V&A Illustration Awards 2019


Nice little exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum showing the prize winners from their illustration awards for this year.

Evidently this award has been running since 1972 but I must admit I’d not come across it before.  There were three categories book cover design, book illustration and illustrated journalism as well as a student award.

The book illustration award has been won by “Heimat” by Nora Krug, a memoir of her journal investigating the lives of family members in Nazi Germany. It includes family photos and archive material brought together with illustrations to tell the story. It did make me want to read the book. The journalism award went to A. Richard Allen for a piece on the front page of the Money section of the Daily Telegraph.

I loved the student award which went to Sophie Burrows’s wordless book which looked at loneliness in crowded places such as tube platforms. I have used a photograph of the book cover award work by Yehrin Tong to mark the 40th anniversary of Virago publishing. I thought the covers had a 1950s feel, like the work of Enid Marx, but with a modern twist.

Closes 25 August 2019

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