Illustrator as discussed in the “Photoshop and Editorial” blog post provides the crispest and sharpest outcome of many programs, the software works with vectors and lines that can easily be changed and altered without much stress. Illustrator files can also printed at any size without loosing quality, which is very important when designing magazine spreads.

Illustrator has altered how the illustrators have communicated their editorial and their body of text with the audience, by allowing the body and structure of the line, as well as the colouring and texture to easily portray secondary characteristics within the illustration. A personal favourite of mine, Malika Favre, is a French illustrator and artist based in London who has worked with countless magazines, books and events creating, posters, designs, logos, advertisements and especially editorials for big names such as Vogue, The New Yorker, Sephora etc.

Her design is a clear example of how illustrator works, her shapely and striped down illustrations rely simply on shape and colour, there is no detail or outlines, yet simple appreciation of light and basic shape, yet the work is captivating and effective. the colouring and the high contrast gives a chic, classic fashionable Parisian style. Her work describes perfectly how modern illustration within editorial has to explicitly project the dialogue within the magazine, and digital illustration has allowed a clean cut effectiveness.

Learn more about Malika Favre here https://www.malikafavre.com https://www.handsomefrank.com/illustrators/malika-favre https://vimeo.com/256327801

Photoshop is still today one of the most infamous and widely used programs, it is Adobes front runner and has completely changed the field of Editorial in a whole. Photoshop offered magazines and photographers to completely reimagine their images, they could alter colourings, desaturate, add filters, add in features, change shapes and of course, touch up and airbrush the models. Fashion has been hit the hardest with an uncontrokabkle wave of altering. Models are altered to points they are flawless and it is completely fake. Photoshop though brilliant for aiding in the position and aesthetic of images has lead to a false distorted reality, a reality chose for us by the editor. If you wouldn’t like to read much more on Photoshop and altering fashion editorial here are these links

https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1087&context=grcsp

Yet in terms of illustration, photoshop has also been a game changer. Both Illustrator and photoshop are widely used by illustrators but there often is a difference, due to the importance of lines and structure within illustrator, illustrator is typically used for more graphic drawings and comic of a more simplistic nature while photoshop is completely free and had no structural aid to line and shape, allowing the graphic tablet of the individual to paint raw brush strokes like a real canvas, playing round with layers, layer properties and colours. Photoshop can provide a far more realistic and ‘painting-like’ illustration. Illustrator is clean and sleek and brilliant for logo design, editorials or product design, the files work vectors which can be printed at ant size and not loose quality, while Photoshop being an image editing software works with pixels. However the use of the brush tool on photoshop and the ‘pen pressure’ technology makes it far better for sketching and physical drawing. Many editorial artists use photoshop perhaps to initially sketch a vector for illustrator or use photoshop to edit and alter their design.

Here is a great comparison on the two. https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1878986

in 1985, Microsoft released Microsoft Paint, this is a primitive drawing software which allowed the user to play with the mouse in variety of tools and textures with an array of colours, using the movement of the mouse to control the movement of the digital tool. Paint though basic as it is, was the mother of many of the drawing softwares today, during the 90’s and early 2000’s is only when paint became outdated and dull and apps like photoshop and newer easier drawing apps became available.

This amazing, and one of a kind piece by James Murray, as part of his ‘Jim’ll Paint It’ community involvement art is drawn completely on paint. A phenomenal use of the program.

You can watch a time-lapse of his work here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIWDAP_VLuPRvRbzqoDpKOw and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm_sdYb-Qnc

In 1990, the tech giant and perhaps one of the most important software for art and design today, photoshop was released by Adobe. The raster graphic software allowed users to alter, edit and correct photos as well as paint with brush like texture, photoshop is a highly technical software which offers endless possibilities, with time and updates, photoshop over the last 29 years has become more and more technical. personally it is my favourite app for digital drawing.

Contrary to general consensus, the beginning of digitally rendered art started far before the late 1990’s, even way before the 80’s. In actual fact, as early early back as the 1950’s!

During the 50’s various artists who were wealthy enough to afford the earliest forms of analogue computers, began playing with them to create some ion etc earliest recorded ‘digital art’, a variety of patterns and shapes printed by the machine. These pioneering work was a sure precursor for capabilities that digital held.

The ‘Oscillon 40’, is one fo the earliest Digital works created, created in 1952 by Ben Laposky, an American veteran and mathematician from Iowa who used the primitive computers and Ocsiciloppes. Oscoloppes are a piece of electronic equipment that receives electronic signals and frequencies. Ben used a ‘cathode ray oscilloscope’ which would then receive frequencies from this transmitters, and connected to a computer which would display the uniting waves and patterns that fascinated Ben. He even managed to create structural and 3D shapes with the waves. (IF YOU WANT KNOW MORE on Ben Laposky, this link here is very informative http://dada.compart-bremen.de/item/agent/253)

Through the next few centuries, computers were largely infantile and had no interface, the user was required to interact with the physicality of the computer and both build and program, scientists nd mathematicians were the biggest users. During the late 60’s and early 70’s computers had began to mimic the process of writing and drawing. The Plotter, was a machine developed in 1959-60, which was the first of its kind, to hold a pen connected to computer which could control its movement or move the surface beneath. This was the beginning of digital ink jet printing. (more on the Calcomb565 printer at https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum/calcomp565.html)

In 1970, the Slade School of Art in London had even introduced an experimental course of computer linked art known as the ‘Experimental and Computing Department’. Artist Paul Brown studied at the Slade school of Design and had designed a series of tile based patterns. (more info here http://computer-arts-society.com/paul-brown)

During the 80’s was the mainstream emergence of computers, their use in big screen Hollywood films such as Tron(1982) and Star Wars (1977-) was utilised in creating 3D environments, textures and landscapes as well as visual affects to illustrate the narrative of the film.

In the 90’s drawing applications controlled by the mouse became available for the home computer, allowing the child and artist at home to try and play with art and technology.

With coming years, digital cameras, digital tablets and programs like photoshop allowed anyone who owned the, to create and produce their own art, to a efficient and extremely comprehensive quality.

Crudely, Editorial Illustration, is a drawn or illustrated response to a body of text, whether an article, blog post, or fact sheet which would describe the point of the article and highlight the key points. However, this is not to say that the body of text is necessary, some editorial illustration is simply the design, a literal case of ‘a picture tells a thousand words’, where the constructed visual language is intended to provide the storyline and the point of the spread.

 Here we have an example from 1956, REAL Magazine, was a classic (now considered retro) men’s adventure and fantasy magazine. This painted magazine cover is both moonlighting the synopsis of a story or featurette within the magazine but also prevailing a raw sense of masculinity, with a gritty, withered face man, gritting his teeth in aggression, sharp and conventionally attractive jawline, thick, untamed eyebrows, snow military uniform and the riffle. Guns for years have been connected to manliness due to their phallic like shape and ability to fire things out. They also represent a sense of power and protection, which the 1950’s vision of the man was expected to be, macho, strong, handy and able to fund and protect his wife and children. There is rather gory hand, laid at the bottom of the spread, this suggests heroism, were the man has either lost a friend or protecting someone who is vulnerable. The magazine is projecting an image that every 1950’s man desired to be.