A commercial illustrator is a person who conveys an idea or message with graphic illustration to the intended audience. It is considered as a very exciting career full of challenge and opportunities for creating eye-catching and innovative graphic illustrations. Illustration provides the illustrators with the opportunity to convey a message to the audience in a very effective manner. This article will give you a basic idea about the training and skills needed to become a good commercial illustrator and the areas that you can look for employment.
Commercial illustration is a form of art that is used to transmit information to a specific group of audience. To convey the information to the public in an effective manner you have to learn many skills from other art forms such as painting, drawing, photography, etc. a degree from a good fine arts school can help you to enhance your ability in drawing. There are many options available for you to work. You can join the advertising agencies, customer service, commercial printing, education, financial institutions, or freelance design and production, etc at the entry level. You can also work as an in-house illustrator in a publishing house, magazine or newspaper. You can also work as a freelance commercial illustrator.
Today commercial illustration can be seen everywhere. Commercial illustration appears in almost all the thinks that people take for granted. The illustrators create and design the cover of the book, interiors, banners, CD covers, advertisements, websites, etc. if you have a look at the back of a book or CD cover you will see “designed by” or “photographed by” followed by a company name or an artist’s name. You can find many such things in a store that has the name on illustrators on it.
The skills needed to become a good commercial illustrator are the ability to organize and arrange information, knowledge in various type of fine arts, good visualization, originality, knowledge of print and visual media, and the most important one needed is the ability to communicate effectively. The ability to communicate well is very important in the case of commercial illustrators. Since the commercial illustrator’s job is to communicate to the audience with the help of illustrations, the illustrator needs t develop and strengthen his communication skills.
Commercial illustrators have to work with a variety of people. When one project ends they are assigned to work on a different project entirely different from the previous one. So the illustrators have to be aware of all the modern and traditional tools used for illustration. The illustrators must be reliable, trustworthy, efficient, and able to handle stressful hours with ease.
Commercial illustrators can work on different areas such as Commercial Character Design, Illustration, Graphic design, Photography, Makeup, Television commercials, Music videos, Animation, Computer art, Fashion Designer, Interior Design, and many more. They work for standard hours or can work as freelancers. They can also work on contract basis. Most of the commercial illustrators prefer to work as freelancers since it is more beneficial than a regular job.
