Drawing Book's Matt Jackson on the future of illustration

My agent, Matt Jackson from The Drawing Book recently did a talk at Creative Sydney. Mind the hyped editing - Matt is trying to do an important thing here; he is trying to bring clients round to the artist, not the style of artwork.

Most times in this industry artists are shown style samples to emulate, or a client will lock onto a piece of previous work without allowing the illustrator to experiment or add input creatively. At the end of the day, the works most clients are drawn to are the ones where the artists have expressed creativity and individuality, and not the watered-down commercial art that comes from committee decision-making. Yet they can't understand why their piece doesn't have that same spark.

So Matt is championing the artist behind the work. It won't work for every job, but if we can try to balance things a little I think everyone will have work they are proud of.