Wayne Mills

Wayne Mills

(He/Him) • England

Biography Interview

Based in the U.K, illustrator Wayne Mills has moved from drawing board to digital over the course of his career. Prior to working as an illustrator, he worked as an engineering draughtsman for Rolls Royce Aerospace. He creates playful and considered visual metaphors that employ simple bold silhouettes paired with line and colour. His continuously expanding graphic vocabulary enables him to create visual solutions for many varied clients and briefs.

Selected clients


BMW, The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, The Guardian Newspaper, IBM, Invesco Perpetual, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Wired.

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Wayne Mills

Your pronouns
He / Him / His

What influences or inspires your art?
I think colour is very powerful. Its immediate
It can pop, it can vibrate and it even can heal but it needs to feel considered. There is a perfect temperature of colour out there for every project and it’s great fun developing a specific colour palette.

Describe your illustration style in one sentence
Playful and considered without being too polished, I like the illustrations to have a certain energy.

Is there an unmistakable thread in your creative work?
I like to think their is a rhythm to the work, a playful dance of colour and line.

Which projects excite you most?
Creating small story books and scrapbooks with my daughter. She will lead and I have little control where the next element will be stuck on the page or how the next felt tip will shape the composition and it feels great. We have the luxury of no deadline and the whole process lends itself to pure experimentation
Very inspiring.

What lights your soul on fire?
Anything fluorescent.

What themes do you enjoy exploring in your illustrations?
Humour.

How has your style evolved since you started?
Technology has made the illustrations less physical? At one time the illustrations would always used hand rendered elements, scanned, printed, reworked, scanned again etc
They tend to exist purely in the digital realm today but I still feel I’ve adapted a way to make the process mimic a style created by hand, just without the messy fingers.

Where, when and how do you best create?
Late at night, always with music.

Name a tool you can’t live without!
Black felt tip pen
I take one everywhere. I rarely put on a jacket or coat that doesn’t already have one in a pocket.

Where is home?
UK.

What is your dream gig?
A regular space in the New York Times or New Yorker would be great.

What would you tell your younger self?
Stay forever curious.

Illustrating the future

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