POV: The illustrators aren’t alright

In May 2022, Michele Rosenthal, a vector illustrator and “Corporate Memphis apologist”, started a thread on X. It read: “Why You Should Be Hiring Full-Time Illustrators to your Specialised Design Teams”. Michele laid out several compelling arguments, including the fact that illustrated assets have become an “afterthought” in the brand identity, negatively impacting the quality of mascots, icons, and the like. But one statement resonated best: “Rates have plummeted, making us some of the lowest-paid workers in design”.

This situation is only more acutely felt in 2024. While small pockets of the branding industry and particular studios or practices may be flourishing, illustrators are contending with their own commissioning microclimate.

Nishant Choksi has contributed to some of our favourite editorial projects of recent years. He illustrated Volume One of The Guardian’s Long Read magazine (a rare physical publication), providing drawings for the cover and inside pages. The expressive faces that covered issues one through 12 of Real Review were also his. And yet, despite a client list of heavyweight editorial commissioners, like Die Zeit and The New Yorker, Nishant is feeling the sting of shrinking editorial budgets.

“While editorial illustration was never highly paid, it now feels like you’re working harder for less,” he says. “With shrinking advertising revenue, budgets have tightened… The space once dedicated to editorial illustration has diminished.”

The illustrator Sergio Membrillas has similar feelings. “There comes a point when one is unsure of its precise nature, yet the reality is that the industry is experiencing difficulties,” he says. Like Nishant, Sergio has a varied client base; his portfolio includes illustrations for The Economist, GQ, and The New Yorker, but also visual identity projects and commissions for bands like Future Islands or Cleaners from Venus.

Clearly, this is not a matter of market over-specialisation. Yet it was Sergio who first bought the scope of the issue to light one afternoon while visiting the It’s Nice That office. “I think that illustration has become a kind of luxury graphic material,” he says. Only those with greater purchasing power (The New Yorkers of the world) can now afford to have a house filled with original works of art, as Sergio puts it.

Yet, the bulk of commissioning goes on beneath this luxury threshold, and it is these mid-sized commissions that are suffering most. Sergio thinks the introduction of generative AI, in particular, is causing intermediate budget ranges to disappear. “These now result in zero expenditure,” he explains. Equally, the rush to uplift “newer” artists within the creative industry – in itself, a positive – has changed market value, with cheaper rates more likely to be accepted.

Sergio says budget cuts are occurring across all creative and related fields. But the weakening of one of the most beloved types of commission, the editorial cover, seems to be the absence most keenly felt by established voices. “I miss the days when double-page spreads dominated major publications and monthly columns featured regular illustrations,” adds Nishant.

This is not simply a case of less magazines equals less commissions – though that is a concern. Instead, this is a matter of illustration having to change in accordance to the changing nature of publishing itself. A good example is cartoons. Last July, three Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists – Jack Ohman, Joel Pett and Kevin Siers – were fired in one day from McClatchy, the American publishing company. McClatchy said the “continuing evolution” of publishing was to blame. Specifically, many pointed to the declining interest readers today have in opinion pages, the home of the printed cartoon.

Nishant says editors can also be “increasingly cautious about potential backlash,” leading to commissioners exercising greater editorial control over the final illustration, in the brief and the back-and-forth that follows. Perhaps more than before, illustrators are over-directed. “It has become more challenging to maintain a strong editorial voice or use satire in illustrations,” says Nishant. “Another trend I’ve noticed is that many publications now produce illustrations in-house, where they once would have commissioned editorial illustrators like me.”

These changes have knock-on effects. If opportunities shrink in editorial, where many illustrators cut their teeth, it becomes harder to get onto the express route of high paying jobs in advertising and branding. “I’ve worked on ad campaigns and branding for corporate clients who found me through my work in both major publications and smaller, independent magazines,” points out Nishant.

Yet, after all this, both Nishant and Sergio, two creatives at risk of a weakening commercial network as much as anyone, demonstrated hopefulness for illustration, too. “Despite all these changes, editorial illustration can still be rewarding if you build a solid client base and get used to juggling multiple projects with tight deadlines. It remains a place where I can express opinions and bring in humour and social commentary,” adds Nishant. He also says there are further positives to be found in the changing landscape – noticing a wider range of illustration styles being commissioned, for example, with social media making it easier to connect clients to creative voices across the globe.

From our view at It’s Nice That, the problems in commercial illustration seem to come at a curious time, considering that signs of an artist’s hand in visual culture are also increasing in popularity. We are clambering for the graphic impact of the hand-drawn – we clearly recognise its luxury potential; the image has a hold over us. But, it is simultaneously becoming rarer to invest fully in its development – largely because of lack of budget, but perhaps occasionally because of lack of will, too. The potential result is a future in which illustration is viewed merely as a final ‘graphic touch’.

Still, Sergio believes illustrators must hold their ground and assert themselves firmly within the luxury category. “We have to put on our raincoats and weather a difficult time. I am optimistic, and I hope that customers with a budget will understand that it is better to buy good shoes in a neighbourhood shoe store, than to go to a big chain just because it is cheap.” After all, adds Sergio: “The court painter has existed since the Middle Ages and has endured. Maybe now the painter can do it with an iPad Pro!”