Strength In Numbers

There was something for everyone in the most diverse World Illustration Awards to date

With the incessant rumblings that all traditional creativity will soon be eschewed for multi-platform-primed digital media (created by AI turbo robots presumably), it’s great that the globally lauded World Illustration Awards retains at its very core its love for the idiosyncratic, often traditional, always human.

Sure, there was plenty of software-manipulated material on show this year, but walking around the awards gallery in Somerset House, London, the draftsmanship, craft and hands-on creativity was the main attraction.

It must have been a timeconsuming task for the panel of industry professional judges, whose ranks included illustrators, editors and agency heads. With a record 3,700 entries, and a wider global reach of entrants than ever before, 2019's awards was as fiercely competitive as it was creative.

There were eight categories – Advertising, Books, Children's Books, Design, Editorial, Experimental, Research, and Site Specific (murals, installations, graffiti, etc), with two winners from each category, Professional and New Talent.