The Association of Illustrators (AOI), in partnership with the Directory of Illustration, has announced the winners of the World Illustration Awards 2025. The global showcase, now in its 50th year, continues to spotlight outstanding talent from every corner of the industry.
Selected from more than 4,700 entries across 85 countries, the 20 Category Winners, four Cross-Category winners and two Overall Winners were revealed during an online ceremony on 16 September. Projects ranged from editorial commissions to site-specific installations, underlining the award’s role as one of the most wide-ranging celebrations of illustration in the world.
Rachel Hill, CEO of AOI, said: “This year’s entries highlight the power of illustration to help us explore and understand the world around us. Artists tackled themes like human connection, the celebration of diversity and inclusion, and the growing impact of AI on our daily lives.”
Overall Winners
The Professional Overall Winner was awarded to Chu-Chieh Lee for Minus Plus Multiply, a short film that explores the delicate balances shaping human experience. Drawing on her own perspective as an Asian woman living in the UK, Chu-Chieh employed a blend of 2D animation, stop-motion, 3D printing, pottery, and ceramics to bring the narrative to life. The work has already been screened at more than 50 film festivals worldwide, reflecting its universal resonance.
“The film tends to capture the difficulty and struggle of a female immigrant building a new life in the UK, away from her safe space where her family, lover and friends are,” Chu-Chieh explained.
Her background spans Taiwan and London, where she studied Narrative Animation at the Royal College of Art. Since relocating in 2018, she has worked with clients including Google, Nestlé, Pfizer and the BBC. Minus Plus Multiply is actually an uncommissioned personal project, proving that deeply personal stories often cut through most powerfully.
Chu-Chieh Lee – Minus Plus Multiply
The New Talent Overall Winner was Léane Ruggli, a Swiss illustrator graduating this year from Arts University Bournemouth. Her project, Ready to Drink Cocktail Cans, is a playful and colourful exploration of cocktail history and culture, designed to animate packaging for social media. Each can design nods to the drink’s origins, from the Mojito’s roots in Havana to the Espresso Martini’s London nightclub beginnings.
“This personal project was created to further my style and add motion to my practice,” Léane said. “I wanted to portray the history, essence and flavours of specific cocktails.”
Vibrant, experimental and accessible, the work captures the sense of illustration as a medium that can elevate even the most everyday objects into something memorable.
Léane Ruggli – RTD Cocktail Cans
Advertising
In New Talent, Cheuk Lam Siu won for The Sound of Cinema, celebrating the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s season of music inspired by film soundtracks. Her pencil line work, coloured digitally, conveys the atmosphere of animal documentaries through richly layered imagery.
The Professional category winner was Raafaye Ali Sheikh with Gaza Cola – The Taste of Freedom,