scottish publishing – ECA Illustration

The Edinburgh International Book festival is in full swing and the Illustration department is on board too, proudly presenting ‘House Style 2019’.

This project saw every student, from Stage 1 to MFA2, and all members of staff choose a book published in the UK in the past 20 years and creating one illustration in response.

Everyone was asked to work in black and white as well as one out of 4 available spot colours which were randomly distributed after choosing a book, and part of the challenge was to work with this allocated colour.

The master-list of 150 books was assembled by literary critic Stuart Kelly, who helped us launch the project by giving introductory talk to the department. A big thank you goes out to him for his support.

The resulting works have been printed as postcards and exhibited at the Edinburgh Book festival as a full set, to represent the range of work coming from this Programme, in all its considerable variety.

All postcards are on sale now – grab one while you can!

Aug 14, 2019

A-Z is a first year Illustration project celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was first conceived, compiled, printed and published in Edinburgh on 10 December 1768.

The project began with a visit to the archives of the National Library of Scotland, where library staff introduced the student group to the original Encyclopaedia Britannica.

After being inspired by the original books, students were asked to each choose one entry and create two pieces of artwork in response:

#Britannica250

In support of the library’s appeal to digitise ‘Britannica’, students created short animated gifs, which are shared across the ECA Illustration and National Library of Scotland’s social media accounts. Use the Twitter and Instagram hashtag #britannica250 to find these lively interpretations of words you may be unfamiliar with. Here are a few examples:

Risograph print

In addition to the animated gifs, the A-Z is a collective book featuring the eighteen chosen Encyclopaedia Britannica entries in the form of risograph prints. The focus of this project was to get students to think about image and text layout and the imaginative interpretation of texts. It also served as an introduction to risograph printing and an exercise in working with a limited colour palette.

This work is currently on display at the National Library of Scotland throughout June, alongside the original Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Jun 6, 2019

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