By Lydia Limbe
Kenya: You may have a gift for drawing. Better still, you like to see the cartoons on newspapers and are inspired to pursue this career. That means you want to be an illustrator.
An illustrator uses creative skills in art and design to communicate a story, message or idea. Illustrators work with commercial briefs to inform, persuade or entertain a client’s intended audience, adjusting the mood and style of images accordingly.
In Kenya, the work is predominantly freelance, with one or two resident illustrators working for a daily newspaper. To pursue this career, you obviously have to have a gift in drawing, as well as an ability to creatively use cartoons to portray the whole message that is to be sent across.
There are several colleges that teach fine art, but pursuing this on a higher degree depends on whether you want to be more than an illustrator or not. University of Nairobi offers a degree in Fine Arts.
There are many possible markets for an illustrator: Editorial (magazines, newspapers and comics), books, advertising, fashion, merchandising (greetings cards, calendars, T-shirts and ceramics), corporate work (brochures, catalogues) or in multimedia (video games, websites, animation).
To be an illustrator, you have to be creative, have an ability to understand and interpret business needs and work within deadlines.
