American Illustration 32

Illustration, as a vital tool of communication and visual delight, continues to defy exaggerated reports of its own demise with artists taking bold risks and forging new markets with self-generated projects--all the while maintaining a healthy amount of traditional assignment work from publishers and advertising agencies. The creative and enterprising persistence is clear in this year’s robust collection of 369 winning images as selected by a jury from 8,742 entries submitted to the annual competition. Illustration Lives: American Illustration 32 features an original cover created by artist Jon Han with an impressionistic take on the human figure. Under the creative direction of Richard Turley with his design team from Bloomberg Businessweek, American Illustration 32 generously presents the winning images one image per page in alphabetical order by artist, and includes die-cut thumb tabs. An image index includes the artist’s contact information, captions and creative credits listing the publications, schools, agencies and clients who commissioned and utilized the winning work. As an added bonus, the book’s designers took the competition data and reimagined the facts and figures in six whimsical but informative charts. These "graphical extrapolations of truth" include data on the global locations of the winning artists; gender breakdown; predominant colors and subjects; number of winning images per publication and school; and the location of the contenders who entered the competition but were not selected by the jury for inclusion this year.