Current trends in illustration - World Illustration Awards 2018

The World Illustration Awards is a competition held each year and calls for entries from both well known artists and new artists alike. The competition is a good way for illustrators to showcase their work and allows the us to see some of the newer trends in the industry. I was looking at an article covering the 2018 awards on We Are Bulletproof's website [link] and they showcased some of the key themes that stood out to them.

Fantasy Cityscapes

This trend is one of the more fun ones to have been highlighted from the awards. It mostly consists of these large fantastical city environments with a lot of detail and different things going on so that each time you look at the piece you see something new. I like the use of colour that these pieces have, a lot of bright inviting colours help give the pieces a very broad appeal. I personally would like to work on environments more in the future and think the more isometric layout can create a very compelling design.

Cutout
World Illustration Awards Owen Gildersleeve
The article also showed some indication that cutout may be becoming more popular in the industry. The work they showed was mostly commercial work, like the Fanta poster shown. This may show the commercial potential of the technique and I think the technique has has a lot of depth in the ways it can be used, such as different materials and layouts.

Print work
World Illustration Awards Joe Gamble Martha's Moths
There was also a good amount of different printing techniques being showcased meaning older techniques like Riso or even relief printing may be coming back into popularity. I myself have been creating a lot more work this year using print methods with the print making project I did recently and I am thinking about using Riso more in future with my other projects.

Red & Black colour
World Illustration Awards black and red trend
Finally they highlighted the use of red, black and white colour pallets being used. This is a very simple yet effective colour pallet and I can also see how just swapping out the red for another colour like a nice teal could also create some good results. I think i'd like to experiment in future with that and maybe adding in some gold to give the piece a kind of regal look.




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