NEW MATTER

Welcome Future Makers!

We’re excited to reveal the illustrators who will be joining this year's Future Makers, our annual artist development programme now entering its 4th year. Please welcome Jakov Jakovljević, Joanna Blémont and Laina Deene!

As part of our mission towards a more diverse illustration industry, Future Makers is open exclusively to illustration-based artists belonging to underrepresented groups, who are ready to take their next steps in the commercial illustration industry with the support of the Grand Matter team and artists.

As with all of our artists, Jakov, Joanna and Laina each bring with them their own unique artistic voice and style, as well as a creative curiosity to explore ideas and push their practice further. Over the next year we’ll be working closely together to help develop that, and perhaps even take on new commissions and opportunities. We’re excited for the year ahead! 

Find out more about Future Makers here.

Jakov Jakovljevic

With a strong grounding in design and art direction, Jakov’s illustrative practice features beautifully crafted digital forms, characters and figures in harmonious and striking compositions. Jakov’s use of texture, soft detail and unusual colour palettes gives his images an atmospheric and sometimes moody edge. Based in Belgrade, Serbia, Jakov works with clients around the world including The New York Times, Goethe Institute Serbia and Booka Publishing House amongst many more.

View work here

I am always looking for juxtapositions and unexpected pairings, whether it's mixing sci-fi and the natural world, impossible body shapes and realistic anatomies, or colourful characters doing nothing accompanied by flourishes of typography.

– Jakov Jakovljević

Joanna Blémont

Edinburgh based artist, Joanna Blémont, creates distinctive watercolour illustrations with a dream-like quality, exploring scenes and spaces as sequential imprints. Often working from memories and photo archives, applying unusual colour palettes, these everyday moments in time take on a quiet, ambiguous reality. Joanna’s practice lends itself to a range of outputs including editorial publications, branding, music and more, her clients including The New Yorker, De Correspondent, CHZON, Stéréolux and Lumière Noire Records to name a few.

View work here

A few years ago, I became very interested in dreams and recorded them as often as I could as  source material. This led me to explore the fine line between the familiar and strange in daily landscapes.

– Joanna Blémont

Laina Deene

Laina is a Brighton-based illustrator with a passion for hand drawn illustration, making use of watercolours, pastels, pencils and more to explore colour and texture. Laina’s illustrations are often observational, taking inspiration from nature, literature and film. The everyday scenes she creates are transformed with exuberance and feeling, lending themselves to a host of different purposes, from editorial and publishing to packaging and branding. Clients include Wieden + Kennedy x It’s Nice That, Rabbits Road Press, Contra Mag and more.

View work here

 I like to photograph anything with interesting colour combinations when I’m out and about. I’ll often return to these images to play with the colours I’ve documented in my illustrations.

– Laina Deene

grandmatter.com/jakovjakovljevic
grandmatter.com/joannablemont
grandmatter.com/lainadeene

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