelä et al (after Rodgers, 2000) distinguish between drawing as a "sense-making tool" and "drawing for manufacture" (Mäkelä et al, 2014). I consider the process of artworking a rough into ‘final’ art that of the latter; a production process. As for Neil Cross, this is a process of concretization.

I've no idea what Alexander's office looks like, but I only need to include enough information for it to be seeable.. The text never mentions desks, coffee, iMacs and notebooks. He might not have a Cambridge degree hanging on his wall, and I'm pretty sure no building at Harvard would offer this view of the college from its windows. I’m not certain if he’s ambidextrous. My only real certainty is that he owns an orange jumper and looks more or less like this:

Screenshot 2021-09-27 at 13.58.57.png

After submitting this, two senior magazine editors questioned the long arms, which “alarmed them” and the AD asked if it “might be possible to just even slightly normalize them” (AD#1 to Jackson, 2020). There was no reason given for this alarm, but my earlier need to highlight their strangeness might evidence my own gleeful irreverence in shifting the verisimilitude of the copyworld. I changed them.

The article's writer stated that the illustration - and me as maker - "seem[ed] to understand Alex at a deeper-than-text level.." (AD#1 to Jackson, 2020). “The author has to assume that the ensemble of codes he relies upon is the same as that shared by his possible reader”, states Eco in Role of the Reader (1979: 7). For this possible reader - the illustrator-as-reader - this represents a success; a conversion of one ensemble of codes into another, arguably demonstrating Teun A. van Dijk’s macroproposition (van Dijk, 1975 in Eco, 1979: 27), elevating the discourse beyond local structures of words into something approaching a global meaning, an overall representation.

In this instance of a copyworld, the author, art director, senior editors and myself collectively wrangle over the world of the copy. Finally, the human subject of the illustration offers an epilogue: Rehding himself later asked for a print, presumably to sit on his office wall, potentially replacing his non-existent actual Cambridge certificate and further unblanking an uncertain space which might not be a space at all.

Arisman, M. & Heller, S. (2004). Inside the business of illustration. USA: Allworth Press..

Bell, N. (2004). The Steam Roller of Branding. Eye Magazine 53, Autumn 2004.

Biggs, M. and Buchler, D. (2008). Eight criteria for practice-based research in the creative and cultural industries. UK: University of Hertfordshire.

Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

Cross, N. (2007) Designerly ways of knowing [electronic resource]. eBook. Basel: Birkhũser. First published 1982

Eco, U. (1979) The Role of the Reader. USA: Indiana University Press.

Goffman, E. (1986). Frame Analysis. USA: Northeastern University Press, originally published 1972.

Jackson, P. (2020). Email exchange between art director (styled as AD#1) and author.

Mäkelä, M. & Heikkinen, T & Nimkulrat, N. (2014). Drawing as a research tool: Making and understanding in art and design practice.. Studies in Material Thinking. 10. 1-12.

Nelson, R. (2013, p. 25-27) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Ryan, M_L. (2005). Possible-worlds theory in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 2005. (eds. Herman, D., Jahn, M., & Ryan, M-L. UK: Routledge.

Once Upon A Spacetime in the West | Year 02

Confirm copying

Restore backup