When we
talk about illustrated text my mind goes straight to children’s books and
comics, but actually the topic is encompasses more than that and it originates
a long time ago. First attempts to tell stories through graphics emerged from
the paintings in caves. Then, religion, especially the Catholic religion, which
used pictures to spread the belief to the masses. Then illustrations were used to
decorate the first printed books and later on they were introduced in different
genres including children’s books and texts for adults.
The first
children’s books were thought to be educative; they showed how a good child
should behave using examples of poor children, sometimes orphans, that could improve their condition only by following
the right track. Children’s books became popular from the 19th
Century; some authors and illustrators of that time have become classics like Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, Peter Pan not to
mention the innumerable Grimm’s fables.
Illustrated
texts have developed over time creating different genre such as comics, graphic
novels and cartoons and covering a variety of topics like politics,
superheroes, fables, tragic historical events and so on.
As a reader
my interest rests with most of them, but when it comes to work for the
realization on an illustrated text, children’s books are the ones that appeal
to me the most. Inventing a story and creating its illustrations require the
writer to pay attention to some rules regarding colours, shapes, placement and
framing. It involves studying several aspects such as: the number of pictures
necessary to balance the text; when to choose words over images; whether to use
pictures that show the same things as the text (congruence), or pictures that
illustrate something different (incongruence) or vice versa, or again pictures
that add more details to the text (complementary) or the other way around;
where to place the pictures into the text (left, right, above, below...). When
you know the rules it is also possible to break them if necessary. To sum up,
creating a children’s book means a lot of work to do, but also a lot of fun!
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