The 7 Best Graphic Designers & Creatives from Germany

At Shillington, we love to celebrate great design and share projects from creatives around the world. We’ve covered the work of many studios so far. Germany is up next! The beautiful landscape is covered with over 20,000 castles and has the largest beer festival in the world. Besides the impressive variety of beers coming from Bavaria, the country produces delicacies like 300 varieties of bread and 1,000 kinds of sausages to accompany your pint.

With a thriving international creative scene in cities like Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne and Dresden, there is an abundance of opportunities and exhibitions for designers and artists alike. Read on to learn about seven of the best design studios, art directors and illustrators from Germany.

1. Studio Chapeaux 

Studio Chapeaux is a boutique design studio from Hamburg that creates branding for companies, helping them to transform their ideas into becoming a competitive brand. Their branding for beverages, food and restaurants employs a consistently elegant style with clean typography and illustrations. For Lapp & Fao, the studio created beautiful pastel packaging for the new truffle series that exudes delight, sweetness and warm days on the beach.

2. MoreSleep

MoreSleep is a multidisciplinary studio based in Berlin and LA developing brand experiences, digital products and print projects for clients. For the Argentinian pizzeria Orno, they created a website and brand collateral that encompasses what the brand stands for, using bold red and clean, simple shapes with slick typography in the design. If you’re interested in designing for the hospitality sector, be sure to check out their projects for bars, restaurants and hotels.

3. Bene Rohlmann

The Berlin illustrator and artist Bene Rohlmann created work for some big clients like The New Yorker, The New York Times, Google, GQ Magazine, Facebook, Nike, Variety and Rolling Stone. His otherworldly artwork spans drawings, mixed media, illustration and collage with a common theme of including people, animals, mythical creatures, skulls and plant life. In this double-page spread, he created playful tiki-themed illustrations using pinks and yellows for the Full Flat zine. For psychadelic music fans, Bene even worked on screen prints for Khruangbin’s concert in Brussels. If you’re a fan of his work, purchase some prints from this shop.

4. Ju Schnee

Ju Schnee is a multidisciplinary creative based in Berlin and New York. Her work is bright and fun exuding a passion for all things colourful, creating illustrations and artwork with type treatments. She’s created murals for public spaces and worked with clients like Adidas, Marriott Hotels, Nike, W Hotel. The By The Way project for the Washington Post was a travel city guide about the off-the-beaten-path showing local favourite spots. The geometric playful shapes, lettering and the bold red capture the exciting creative spirit of Berlin.

5. Marie Stadelmann

Marie Stadelmann is an art director and designer who runs her studio Marie Marie in Berlin. She’s done branding for a wide variety of industries, including hospitality and food. For Motel Nitro, she created the identity and packaging design for the canned coffee drinks. The end result was a minimal design using two colours with a clear, modern type of treatment.

6. Yeye Weller

Yeye Weller is an illustrator based in Munster. His creative style is vibrant with cartoon-like doodles of a wide range of characters from animals to humans. The striking palette and whacky illustration style is bound to make anyone notice. For Bureau beer, the quirky character illustrations in the label design are so appealing that you can’t help but want to purchase a bottle for the packaging alone!

7. Benedikt Luft 

Benedikt Luft is a Frankfurt-based illustrator and graphic designer with a varied portfolio. His versatile illustrations range from editorial commissions for clients like the German magazine Zeit Campus to creating an animation for the eyewear brand Selfridges. He’s also worked with cool clients like Google, Vice and Frieze. For The New Yorker, he created the above illustration about “Velocity“, an Irish step dance with a contemporary edge that captures his unique style. You can see more of his daily drawings in the ongoing project about ideas “captured within a square”.

Want to see the full list of creatives around the world? The latest countries we covered in the series are from  New Zealand, France and Scotland!

Feeling inspired? Check out our #ILoveTheseGuys series to discover more creative studios from around the world! Or become a graphic designer yourself—study design in three months full-time or nine months part-time in London, Manchester, New York, Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne with Shillington.