Andrew Selby is Senior Lecturer in Illustration and Animation. From 2011 - 2014 he was Head of the School of the Arts and led it to become Top 40 QS World-ranked for Art and Design. Following this, he served as Associate Dean for Enterprise in the School of the Arts, English and Drama, overseeing the school’s Research Excellence Framework submission for 2021. The result of this submission was 100% of Loughborough’s research impact in Art and Design being deemed ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally-excellent’.
An internationally recognised illustrator, Andrew's work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, billboards and on the covers of major corporate reports for nearly three decades, including major campaigns for Nike, Barclays, Accenture, British Gas, Volvo and Eurostar. His iconic and thought-provoking illustrations have been commissioned by The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times and been recognised by 3x3: The Journal of Contemporary Illustration, Society of Illustrators’ of New York, Society of Illustrators’ of Los Angeles, American Illustration and the Association of Illustrators’ juried exhibitions and annuals.
Andrew’s work is held in public and private collections in the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. He has been commissioned to illustrate the influential covers for The Lancet including the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the Journal of Diabetes & Endocrinology, and the Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
Andrew's research interests originated out of the subject of illustration by questioning its perceived ‘place’ in visual communication as part of the global creative industries. His research aims to identify, analyse and explain the inter- and cross-disciplinary nature of contemporary illustration and animation across multiple service and product platforms. Andrew’s research considers applications of illustration and visualisation through the prisms of service design, UX, UI and social anthropology. These interests have resulted in individual and collaborative projects with other academics, industrial partners and organisations, traversing the areas of illustration and animation through a variety of published outputs including books, academic journal papers, chapters in edited works and exhibitions. His research has been successfully submitted to five Research Assessment Exercises and Frameworks in the UK between 2001 and 2021.
Andrew has written monographs including Animation in Process (London: Laurence King, 2009) and Animation (London: Laurence King, 2013) which were co-editioned in Spanish, Chinese, Taiwanese and Russian. His most recent publication is Editorial Illustration: Context, Content and Creation (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). He has organised and made several invited keynote contributions to academic conferences on illustration, animation, communication and media studies in Australia, South Korea, Singapore, UK, USA, Ireland, Japan, Portugal and Canada.
Andrew has held a number of publicly funded research grants, including the AHRC Creative Economies in China project Repositioning Graphic Heritage, led by Dr Robert Harland (PI) and Professor Paul Wells (CI), in partnership with Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Andrew was Co-Director of the major international exhibition, Olympics and Culture; Tracings, Projections and Intersections, with Dr Linda Dennis (Joshibi University of Art and Design) that was exhibited in Tokyo as a precursor to the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, sponsored by Nomura. These projects continue work Andrew has been involved in across East Asia over the last twenty years which draw together expertise and opportunity in the creative and cultural industries between China, Japan and Singapore and the United Kingdom. He is a reviewer for the AHRC, EPSRC and several academic publishers.
In addition, Andrew is a director of TRACEY, the web-based research portal dedicated to exploring contemporary drawing and visualisation. He serves on the editorial boards of The Journal of Communication and Media Studies (Melbourne: CommonGround) and the scientific committee of CONFIA, in addition to his membership of the 3x3 Illustration Advisory Board. He is a founding member of the International Association of Illustration Academics.
- ACC140 Negotiated Project
- ACC141 Major Project
- ACP205 Design Challenges: Management and Entrepreneurship
- ACP207 Defining a Specialist Project
- ACP200 Final Project
Andrew is committed to teaching methods that explore entrepreneurial approaches to visual communication. As a result, Loughborough University students have won numerous national and international awards, prizes and scholarships. These include 18 D&AD New Blood Pencils, Society of Illustrators’ of New York Student Awards, Macmillan Children’s Book Prize, Crowbar Advertising Awards, Bologna Children’s Book Fair Award, Penguin Design Awards, Royal Society of the Arts, Young Creatives Network, British Film Institute Young Filmmaker of the Year and 3x3: The Journal of Contemporary Illustration. Loughborough students have worked with major national and international clients including Oxford University Press, DHL, The Radio Times, Mercedes Benz and H&M on a range of industry-led briefs. Andrew welcomes approaches from organisations wishing to work in a collaborative manner with Loughborough students. He has been closely involved in The Studio graduate incubator at the University for many years and has organised annual events that help bridge education and the creative industries on Loughborough’s London campus.
Andrew is an experienced external examiner across postgraduate research and postgraduate and undergraduate teaching. He has examined at the University of the Creative Arts, University of Central Lancashire, Birmingham City University, Coventry University, University of Plymouth, University of South Wales and The National Film School, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in the Republic of Ireland.
Andrew has examined internationally at Silpakorn University (Thailand), Hong Kong Design Institute (Hong Kong), SSR Jakarta (Indonesia) and the University of Newcastle (Australia). He is currently appointed as external examiner for BA(Hons) Animation at Leeds Arts University. Additionally, he has served as an external panel member for validation and revalidation of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at University of Dundee Duncan of Jordanstone, Cardiff University, University of Brighton and Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
Andrew has worked extensively in a consultancy capacity for organisations that seek to utilise illustration as a mode of visual communication to stakeholders through partnerships and engagements, including work for Barclays de Zoete Wedd in South Africa, Bloomberg, Investec, CNN, CNBC, Sky and the Singaporean Ministry of Education. He is an invited member of All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG), chaired by Baroness Whittaker and has represented Loughborough University at the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD). Andrew has been selected to be part of the Government Department for Business and Trade international missions, including South-East Asia and the Indian sub-continent working with UKRI and the British Council.
Andrew’s completed PhD supervisions include:
- Dr Haifa Alhumaidan: Co-Design of Augmented Reality Book for Collaborative Learning Experience in Primary Education, co-supervised with Dr Kathy Pui Ying Lo, as part of the Service Design Mini Centre for Doctoral Training led by Dr Kathy Pui Ying Lo
- Dr Diwas Bisht: Diasporic memory ecologies: Creative explorations of intergenerational memories and identities in the British Bangladeshi community, co-supervised with Professor Emily Keightley, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded research project Memory and the Post-colonial Imagination (MMPI): British Asian Memory, Identity and Community after Partition.
- Dr Gill Bliss: Redefining the Anthropomorphic Animal in Animation, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Dr Nye Canham: Examining the application of STAMP in the analysis of patient safety incidents, co-supervised with Professor Thomas Jun, as part of the Service Design Mini Centre for Doctoral Training led by Dr Kathy Pui Ying Lo
- Dr Holly Ling Hou: An Exploration of Social Photography in a Visitor Museum Experience: Understanding Communication and Engagement through a Mixed Methods Study Incorporating Service Design, co-supervised with Dr Marco Bohr (Nottingham Trent University) and Dr Fred Dalmasso, as part of the Service Design Mini Centre for Doctoral Training led by Dr Kathy Pui Ying Lo
- Dr Samantha Moore: Out of Sight: Using animation to document perceptual brain states, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Dr Mark Smith: The Implications of the Internet as a Distributive System for Moving Image Learning Resources, co-supervised with Dr Robert Harland
- Dr Xiyuan Tan: Representation of Chinese Minority Ethnicity in the Contemporary Context: Constructing Fictional Characters in a Chinese Zhuang Folktale Adaptation, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Dr Ying Zhang: A Comparative Feminist Analysis of Chinese and Disney Animated Features 1970-Present, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
Andrew’s current PhD supervisions include:
- Hind Alhumaihdi: An Investigation into the role of Animation Design and Storytelling Methods in Representing Saudi Arabian Dignitaries’, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Hend Althibiti: The Representation of Bedouin Dances located in the Taif Countryside: Movement, Costumes and Morality, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Andy Robert Davies: Illustration as a method for investigating and articulating the narratives of the River Severn, co-supervised with Dr Rob Tovey
- Tianhua Jing: Exploring design strategies for 3D avatar stylisation for motivational effects in gameful environments, co supervised with Dr Steve Summerskill
- Sara Khomais: Typography as an Image: Designing Children’s Picture Books from English to Arabic Language, co-supervised with Dr Rob Tovey
- Ridzuan Rasid: Towards the Use of Interactive Multimedia for Effective Physical and Virtual Learning in a University Teaching Environment, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- Jiawen Xie: A study of digital interaction with exhibits by museum audiences at the National Museum of China, co-supervised with Professor Paul Wells
- E Yishi: How National Culture Integrates with Contemporary Animation: Traditional Chinese Animation Design, co-supervised with Professor Phillip Lindley
- Xinyu Zhao: Exploring Death Education Approaches in China through Interactive Storytelling, co-supervised with Dr Simon Downs
Andrew welcomes interest from researchers and organisations for collaborative research projects and postgraduate supervision with interests particularly in the strategic and operational production, interaction and application of illustration and animation in emerging media for both practice-based and full thesis PhD variants of study.