Nora Krug named Illustrator of the Year at the V&A Illustration Awards 2019

Her work will be displayed alongside the award-winning artworks from each of the four categories and the commended student shortlist from today at the London museum until Sunday 25 August 2019.

Krug’s book on the lives of her German family members under the Nazi regime explores notions of identity and home. The judges praised her decision to blend almost childlike illustrations alongside photographs of her family and life in Germany during WWII. It was commended by the judges as brave and unique, for offering a new perspective on a sensitive, complex and painful subject.

Elsewhere, the winner of the Illustrated Journalism Award was A. Richard Allen, for his illustration for ‘My Lawyer was so bad I did the work myself’ (The Sunday Telegraph). The judges felt this was a perfect example of classic illustration: "The ‘Money’ section of a paper is notoriously difficult to make interesting, but this made you want to read the article – even though the illustration actually told the whole story of the piece! The composition was very strong, and both directed you to the text but also drew you back to look at the rest of the image. Part of the difficulty of illustration is tricking the viewer into looking at the image for longer than a few seconds but this image kept your attention with all the clever details and directions."

Winner of Book Cover Award was Yehrin Tong for Their Eyes Were Watching God (Virago). The judges felt this was a luscious, evocative and appealing cover that made you want to pick up the book and buy it. "It was so beautiful that you would be proud to be seen walking around with it and reading it. It was good to see re-issues of classic literature with covers that had been created so beautifully, especially when it’s a book you love and want to see treated with respect," they said.

Winner of the Student Illustrator of the Year Award was Sophie Burrows for Crushing (Anglia Ruskin University). "Burrows tender illustrations in graphic novel format are both darkly amusing and wryly observed. Her shrewd use of just two colours conjures a quirky dreamlike atmosphere as well as evoking the essential loneliness of the central character."

Runner Up in this category was Yanyin Xu for One by One (University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts). Highly Commended accolades went to Harry Woodgate for Invisible Cities (University of Hertfordshire); Junli Song for Dance (Anglia Ruskin University) and Ying Wang for Food Journey in London (University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts).

You can view all the winners at vam.ac.uk.