WIA2021: Highlights from the Professional Alternative Publishing Category

Explore just some of the highlights on the WIA2021 Professional Alternative Publishing longlist in this curated list featuring work across all new forms of publishing, from comics to artist books! Find out how illustrators are taking the traditional book format to the next level…

The World Illustration Awards 2021 Longlist features 500 projects by New Talent and Professional illustrators from all over the world across ten categories. This year, the awards celebrate great illustration! Read on to see our Professional Alternative Publishing Category Highlights – and if you’d like to learn more, click through to see the full project and contact information!


This piece was created as part of the ‘Walk Don’t Walk’ exhibition with Out of the Blueprint. They commissioned new work by comic makers and illustrators, to push the limits of riso production. The intention was to create an experimental long form comic/zine by pushing the limits of riso production.

Lauren Morsley is an Illustrator and printmaker based in Scotland. She specialises in the bold, the bright, and the colourful to create lively and playful designs.

Sol Jeong’s work is inspired by someone she met who collected her self-portrait created by different people. The illustrations were turned into a graphic novel that shows this journey of self-discovery though the eyes of others.

Sol Jeong is an illustrator, animator and maker who loves to draw from life as she finds people interacting with their surroundings mesmerising. She captures the liveliness and movement of certain places in her work and wants to encourage people to experience how she visualises things through her own depictions.

Mid book section spread.

This work was inspired by the artist’s collection of plants, something she started as a calming hobby. The illustrations are shown alongside advice for caring for indoor plants.

Kladi is the founder of studio Printmysoul. She was named one of the world’s top Illustrator instructors by Adobe Edex.

This project shows 21 of the most commonly seen abandoned items on British Streets, drawn by hand using Indian ink, dip pen and brushes. YA MUM is the culmination of years of observation, lived and heard experiences of the lesser celebrated pillars of British sub culture

Ben Tallon is an illustrator, writer and host of Arrest All Mimics: Creative Innovation podcast. He has worked globally, across a broad range of media with clients including The Guardian, Premier League, UNICEF, WWE, EMI Records and Bloomsbury Books among many others.

Suffolk Libraries commissioned Sandy to draw one day a month, in thirteen of their libraries, over the course of a year, capturing the unseen moments of library users and staff. The resulting 200+ illustrations are presented as a concertina book and limited edition prints, for exhibition at Ipswich library. During the project the UK went into lockdown because of Covid-19, and the exhibition moved online.

Sandy Horsley is an illustrator and printmaker based in Suffolk, UK. She has an illustration BA from NUA and an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from Cambridge School of Art. In 2019 she received a Diploma Award at the Moscow International Book Fair and her debut picture book was published in 2020.

Cover Illustration

Illustrations for a graphic novel printed using risograph technique for a limited edition, focussing on how we experience solitude.

Eric Schwarz is an illustrator and comic author. He studied graphic design in Germany and spent one year at the graphic storytelling program of LUCA school of arts in Brussels. Since graduating in 2019 he’s been freelancing on a wide range of projects. He regularly illustrates articles for FOCUS magazine, murals for local gyms, or visuals for musicians.

This comic was inspired by what has happened and changed during the first 6 months when the Covid-19 pandemic started. The spring arrived and the trees and plants started growing and blooming more widely than ever during the time of our lockdown. The vivid vibe and the new normal of keeping the distance between us reminded the artist of the crown shyness phenomenon between trees.

Pei-Hsin Cho is a freelance illustrator and animator based in London. Her narrative-based work combines traditional and digital mediums to depict a variety of inward feelings. Personal sentiments are always present in Pei-Hsin’s work, wrapped with rational narration to catalyse intimate subjective experiences and memory fragments.

Ovadia illustrated a poem titled A Purchase in Deizengov by Erez Bitton for an anthology of Hebrew Poetry. This particular poem tells a story of a store owner at Dizengoff Street in Israel and how alienated he feels compared to the outside, almost a stranger coming from the outskirts of Israel into the very centre of a bohemian society. This piece shifts the poem’s perspective, to show the inside from the outside.

Ovadia Benishu is an Israeli Illustrator based in Tel-Aviv. A graduate from Shenkar College, Ovadia works mainly as an editorial Illustrator and comic artist. Clients include Wired, BBC’s Focus, Harvard Business Review, Mr Porter, HP, Zetland and more.

Encyclopedia

Indonesia consists of 17.000 islands and becomes one of the biggest archipelago countries in the world and has a high variety of wildlife from other countries, it causes by natural selection. This unique book is the first of its kind to document the unique wildlife of this country.


Syams Riadio lives in Jakarta works as a freelance illustrator. His illustration is a representation of human thoughts, a foundation of an invention, and a statement of the act.

If you enjoyed reading this curated list, why not explore the full WIA2021 Longlist for more inspiration!


2nd July 2021
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