Associate Professor Geoff Grandfield is Course Director for BA Illustration Animation at Kingston University in parallel with being an award-winning illustrator who has worked with major international clients since 1987. After graduating from Royal College of Art his practice has encompassed the communication of ideas, narrative and atmosphere influenced by the cinematography of film and the reductivism of modernist graphic communication.
His commissioned editorial illustrations for The Guardian, The New York Times and a year making a daily picture for The Times newspaper developed an economy of expression completing assignments in less than 3 hours. His work for fiction book jackets (novels by Walter Mosley and George Pelecanos) extended into internal illustration series for the Folio Society, two boxed sets of novels by Graham Greene (1996 and 1998), Raymond Chandler (2000, 2006, 2007) and for The Alexander Trilogy (2013). The Folio have also commissioned illustration series and cloth bindings for non-fiction titles (2008, 2011).
Exhibition narrative has been explored in the 2011 commission for The Historic Royal Palaces display of the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London. A permanent exhibition of triptych lightboxes, wall friezes and etched and enamelled exterior panels visually narrating 800 years of the Crown and symbols of power.
He has been awarded the Association of Illustrators Gold for book illustration five times, the overall Professional Award in 2014, two Yellow Pencils for D&AD and the V&A Illustration Award. As an educator he has been awarded 3×3 Publishing Educator of the Year 2014 leading BA Illustration Animation at Kingston (since 2006). As co-founder of ‘Mokita’ the illustration forum (since 2010), he has campaigned for the greater recognition of Illustration as a subject and its significance for international visual culture.
Research interests draw upon the fields of mass visual communication and narrative forms. From his illustration practice particular themes have emerged such as the visual interpretation and representation of power through narrative communication and the significance of place and memory in creative visualisation.
He is currently supervising PhD’s on the effect of environment on social function, communication and mythology.