Last year, over on Twitter, illustrator Lee Gatlin posted this sketch:
It made me think about a topic that’s been nagging at my mind in recent years. Namely, I have a worry that that young people’s visual literacy is dropping at an alarming rate. Why is this a concern to me? Let’s talk about CRT TVs.
Computer monitors (which essentially looked like CRT TVs) were a big staple in my early career as an illustrator. I worked mainly in kids educational media and was often called on to draw kids sitting around computers. These computers were big and bulky and hard to draw in an appealing way. I always kind of wished there was a better looking computer. And then came the candy colored iMacs.
That was an exciting moment. I actually remember the first time I drew one of those. They were fun, friendly, and gave me the hope that maybe we were entering a new golden age of design. Maybe we’d get back to things like this:
As an illustrator, you want to draw interestingly shaped and proportioned things. When you do this your imagination runs wild, and connections happen in the most unexpected ways. Could a TV double as a fish bowl? Maybe the TV is full of teeny tiny actors who put on shows just for you? Maybe the TV can be mixed with other types of electronic or mechanical gadgetry? The possibilities seemed endless.
The educator in me thinks a lot about how illustrations help shape how kids see the world. At their best, picture books are gateways to imagined worlds and a kid who reads picture books can learn to create their own imagined worlds, and then their own real worlds. The artist in me wants to draw worlds rich in design and in meaning. I hope that these worlds inspire kids to make their own, better worlds. I might draw a bubbly computer, but maybe the next generation will draw a bubbly computer with wings, that works off solar energy and delivers educational programming to kids all over the world. Endless possiblity!
But, sadly, it was only a year or so later that the first iPhone came out and very soon all tech was designed to be a black rectangle. TVs? Black rectangle. Computers? Black rectangle. Telephones? Black rectangle. Digital books? Black rectangle. Everything is a black rectangle these days and it depresses me.
One of the most magical things in the world to me when I was a kid was the toy store. San Francisco had a four story tall FAO Schwarz, San Mateo had the shorter (but wider!) Talbot’s Toyland. Both are gone. Do they make sense in books anymore? Would a young reader understand what a toy store is? 3 Magic Balls was one of my nephew’s favorite stories. I read it to him dozens of times.
When kids today grow up and become illustrators themselves, what will they draw? The toy aisle at Walmart?
Okay, I just said “kids today”. It’s totally possible I’m indulging in Boomer Doomerism—after all, Corduroy took place in a department store—maybe none of this is a big deal but I can’t help but think that it is.
Other things that are going extinct that makes our world poorer:
Bus drivers
Newspapers and paperboys
Paper maps
Colorful elders
And anything Richard Scarry drew.
One time my nephew and I were watching old cartoons and we saw an old Mickey Mouse short in which Mickey and Donald ate corn on the cob. They did it like all good cartoon characters did, thus:
My nephew said “Why are they eating like that?” I explained they were mimicking the action of an old typewriter. His reaction: “Oh.” It didn’t diminish his enjoyment of the gag that he didn’t know what a Remington was. And his curiosity was fired up for a moment so I dunno, maybe none of this is such a big deal. But, still, those damn black rectangles.
So… is there a point to any of this? So much of what I’m describing is out of our control. Apple isn’t going to suddenly make cartoonishly round iPhones again and Toys R Us has long ago declared bankruptcy. I guess what it comes down to is that the job of the children’s book illustrator has become more important than ever. Sounds dour and dire (and maybe self-aggrandizing) but it’s entirely possible picture books have become the best last stand against the death of imagination. So let us fill our books with the richest, most beautifully imagined worlds we can conjure. The fate of the world may depend on it.