State of Illustration 2025: Anxiety Rising, Income Is Not

Comments ¹²

1. Brian

   Ok, in all fairness is this a legit report or just a way for them to make $39 a copy off the unwittingly naive young artists…sounds similar to those late night infomercials that sell books like “How to Get Rich In Real Estate…”

   All the stories I hear are how the freelance illustration market is quickly drying up and dying primarily due to the infusion of A.I. (See Jason Chatfield’s recent blog post that the DC linked to)

   Please, someone tell me I’m wrong!

   1. Alan Gardner  (admin)

      It’s a legit report of quantitative data from 2018-2024. It’s not going to tell you how to get rich in illustration. There’s a fair bit of information (demographic) that is probably more valuable to statisticians and researchers.

2. Mike Lester

   AI did not kill illustration. A guy named Mr. Adobe did in the ’90’s.

   1. Steve

      Eh — Mr Adobe supported me for over 30 years in my career as an illustrator and graphic artist. It wasn’t “magic” (like AI seems to be), we still had to have skill and knowledge to manipulate the software — often with hand-drawn sketches as well as scanned traditional artwork.

      As we often had to explain to clients, “No, there is no magic Mac button.” Seems that’s no longer the case. :/

      1. Mike Lester

         Adobe illustrator came out in 1985. By 1995 ad agency account directors just walkeddown the hall and had salaried art directors who couldn’t draw create ad illustrations rather than call/pay professional illustrators. I’m not saying that’s you. I’m saying that’s what happened and I can prove it: American Showcase Directory of Illustration heretofore was so big it came in two volumes and vanished along w/ Blackbook. The Workbook hung around for a while going to paperback and 4 issues / year. Mort Drucker called me in the late 80’s to find out how to utilize the directories. I told him to buy a spread and wait for the phone/fax to ring. Those days are gone but there was a time when illustration was king. Bernie Fuchs, Mark English, Rick Meyerowitz, Arnold Roth, Bob Staake, Jared Lee, Bill Mayer, Jack Davis.

         None of those guys used Adobe. But a few years later I hit myself in the head and said “it was all fashion and fashion changes”.

3. Steve

   I’m with you Mike — I was waist deep in that era. Taught myself the Mac in 1990 (no computers in art school when I went) while still creating thumbnails with markers.

   I’m just saying it was still more hands-on than asking AI to “draw” angry donuts for you. Illustrator and Photoshop were just tools for us like a t-square and Rapidograph.

4. Steve

   And by “AI,” I mean artificial intelligence, not Adobe Illustrator. 😉

5. Bob Staake

   it was a different era to be sure back then, mike. the key to my success as an illustrator (much like your’s) was “venue diversification”. magazine editorial, newspapers, advertising, animation design, book publishing, product/package design, greeting cards, “new” media, yada yada — it was the way to buffer yourself against the mercurial ups and downs of of the biz; if greeting card work was down, maybe book work was up – if consumer magazine work was slowing down, maybe trade magazine stuff helped, if animation design slowed to a crawl maybe advertising (UGH!) picked up. thankfully, i had a prolific and very lucrative 50-year career following that path, but when young kids out of art school (with i didn’t go to) ask for advice, i no longer have a clue what to tell them. you mentioned morty and jack — the KINGS of HUMOROUS ILLUSTRATION when you and i were coming up, but as great as they were, i simply can’t see even THEM succeeding in today’s market (a jack davis album cover? a mort drucker TIME cover? a double-page bernie fuchs illo of a heated pickle ball tournament in SI?) please. minor correction: after a very long career working in pen, ink, gouache, wc and prismacolors on this stuff called “paper”, i decided to combine traditional techniques with this thing called “digital.” in 1994 I bought my first Mac (powermac 7100) and began “scanning?” my line art and then coloring it using something called Adobe Photoshop 3.0. 30 years later, I still work in old desktops that can run both Classic and PS3.0. Bob Staake

6. Brian

   The comments from both Mike and Bob regarding the glory days of the pre-Adobe illustration era are spot on…oh what I would give to have been there. However, Bob also makes a great point about adapting in the 90’s with the birth of Photoshop. Lester adapted quite well too.

   Nobody back in the 90’s who did not have the illustration skills that Lester and Staake possessed could have produced what they did without their level of talent. In that sense Photoshop was and is only a tool.

   However, A.I is vastly different. There is no talent or skill required beyond knowing how to type a prompt. Now everyone can be a great artist and illustrator…and this is not a good thing.

   As a kid, If you found a gold mine and spent your whole mining it you would rewarded with great riches. However, if you woke up tomorrow and everyone in the world had access to a new device that with one push of a button (no hard work down in the dark mine required) produced as much gold as they wanted…what would happen to the price of gold? It would become worthless overnight and all your long hours down in the mine would be wasted.

   Thanks to A.I. the illustration profession (and art) will become as valuable as an empty mine shaft.

7. Mike Lester

   Brian, I can’t tell you whether your metaphor is accurate or not since I have not nor do I plan on A.I.-ing a goddamn thing (Lord, I apologize). This is 40 years later and I of course use a computer today to knock out 90% of work I draw with a Wacom. But I remember like it was yesterday when all the directories I listed earlier came out at the beginning of the year and it was clear somebody had found a “wah-wah pedal” that made everybody sound/look like Jimmy Page and each other. Curves were perfect, lines were smooth and mechanical perfection of an image was now possible. They still do but back to that memory in 1980-something, after going through the directory sizing up the competition I remember thinking, “time to go luddite”. I still try to draw as primitive as possible. -ML

   btw: nobody got more out of a PM7100 and PS 3.0 and talent than Bob.

8. bob staake

   insightful comments both brian and mike. any successful illustrator working “traditionally” in 1994 would have been an utter moron to risk killing the golden goose by making the switch to digital, but that’s what I did. in the beginning all i was doing was drawing my pen and ink art, but instead of painting it, i’d “scan” it and then add color in something called “software” — and even more perplexing, “photoshop.” my agent should be saying this, but since she’s not here i need to do so: as a very early adopter of digital mediums, i WAS in many ways a “pioneer”, but back in the beginning and even MANY years later, i STILL had to DEFEND “working digitally” to even my peers. they knew zero about the technology and (like the general boneheaded public) thought i’d simply push a button an voila; a magically finished illustration ready for publication! but 30 years later, that is PRECISELY how AI works. Sure, WE get it — because WE are in the trenches — but that ain’t gonna matter. it’s the general PUBLIC who accept or turn a blind eye to these revolutionary moments in time and greatly because they are ill-equipped to understand (or care about) the pivotal ramifications of a technology that we don’t yet understand. to be an emerging illustrator or designer in 2026? can’t fathom it.

9. John Ott

   I made the jump to digital illustration in the early 1990s. After teaching a few mainstream comic publishers about coloring their pages with Photoshop, I found to my chagrin that none of them had any notion of paying my page rate to have me do the actual work— they preferred to hire enthusiastic kids who were starry-eyed about getting into comics and would work for one-third the cost. I gave the whole field an “oh well” shrug and went back to my niche in textbook illustration, where the competition wasn’t as bad and the speed and ability to produce print-ready digital image files counted as an advantage.