Top Designers of 2025
From bold, colorful illustrations to sleek and polished product designs, this list features outstanding creatives shaping the future of the industry. We created this initiative because design is powerful, representation matters, and championing the next generation of creative talent is critical.
This list was curated by Noun Project and our partners at Canva, Dribbble, Monotype, and Skillshare.
The Honorees
Russell Abrahams
Russell Abrahams, aka Yay Abe, is a South African illustrator and muralist known for his bold lines, vibrant colors, and storytelling rooted in identity and joy. Working at the intersection of art, design, and culture, his work brings walls, packaging, and campaigns to life. His work always carries a pulse that is alive with color, culture, and craft.
Read the InterviewChon Hin Au
Chon Hin Au is the Founder/Creative Director of UNTITLED MACAO, President of Macau Designers Association, and Vice Chairman of Shenzhen Graphic Design Association (SGDA), specializing in visual communication design, visual identity design, and brand design. His works celebrate the uniqueness of Macanese culture and have won numerous international design awards.
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Timea Balo
TimTim (Timea Balo) is a UK-based 3D Art and Motion Designer who brings a vibrant blend of bold playfulness and vivid colors to her work, focusing on abstract forms and typography. Her work effortlessly blends graphic design expertise with 3D magic, resulting in artworks that are fun and bold.
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Alfrey Davilla
Alfrey Davilla is an Indonesian illustrator and logo designer with over 15 years of experience crafting playful, character-driven brand identities. Known for his clean vector style and cute, expressive mascots, Alfrey's work helps brands express their personality through simple, lovable visuals and emotional storytelling. His illustrations often feature joyful animal characters and charming personalities that help brands connect in ways that feel warm, human, and memorable.
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Ben Didier
Ben Didier is an independent graphic designer, Noun Project Creator, illustrator and art director based in Vancouver, BC. He specializes in branding, packaging and print projects with a focus on illustration, typography and custom lettering, with clients including The Royal Canadian Mint, The Washington Post, Old Spice, Oprah Magazine and Softball Canada.
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Khadija El Sharawy
Khadija El Sharawy is an independent graphic designer from Cairo, Egypt, a self-taught animator, and a Top Teacher on Skillshare with over 15,000 students. With a specialty in branding and packaging, she's passionate about creating thoughtful, expressive work that bridges strategy and storytelling.
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Ethan Fender
Ethan Fender is an experimental freelance graphic designer living in Columbus, Ohio. He works within the niche specialty of logo design and iconography, with occasional packaging design, imbuing his pieces with a retro-futuristic approach influenced by nature, geometry, mid-century modern design, sci-fi, and even dark medieval fantasy/heraldry.
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Tom Froese
Mr. Tom Froese is an award-winning illustrator, speaker, and Top Teacher on Skillshare. He loves making images that make people smile. Tom's is known for his lively maps, characters and scenes, created with expressive shapes, bright colors, and printmaking-inspired textures.
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Mariell Guzman
Mariell Guzman is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, Texas, whose work spans mixed media painting, murals, and sculpture. Inspired by nature, her bicultural upbringing, and ancestral heritage, she creates vibrant, surreal ecosystems that explore identity, transformation, and healing.
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Zabi Jose
Zabi Jose is a Manila-based illustrator and designer who enjoys adding a colorful and childlike lens to mundane things. These translate to narrative illustrations and silly cartoons. Through these creations, she hopes to bring happiness and enjoyment to both kids and kids at heart.
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Anna Krestovskaya
Anna Krestovskaya is a self-taught illustrator and brand designer from Ukraine, now living in the U.S. For over a decade, she's been working at the crossroads of design and illustration — creating visuals that feel alive, honest, and rooted in nature. Her style shifts from soft, textured scenes to clean digital forms, always led by the feeling.
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Vinitha Mammen
Vinitha Mammen is an independent illustrator, lettering artist, and educator who helps businesses and individuals express themselves through custom illustrated projects that stand out with pretty and playful lettering, fun stylized illustrations, and bold color palettes. A passionate educator, she teaches lettering and illustration both through in-person workshops and online on Skillshare, where she is recognized as a Top Teacher.
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MUTI
MUTI is a creative studio founded in 2011 in Cape Town, South Africa, by Brad Hodgkiss, Clinton Campbell, and Miné Day. They're a passionate team of illustrators and designers dedicated to creating original, inspiring artwork — ranging from lettering and icons to digital painting and animation.
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Megan Nixon
Megan is a freelance graphic designer based in sunny San Diego, California, who loves listening to people and watching their faces light up when they talk about what they are passionate about. Bringing someone's passion to life visually, and breathing life into a brand is something Megan cherishes greatly.
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James Olstein
James Olstein is an illustrator and author from Philadelphia specializing in creating digital art that retains an old-school look and feel. James uses grainy textures and overlapping vibrant colors to give modern subjects an analogue feel. James works in the fields of editorial, brand, packaging and book illustration.
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Sam Perkins
Sam Perkins is purpose-led designer working across branding, digital, campaign and print. He firmly believes that good creative can change the world for the better and has spent the last decade at Nice and Serious, shining a light on issues ranging from education and equality to community and clean energy.
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Danyel Maxin Santos
Danyel Maxin Santos (Dany) is a multimedia artist based in the Philippines who has worked on a variety of projects combining design, illustration, motion, and 3D to tell stories. She is a Canva contributor who also makes slice-of-life comics reflecting on life in her free time.
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