© 2026 Mette Virala

Commissioned illustration for "Kansanvallan tunkiolla"

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Illustration picture for an article: Black-and-white house of cards mid-collapse; the letters of TUNKIOLLA tumble with it, KANSANVALLAN in red serif capitals below, a pale pink triangle behind.
Published on Tags: collage, commissioned work, editorial design, illustration, print

I was commissioned to illustrate "Kansanvallan tunkiolla", a feature article on the decline of democratic institutions. The title translates roughly as "on democracy’s dung heap", and it handed me the image: something official, collapsing.

I went with a house of cards caught mid-fall. The cards are patterned like official paperwork, so the structure reads as bureaucracy rather than a card game.

The palette stays at grey, white and black, with red type and a single pale pink triangle behind the fall. I broke "TUNKIOLLA" apart so its letters tumble with the cards, and set "KANSANVALLAN" in red serif capitals along the bottom — the foundation everything lands on.

Most of the working time went into texture: several layers to make the papers feel tactile while keeping the composition legible from full page down to column width.