cover image The Big Book of Illustration Ideas

The Big Book of Illustration Ideas

Roger Walton. Collins Design, $45 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-06-056030-0

This giant, glossy catalogue of illustrations compiled by Walton, the publisher of art-books house Duncan Baird, includes hundreds of graphic artists showcasing hundreds of their pictures--of people, animals, food, architecture and abstractions--from their public campaigns and personal collections. Businesses looking for new advertising motifs, magazine art directors seeking illustrators, book publishers seeking cover designs and graphic arts students seeking inspiration can all thumb through these full-color pages for inspiration, not mention contact information for the artists themselves. Some of the work will be known to most readers--Marcos Chin's drawings for the Lava Life dating service were plastered throughout New York City subways; Gary Baseman's quirky work is all over the place, including the LA Times, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone and other publications, and he's the creator of the animated TV show Teacher's Pet--and the rest of it will look vaguely familiar, with its poppy exuberance and bright, millennial palette.