Valpuri Kerttula is a Finnish illustrator and designer based in Lahti, Finland. In addition to diverse domestic work, her art is also being published internationally. Valpuri is known for her quirky and humorous characters of oddball humans and animals.

Kati Vuorento is an illustrator living and working in Helsinki, Finland. “In small details there is an infinite magic. I want my illustrations to stir emotion in the audience. Emphatizing is important to me. In my illustrations I always include approachable characteristics to even the most hardened anti-hero. This is how I mold the characters into personalities with depth and dimension.”

KAROLIINA PERTAMO is an artist who has illustrated more than 30 books. She works with a bright color palette and also uses collage in her charmingly naïvist work. She has been nominated for the Rudolf Koivu Prize and Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize, and received The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Award.

ANNI NYKÄNEN is a comic artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Her comics have thrice been nominated for the prestigious Comic Finlandia Award.

TEEMU JUHANI (born 1987) equals Finnish illustrator, comic artist and graphic designer currently based in London, UK. Born and raised in a land of snow and northern lights, he grew up reading comics, holding pencil in his hand and dreaming of superhuman powers. Teemu has studied graphic design and illustration at Karelia University of Applied Sciences in Finland and Academie Minerva in the Netherlands. Currently he’s working as a freelance illustrator and designer and creating his first children’s book and graphic novel.

Saku Heinänen is an illustrator, type designer, and former professor of graphic design at Aalto University. He creates light and shadow in his illustrations with skillful use of black ink. He has written and illustrated two praised children’s novels, Zaida and the Snow Angel (Finlandia Junior nominee 2014) and Zaida and the Thunderbolts (Arvid Lydecken nominee 2015).

Laura Haapamäki is a Lapland-based illustrator. She loves to portray fictional people and places in her illustrations and does most of her work on the computer. She holds a degree in Graphic Design from the University of Lapland. Besides art, Haapamäki spends her free time playing video games and horseback riding.

Mervi Lindman (b.1971) is a much-loved illustrator whose cheerful artworks have been published in 15 different countries to date. Lindman’s illustrations have been regularly appraised by critics and public alike, and she has received several grants to support her art work.

Satu Kontinen (b. 1976) is a graphic designer and illustrator obsessed with little animals and Instagram photography. She is known for using bold colours and creating quirky creatures and worlds of cuteness that spark the imagination of kids and adults. In 2008 she was given an award for designing and illustrating one of the most beautiful book covers in Finland (Vuoden kaunein kirja) by the Finnish Book Art Committee, and in 2004 she was nominated for the Finlandia Junior Prize.

Since starting “her own thing,” the Mokomakis, in 2011, she has quickly gained recognition around the world and is currently working on a number of international illustration commissions.

Matti Pikkujämsä has created illustrations for nearly a dozen children’s books as well as several national magazines and newspapers in Finland. His visual language is defined by clear lines, stylized and expressive characters and bold colours. Among his accolades has been the 2012 Rudolf Koivu Prize, a biennial award given by the Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland to an outstanding children’s or YA book illustration.

Wonky Donkey (Hipinäaasi apinahiisi, Tammi 2013), which Pikkujämsä created together with author Ville Hytönen, was nominated for the prestigious 2013 Finlandia Junior Prize that honours the year’s best children’s book. Wonky Donkey was also named one of 2013′s three most beautiful Finnish children’s books by the Finnish Book Art Committee.