The Art of Visual Storytelling:
Crafting Conceptual Narratives in Editorial Illustration
with Sunnu Rebecca Choi
Oct 24, 2024
10:00–17:00
F205
Cross Year Studio
‘The workshop is designed to help students transform written content into engaging, thought-provoking visuals. Through activities focusing on word association, conceptual development, and visual composition, participants will learn how to interpret text and create images that enhance storytelling in an editorial context.’
——
Interesting workshop. I’ve been commissioning illustration for years, but rarely spoken about process outwith a specific brief and its context. It was fascinating taking to Rebecca. She guided us expertly through some informative examples including illustrators like David Plunkart, Louisa Jung and Paul Bow etc as well as her own work.
After an introduction we produced a mind map based on a given idiom, and then generated ideas using just a black road sicker as a starting point. After that, we realised our favourite idea in collage. I had forgotten how enjoyable ‘graphic play’ can be.
In the afternoon session we were given a text to work from, mine was ‘Is it Worse to Have No Climate Solutions – or to Refuse to Use Them?’. Using keyword extraction and association via a mind map again, we produced a more detail response in context of Rebecca’s Key Characteristics of Editorial Illustration. I found this exercise really valuable, something I often disregard because of speed in a commercial setting.
We all reviewed and discussed the days work at the end of the day.
My key takeaway is play and mind-mapping and an aid for ideas generation.
