Creativity Spark From Masters Of Illustration
Creative thinking is an essential part of design workflow. Whatever sketch you are working on, at some point you find yourself in the situation where you simply need some fresh ideas to find your path around the creativity block. Going away may help. Listening to the music may help. But particularly the works of the famous graphic artists may help. In fact, studying them very closely, you can not only explore new ideas, but also learn the smallest details – they form the profound foundation of every masterpiece.
In this post we’d like to present you an ultimate breakthrough for your creativity blocks; over the last weeks we’ve been searching for the most popular graphic designers, illustrators and artists around the world. We’ve selected some of their works to give you an idea what style they have and what details of modern design you can expect and learn from them.
So what do we have as result? Over 100 breathtaking illustrations from some of the best contemporary graphic designers, illustrators and artists; besides you’ll also find references to further (mostly unknown) sources for inspiration you can use on a daily basis.
Once you’ve selected the artist whose works you like, click on the image to get to his/her portfolio and explore his/her work in more depth. Please notice that most artists listed below are well-known in the worldwide design community (and so are their works); hopefully you know not all of them.
Please be patient, it may take a while until the images are loaded. Please be aware that it also may take a while until you’ve seen most of showcased images.
Further suggestions and ideas? Please comment.
Creativity Spark From Masters Of Illustration (Graphic Design)
1. Radim Malinic (UK)
2. Neil Duerden (Manchester, UK)
3. Büro North (Melbourne, Australia)
4. Evgeny Kiselev (St. Petersburg, Russia)
5. Maciej Mizer (Poland)
6. Pete Harrison (London, UK)
7. Alberto Seveso (Rome, Italy)
8. Emeric Trahand (Saint Etienne, France)
9. Mario Sánchez (Newcastle, UK)
10. Peter Jaworowski (Warsaw, Poland)
11. mcfaul (Emsworth, Hampshire, UK)
12. Chuck Anderson (Chicago, USA)
13. Platinum, FMD (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
14. Seth Weisfeld (San Francisco, USA)
15. Kacper Spala (Poland)
16. Scott Pollard (Manchester, UK)
17. Adhemas Batista (São Paulo, Brazil)
18. Raquel Falkenbach (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
19. Tom Kan (USA)
20. Nicholas Ainley (London, UK)
21. Drew Flaherty (Brisbane, Australia)
22. Alex Mapar (Melbourne, Australia)
23. Mark Verhaagen (Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
24. Alex Trochut (Barcelona, Spain)
25. Alexander Radsby (Kalmar, Sweden)
26. Taobot (Mainz, Germany)
27. Gui Borchert (New York, USA)
28. Si Scott (London, UK)
29. Alex Cherry (California, USA)
30. Paul Hollingworth (Newcastle, UK)
31. Jacques S Alton (London, UK)
32. Susanne Paschke (Berlin, Germany)
Galleries of Graphic Design & Illustration
- DigitalAbstracts
A design community that strives to deliver a unique blend of content, discussion and creative inspiration to its army of readers. - 2Photo.ru
The projects showcases the best works of contemporary illustrators, artists and graphic designers on a regular basis. In Russian. More works on Designcollector.ru. - Bak Magazine
A magazine related to digital photography, illustration and graphic design. 8 .pdf-issues are available for free download. - Artzmania
Artzmania is an independent venture showcasing outstanding international creativity and culture. 5 .pdf-issues are available for free download. - Cpluv.com
One of the most comprehensive resources related to digital photography, design and illustration. Dozens of categories, dozens of resources, hundreds of sources for inspiration. - NTMY – Nice to Meet You!
A growing gallery of resources (weblog) related to graphic design and illustration with hundreds of references to creative agencies and designers. - digitalthread
The designer’s arrivation point. A growing index of design-related resources and design companies.
Andy Gongea
August 23rd, 2007 5:42 pmC’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
Jack
August 23rd, 2007 5:59 pmcan 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.
jon
August 23rd, 2007 6:34 pmSome 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.
Dennis
August 23rd, 2007 6:48 pmI 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
August 23rd, 2007 7:35 pmpeter jaworski not jaworowski
Skeku
August 23rd, 2007 11:40 pmPeter, Jaworowski is ok ;)
reejo
August 24th, 2007 2:00 amthe 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..
Tom Lee
August 24th, 2007 2:14 amI 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.
rietz
August 24th, 2007 2:31 am@ 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.
RV
August 24th, 2007 3:29 amI agree with Kevin (#2 comment) minus the uncalled for language!
Goran
August 24th, 2007 4:24 amNot bad.. Not bad at all… Nice stuff!
cenourinha
August 24th, 2007 9:56 amWow!
All the images are beautifull… amazing, never seen!
Jack
August 24th, 2007 10:25 amYou 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.
cobrastrike
August 24th, 2007 12:16 pmI 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.
Richard Francis Kay
August 24th, 2007 4:00 pmThis 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
OLDSKULL
August 24th, 2007 5:04 pmlove this post! many thanks!
rayidea
August 24th, 2007 5:15 pmIs there any tutorials about this? it’s wonderful. I like it!
Darjan
August 24th, 2007 6:40 pmEvery time i see the work of these guys makes me kinda depressed :) they really are the greatest artists of this world.
Amarjeet Singh Rai
August 24th, 2007 9:49 pmPlease could you post this as a PDF?
Thanks
Blue Buffalo
August 25th, 2007 12:03 amNice collection of designers! Creativity floweth!
jonathan ball
August 25th, 2007 1:09 am“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.”
I don’t think it haters posting, while at least I like a lot of this stuff, but it is all in a similar style mostly, collages of photo and vector with colour effects and I think an article on top illustrators could have featured a wider variety of illustration styles.
Dont really want to post links to stuff I feel is good, as it might be considered spamming.
Bruno
August 25th, 2007 3:43 amSorry, but this got a little bit of “hype” illustration style.
A real good illustrator is Stephane Manel with his atemporal works!
bling pix
August 25th, 2007 4:52 amlolz dis wikked pics gonna mek meh myspace look sweet as bro
gonna pimp myspace designer styleeee wuuurrd up
Ricardo Vidal
August 25th, 2007 9:32 amAlthough some of these (all!?) are amazingly good, I would like to add another great artist to this list.
His name is Mário Belém and he’s done some amazing work. You can see his work here.
Dennison Uy - Graphic Designer
August 25th, 2007 3:03 pmAwesome, but could use a little variation. A downloadable version would be very handy.
vu
August 25th, 2007 6:52 pmany tutorial links on how to do this stuff?
Oswaldo Gallo Cuba
August 25th, 2007 11:04 pmWow!!!, my eyes and my mind are in shock!, it’s a great work, thank you and congratulations to you and artists!
…….. wow again!
Chris
August 26th, 2007 4:05 amCheck this guy http://www.stefanlucut.com or http://www.stefanlucut.ro
Unfeel
August 26th, 2007 3:58 pmlol, pretty bullshit list here..
1st its not graphic design
2nd its illustration
3rd they look all the shame
and wtf is this Maciej Mizer (Poland) ??? how can that be upper than guys like Drew Flaherty or Chuck anderson..
who made this list anyway?
Ta4ka
August 27th, 2007 12:15 amDamn, is this guy above me pissed off or what
Jo
August 27th, 2007 10:11 pmThey look pretty amazing to me… I’d love to knw how to make some of these…a lot of guys here seem to find them easy or monotonous… well I guess I’m the untrained eye…
anywhere where I can find tutorials of this type of art??
Sara
August 28th, 2007 4:02 amhello guys
im Sara frm Pakistan,i see thesework n i become crazy,its mind blowing,amazing,i have no words,i knw photoshop,illustrator n many others softwares,plz help me,how can i do work like this.
my id is …@…com
- Tips Guy -
August 28th, 2007 7:19 pmis there any tutorials how to done this?
ishfak ahmed
August 28th, 2007 10:42 pmnice,really amazing.these works are really inspiring;full of color and joy.i want more.
plz visit my site ishfak.blogspot.com;you will find some good advice.
Aviance
August 28th, 2007 10:53 pmMaybe it’ll be on-topic :) I have made a small selection: designers and artists with passion spark.
VagabondoDigitale
August 28th, 2007 11:00 pmVery Very fantastic images… Great !
Cool Mike
August 29th, 2007 12:19 pmThis is artistry at its best!
Spencer Lavery
August 29th, 2007 8:20 pmSome great stuff on here, but can people not illustrate without hot girls these days?
Emily
August 30th, 2007 7:19 amNot knocking on graphic design/illustration here, but it is one of the visual arts, not the fine arts. So to defend these illustrations as “they’re art, and if you don’t get them, you just don’t get art” is b.s. Illustrators work on commission, at the request of their clients. And few clients care about artistry in the works they commission. What they care about is advertising that works. Artistic or not, an ad that is overly detailed and looks just like every other ad out there will not work. This trend cannot last because it is information overload.
downrodeo
August 30th, 2007 10:41 amWot? No Asians?
Anyway, I think this falls along the lines of commercial illustration. I totally appreciate the effort put in by the designers, you have to say that it’s pretty damn good illustrations. It’s not graphic design in it’s entire context, tho. Cheers to them, and the authors efforts in putting this out in the first place.
raj
August 30th, 2007 11:17 amThis is one of the most gorgeous collections of color I’ve ever seen. Thanks so much for this. Color makes me happy, and my happy meter is up. Sigh. Now I have 32 more sites to visit :)
lev dolgachov
August 31st, 2007 10:50 pmfriend of mine gave me link to this article.
it’s a pleasure for me to see my picture is used in very first design of this list, and used so professional way.
feels good. thanks for choosing my work to be part of your good work, Radim.
Mario Sánchez
August 31st, 2007 11:11 pmSomeone just linked me to this via email, I’m honoured! But I have to say I am for Murcia (Spain) not from UK! :)
Kiara
September 3rd, 2007 7:40 amHow come electricheat.com is not included?
Des.Dir.
September 3rd, 2007 10:42 pmThe pieces by Radim and Neil are colorful, eye catching and engaging. What’s more, for all of the motion and excitement, it is easy to center attention on the product. We’re big fans over here.
And thank you, Smashing, we are using this list as a point of departure for exploring talent.
Ronan
September 4th, 2007 5:27 amI was at talk with about a dosen people seeing Si Scott, as he talked he sketched an image, he is truely unbelievable but simplist at the same time. Fan of his work
Nadine
September 4th, 2007 8:35 pmRietz said:
“@ 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.”
Holy shit, rietz, what crawled up your arse and died? Not everyone here is a serious, professional graphic designer or a skilled photoshop user, moreover not everyone here gives a fuck about graphic design artistry or whatever.
Even though you dislike this style of illustration (as do I) there’s absolutely no need to be rude to some photoshop amateur who was asking an innocent question that has nothing to do with you. And, you know, he might not even be a graphic designer/illustrator and doesn’t have to care whether it’s good illustration/art or shit.
He might be a noob but you’re a pretentious, condescending wanker and everything you say is as worthless as these swirly oversaturated crap you so hate.
Prasad
September 4th, 2007 10:06 pmWow, amazing…
To be honest, I’ve never acctully seen one of these images never & never
iam very inspred when see these images really amazing……
NO ONE BEAT YOU and NO ONE REACH YOU
ALL THE BEST FOR UR TEAM
Bilal
September 5th, 2007 1:57 amit’d be nice to know what their software of choice was…
Brand Nu - Radim Malinic
September 5th, 2007 2:11 amHello lovers and haters,
thanks to the author for including me on the list, ever more enjoyable I didn’t have to scroll too far down :)
I just wanted to let you all good people know (so you don’t miss out) that I am releasing my debut publication with more that 50 selected pieces of my best work from last few years.
The book is now for pre-order at http://www.brandnu.co.uk. Get yours now, they have been flying out. Only 500 copies in this edition.
Radim
Jorge Sales
September 7th, 2007 11:45 pmBravo ! Great ! Brazil images is very very fantastic !
baratas
September 8th, 2007 1:50 amVery good. Congratulations!
Saúde e paz!
Libby D.
September 10th, 2007 4:04 pmwow these are absoluetly amazing. i like some of the more abstract peices on this page though. very intriguing.
juanaa
September 13th, 2007 7:39 pmamazing blog
ahmet alp balkan
September 13th, 2007 7:56 pmthey’re really perfect and the best i’ve ever seen!!
andre
September 13th, 2007 11:58 pmbreathtaking…
georgia
September 14th, 2007 12:59 pmawesome! they make 4 cool backgrounds a skool! keep makin them :)
Jason
September 15th, 2007 10:07 am…I think some of you are too hung up on the “trend”
everything is a trend.
why don’t you all let us see how you design and then we’ll see what trends you guys are following?
Nothing is completely origional. That’s art. And these guys are artists.
Greg Elvis
September 15th, 2007 8:14 pmAre you sure that these aren’t all by the same person? BORING!!!!
There is some fabulous illustration work out there – but this stuff is going to look so dated in a couple of months. Honestly, you could write an applet that slapped a few vector swirls around some vacuous model and it would generate this pap automatically.
Sara
September 16th, 2007 2:25 pmThese are realy Great! Congratulation!
barak
September 16th, 2007 9:50 pmyou also suggested music (in the introductory article) as a way to break through a creative block. nice idea. how about a blog post on the music people listen to when they are creating.. here’s my playlist.. link opens in itunes
http://n90.mediamaster.com/myradio/brate/64/barak.pls
Linerider
September 17th, 2007 12:58 amVery nice artwork but looks like everyone is copying to the each other… all looks the same.
Onzere Derick
September 17th, 2007 3:56 pmHi, my name is derick onzere, from Nairobi, Kenya. This is very good stuff.
Am impressed.
regards.
Steffen Kasperavicius
September 18th, 2007 1:45 amYep, all looks the same, I’m very bored of seeing these swirls, lights, Rohrschach-attitudes and crestshape-revivals… at that moment, design is stuck
Huan Vo
September 19th, 2007 2:38 am-First off, I want to truly express my appreciation to the Editor of This Article for presenting us a diverse collection of illustrations from various artists.
-Second I want to point out to the fact is most of us argue about these works whether or not the Terminology of Graphic Design-ers/ Illsustration -ers fit them or how cliche and similar these works are.
-To be honest, I’ve reached these artists’s works before I read this article, and I was a little bit upset or just a thought : shoot, we and most the audience would perceive them as …. trendy,cliche,copycatted. Perhaps the selection wasn’t very diverse…..
Anyway, I am sure it’s worth to explore these artists individually and you will find something unexpected and orginginal.
I would perceive these works as ART/Illustration than Graphic Design. And please don’t make them try to define what the terms are ^_^
Mellie
September 23rd, 2007 4:58 pmAwesome work.
I really love those colours and sparks that Chuck uses. Anyone that have some tuts? :D
dendoo
September 27th, 2007 12:42 ami think that these works are pretty, well designed, but they look the same. now this style is starting to become a fad. i’ve seen most of these designers before stumbling across this link. i guess on their own you can go ooohh and aaaahhh but when you lump them together it really shows how we’re being fed the same ol, same ol. i like my illustration/design with a lil kick to it please.
Windy
September 29th, 2007 2:08 pmwhat a wonderful site. so glad i ‘stumbled’ upon it.
Richard Francis Kay
October 1st, 2007 5:22 pmReally brilliant designs, I really like the way how the designers put in the emotion with the use of colors… passionate work guys! Keeps me motivated to excel.
And I really like SmashingMagazine for bringing these kinds of (high) creativity input and other interesting resources.
You guys are my nr.1 resource page! Keep up the creativity knowlegde sharing!
Jaime
October 5th, 2007 4:52 amBy looks of Sara from Pakistan’s grammar and juvenile verbiage I suspect it is probably a 40 year old studio worker from CBS–blogging in character. They are “trolling” for the next season of “Pedophile Caught on Tape”.
DON”T EMAIL HER.
lol
andrea
October 5th, 2007 11:44 amInteresting photoshop effect perhaps, but no, not “masters of graphic design”. I consider this type of design on par with what airbrushers did, when poeple still did such a thing. Slightly above mall-rat work, sorry.
Millus
October 5th, 2007 9:08 pmTruly interesting artworks – some are very cool
somehow very equal too – somehow too digital
I miss the wonderful simple art and graphic design and the roots to non digital art
Daryl
October 5th, 2007 11:52 pmWow very incredible…Master of all Master…Very Inspiring…
nnamffoh
October 8th, 2007 1:38 amHello,
can someone tell me, where i find tutorials for so beautiful illustrations?
i have search via google but i don’t found anyone :/
Please help me :)
Jeranet
October 10th, 2007 3:08 am0.o
Muito bom, ótimos trabalhos…
Markus
October 10th, 2007 5:35 pmHahaha, you people being all pretentious and condescending about this post are exactly why everyday average people hate dealing with “designers”.
Yes this post was definitely biased towards the style du jour. You shouldn’t be surprised at all.
Get over yourselves. If you acted that snooty in real life in another industry towards someone else’s work you’d get a face full of knuckles.
moon2318
October 11th, 2007 12:24 pmExcellent entry. Thank you very much.
Zpixel
October 14th, 2007 12:59 amThis is totally wicked!!!!!
andy
October 14th, 2007 8:26 pmIt takes a good deal of work and attention to detail to make illustrations like this come together. While I wouldn’t go as far as saying that they are ‘masters’, I can easily give credit to their great technical ability.
At first glance it all seemingly looks like a plethora of eye candy, but to suggest (as previous posts have suggested) that a number of it are illustrations created only to satisfy the creators impulses and have made something for pure aesthetics, is a bit much.
Despite the fact that some works may not have been successful in communicating their message to you, who are we to say that they haven’t tried and rob them of that notion that they attempted to visually communicate something to their audience? In essence that’s the objective of graphic design isn’t it?
So how can we just assume on everyone else’s behalf and say they’ve failed and furthermore go on to think that it hasn’t been able to speak something to someone else out there? I’m not a fan of all the work displayed here but I don’t think I could conclude by stamping them as being nothing more than illustrations that over-stimulate the retina.
NaLLe
October 24th, 2007 2:27 pmwoow! i can’t stop looking at theseee!! sooo amazing …. just luv ‘em!
Duccio
October 30th, 2007 4:50 amI’m starving for a glimpse of new stuff. New that’ll be old soon, like this one. Like you, like me. People stop being depressed and use this nausea to feed your creativity.
Good post. neat picture of today oldest news.
Keep exploring people. Good luck.
mel erick
November 7th, 2007 10:58 amThis is a real modern art using a full imagination.
Let me know how do you do this fantastics images. you have some guides or tutorials for follow.
John Faulds
November 9th, 2007 11:01 amGot nothing to do with the industry being discussed; it’s the nature of the Internet, innit? If people said in real life half the stuff they say online, the hospital wards would be full of battered bodies. ;)
Nadja
November 11th, 2007 6:26 pmSimply W.o.W !
SVC81
November 25th, 2007 2:00 pm“The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents”.
Simple Amazing
salvatore
November 28th, 2007 1:04 amall look so wonderful!! awesome… so some people dont call this graphic design… so i invite to post a link to check your stuff… maybe after that we can call crap this work….
k16903
December 4th, 2007 11:00 pmThere is an alternative reaction to this… lots of contemporary illustrators are doing beautiful work that moves on from this homogenous current trend — it’s just a matter of art directors and designers having the imagination and guts to commission something different.
kornel
December 7th, 2007 3:02 amsome of them are art
frank blindblues
December 18th, 2007 7:32 amwow Very good Bellissimi
karol lasia
December 18th, 2007 12:10 pmwell done technically, extremely unoriginal otherwise. enough is enough, come on now.
Margarida Lencastre
December 23rd, 2007 4:13 amNice Pics !!!
Awesome… This is Art!
Candy
December 27th, 2007 2:41 pmi like your designs.
FROM CHINA
gadden
January 1st, 2008 1:37 ami love it…..
but where did you get all the nice brushes ?
gadden
Nisrod
January 4th, 2008 12:34 amThe shame about this is that few people will realize that a lot of the influence for these artists was a guy on Deviantart called ‘Silveryn’,who basically pioneered the nature/silhouette/floral style around 2002 that shows clear signs of being in some designs here. His ‘Change of Seasons’ piece that had thousands of favs on DA is probably one of the single most imitated/ripped/cloned pieces in digital art history. It’s a pity that those rippers basically made him give it all away.
jux
January 6th, 2008 4:48 amReally amazing pictures. I hope the OLED-Display technology comes and i can change the pictures from you!
Nandu
January 9th, 2008 3:52 amreally amazing stuff…….
Nandu
January 9th, 2008 3:53 amreally amazing stuff…….should be inspiration for every designer in the world…..
MaxSerna
January 10th, 2008 6:46 pmAmazing jobs, i not have to say. Thanks for post these works.
NHughes
January 11th, 2008 2:47 pmIt is only when they are all put together like this that you see how alike alot of them are in z z z z z z z z .
whatever
January 13th, 2008 7:34 amWhy are these people the ‘masters’ when it’s all cliche same old adobe cs shit ?