Images

By August 10, 2011 1:59 pm January 30, 2015 10:37 am

Opening at the end of the month is the Association of Illustrators’ Images 35 exhibition, a collection of some of the best illustration in Britain from the past year.

Images 35 – named so as this is its 35th year – will exhibit selected works from this year’s Images 35 annual, which features work from 240 illustrators.

From the annual, 180 artworks will be on show, including work from Ian Pollock (who was also featured in the inaugural Images 35 years ago, and has written an essay for this year’s book); Simon Spilsbury, David Hughes and Brian Grimwood.

One of the Images 35 judges Fred Flade, design director at Poke London says, ‘Overall I was hugely impressed by the diversity of work and the fantastic quality of illustration work submitted.’

He adds, ‘I for my part am going to do everything to encourage the use of illustration in more digital and interactive projects.’

The other judges on the panel include The Times’ Martin Harrison, BBC Learning’s Geoffrey Pais, and the wonderful Sam Freeman, former Design Week art director and the brains behind our redesign, who judged the design and self-promotion categories.

Simon Spilsbury’s cover for Design Week – Yeti, which is included in the annual and exhibition

Other categories include advertising, children’s books, new talent (the work of recent graduates and students), editorial and new media.

Helen Thomas, AOI exhibitions and events manager, says, ‘The beauty of Images it that it’s really varied – you get such a breadth of illustration that there’s no one trend. There’s a mix of original and digital works – a huge range.’

Sabine Reimer, Images coordinator, adds that there have been significant changes since she began working on the competition six years ago – for one, paper forms and CD Roms have been sidelined for digital-only applications – though the breath of submissions remains constant.

Reimer says, ‘It’s consistently very varied from simple to avant garde, almost abstract things – there’s always a great variety.’

She adds, ‘Over the last year there’s been more entries in the self-promotion category due to less illustration being commissioned because of the recession. In this time, the good illustrators spent their time promoting themselves and creating more work.’