Illustration style

A graphic and simple children's book

Large areas of colour, clean edges, few colours and characters you recognise at first glance. “Graphic and simple” is a descriptive umbrella term and names neither a school nor a country. It means an approach to design that came into the picture book from graphic design in the twentieth century.

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Example illustration in the Graphic and simple style — Clear shapes, few details and bold areas of colour: easy to read for the very youngest

Origins

When graphic design comes into the picture book

This visual language has no founder and no home region. The term gathers pictures that tell their story with simplified shapes, clear areas and a deliberately composed page. It prescribes no material: the reduction can come from cut paper, from painted areas or from digital shapes. What matters is how the shapes relate to one another. Which silhouette do you recognise at once, which colour carries the action, how much background does the scene need?

The art historian Raquel Garrido Martos describes how this took hold in the picture book. The American market of the 1950s was dominated by naturalistic illustration. Towards the end of the decade, two designers from the New York advertising and design world arrived and carried colour, area and abstraction over from their work into the children's book. Paul Rand published I Know a Lot of Things in 1956 with texts by his wife Ann Rand, followed by Sparkle and Spin in 1957. Leo Lionni, art director of the magazine Fortune from 1948 to 1960, brought out Little Blue and Little Yellow in 1959. Lionni himself later traced the rhythm, the simple plot and the placing of the characters on the page back to his work on the issues of Fortune.

Even so, the line is not American. Lionni was born in Amsterdam in 1910, came to the USA in 1939 and moved to Italy in 1960. According to Garrido Martos, New York design of these years drew on European currents such as Constructivism and the Bauhaus. A forerunner is El Lissitzky, who in 1922 made a book whose main characters are squares and circles, A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions. At the same time Bruno Munari was working in Milan; in Nella notte buia (1956) he combined different papers and punched holes into a book that you explore as an object.

Eric Carle also came from graphic design and learned from Lionni how to use colour and collage. His technique is paper collage, which we list as a style of its own, “Paper collage”. Here he appears only as a related reference. Sagalino's pictures are a present-day interpretation of this approach to design and not a reproduction of any particular book or artist. They are not made of paper but as smooth, flat shapes.

Who shaped this style

The names behind it

Paul Rand
I Know a Lot of Things, text by Ann Rand, 1956
The advertising and graphic designer carried his means from poster and advertisement, flat colours, strong contrasts and simple shapes, over into the picture book.
Leo Lionni
Little Blue and Little Yellow, 1959
Trained in area, rhythm and page layout as art director of Fortune, he later became one of the most important picture-book authors, with over forty titles.
Bruno Munari
Nella notte buia, 1956
The Milanese artist and designer made the picture book an object of different kinds of paper and die-cut holes, with simple pictures.
El Lissitzky
A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions, 1922
An early forerunner: a book with geometric shapes as characters, which, however, hardly reached the bookshops.

Features

How do you recognise graphic and simple pictures?

Large, single-colour areas with sharp edges, without gradients and without soft shading.
A few coordinated colours that run through the whole book. In the example picture they are green, blue, orange and cream.
Characters built from simple basic shapes: a round head, dot eyes, no modelling of the face.
Trees and plants made of a few repeated shapes such as triangles and curves instead of foliage.
Clear silhouettes and calm areas: the character stands out sharply from the background, and volume and play of light are absent.

What it suits

Which stories the style suits

The style suits stories with a clear plot well: animals, nature, paths, everyday scenes. Because silhouettes and areas of colour come first, you find the main character again quickly on every page, and the calm areas leave room for looking.

A child becomes recognisable through hairstyle, hair colour, clothing and striking features such as glasses. With dot eyes and no modelling of the face, fine expressions can only be hinted at. If you are telling a story that lives on quiet shifts of feeling, you are better served by watercolour or ink.

Compared with paper collage, this style shows no cut edges and no paper texture, only smooth areas. As an editorial judgement: it suits children from about two years and carries into the preschool years.

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Questions

Good to know

Is graphic and simple an American style?

No. The term is a collective name for reduced, graphically conceived picture-book illustration of the twentieth century. Rand and Lionni worked in New York, Lionni later moved to Italy, Munari worked in Milan, and a forerunner such as El Lissitzky dates from the 1920s.

How does the style differ from paper collage?

Collage lives on the material: cut edges, overlaps and the texture of painted papers are visible. The graphic and simple style is about the design of the surface; the pictures look smooth and show no trace of material. Eric Carle, with his paper collage, belongs to collage and appears here only as a related reference.

Are the pictures a reproduction of Rand, Lionni or Munari?

No. They carry the approach to design over into a present-day children's book: large areas, few colours, simple characters. No particular book or artist is copied.

From what age does this style suit?

As an assessment, from about two years. The clear silhouettes and few details are quickly taken in. For older children it works when the story lives more on plot than on fine expressions.

Does the style stay the same throughout the book?

Yes. All 14 double pages are illustrated in the style you choose, and so are the cover and the character's portrait.

Sources

1.Raquel Garrido Martos: Rand y Lionni. La irrupción del diseño gráfico y la abstracción en el álbum infantil. EME Experimental Illustration, Art & Design 14, 2026, pp. 92-105. (in Spanish)What it confirms: Rand and Lionni brought means of graphic design into the picture book at the end of the 1950s; dates for I Know a Lot of Things, Sparkle and Spin and Little Blue and Little Yellow; Lissitzky's book of 1922; Munari's books as forerunners; Carle learned from Lionni.
2.Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art: Creative Connections, The Art of Eric Carle and Leo Lionni, exhibition 2006.What it confirms: The early careers of Carle and Lionni in graphic design can be seen in the bold simplicity and elegant sense of design of their books.
3.Illustration History: Leo Lionni.What it confirms: Lionni, born in Amsterdam in 1910, was art director of Fortune from 1948 to 1960; his first picture book appeared in 1959; in 1960 he returned to Italy.
4.Paul Rand Design: I Know a Lot of Things (1956).What it confirms: The book appeared in 1956 as the first children's book collaboration of Ann and Paul Rand.
5.Corraini Edizioni: Bruno Munari, Nella notte buia (catalogue entry). (in Italian)What it confirms: The book first appeared in 1956 in a small print run and was reissued in 1996; pages of different papers with holes and cut-outs.
6.Wikipedia: Bruno Munari.What it confirms: Munari (1907-1998) was born in Milan, was an artist and designer and made children's books, among them Nella notte buia (1956).