Review of the Year 2025: Top 25 Illustration

The art of illustration is thriving in 2025, in defiance of a year where generative AI imagery skyrocketed in its pervasiveness. Taking the top spot is Angelica Frey’s deep dive into the enduring influence of the 2000 game The Sims, where isometric dollhouses of quirky NPCs have inspired creatives for 25 years. Likewise, Luca Bjørnsten’s crayon illustrations of 90s televisions, VHS tapes and computer screens has transported you all back to earlier days of home technology. Elsewhere in nostalgia-land, Helen Oxenbury captured readers with her storybook illustrations that have embodied the spirit of childhood for over 60 years.

Another artist that had you fascinated was Irasutoya, a one-man clip art illustrator who has quietly shaped Tokyo’s visual vernacular, in addition to Ryan Gillett and his kinky drawings for The Guardian’s weekly sex column. It seems that the interiors of everyday living will always be interesting, with many of you pulling up for Gaia Alari’s deft communications of universal feelings, whilst Taylor Barron’s illustrations expressed “the general absurdity of being alive”. Tom Bingham’s “silly little guys” have reminded you all to slow down and cosy up, while Jodie Howard’s warm and wistful paintings invited us to a Studio Ghibli-like world.

As always, illustration has been a pathway to understanding each other, as Edie Medley proved to you with her acidly funny drawings of conversations overheard at the pub, whereas Mon Jajaja attempts to understand her former home of London through paintings of internal monologues and shifting perspectives. Explore more of our most popular illustration stories below!