Seven Emerging Illustrators Bring Distinctive Ideas to Image Making

Distinctive illustration can begin with a single organizing idea: a cloud, a crowded frame, a visual metaphor or a deliberately lumpy shape. A 2021 feature by Creative Boom, written by contributor Tom May, selected 28 emerging illustrators to watch. Seven of those artists are represented by the Directory of Illustration. Their approaches offer a useful look at how personal interests, formal training and different kinds of client work can feed an illustration practice.

The selection spans editorial and book illustration, animation, graphic design and work for commercial clients. The source provides little detail about individual commissions or image making processes, so the most revealing points are the artists’ stated interests and working contexts. Taken together, they suggest several routes into a recognisable visual language: translating complex subjects into a single image, building meaning through graphic layers, or drawing on familiar objects and memories.

Images built around a clear idea

Eleni Debo

Belgian illustrator Eleni Debo lives in the mountains of Italy and is represented by Folio Art. She combines analogue and digital painting, and her work appears in newspapers, books and magazines. The source describes her as a conceptual thinker with a particular ability to distil complex stories into one thought-provoking image.

That focus on distillation is useful to keep in mind when looking through an editorial portfolio. A single image has to establish a subject and offer a point of view without the room a sequence or long text might provide. Debo’s mix of physical and digital methods also points to a flexible process: the tools can serve the idea, rather than dictate a fixed finish. Her work and further information are available through her website and portfolio.

Jake Hawkins

London-based Jake Hawkins works as an in-house designer at The Telegraph and makes both representational and conceptual illustrations. He studied illustration at Falmouth University, earning a BA. The feature highlights his use of visual metaphor and a clean aesthetic—a combination that can make an abstract idea legible through a concise, carefully chosen image.

Representational and conceptual work ask different things of a viewer, but metaphor can connect them: familiar forms can carry an additional meaning without losing their immediate readability. Hawkins’s work can be explored through his website and portfolio.

Layer, animate and build a world

Jacques Kleynhans

Illustrator and graphic designer Jacques Kleynhans works between South Africa and the Netherlands. He is interested in layered information and narrative, using graphic devices, icons and typography to complete many of his illustrations. That toolkit lets an image carry several kinds of information at once: type can establish hierarchy, icons can orient the viewer, and visual details can help a scene unfold.

For designers, the approach raises a practical composition question: how can an illustration hold multiple elements while still guiding the eye? Kleynhans’s work gives that question a place to start. See his website or portfolio.

Menghui Huang

Shanghai-based freelance illustrator Menghui Huang works across illustration and animation. Her client list includes Huawei, Tencent and Alibaba, and the source notes packaging and advertising work among her experience. She studied New Media Art at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, graduating with a BFA. The source also reports that she won that year’s Directory of Illustration Cross-Category AOI Award.

Working across still and moving images can make an artist consider how a visual idea changes over time, while packaging asks an image to function within a designed object. The source doesn’t describe Huang’s specific methods, so those fields are best read as the range of contexts her practice touches. Her website and portfolio offer a closer look.

Dion MBD

Dion MBD is the working name of Indonesian illustrator and designer Dionisius Mehaga Bangun Djayasaputra, who lives and works between Brooklyn and Bandung. He studied illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, where he developed a fascination with clouds. It is a modest detail, but a revealing one: a recurring subject can become a way to test shape, atmosphere and variation across different images.

The source doesn’t specify how clouds appear in particular pieces, leaving the portfolio to show how that interest develops visually. Browse his work on Behance or through his Directory of Illustration portfolio.

Influences that keep an image playful

Mariajo Ilustrajo

Spanish illustrator Mariajo Ilustrajo was studying for a master’s degree in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University when the feature was published. The source also reports that she won the overall New Talent category at that year’s World Illustration Awards. Her training connects her practice to picture books, where each image has to contribute to a story that moves across pages.

For anyone interested in narrative illustration, her portfolio is a useful place to see how an artist approaches that visual storytelling challenge. Explore her website or portfolio.

Jess Hannigan

Jess Hannigan grew up in Niagara, Ontario, and earned a BFA from Sheridan College’s Bachelor of Illustration program. She describes her pictures as vibrant, flat and lumpy. Her influences include toys from the 1990s, ceramic clowns that are a little unnerving, and candy wrappers. These everyday and deliberately odd references give a sense of how personal visual material can become a source of form and mood.

Hannigan’s work also explores the messy parts of being human and people’s relationship with their possessions. The stated influences suggest a practice comfortable with eccentric shapes and imperfect surfaces, though the portfolio is where those qualities can be seen directly. Visit her website or portfolio.

Each artist offers a different starting point for looking closely: Debo’s conceptual compression, Kleynhans’s layered information, Hawkins’s metaphor, or Hannigan’s personal archive of shapes and objects. The 2021 selection is a reminder that a distinctive practice needn’t begin with a signature technique. It can grow from a subject, a way of arranging information or a set of influences—and develop as the artist carries those choices into new work.