Dutch Uncle

In short

Dutch Uncle is an artist management agency set up in London in 2006, with further offices in New York and Tokyo. The roster is small and recognisable, including Noma Bar, Brian Rea, Eiko Ojala, Klaus Kremmerz and Ping Zhu, and it also acts as an animation producer when an illustrator's style has to move. That pairing of named artists and in-house animation production puts it at #7 on our illustration list.

Its client list runs to luxury and travel names such as Hermès, RIMOWA, Moncler and The Macallan, alongside Airbnb, Etsy, Pfizer and Oracle. For RIMOWA, Kremmerz drew a series of animated films following one woman through a year that ends with a Chinese New Year homecoming. Noma Bar directed and designed a sustainability film for Drax with Dutch Uncle producing, and Javi Aznarez made six lamp animations for Foscarini.

Brands and their agencies that already know they want an author's hand, a specific illustrator whose style carries the idea, will get the most from it, particularly when the brief includes animation. The agency publishes a commissioning guide for teams new to the process. If you need a studio to build an identity system or run a campaign end to end, Dutch Uncle supplies the artist, not the agency.