Originally, illustration and writing were one thing, since both were born of pictographic characters, images synthesized in a sign linear and ordered to give ideas. The illustration itself when there is a single message can be interpreted in two ways: first, by reading the abstract signs and second, for pictorial images.
Illustration is a graphic representation that will explain, clarify or embellish a text. The illustration may have, therefore, informative or ornamental purposes.
In antiquity, it was often joining figures for inscriptions monumental as the stele of Israel and the Code of Hammurabi. It was also common to the illustration of scientific texts, especially doctors and botanists, but the documents of that era are scarce. Strictly speaking, the art of illustration came with the Egyptian papyrus and then went to the codex of parchment, in the form of thumbnail illuminated known as. One of the oldest surviving manuscripts of this type that is the Iliad of the fourth century, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan in primitive Christianity, the illustration was very used to evangelize a population that in most cases, did not read.
The XVII and XVIII centuries were a time of splendor of illustration engraved in metal. This leaves the face of the Baroque allegoric characteristics, the sweet-shop displays, however, the disadvantage of requiring the printing press of a kind different from that prints the text. The lithography, invented at the end of the eighteenth century but used to illustrate the book only from the nineteenth century, is one of implementation procedures easier. Consecrated by romanticism, had its first major success in the arts with book edition of Goethe's Faust, illustrated by Delacroix in 1828. The process gave great impetus for illustration typeface, that is the best example pittoresques the Voyages et romantique dans l'Ancienne France (1820-1878; Travel picturesque and romantic to the former France), published in twenty volumes. Later, he became the instrument par excellence of social criticism, as ridiculous illustration of periodicals.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century was also popular zincography. There followed the procedures fotomecânicos, which allowed the large-scale production of textbooks and technical illustrated with the necessary accuracy documentary and favored the proliferation of weekly updates. A large number of modern artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinski, Paul Klee and Salvador Dalí, devoted to the illustration. The new techniques of reproduction include linoleum and printing, among others.
The illustration of books are usually divided into two types: intratextual (picture) and extratextual (picture, board or blade). The processes of illustration oldest, still employed in editions of luxury, is formed by engraving: Raised (woodcut), the notch (sweet shop) and plan (lithography). Modern, employs to photogravure (fotomecânicos processes), also in its three systems: Raised (clichés to trace and autotype), the notch (gravure) and plan (offset). The newspapers, which were illustrated by the three-etching processes today are made solely by means fotomecânicos, especially by rotogravure and offset printing, allowing printing at the same time, the text and illustrations.
