The profession of illustration has undergone dramatic changes over the last decades. These changes (one may think here of the widespread use of ready-to-copy and very cheap images in all kinds of visual databases) seem to jeopardize the very future of the profession. For the author of this study, a renowned and much awarded illustrator himself, they also create new opportunities, provided one accepts a broadened idea of what illustration actually means and adopts a new professional ethos that fits this changing definition. Illustration is thus no longer to be seen as the technical “coloring in” of a previously determined idea but as a form of “applied imagery; a ‘working art’ that visually communicates context to audience” (I am quoting here the opening words of the book). In a similar way, the task of the illustrator includes more than just image-making. Illustrators have become researchers and their research is strongly...

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