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Latest Illustration News
Aaron Fernandez Puts Productivity Panic to Bed
An isometric wireframe bedroom traps a sleepless coder among looming green hands, turning AI’s always-on pressure into something claustrophobic and physical for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Can a Maximalist Composition Have a Hierarchy?
James Clapham packs a new dimension into his work for New Internationalist
James Clapham fills rooms. Bars, city blocks, entire neighborhoods. He packs them with interest until every square centimeter is pulling narrative duty. His compositions for The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Washington Post are visual stockpiles where you keep finding new jokes. The tradition comes from Bruegel’s peasant panoramas, or even Richard Scarry’s Busytown. But Clapham’s flat digital color and comedic sensibility makes his work entirely contemporary.
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What Happens When You Illustrate a Monthly Column For a Whole Year?
Inside Carmen Casado’s illustrated takeover of the Guardian’s “How To Start” column
The fashion items scattered across the composition read like a thrift store haul from 1987. It’s the kind of image that makes you want to rummage through it. Casado has been illustrating this column since January 2025.
Pete Gamlen Draws a Standoff from Above
Forced perspective turns a failed protest into a commanding composition for The New Yorker
You’re above everyone. Below, tactical officers mill about in helmets and camouflage vests. Gamlen positions us forty feet up in a tree and from there the entire operation shrinks to the scale of a board game.
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Every week, we look back at the illustrations reviewed on PUBLSHD, find the threads connecting them, and forecast where the industry is heading.
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Pete Ryan Catches Grandma Pumping Iron on the Playground
An older woman doing a one-armed handstand on a jungle gym gives this New Scientist cover story about frailty a burst of optimistic joy.
A sunset settles over a playground. Kids hang from the bars, vibing. Above them, an older woman balances inverted on one arm, limbs flung wide. New Scientist’s March 2026 cover story argues that our assumptions about aging and physical decline are upside down. Pete Ryan’s illustration put that thesis on top of a jungle gym and made us laugh.
Tania Yakunova’s Social Sampler for 5280 Magazine
Yakunova packs a city’s worth of social activities into one image for 5280’s guide to Denver’s best gathering spots
How do you illustrate a list? 5280’s feature on Denver’s 36 best “third places” poses the problem at scale. Tania Yakunova’s answer is in the structure of the composition. She builds a grid, then lifts one woman out of it entirely, positioning her as a guide threading us from vignette to vignette.
