Inspiring work..

.. seems to be the year of the swirls.

This is absolutely fucking INCREDIBLE.

WOW!

Peter Jaworski, not Peter Hejz

Some amazing pop art here. The detail is phenomenal.

Swirly colorful pattern overload. Puke.

When you put them all toghether like this, I’d call it visual masturbation more than graphic design. It’s also why nothing designed in this style ever stands out when you see it in a magazine or a billboard. Overplayed.

Real Masters!!! Bravo - superb artwork

Hahaha. Between truck paintings and “wow this looks like a bjork video clip” style.

I’ll wait for more mermaids and dolphins next year.

Glowing lines seem to attract graphic designers like rotten meat attracts flies

“Graphic Design” is communication using text and images. This is illustration, and only one single style of illustration, at that.

This style is so played out… Next!

Nice, but it does seem to be an overused style nowadays

A lot of these artists seem to have the same elements and colors in their work. The swirly vector’s seem to be a modern day element that can be compared to that of art nouveau elements with similar swirly glamorous features. I can see this style being duplicated by a lot more designers in the near future.

Even though their are a few trendy designers on this list it’s still a great source of inspiration and I’m glad you guys decided to post it.

I agree. Some of this is overkill… Die, vile swirlies!

Are these examples of a trend in graphic design, or is this a reflection of the personal taste of the author?

They are all amazing but most are interchangeable. If I were picking an illustrator for a particular project, this style would either work or not work. With a few exceptions.

They are great though.

Polish seem to totally own as web designers and graphic artits! Not only from the small sample of imagery, but from various art and design that I have been encountering since the beginning of the year.

It may be just one style but it is one I love - I’ve been following Radim Malinic and Chuck Anderson for a while now but thanks for turning me on to a lot more great illustrators/designers.

What about Vault 49 (Link [www.vault49.com]). They should definitely be on there.

While scrolling through these, I ended up speeding through the last half because, as those ahead of me have stated, they’re all very much the same. Made me think of Thomas Kincaid lost in the land of the elves and fairies style of artwork. They’re pretty illustrations but I wouldn’t call the majority of them examples of graphic design. Each is an illustration - portraying no clear message to the viewer. Illustrators can be graphic designers, and graphic designers can also be illustrators, but they are not always the same thing.
I did especially like the clean look of the German contribution (Taobot), and the child against the skyline from Alex Cherry of California. No swirlies…. Obviously, it’s just all in the subjective tastes of viewers!

@ Are these examples of a trend in graphic design, or is this a reflection of the personal taste of the author?

I echo this sentiment. I feel that this post simply advertises the bias of it’s author and reflects a lack of understanding of objectivity in design. I am not assuming that these individual pieces were not the appropriate solution for their respective clients, but it does beg the question of whether the client simply wanted what was today’s trendy euro neon floral style. I expected more from Smashing.

Beautiful pieces, but disappointing editorial.

1. This isn’t graphic design; this is illustration. I know the lines between the two seem to be quite blurry these days, but the bulk of what’s posted here (talented as it is) is pretty, swirly, flourish-heavy, colorful illustration. Decoration. Style.
2. “Masters” is a tad subjective.

Thank you tons. This is some jaw dropping work and I’m going to have to now look at each and every link provided. This will deffiantely help me in my new A Level artwork.

You helped more than you may believe :D Thanks!

The empty headed naysayers are missing the point. If you think “they’re all the same” you aren’t paying any attention to detail. You fail. Goodbye.

I made a Flek with these images, enjoy!
Link [www.flektor.com]

It looks like to be a Master of Graphic Design, you need to download pictures of beautiful women and then put colourful stuff on top of these images… And that’s about it.

I’d agree with Justin. Great examples of elaborate style, but most lack direction. While it’s impressive what these designers can achieve in a technical sense, only a few offer a real concept or convincing storytelling, in my humble opinion.

@ Smarmy

Attention to detail by the designer is one thing, but it is second only to composition. The critics here are pointing out that the compositions are all very similar and lack originality.

And if you don’t understand what I mean by composition, you should spare us all the ignorance of your empty headed remarks.

Designers should stray from marrying themselves to a particular trend or style and rather ask themselves what the appropriate solution for the problem is. This is what separates designers from decorators. Peter up there said it best, you must remain objective. Otherwise, you just have a very unimportant cliche full of detail.

Smarmy,
As a graphic designer, the first lesson I learned is that clients (and the viewers) are simply NOT going to spend time “paying attention to the detail.” That is for artists, they will appreciate the talent, time, etc., involved in creating an illustration like those shown. The client and marketing usually just want you to drive the point across - and if marketing is pushing the direction, you’re very lucky if you can do an illustration versus cramming in a ton of text. How many magazine or billboard readers are really going to study the detail? How many clients are really willing to pay for services of an illustrator or agree to the time spent creating these works of art? Not nearly as many as we would wish. Pretty much everyone here has had the “opinion” that they are beautiful, pretty, etc., however, the style is very much the same - there is nothing mean or insulting in those comments.
Apparently, you’re not open for any discussion of differing perspectives and experiences… That’s fine. I pretty much view that as a failure (and arrogant) but then that’s just my opinion. I am entitled to my opinion, you know. As are all the other “empty-headed naysayers.”

These two quotes sum this posting up:

“When you put them all toghether like this, I’d call it visual masturbation more than graphic design”

“It looks like to be a Master of Graphic Design, you need to download pictures of beautiful women and then put colourful stuff on top of these images… And that’s about it.”

Masters of graphic design? Yeah right. There are some talented people in this listing for sure, but let’s be honest — Chuck Anderson took this style and ran with it, and ever since then, people have biting his heels to redo the style that he enflavored (that’s a new word for you right there). Even Chuck Anderson though is not a “master of design”. How about some true masters like Wim Crouel, Otl Aicher, Herb Lubalin, Chuck Close, Wegman, Wildplakken, I mean come on…these aren’t masters. These are designers whose whole worth is a by-product of over-spending in marketing. This stuff isn’t even a style, it’s a mess. Graphic design is supposed to be about clarity of content and your message, not who can muddy up the stage the most.

This is sad.

And @Smarmy — great retort there. I’m the “empty-headed” one because I’m able to see through this visual clutter as being nothing more than “pretty.” I guess you probably look up to and are “inspired” by people like ElectricHeat who claim that graphic design is just about “making things look pretty.” You’re sad. You fail at life. Please eject yourself and do not try again. Do not pass go and do not collect any props. Maybe next time around in college you’ll learn a little something about concept and the meaning of design.

And Si Scott deserves heaps of credit for pioneering his rendition of a classic type styling used in 14th and 15th century manuscripts, which has just been bastardized and abused ever since he broke into the mainstream with his stuff.

Sad. This post really makes me sad.

wow wow wow. this is awesome work!
may fovourite ist the first one of Paul Hollingworth. Nice idea

90% of all those are good yeah.. but together they look crap, they all look the same and without any imagination.. is pink mixed with 400 colours the new style in design illustration?

theres only 3-5 outstanding peices of work there.

while your at it chek out.. Link [www.rasterized.org] more illustration rather then design.

I have to agree with both sides of the aisle- great visually inspiring work, but “Masters” they are certainly not. The overly layered swirly design will go down in design history as a chapter/phase, but no historical moments were made here. Where is my Paul Rand? Where is my Alvin Lustig? Those are the true inspirations…

With the exception of Paul Hollingworth, and maybe a couple others, they all look the same! They’re all people or things with junk floating around them. These are all by different people? Wow. We are just a bunch of copycats if this is supposed to be creative.

Beautiful images, I feel they are to be taken for what they are. It seems to be a genre of illustration that morphs with design and 3d. So many details! Not sure why, but some of them remind me of the Lisa Frank trapper keeper illustrations from the 80’s. Thanks for another great post.

Wow, amazing…

To be honest, I’ve never acctully seen one of these images not plasted with ads for something….hehe

10/10!

how about posting something without frigging fairies in it

this doesn’t represent graphic design, it represents just one trend

I’m disappointed, like most of you. Smashing has been so good in the past, this seemed like a joke. Most of these designs look like they could have been made by the same person. And I guess that person thinks everything in the world could be improved by random floaty swirly stuff? What’s going on? Where’s the simple, effective, creative stuff I expected?

Only on the internet could a page of beautiful eye candy lead to a bunch of people putting each other down and trying to sound smarter than one another.

Leave the butterflies alone. A great deal of this work looks the same.

Crap.

Don’t get me wrong I’m sure some work went into all this but its all pretty much the same and only inspired me to write that its not inspiring. I will say that there was some really interesting ones but for the most part very unimpressed. Better luck next time to the artists in my book anyway.

I don’t care whether you call it illustration, graphic design or any other name. I find these pieces very artistic and awe inspiring. I quote Kevin, comment #2

“This is absolutely fucking INCREDIBLE.”

This style of design, though it may be played out in the mainstream is something we don’t practice in a small company’s internal creative department and it is absolutely a breath of fresh air to me!

Most people around here seriously devalue illustration and illustrated elements because they take too much time to create. We use photos instead. Though we have an absolutely amazing photographer, a lot of our work seems unbalanced to me in the use of different elements and layers to add interest. When I use stock swirlys in a project (we don’t have a staff illustrator), most people think that’s just my style, not a trend in the bigger picture.

I think these are fantastic - thanks so much for the post!

@ John Moldybuns - Yeah, man. Exactly. Eye candy. That’s all it is.

Personally, my favourite designers are the Bazmark Design people - particularly Catherine Martin (Baz Luhrmann’s 2 x oscar winning wife) and her Head of Design Silvana Azzi Heras. Movies, Broadway shows, Books, TV commercials and I hear they’re even doing a homewares line. Everything they do is visually amazing!

My only gripe is that it’s a bit tough to find all of their work in one place on the Internet. Maybe when they finally get that bazmark site working…

Wow, some of you guys seem to love moaning and complaining, no matter what. Look back through those images : it’s not ‘all’ swirly designs that look the same, there’s a lot of different styles there. Maybe there’s more swirls and neon than others things, ok, but it doesn’t mean that all if it can be so simply dismissed and lumped under the same category. You’re robbing yourself if you’re seriously interested in design and don’t go back through that stuff but just dismiss it all instead.

Some of that work is really amazing.

@ Te

It’s not the artwork that is the problem, it is the bias of the author. He should have demonstrated more respect for design history and shown us some kind of objectivity before making claims such as these being the finest designers of our time. It was how he categorized these illustrations that was the problem. Any formally trained designer can spot this author from a mile away as a self-taught (or maybe he just wasn’t paying attention in class) trend-following wannabe.

With that said, yes, the work is amazing. The author needs to go buy a design history book, along with everyone else that’s drooling right now.

I agree, this work is beautiful illustration. As to if it is timeless Graphic Design - no it is not. To me these illustrations are all just reiterations of many artists from the 1970’s. Think album covers and New York City. The positive thing I can think of regarding this is that the marriage of Illustrator, Photoshop and various 3D programs have really taken us to the level of the Hyperreal. Perhaps Baudrillard was right? Why don’t we all whine a bit more and try and control this stuff from the comfort of our computers? :)

Amazing, why? Almost every single designer that I know can create designs that mimick that look to a T. Every single one of them. This is street-level, urbanized-niche design — it doesn’t communicate a message, and it is most CERTAINLY NOT timeless or of masterwork quality. Please people, stop bemoaning the negative comments, unless you have something facts-based to relay.

To quote liquid06: “This style of design, though it may be played out in the mainstream is something we don’t practice in a small company’s internal creative department and it is absolutely a breath of fresh air to me!”

That’s because you aren’t a trendwhore. You don’t keep up on design trends clearly, because if this style is something new to you, then for the last three or four years you’ve been living under a rock, protected by an umbrella of Helvetica and Avant Garde.

Here’s a great gallery if you’re into illustrations;

Link [tomledin.com]

this is some quality art work…

i love the sunglasses and pepsi ones… i am amazed with the creativity of these people. Inspirations like this help me get ideas :)

these are some great illustrators!! where are the designers?

This is not a bad post, but doesn’t has a good title.
We have to admit these swirling eye candies are very pretty and need a master to create them. No matter the graphics serve the purpose of the design or not, swirling and sparking are definitely a trend and getting strong reinforce by designers.

All these pieces look the same!
These aren’t graphic design masters, they’re just Photoshop masters that are copying all the trendy shit.
Boring!

Best gallery is devianart.com

“Masters of Graphic Design”, A.K.A. “Swirly Photoshop Images From Hell.”

I clicked through to just one of the portfolios of the designers linked above and found that he’s actually done a whole bunch of stuff that is different to most of the pictures in this post, so I’d suggest that it’s not that all these designers are turning out the same type of work, but that rather it reflects the author’s own particular bias as to what they like in graphic design.

Very technical, but it all looks the same. Nothing looks that original.

Most of this appears to be pop art, with very little meaning, scope or depth. That being said, I must applaud you for bringing Paul Hollingworth’s first image to my attention, as it is full of meaning, cultural significance and artistry. Thanks for the list!

OMFG… when i see that i think im just good for the the trash can

I have to agree with most of the others. This list is a disappointing scroll of similar styles and nothing original.

“oh hey,..lets throw a female body outline and some glossy glittery swooshes in there.. and it’ll knock people out!! zomg 11s!!”…

Its overdone and shallow.

Whomever came up with this idea is probably the same person who came up with the “glossy screen” idea for laptops… totally weaksauce.

Sadly… it seems like its popular because most people in society these days are more concerned about looks than substance. (omg, look at these sweet spinner rims with LED’s on them!!).. lame.

poor women…becoming object and object again. lack of creativity!

Masters of Graphic design? Nah, not really.
Masters of Illustrations? Yes, although swirls seems to be very trendy now.

Nice use of layering. I’m a fan of the montage at the moment.

I think some people looking at this forget that you’ll very rarely see these in any one place at the same time. Appreciation of these will be increased in there own advetising space and sites.

We (designers) can all do these montages, its whether you think too…

Some smooth Photoshop masters.

Would be nice to know the time frame a few took from Design to Development.

Good Collection of talent.

Utterly stunning collection - no doubt there’ll be some contention within the comments, though. Sure it’s all been done before, women as sex objects, cry me a frick’n river, people will always find something to criticize. But when you take a step back from the intellectual and let yourself emotionally feast on what’s here, that’s when you actually get the point of what many of these people (presumably) tried to create - a lush, rich, visual world where even the least creative person can still lose themselves.

I’m in agreement with many others. First off, labeling them all under graphic design is terribly misleading. Define graphic design? Many of the above I know are not. Another point; being a graphic designer myself, inspiration doesn’t “just” come from looking at others graphic works, but from life, dreams, photography, fine art etc etc…..really, designers aren’t that shallow! lol

Admittedly there’s alot of talent here, but masters? Aren’t you just trying to play for popularity, while misleading others? Very weak-sauce.

Nice nice nice!!
I’m like at dreamland. Very fantasy picture.

Some more individually styled illustrations can be found in Candy magazine.
Link [www.candycollective.com]
PDF dowloads available.

Although I appreciate all the hard work and excellent detail that went into these - I have to agree that they do all follow a similar trend that is a little played out. Pretty woman + fireworks and swirls.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! ..no words for me!!

Three talented designers from Poland. Nice:)

Before I went to university, I would be psyched on this page, but now, I have higher expectations. To reiterate the words of others, this is more a gallery of serifs than of “masters”. Then again, 14 year olds won’t know the difference anyway. long live diggg.

Only one word to say…. great! Thank You for this listing!

This is a really depressing list.

This is not graphic design. I do not see any communication. I see one hollow, overplayed, utterly derivitive style of illustration. Shame on the person who compiled this.

There’s a few good designers in there, definitely. That said I also agree that most of the designs shown are very close to each other, which takes away a lot of the power each individual design has(or had), and the styles feel very temporary. Finally I can’t help but notice there are a few notorious designers missing in there: Crouwel, Build… just to name a few.

I agree with 80% of the comments here. It most certainly is NOT graphic design. I’d struggle to even call this illustration, try wikipedia for a definition if you’re stuck.
There’s a couple of names on the list of merit - the rest are weak, over techincal derivatives of ONE style. It’s chocolate box decoration, nothing more. Sure, there’s some pretty incredible photoshop skills on display but seeing them all bundled together here shows the sheer unoriginality that is rife in visual communication these days.

fu.ck.in amazing..
i personally don’t like that kind of art, but this is ART!

I am happy to see the huge negative response against this silly post. There apparently a lot of real designers out there who are also offended by the misuse of the term “masters of graphic design”

Thank you author, for changing that in the post.

awesome. getting jealous…as I do not create such sort of work.

In a word: Wow. Really stunning imagery.

Does anyone know of some tutorial illustrations that demonstrate these techniques and styles?

Thanks,

I really enjoy these illustrations and high fashion photography. Do most of them have a variety of vector designs on hand and a library of elements to build these type of designs or is this all crafted?

@ Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

I appreciate your willingness to receive criticism and hope that you are indeed passionate about improving this magazine, as I appreciate and rely on it heavily.

However, having worked in the publishing industry, may I offer something based on your defense of the post? You say that your intent was to get us to explore in further depth the work of these artists, but I assert that it is the responsibility of the author/editor to make sure that the editorial content is objective and well-researched. The problem is, you have given your audience too much credit in expecting them to do the research. If you wanted to show us the breadth of these artists’ portfolios, you could have just as easily selected the more diverse works that you alude to over the monotonously illustrative pieces that you did end up selecting. I’m afraid that this obvious fact makes your defense shallow and transparent, and only makes it even clearer that you are trying to communicate that this style is preferable. What you select communicates much more effectively than what you say.

It is the duty of the editorial staff to exercise objectivity & depth, and not a fair expectation to assume that your worldwide audience will correctly interpret your intent. So, better to play it safe in the future.

Lot of work to compile this. However, all I can see are just illustrations, I cannot call them designs.

Also, on top of the lists, most illustrations are women - little or no creativity.

KEN:

Computer Arts (http://www.computerarts.co.uk/) gives detailed tutorials on this and other trendy/popular styles.

agree with earlier posts - not graphic design, most not particularly contemporary anymore. still fun to look at though, just like a hot pink convertible.

i’m surprised no one is really subverting this yet, been around so long…

[subvert meaning] ^^ like maybe a turd with some swirls, flowers and glow :)

wow there is some real talent there… [borat] very nice! [/borat]

All my favorites are on this list!
Great work from people that I’d never heard of up until this point.

wow cool article, this was great thanks again!

jeff

This list is skewed in all possible ways. I don’t see why using photo realism in illustration automatically equates to “contemporary” or how mastering particular new trend leads to masterpieces.

I don’t know how much these illustrators are paying you guys to advertise on your “blog” but I just want to inform the digg users that this list is incompetent and there are tons more illustrators out there in the world that deserves “Master Of Illustration” title. These illustrations are merely one particular style out of many. I personally like to call these illustration trend, “busy” art.

Like they say, don’t follow the trendy tattoos because trends go away and you’ll regret it later down the road.

Define your own style, not mirror others.

amazing! Great inspiration

i love that you can scroll through this entire thing, and think that 1 person made this.

what a pathetic “creative” spark.

My, my. Quite the firestorm. Art is passion, after all. “Illustrators” works better in the title than “Designers,” I’m glad to see the change. I can appreciate the work and the portfolios of each of the artists. We all have our own tastes, styles, etc. What drove me to comment at all in my earlier post was the “You fail. Goodbye.” comment from Smarmy. I love differing viewpoints and trying to see what somebody else sees in art; why they like or not, what it “feels” like to them….Shutting out other perspectives creates the sameness that kills creativity.
I enjoyed the post as much for the commentary going on here as the portfolios (far more interesting than just the illustrations shown on this first page).

Weak. The 90s are over, friends.

I’m going to give my $0.02 here.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that these designers are “masters” per se… but I can guarantee you that the works showcased here are certainly not something your average Photoshop user could ever hope to achieve. Many of these designers (such as Pete Harrison, Peter Jaworowski, Nick Ainley, and Mario Sanchez) have deviantArt accounts with a great deal of people who follow and try to emulate their designs. And fail miserably at it.

Yes, many of these designs are very similar. But to say they are interchangable is to do absolutely no justice to the hard work that was put in to each and every piece.
Look closer.
Some of these artists put a lot of emphasis on typography. Others put a lot of emphasis on fitting a variety of abstract thoughts into a single piece. Others are just created as eye candy for various art groups online, and dont require any real substance since that was not the intention of the artist.

And I guarantee you, as I follow a majority of these designers, the pieces showcased here were not representative of the best of the designer’s portfolios. This blog’s choice to show only those pieces which pander to the same genre really does these artists no justice.

Rather than chalking it all up to one uniform lump of overdone crap, rather than stating that it all looks like one person’s work, rather than trying to convince yourself and the rest of the commenters that you know what you’re talking about while discounting the talent on display here, I implore you to actually LOOK at the artists complete portfolio and you will see that there is indeed individuality and talent to be inspired by. Damn that was a long runon sentence. But its a rant, so I’m allowed.

Thanks for your time.

Yes. The style is played out. Admittedly, I too have created designs that follow the same trend. Am I a trend whore? Abso-freakin-lutely! But, these artists are the best at what they do, so if I aspire to make some awesome eye-candy for my desktop background, then I will be looking to these guys to set the bar. These are the guys I guage my work with.
A lot of the pieces showcased were designed for specific clients. (Many of which were high profile with large budgets and a large target audience)

This is so boring! No personality in most of these.

hello everyone, nothing much i can say..all image looks perfect, 99 over 10 :D

It’s Neil Duerden, not Neil Durden. And the first image is a collab with Mathew Star Thomas. I think it should be credit too ;)

C’mon guys, this is a good article. As an entity - every single graphic designer is attached to his style. But that does not mean that the other design techniques are wrong or not good. Those artworks are quite good and if the client was happy with the work - 2 thumbs up.
By the way - Stop Complaining

can i make a guess? people that condemned this masterpiece to be none other than pretty woman and swirl are the same people who think gradient, sticker-like “BETA” graphic, pop -up ajax image and BIG HEADLINES is very web2.0.

get a life. web 2.0 is not everything. this is ART; digital art. not a web design.

Some nice stuff there, but the selection is WAY WAY too homogeneous, there’s a lot of variety in good illustration out there to be found.

I do agree with all the comments that these artists have similar styles. And do see the point of Vitaly & Sven that this should not be used to compare the artists but to explore them.

I think it is rather interesting though that the trend (at least for these webdesigners and let’s say the Web 2.0) goes to exactly these colors and shapes.
Especially interesting is the complexity of all presented images here. I believe that will be the next step in commercial art of having very complex pictures with many different aspects compiled to form some kind of real-life beauty as it ain’t simple either.

Am I making sense?

peter jaworski not jaworowski

Peter, Jaworowski is ok ;)

the master’s of tutorial anad tips…. please please please find sumthin (a tutorial) to remakke atleast one of them… they are sooo amazing…. goooooooooooooooooooooood work..

I thought this was intended to possibly provide inspiration to designers who are stuck in a rut. If you don’t find it inspiring or thought it too homogenous, that’s fine - but don’t complain about it, BE about it. If you have other examples that you find more inspiring, by all means post links!! I for one would love to see them.

@ Reejo

No one is going to write up a tutorial on how to use the Blur and Smudge tool, combined with the Glow and 3D Shadow effects. There are hundreds of them out there. Pick up a mouse and keyboard and L2photoshopz, nubcakes.

I agree with Kevin (#2 comment) minus the uncalled for language!

Not bad.. Not bad at all… Nice stuff!

Wow!

All the images are beautifull… amazing, never seen!

You guys who said that this is nothing than pretty woman with swirl; show us your works so that we can now WHAT GRAPHIC DESIGN really is

you guys should learn to differentiate between WEB DESIGN (y’all took it for granted in this case) and GRAPHIC DESIGN

it’s an art. ART for god’s sake.

I don’t know why there are so many haters posting. They should post their work so we can crit the hell out of it and how they copied so and so.

Every piece in here is awesome. You must really look at each one for a while to notice all the details.

This is the reason I really like S’Magazine! For me as a professional designer, this is the place to be: inspired.

Keep it up. I’ll keep it bookmarked.

Richard Kay

love this post! many thanks!

Is there