The Creatives Room

Illustration in Ads

Illustration in advertising communicates something photography can't: it announces that something is imagined rather than documented, which gives it access to worlds and moments that cameras can't reach. The London Underground's history of commissioned poster art, the illustrated campaigns of Penguin Books, the hand-drawn aesthetic of brands like Innocent Drinks - these chose illustration because illustration was the precise right tool for the creative job. This collection brings together the advertising where that choice was right.

The campaigns in this collection

  1. The Cat Prince - Corsair Poetry · Jon Gray · 2024

    Cover for Michael Pedersen's The Cat Prince. The crowned, arch-backed cat gives the title poem a cheeky mascot - regal and feral at once, matching the collection's tender, mischievous tone.

  2. Earl Lovelace - Faber · Kishan Rajani · 2025

    Cover for Earl Lovelace's The Schoolmaster. The imposing figure hovering over the wary girl signals the novel's story of authority and its abuse in a remote Trinidadian village.

  3. Secrets of the Snakestone - Nosy Crow · 2025

    Cover for Piu DasGupta's middle-grade novel Secrets of the Snakestone. The great coiling snake winding through a hidden world signals a Paris-set mystery full of secret passages, magic and danger.

  4. Company - One (Pushkin Press) · Anna Morrison · 2025

    Cover for Shannon Sanders's story collection Company. The figures crossing and overlapping through colour panels evoke the visitors, kin and guests - the "company" - who move through these linked family stories.

  5. The Tower - Hutchinson Heinemann · Henry Petrides · 2025

    Cover for Flora Carr's The Tower. The women confined within the fortress walls, watched by beasts, evokes the novel's imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots and the fierce bonds forged in captivity.

  6. Finn Jones Was Here - Scholastic · Sarah Baldwin · 2024

    Cover for Simon James Green's Finn Jones Was Here. The friendly gestures forming the title celebrate friendship and connection - the heart of a tender middle-grade story about loss and belonging.

  7. Macbeth - Penguin Books · Arabella Jones · 2025

    Cover for Shakespeare's Macbeth. The luminous coven and blazing eye foreground the witches and prophecy that set the tragedy in motion - fate glowing at the heart of the play.

  8. The Vaster Wilds - Hutchinson Heinemann · Henry Petrides · 2024

    Cover for Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds. The lone girl running through gilded, beast-filled wilds captures the novel's colonial-era servant escaping into a vast, indifferent American wilderness.

  9. The Wild - Oxford Children’s Books · Holly Fulbrook · 2024

    Cover for Yuval Zommer's The Wild. The teeming, hand-painted woodland packed with creatures invites young readers straight into nature's abundance - the wild as a place to get lost in.

  10. Eight Weeks of Bruce - Owen Glidersleeve · 2010

    Cover for "Eight Weeks of Bruce." The title carved out of a spreading wine spill sets a warm, messy, comedic tone - domestic life and a little chaos, made by hand rather than typeset.

  11. The White Guy - Peter Cocking · 2009

    Cover for Stephen Hunt's satirical The White Guy: A Field Guide. Presenting a generic suited everyman like a specimen in a nature guide sets up the book's tongue-in-cheek anthropology of a type.

  12. The Whale - Ecco · Allison Saltzman · 2010

    Cover for Philip Hoare's The Whale. Presenting the great cetaceans like plates from a field guide honours the book's blend of natural history and wonder at the ocean's giants.

  13. I Haven't Been Thinking About You At All Lately - Shannon Freshwater · 2009

    Cover for Jacob Evans's collection. The coiled snake under a breezy, obviously-untrue title needles at denial and lingering feeling - the casual line contradicted by the tension in the image.

  14. Hamlet - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of Hamlet. The play's emblems - crown, blade, skull, ghost - are distilled into one elegant line-drawn totem, mapping the tragedy's obsessions with power, death and vengeance.

  15. King Lear - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of King Lear. The crowned head unravelling into a labyrinth under falling rain maps the play's descent into madness and the storm on the heath - authority coming apart.

  16. Othello - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of Othello. The calm mask over a body dripping red distils the tragedy - a composed surface hiding jealousy and bloodshed, the noble Moor undone from within.

  17. A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The tangled quartet of lovers and Puck's love-in-idleness magic are distilled into one symmetrical icon; the crossed arrows and shared heart map the play's mismatched, redirected desire.

  18. You Think That's Bad - Knopf · Jason Booher · 2010

    Cover for Jim Shepard's story collection You Think That's Bad. The knotted ear roasting on a fire is a fittingly absurd, faintly disturbing emblem for stories of people in over their heads.

  19. The Twelfth Night - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of Twelfth Night. The shipwreck, the twin-hinting crowned figure and scattered hearts fold the comedy's storm, disguise and tangled love into one graceful emblem.

  20. International Jester Festival in Willisau - niklaus troxler for 100 beste Plakate · 2025

    Niklaus Troxler poster for the International Jester Festival in Willisau. The swarming, colour-drunk mob of masks captures Fasnacht carnival mayhem - anarchic fun rendered as a wall of grinning faces.

  21. Your Ticket into New Worlds

    Social platforms already own Gen Z attention, and the appeal is being inside a shared conversation. Reading is positioned to compete on exactly that ground: not as schoolwork but as entire worlds to enter and then talk about, with the book framed as the ticket in.

  22. Don't drink and drive - opel · Y&R Rome · 2020

    Opel sought to reinforce its road safety commitment by addressing drink-driving without relying on easily dismissed shock tactics. The campaign taps into the cultural truth that social drinkers view popular alcoholic beverages as friendly companions rather than lethal threats. To disrupt this compla

  23. Minha Melhor Semana - Bolero · Bolero · 2016

    To combat the hidden nature of domestic abuse, this public interest campaign addresses how victims normalize toxic behaviors before they escalate to physical violence. The creative idea subverts the diary format of a personal calendar to chronicle a woman's 'best week,' which is tragically defined n

  24. They can't pretend to be what they have never seen. Donate your eyes. - fortaleza city hall · Propeg · 2015

    Fortaleza City Hall's organ-donation line: "They can't pretend to be what they have never seen. Donate your eyes." The whole argument lives in one sentence - children born blind cannot even play at being the things sighted children imitate, so a cornea is not just sight, it is imagination and play.

Why this collection is worth studying

Illustration in advertising is having a particular moment as brands seek to differentiate themselves from the stock photography aesthetic that digital advertising has normalised. The campaigns in this collection predate and predict that trend - they chose illustration when the choice was genuinely unusual, which is why they still feel distinct today. Understanding what illustration uniquely offers - warmth, character, imagination, the sense of the handmade - is useful for any brief where those qualities matter.

See also

Best Illustrated Advertising Campaigns - The Creatives Room