Education of an Illustrator Book

Part manifesto, part instruction manual, this volume's cutting-edge essays, interviews, and course syllabi provide the first-ever blueprint for teaching and practicing the dynamic art and craft of illustration. This revolutionary book fills a practical and an intellectual void for educators, students, and professionals in the field of illustration. Based on interviews with top illustrators and teachers, the book discusses how professionals acquired their illustration know-how and went on to apply it in their careers. Also explored are model illustration education curricula-for both undergraduate and graduate levels-created by leading illustration educators and practitioners. Offering a diverse range of attitudes, philosophies, and visions, this book is the first to address pressing issues confronting education in the illustration arts, including such concerns as authorship, new media, and the marriage of illustration and design.


About the Author

Marshall Arisman is the chair of the Master of Fine Arts, Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual Arts. His illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Time, Rolling Stone, and other publications, and have been exhibited frequently in galleries and museums. He lives in New York.

Steven Heller is editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design and the chair of the MFA design department at the School of Visual Arts. He is the author or editor of more than seventy books on graphic design, and he is a contributor or contributing editor to nearly 25 magazines, including Print, U&lc, Eye Magazine, Communications Arts, ID magazine, Graphics, Design Issues, and Mother Jones. Since 1986 he has been senior art director of the New York Times, which he first joined as an art director in 1974. From 1967-1973, he served as art director for numerous publications, including Interview magazine, The New York Free Press, Rock Magazine, Screw magazine, Mobster Times, Evergreen Review, and the Irish Arts Center.

He was awarded three design grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1986,1988, and 1990. In 1996, he received a Special Educators Award from The Art Director's Club of New York. He has been the curator of ten design exhibitions, including "The Art of Satire" at the Pratt Graphics Center and "Art Against War" at the Parsons School of Design. Since 1986, he has directed "Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of American Graphic Design," an annual symposium at the School of Visual Arts. He lives in New York.