Illustrator Montse Galbany uses kind shapes and vibrant colours to tell her stories

A life-long drawer, Montse claims she first picked up the scribbling habit as soon as she was physically able to hold a pencil. She's never stopped since then, and she subsequently went on to study graphic design at ELISAVA University.

Since 2017 she made the leap to become a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, and her impressive roster of clients already includes Youtube, Forbes, Rebel Girls, Sierra Magazine, Tribune Magazine, Penguin Random House and Atlassian, among others.

However, her pencil days are behind her, as Montse now chooses to work digitally. "Kind shapes" and "vibrant colours" are the preferred choices in her creative toolkit, and she puts them to work with aplomb. Whether she's creating editorial illustrations or images that will appear in picture books, her colourful, geometric approach is a vivid, playful explosion that harnesses the strength of her design background.

Speaking of books, Montse created her first illustrated one in 2021. Titled Benditos Errores (or Awesome Mistakes in English) and published by Mosquito Books, it's all about celebrating life's fortunate mishaps. "In this book, the star guest is the mistake, miscalculation, improvisation, confusion and carelessness, which, thanks to the ingenuity and insight of their creators, became Awesome Accidents," she explains.

Not one to do things by half, Montse was in charge of creating all of the book's illustrations and designing the cover, page layouts and texts. All that hard work has paid off, though, as the beautifully designed and illustrated book has already been translated into nine languages, including English, French, German, Italian and Chinese.

Outside of work, Montse's main passion is crafting ceramic sculptures. With clay modelling, she enjoys how she can create and experiment in 3 dimensions, something which is a bit more difficult to appreciate when working on two dimensions on a screen.

"One of my great sources of inspiration comes from nature and spending time outdoors hiking, mountain biking, skiing, taking cold plunges on mountain lakes or mushroom hunting," she tells Creative Boom. "My main goal is to make people's lives happier via my illustrations."