Futuristic, detached and intensely human: Ard Su’s editorial illustrations are simple yet unique

No one has quite a style like the New York based illustrator Ard Su, who’s been commissioned by the likes of Apple and Adidas, and has graced the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Washington Post and The Hollywood Reporter with brilliant images that strike an unique blend of clinical coldness and human warmth. Working primarily in the editorial industry, Ard is proficient in Procreate and Photoshop, often taking on commissions that deal with subjects like tech, medicine, social issues. With subjects that are often abstract or hard-boiled, Ard’s job is to make them look and feel engaging through skills learned in her former studies in literature – deconstructing narratives, finding metaphors and building stories. The results are stunningly emotional, communicating an intriguing distance between image and reader – or even between subjects inside of the images – that is not seen often seen in mainstream editorials.

“I like to draw human bodies or fragments of them in my work. I’m also drawn to use ‘vector-like’ elements, like simple shapes and lines and dots,” says Ard. “I guess it’s because I enjoy the tension and balance between the organic and inorganic curves – and the sentiment and the structure they represent.” Ard breaks down the exhausted Alegria editorial illustration style, reusing its flatness for geometric experimentation but adding a more mature sensibility to the colour palette, creating futuristic glosses that meet with her tech and medicine assignments. Inspired by the works of Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Haruki Murakami, Ard channels their topics of loneliness and emotional remoteness. “I’m drawn to the concept of emotional distance, how we stage feelings, perform intimacy, or aestheticize detachment in the modern days,” says Ard. Whether her character’s beady eyes are two pinholes in a vast void or obscured in drapes of dusty shadows, they still feel intensely relatable. In other words, Ard creates deeply felt and human pictures that require no words in order to deliver a rousing message on our current times.