Yuko Shimizu is a multi-award-winning Japanese illustrator based in New York City, with over 20 years of experience across a wide range of disciplines. In addition to her illustration practice, she is also an instructor at The School of Visual Arts. Her clients span major media, publishing, tech, and cultural institutions. Yuko is also a two-time Hugo Award nominee (2019, 2020) and a recipient of multiple Clio Awards (2023). She was awarded the Caldecott Honor in both 2021 and 2025 for her work on the children’s books ‘The Cat Man of Aleppo’ and ‘Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains’. In 2009, Newsweek Japan named her one of the “100 Japanese People the World Respects.”

Simon J. Curd is an illustrator based in the outer suburbs of Nottingham, UK. He's known for creating an ever-expanding world of curious creatures wandering through overgrown, abandoned places. His work celebrates nostalgia and the quiet beauty of forgotten things. Alongside his personal projects, Simon illustrates for bands, books, and businesses and regularly appears at markets and conventions across the Midlands and the North of England. 

Tomo77 is a Costa Rica-based artist whose bold, graphic work explores human behaviour, capitalism, and pop culture, shaped by his immigrant experience. With over 30 years in design and art, his work has appeared in exhibitions at La Luz de Jesus, LA, Saatchi Gallery 1st London, Stolenspace, One Grand Gallery PDX, Mortal Machine NOLA, Mirus SF, Palazzo di Espozisioni di Roma, and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Costa Rica. It has been featured in Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz. He's collaborated with Devo, Pearl Jam, Mastodon, Mike Doughty, Alien Ant Farm and Shepard Fairey, bringing a distinct visual voice to every project. His pandemic-era book Pandemonium acts as a graphic journal of life in crisis, urgent, raw, and reflective. Tomo77's work confronts the present moment with clarity and force, giving form to the stories that need telling.

In The Flowers Personified (Les Fleurs Animées, 1847), a garden blooms with far more than petals and leaves. This illustrated work combines the imaginative drawings of J. J. Grandville and the playful text of Taxile Delord. Flowers take on human form with personalities, moods, and moral inclinations. What begins as a charming floral fantasy unfolds into a subtle critique of 19th-century ideals around femininity, beauty, and social behaviour.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a boom in illustration that transformed books, magazines, and print media into immersive visual experiences. This period between the 1880s - 1930s was known as The Golden Age of Illustration. This period saw the rise of masterful artists who revolutionised storytelling through their intricate and atmospheric artwork. Figures such as Gustave Doré, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham elevated illustration to an art form, crafting iconic images that inspire artists, designers, and storytellers today. Read on to find out more!