Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld's eleventh cover for The New Yorker

'Winter Sun'for the February 10th 2025 issue of the magazine.

Tom Gauld: “𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥, 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘱, 𝘴𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘢 𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬, 𝘸𝘦𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘤𝘦-𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘦.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘐 𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘦𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘵.”

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about his New Yorker cover, here

A video interview with Tom Gauld

Cover for The New York Times' Kids supplement 'Where Will Your Summer Take You?'

Cannes Film Festival accreditation system published in the 2024 Cannes edition of Mubi ‘Notebook’

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

Tom Gauld's ninth cover for The New Yorker

'Captive Audience'- when trapped indoors, the act of looking out the window can become a simple, nearly sublime pleasure.

Captive Audience for the March 15th 2021 issue of the magazine.

Tom Gauld: "When I take walks, I see a lot more people sitting by their front windows, often working on a laptop. The idea for this cover started when I walked past a building and noticed that there was a figure in almost every one of the windows. I tried to imagine an everyday event that might attract the attention of everyone in a building."

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about his New Yorker cover, here

'Winter Garden' for the February 4th 2019 issue of the magazine. When coming up with ideas for this cover, Tom recalled his Uncle's house, which he visited as a child.

Tom Gauld: "It was a small house in the middle of the city, but packed with house plants. I have memories of staying over one night and plants looming over me."

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about this New Yorker cover, here. 

Tom Gauld's seventh cover for The New Yorker.

Dog Walkers 2.0 for the May 20th 2019 Innovations Issue. Tom was inspired by a friend who showed him an app connecting people that wanted to walk dogs, with owners that didn't always have time. Robots are a recurring motif often seen in Tom's work.

Tom Gauld: "I am often looking for ways to present everyday things in a funny, interesting or unexpected way, and substituting people for robots can be good for this. I think it's funny and slightly tragic that robots are in this middle ground, where they have some qualities of living creatures, but at the same time are machines that can be dismantled or discarded like a broken microwave."

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mosley about this New Yorker cover, here. 

Cover for Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Characters for Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Spread from Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Character from Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Spread from Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Spread from Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Character from Tom Gauld's first children's book 'The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess'

Cover of The New York Times Kids' Supplement 'The Money Issue'

'Kid Bucks' bank notes for The New York Times Kids Supplement 'The Money Issue'

'Moonlit Gallery'

Tom Gauld: "I wanted my set of stamps to feel like you've wandered into a strange art gallery in the middle of the night"

Heart commissioned the Artists to each create a stamp sheet design. They were each given a perforation grid specifically designed for them and were asked to create an artwork that either worked within the grid, or interacted with it.

Tom Gauld's design was pinhole perforated and printed 5.5" x 8.5" in a print run of 100 by The Portland Stamp Company

Diet Coke advertising campaign and packaging in the US and Europe over several years. The campaign included packaging, point of sale, out of home advertising and a series of animations for TV and the Super Bowl.

'Schools in the Line of Fire'

For 'The Question' column where artist Brian Griffiths and comedian and art historian Verity Babbs consider 'Can art be truly funny?'

Imaginary London Park, a series of twenty four prints installed throughout the Cystic Fibrosis Unit at Bart's Hospital, commissioned by Vital Arts

The risk of cross infection at the Unit means that patients, who range in age from sixteen to mid-thirties due to limited life expectancy, are unable to socialise with each other, leaving them alone in their rooms for weeks on end. Recurring infections causes the same patients to be in and out of the Unit several times a year.

As part of Tom's commission, he met with patients to gain insight into the particular circumstances of their condition, the hurdles they encounter, their hopes and fears in order to create a project that is relevant to their reality. The outcome is an urban park featuring humorous vignettes and unexpected elements. Each isolation room in the Unit displays a selection of prints from Tom's Imaginary London Park series. Embedded within each image are an array of symbols that relate to an explanatory key, included in the rooms. Patients can imagine the variations in their own, as well as adjacent rooms. Due to frequent re-admission, patients can explore more of the work, and discover new vistas, when they return to the Unit and occupy a different room.

'On the Beach' for the August 13th 2018 issue of the magazine. Tom's inspiration for this cover came from a photograph by Weegee of Coney Island.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265302

Tom Gauld: "I wanted this cover to feel like a David Attenborough nature documentary, a time lapse of the beach as a herd of New Yorkers arrive at the seaside, like wildebeests at a watering hole."

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about this New Yorker cover, here
 

'Winter Fantasy Map'

A repeat pattern for Heart's limited edition wrapping paper 2018.

'Winter Fantasy Map'

A repeat pattern for Heart's limited edition wrapping paper 2018.

Cover artwork as part of a larger commission to create a series of artworks for the magazine's Summer Reading Special, featuring four short stories on the theme of 'The World in 100 years time'.

Tom Gauld's artworks accompany Kim Stanley Robinson's story 'One Hundred'

Cover for The New York Times' Magazine 'Future of Work' issue

Poster for the 50th anniversary of The Angoulême International Comics Festival. 50 artists were asked to make a poster about the future of comics.

Book cover for the Six degrés de liberté by Nicholas Dickens, published by Éditions Alto

Cover for the Penguin Classics edition of 'People from Bloomington' by Budi Darma

Cover for Eye 97 special 'Magazine' issue, Part Two.

Following on from Eye Issue 96, this is only the second time that Eye has commissioned an illustrated cover.

Tom Gauld's artwork celebrates the endless possibilities for magazines.

'The Nine Contemplations. How to meet the inevitability of death'

'The Nine Contemplations. How to meet the inevitability of death'

The Endless Journey Myriorama.

Twelve picture cards which can be arranged to form 479,001,600 different landscapes. Available to buy here

Myriorama, or 'Many Thousand Views' consist of numerous cards depicting fragments or segments of landscapes that can be arranged in a multitude of different combinations. This 'entertainment' for young ladies and gentlemen originated in France. The first English version in 1824 was a set of 16 cards which depicted Gothic ruins, castles, cottages, a lighthouse, a man fishing and a gypsy encampment. These landmarks had a backdrop of mountains with islands and a lake to add extra texture and depth.

The contemporary myriorama by Tom Gauld, commissioned to celebrate the life of Laurence Sterne, contains incidents and characters from his novels.

The Laurence Sterne Trust was established as a registered charity in order to promote the writings of Laurence Sterne, the 18th century novelist and vicar of Coxwold. Shandy Hall is where he lived and wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

The Endless Journey Myriorama.

Twelve picture cards which can be arranged to form 479,001,600 different landscapes. Available to buy here

Myriorama, or 'Many Thousand Views' consist of numerous cards depicting fragments or segments of landscapes that can be arranged in a multitude of different combinations. This 'entertainment' for young ladies and gentlemen originated in France. The first English version in 1824 was a set of 16 cards which depicted Gothic ruins, castles, cottages, a lighthouse, a man fishing and a gypsy encampment. These landmarks had a backdrop of mountains with islands and a lake to add extra texture and depth.

The contemporary myriorama by Tom Gauld, commissioned to celebrate the life of Laurence Sterne, contains incidents and characters from novels.

The Laurence Sterne Trust was established as a registered charity in order to promote the writings of Laurence Sterne, the 18th century novelist and vicar of Coxwold. Shandy Hall is where he lived and wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
 

One in a series of 10 spots, published throughout one issue of The New Yorker, Fall 2018

One in a series of 10 spots, published throughout one issue of The New Yorker, Fall 2018

One in a series of 10 spots, published throughout one issue of The New Yorker, Fall 2018

Book cover for comedian and broadcaster, Paul Merton's selection of eighty of the funniest stories ever written, published by Head of Zeus

The 'go-big-or-go-home' reality of naming a modern offering. Thought leadership piece for Lippincott, a brand strategy and design agency that regularly publishes 'Sense Perspectives.'

Name your strategy... Reinvent or Reinforce? Thought leadership piece for Lippincott, a brand strategy and design agency that regularly publishes 'Sense Perspectives.'

One in a series of artworks for The Economist's Technology Quarterly looking at different aspects of AI

One in a series of artworks for The Economist's Technology Quarterly looking at different aspects of AI

'Humans will add to AI's limitations'

Artwork for the cover of the Economist's Technology Quarterly about Artificial Intelligence and its limits
 

One in a series of artworks for The Economist's Technology Quarterly looking at different aspects of AI

'AI, data are harder to come by than you think'

One in a series of artworks for The Economist's Technology Quarterly looking at different aspects of AI

'Businesses are finding AI hard to adopt

One in a series of artworks for The Economist's Technology Quarterly looking at different aspects of AI

'Driverless Cards show the limits of today's AI'

'Holiday Track' for the December 11th 2017 issue of the magazine.

Tom Gauld's cover celebrates the annual migration of large trees coming to the city for their final moment of glory.

'Soundtrack to Spring' for the April 16th 2018 issue of the magazine. The idea for the cover came to Tom whilst sitting in his daughter's violin lesson, listening to her play.

Tom Gauld: "I noticed that there were birds singing in the trees outside. It made for a very pleasant moment, and I thought it would be interesting to try and capture it in a cartoon by using musical notes within speech bubbles.'

For the magazine's first musical cover, Tom wanted the scores in the speech bubbles to make sense to those who can read music. He worked with fact checker Fergus McIntosh to select Spring themed pieces of music including Vivaldi's 'Spring' and Beethoven's 'Spring Sonata'. These were then performed by friends of The New Yorker (including McIntosh) and can be heard by hovering over the musical notes, here.

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and François Mouly about this New Yorker cover, here
 

Tom Gauld's eighth cover for The New Yorker

Rooftop Astronomy for the December 9th 2019 issue of the magazine. Tom recalls the ritual of going outside to look at stars and planets with his Dad, Perhaps remembering this more than what he actually saw.

Tom Gauld : 'Almost all my work is about storytelling - even the single images are intended to suggest what happened before and what will happy after the moment depicted. But by using multiple panels I can show a few different moments to tell a more involved story. There are probably more storytelling choices to be made when using panels than when pencilling a single image. And it's unusual to have a comic strip on a magazine cover, so I'm pleased we got it to work.

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about this New Yorker cover, here

'Exit Strategy' about board games based on escape rooms.

A short comic for the back page of the New York Times Books section 'Our Town's Libraries'

Department of Mind-Blowing Theories is a collection of over 150 science related cartoons from Tom's weekly column in New Scientist, the international magazine about science and technology

Tom has been illustrating his column since 2014.

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#216 Delivery

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#153 Genome

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#147 Cutlery

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

'Collider'

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#135 Text Abbreviations

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#129 Graviton

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#200 Willow Pattern

Since 2014, Tom Gauld has been creating a weekly cartoon for the New Scientist

#223 Plagiarism

Cover of Mooncop written and illustrated by Tom Gauld, published by Drawn & Quarterly and translated into ten languages

Set against an epic backdrop, this is the story of the last remaining Mooncop after the much anticipated lunar colonisation doesn't quite become the big deal everyone was expecting. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon. Each day the Mooncop goes to work, life gets a little quieter and a little lonelier.

Tom Gauld : " The idea of a cop on the moon came from a 1960s tin toy I saw, which was a car with 'Space Patrol' on the side and a robot driver in a glass dome wielding a laser cannon. The packaging showed the car on a deserted moon, with the Earth in the black sky above. The toy suggested a future where we were not only living on the moon, but the enterprise was successful enough that it required a heavily-armed police force. I began to imagine the life of a lonely policeman patrolling the moon and the story grew from there."

Read a review by Wired here 
 

Cover of Goliath written and illustrated by Tom Gauld, published by Drawn & Quartely and translated into ten languages

Goliath is a retelling of the classic myth, this time from Goliath's side of the Valley of Elah. Goliath of Gath isn't much of a fighter. He would rather do the admin. Nonetheless, at the behest of the king, he finds himself issuing a twice-daily challenge to the Israelites: "Choose a man. Let him come to me that we may fight." 
Preconceived ideas of the 'born-warrior' are challenged as Tom draws out his thoughts and presents the dialogue between Goliath and his shield bearer. It's a story of tender humour, celebrating the gulf between the heroic and the mundane reality.
 

Using virtual reality to teach peace to soldiers
 

Cover for the Guardian Review 'We are all time travellers now' From HG Wells to Doctor Who and beyond... how the internet caught up with science fiction'

'15 mind-bending scientific riddles' featured in a Christmas issue of New Scientist

The 'Happy Place' app, helping combat depression

Artwork for a plate auctioned to raise money for Life Kitchen, an initiative that provides free cookery classes to cancer patients.

Around 80% of people receiving chemotherapy experience a loss of change of taste. Life Kitchen's class are focused on making nutritious dishes and adapting recipes to account for this change.

How to teach Artificial Intelligence to tell stories

Book cover for Shadow Show, a collection of short stories in celebration of the American Author Ray Bradbury, published by Harper Collins

Book Review of Wood Ghosts
 

'Books of the Year' cover for The Guardian Review
 

Risk

A collection of strips from the weekly 'Riffs' column in The New York Times which Tom Gauld illustrated for several years

Cover for Baking with Kafka, a second compendium of Tom Gauld's cartoons from The Guardian. Published by Drawn & Quarterly in the US and Canongate in the UK. In 2018 Baking with Kafka won an Eisner Award for Best Humour Publication

Cover for 'You're All Jealous of my Jetpack' the first compendium of Tom Gauld's cartoons from The Guardian. Published by Drawn & Quarterly

'The Snooty Bookshop' Thirty postcards of Tom Gauld's literary cartoons

Canongate Books' 40th anniversary identity, one in a series of artworks created for an illustrated book, as well as advertising and marketing

A collection of cartoons by Tom Gauld featuring 150 of Tom's weekly comic strips for the Guardian which he has illustrated since 2005 and are loosely based on the readers' letters appearing in the Review section of the paper.

One of Tom's weekly comic strips for the Guardian which he has illustrated since 2005 and are loosely based on the readers letters appearing in the Review section of the paper.

'Wordle'

Book cover for The Tribes of Britain by David Miles, published by Orion Books

A book that explores the diverse peoples of Britain and Ireland through their physical characteristics, the structures and settlements they built, and the place names and dialects they invented.

Tom Gauld's first cover for The New Yorker

'Turkey Day'

Read a short interview between Tom Gauld and Françoise Mouly about his New Yorker cover, here
 

Artwork for 'The Real Nature of Thomas Edison's Genius' an article discussing Edison's approach being not to look for problems that needed solutions but solutions that needed modification

Book cover for Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall published by Orion Books

This book was first published in 1905 and is considered by many to be the best and most comprehensive history of Britain for young readers
 

Cover of The World Today for Chatham House, the rise and impact of campaigning online

Internal artwork from the book 'I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong: And Other Wise and Witty Comments from Guardian Readers'

Everyday The Guardian publishes over forty thousand reader comments. The book (for which Tom also created the cover) is a miscellany of the best and most baffling thoughts from their witty well-meaning readers.

Poster for Tom Gauld's talk for The Typographic Circle

'Characters for An Epic Tale'

How AR will create a 'deep reality' we can't escape from and how companies are informing our vision of the world by being able to see our inner selves

'Noisy Alphabet'