Central Illustration Agency Opens California Office, Featuring Four Distinct Illustration Practices

Central Illustration Agency’s new California office adds a US base to a roster already represented in London, Paris and Oslo. The announcement also offers a useful look at the range of practices the agency brings together: detailed botanical drawing, expressive painting, intricate paper work and character led illustration. For art directors and design teams, that range points to an agency built to match a visual brief with an individual artist’s way of working.

The Directory of Illustration marked the opening with a spotlight on four Central artists: David De Las Heras, Charlotte Day, Jason Raish and Andy Singleton. Their work spans packaging, books, editorial projects, print and large scale installations. The examples show how illustration can shift between a self contained image and a larger design role, carrying a product’s identity, shaping a publication or giving a physical space a visual centerpiece.

Central Illustration Agency describes its offer as talent management across illustration, motion and installation. Its team says it curates artists, advises clients through the business side of a project and connects them directly with the chosen image maker. That approach places the working relationship at the center: the client and artist begin collaborating early, with the agency helping shape the match and support the process.

The agency also describes work with public projects and education. It says those efforts involve bringing professional image makers into contact with groups that might not otherwise work with them, and supporting more equal access to arts education. The new California branch extends the agency’s geographic reach while keeping its focus on artists whose work moves across formats.

Four practices, four ways into a brief

From left: David De Las Heras, Charlotte Day, Jason Raish and Andy Singleton.

Jason Raish brings a cosmopolitan illustration practice shaped by a six year period living and freelancing in cities including Beijing, Tokyo, Barcelona, Seoul, London and Paris. Born in South Korea and raised in western New York, he now lives and works in Brooklyn. The featured images include a sharply dressed man in a mint suit holding a cane and two women playing croquet. These scenes suggest a taste for character, costume and narrative detail, giving a commissioning team clear visual hooks to build a story around.

Raish’s work has received recognition from the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles, Communication Arts, American Illustration, 3×3 and Spectrum. His international working history may also suit briefs that need a visual sensibility informed by different places and cultural references. Portfolio // Website // Agency

Illustration of a man in a mint suit holding a cane. © Jason Raish

Illustration of two women playing croquet. © Jason Raish

Charlotte Day turns a longstanding interest in horticulture into botanical illustration for packaging, book covers and editorial work. Her featured pieces include botanical designs for Lush and a tiger pattern. Both point to the versatility of her detailed approach: plant forms can carry the subject of an image, build a repeat pattern or add texture and personality to a product surface. The balance described in her work is between careful craft and a contemporary finish, a combination that can help nature inspired imagery feel at home in modern design systems.

Botanical designs for Lush © Charlotte Day

Tiger pattern © Charlotte Day

Portfolio // Website // Agency

David De Las Heras is a Barcelona based artist and illustrator who studied art at the University of the Basque Country, specializing in painting. His training shows in his confident use of the brush, while contemporary graphic forms give the work a more immediate, communicative quality. The featured images are book cover and book artwork for Planet of the Apes, an example of how his painting background can translate into a designed object. For a book brief, that mix can give an image both an expressive surface and a strong graphic read at cover scale.

Planet of the Apes book cover © David De Las Heras

Planet of the Apes book © David De Las Heras

Portfolio // Website // Agency

Andy Singleton, from Wakefield in northern England, works with paper engineering. His practice examines natural and human made forms through intricate, detailed construction, extending from printed images and advertising to large scale installations. The featured work is for the London Biennale. Paper’s physical qualities make his work especially suited to projects where an image can become an object or occupy a space, while the fine detail rewards closer viewing.

Singleton’s client list includes Harrods, Hermés and Liberty of London. His range offers art directors a way to carry a crafted visual language between formats, from a printed piece to a spatial installation.

London Biennale artwork © Andy Singleton

London Biennale artwork © Andy Singleton

Portfolio // Website // Agency

What the roster offers design teams

Together, these artists make the agency’s breadth tangible. A brief that calls for botanical patterning can draw on Day’s close observation; a book cover can build on De Las Heras’s painterly and graphic balance; Raish brings character driven scenes; Singleton can take an illustration into constructed paper and physical space. The California office gives Central another point of contact for that range, while the agency’s stated process keeps the artist involved from the start. For teams planning a project, the practical question is how the image needs to work: as a pattern, a narrative, a printed focal point or something that changes the room around it.