V&A Illustration Awards 2004

Overall Winner and First Prize (Book Cover and Jacket Illustration)

Sara Fanelli for Pinocchio

(author Carlo Collodi), London, Walker Books, 2003

Sara Fanelli was born in Florence, Italy, then came to London to study at Camberwell College of Art and the Royal College of Art. She works for a diverse range of clients internationally, dividing her time between children’s books, book jackets and advertising, as well as her own projects. She won the D&AD Silver Awards for poster design in 2003 and for a postage stamp in 2000.

Fanelli is well known for her experimental children’s books, which have earned her nine international awards and commendations since 1991. Illustration allows Fanelli ‘a personal visual interpretation to texts’. Inspired by literature and the theatre, she has worked with texts by such writers as Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.

Fanelli combines drawing and collage with a keen sense of design and typography. Of Pinocchio she says,

‘By using collage I can interweave narratives and elements from different times and places. Collodi was born in Florence in the 19th century and the landscapes of Pinocchio are very familiar to me. The challenge with this book was to maintain a flavour of that world while creating a new personal view of it.’

More on Sara Fanelli's website

Second Prize (Book Cover and Jacket Illustration)

Chris Ware and Gary Panter for McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

Issue 13, 2004. London, Hamish Hamilton, 2004

Chris Ware was born in Omaha, USA. He produces a weekly newspaper comic strip and the periodical The ACME Novelty Library. Ware has won all of the major awards for comic art, including the Harvey, Eisner, Ignatz and Reuben Awards. He is famous for the cut-out kits he incorporates into his comics.

Ware is also noted as a graphic designer of book covers and insides, which include the Krazy Kat reprints for Fantagraphics. His first comic book, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, won the Guardian First Book Award and the American Book Award. His book design has won the Eisner (2002) and Harvey Awards (1995–2001 and 2004). He also won the Harvey Award for Best Book Cover Artist in 2000.

Ware says,

‘Many of my [art] instructors simply didn’t understand why I was drawing comics … Cartooning isn’t really drawing … Comics are an act of pure composition, carefully constructed like music, but structured into a whole architecturally, a page-by-page pattern, brought to life and “performed” by the reader – a colourful piece of sheet music waiting to be read.’

Texas-born Gary Panter is one of the most influential comic artists. Famous for his underground cartoons, he was dubbed ‘King of Punk Art’. He also exhibits regularly as a painter. Panter successfully translated his punk style into commercial work for magazines such as Time and Rolling Stone, album sleeves, television set-design and animation. He won the Chrysler Design Award in 2000.

Panter’s drawing is recognisable for its serrated lines. His most enduring comic character, Jimbo, was created in 1974 and published in the punk paper Slash. Jimbo later features in comic novels, notably Cola Madness (2000, created 1983), and Jimbo in Purgatory (2004), which reinterprets Dante’s poem Purgatorio. Panter’s comic strips were a backbone of Spiegelman and Moulys’ RAW magazine.

Panter combines diverse influences like Japanese film, commercial packaging and science fiction. Comics always inspired him and as a child he drew ‘simple comics with friends’. ‘Underground comics of the '60s got me excited about drawing comics of my own. At first I drew purely stream-of-consciousness comics and soon a little universe of my own evolved and I still draw from it.’

More on Gary Panter's website

First Prize (Editorial Illustration)

Daniel Pudles for The Moral Myth

(author George Monbiot), The Guardian, 25 November 2003, page 23

Born in Paris, Daniel Pudles studied at ESAG Penninghen (Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques et d’Architecture d’Intérieure). He studied typography, photography and illustration. Resisting the then-standard advice of tutors to become an art director, Pudles began his career in the 1980s with experimental animated illustrations for interactive CD-Roms. He won the Graffiti Award in 1988 for a series of drawings layered on top of one another to produce a short animation for a CD-Rom.

Pudles career as an illustrator took off when he moved to the UK in 1993 and began producing illustrations for editorial and book publishers. He produces a weekly illustration for both The Guardian and The Economist, and also works for book publishers, including Le Seuil and Media Vaca. He works mainly with woodcuts, producing striking and flamboyant images full of movement.

Daniel says,

‘I would just like to use this space to thank with all my heart a group of lovely women and men who allowed me to develop my work through all these years – a bit like proving a nice bread, hopefully, but not by using a bread-making machine! Merci!’

More images of Daniel Pudles' work

Second Prize (Editorial Illustration)

Gary Taxali for Order of Merit

(author Alain de Botton), Telegraph Magazine, 13 March 2004, page 23

Gary Taxali was born in Chandigarh, India, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He studied at Ontario College of Art. He is a founding member of the Illustrators’ Partnership of America and co-founder of Picture Mechanics. Besides working for a wide range of commercial clients and newspapers, he exhibits his personal work and also teaches.

Taxali’s distinctive cartoon-like illustrations have appeared in national magazines, print and television advertisements, and on packaging from CD covers to wine labels. Taxali has won over 100 awards, including the Society of Illustrators 43, the National Magazine Awards (2002) and the Advertising and Design Club of Canada Awards (2002).

He experiments with different textures and media, sometimes using rubber stamps made from his drawings. Old book covers and paper reappear as canvases, with evidence of their former use deliberately exposed. He told Pixelsurgeon,

‘I began cutting apart and collaging old tearsheets of mine to create new pictures. There was a spontaneous, raw and tactile reaction I had ... The rawer look of the new pictures was very exciting to me.’

More on Gary Taxali's website

First Prize (Book Illustration)

Nicholas Garland for The Coma

(author Alex Garland), London, Faber & Faber, 2004

Nicholas Garland studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Art. The Telegraph newspaper’s first political cartoonist in 1966, he has produced work for them ever since. His cartoons have also appeared in The Independent, The New Statesman and The Spectator. His long-running comic strip Barry McKenzie, co-created with Barry Humphries, ran in Private Eye from 1964 to 1974.

Many of Garland’s cartoons are held at Kent University’s Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature.

Also a painter and woodcut artist, Garland has exhibited his prints at the Fine Art Society. His son Alex asked him to illustrate The Coma. The result is a book in which the author’s spare, pared-down text is matched by the bold economy of the woodblocks.

In a Telegraph interview, Nicholas said,

‘One of the phrases that cropped up often when we were talking was “Too much information – you don't need all that.” And there’s always this question of taking it out. And eventually, I get right down to what I think is the thing, and I show it to Alex, and he says “You can take that out too”.’

Joint Second Prize (Book Illustration)

Bruce Ingman for Bad News, I'm in Charge!

London, Walker Books, 2004

Born in Liverpool, Bruce Ingman studied at Nottingham Trent University and the Royal College of Art. He taught in several art colleges and illustrated for magazines such as Vogue and The Sunday Times before becoming a children’s book illustrator. He writes and illustrates his own books as well as collaborating with other authors.

In his children’s illustration, Ingman combines line drawing, collage, strong colour and lively graphic and typography elements.

His first book, When Martha’s Away (1995), achieved enormous critical acclaim. He won the prestigious Mother Goose Award in 1996 as the most exciting British newcomer to children’s books, as well as a National Art Library Illustration Award. Ingman has written and illustrated two more picture books, Lost Property (1997) and A Night on the Tiles (1998). He has also recently illustrated Boing!, written by Sean Taylor.

Of Bad News, I’m in Charge! he says,

‘It was very hard to keep the book short once I got started. I just kept thinking of more things I wanted to put in if I were in charge! I hope the book sends kids dreaming of the fantastic things they would get up to.’

Visit Bruce Ingman's website

Joint Second Prize (Book Illustration)

Simone Lia for Little Giant

London, Gullane Children's Books, 2003

Born in Essex, Simone Lia studied at the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art. She occasionally works for design companies but now devotes much of her time to writing and illustrating comics and children’s books.

She has illustrated four children’s books for the publishers Gullane and Mammoth. She also publishes comics under the banner of Cabanon Press, which she co-founded in 2001 with illustrator Tom Gauld. Together, they won the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Design and a Quentin Blake prize for narrative illustration in 2001. Lia has recently published a four-part graphic novel entitled Fluffy.

Talking about her inspiration for Little Giant, Lia says,

‘I was looking out to sea once. I thought about how timeless it was and how tiny and insignificant I was next to its vastness. Then looking down by my feet I saw hundreds of very small insects walking on the rocks. I thought about how big I was next to them. I tried to relate that split second moment of inspiration into a story.’

More on Simone Lia's website