Throughout the history of humanity, people have expressed their feelings and thoughts indifferent ways and made them permanent through methods. Examples of cave paintings and drawings are known as the activity of expressing people’s feelings and thoughts and communicating with them. Since the depictions of the cave period are accepted as the first narrative examples, it would be appropriate to evaluate the illustration area within this scope. It is possible to say that the illustration, which dates back to all this past, reached to the present level by means being made for different cultural environments and different purposes throughout the world. Although the illustration, which generally develops with in the art of painting, has not been mentioned as a private and independent field for a long time, it has been an area that has come forward with its functional features in many cultures throughout history. This area reflects the most striking examples of the visual design field as a new style of expression, especially in the twentieth century when modern art movements began, and it continues this feature.We can say that since the beginning of the twentieth century, illustration has become increasingly diversified, application areas have increased, and it’s been developed as an independent field in art institutions and organizations. In this process, although the world’s fast developing and the richest area with its samples, the illustration, comparing with the western countries; its development in Turkey comes later, though later developments in the design samples in the modern sense, would not be wrong to start their permanence with the Republican era. Today we can state that providing the technical possibilities of the digital era and also as a result of the diversity of application areas illustration in Turkey increasingly gained rich production potential. In this study, cultures the illustration has been fed, art areas it’s been affected, the stages of it’s development, and accumulation of the illustration with in the historical processin Turkey, and its place and importance of plastic arts in terms of functional or artistic production are examined.

Keywords: illustration, visual design, miniature, art and design