Now entering it's fourth year, Future Makers is Grand Matter's yearly professional development opportunity for illustrators at the beginning of their careers, directly supporting a more diverse and inclusive illustration industry. Born in response to the desperate lack of diversity in the creative industries, Future Makers is solely open to those belonging to typically underrepresented groups, and offers up to three-illustration based artists the opportunity to join our roster for one year, along with our professional support and guidance.

Throughout the year successful applicants work with our team to identify where they want to take their work and how we can achieve that together. In addition to a curated portfolio of work on the GM website, Future Maker artists receive personal development sessions with our team and on-going advice and support over the year, as well as the opportunity for an advice session with one of the artists on our main roster. We also hope to work together on some exciting live assignments.

Find out more below about this year's cohort, as well as the fantastic creatives we have worked with over the past 3 years.

With so many brilliant and wide ranging applications this year, we had the mightily
difficult task of choosing just three artists; Jakov, Joanna and Laina.

Jakov Jakovljevic is a Serbian artist 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. 

Joanna Blémont is an Edinburgh-based artist, who 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.

Laina Deene 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.

We'll be annoucing a call out for a new set of creatives to join the Grand Matter family as part of next year's Future Makers programme in March 2025, to launch June 2025. Keep an eye on instagram for announcements! 

Future Makers was set up out of a strong desire to see a more diverse illustration industry, and for this reason the programme is open exclusively to illustration-based artists belonging to typically underrepresented groups and communities of all ages (18+), ready to take the leap into the commercial illustration world with the support of our team and artists.

You might be a college leaver, a recent graduate, or a newbie to the industry. What matters is a strong sense of who you are as an artist and what you’d like to achieve, along with a healthy dose of creative curiosity.

As one of our Future Makers you’ll get a place on the programme for one year, with exclusive representation from Grand Matter, and all the guidance and support you’ll need to develop your portfolio with the aim of securing some exciting commissions. We have up to three places available on this year’s programme.

● A place on the Future Makers roster for one year
● A curated portfolio of your work on the Grand Matter website
● Exclusive representation, with the aim to take on illustration commissions together with our production support
● Regular personal development sessions and on-going guidance and support throughout the year
● An advice session with one of the artists from our roster

● You must be aged 18+
● You must have an existing collection of illustration-based work that reflects your style as an artist
● You must belong to one of the following groups:

Entries are now closed for 2024.

To apply to become a Future Maker please fill in the form below; including your name, email and up to 8 portfolio examples, plus a short introduction about yourself, your work and what you’d hope to get out of joining Grand Matter.

(Entries are now closed for 2024)