Postgraduate Degree in Illustration

This postgraduate degree considers and delves into illustration as a relevant element in contemporary visual communication. Its presence in the media spreads into different areas and colonizes new supports.

Illustration is also a valuable means of artistic expression and a universal language in which to disseminate ideas with multiple applications and functions: from the adorning of opinion and information to the encouragement of reading.

The professional area in which illustrators will develop their professional activity comprises different areas of communication: advertising, the Press, literature, design, application to products, new audiovisual formats.

In this postgraduate degree the students will delve into the functions of illustration and its main fields and applications as well as into the figure of the illustrator and the value of the work of illustrators as providers of information, trend-setters, critics, historians or graphic witnesses who leave proof of something that took place at a particular moment.

This programme is made up of 8 modules that describe the different categories and functions of illustration, and concludes with a final project. In the modules the students will develop theoretical and practical contents with the creation of illustrations for the different areas of this profession.

The modules will be imparted by teachers, all of them well-known professionals in the illustration sector. They will suggest exercises from their own experience in their own fields: narrative, trends, new media, product, Press, comic, etc.

The modules will be completed with interventions, lectures and talks which, occasionally and throughout the course, will be given by working illustrators who are specialized in the different sectors of illustration.

Module 1 – Illustration in the press

Module 2 – Illustration of trends

Module 3 – Children's illustration. Narrative and literature

Module 4 – Advertising. Graphic campaign

Module 5 – Scientific illustration

Module 6 – Packaging

Module 7 – New media and formats

Module 8 – The employment market

Module 1 – Illustration in the press

Illustration constituted the graphic content of magazines and newspapers from its appearance in the 19th century until the 1950s. The students will study the different applications of an illustrator's work in this field. They will analyse the function of illustration in the Press and in magazines as well as its main contemporary uses.

• Illustrations in the daily Press.
• Illustrations for an article in a Trends Press publication.
• The comic strip.
• Analysis and comprehension of a text.
• Development and gestation of graphic ideas.
• Past and present models: viewing of images.

Module 2 – Illustration of trends

Illustration, given its costumbrist nature, has been the main way to describe styles of life and clothing since the 18th century. Detached from the main subjects of painting, the work of an illustrator observes and recreates how people behave and live by analysing the trends in different everyday environments. Illustrations nourished the graphic content of fashion magazines until the appearance of photography, although illustration is still used today.

• The field of the Trends Press.
• A fashion collection: recreating and describing.
• Illustrations for an article in a Trends Press publication.
• Illustration for textile application.
• The human form: comprehension and representation through different technical and conceptual processes.
• Short history of fashion illustration.

Module 3 – Children's illustration. Narrative and literature

In the 19th century, with the improvements of reproduction techniques in England, began the rise of illustrated literature. Writers and illustrators worked together to unite their work, and illustration decorated and gave a new dimension to the book as a consumer article and a means of spreading ideas. Currently, the illustrated book is an indispensable tool for education and play and one of the illustrator’s main vehicles of expression.

• Illustrations in the field of narrative for adults and children.
• Technical and conceptual processes for developing illustrations.
• The illustrated book: composition and diagramming. Illustrations and cover of an illustrated book.
• Psychological and formal representation of the characters of a narrative work: character creation.
• The graphic novel and the sequential narrative.
• The narrative of the 20th century: the main illustrators.

Module 4 – Advertising. Graphic campaign

Since the 19th century, illustration has promoted products, decorated packages and recreated the philosophy and universe of trademarks. The advances of lithographical techniques launched posters as one of the great means of artistic expression, establishing the foundations of visual communication by focusing on large audiences. In the field of advertising, the illustrator generated idealizations of reality and materialized the spirit of products and trademarks, converting illustration into an important means of persuasion as well as a vehicle for expression and communication. The advertising campaign disseminated the work of artists in an unprecedented manner.

• A series of illustrations will be developed, starting from a hypothetical briefing for the graphic contents of a campaign.
• Briefing: analysis and comprehension.
• Communication strategy: process.
• The campaign: graphic development.
• Multiple supports: application.
• The budget.
• A short history of graphic campaigns.

Module 5 – Scientific illustration

The students will analyse the most technical application of illustration. The Renaissance painters became interested in the analytical representation of Nature and converted anatomical and botanical studies into one of the main artistic manifestations. During the 19th century, the rise of science demanded an infinity of exhaustive descriptions as instruments for research and understanding in different areas. Today, medicine, biology and engineering need the work of the illustrator for technical development, since infographic processes are the main tools of an illustrator, providing scientific drawings with greater descriptive and analytical rigour.

• Development of analytical skills.
• Infographic tools.
• Illustration of botanical/zoological topics.
• Pictorial tools.
• Introduction to hyperrealistic languages.

Module 6 – Packaging

The students will study how the revolution in printing techniques and the industrial production of goods generated a new market for designers and illustrators, of crucial importance in the 20th century, and which converted packaging into one of the main formats for visual communication. The decoration of packaging was to shake up popular culture by converting the product into a cultural referent, and by invading the collective popular imagination with an infinity of icons, endowing products with a huge emotive charge and a new dimension.

• The relationship between product and image.
• Design and illustration of a CD digipack.
• Non-figurative graphic resources.
• Introduction to typographic/calligraphic treatment.

Module 7 – New media and new formats

In recent years, graphic communication has been defined by the desire to search for new formats and strategies, and illustration has found its place in numerous new media. The new reprographic techniques have allowed illustration to be applied to many and different materials, which has allowed the illustrator's work to be spread widely. Illustrators have diversified the uses of their work among endless products and have managed to open a market that is becoming more and more extensive.

Occasional interventions from experts who will intervene and show their work applied to the latest trends in formats and media.

Module 8 – The employment market

Gaining access to the employment market is difficult, and we need information and mastery both of the social networks and of the platforms that will give visibility to the illustrator's work.

Participation of Gemma Cortabitarte, manager of APIC (Associació Professional d’I·lustradors de Catalunya).