Pan Macmillan Storybook - Laura Carlin Illustrator

Last year at the Offset lectures in October, one of the lectures was by Laura Carlin, an award winning illustrator, unique for her unflinchingly honest approach to illustrating for children's stories. She described one of her techniques which is to not directly draw what is written in the text or copy from photographs. This way the imagination is freed and without constraint - this was something we wanted to consider for our story, as it had a particular focus on the use of imagination and illustrations needed to reflect that.

She also says that the best illustrations are ones that lead people to continue the stories in their heads. It was important that the characters we created were so grounded and in depth that they were believable and possible; so children could see the characters far beyond the context of the story.

Another thing she suggested was that an illustration should reveal itself subtly and gradually, similar to how you form a view of any character when reading.The best aspects of the illustrations should not be laid out on page one, there should be a journey in story and design across the book.


There are very few great success in children's books, as often kids are the harshest critics. Carlin has had the great notion to respect children's intelligence. It is in fact very patronising to alter yourself to illustrate or write for children. Most are able to read into images and will not be perturbed by difficult subjects or truths. For example, in her illustration for Ted Hugues' Iron Man, she didn't give any of the villagers shadows until they resolved as kind characters by the end. Although this will have gone unnoticed by most, it shows she was unafraid to implement a sophisticated idea for a child audience. We wanted to make sure we had hidden or exciting elements for our story, that give it similar depth and foundation.