Now is an illustrators time …

Throughout my creative career: I have encountered what I call accelerators (opportunities ) and bumps. Now is a time for acceleration.

=I’m often told I’m entrepreneurial, but i see myself more an opportunist.

I didn’t set out to build a global full service creative agency. But I did set out to succeed. I was ambitious, and I knew I wanted to work with artists and creativity in some form. At university, studying visual communication, I had a very clear image of who I thought I would become: black polo necks, red lipstick, thick glasses, acupuncture trainers with pencil skirts, rucksacks always on both shoulders, that unofficial uniform of the creative director of the naughties.

People call that manifestation but at the time it was simply a picture in my head of the life I saw myself in.

So I didn’t write a business plan for Bright, but I was open recognised opportunities. I was too young to have a fully thought-through plan, and the plan i did have was built on dreams rather than experience. I didn’t yet have the experience, or anything realistic to base a plan on.

Creative careers and business rarely unfold in logical steps. They can look like planed steps from the outside, but when you’re living them they are far more chaotic. One thing leads to another and success is simply the accumulation of one step after another, two good and one back is progress.

Along the way though I have noticed something that seems to happen to almost every creative career: you encounter what I call accelerators (opportunities ) and bumps.

Bumps are the moments when something unexpected knocks you off course. I remember one author who had written a charming picture book about a worm. In the final scene, the worm travelled across a plate and, as it moved, the curve of its body made the plate appear to smile. It was a lovely idea.

But just as we were preparing to pitch it, Julia Donaldson released her new book Superworm.

That was the end of that. A bump.

No publisher was going to commission another worm picture book in the wake of a Julia Donaldson release. Our project hadn’t suddenly become worse. Infact it showed just how on point our subject matter and book was, but the timing had worked against us. That’s what I call a bump.

Accelerators are the opposite. They are the moments when the wider world unexpectedly aligns with what your doing. Like when Bills restaurant sold avocado on toast, and the millennial trend of going out for breakfast and eating local food, meant that Bills idea of a restaurant selling locvally produced food and putting avocado on toast for breakfast was a boom move and a business accelerator.

Right now, as illustrators you are living through one of those moments. An accelerator.

I know you may think I’m mad to say this whilst we have all been living through a period of extreme anxiety and anger, having watched our work scraped and absorbed into making AI models. We’ve seen awkward replicas of illustration appear everywhere. Tools like Canva have made basic design more accessible than ever, instagram tools that have made what was hours of photoshop work happen by anyone, and immediately that follows a you tube how to video. We have seen in many ways, the general level of visual literacy improving, taste improving. The internet is now full of people experimenting with design and composition in ways that would have been unimaginable fifteen years ago.

I think many of us have been so blinkered by fear and anger that we hardly dared to believe the occasional voice saying that hand-drawn work would become more valuable. Even though I’ve written about it myself, I have to admit I didn’t fully believe it either.

Yet it seems that at this very moment, when we are all feeling creativity might erode into the sea the very opposite has begun to happen.

The ultimate luxury good is illustrated.

Hermès is utilizing hand-drawn illustrations and, in early 2026, launched a website featuring whimsical underwater scenes by illustrator Linda Merad to highlight human craftsmanship over, and in contrast to, digital AI, featuring, with, and for products.

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras for Hermes

If someone had told me three years ago that The Very Hungry Caterpillar would appear on a Dior bag, I would have laughed. If you had said that Hermès would redesign its website around illustration — and not even necessarily illustration by famous artists — I would have assumed you were joking.

Illustration by Eric Carle

And yet here we are.

Hand-drawn work feels rare, And rarity, as we know, is the foundation of luxury.

Today, when you walk through the most interesting corners of design and retail, you see it everywhere. The most distinctive craft beer labels are illustrated. The most desirable chocolate brands are illustrated. Independent perfume houses, wine makers, bakeries and fashion labels are all turning toward illustration again.

Illustration by Enikó Eged

Illustrations by Arthouse Unlimited

Illustration by Gnaw

When something is made carefully, by hand, people want the visual language around it to feel human too.

Even the highest-end luxury houses are rediscovering this. The finest leather goods are valued not because they are perfectly identical, but because they were made by skilled hands. Craft is no longer hidden; it is the selling point. Imperfection means real.

And Illustration belongs naturally in that world.

That is what I mean by an accelerator when suddenly what you do sits exactly where culture is heading.

For illustrators, artists and visual storytellers, this is a moment to recognise what’s happening. and really get behind it. Share this type of work and celebrate it. Develop your portfolio for it.

Understand that being a creative also means being an entrepreneur. Every artist is running a small business, managing your time, your energy and output in order to make a living from your craft.

And right now, that cultural wind is behind you.

So I find myself feeling unexpectedly grateful to the disruption of ai, and reasured by the creativity of humans that we will rise and I’m thrilled to see how luxury brands have recognised this shift. They have reminded us what luxury is, and as we know other industries follows cat walk trends.

So in a world increasingly defined by speed and automation, the ultimate luxury may is something that was drawn and imagined by a person and this fellow creatives is what I call an Accelorator.