Illustration

Illustration is the art of creating images that communicate: images that tell stories, explain ideas, evoke emotions, or establish visual identities in contexts ranging from books and magazines to digital media, advertising, and public art. It is a discipline that sits between fine art and graphic design, requiring both the freedom of artistic vision and the discipline to serve a communicative purpose, and it rewards practitioners who have a distinctive visual voice alongside the technical range to work across different media and contexts. Understanding how images are made and how they function in the world is as much a part of illustration as the making itself.

At Leeds Arts University this three-year programme takes you on a creative journey through communication, image-making, and conceptual thinking. You will develop your own practice across a range of media and approaches, building the visual intelligence and technical craft that professional illustrators need, while also developing your critical understanding of illustration as a discipline with its own history, theory, and relationship to the broader visual arts. The Leeds arts community and the University's specialist facilities provide a rich environment for this kind of creative development, and you will work alongside students in other art and design disciplines throughout your studies.

Illustration graduates work as editorial illustrators for newspapers and magazines, children's book illustrators and authors, surface pattern designers, motion graphic artists, character designers for animation and games, concept artists, and in a wide range of roles in advertising, branding, and digital content creation. The creative problem-solving and visual communication skills developed in the degree are also valued in arts education and in any role where the ability to make compelling images matters. Many graduates build portfolio careers that combine several of these areas.

Further study at postgraduate level in illustration, visual communication, or fine art is an option for those who wish to develop their research practice or move into teaching.