ARIZPE, E. and STYLES, M. (2002) “¿Cómo se lee una imagen? El desarrollo de la capacidad visual y la lectura mediante libros ilustrad.” Lectura y Vida, 23(3). Available from: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/50859/ [Accessed: Oct. 27, 2018]
Notes: How do children perceive illustrated books? How do they react to the interaction of words and images? How much of the message are they capable of absorbing? The study with children ages 4 to 11 found that children are capable of noting and decoding metaphors, multiple meanings, inconclusive endings, visual jokes and were capable of understanding social and moral aspects of the books presented to them. Although my focus is on visual books for adults, it was a positive surprise to learn that, in short: “children get a whole lot from picture books.” Also, to understand that we learn to read pictures early in live, but many of us lose it as we get older. It helped me to understand that it is likely that the role of pictures in books or other forms of storytelling is likely to increase, as our society is becoming more visual.
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KALMAN, M., TED2018, IDEAS WORTH SPREADING (2007) The illustrated woman [Online video] March 2007. Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/christoph_niemann_you_are_fluent_in_this_language_and_don_t_even_know_it [Accessed 23 October 2018]
Notes: Maira Kalman is known for her naive illustration style and the serendipitous feeling that she is capable of conveying on her illustrated essays and books. She talks about her approach in this talk. She decided to become an illustrator after failed attempts to be a writer. She decided to open a studio with her husband Tibor Kalman. Curiously, one of their main goals would be to strive to do things that they did not know how to do. Maira Kalman says that she doesn’t like stories with plots and that she doesn’t even really know what a plot means. Her books, she says, are simply journals of her life.
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KALMAN, M. (2009) By George. [Online] Dec. 31, 2009. Available from: https://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/ [Accessed 23 October 2018]
Notes: This is the like to illustrated column that Maira Kalman published for two years at The New York Times. In the specific link above, she used her trademark naive style to make an illustrated diary. It also has samples of her annotated photographs, another of her recurrent tools. What is most intriguing about her work is the subjective relation between words and images. She does by a mix of 1. drawings of objects; 2. annotated photographs and 3. naive style scenes. The unpretentious beauty of her style along with plotless annotations sets her apart from the pack. Her words alone are not good. Her drawings, so, so. But the combination of the drawings and words is powerful.
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KALMAN, M. TEDxMet: Icons – Maira Kalman [Online video] Oct. 19 2013. Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/christoph_niemann_you_are_fluent_in_this_language_and_don_t_even_know_it [Accessed 23 October 2018]
Notes: Kalman talked about her personal story and the intersection of her life and some of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York’s acquisitions. The talk is amusing. But one specific moment related to storytelling called my attention: “I was doing things that were narrative and naive because I thought: “this is my way to write. I’m going to write by painting,’” Kalman said.I often get obsessed in controlling every detail of the stories that I’m trying to tell. This is a meaningful insight to me because it emphasis the power of just setting yourself free to try.
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LEONHARDT, D. et al. (2017) ‘Journalism That Stands Apart.’ The New York Times. [Online] Jan. 2017. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2020-report/index.html [Accessed on Nov. 15, 2018]
Notes: The report produced by the New York Times staff after conducting extensive research and interviews with experts and with people within the newsroom is considered seminal on the reinvention of digital journalism in the 21st century. It has been working as a sort of gospel that is being adopted in news organizations across the globe. One of the main guidelines of the report is that the Times’ journalism should become more visual. To my research, it was very interesting to notice that, as newsrooms accelerate their conversion to digital platforms and decide to produce more visual content, they contribute to transform the role of visual communication in the world. This fast-paced transformation is reshaping what people think as common ways to consume information. It is also, in a way, elevating the power of visual communication and bringing it up to pair with verbal communication.
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NIEMANN, C. TED2018, IDEAS WORTH SPREADING (2018) You are fluent in this language (and don’t even know it) [Online video] April 2018. Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/christoph_niemann_you_are_fluent_in_this_language_and_don_t_even_know_it [Accessed 20 October 2018]
Notes: Niemann is one of the most successful and influential illustrators today. I am interested in closely analyzing his work to try to decode some of his techniques. He explained his use of negative space and said that his favorite tool as an artist is abstraction.
In this talk Niemann says that his goal is to use the smallest amount of information possible to trigger an image. He talks about the importance of having a good understanding of the visual and cultural vocabulary of the target audience. The right balance between realistic and a figurative allows for new angles in storytelling. He is not trying to show a realistic scene — he is trying to create an “a-ha” moment for the reader. To him, the cognitive magic happens when readers interact with the image.
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NIKOLAJEVA, M. & SCOTT, C. (2001) ‘How Picturebooks Work.’ Routledge, 2006. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=1123186. [Accessed: Oct. 27, 2018]
Notes: The most relevant part of Nikolajeva & Scott’s text, to my research, is in their comment on the differences between how adults and children read picture books. They explained that the reader looks at pictures, read words and creates a cohesive meaning through that back and forth between images and verbal text. To them, this construction of a message by consulting both image and words is natural in children. But the spontaneity gets lost as people grow up and start to treat images as secondary. The authors noted that the way adults see picture books could change in the digital age. This tip was fundamental for me to deduce that we are likely to see a substantial jump in the production and consumption of visual stories (picture books or other types) for adults, as the society as a whole is becoming more visual.
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SALISBURRY, M. and STYLES, M. (2012) Children’s Picturebooks – The art of visual storytelling. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
Notes: The book contains a brief history of picture books. It focuses mostly on the period after the birth of the modern picture book, in the late 1900s. (Randolph Caldecott is considered the father of the modern picture book, for breaking new ground in how words and images were placed together.) The book is heavily illustrated and a useful visual reference for styles and history. It has a few, but not enough, examples of books in languages other than English.
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SHRIGLEY, D. (2018) Fully Coherent Plan: For a New and Better Society. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
Notes: Shrigley is one of the most prolific visual storytellers today. His work mixes straddles through areas like cartoons, paintings, books and sculpture. He has published several books. But the most interesting thing about this book, specifically, is that he comes up with a completely new way of telling a long story with a mix of words and pictures. This is the first long story of this sort that I came across. The synergy between words and text is dynamic, fast, energetic. It allows readers to read the entire book in about 30 minutes. The final product is a book but, in a way, it is also a completely different kind of product. A mix of artwork, storytelling and conceptual art.
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SHRIGLEY, D. (2011) What the hell are you doing? The essential David Shrigley. New York: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Notes: This book is a survey of Shrigley’s intense production. It includes a variety of samples of his drawings, cartoons, photography and sculpture. The survey is valuable because it allows an analysis of Shrigley’s storytelling techniques and gives insight into the brilliant and unexpected ways that his brain works. Shrigley’s work is visceral, witty and sometimes crude. The illustrations as at the same time infantile and sophisticated and are a rich source of inspiration for me. The vast collection in the book prove that Shrigley is highly productive. That observation provided me with a useful reflection about what makes him so productive. In short, it’s a mix of discipline (he works a regimented number of hours every day) and his style (the crudeness of his style requires little time to finalize the artwork) .
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SIPE, L. R. (1998) ‘How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships.’ Children’s Literature in Education. Vol. 29, No. 2 p. 97-108.
Notes: Sipe used the semiotic concept of transmediation to describe how word and images side by side can change the meaning of one another. He also highlighted the role of the reader in acting as a co-creator of the story. I found the theoretical approach on the relation between words and pictures interesting and helpful to my work. Subjectivity also plays a fundamental role here. Sipe’s paper reinforces and gives a theoretical basis to what I had only understood in practice.
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WIEBEL, P. (2015) ‘Children’s Island.’ Peterwieben.com. [Online] September, 2015. Available from: http://www.peterwieben.com/stories/#/lesvos/ [Accessed on Nov. 17, 2018]
Notes: The main lesson that I got from Wiebel’s work is that there are moments when illustration can stand on equal footing to photographs when telling stories. Even on difficult stories of faraway places, like the refugee crisis in Lesbos, Greece. An analysis of his work made it clear that subjective illustrations can be specially useful to tell stories where there is difficult access and psychological human drama involved.
Sergio’s research & enquiry 