It's been an exciting time for illustration research. I believe there is an
increasing curiosity in the phenomenon of illustration in general, and this
brings a growing understanding of its specific qualities as a form of
communication and place of culture.

This journal issue highlights the potentials of bringing diverse research
methods together. It gives space for established academic approaches which
support illustration historic subjects, looking at the place of illustration in
society. But also, since the start of the journal and its conferences, more and
more practicing illustrators or illustration-researchers have felt enabled to
investigate their own discipline, using forms of practice-based research to
understand from the inside, what illustration is and can do. This field of
research ‘through’ illustration has grown. This supports the desire of opening up a more expanded and arguably, a more representative field of research.

What is behind this? First of all, there are greater opportunities in
postgraduate positions within universities, particularly in the UK: the context
in which artistic practice-based research and research into illustration can
thrive and be taken seriously is becoming more established. The illustrators
who pioneered academic illustration research, are now the supervisors able to
support and encourage new research, and new forms of research output, and,
importantly, new generations of researchers.

Secondly, I think there is a greater appreciation for the different type of
knowledge that practice-based research can offer. But that comes with questions
around methods of inquiry and dissemination. This is for instance the question
asked by Stephanie Black and Luise Vormittag in this issue. What other
forms of scholarly expression can give space for different types of insight?

So far, we have very much understood, explored and taught illustration using
a deconstructivist/post-modern framework: the Illustration as Meaning
Materialised, where every brush stroke, colour or visual element is intentional
and is there to be read. But we might need to start to revise this singular view that can be very limiting and stifling and in and of itself problematic. Meaning, interpretation, connotation, – all of these are concepts under pressure in a communication world, thanks to the way we circulate images online, where decontextualization is becoming the norm. With AI scraping the internet’s billions of images, we are starting to see, that perhaps provenance, anchorage and contextualisation are no longer assured, and maybe no longer interesting.

Where do we go from here? Pete Williams' two-part article in this issue, offers
a theoretical grounding for this new way of image production and consumption, and a way forward with, through, and beyond AI.

Perhaps we are witnessing a next split in how we understand images, similarly to how we did with the introduction of photography – asking questions about visual truth and indexicality, now around context and authenticity. The traditional illustration is nestled in a fixed image-text relationship, safe in picturebooks and on printed packaging – and we can easily explain how the image and text build on each other. But now, this same image, let loose in the digital sphere, is more like a nomadic collection of assets, that can be recontextualised, rearranged and reinterpreted at will. This offers new freedoms, demands new ways of making connections and potentially new ways of conceptualising and creating. It certainly demands new ways of teaching.

Blindspots as a theme was initiated as an open call to illustrators and illustration researchers to bring the areas that are underrepresented to our attention. When you grow from a small community like the illustration research network, what drives the interests and outcomes are the pre-occupations that are held within this community, particularly if you put practice-based research central. This brings depth in certain subject areas, but equally an inherent bias in focus and leaves cultures, approaches and technologies that are overlooked. Worse perhaps, subjects that are difficult or necessary for a thorough understanding might simply be avoided.

I had expected the range of topics to be more overtly discussing ‘our blind spots’. But of course, this is not how it works. Research and its subsequent dissemination are by nature the attempt to uncover something explicit yet unseen. So the issue presents articles that are specific in their topics, yet they link out to wider themes that are important to follow through. These would be the themes you will hopefully see develop in years to come.

So Blind Spots points to the ongoing essential need to discuss representation, both on who illustrates and who is illustrated, how we can or should approach culturally specific subjects, consider data visualisation methods to reveal alternative narratives or AI as both inherent and all changing. It asks questions about seeing and unseeing: visualising absence, what illustration means if you are visually impaired, or dealing with the experience of being unseen. It seeks to provoke a discussion about central qualities of illustration, presenting style, and our own artistic hubris that makes us blind to illustration’s inextricable link with an economic and practical raison d'être.

Hopefully this inspires and provokes people not only to further pursuit their own research ambitions, but see how their thoughts and ideas can be expressed in alternative ways and be part of a wider discussion.

NANETTE HOOGSLAG, DANIELLE RIDOLFI
Blind Spots (Editorial piece, OpenAccess)

CATRIN MORGAN
Refusing representation: Illustrative uses of the black square

BETH DUGGLEBY
Lullabies in Lockdown illustration exhibition

JIATONG 'DIANA' DAI
The neurological basis for non-visual illustration

JULIEN PORQUET
How to do things with style: A pragmatic history of style as a site for debates about authorship, commodification and technological reproducibility

HELEN IVES
Design and How! The history, theory and impact of Virginia Lee Burton’s design pedagogy

AMY DE NOBRIGA
The sublime landscapes of Frankenstein

YUQING ZHU, YUNYU OUYANG
Immersive study in illustration narrative of vernacular culture: A practice-based research in northern Italy

ALISON NOWAK
Teaching illustration students to reject stereotyping and cultural inaccuracy through research-based assignments

PETE WILLIAMS
Tears and rain – AI and authorship: Challenging concepts of the unique through unauthored rarity

STEPHANIE BLACK, LUISE VORMITTAG
Colouring In: An attempt at polyvocal publishing

ALAN MALE
Elitism and the intellectual hierarchies of creative practice