In this piece we’re celebrating the AOI’s 50th Anniversary, and our Events and Awards. From the very first competition and annual in 1976 to the current global success of World Illustration Awards, the Awards have been a substantial part of the AOI’s activities, helping illustration reach a wide ranging audience of commissioners and the general public. AOI also focused on events tailored to illustrators to help run their businesses and see more of the amazing work created by their peers.

AOI Events

To help illustrators gain more insight and understanding of various areas of the illustration industry, AOI has always organised a broad range of events, including, from the 1990s the always popular, long running Looking at Children’s Books, which brought together a literary agent, illustrators, a portfolio consultant and art directors to offer their experience in this area.

How to Survive as an Illustrator was an annual all-day conference guide to the illustration profession aimed at new illustrators, including how to do the best portfolio presentation, the role of a commissioner, a presentation from a professional illustrator and more. We’ve continued to offer info on freelancing as an illustrator, with Business Start Up Master Classes for Illustrators (2006) and Open Portfolio – A Showcase for Illustrators and Artists (2007), bringing shorter sessions focusing on a particular area as the internet opened up the opportunities to reach more people.

With one-offs such as Virtual Fruits: is the Internet ripe for the picking? Beyond Imagination The World of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art and Re-drawing The Line – A symposium exploring contemporary issues in illustration presented in the mid 2000s, AOI aimed to explore how illustration kept expanding as an artform.

We’ve maintained a long term presence at the New Designers annual graduate fair where we’ve been able to meet AOI college members alongside other universities and offer a free business talk to the attending students.

Continuing to help illustrators feel confident in their business practice, this year we’re presenting the fourth season of our Complete Guide to Illustration.

Alongside the organisation’s own annual illustration competition, the AOI has also been a partner in several long running awards competitions, including the London Transport Museum’s (unsurprisingly) capital city focused competition which issued themed calls for entries. These included, Cycling In London, Secret London, London Stories and River Thames. The competition had started in 2000 as the SAA Illustration Awards, with the AOI organising and administering the entries later on, while the museum held the exhibition.

In 2019 AOI hosted the entry form for The Northern Illustration Prize, part of The Northern Festival of Illustration, a biennial celebration in Hartlepool of all that is great about the diverse world of illustration. In 2019, 2021 and 2023 The Prize attracted hundreds of entries from 6 continents. In 2023 the town hosted the world-famous Tall Ships Race and to celebrate this and the town’s maritime heritage the theme of the 2023 Prize was ‘The Sea’. A £1000 prize awaits the winner of each category. 

After many successful years, in 2015 the AOI partnered with the USA based Directory of Illustration to move the Awards global and the World Illustration Awards took over from the Illustration Awards, proving to be the most successful awards yet, peaking at 5300 submissions in 2021. Alongside the AOI’s move to Somerset House, the awards were exhibited in the stately building until the Covid pandemic shut down exhibitions.

From 2020 the awards night and showcase successfully moved online to cater for a global audience. However, the awards continue to tour globally to bring the fantastic winner and highly commended work to a wide audience.

AOI Awards

Only a few years after forming, the AOI published its very first jury selected annual in 1976 to accompany the first annual exhibition of British illustrators. Presenting an exciting mix of illustrations from all over Britain, this book formed the first permanent record of some of the best illustration executed during that year. It covered work from five broad areas; advertising, editorial and institutional use, book illustrations and unpublished work. The roughly 200 images inside are mostly black and white, with only about 25% in colour.

Appearing at a time when only one other publication (European Illustration) was showcasing British Illustration to any degree, the AOI’s annual was influential in increasing demand for illustration and in changing commissioners’ ideas about the type of work they could use. In those times you had to carry your heavy portfolio around to potential clients which made getting commissions not even harder work than it is already. The annual served the purpose of collecting “The best of British” illustration and distributing the catalogue to commissioners for easy connection with artists, quite unique for its time. And for the artists it offered the opportunity to easily showcase their work to many industry insiders in various locations. Internally, the AOI liked to think of the awards catalogue as a snapshot of each year’s trends.

The format changed over the years, but generally it was a hardcover book in roughly A4 size with around 300 pages. A publisher would sometimes partner and help with the printing cost. The book was mostly monochrome for a few years before colour printing became more affordable. Various companies would sponsor awards, such as Pentagon Design Agency, Phaidon Publishers, Winsor & Newton and a few pages were reserved for general adverting.

The AOI awards have always been selected by an independent jury. Judges would select a shortlist of maybe 400 projects which would be invited to be featured in the annual. The pages in the annual were offered for a fee to the artists to advertise their selected work. They had to take up the minimum as per terms for entering, such as a “shared page” but could take out as many pages as they wished.

Initially named The Association of Illustrators first / second… Annual, the headline title Images was added in 1981 and remained in place, later including Best of British Illustration until the final edition in 2012, Images 36.  For two years the awards were simply called Illustration Awards before the World Illustration Awards (AOI in partnership with Directory of Illustration) were created to reflect broader content and further international participation.

Most of the incarnations of the annual were also exhibited in central London, sometimes in Galleries, sometimes in the 1980s at the AOI headquarters’ own gallery. The size varied depending on space from 40 to 400 works. Very often these artworks would also be offered for or sale at the exhibitions, offering the artist another option to profit from their investment of entering the awards. 

The private view of the exhibition and awards announcements were always the highlight in the AOI’s and Illustration industry’s calendar. Often highly respected artists would present the awards, such as Patrons Sir Peter Blake on numerous occasions (Images 20 at RCA 1995, Images 28, Mall Galleries 2004), and Sir Quentin Blake (Images 32 LCC, 2008).

Images 20 in 1995 was first the exhibition to tour the UK to give the rest of the country the opportunity to see what “the nation’s illustrators had been up to and to promote the cause of illustration.” Creative Review. Galleries and universities across the UK continued to take the Images exhibition, with regular venues making it a popular draw.

In later years a selection of the exhibition material would also tour internationally, most notably with the support of the European Illustrators Forum to Norway, then South Korea (WIA2016/WIA2017) and since WIA 2021 to China, where 2022 is touring through 2023.

The AOI annual competition was relaunched as the Illustration Awards in 2013 and was positively received with over 1,500 entries, improving on the numbers of recent years. There was  a strong showing of UK illustrators entering the competition, and nearly 25% of entries were from 35 countries across the world.

The following year the newly renamed World Illustration Awards in partnership with the Directory of Illustration was launched. Co-owned by AOI and DI, the aim was to expand the reach of the awards and make them truly global. 1200 people from all over the world entered, mainly UK (40%) and EU (23%), the Americas (25%) with the remaining 12% from the rest of the world. 166 entries were shortlisted and 16 category winners appointed in the 8 categories.

In 2023 the winners were selected by an independent jury from a shortlist of 200 projects, drawn from over 5,000 entries from 84 countries. A fantastic build on the initial launch. The winners were announced in September 2023 at an online Awards Ceremony, presented by renowned illustrator Emily Gravett and a host of special guest presenters.

The winners are featured on the WIA2023 Online Showcase, and in an online catalogue of all 200 shortlisted projects, with the catalogue distributed digitally to commissioners worldwide.

The World Illustration Awards continues to be a year-long celebration and showcase of illustration, bringing together creatives, industry, commissioners, and art directors, celebrating great illustration on a scale like never before.

AOI 50th Anniversary illustration and logo by Jonny Hannah

More on our Anniversary

AOI 50th Anniversary – Here for the members! Fifty years of support for illustrators

AOI 50th Anniversary – Got your back! Campaigning AOI’s achievements for all illustrators

AOI 50th Anniversary – I was there! Recollections from important AOI contributors

AOI 50th anniversary – 5 major achievements