Steven Heller's The End Of Illustration

Steven Heller, a well-known art-director and author of over 100 books, critical essays and columns devoted mostly to design, illustration and popular culture, in this article dated 2000 stated that illustration was in crisis and could no longer be considered as people’s art. Although this discipline since its inception has undergone many changes and developments, it, beyond doubt, has also faced obstacles, which weakened its former significance and position among other fields. With the emergence of photography and afterwards digital media, specifically PhotoShop, illustration has begun to be marginalized by designers and art directors and devalued by stock art, which reduced the need for originality and made it easy and cheap to purchase any

During this time ‘The End of Illustration’ as a concept has appeared more than once, altering the purpose of this discipline by introducing up-to-date topics and ideas, making it more complex, critical and ingenious. The ‘demise’ of this field since 2000 has already turned to become a new dawn of the discipline after 15 years, leaving behind mediocre and obsolete methods and themes, but still remaining a significant art form, assigned to express the reality and help people make sense of the world they live in. Nowadays there is an increased interest and demand for illustration as an independent industry and integrated within other fields as

As he claimed, digital platforms strengthened the position of stock art, which now has become “an accessible, inexpensive and hassle-free alternative to commissioning original illustration”. Art directors and designers no longer had the need for original artworks, because they gained the opportunity to rent decent image, free of risk and receive it in the shortest time via e-mail, while a commission still remained more expensive and sometimes had unpredictable unpleasant results. Besides that, stock libraries made it possible to spend much less time on the image-making process because it proposed ready images, which could be then transformed and even disfigured without illustrator’s consent. But the conditions, which these so-called ‘agencies’ provided for artists who shared their work, infringed on their rights and diminished dignity. “In fewer than ten years, stock houses had become a destabilizing force in the careers of illustrators everywhere” (Brad Holland), had reduced the average quality of the imagery and weakened the competition within the field by making plagiarism legitimate. Art directors and other clients no longer communicated directly with illustrators but with stock houses, which had the right to conduct all negotiations and set any conditions they