Down With Big Erp!

As advertising is in the throes of a punctuated equilibrium evolutionary period, so is illustration.

The technique of animation -often used in conjunction with illustration in advertising -has experienced fallout from this.

Broadcast commercials have all but disappeared -those that remain are either Flash driven neo-retro (enough already with warmed over 50s style!) or high end graphics styles. The latter is interesting visually, but limited in terms of narrative possibilities, a :30 commercial pretty much represents the creative apex.

For illustration, the magazine and newspaper market has withered. If the rise of the internet was the death knell for illustration, those publications that continue on after the economic collapse as surely the walking dead.

Today a campaign we worked on for Infor "launches". It's running on several websites, including the Wall Street Journal. Additionally we did some components for their microsite.

These are mostly Flash-based as well. Click HERE to see one.

Steve Brodner was approach by PJA in Boston to create print advertising. He suggested making the drawings move. That's essentially what this series of banners amounts to: moving illustration. The work (apart from the constant attention demanded by advertising clients and the arm's length list of web deliverables) is nothing that a tech savvy illustrator couldn't do. The next generation of illustrators, they may lack the broad intellectual scope of David Levine or Richard McGuire or Mirko Ilic but they'll bring a facility with media which will further cut into the traditional advertising client base of the animator.