Oliver Jeffers
Oliver Jeffers is an illustrator from Belfast (now living in Brooklyn, New York) that focuses on children’s books and storytelling. A Lot of his work centres around the themes of curiosity and humour as he likes to explore how the mind understands and explores different ideas as well as having a form of comic relief in all of his books as they are mainly targeted to children.he has sold over 12 million copies of his work and his work has been translated into 45 languages. This has come with many awards including “Bologna Rigazzi Award” and a “New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Award”. Although paint is his main form of media, he has said that he often uses a range of media and will simply use whatever he believes will fit the piece the best and will often mix media. He has said when creating a book he creates the images whilst writing the text that goes along with it. He will begin with generating ideas and themes before beginning the actual body of work and often simply has fun with it as he loves telling stories and says he is incredibly lucky to be able to create something he is very passionate about his career.
Peter Strain
Peter Strain is an illustrator from Belfast. His work is highly recognisable for its bold lettering and imagery. He has a Communication Arts Award for his work. He has said that some things that inspire him are political issues as well as music, cultural issues and film. Some of his most famous clients have been Harry Potter, ADIDAS, FILM 4 and many more. He has said that while creating a piece, he will usually start traditionally on paper in order to gather his ideas and then move digitally but this can sometimes change depending on what he’s working on.Strain has created work inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and has been strong in sharing his voice on the matter through many of his pieces. He has also explored different celebrities such as Freddie Mercury, often using their lyrics as the bold lettering as well as some important parts of their character such as “Immigrant”. Not only does he use the image of the person in order to show who they are, Strain wants to get across who they are inside by creating them with the bold words he uses. This allows his audience to immediately recognise his work for its uniqueness.