PUBLSHD brings you thoughtful analysis about the illustrations that are getting published today and the people who make them
Latest Illustration News
Maggie Chiang Trusts the Reader to Slow Down for Los Angeles Times
A story about connection as self-care, illustrated with an image that rewards a second look
For an interview with psychiatrist Joanna Cheek, author of It’s Not You, It’s the World, Maggie Chiang painted what first reads as a sunny afternoon scene with two people talking in a park. Moments later, the foliage itself resolves into a woman’s profile. The whole picture reorganizes. The conversation isn’t happening in a park, it’s happening inside someone.
Which Frame Caught Your Eye First?
Lorena Spurio’s opening illustration for Vox’s parental leave story demonstrates how three fundamental composition techniques can carry a concept
The frame your eye landed on first wasn’t an accident. Lorena Spurio’s opening illustration for Vox’s recent piece on parental leave uses three basic compositional tools, contrast, scale and cropping, to guide your attention to a single point. The way she layers them follows the same sequence that vision science says your brain does.
Nico189 Illustrated a Gen Z Take On Travel for Los Angeles Times
A fun story about microtrips needed an image with a sense of humor. The solution involves a small airplane and a large coffee.
Julia Kluge illustrated twenty book reviews. What emerged was a single vision.
A look at how one illustrator turned a full section of literary criticism into a cohesive visual experience
Readers of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung opened the newspaper’s celebrated Literatur supplement and found themselves surrounded by color. Across a full special section timed to the Leipzig Book Fair, twenty illustrations by Julia Kluge accompanied reviews of the season’s most anticipated titles. One artist threading an entire literary season together through her visual language.
Aaron Fernandez Puts Productivity Panic to Bed
An isometric wireframe bedroom traps a sleepless coder among looming green hands, turning AI’s always-on pressure into something claustrophobic and physical for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Xinmei Liu Draws the Future with a Visual Grammar Mined from the Past
Four illustrations for MIT Technology Review’s feature on the US-China Mars race show what happens when an illustrator lets the visual language carry conceptual weight.
Commissioned to illustrate a feature on NASA’s defunded Mars Sample Return program and China’s advancing Tianwen-3 mission, Shanghai-born, US-based illustrator Xinmei Liu chose to render the entire series in the visual grammar of mid-century Chinese state propaganda.
