Exercise 3 – Writing a Brief

An illustrator who I feel some connection with and really like the style of her work is Agnes Decourchelle. Agnes’s illustrations are colourful and her work has a real sense of light achieved by using a combination of coloured pencils and watercolours.

I’ve tried to write the brief for a few of her illustrations.

Illustration 1 - Immediately this image tells me a story and makes me want to look again and rediscover something in the scene. The brief that I imagine she would have been set

Produce a range of illustrations to be included within a well-respected newspapers lifestyle weekend supplement.  The illustration will feature alongside a full page editorial. The article focuses on social gatherings and imaginative food ideas to create stylish relaxed events. Ideally the illustration should provide a decorative feature to the text, however should communicate the idea of a stylish get together.
The magazine article is targeted at relatively affluent, socially aware adults (age range late 20s +)
The illustration should be in colour and ideally should be hand drawn as opposed to an overly digitally created piece. Whilst some stylistic interpretations of any figures in the image is suitable, it is preferably that these aren’t overly stylised as the article should represent the relaxed nature of the gathering and appeal to both males and females.
The article will appear on an A4 size page and the illustration will be incorporated within this (it is proposed the illustration will be placed at the top of the article).

Illustration 2 –

The illustration is to be used as the front cover for a travel guide for the Far East which highlights undiscovered villages and place of interest to visit.
The book name and credits will appear alongside the image and space should be provided. The illustration is to be used as a decorative accompaniment to the book and should ideally give an impression of the Far East from a traveller’s point of view. The guide is read by travellers in a wide age range and as such should be styled appropriately.
Hand drawn is preferred and tonal colours as opposed to block. Suggested mediums would be pen and ink or watercolours.
The finished size of the guide is A5.

Reflections on exercise

I found this quite a helpful exercise and it made me realise how the success of a lot of illustrations is whether they are fit for purpose – ie are appropriate for the brief and target audience. Writing the briefs I was unsure how much detail to go into and whether to ask the illustrator to include certain things in the image of just give her a rough idea of the overall article.
At the moment as I haven’t really found my style as such and am experimenting with different methods, mediums etc, I think that having a very specific brief would probably be helpful to direct my focus and illustration style for the assignment.
However, I can imagine that for some illustrators, briefs can also be quite restricting, especially if they have a very specific style (although the company might not choose them in the first place if this was the case) or if they have certain ideas for illustration they will create.

Illustration 1





Illustration 2