Category: Art

The self-taught Johannesburg painter borrows the language of 17th-century still life and fills it with Rubik’s cubes, Coke bottles, and PlayStation controllers, plucked from your childhood bedroom in the early 2000s. The 2000s seem to be having a moment. That decade is everywhere. In our clothes and music, in our conversations. Even in art and…

From terrace flags to the humble bar glass, the São Paulo illustrator draws the everyday life of Brazil he grew up in – and now Nike has come calling. Gabriel Diogo was born and raised on São Paulo’s east side, which is Corinthians territory through and through. That’s a Brazilian football club, if you didn’t…

Tommy Keith                                                                 Tommy Keith’s Website Tommy Keith on Instagram

Wondering where the A-listers are in ads these days? So was I… The other day, I was chatting with some mates, and we got onto the subject of celebrities in ads. Our references, though, were a bit long in the tooth. George Clooney, who, it turns out, has been doing Nespresso for 20 years now.…

Do your research, plan everything… then rip everything up if necessary. What’s your approach to festivals? Me, I like to spend time compiling a schedule. I’ll find the official festival playlist on Spotify, spend several hours weighing up the bands I haven’t heard of, then draw up a list of ‘maybes’, ‘must-sees’ and ‘ride or…

The Working Assembly’s new identity for Untold aims to avoid gen AI clichés, but still uses gen AI to create it. It can’t have escaped your attention that AI feels like a dirty word right now. But generative AI isn’t the only flavour of AI around. There are a number of genuinely useful tools that…

Her evocative work reminds me of the storybooks of my 1970s childhood—only reimagined for the digital age. Originally from China, Fei Meng lived in the UK for ten years before relocating to New York in 2024. She’s spent the last six years crafting character-driven illustrations for media publications and private commissions. And I’m not surprised…

The Bangkok-based illustrator makes what she calls “visual diaries”, recording her thoughts and feelings on paper and screen to try to make sense of them. Her latest work is about letting go. We all hold on to emotional baggage longer than we need to – anger, frustration and self-loathing for things we did decades ago…

The town made headlines after a local by-election made Andy Burnham Prime Minister. But the real story was already happening behind the scenes – a car park becoming a public square, with an identity by StudioDBD inspired by making. Earlier this summer, Ashton-in-Makerfield found itself at the centre of a media storm. TV crews and…

VCCP puts Jelly Babies and Wine Gums in a seriously life-threatening situation in a new campaign that turns lifts into a satisfying game of sweet-based roulette. I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect to write about a new ad campaign involving lifts and sweeties on a Tuesday morning. But what can I say? I’m a big…

VCCP puts Jelly Babies and Wine Gums in a seriously life-threatening situation in a new campaign that turns lifts into a satisfying game of sweet-based roulette. I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect to write about a new ad campaign involving lifts and sweeties on a Tuesday morning. But what can I say? I’m a big…

Goalkeeper-turned-photographer Alfie Whiteman spent 15 years inside the club he grew up opposite. Now his debut film for Spurs celebrates the people of N17. Football is back for another season – a fact you’ll either love or loathe. The players have returned from their summer breaks. There have been a few transfers, new haircuts (Haaland,…

Goalkeeper-turned-photographer Alfie Whiteman spent 15 years inside the club he grew up opposite. Now his debut film for Spurs celebrates the people of N17. Football is back for another season – a fact you’ll either love or loathe. The players have returned from their summer breaks. There have been a few transfers, new haircuts (Haaland,…

Ibrahim Rayintakath                                                                                 Ibrahim Rayintakath’s Website Ibrahim Rayintakath on Instagram

What’s been cooking up in typography over the summer? Quite a lot, actually. We share some of the latest typefaces to inspire your next project. You don’t expect much news over the summer months. We journalists see them as barren months for anything exciting happening. Everyone’s on holiday, including the government. So opening up my…

To make sense of her move from Montreal to Turin, the French-Canadian illustrator turned to her art. The resulting series conveys her mixed emotions and how she felt stuck between two worlds. Moving to another country is a common theme of conversation amongst friends. We love to imagine what life might be like in warmer…

If you’re turning down work because there aren’t enough hours in the week, read on. Here’s what it looks like to bring in temporary help on Upwork, and how to do it without the usual faff of hiring. You know how it goes. The work you pitched for but half-forgot has finally come through, the…

Lou Benesch                                                                     Lou Benesch’s Website Lou Benesch on Instagram

The new Instagram logo hasn’t just raised a huge debate amongst creatives. It’s also exposed a deeper divide over what design, in general, needs to do. I’ve been paying attention to Instagram since the very start. In the early 2010s, the audience was mostly designers and developers. In fact, I personally knew the person with…

Our community’s advice for junior creatives. Image licensed via Adobe Stock Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I first got started. When you’ve got a few years under your belt and have learned a thing or two, it’s a great feeling to pass those learnings to juniors. Especially if that’s advice you…

As AI reshapes creative work, the photographer and founding member of Adobe Creative Collective explains why picking up a camera helps to sharpen your creativity. If you’re a designer, illustrator or art director, there’s a decent chance photography lives somewhere in your working life. Or maybe just your life in general. Either way, you love…

Iconic bicycle manufacturer Brompton needed a global brand platform. But Studio Blackburn didn’t just design a system. They went to the source and cut metal letters next to the machines that build the bikes. It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Brompton at Creative Boom (watch our exclusive video Inside Brompton’s London Factory if…

Drawing on 197 in-depth conversations with global creative leaders across 30 countries, alongside an analysis of more than 10,000 D&AD Award entries, its new AI & Creativity Report gets to the heart of what’s tearing the creative industry apart. Remember when, a few years back, everyone thought generative AI would help us unleash our creative…

With gestures and postures doing the heavy lifting, the artist tells us why hands have become a recurring motif in her work. “I always wanted to be an artist,” says Stefhany Lozano, and looking at her childhood, it’s hard to imagine how she could have ended up doing anything else. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, 40…

With works that are “slightly lonely and quietly optimistic”, the artist turns the everyday into something familiar, nostalgic and utterly beautiful. A pigeon on a beach path; a blue elephant spring-rider bolted to tarmac; a chain-link fence catching the afternoon light. These scenes might not sound like much on paper, but on the canvas, in…

Cat Sock, 2024 © Minyoung Kim The South Korea-born and London-based artist has always been obsessed with cats. Below, she tells us why they’re a recurring motif and her reasons for only showing the indirect details. We often hear about a character or subject matter becoming a focal point in a creative’s work. It can…

From charcoal smudging to crosshatching and stretchy animations, the illustrator builds immersive worlds through each frame and pencil mark on paper. In Gaia Alari’s drawings, you’ll see worlds where characters are engulfed in flowers, and pigeons tangled in string. And if you look for more than a few seconds, you will start noticing the hand…

Photo: Nici Eberl The perfect festival for people who make things, Green Man’s science talks, comedy stage and cinema tent deserve as much attention as the main headliners. If you work as a creative and haven’t been to Green Man Festival, you might want to pay attention. It’s too late to get tickets for this…

Masanori Ushiki                                         Masanori Ushiki’s Website Masanori Ushiki on Instagram

The script survives, but it’s been straightened out. Instagram’s design team admitted it tried hundreds of other directions before returning to the handwritten approach. We find out more. Instagram has surprised us all with its first brand refresh in nearly a decade. That’s a long time to live with your own handwriting. Its cursive wordmark…

Creative Boom IRL Manchester. Photography by Fiona Finchett Our free real-life meetups for creatives now have the backing of Affinity and Cavalry by Canva, and events are coming to Glasgow, New York, Shrewsbury, Nottingham and beyond. Sick of staring at screens? Well, out there in the real world, something exciting is happening. Creative Boom IRL,…

Stools, clothes pegs, envelopes and clothing take centre stage in the Paris-based illustrator’s textural yet impeccably detailed drawings. If you look at a patch of light on a wall, or a crease in a shirt sleeve, you might not have much to say or think too deeply about them. For Julie Jonquet-Caunes, these details carry…

Working alongside painter Natalia Kleszczewska, the video features handcrafted creatures and dystopian CGI visuals. When Björk approached CGI director Natalie Liu to work on the video for her new song Nerve Bloom, alongside painter Natalia Kleszczewska, the task was to build a digital video that would live within Kleszczewska’s visual world and bring it to…

From uni rivals to a creative team of four, OnePlus Studio gives the lowdown on studio dynamics, competitive habits, a mishmash of inspirations and – ultimately – what makes a successful creative collaboration. What makes the perfect team? For OnePlus Studio – founded by Matteo, Pietro, Giovanni and Aaron, who all met at university –…

Caleb Stein                                                                                         Caleb Stein’s Website Caleb Stein on Instagram

M+C Saatchi promotes Guy Bradbury and hires Regan Warner In our monthly celebration of all that’s happening across the creative world, we explore the biggest movers, shakers and launches. And the big takeaway? Things are looking up. As the editor of Creative Boom, I get to chat with so many founders and leaders. For a…

Photo: Sophie Jones Party Cannon is hands-down the heavy metal group most talked about at design conferences. But where does their unusual day-glo branding stem from? I met Chris Ryan and Martin Gazur backstage to find out. Over the decades, I’ve sat through more design conferences than I can count, and Party Cannon’s logo turns…

Retirement plans are changing for creatives. Image licensed via Adobe Stock Right now, senior creatives are planning to exit the industry much earlier than expected. So what exactly is going on? There’s a conversation in creative industries right now that’s largely going under the radar. It’s happening in DMs, in whispered conversations at industry events,…

Light Bike, 2021, by Benji Reid October Gallery pairs two photographic artists who constructed their imaginative scenes by hand, in front of the camera—not afterwards on a screen. Walk into most commercial studios chasing a “surreal” or “dreamlike” campaign image, and you’ll find someone, somewhere, muttering about compositing in post. Clouds get painted in, wires…

From Midtown to Chinatown, Uncommon’s giant ‘Tumblehair’ has been surprising New Yorkers this week – all to get the Big Apple talking about hair loss for K18. It’s never a fun job removing dead hair from your shower’s drain. But it’s a necessary weekly ritual for anyone with longer locks. What you don’t ever expect…

In his signature colour-blocked collage style, the London-based photographer and director has worked for clients including Carhartt and Speedo, as well as artists such as Nigo and Little Simz. “When I was younger, I’d spend ages looking through old black and white boxing books and then researching whoever had shot them,” says London-based photographer and…

The Portuguese illustrator swapped buildings for editorial pages. But her architect’s eye never left her, as it runs under everything from her award-winning Barron’s covers to a quirky garden of plants that don’t exist. Carolina Moscoso never set out to be an illustrator. Yet the New York-based Portuguese artist has spent the last few years…

She worked as a dentist for more than two decades before she found the courage to call herself an illustrator too. Now, with AI flooding publishing, Nosheen Ahmed makes the case for the human hand – and the belief that no experience is ever wasted. I first met Nosheen Ahmed at a Creative Boom IRL…

Photography by Sarah Rainer Founders Tom Woodgate and Juli Laki were told illustrated packaging would be expensive, complicated and hard to manage. They ignored those voices and hired artists anyway – and their work is now the Greek olive oil brand’s defining visual language. Originally from the UK and Hungary, Tom Woodgate and Juli Laki…

Leonie Bo                                                                         Leonie Bos’s Website Leonie Bos on Instagram

After his wife died in 2020, he finished the garden studio they’d long dreamed of and poured everything into Campfire Crew – a self-published adventure whose heroes are his daughters, an old friend and the dog who walked the fells beside him. Last weekend, I headed to the Lakes for the first time in ages.…

The designer talks us through his recent projects and why design “can be clear, beautiful and full of wit at the same time”. We often hear that a person’s childhood surroundings have a great impact on the type of work they will do in the future. And sometimes, if the parents are creative, they’ll likely…

Photo: Dan Mills Four days of doom metal, mosh pits and dinosaurs taught me more about creative renewal than any design conference ever has. When I was a teenager, I’ll admit: I went a fair few heavy metal gigs. But somewhere around the time classic rock like Iron Maiden and AC/DC started giving way to…

Marina and her team have overhauled the identity of one of Europe’s most respected music venues, and it’s inspired by American composer John Cage. We find out more. The Muziekcentrum De Bijloke in Ghent is one of Europe’s oldest buildings that now acts as a concert hall for classical and contemporary music. Tucked beside a…

Xiao Hua Yang                                                                                                        …

The Berlin studio has renamed the city’s museum and given it a flexible identity that draws on typefaces from U-Bahn stations, landmarks, and the local currywurst stand. Imagine sitting on a collection of 4.5 million objects and discovering that most people in your own city can’t tell you where you are. That was more or…

The studio’s OOH poster campaign for the Imperial War Museums’ new exhibition takes a familiar childhood toy and makes it impossible to ignore. Almost all of us had a bag of them at some point: little green plastic soldiers, frozen mid-charge, lined up across the carpet (ready for a painful moment for a parent) or…

With High Hopes, the Australian non-alcohol brand turns a fiendishly tricky bit of wine science into a DIY punk statement about optimism. Making a non-alcoholic wine good enough to sit on a proper wine list is one of those challenges most of the drinks industry has pretty much given up on. I should know. I’ve…

The founders of the branding world’s fastest-growing sisterhood on impostor syndrome, a cheetah called Beyoncé, and why they stopped tiptoeing around their big idea and started shouting. Picture an awards ceremony in London three years ago. Round tables of ten, and at nearly every one the same arrangement: eight women huddled together, clapping, nervous and…

Alina Bobrova                                     Alina Bobrova’s Website Alina Bobrova on Instagram

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Right now, a whole generation is asking themselves this question. We asked the Creative Boom community for help, and you might find their answer a little unexpected. If you’re past 40 in the creative industries, you’ve probably had a moment—usually at an ungodly hour of the morning—where you’ve wondered what…

andstudio’s Wine Design Exchange eschews fees, RFPs and email chains in favour of a week spent living alongside winemakers. Here’s what other studios can learn from it. Every studio owner knows the drill. Draft the deck, chase the brief, wait for the procurement team to get back to you. It’s slow, it’s expensive to pitch…

The illustrator talks pencils, party fun, and pitching the perfect box art for Alley Cat Games’ What The Sketch? Party games live or die on their box art. Before anyone reads a rule or shuffles a card, they’ve already decided, in about two seconds, whether the thing on the shelf looks fun. That’s a lot…

Studio Sprengsatz interviewed nearly 50 designers and agency heads about AI, then turned the best 30 into a book that refuses to give a straight answer. Every design conference now has its obligatory AI panel, and every panel ends the same way: a moderator asking “so, are we cooked?” and a room full of nervous…

After last summer’s trial run, the #WatchTheFemmes campaign is back. This time it’s bigger and bolder, with an all-women team of artists transforming the route’s crudest scrawls into playful adverts for the women’s race, which runs until this Sunday. Not many illustrators can say their sketchbook doodles have been broadcast to billions on live TV.…

The internationally loved illustrator has turned his “Mecca” into a celebration of the city’s greatest names, from the Gallaghers to Emmeline Pankhurst, with a brand-new portrait of suffragette Ellen Wilkinson unveiled for the occasion. There’s a fair chance you’ve seen a Stanley Chow portrait this week without knowing it was one. Our new Prime Minister,…

The studio behind San Francisco and DUMBO has given Vermont its first dedicated tourism brand, tackling a curious problem: nearly everyone likes Vermont, but hardly anyone books a trip there. Here’s an interesting puzzle worth sitting with. Ask Americans what they make of Vermont and 79% will tell you it’s an appealing place to visit.…

The illustrator is inspired by fashion, Slavic folklore, the mysticism of old fairy tales, witchcraft and what she calls “the strength of women throughout history and into the present day”. In Anna Karetnikova’s series Verloren Gegangen, you’ll see a bundle of figures toppled together in a ball – their limbs tangled, their bodies wrapped in…

A selection of recent work by artist Emma Steinkraus. Based in Lexington, Virginia, Steinkraus                     Emma Steinkraus’s Website Emma Steinkraus on Instagram

The Gloucestershire textile artist gives a ketchup sachet or a tin of pilchards hours of free-motion embroidery, turning the packaging we’ve almost forgotten about into “little care labels”, as she puts it, “for the soul”. Most people who grew up in the 1980s and ’90s will remember the food packaging of that era. Monster Munch.…

After moving from Taiwan to London at the age of 18, the photographer spent his formative years navigating two different environments while questioning his relationship to masculinity, home, and family. “My journey so far has been incredibly exciting,” says Adam Lin, a Taiwan-born and London-based photographer and visual artist. In the beginning, Adam trained in…

Table d’écoute, CitizenK Depicting subtle, quiet scenes where “nothing dramatic is happening”, the illustrator wants to keep her drawings wide open for interpretation. “I don’t usually start by trying to make a beautiful image,” says illustrator Sun Bai, which is a strange thing to hear from an illustrator whose work is undeniably gorgeous – soft,…

Wallace Chan by Giacomo Cosua © 2025 More than the sum of its parts, this sprawling dual-site exhibition across Shanghai and Venice tackles time and scale with ambition and verve. The poet and painter William Blake proposed that we should be able, “To see a world in a grain of sand… and eternity in an…

Luke Rosing                                                                                                          …

Wiedemann Lampe’s rebrand of London’s Gunnersbury Park and Museum finally answers an awkward question: is it one place or two? Ask most Londoners what’s inside Gunnersbury Park, and you’ll get a shrug, a mention of the boating lake, or, if you’re really lucky, a vague memory of a school trip decades ago. Ask them about…

A 37-foot data sculpture appeared inside New York’s Oculus for two days only, turning stock market noise into something you could actually watch happen. Ask most people what a fund manager does all day, and you’ll get a vague answer at best. Something about stocks, probably. Maybe a spreadsheet. It’s one of those jobs everyone’s…

Alexis Jamet                                                                 Alexis Jamet’s Website Alexis Jamet on Instagram

Steel Riveters at Fire Dubbed “one of the most extraordinary, creative artists of our time” by Richard Branson, Ken White painted Virgin’s most famous image. Yet he never signed his name to it, and I think there’s a lesson in that. We’ve all at some point checked how many likes a post got, chased a…

Credit: Shi – stock.adobe.com By the time a brand can use youth slang safely, it’s already dead. I got sent a press release this week explaining what the TikTok phrase “quiet on the creek” means (for the record: “keep it on the downlow”). Pitched at parents baffled by their kids’ vocabulary, it was a well-researched…

Pearl Gaze New York illustrator Wenjia Wang explains why she pairs pearls with fish eyes, silk with decay, and beauty with unease. In a world where everyone scrolls, and scrolls and scrolls, many of us have lost the ability to do more than glance at things momentarily. But look at Wenjia Wang‘s work for a…

Bike © Fatih Öztürk The Turkish illustrator, now painting from a quiet corner of Copenhagen, on why his sunbaked scenes of old video games and obsolete gadgets aren’t really about those toys at all. Think back to the last video game you truly loved as a kid. Chances are you’re not just picturing the screen;…

Following the bank’s 2025 refresh, the Brighton studio didn’t just make 16 social films; it wrote the entire rulebook for how Starling moves on screen. Be honest: when did a bank’s social feed last stop you mid-scroll? Me, personally? I’d rather bury my head in the sand than look at my account balance, not to…

The dating app’s new campaign by Jellyfish pulls young daters out of a stuffy period drama and drops them into a games arcade, all to show off its new Double Date feature. We’ve all endured the misery of an awkward first date. The long pauses, the oversharing, the pressure of being witty and charming –…

The Bristol studio took a garden-room company beyond timber and square footage, and built an identity around the peace and quiet its spaces actually give you. When did you last have somewhere to… stop and think? A place away from the madness? Not the kitchen table with the washing-up winking at you in the corner…

João Daniel Pereira                                                                                                        …

She studied fashion, designed accessories for a living, and enjoyed being an artist in whatever time was left over. When the drawing started making her happier than the job, she quit to embrace it full-time. Yurie Takahashi did everything you’re meant to do. She went to fashion school, graduated with flying colours, and landed a…

A bespoke wordmark with a win hidden inside, a graphic “Portal”, and a custom Greek-and-Latin typeface, built with Leo Field and Studio Drama along the way. If you happen to notice all the logos in the betting category, you’ll see they all blur into one: a bold italic sans here, an optimistic swoosh there, the…

All photos by the official festival photography team: Katja Ogrin, Steve Dempsey, Leigh van der Byl, Sophie Jones and Abbi Draper-Scott Ahead of its 25th anniversary, the Derbyshire metal festival proves that this often-derided scene involves far more visual imagination than outsiders assume. Metal festivals have been part of my life since I first attended…

Julian Adon Alexander                                                         Julian Adon Alexander’s Website Julian Adon Alexander on Instagram

The French illustrator on mountain magic, the “sisters” she draws, and why, at 31, she’s finally proud of her weirdness. As part of my job as editor, I spend an unhealthy amount of time happily scrolling through Instagram in search of creative talent to write about. When it comes to illustration, there’s always a particular…

Cult cartoonists team up with University of Sheffield experts to record how the whole country swears, one region at a time. If you’ve ever doodled something rude in a notebook during a boring meeting and wondered whether it could ever be “proper work”, two British cartoonists who go by the name Modern Toss have some…

A carafe shaped like a pill and ping pong paddles you can hang on a wall. Here are five things from Malika Favre and George Wu’s bazaar that we’d happily blow the summer budget on. You weren’t looking for a hand fan. You have never once stood in your kitchen and thought, “what this place…

Yann Pissenem and Sam Mooney The team behind Ibiza’s biggest superclubs has launched its own creative agency, The Ideation Bureau. Is this a sign that brand owners are done outsourcing their ideas? Traditional creative agencies have spent the past few years worried about AI eating their business. But maybe should be paying closer attention to…

The creativity tax. Image licensed via Adobe Stock Every agency claims to want mavericks, but plenty of creatives have learned that a wild idea is only welcome if it arrives from the right mouth. There’s a weird ritual that plays out in creative studios and agencies everywhere. A brief lands, the team gathers, and someone…

Belgium’s biggest dance festival keeps building on a scale most events can’t match, at a time when dozens of UK and European festivals are folding for good. If you’ve never heard of Tomorrowland, here’s the skinny. It’s one of the world’s largest EDM (electronic dance music) festivals, held every summer in the small town of…

Aaron Agosto                                                                                                          …

The independent London studio has turned the happy accident behind one of our favourite puds into an ownable identity for a new dessert brand from meringue makers Flower & White. Nobody can quite agree on how Eton Mess came about. One version has a meringue dropped at an Eton College picnic; another has a pudding…

The global design studio has given the social restaurant-discovery app a warm, yellow-soaked identity built on one deceptively simple idea: make “time” itself dance. You know that hangry moment? When you’re standing on a street corner, phone in hand, three chat threads open, everyone hungry and nobody willing to commit and pick the place? Deciding…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Remember PR? Good old public relations? Well, it’s back. And this time the machines are in the picture too. Here’s how to get yourself covered, from someone who’s been on both sides of the fence. For the last 25 years, I’ve worked across both journalism and public relations. I started…

Marks & Spencer has rolled out two new own-label beer ranges with drinks-branding agency Thirst – a Continental line built on vintage postage-stamp storytelling, and a craft range that puts its brewery partners front and centre. Be honest: how much thought do you usually give to the design on a supermarket own-label beer? Ok, maybe…

A new Thames & Hudson book surveys 50 indie games that redrew what a video game could look like – with a foreword from Elite co-creator David Braben. My first computer was a ZX Spectrum with a satisfying, squidgy keyboard. If you had one too, you’ll know the ritual: the cassette loading screen, the screech,…

A visit to Kensington Olympia’s latest eatery was an unexpected masterclass in how naming, branding and interiors can be conceived as one, subtle, connected system. The best restaurant brands don’t announce themselves. They accumulate in small decisions repeated until a room feels inevitable rather than designed. Wolves of Tokyo, the new Japanese restaurant and rooftop…

Common Objects brings together the work of 97 photographers from across the globe to explore the role of the image and its ability to shape perception. Organized not by theme or geography but by visual association, the book draws on the logic of the reference catalog—a structure built for sustained, democratic looking. Within it, photographs…

The Tokyo- and New York-based animator has taken the rudest, most bodily subjects imaginable and won at Annecy, SXSW, and Ottawa doing so. She tells Creative Boom why she never chose these obsessions, why she’s making work “kids can get addicted to”, and why some things are better left unexpressed. Bottoms, bodily fluids, cells, sex,…

© Shrey Kathuria We hear from the Delhi-born, London-based designer behind One Little Independent Records’ visual identity about why he launched Mindspill – a growing archive of typographic posters. During a particularly quiet moment in time, when work had slowed and social life had gone still, Shrey Kathuria sat down and made a poster. He…

Working from his home in South Norfolk, the artist creates symbolic, folk-like paintings shaped by tattoo culture and a lifelong tendency to see connections everywhere. Joseph Carway didn’t grow up with art. There was no sketchbook on the kitchen table, no trips to galleries, no teacher who spotted something in him early. What there was,…

The Baghdad-born, Antwerp-based artist combines digital image-making with southern Iraqi visual culture, Shia Islamic history and Mesopotamian mythology to create layered jacquard-woven works. As a child in Baghdad, Hussein Shikha spent a lot of time indoors, and the electricity came and went in unpredictable bursts. When the power cut out and his PlayStation screen went…

Claudia Koh                                 Claudia Koh on Instagram

The Seoul-based food experience design studio creates workshops, installations and research projects that explore how cooking and eating can bring people closer together. There’s a photo in Small Batch Studio’s archive of two strangers holding opposite ends of a 3.6-metre length of string, a teabag knotted along its length, both of them pulling gently until…

Through thoughtful identities, publications and digital platforms, Zahari is helping cultural organisations document themselves for future generations. Growing up between Sofia, London and Los Angeles, and arriving in new countries without full command of the language, Zahari Dimitrov developed a way of reading spaces: how they were organised, what they were communicating and who they…

Erika Nina Suárez                                         Erika Nina Suárez’s Website Erika Nina Suárez on Instagram

Image licensed via Adobe Stock We asked illustrators what they charge and how they’re feeling out there. The answers were more honest than we bargained for. Here’s a number we didn’t expect: £350. That’s the median day rate among the illustrators who told us they’re based in London. It’s also the median day rate for…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock We asked illustrators what they charge and how they’re feeling out there. The answers were more honest than we bargained for. Here’s a number we didn’t expect: £350. That’s the median day rate among the illustrators who told us they’re based in London. It’s also the median day rate for…

Work for The Telegraph Magazine Known for his retro illustrations for big-name clients, the Argentine artist explains how he stays human in the age of AI. Ask most illustrators to name their career highlight, and you’ll get their biggest client: the global drinks brand, the broadsheet cover, the company whose logo makes other creatives sit…

Mud completes its leadership team M+C Saatchi lands Boss, Mother Design opens a real, physical shop, Oliver makes a big TikTok hire, and plenty more besides. Welcome to Booms & Shakes, our monthly round-up of the hires, launches and wins making noise across the creative world. July has arrived warm and heavy with inbox traffic,…

Joey Roden The global agency’s co-founder explains why they’re putting themselves on the line by launching their own font foundry, CcType. It’s a little weird when you think about it. Creative studios spend their careers building things other people put their name on. You pour years of craft into a brand system or a typeface,…

IconPapers © Mathilda Mutant The Mainz designer on packaging obsession, a pseudonym that got out of hand, chocolate shaped like breasts, and why she’s best in the in-between. Ask most designers where they go looking for ideas, and you’ll hear about galleries, sketchbooks, and a long walk. Ask Mathilda Mutant, and she’ll point you towards…

The award-winning studio has given BAFTA’s various ceremonies a single visual language – flowing coloured particles that gather into interesting forms. And it was all built in Cavalry. Here’s something worth remembering the next time you watch someone lift a BAFTA: every single winner started with a rough idea. A scribble or hunch, a half-formed…

Andy Aitchison is the UK’s foremost prison photographer. In a new book from Bluecoat Press, two decades of his work find the people behind the clichés – delicate, tragic and often surprisingly ordinary. I’ll say this up front, because it determines how I read a book like this one: I’m all for reforming our prison…

The fresh identity trended on X on day one, drove Granola’s biggest-ever download day, and helped the company raise $125m in funding. Here’s how Ragged Edge did it. Back in my broadcast journalism days in the early 2000s, I carried a silver dictaphone roughly the size of a house brick. It went everywhere with me…

Sara Suppan                                         Sara Suppan’s Website Sara Suppan on Instagram

The London agency has created the positioning and identity for Hovis Bakeries, the new home of two of Britain’s best-known loaves, and has mercifully resisted every visual cliché the bread aisle has ever baked up. Walk down any supermarket bread aisle, and you’ll see the same three things over and over: a field of wheat…

From Delinquent Youth to Cool Kids: Taiwanese Tattoo Artists 1980–2020 © Houth Studio The Taipei-based studio turns ideas into practice, building branding and publishing systems that briefly disorient you before resolving into something familiar. Houth was founded in Taipei in 2014 and has since become known for bold colour, experimental graphics and innovative typography –…

Drawing on fashion, memory and material culture, the artist transforms jumpers, fur coats and slogan T-shirts into meticulously painted studies of identity and desire. Growing up in Ealing with a fashion designer mother, artist Hannah Knox spent her childhood surrounded by dyed fabric drying in the bath, half-finished garments draped over chairs and trips to…

Jaiku Live Marketing Ideation, June 2025 (Credit: Adam Kang) The JAIKU Storytelling Summit lands in London this September, bringing founders, marketers and creative leaders together to ask whether narrative still has the power to change things. In a media landscape drowning in content, the question “Can stories save us?” might sound counterintuitive. But Marianne Olaleye,…

Liang Wang                                 Liang Wang’s Website Liang Wang on Instagram

Marianne Olaleye. Photography by Krystal Neuvill The JAIKU founder has helped brands from Glossier to the British Library find their story. Now, finally, she’s learned to apply the same thinking to herself. There’s a special kind of irony in being a storytelling expert who can’t quite bring herself to tell her own story. Marianne Olaleye,…

From fashion-editorial red packets to scratch-off fortunes and spring-loaded packaging, the Kuala Lumpur studio reimagines familiar rituals as immersive design experiences. Fictionist Studio’s founder, Joanne Chew, grew up in Kuala Lumpur, studied in New York City, worked there for a few years, then did a stint in Singapore. The plan to return to Malaysia crystallised…

The self-taught French animator makes wicked, grainy, gloriously imperfect films – and there’s encouraging demand for his work. We caught up with him about taming the wrong tools, ’90s hip-hop and why the grain is the whole point. There’s a lovely, naughty quality to Simon Vergély‘s work. A mischievous take on modern life that imagines…

The sun is shining, the type industry is buzzing, and the latest fonts are by no means playing it safe. We check out the most interesting releases of July 2026. In mainstream journalism, July and August are often called the “silly season” because, without Parliament sitting, there’s not much serious news to report. But the…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Execution at the click of a button might not be the career crisis you think it is. You just need to shift to the skills that are in demand more than ever. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series where the creative community helps solve the industry’s…

Erwin in the studio on Swammerdamstraat © Piek Erwin Olaf: The Biography by Mischa Cohen, published by Hannibal Books, traces the Dutch image-maker’s career from Amsterdam’s nightlife scene to international acclaim, activism and creating work until his final years. Erwin Olaf Springveld – known as Erwin Olaf – was born in the Netherlands in 1959.…

Aiqi Zhang / Credence From handmade films to woven typographic blankets, the Mother LA senior designer is interested in graphic design that refuses to stick to one format. For Aiqi Zhang, her ideas tend to start with a question: “When I see something interesting, I often start asking ‘what if,’” she says. “What if this…

With Aesop, Byredo and a wave of tomato-leaf-touting newcomers fighting for space in our bathrooms, Cowshed needed to stand out again. Otherway’s refresh reconnects the brand with its rural Somerset beginnings. Cowshed has always been one of those brands that feel like an indulgence. It’s right up there with Wildsmith and Aesop, but it’s always…

The Venezuelan-born, London- and Rio-based artist transforms migration, spirituality and fragmented notions of home into vivid, handmade works that explore identity and belonging. “I find inspiration in empathy, but not as something soft or passive,” explains Victoria Ruiz. “For me, empathy is a form of resistance. It is a decision to stay present with another…

When Nick Ellis acquired two long-standing butcher shops at opposite ends of Blackheath, Studio Blackburn faced a fun challenge: one brand, two very different crowds. If you’re not a fan of meat, look away now. Studio Blackburn has crafted the new identity for Meat Ellis Butchers, a sustainable “whole-carcass” butcher in London. The agency was…

Jon Testa                                                                                                          …

Gemma Phillips spent 12 years at Saatchi & Saatchi before going it alone, and her solo work has already reached the House of Commons. We explore how she gets away with saying the unsayable. There’s a particular skill in making a brand swear on a billboard and have it feel like the most reasonable thing…

Cohen, 19, from Grimsby in his Easter bunny costume. Against the Tide, 2026. Photograph by Polly Braden The most overlooked beat in British photography isn’t some far-flung conflict zone; it’s the end of your nearest pier. A new exhibition at Bristol’s Arnolfini looks behind the cliches and brings you the truth, with the active help…

The Zhengzhou-based branding studio builds visual identities that evoke a fleeting sensation of seeing something familiar you can’t quite make sense of. “I hope that when viewers see my work, they don’t try to ‘understand’ it first,” says Bai Mi, founder of Cooot studio. “Instead, they feel a subtle sense of uncertainty – something feels…

Lark Design Studio’s new identity for EV cable brand Wottz proves that the best ideas sometimes hide in the smallest details. Some rebrands are worth studying not for their scale, but for their restraint. Lark Design Studio’s new identity for Wottz, a British manufacturer of customisable EV charging cables, is one of them. There’s no…

Madeline Gallucci                                                                 Madeline Gallucci’s Website Madeline Gallucci on Instagram

The Los Angeles designer has turned the maths of motherhood into art, pairing sharp visuals with an essay that’s funny, angry and backed by hard numbers. There’s a particular kind of maths that creative mothers do in their heads, usually at 11pm, usually while staring at a laptop in a quiet kitchen. It goes something…

The Los Angeles designer has turned the maths of motherhood into art, pairing sharp visuals with an essay that’s funny, angry and backed by hard numbers. There’s a particular kind of maths that creative mothers do in their heads, usually at 11pm, usually while staring at a laptop in a quiet kitchen. It goes something…

This Edinburgh-based interior designer applied for hundreds of jobs after graduating and got nowhere. Eventually, he decided his “too bold” portfolio wasn’t the problem—it was the brief. Harry Matuszewicz-Milne spent 10 years as a mental health nurse before retraining as an interior designer. He graduated from UWE Bristol in 2024 with a first-class honours degree…

Love & War’s identity for Shaver Hall shows how naming, history and a forgotten icon can turn adaptive reuse into a genuine creative opportunity. Every city has at least one building everyone walks past without really looking up. The Lord & Taylor flagship on Fifth Avenue is one of New York’s: a 1914 limestone hulk…

Allison Henry Aver The veteran creative leader, who specialises in branding for beauty and fashion, explains why it took her a few decades to figure things out. The most surprising thing to me when I opened my branding agency, Letter A, was just how ready I was, which is not to say it was easy…

The New Jersey illustrator on hitting the burnout wall, drawing with a black ink pen so she can’t turn back, and finding the magic in everyday things like beans and thrifted trinkets. Kaitlin Brito makes, in her own words, images with a “sparkle”: careful linework, bright flat colour and a playful sense of nostalgia that…

Blood Stocks, a Danish proposal to turn menstruation into a medical asset, was the only project at tonight’s ceremony in London to take both a Black Pencil and a White Pencil. Here’s why it struck such a chord. Here’s a lovely thing. The work that defined this year’s D&AD New Blood Awards wasn’t a glossy…

All images by Angela Grabowska Accept & Proceed’s founder spent 20 years mastering the mechanics of desire. Now his new framework, Signalism, asks what that mastery actually costs. At the start of a project, all good creatives ask the same questions. Can we build it? Will people want it? Can it scale? David Johnston, founder…

The much-loved developer site has had a tough couple of years. So Koto’s job was a tricky one: not just a fresh look, but a fresh argument for why Stack Overflow still matters in the AI era. Here’s how the global studio pulled it off. There are really only a handful of reasons a brand…

TikTok – A Match Made in Cannes. Photography by Cristina Talpa Reach is out, and resonance is in. Here’s what a week on the Croisette revealed about where the creative industries are heading next. The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, held over five days on the Côte d’Azur, brings together some of the biggest voices…

In a brilliant piece of self-promo for a creative agency, prayer beads prove the best campaigns don’t sell products; they understand rituals fans already perform. Every England fan has a tell. Some can’t watch penalties. Some leave the room. Some grip a cushion so hard that it loses its shape by full time. And a…

Gavin Brophy Feeling stuck between junior and senior is a common experience, so why is it never discussed? We chat to brand designer Gavin Brophy about this much-misunderstood phase of a creative career. Everyone’s career has a “messy middle”, where you’re long past being a junior, but being respected as a senior still seems light…

Images courtesy of Thomas Adank, Ed Park and A Practice for Everyday Life. Based not far from the museum itself, APFEL was the perfect choice when V&A East commissioned the graphics and signage for its new five-floor gallery in Olympic Park, Stratford. Situated in the Stratford area of London, V&A East Museum is an excellent…

Caleb Weintraub                                                                                                          …

Cannes Lions Creators Party. © Caitlin Bulley From the inversion of creator authority to a craving for tangible, screen-free experiences, this year’s festival was less a celebration of technology than a reminder of what it can’t replace. You’d expect AI to dominate Cannes Lions, and it did – on every stage, in every panel, from…

Image licensed via Alamy The current shift in design roles from creating to finishing is eroding a fundamental part of being a designer. Here’s how to hold onto your skills and protect your practice. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series where we take the questions keeping creatives awake at night, and…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Our wide-ranging survey lays bare a profession that’s exhausted, anxious about its future, and using AI tools it doesn’t trust. Feeling tired, less secure and resentful of AI?. Then it’s official: you’re by no means alone. Creative Boom’s flagship survey for 2026, gathering responses from 882 creative professionals worldwide (UK…

Almudena Romero has spent three years growing a human eye into a French field using nothing but wheat and winter grasses. Now she’s about to eat the evidence. Read on to discover why. Ever had that weird feeling when you look at your creative work and feel like it’s looking back at you? For most…

The female-led studio has given the baby care newcomer a soft, fluid identity with rounded lowercase type, a floating ‘o’, and an ochre-yellow palette – built to feel credible and aspirational, all at the same time. The baby care aisle isn’t somewhere I’ve ever needed to walk down, but if I do stumble upon it,…

Riccardo Magherini                                                                                                          …

The London agency has repositioned the Scouts programme for 14–18-year-olds around a blunt new proposition: ‘Grow up’, with a compass-led marque, bold supergraphics, and 40 fresh badges. When Explorer Scouts launched in 2002, most families shared a single home computer, if they had one at all, and social media didn’t even exist. More than two…

Image licensed via Alamy Most illustrators are signing away rights they don’t understand. Experts from Handsome Frank and Jacky Winter Group reveal how to stop this from happening to you. If you’ve ever signed a work-for-hire agreement without fully understanding it, you’re not alone. Most illustrators have. But a single contract decision could cost you…

In response to AI’s rapid takeover of editorial imagery, Anna May and the team behind MISC magazine made something physical and human. Here’s why. Most of us in the creative industries have spent this year complaining about AI in one form or another, whether that’s over a pint in the bar or in the comments…

Co-founder Jeremy Sahlman Co-founder Jeremy Sahlman on building a studio from a chance meeting on a Boston street, chasing ideas nobody asked for, and why taste is the one thing the new tools can’t fake. I didn’t meet Black Math in a boardroom. I met two of their team – Travis Tyler and Louis Jannetty,…

Shane Walsh                                     Shane Walsh’s Website Shane Walsh on Instagram

For its tenth edition, the cult charity auction returns with 700 one-off record sleeves from the likes of Murugiah, Clare Twomey, and Thierry Noir. And you won’t know who designed yours, or which song is inside, until you’ve won it. It’s been a highlight of our creative community for a decade, and it’s back once…

The Milan-based, Sardinia-born illustrator reimagines retro glamour as something stranger and far more self-possessed – and he got there by taking the long way round. The women in Federico Salis’s illustrations are not waiting to be admired. They turn their backs to you at the poolside in a red polka-dot swimsuit. They drive off in…

The self-taught illustrator, muralist and pattern designer on swapping advertising for a sketchbook, painting 42 feet in the air, and why slow periods are easier when your income isn’t relying on one thing. If you have spent any time on the colourful side of Montréal as I have, you have probably already seen Anne-Julie Dudemaine’s…

Flower Huggers From graphite on paper to digital drawing to vector brushes in Fresco, illustrator A has developed a new visual alphabet through experimentation and dubbed it Sour Soda. Being an illustrator is a wonderful job, but it can be easy to get into a rut. Clients look at your portfolio, see something they like,…

The Southern California designer on dropping out of art school, working for Gucci and the UN without dulling his vibe, and why making thousands of pieces for nobody but himself is kind of the whole point. Tyler Spangler describes his own work as “like a rainbow-flavoured popsicle dipped in the ocean and placed on a…

From white rabbits leaping out of a 3D screen to school kids zapping each other with laser-eyed crushes, the Tokyo illustrator makes ordinary life strange, witty and wonderful. At first glance, a Shunpei Kamiya illustration gives you something familiar, right out of Japan: a packed commuter train, a family posing for a selfie outside the…

Sarah Jane Coleman AKA Inky Mole has illustrated nearly 100 fairies, monsters and other fae creatures for Dr Elizabeth Dearnley’s upcoming book The Fairy Spotter’s Guide. “These things may or may not actually exist. I think they all do, but that’s for another discussion,” says Sarah Jane Coleman, as we talk about the challenges of…

Xiangjie Rebecca Wu                                     Xiangjie Rebecca Wu’s Website Xiangjie Rebecca Wu on Instagram

The Enough and Fuzzy Feelings director and filmmaker returns to short filmmaking with a tender, funny and increasingly unhinged portrait of people who just want to be loved. Most of us spend a fair amount of energy hiding the needy, pathetic parts of ourselves. (I know I do.) Anna Mantzaris wanted to put them on…

All images courtesy of Cannes Lions More than 1,000 fringe events, one short list: the no-pass-needed picks we’d actually add to our Cannes schedule. Your flights are booked, you’ve found a friend’s sofa to crash on, and the sun cream and Birkenstocks are in the bag. Now what? With more than 1,000 fringe events taking…

Image licensed via Alamy In theory, you want to feel seen. But in practice, your brain is telling you to hide. Here’s how to do both. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series that tackles the questions keeping creatives awake at night. This week’s dilemma speaks to a paradox many of us…

The London studio has shaped the look and feel of Frida Redknapp’s new range of cooking blends, now on shelves in M&S and Ocado. There is a certain trap waiting for any “healthy” food brand. It’s that whole worthy, slightly joyless aesthetic that signals goodness but risks forgetting the pleasure of actually eating. Frood, a…

Artists Trevor Wheatley and Cosmo Dean, with design studio Puncture, have moored an entire convenience store on Lake Ontario – glowing, solar-powered and just out of reach. There is a convenience store floating on Lake Ontario, fully stocked. Well, we say “convenient”, but that’s definitely not the case. Called Global Convenience, it’s a new artwork…

Rachel Jump                                                                 Rachel Jump’s Website Rachel Jump on Instagram

Now that anyone can make content in seconds, taste has become the most valuable asset. That means the tools worth using are the ones that take the grunt work without making you compromise on craft or how things are built. Adobe Stock’s AI Studio does just that. Something has flipped in the last 18 months.…

Hockney-inspired self-portrait © Gayle Kabaker The New Yorker cover artist on why a cover still feels like a miracle, the morning David Hockney died, and learning to paint bedding like water. Gayle Kabaker has illustrated some of the most recognisable covers The New Yorker has ever run, but she will be the first to tell…

The studio behind the rebrand has expanded the SS Great Britain into a full cultural destination, with a defiantly un-nautical pink lifted straight from Totterdown’s terraces. Some ships are worth knowing about. Brunel’s SS Great Britain launched in 1843 as the first of her kind, and in the years since, she has lived more lives…

Image licensed via Alamy What actually happens when you leave your comfy job and start from scratch? We chat to agency founders to hear their stories. Right now, something is shifting in the creative industry. Across the UK, senior creatives are leaving the relative safety of network agencies—some after decades of painstakingly climbing the ladder—to…

Fumi Nakamura                                                             Fumi Nakamura’s Website Fumi Nakamura on Instagram

Pinterest is changing. What does that mean for creatives? Image licensed via Adobe Stock As AI takes over from Google search, the thing that used to draw people to your creative work is disappearing fast. Here’s what’s happening, and how to respond. At Cannes Lions 2026, Pinterest said something that should stop every creative in…

Malika Favre and George Wu’s curated bazaar, I Can’t Afford This But Maybe She Can, is full of brilliant, creative things. Here are five of our favourites for bringing a bit of character, and the odd touch of glorious colour, to your space. I’m going to level with you here. I’m a sucker for a…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock The free routes that used to bring creatives their next commission are closing one by one. It’s been happening for some time. And now AI is pretty much destroying the web as we know it. Here’s how to keep being found – and, increasingly, recommended – without a marketing budget.…

Adrian Kay Wong                         Adrian Kay Wong’s Website Adrian Kay Wong on Instagram

Solitude in Transit © Hannah Li After more than twenty illustrated books, the New York-based artist has stepped back from publishing to chase something more personal: the way light holds a room, a station or a street corner in the seconds either side of an event. There’s a beautiful stillness to Hannah Li’s latest work.…

Murugiah. Image credit: Jack Woodhams The London-based artist behind the Quentin Blake Centre’s debut solo show talks to us about parent pressure, pandemic breakthroughs and learning to stop making other people’s art. On day one of his first solo exhibition, hosted at London’s Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, the multidisciplinary artist Murugiah did something unconventional:…

The new identity leans into the contrasts that make Hiut what it is: industry alongside nature, utility alongside craft… right down to a typeface drawn from the makers’ own signatures. There’s a lovely bit of stubbornness at the heart of Hiut, and the brand’s new look finally does it justice. Pentagram partner Hugh Miller has…

Shih-Yu Lin’s watercolour farewell From Bradford to Beverly Hills, Hockney’s bold colours and irrepressible joy for living inspired a generation. Here’s what they created in response to his passing. David Hockney, who died on 12 June at the age of 88, was one of the most influential British artists of the modern era. Born in…

Jones Knowles Ritchie reworks every touchpoint, from a 3D logo and custom typefaces to a refreshed Colonel, as KFC’s biggest brand evolution begins rolling out across more than 150 countries. Chicken is having a moment. I only realised this recently at a Spanish airport, when I spotted a new Popeyes branch past security. On further…

New Hapworks Studios in Dundee Strategy leaders are in demand, social-first agencies are hiring more, and one studio has done the brave thing and handed its own rebrand to someone else. Gulp. Here’s what’s been happening in the creative industry this month. Welcome back to Booms & Shakes, our monthly round-up of the hires, promotions,…

At Glacier by Omar Careaga For all you graphic designers out there, we’ve rounded up the latest big releases from foundries across the planet. From display fonts to classic serifs and a family inspired by Iceland’s wild landscape, June’s offering is so good that some might end up in your current projects. There’s something about…

Madeline Ludwig-Leone                                             Madeline Ludwig-Leone’s Website Madeline Ludwig-Leone on Instagram

The London studio drags the premium tortilla brand out of the farm-shop aisle with a vibrant new palette, dancing mascots and packaging that tastes as good as it looks. You know those tasty snack-treats called Manomasa? The ones saved for special occasions or BBQs with friends, and only available from the “posher” supermarkets? It’s probably…

The Barcelona and New York studio was asked to merge Midnight Cosmetics’ sleek monochrome world with HotDog’s bold, chaotic energy – and found the answer in gouache, flying fur, and dogs in a state of pure bliss. The brief, on paper, looked like a collision waiting to happen. Midnight Cosmetics – a company defined by…

Fish House Partners Nelly Michenaud and Ed Bulmer have moved their animation outfit from London to Nantes, leaving them aglow with positivity and creativity. There are so many things to love about the animation studio Orca, but let’s start with its name. Killer whales are cool, for sure, but this wasn’t a moniker founders Ed…

Christopher Postlewaite                                                                                 Christopher Postlewaite’s Website Christopher Postlewaite on Instagram

Drawing on the heyday of the tabloid press and the inspiring archives at St Bride, the all-caps variable font marks the launch of D8’s new type studio – and a break from spiralling licence fees – ahead of its debut at Birmingham Design Festival. Any discerning designer will tell you how expensive typography can get.…

Art direction & set design, Miguel Morte Working across still life, collage and mixed media, the London-based Polish photographer is drawn to details that feel “slightly off, slightly magical”. It started with a friend’s Sony Ericsson phone in Poland in the early 2000s. Karolina Burlikowska got hold of it and started taking pictures. She begged…

She uses real paintbrushes, real pens and real pigments to create images that slip from reality into dreams and beyond. When Maki Yamaguchi created her first portrait illustration for The Drift magazine, she was pleased with the outcome. With fine detail and bold, gestural spontaneity, her image captured the likenesses of former New York mayor…

artist portrait. Photography by Brian Lockyer The London-based artist draws on archival imagery and a nomadic upbringing to create work that feels unfamiliar and impeccably handmade.  Born in Belarus, raised in Estonia, and having spent a significant portion of her life in Malta before settling in London, Jana Frost describes herself as a “third culture…

The Paris-based illustrator and bookbinder creates small, meticulously crafted objects exploring what happens when you merge “playfulness and control”. David Adrien grew up in Paris and studied printmaking in Brussels before returning to France to finish his degree and settle there. Since graduating, he has worked primarily as an illustrator, contributing to collective comics fanzines…

The Slovenian graphic designer and recent Werkplaats Typografie graduate approaches typography with a messy, intuitive process, making work that is impossible to look away from. Earlier this spring, Tjaša Cizej was staying at her parents’ place in Slovenia, surrounded by nature, and noticed buds on a branch. She had spent the previous two years in…

We Make Stuff Happen by Maddison Graphic Business cards were once deemed dead. Not anymore. They’re back in a big way. If you’re looking to design your own, here are some great examples to inspire. Haven’t you heard? Business cards are making a comeback. Yes, really. The global pandemic, not that we like to mention…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock When it comes to pricing your illustration work, how do you get it right? Two agents who negotiate fees for a living explain how to charge what you’re worth, from your first quote to raising rates years into a client relationship. Figuring out what to charge clients can be the…

Are you earning the right salary as a graphic designer? Image licensed via Adobe Stock Are you making the right salary as a graphic designer? In this helpful guide, we’ll explain how to figure out whether your salary is fair. And if it turns out your pay isn’t right, we’ll share advice on how to…

The Brazilian-born, Tokyo-based digital artist blends 3D animation, collage and physical sculpture – and believes art exists to give people a little more joy than they started with. Pedro Nekoi will tell you that his whole creative process takes two or three days. Or just one, if he drinks three coffees. This is a man…

The best online job boards for designers. Image licensed via Adobe Stock The industry is changing at a frightening pace. Agencies are shrinking in some creative disciplines, while others are growing so quickly that there’s never been a better time to be a designer. If you’re in the market for a new role, here are…

Candle, 2022 The London-born illustrator has spent a decade building a distinctive pencil-based practice, and she’s only just getting started. Ideas come to Palesa Monareng on long walks with her dog, Herzog. Not from scrolling – she is already fretting about how much the “near catatonic scrolling” she does shapes her creative output – and…

Colours May Vary, Leeds Forget new technology. Nothing beats the simplicity of a notepad and pencil. It’s why stationery is the go-to favourite treat for artists and designers everywhere. If you’re looking to update your own kit, here are 22 brilliant shops we highly recommend. We’ll apparently spend five years of our lives doomscrolling. A…

Installation View – M.C.Escher The Exhibition, Somerset House 2026. Photo: Stephen Chung Before the famous optical illusions and infinite worlds, there were humble tools and a very patient hand. This summer, Somerset House gathers over 150 of Escher’s prints for his first major London exhibition, and there’s a chance to immerse yourself in a few…

Benny Young                                                         Benny Young’s Website Benny Young on Instagram

The Madrid-based duo draw on vintage print culture, secondhand bookshops and a disruptive approach to shape their wide-ranging practice. Aida Casado and Carlos Arrojo – the duo behind Studio Patten – came from different corners of the world. Aida is from Galicia in northern Spain; Carlos grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They both trained…

For Danish NGO Plastic Change, the agency has turned a familiar food-packaging warning into an NSFW wake-up call about microplastics and male fertility… part visual gag, part genuine health alert. Apologies if you’re eating breakfast. There are far easier ways to talk about microplastics than a huge billboard of wrinkled testicle skin staring you in…

Tracking Line is a new series by Paris duo Souffle that pays tribute to the early 2000s, not as an aesthetic but as a vanishing set of gestures and motions. We find out more about the film-and-photo project and why, in 2026, they refused to let AI anywhere near it. There’s a sound only a…

Cindy Bernhard PLATO is honored to present Broken Vessels, a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Cindy Bernhard, featuring a new body of paintings that explores spiritual rupture, transcendence and the relationship between the human body and the divine. The public opening is scheduled for Thursday, June 4, from 6 to 8 PM in the gallery’s…

Drawing on folklore, anthropology and Buddhist philosophy, the New York and New Haven-based artist and independent publisher creates publications that ask readers to slow down and breathe. “I’m a haunted living ghost wandering around the past, telling the stories of the forgotten, the avoided and the ignored,” says Vanilla Chi.  Born in Shenzhen, she studied…

The local studio has reimagined the terminal from the ground up, with a plane-window-view palette of blues, custom patterns hiding the number eight, and a voice that speaks fluent Queens. JFK Airport is a bit of a homecoming for New Yorkers. It’s also the jump-off point to the rest of the world. Although it’s very…

Legs Crossed, 2023 Working from found photographs and thrift store catalogues, the Connecticut-based painter chases the nostalgia that travels through imagery across time. Chad Etting has been painting since he was sixteen. He is now 42, and between those two points, he has worked as a high school teacher, an administrative assistant, a financial specialist,…

Schweppes gets a major glow-up, complete with a new look and the return of Clive the Leopard. We learn more about the brand’s latest drive to maintain its dominance in the category. The world’s first soda is undergoing its biggest makeover in generations, thanks to JKR, Studio.One and Mischief. Schweppes has unveiled a sweeping brand…

Sleepwalking, 2025 The London-based artist works across painting, animation and installation to conjure whimsical, dreamlike worlds. Last October, during Frieze Week, visitors to Soho Revue in Soho could walk into a room and disappear. Sleepwalking – Cecilia Reeve‘s large-scale animated installation – projected across four layers of gauze, filling the gallery with shadowy figures, drifting…

Wiggle Wonderland at National Memorial Arboretum, artwork by Lucy Grainge. Photo by Beca B Jones The Manchester-born artist, printmaker and facilitator has spent a decade using play and community as the raw material for a practice that refuses to stay inside a gallery. Lucy Grainge will tell you that her final year at Glasgow School…

Rebecca Cobb An exhibition celebrating nature by children’s book creators looks set to be one of London’s top creative events this June. Sharon King-Chai isn’t a cowgirl, but she does love the great outdoors, and she has rustled up a big posse of fellow children’s illustrators to hold Nature, an art exhibition benefiting both kids…

The animation director and illustrator is on a mission to bring grubbiness back to digital design, one human fingerprint at a time. There’s a paradox at the heart of Christa Jarrold‘s practice. Based in Margate on the north coast of Kent, she works in 3D using Cinema 4D and Redshift. It’s a medium most people…

Aperture Art Frames answers a question every creative parent will recognise: why aren’t we treating our children’s earliest creativity with the same care we’d give any other art? There’s a special kind of guilt creatives all know well. You spend the working day thinking carefully about composition, colour and how objects sit within a space.…

The London studio has trained an AI on 25 years of its own thinking, and now anyone in the world can interrogate it. Could this be a model for other agencies to adopt? Back in November, I wrote about Super Keen Studio and the brilliant way they’ve reinvented the website case study. In brief, they’ve…

Alex Bruno                                                                                                         Alex…

We’re Just Here for the Bad Guys chronicles Brian Van Lau’s relationship with his estranged father. Lau’s father was absent during his childhood due to his incarceration. After his release, he rebuilt his life in Vietnam, remarried, and gradually disappeared from Lau’s life. Nearly a decade later, Lau traveled to Vietnam following his father’s sudden…

Reena Wu                         Reena Wu’s Website Reena Wu on Instagram

Candace Caston                                 Candace Caston’s Website Candace Caston on Instagram

Aunia Kahn                                 Aunia Kahn’s Website Aunia Kahn on Instagram

GR gallery is pleased to present My Screen Tests, the first New York City solo exhibition by Kohei Yamada. The exhibition examines the enduring value of the authentic relationship between artist and artwork, engaging in themes of irony, introspection, and visual metaphor, which draw inspiration from contemporary practice and Yamada’s nuanced admiration for American Pop…

Derek Beck                                                                                                          …

Orpheus Acosta                                                                                     Orpheus Acosta’s Website Orpheus Acosta on Instagram

Blake Masi                                 Blake Masi’s Website Blake Masi on Instagram

Sylvia Trotter Ewens                                             Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website Sylvia Trotter Ewens on Instagram

Kelsey Shwetz                                                             Kelsey Shwetz’s Website Kelsey Shwetz on Instagram

Dorian Tocker                                                                         Dorian Tocker’s Website Dorian Tocker on Instagram

Nahanni McKay                                         Nahanni McKay’s Website Nahanni McKay on Instagram

John Sanderson                                                             John Sanderson’s Website John Sanderson on Instagram

Nicholas Moegly                                                         Nicholas Moegly’s Website Nicholas Moegly on Instagram

Sarah Muirhead                                                                                 Sarah Muirhead’s Website Sarah Muirhead on Instagram

Little Thunder                                                     Little Thunder on Instagram

We are so excited to share our interview with Surreal Salon 18 winner, River Reishi, selected by guest juror, Swoon. On the occasion of the win, we spoke with Reishi about the work in the show, the history of Surreal Salon, and her upcoming travels. 

Francisco Gonzalez Camacho                                 Francisco Gonzalez Camacho’s Website Francisco Gonzalez Camacho on Instagram

Pictoplasma Berlin                             Pictoplasma Berlin Website Pictoplasma Berlin on Instagram

Britt Lucas Bennett                                     Britt Lucas Bennett’s Website Britt Lucas Bennett on Instagram

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, is pleased to announce X-Rated (1972–1974), a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by William N. Copley. This is the fourth presentation of the artist’s work at the gallery, and the show will be on view through April 22, 2026. 

Lyles & King presents new paintings by Kate Meissner in our project space, on view through April 4. Kate Meissner writes: “These works are an exploration of the human body’s elasticity and capacity to metamorphose. Informed by my own experience of pregnancy and the birth of my first child last year, these paintings are a meditation…

Greta Kresse                                 Greta Kresse’s Website Greta Kresse on Instagram

PPOW are pleased to present Orchid Rain on the Underground, Chris “Daze” Ellis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The show is on view through April 25, 2026. Featuring a new series of paintings, multimedia installation, and a site-specific mural, the exhibition harnesses the passion and spontaneity of the graffiti movement of the 1970s and 80s while…

HESSE FLATOW is pleased to announce the opening of Franklin, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Nat Meade, marking his third solo presentation with the gallery. The show is on view through April 18, 2026. 

Mrs. is pleased to present The Light That Loses, The Night That Wins, Molly Bounds’ New York debut solo exhibition, on view at the gallery’s 6040 56th Drive location. This exhibition marks the Los Angeles-based artist’s second presentation with the gallery following The Armory Show in September 2025. The show will be on view through May…

Thiago Cosme Morales                                 Thiago Cosme Morales’s Website Thiago Cosme Morales on Instagram

Harper’s is pleased to announce Prussian Blue, New York–based artist Sophia Huitema’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new works by Huitema and will be on view through April 25, 2026. 

The second collaboration between French shoemaker Paraboot and Nottingham’s Universal Works puts the 1960s Thiers silhouette centre stage, bridging sport and city with lighter construction, natural leather and a shared belief that handmade means honestly made. It’s no surprise Paraboot and Universal Works have teamed up once again. Its first collaboration last year was so…

Holly Stephens and Georgia Pizzala from The Romans, won the Design Young Lions and will represent the UK at Cannes A landmark exit at Iris, a flurry of new ventures in sport, social and AI, and a month that proves the creative industry isn’t for standing still. Welcome to Booms & Shakes, our monthly round-up…

Most technology competes for your attention. Sunday is building the complete opposite, a new kind of robotics company focused on returning time to people’s lives. Its identity, created in collaboration with Moniker, strikes a careful balance between warmth and credibility. There is no shortage of bold claims in the world of AI and robotics. Every…

South African artist Cinga Samson’s exhibition of new paintings is titled ‘Ukuphuthelwa’, an isiXhosa word in the artist’s native language that translates as ‘unable to sleep’. Unlike the English word ‘insomnia’, the isiXhosa term carries no negative connotation and accordingly, for Samson, sleeplessness is not a condition to be cured but a state of spiritual…

As Warburtons turns 150, the Bristol-based studio has delivered a sweeping packaging redesign that finally puts the brand’s iconic orange to work. And it’s been rolled out confidently, across every loaf, crumpet and roll in the range. There’s something deeply reassuring about a brand that’s been around for as long as you can remember. Warburtons,…

Created in collaboration with Publicis London, ‘Porcelain’ is printed entirely on loo roll with skin-safe ink, turning product sampling into light-hearted bathroom reading for a new campaign. Publicis London and Cushelle have unveiled Porcelain, a limited-edition magazine printed on toilet paper that you can happily read on the loo before putting it down the pan.…

Welcome to the latest edition of Nuart Aberdeen. As far as we can ascertain, this will be the first street art festival in the world with a focus primarily on poetry and text-based works. Over the years, for better or worse, the large scale colourful figurative mural has come to dominate the culture we work…

Image licensed via Alamy / MauriceNorbert OpenAI just killed Sora without warning. Your favourite AI tool could be next. And that should give all of us serious pause. When OpenAI launched Sora, it landed like a thunderclap. A standalone app. A scrolling social feed. Hyper-realistic AI video conjured from a few lines of text. Within…

Image licensed via Alamy / MauriceNorbert OpenAI just killed Sora without warning. Your favourite AI tool could be next. And that should give all of us serious pause. When OpenAI launched Sora, it landed like a thunderclap. A standalone app. A scrolling social feed. Hyper-realistic AI video conjured from a few lines of text. Within…

Kristina Tzekova                                                     Kristina Tzekova’s Website Kristina Tzekova on Instagram

The British icon’s new spot on Lexington Street blends music, subculture, and modern retail to create a space that feels more like a museum than a store. Fashion is having a moment. You can feel it. Not just on runways, but on the streets, in culture, in the way brands are telling stories again. And…

Buenos Aires-based creative Kukso has turned the most overlooked moment in arcade history into a series of sculptures that are equal parts nostalgia trip and genuine art. As a lifelong gamer who grew up hammering buttons after school every day, I was completely floored. I’ll be honest with you. The moment I saw these sculptures,…

The non-alcoholic spirits category has a perception problem. Too many brands have leaned so hard into “better for you” that they’ve ended up apologising for what they actually are. La Borosa takes the opposite approach. And the packaging does a lot of the work. Have you ever had the challenge of designing in a category…

A Paris studio’s identity for a new Nantes arts venue proves that the most ambitious visual systems often begin with the smallest idea. There’s a perfect moment in graphic design when a system stops feeling like a rigid structure and starts behaving like a living, breathing thing. That’s exactly what Paris-based studio Atelier AAAAA has…

Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of new tennis court paintings by Jonas Wood. The gallery’s tenth exhibition of Wood’s work, and its first based in Los Angeles, will be on view through April 25, 2026. 

The internet willed it into existence. KFC obliged. Meet the Pickle Puffer: a wearable, drinkable tribute to the nation’s most chaotic food obsession. At some point in the recent past, someone generated a fake AI-generated video of a puffer jacket stuffed with pickles and pickle juice, posted it online, and the collective response was less…

The Auckland-based studio has built brands for businesses, campaigns, and causes. But their work with B416 – a New Zealand movement fighting to raise the minimum age for social media from 13 to 16 – might be their most important yet. There’s a version of this story that stays safely in the world of design.…

As war reshapes the world order and economic uncertainty tightens its grip, March’s typeface releases offer a welcome contrast: the act of making things carefully, and building them to last. March has been a bruising month so far. Energy bills climbing, markets rattled, and the conflict in the Middle East casting a long shadow over…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock When a reader flagged concerns about concept work, it opened a debate that often goes under the radar in the design profession. A couple of weeks back, we published a feature on a vibrant cannabis brand identity. But the feedback from one reader took us by surprise. Rather than engaging…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock When a reader flagged concerns about concept work, it opened a debate that often goes under the radar in the design profession. A couple of weeks back, we published a feature on a vibrant cannabis brand identity. But the feedback from one reader took us by surprise. Rather than engaging…

Perrotin is pleased to present Borrowed Chord, Danielle Orchard’s second exhibition in Paris and her seventh with the gallery. The exhibition brings together new works that deepen her engagement with figuration, intimacy, and the history of painting. Borrowing its title from a musical term describing a harmony drawn from a parallel key, the exhibition reflects Orchard’s…

Maura Pompili (left), aka @ARVEN92, is one of the top sellers on DeviantArt The world’s biggest online art community now has a creator-friendly monetisation system, and tens of thousands are already cashing in. You’ve put the work in. You’ve built an audience. You’re posting on social regularly. And people genuinely love what you make. So…

What a Brooklyn waiter who’d been at the same restaurant for 30 years taught Athletics’ Head of Client Experience about the difference between good service and something truly memorable. When my parents first visited after I moved to New York in 2011, I took them to Henry’s End in Brooklyn Heights for its famed Steak…

Now in its third year, NDF returns to Lancaster this May with a people-first programme, a bespoke new typeface rooted in medieval history, and a billboard campaign asking big questions about northern creative identity. There’s a question the organisers of Northern Design Festival get asked every year: why Lancaster? The answer, it turns out, is…

GRIMM is pleased to present Vignettes & Mutations, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles–based artist Eric White on view through May 2, 2026. This is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition with GRIMM and his third solo exhibition at the New York gallery.

Air founders: Shane Hegde and Tyler Strand While most AI tools are declaring war on creative jobs, one platform is taking the opposite approach. And on 24 March, it’s shifting things up a gear. Spend any time following AI, and you’ll notice a pattern. Every few days, a new model launches with breathless claims about…

With a line-up including some of the biggest indie bands ever, this year’s Teenage Cancer Trust gigs are being promoted with artwork created by one of the UK’s leading designers. Veteran music industry designer Andy Vella has created a series of gig posters and art prints for all the bands performing at this year’s Teenage…

Cezar Berje                                                                                                          …

Alicia McCarthy’s abstract and colourful compositions instantly capture the viewer’s attention. From afar, the use of repeated geometric patterns recalls the Op Art of the 1960s. A closer look yet reveals that these optical effects aren’t engineered and calculated by machines with mathematical precision, but the result of a spontaneous gesture. McCarthy’s modular blocks of…

Galaxy’s new campaign tackles the deeply ingrained habit women have of downplaying their achievements. Creative Boom’s Katy Cowan reflects on why this campaign hits close to home – and what a back injury taught her about the difference between modesty and erasure. There’s a question I couldn’t have answered two years ago. Not because I…

Swiss paper specialist Winter & Company is bringing the beloved Coloursource range to designers worldwide. And to mark the occasion, they’ve commissioned a series of stunning hand-made paper sculptures by photographer Susan Castillo. When it comes to being a creative, you can’t beat the feeling of finding a material that behaves as you always hoped.…

“What I paint is something that no longer exists,” Francisco Rodríguez says. “Like how the stars we’re looking at are already dead—their light reaches us after they’ve turned to dust.” He describes his practice simply: “I’m painting dust—memories of places that no longer exist.”

Area in use for 22º Bienal Sesc, Videobrasil, project by Luciana Facchini. Pictures by Nino Andrés These beautifully crafted typefaces from Blaze Type will sharpen your layouts and bring genuine character to every page. Typography is one of those things that separates good editorial design from great editorial design… and great from genuinely memorable. The…

Gonzalo Palaveccino                                             Gonzalo Palaveccino on Instagram

The global agency has bottled the energy of E1 into a whisky pack that earns its shelf price through craft and contradiction rather than any heritage cliché. East London Liquor Company has launched its first blended whisky, and the pack design is as much a statement about place as it is about product. Created by…

Creative Director Daniel Irizarry of Athletics argues that the most resilient brand systems aren’t built on exhaustive rules – they’re anchored by a few essential elements, and designed to move. Most brand systems don’t fail because they’re poorly designed. They fail because they’re overdesigned — too many rules, too much rigidity, too little room for…

JKR had a rare brief: don’t fix what’s broken, amplify what’s already there. The result is a sharper Firefox and its first-ever mascot. For designers, there’s a particular kind of branding challenge that looks simple on paper but is actually a complicated beast. Firefox already had one of the most recognisable logos on the internet,…

Casey Bolding’s paintings make memory material. Using plaster and industrial paint in concert with oil, acrylic, and Flashe, the artist builds up densely layered surfaces which he then scrapes and reworks, excavating embedded imagery drawn from mementos, photographs, and art history. As personal as they are process-based, Bolding’s paintings of landscapes and interiors are particularly…

As dream projects go, drawing a 100-page reference atlas covering every corner of the Star Wars universe is right up there. Return of the Jedi came out when I was 13, and I became obsessed with creating a role-playing game based on the Star Wars universe. I had no idea about licensing back then, and…

Opal Mae Ong                                         Opal Mae Ong’s Website Opal Mae Ong on Instagram

Josh Lilley is proud to present No Swans, an exhibition of new work by Providence based painter Timothy Lai (b. 1987, Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia). The landscape around Lai’s home has been the chief source of inspiration for this series of paintings executed across the past autumn and winter. Salter Grove Memorial Park conjoins the bluntly…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock From imposter syndrome to learning to say no, the early years are genuinely tough. But your peers provide the proof that things get better. Early in my career, I used to present work standing up. Not because anyone told me to, but because standing up felt like the correct shape…

Gute Laune Brille, worn by the artist The Design Academy Eindhoven graduate is merging art and product design to create sculptural eyewear rooted in nature and evolution. “Everything that we consume once belonged to nature and will eventually return,” says Béla Bezold, an artist and eyewear designer creating lava-like spectacles for the future. “So when…

Jackson Howell                                                                 Jackson Howell on Instagram

Image licensed via Adobe Stock You start shell-shocked, but it might actually lead to something better. Here’s how creatives are turning redundancy into the best thing that ever happened to them. It’s an ordinary Tuesday. You’re making coffee, answering emails, maybe thinking about lunch. Then a message appears: a meeting request from HR, a phone…

Public Gallery is pleased to present Sill, a solo exhibition of new painting and sculpture by Berlin-based artist Cathrin Hoffmann, whose subjects embody the physical intensity and psychological fatigue engendered by an age of information overload. No longer performing exaggerated gestures of desire or grotesque theatricality, Hoffmann’s figures inhabit states of sustained tension and accumulating pressure,…

Pen Densham with the R. Wyman office installation “Fluent Chords” The writer and producer of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is currently forging a fresh career in photography. Pen Densham shares his life lessons on creative courage and the crippling cost of holding back. After more than 50 years in the creative industries, Pen Densham‘s…

For World Down Syndrome Day 2026, CoorDown’s ‘Just Evolve’ campaign asks us all to leave harmful language behind. For me, it’s deeply personal – and long overdue. My first words were my aunty’s name. She had Down syndrome, and she was my best friend for my entire life. I’ve been sitting with this campaign this…

When a portable toilet startup asks for a full brand identity, most agencies might flush the brief straight in the bin. Lark Design sat down and got to work. There’s a particular kind of brief that separates the genuinely strategic designer from the merely decorative one. It’s the brief where the product is brilliant, but…

Reave Dennison                             Reave Dennison’s Website Reave Dennison on Instagram

Still from Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, 2022 by Ayoung Kim © 2026 MASI Lugano’s K-NOW! Korean Video Art Today showcases eight handpicked artists who are pushing boundaries in film, VR, and audiovisual art, created between 2016 and 2024. Five hundred hours of new footage are uploaded to YouTube every sixty seconds. And that’s just one site.…

Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way explores contemporary Latinx artists’ innovations and interventions within established traditions of painting, inviting discussion on a variety of themes and revealing the diversity and expansiveness present within the field. The fifty-eight artists in the exhibition—and those in the Latinx field more broadly—encourage us to interrogate the continued relevance of…

Romario Dudok van Heel From folk embroidery to naïve brushwork and ampersands that bloom, our fictional florist brief inspired some of the most inventive branding we’ve seen yet. Boom Briefs, if you haven’t come across them before, are our monthly creative challenges: fictional briefs designed to get your ideas flowing, stretch your skills, and, if…

Sometimes, one clear, well-executed idea can take you a long way. Illustrator Craig Boylan discusses how he developed his uniquely playful creative style. Stepping from the world of graphic design or animation into freelance illustration can be daunting for a whole range of reasons. One of the toughest things about it is finding your own…

Crown Creative’s identity for Barkhouse, a luxury New York dog hotel, solves one of branding’s more unusual briefs: two audiences, one of whom has zero interest in your typography. Every creative brief has a tension at its heart. Usually it’s something like: make it “premium but accessible”, or “bold but timeless”. But for Crown Creative’s…

Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present No Coward Soul, a solo exhibition by Kansas City-based artist Rachel Gregor. Inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1846 poem No Coward Soul Is Mine, Rachel Gregor’s latest body of work explores faith without religion, resilience without certainty, and the fragile boundary between dread and hope.

Philipp Treudt                                                                             Philipp Treudt’s Website Philipp Treudt on Instagram

The Amsterdam-based artist turns everyday objects into meditative studies of colour and form. When a simple idea is executed well, it can be utterly satisfying. And when we mean simple, we mean the objects that you look at all the time – or the tools you might use every day. Hugo Rocci is a master…

The Paris-based illustrator transformed Hermès’ ‘Venture Beyond’ theme into a technicolour underwater world where the sea becomes sky. When you’re working with a well-known brand, it can sometimes be tricky to navigate legacy, tight briefs, and creative freedom. But when a brand like Hermès reaches out, you know you’re in for an exciting experience. The…

Richard Heller Gallery is pleased to present, Reading the Rooms, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Gretchen Scherer. This will be Gretchen’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

NANZUKA is pleased to present “Good Looking,” a solo exhibition of new works by Raymond Lemstra at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND. This exhibition marks the artist’s second solo show at NANZUKA following his first exhibition in Japan held at 3110NZ by LDH Kitchen (now Sushi Saito Hanare NANZUKA) in 2024. The show will be on through April…

Bethia Connolly From Alpine ski resorts to Melbourne agencies and Dubai boardrooms, designers and art directors are voting with their passports. But it’s not all postcard-perfect: the picture is a lot more complicated than that. Recently, we posted on LinkedIn asking whether creatives were actually leaving the UK, or just thinking about it. We expected…

Kate, Brett & Vicky (Leeds). Photo by Jemma Mickleburgh From Belfast to Brighton, creatives are swapping algorithm feeds for real conversation… and loving every minute of it. If you’ve ever felt invisible in your own industry (heads down, working solo, scrolling through feeds and wondering where all the energy went), Creative Boom IRL might be…

Solo Exhibition, The Garden, Etage Projects. Credit: Robert Damisch The Copenhagen-based artist uses digital jacquard weaving to tell the stories history forgot. When you look back on textile traditions, the beautiful, tactile medium has long encompassed weaving, dyeing, and embroidery as ways of telling stories or marking moments in history. For Marie Holst, she is…

Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present Window Shopping, a solo exhibition of new mixed-media paintings by Melissa Brown. Utilizing a combination of screen-printed photographs hybridized with passages painted in impasto or airbrush, Brown mines the rich topography of New York City store windows. With historical precedents like Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol who famously engaged…

Julija Panova                                                                                 Julija Panova on Instagram

Image licensed via Adobe Stock You didn’t mean it to sound like that. But it did. Whether it’s a curt reply, an overly formal sign-off, or a “per my last email” that could turn milk sour, the way we write at work shapes how people feel about us – often without us realising. Here’s how…

Lucky Generals’ latest work for Yorkshire Tea is funny, human, and quietly brilliant. And yes, it made us want another brew. There are moments in life that call for the good stuff. Not the everyday bag-dunked-in-a-mug routine, but something a bit more considered. A touch of the special. A Yorkshire Gold, if you will. That’s…

José Manuel Vega’s bold new branding project proves the cannabis industry doesn’t have to look like, well, the cannabis industry… and the results are gloriously, unapologetically fun. There’s a creative challenge that doesn’t get talked about enough: what do you do when you’re designing for a category so visually established that breaking from it feels…

We talk to illustrator Dan Woodger, who is running the London Marathon and creating a huge crowdfunded artwork for charity. He’s laced up his high-performance trainers. He’s got his iPad and stylus. And illustrator Dan Woodger has launched a project that combines his favourite mode of transport – running – with his vocation: drawing, drawing,…

On view in downtown Los Angeles at Corey Helford Gallery in Chloe Early’s new body of work, Futures. Early’s paintings unfurl like fragments of an unwritten film—half-lit figures caught in a hush of nostalgia, their surfaces alive with a delicate interplay of glaze and abrasion. The effect is at once theatrical and intimate, a lyricism…

Deb JJ Lee                                                 Deb JJ Lee’s Website Deb JJ Lee on Instagram

If you happen to be Antwerp this week, and maybe you are, Laurent Proux, one of our favorite French painters, is opening Out of the Blue with GNYP Gallery. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock From the design-saturated optimism of the 1980s to corporate consolidation, austerity and AI, designer Paul Leon traces forty years of the UK creative industry, and makes the case for why the disenchantment many feel right now might just be the beginning of something better. Over the last 40 years, the…

Clementine’s Bookshelf, 2021 © Hilary Pecis Edited by Olivia Clark, Phaidon’s new book gathers more than 200 works across centuries, tracing the feline’s influence on artists and pop culture. It seems like cats have always been loved by humans (dog lovers, look away). They’ve been worshipped, mummified, associated with deities, prized for their mouse-catching abilities…

François Ghebaly New York is proud to present Rise above it, John Rivas’ second solo exhibition with the gallery and first time presenting at the Lower East Side location.

Lola Delafuente, junior creative at 20(SOMETHING), reflects on the jump from university to studio life, and why fixing the gap between education and industry matters more than glossy International Women’s Day panels. If you’d asked me in my final year at university how ready I was for the creative industry, I’d have said: completely. With…

Alice Angelini                                                                                 Alice Angelini’s Website Alice Angelini on Instagram

Subliminal Projects is pleased to present MODULAR FREQUENCY, an exhibition by gallery founder Shepard Fairey. This show features eighteen new mixed-media works, highlighting the artist’s latest explorations in visual distillation and synthesis. Fairey merges imagery, symbols, and text into modular geometric compositions, creating a resonant visual language that bridges abstraction, design, and cultural commentary.

The London-based artist uses household materials to create theatrical, sculptural, performative self-portraits. Maya Golyshkina is a self-taught artist whose greatest inspiration comes from what’s around her. More specifically, the household objects – bags, cardboard boxes, anything really – that she can snip up, rip up, tape up and turn into a fantastical creation. In her…

From ferret clubs to bog snorkellers and devoted memorabilia hoarders, the Welsh photographer documents the rituals and passions that bind people together. Why, as humans, are we drawn towards collecting things? There are many reasons, in fact. It could be the thrill of the hunt – that feeling of diving into a bucket of bargains…

We go behind the scenes of the spicy vodka collaboration to uncover how flavour, heritage and screen-print craft shaped one of 2026’s most eye-catching bottles. It would’ve been hard to miss the recent news that Absolut and Tabasco have joined forces. What’s more, seeing a premium Swedish vodka paired with a 150-year-old Louisiana hot sauce…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Before posting about my experience, I softened my language, added disclaimers, and reassured everyone that I love men. The fact that I felt I needed to do that, it turns out, is the whole story. Last week, I posted something on LinkedIn that I’d been sitting on for the best…

pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present Always Never, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Oakland-based artist Linda Geary. Geary’s practice has long been rooted in collage, cutting, masking, and deliberate construction. Building up color, shape, and pattern through layered compositions, she develops paintings where structure and revision unfold together. In Always Never,…

Chihuahua © Monica Loya The Mexico City painter uses pastel palettes and surreal scenarios to question reality – and our place within it. When you have a gander at Monica Loya’s artworks, you might at first absorb the delightful and satisfying colour palettes – the cherry pinks, baby blues, velvet greens and soft beige shades.…

Sestry Feldman at Pictoplasma Berlin 2025. Photography by Diego Castro The world’s leading conference on character creativity returns to Berlin this May, and it’s shaping up to be unmissable. And Creative Boom will be attending once again. If you’ve never heard of Pictoplasma, allow us to fix that immediately. Now in its 22nd edition, the…

Tonic Health has ditched clinical clichés and pastel wellness promises in favour of a striking new identity built around the idea of light as clarity. In the UK, nine out of ten adults aren’t getting the nutrients they need, with more than half of daily meals made up of ultra-processed foods. The supplement category should,…

The newly launched studio’s debut project proves that the most useful thing a renovation app can be is the person who’s already been through it. For anyone who’s ever experienced the stress of renovating their home, here’s a trigger warning. This article is all about the rebranding of the renovation planning platform Hey, Barb. And…

Costanza Starrabba aka Starrenco                                                 Starrenco on Instagram

Notoriously one of the most challenging objects to conceive, the chair is also among the most resonant forms an artist or designer can undertake. Intimately bound to the human body, it requires a negotiation with ergonomics, whether in pursuit of comfort or in defiance of function. Its ubiquity has made it fertile ground for material…

Sarah J Coleman’s cover for the Wuthering Heights 200th anniversary edition Should you judge a book by its cover? Of course you should! We talk to a selection of amazing artists whose book jackets have been catching the eye. They say our attention spans are shortening. And that our appreciation of nuance has become limited…

A charging buffalo, a somersaulting samurai cat and a ghostly flame-throwing organist walk into a living room. Funny, yes. But is the industry leaning on strangeness as a substitute for strategy… or has it simply found something that works? Something’s been happening in advertising for a while now, and the new Domino’s campaign is a…

For the first in a series of designer collaborations, Balmoral Defender tapped the Brooklyn agency to create something that feels more fashion editorial than car commercial… complete with a dual-logo system, edition numbering and a film shot across Brooklyn and Tribeca. Fashion and automotive collaborations often don’t go much deeper than a logo swap and…

Kanal isn’t a traditional museum, and Base Design’s identity doesn’t treat it like one. The system spans visual, sonic and behavioural layers, all designed to flex as the institution grows. When Brussels’ former Citroën garage reopens in November 2026, it won’t be as a showroom. The 40,000-square-metre site is becoming Kanal, a new cultural centre…

One of the leading postmodern painters of the last fifty years, David Salle’s art is one of juxtaposition, and his artistic “style” is the integration of disparate, contrasting styles. Since the 1980s, Salle has plucked compelling imagery from art history, print advertising and, most extensively, his own photographs. He uses this source material to create…

Simchowitz is pleased to present So Far Out of Sight, a solo exhibition of new work by Lily Ramírez, on view at Hill House Pasadena. In So Far Out of Sight, Lily Ramírez approaches painting as a space of quiet reckoning, an arena where memory, perception, and feeling converge. Rooted in ongoing conversations with the self and reflections on…

Hello Kitty. Irfan_setiawan – stock.adobe.com Fifty years on, Hello Kitty remains one of the most recognised characters on the planet — not through reinvention, but through patient stewardship. Rebecca Demmellash of Pearlfisher explores what brand custodians can learn from the woman who spent half a century listening. She’s not a cat, she’s a little girl…

Discover why How&How built a sleep-friendly ice cream brand, Snooz, by tearing up every visual rule in the category playbook. There’s a particular kind of brief that arrives fully loaded. Not in the sense of being demanding or complicated, but in the sense that the insight is so clean, so surprising, the work practically tells…

The social film borrows the look of viral skincare routines, then swaps serums and gentle exfoliants for heavy metals and exhaust fumes. It’s designed to make city pollution feel as visceral as it actually is. Most beauty campaigns are glowy and glossy, so why has luxury skincare brand NIOD gone in the opposite direction? Created…

AXA XL is excited to announce the launch of the ninth edition of the AXA Art Prize in the United States, a leading platform dedicated to emerging figurative artists. This prestigious competition invites undergraduate and graduate students from across the country to submit their innovative paintings, drawings, and prints. The deadline for submissions is March…

Xenia Gray                                 Xenia Gray’s Website Xenia Gray on Instagram

Wuthering Heights. Image licensed via Adobe Stock From Barbie to Wuthering Heights, brand collaborations have become the default response to every cultural moment. Matt Herbert, co-founder at Tracksuit, asks whether the industry is confusing short-term buzz with long-term brand building — and what it really takes to collaborate with purpose. It can feel like every…

GRIMM is delighted to present No Longer, Not Yet – Paintings on Paper, an exhibition of new work by Jonathan Wateridge on view at the Amsterdam gallery through March 28, 2026. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery,  and his first in Amsterdam.

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Right now, something bigger than a seasonal slowdown seems to be happening. We take the temperature of the creative community, and some of their experiences may shock you. A designer posted a question on Creative Boom’s Instagram last week that made my stomach drop in recognition. They’d lost their job,…

Tebo Mpanza, co-founder and client director at Unfound Studio, reflects on the pressure for certainty, the cost of constant momentum, and the slow return to creative meaning through restraint, relationships and purpose. The start of a new year has a way of demanding certainty. There is an unspoken expectation that in January you should have…

Valentine’s Day might be over, but CERCA is rethinking romance for the long haul – with a rebrand by Saint-Urbain that swaps anonymous swiping for connection through mutual friends. Dating apps have become dominated by anonymous swiping and opaque algorithms, but CERCA is attempting something a bit different. Now, with a new identity by New…

Brazilian studio MELT Design turned one family’s extraordinary migration story into chocolate bar packaging no rival brand could replicate. There’s a version of the Clemens Chocolate project that never gets written about. In that version, MELT Design takes a brief about artisanal organic chocolate, reaches for the usual vocabulary (warm browns, botanical illustration, a tasteful…

Marking Demetrius Wilson’s sixth career solo, and second with Half Gallery, Light in a Dark Mirror is formed around Demetrius’s fascination with human psychological “darkness” and how we carry it through life. Being that we start & end in “the dark,” he argues it must be true that we carry some form of it with us always, almost like an…

Two RCA creatives explain how the college gave them the space, the tools and the critical grounding to do something genuinely new with AI. AI is everywhere in the creative industries right now: in the hype, in the anxiety, in the tools themselves. But between the breathless enthusiasm and the fevered backlash, a more interesting…

We talk to Vicki Ashurst, who has stepped from clean and considered identity design into the wild world of tattoo-inspired merch and NFTs Based in South Wales, Vicki Ashurst has a portfolio full of fine branding work, plenty of experience, and she loves being strategic and purposeful in her work. But working in studios, impressing…

Suri toothbrushes From refillable deodorant to e-ink notebooks, these are the everyday upgrades that prove good design and sustainability are no longer mutually exclusive. We asked the Creative Boom community a simple question: what have you swapped out that genuinely feels like an upgrade? The response was overwhelming. Dozens of designers, art directors, illustrators and…

As AI tools, software and hyper-polished visuals dominate modern workflows, many designers are rediscovering the creative power of slowing down. Matteo Di Iorio of Interstate explores why sketching remains one of the most valuable and human parts of the design process. Who’d have thought that in this brave new world, where design often begins with…

David Kaminsky                                         David Kaminsky’s Website David Kaminsky on Instagram

Perrotin Los Angeles is delighted to present a new solo exhibition by Takashi Murakami, Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis. Freshly inspired by a visit to Monet’s Giverny, Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) explores the relationship between ukiyo-e and Impressionism in a suite of 24 new paintings at Perrotin Los Angeles. The latest works…

L-R: Jolyon Varley, Liz Stone and Ben Gordon of OK COOL New leaders, new practices, new cities… and a sense the creative industry is quietly rewiring itself for what comes next. Welcome to Booms & Shakes, our monthly round-up of the hires, promotions, partnerships and stories making waves across the creative world. And there’s no…

No laptops, no Slack, and a live brief for children’s literacy charity BookTrust – Special Projects’ executive course at the Royal College of Art is the antithesis of the modern boardroom, but that’s precisely the point. I arrived at the Royal College of Art with my laptop in my bag and my inner productivity gremlin…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Saving for retirement as a freelancer feels like a struggle when you’re surviving month to month. But not doing so would be a big mistake. Here’s how to get started. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series tackling the questions that keep creatives up at night. This…

With a bold colour palette, modular ‘C’ system and a renewed tone of voice, FORM Brands Studio’s work positions circularity as collaboration in action. The Circular Economy Institute (CEI) has unveiled a new brand identity by FORM Brands Studio, designed to position the organisation as a global, collaborative force driving the shift beyond waste. Following…

Nine nights; Strange fruit brings together a new body of paintings by London-based artist Shaqúelle Whyte that trace the emotional and temporal reverberations of familial grief. Rather than unfolding as a linear account, the exhibition forms a constellation of moments that draw upon the Jamaican funerary tradition of Nine Nights and the historic resonance of…

In February 2026, SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) will return to Jeffrey Deitch to exhibit the latest complete segment in the expansion of The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, fifty years after its initial production.

Louise Sloper. Portrait by Rankin The executive creative director of SWC and TypoCircle chair shares hard-won lessons from the Bacardi Untameable campaign… including when you should bin the grid. Most designers, if they’re honest, treat typography as the bit that happens after the interesting decisions have been made. The photography gets art-directed, the concept gets…

Ben has been creating spot illustrations for Martin Coul’s podcast, The Hushed The leading British illustrator on how he’s adapting to the new realities of the creative scene while keeping it fresh at every turn. It was the mid-noughties when Ben O’Brien – AKA Ben the Illustrator – first sauntered onto the creative scene. The…

Olivier Lavenac                                                                                 Olivier Lavenac’s Website Olivier Lavenac on Instagram

Vielmetter Los Angeles is thrilled to present Hayv Kahraman’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, Libations, on view through March 21st, 2026. Marking Kahraman’s first exhibition in Los Angeles since her displacement resulting from the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena, the artist’s newest body of work responds to an urgent question precipitated by the catastrophic events…

Jessica Walsh We’re delighted to welcome Jessica Walsh to Creative Boom. In her first column, she argues that branding has become too safe and interchangeable, and makes the case for expressive, human-crafted typography as one of the last true ways to stand out in an AI-driven world. Typography has always been the quiet backbone of…

Image licensed on Adobe Stock The creative freelancers that clients are desperate to keep? They aren’t always the most skilled. They’re the ones who show up, speak up and understand the bigger picture. We tend to assume that the quality of the work is what keeps a freelancer on speed dial. A sharper eye, a…

Suncoast by Tipotype Valentine’s Day is done and dusted, the month is flying by, and the type world has been quietly busy. Here’s what caught my eye in February. We’re well past the midpoint of February now. The post-January slump is officially over and, if this month’s type releases are anything to go by, the…

Graphic artist Anthony Burrill discusses building the War Child Pavilion at Glastonbury Festival, the importance of creative freedom, and making work that actually says something. There’s a question that quietly haunts every artist who’s been around a while: Am I actually saying something, or am I just making things look nice? Anthony Burrill, the graphic…

From our friends at CAN: After 10 years of history in Madrid, and coinciding with the close of the 4th edition of CAN Art Fair Ibiza on the island, we feel that the time has come to take the next step. UVNT Art Fair (Urvanity Art) is transforming into CAN Art Fair Madrid, bringing both…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Members of the creative community share their views on the platforms that once promised connection but increasingly deliver only exhaustion. There was a time when social media felt like a gift to creative professionals. A free portfolio. A global studio door, flung open. A place where your work could find…

A storybook serif, a Swiss workhorse and a riot of colour: we explore the typographic thinking behind United Us’s rebrand of Buttle UK. When a charity’s biggest problem is that it’s too quiet, you don’t start with colour. You start with voice. And voice, in brand design, begins with type. That’s the lesson at the…

The filmmaker and creative director’s work in set design is a masterclass in craft, personal storytelling and adapting visuals for different spaces. There’s a moment in Michael Morpurgo’s Pinocchio at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, where the performers raise transparent umbrellas dripping with cherry blossoms, bathed in hot pink neon light. It’s the kind of image…

The Brooklyn-based tattoo artist has built an international practice on a radical premise. Clients bring feelings, not mood boards, and he does the rest. There’s a running joke in the creative industries about the dream client. The one who turns up with a vague but genuine emotional impulse, says something like “I trust you”, and…

Monya Rowe Gallery is pleased to announce the first New York solo exhibition by Lily Taylor titled Left Open. The opening reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, February 19, 6-8 PM.

Courtesy of Makiko Harris. Photo by Ben Pipe Three award-winning creatives explain how the Royal College of Art transformed their practice, their confidence and their sense of possibility. Applying for a master’s is a big decision. When it means leaving a career you love, moving to a new country, or stepping into an institution where…

The Birmingham designer’s “anti-placement placement” is part bootcamp, part studio safari, part masterclass in confidence. When a design student lands a placement, they typically know how it goes. Shadow someone, do a bit of work, make the tea, then leave. Luke Tonge, a Birmingham-based designer and co-founder of the Birmingham Design Festival, looked at that…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Feeling trapped in the middle? Here’s how to navigate the murky waters between junior and senior when the path forward isn’t clear. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series where the creative community helps solve the industry’s trickiest problems. This week’s dilemma speaks to a typically underserved…

All images ©️ & TM Aardman. All rights reserved In an age of AI-generated everything, Aardman is celebrating its half-century by pairing plasticine with a live orchestra. And there’s a lesson in that for all of us. If you look closely at Wallace—the cheese-obsessed, gadget-building Yorkshireman who, alongside his silent, long-suffering dog Gromit, became the…

The man himself, Stanley Chow The famous illustrator, artist and DJ, along with Wild in Art, has launched a new trail that spotlights 21 brilliant creatives, turning Manchester’s streets into a vibrant showcase of local talent. When I first moved to Manchester, I found myself in an old mill warehouse tucked behind Oxford Road. It…

Daniel Dorsa                                                                                                          …

Eve Warren’s wedding Can they resist designing their own big days? Or is the occasion too irresistible to style? We find out from three leading creatives how they approached their own weddings. Most graphic designers live in a world we can’t even imagine. They see inspiration everywhere. They mentally rebrand a café menu while waiting…

Voorlinden is proud to present the first major museum-wide retrospective of the work of Claire Tabouret (1981). The French painter’s solo exhibition Weaving Waters, Weaving Gestures showcases the remarkable breadth of her oeuvre, her boundary-defying practices, and her exploration of complex themes such as identity and human relationships. In addition to this solo exhibition, her stained-glass windows…

The Secret Language of Flora Meet one of the rising stars in illustration, with a style inspired by elegant motion, vitality, Chinese philosophy and abstract perspectives. One of the most difficult things for many young illustrators is settling on a style that sets them apart from all the rest and is comfortable to work in.…

Galerie Nordenhake Mexico City is pleased to present Zigzags and Curves, an exhibition by Sarah Crowner that brings together her sustained research into geometry, abstraction, and the expanded language of painting. Presented across two sites – the gallery’s Mexico City space and Casa Roja in Lomas de Chapultepec—the exhibition takes its title from the fundamental graphic…

At Pentawards Festival in Paris, Paula Scher and new industrial design partner Piotr Woronkowicz made a compelling case for 3D thinking – showing how systems, structure and tactility can futureproof a brand. When you think of world-renowned design firm Pentagram, your mind doesn’t immediately go toward packaging design. Yet there they were on the Pentawards…

Rochelle Marie Adam                                                                                     Rochelle Marie Adam’s Website Rochelle Marie Adam on Instagram

Photo by Lorna Allen What started as a request for resolutions became a book, an exhibition and a conceptual framework for a whole year of work. Back in December, artist and designer Sarah Boris emailed friends, artists, writers and musicians with a single request: “send me 10 resolutions”. She wasn’t planning a book; she was…

Design by Sunnie From logos that double as measuring tools to reimagined ceramic objects, our community proved that sustainable design doesn’t need to shout; it just needs to be beautiful, clever and worth keeping. January arrived with its usual promise of fresh starts. But for Boom Brief #6, we weren’t interested in performative sustainability or…

OSCAR MURILLO (b. 1986, La Paila, Colombia) has developed a multifaceted and challenging practice that spans painting, collaborative projects, video, sound and installation. Through each body of work, the artist probes ideas of collectivity and shared culture, demonstrating a commitment to the power of material presence alongside complex meditations on contemporary society.

How the London studio helped turn an ambitious urban transport idea into a brand people could trust and see coming to life. Cities are busier than ever. Our roads are heavily congested, and public transport is increasingly overstretched. Getting from A to B has never been so challenging, which is why it’s interesting to learn…

“I want to create spatial, sculptural and digital installations with a message,” says the cutting-edge 3D artist and animator. Animation aficionados will experience an instant sense of warmth browsing reels created by Ukrainian animator Nadiia Pliamko. Ranging from the cutely curious to the grotesque, her films are saturated with odd and uncomfortable details – both…

Bloom held on to Tango’s boldness, British mischief, and intense flavour hit, but stripped out the expected in its new identity, making it credible to younger audiences who can spot when brands are trying too hard. Tango has teased a first look at its new identity, designed by branding agency Bloom, ahead of the official…

Billy Cowden Joy Rigard and Jamie at 156 Sewardstone Road in 1978 © Joyce Edwards Found after the photographer’s death at 99, Joyce Edwards’ previously unseen portraits document the people who reclaimed abandoned homes and went on to create a rare social housing project that still survives today. When filmmaker Derek Smith began sorting through…

Michelob Ultra 2026 Super Bowl ad featured actors Kurt Russell, left, and Lewis Pullman. Via Anheuser-Busch Who better to appraise, dismantle and debate this year’s biggest ads than Leith’s head of new business, Cori Schwabe (an American) and Debbie Morgan, Leith’s head of art (a Scot), two people hard‑wired to see the same work in…

Designed by Iris to fuel participation, the campaign invites us to spot it, share it and debate how it could even work. Are you old enough to remember when Pizza Hut first made its mark in the UK? The American chain might as well have been a space rocket landing when it became a fixture…

The Long Beach Museum of Art is pleased to present Jux founder Robert Williams: Fearless Depictions, a survey exhibition featuring 57 paintings spanning from 2001 to the present, along with two large-scale sculptures by the iconic Southern California artist. Robert Williams’ epic, cartoon-inspired history paintings draw deeply from American vernacular culture and its visual slang,…

New York is fast, demanding, and full of strong opinions, but for designers, it’s also a place of constant learning. Koto’s Hailey (SoJeong) Kim shares how working in the city has sharpened her craft, confidence, and creative voice. New York has a reputation for intensity, but that word barely scratches the surface. Yes, everything moves…

Boiled Egg #2 © Terawat Teankaprasith The Bangkok-based artist transforms everyday edible objects, such as eggs and dipping sauces, into hyper-real, mouthwatering works of art. When Terawat Teankaprasith looks at objects, he doesn’t just see the thing in front of him. Rather, he analyses its composition, consuming its hues, contours, and textures, and considers how…

The farmer co-owned Fairtrade brand unveils its most significant rebrand to date, swapping dark, predictable cues for joyful colour, hand-drawn illustration and a renewed focus on taste. Chocolate is having a moment. From craft bars to cult packaging drops, it’s become one of the most competitive and creatively ambitious categories in branding. For studios, it’s…

Digital transformation in vocational learning settings is a detailed subject. Karmijn Simons’s illustration skills have been crucial in communicating key themes in the process. MBO Digitaal is a Dutch organisation that helps schools and educators implement digital systems to support vocational learning. However, the aim isn’t to introduce digital tools for the sake of it…

Harman Projects, in conjunction with Spoke Art and Deadly Prey Gallery, is pleased to announce an exhibition of hand-painted movie posters from Ghana. The origin of this artistic movement has its roots in the 1980s with the rise of mobile cinemas across the country of Ghana. Promotional posters were created to support these traveling VHS…

Janie Korn © Ben Deakin Photography From cherub mugs to whimsical wax candles, the London-based artist moulds everyday objects into playful curiosities for your home. Do you ever just look at your kitchen and think – why have all the same white plates from Ikea, stacked on an ugly shelf, sticking out like a cluttered…

Emmalyn Pure                                 Emmalyn Pure’s Website Emmalyn Pure on Instagram

Megan Mulrooney is pleased to present Taut, our first solo exhibition of abstracted still life paintings with Los Angeles-based artist Annie Pendergrast. Flowers, vases, stripes, grids, and looping forms recur across the exhibition, rendered in precise gradients and graphic color combinations. The works feel simultaneously playful and controlled: blooms swell to near-cartoon proportions, stems curl…

IN Residence, 2023 © Audrey Large. Photography by UniversPlaza From molten lamps to virtual reality, the French designer creates objects that play with light, texture and perception in mesmerising ways. “I like fluid materials that play with light, whether they reflect or absorb it, textures that cannot really be described or grasped, and combining contradictory…

François Ghebaly is proud to present Golden Days, Dabin Ahn’s solo exhibition at the gallery’s Los Angeles space. Painter and sculptor Dabin Ahn transforms personal objects, Korean ceramic vessels, and other ephemeral still-life elements into sites of passage. Drawing from 20th century art history, Joseon dynasty porcelain traditions, and his own imagination, he creates sensitive, meticulously painted…

© Paul Saltzman. All Rights Reserved. One of the iconic photos Paul Saltzman took of The Beatles in Rishikesh, India The director of 343 films and counting shares some hard-earned lessons on having a purpose, trusting your instincts and how meaningful work can create ripples beyond measure. In 1968, aged 23, Canadian Paul Saltzman travelled…

Maurizio Rampa                                             Maurizio Rampa’s Website

Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Krzysztof Grzybacz’s latest body of work in his first solo exhibition at the gallery in Brussels. Behind its seemingly polished framework, To Empty Out emerges as an exhibition beautifully rife with contradictions that overlay serious and playful themes according to Grzybacz, who often sets out to “clash the forces” of…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock From cautious optimism to complete exhaustion, members of our community share their emotions as we navigate towards the year ahead. February has arrived with its characteristic grey skies and stubbornly short days. The new year optimism has well and truly faded, replaced by the reality of winter’s darkest stretch. It’s…

There was a time when packaging was dismissed as functional or forgettable, but now it’s evolved into one of the most emotionally charged and culturally revealing areas of creative work. As Pentawards marks 20 years, its history tells a bigger story about where this discipline is heading. Some might think packaging is one of the…

As audiences grow increasingly curious about how things are made, Volvo’s latest electric SUV campaign leans into transparency and process. We’re living in a time where behind-the-scenes content can generate as much intrigue as the finished product, so it’s no surprise that Volvo Cars has leaned into that cultural shift with its latest global campaign…

A star-studded, high-octane campaign introduces Oakley Meta’s Performance AI Glasses as a new competitive tool for athletes. Oakley Meta is making its Super Bowl debut with a campaign by Mother Los Angeles that positions performance wearables as the next frontier in sport. Titled Athletic Intelligence Is Here, the work introduces the Oakley Meta Performance AI…

Adobe is bringing together the creative industry’s leading lights to navigate what happens after the hype dies down and the real work begins. Getting exhausted by the AI conversation? I’m not surprised: so much of it feels like people shouting into the void. One camp insists robots are coming for our jobs. Another claims AI…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Frontify’s new report, Rebranding Redefined, argues that successful rebrands depend on living systems rather than static assets. Here are the main points of the report, and how you can apply them to your own projects. The rebrand brief lands on your desk. Typeface? Check. Colour palette? Sorted. Logo variations? Done.…

Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Katelyn Ledford. Known for virtuosic trompe-l’oeil and dark humor, Ledford constructs images where artifice, vulnerability, and bravado collide. Working exclusively with oil and acrylic on canvas, she renders wood grain, masking tape, lace, and denim with the charged aura of stage props. In her…

Detail from Apartment 2119, 2025 © Li Wang From sunlit beaches to intimate interiors, the Beijing-born artist explores masculinity, queer diasporic experience and personal memory through vivid, evocative paintings. Sometimes, putting yourself into new situations, like moving to a different country – despite how scary or nerve-racking – can be the best thing you can…

From awkward first dates to relationship idioms brought to life, the illustrator turns everyday romantic misadventures into bold, humorous works that are instantly relatable. There are many ways that a creative mind can spark an idea. Some might go for a walk, others might do some star jumps or listen to a favourite album on…

From fashion and street portraiture to a decade-long family archive, the London-based photographer reflects on image-making as a way of staying with people, places and memories. Laura McCluskey first picked up a camera at 14, after choosing GCSE photography alongside art and product design. Her school had a black-and-white darkroom, where she learned the basics…

Su A Chae                                             Su A Chae’s Website Su A Chae on Instagram

Creators taking a stand in Granary Square, King’s Cross. Including illustrators Benji Davies, Chris Haughton, Ged Adamson, Momoko Abe and Simona Ciraolo, and AOI Board Member Jhinuk Sarkar. Photograph by Ozzy Nada. Built on evidence from over 10,000 creators, the move lays bare the real-world damage generative AI is already doing to creative careers, and…

NANZUKA is pleased to present “Metanoia,” a solo exhibition of new works by Christian Rex van Minnen at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND. This exhibition marks the artist’s second solo show at NANZUKA following his first exhibition in Japan which was held simultaneously across three venues (NANZUKA UNDERGROUND, 3110NZ by LDH Kitchen, NANZUKA 2G) in 2021.  

As AI threatens to flatten creativity, the Barcelona designer is putting her faith in craft, curiosity and maybe a little chaos. When Verónica Fuerte compares her 18-year journey running Hey Studio to the career trajectory of Britney Spears, you might think she’s joking. She’s not. Speaking during a session on The Studio (our free networking…

What if chocolate could be heard as well as tasted? For Fortnum & Mason’s newly reimagined chocolate bar collection, design studio Otherway has transformed flavour into melody, pairing each bar with an original piano composition to create a range that’s as much a performance as it is a treat. We all love a nice sweet…

We talk to the Chinese American artist about how she developed her style and the sublime, tranquil imagery she creates. Draw the viewer to the heart of the story. It’s what Brooklyn-based illustrator Jesse Zhang aims to do every time she sets out to create an image. Through her art, she builds mood, feeling, and…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock As creative professionals grapple with isolation and freedom, many are seeking new ways to balance solitude with connection. It’s 6pm. You’ve been staring at screens all day, moving between tabs and applications, responding to Slack messages and emails. You’ve been highly productive; maybe more so than you’d have been in…

Michael Dean Lemon                                 Michael Dean Lemon’s Website Michael Dean Lemon on Instagram

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Israel Campos: Echoes, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. Campos excavates the layered cultural histories of Los Angeles using a combined painting and screenprinting technique. In his role as artist-historian, Campos reveals the figures, stories, and myths that echo through the city’s history, folding Mexican folklore into…

Lyles & King is pleased to present Time Bends for the Tender, a solo exhibition of Akea Brionne’s work on view through February 21, 2026. Drawing inspiration from bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam, this series explores the interior landscape of black women cultivated in order to survive the psychic, social, and geographic pressures placed upon them.

Game designers, Netflix executives and the minds behind Tomorrowland are all heading to Barcelona this February. And Creative Boom readers can register for free! Barcelona in February isn’t just about the weather (though that helps). This year, it’s about Spark 2026; the new creative showcase at Integrated Systems Europe that’s bringing together everyone from game…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Taking a stance on generative AI might feel good, but could it lose you clients? Here’s what our community has to say about this divisive issue. Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series where the creative community tackles the thorniest questions facing our industry. This week’s dilemma…

Quba Tuakli, Creative Practice Lead at GentleForces From executive appointments and creative promotions to studios scaling up and branching out, the year is already shaping up to be a big one for people moves. The creative industry never stands still. And neither do the people shaping it. From agency founders marking major milestones to new…

Célestin Krier                                                                                                          …

KÖNIG GALERIE presents Ayako Rokkaku’s fourth solo exhibition SCENERY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FORMED, with the gallery, on view in the Nave of St. Agnes. Bringing together a wide-ranging sculptural practice alongside a new body of paintings, the exhibition traces the artist’s movement through places, materials, and atmospheres—and how form slowly emerges through her hands. 

Thanks to Obello, design teams no longer need to choose between creative control and empowering their marketing colleagues to create content at scale. Modern brands need constant content across an endless array of channels. For agencies, the relentless volume and sheer scale of the task can become overwhelming. AI tools promise to help, but most…

“I love using collage to tell stories about everyday life, mental health, loss, nature or simply a sock that went missing in the wash,” says the up-and-coming British illustrator. There are faster ways of making images. Approaches that deliver more punch. Techniques that achieve more detail. But Chloe Isteed knows that the collage imagery she…

Returning to Disseny Hub Barcelona this April, OFFF 2026 once again positions itself as a global meeting point for creative leaders, emerging practices and new ideas shaping design, art and digital culture. One of the most coveted events in the global design calendar, OFFF Barcelona returns this spring for its 26th edition, bringing together some…

As the dust settles on this year’s CES, ÖFY offers a case study in a growing design-led push towards unobtrusive technology, signalling a potential shift in how intelligence is embedded into everyday products. If you’re not part of the typical tech crowd, CES probably feels a little overwhelming. Screens stack on screens, demos blur into…

In Dead Fish, Nicolas Party surveys his practice through oil-on-copper paintings, each of which is a small-scale reworking of an earlier composition. While copying himself, Party also engages the long art-historical tradition of reproducing paintings by the masters: from Francisco Goya’s Still Life with Golden Bream (1808–12), he has created a direct pastel-on-linen study. The…

Wide Angle: Distorted © Molly Strohl Tired of safe, generic work? Stills’ 2026 trends empower creative professionals to embrace personality, texture and risk in visual communications. Amid a world drowning in sameness, the work that cuts through isn’t the work that plays nice; it’s the work that gets playful. That’s the core message from Stills’…

Weber Wong When a sportswear giant lists a creative AI tool in job requirements, it’s worth understanding what caught their attention. When Nike recently posted a job listing for a generative AI design expert, it included an unusual requirement: “Mastery of FLORA.” Not Photoshop mastery, not Midjourney expertise. FLORA, a unified creative environment that’s quietly…

Founded by Julen Saenz, whose CV spans Apple, Google Creative Lab and Collins, HIRUKI is a new collective studio built on the belief that brands should be felt as art. Over the past decade, the design industry has become increasingly fluent in systems, scale and speed. Brands are ‘optimised’, frameworks are refined, and success is…

What happens when a progress bar grows up? Koto’s latest work for GoFundMe transforms an everyday UI element into a flexible brand system that scales generosity. Global creative studio Koto has partnered with GoFundMe on a wide-ranging brand evolution, marking a significant moment for the fundraising platform as it continues to expand beyond individual campaigns…

Albert Elm                                                             Albert Elm on Instagram

Now in its fourth year, the Milton Keynes festival is proving that intimacy trumps scale when it comes to meaningful creative connection. We’re big fans of All Flows, the boutique creative festival, which returns for its fourth edition on 13–15 May 2026. So it’s great to hear that co-founders Richard Wiggins and Simon Wright have…

GR gallery is pleased to present Misfits, the first New York City solo exhibition by Daniel Nunez. The exhibition brings together a new body of work comprising paintings on canvas and drawings, offering an in-depth look at the artist’s most recent explorations.

T293 presents Sacred Hair / Capelli Sacri, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Spanish artist Nieves González (Huelva, 1996), curated by Victoria Rivers. The exhibition simultaneously marks the inauguration of the gallery’s new location in Rome’s emblematic Piazza del Catalone, establishing a natural synergy between González’s artistic vision and the experimental spirit that has…

Image licensed via Adobe Stock Members of the Creative Boom community explore when it’s okay to accept an advance payment for future work and offer some tips to make it work. Welcome to the latest edition of Dear Boom, our agony aunt series for creative professionals. This week’s dilemma touches on something many of us…

Simon McAleese The Sunderland-based menswear illustrator explains why frustration with “vanilla brands” inspired him to go it alone. When you spend your days drawing other people’s clothing designs, you notice things. Every seam, every pocket placement, every missed opportunity for something more interesting. For Simon McAleese, a menswear illustrator based in Sunderland, that scrutiny eventually…

Guess Who Studio won the New Talent award in Explore last year Get yer giddy-up! The awards close for entries on 17 February, and you’ve got to be in it to win it. It’s surprising how many illustrators don’t enter awards. Sometimes an artist is just too busy, which seems fair enough. However, they often…