Feature: Illustration
Chasing perfection
From Penguin bestsellers to Royal Mail stamps; from elaborate playing cards to the covers of Radio Times; the illustrator and designer Tony Meeuwissen has always taken a dedicated and detailed approach to his exquisitely hand-crafted artwork. Mike Dempsey reflects on a career that has spanned more than 50 years
To have and to hold
The challenges of digital publishing have galvanised a new spirit in book design and production. Is it just the decadent flourish of a disappearing format?
Well fed in the West End
Ardizzone’s menus evoked a mid-century world of food-loving Londoners
Fry like a spy
The comic strip simplicity of Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book taught bachelors how to cook
Labelled with love
The new craft beers come in bottles, ideal for trendy bars and hipsters who want to display what they’re drinking. By Paul Keers
Process and poetry
Stranger & Stranger and Fernando Gutiérrez tell Paul Keers about the ways in which bottles and labels communicate the intangible (and occasionally imaginary) character of wine and spirits
Raw like sushi
Alternative food zines scramble the conventions of magazine design to make a more authentic flavour
Comic cuts
Andreu Balius collects Spanish meat papers, which are typically covered in graphic images of animals who often relish their tragic end under the butcher’s knife
Told in pictures
Wordless picturebooks form a corner of children’s literature in which illustrators and artists tell stories with images alone.
Puffins on the plate
How the Russian revolution – plus new technology – led to a colourful and radical change in children’s book publishing.