A white owl with two large yellow probing eyes looks straight ahead. In his left hand, the bird holds a golden scale with a pine tree sitting on one balance and a disembodied heart on the other. In his right hand, the fowl brandishes a silver sword outfitted with a carefully carved handle. This is an impossible owl: he has human hands and feet and a large monocle covering his left eye.

This image seems like something someone would have witnessed in a dream—or a pleasant hallucination—but this strange scene describes a digital drawing. In his ‘Justice’ card—part of the illustration explaining the ten principles of Burning Man, in which a tarot card represents each principle in a cabinet of curiosities—designer and illustrator Guillermo Flores uses strange juxtapositions and vibrant colors to prompt questions about the true meaning of due process and fairness.

Kevin Finn—a brand expert, author, internationally recognized branding designer and TEDx speaker who is familiar with Flores’s oeuvre—says that “in our age of instant gratification, Guillermo’s ‘world-building’ work has the ability to immediately catch people’s attention, slowing them down long enough to engage with his authentic visual narratives in a way that can amplify one of the most valuable corporate currencies today: sustained attention.”

Flores, a designer and illustrator based in Guadalajara who primarily specializes in collage, illustration and digital art, has spearheaded projects for several companies including Adobe, Cirque du Soleil, Citi Private Bank, Cloe, Domestika, Envision Fest, HMR Design, Marc Jacobs, Momentum Worldwide, Sephora and Tequila Patrón. He has also been a creative and art director on multiple projects for which he has created illustration work, brand identity, strategy, planning and execution.

The 42-year-old illustrator—who won the Muse Creative Award in 2023—has been making art since he was a small child. His relatives encouraged him to explore his nascent interests in sound and visual media. Creativity runs in Flores’s blood: He was raised in a family of musicians who were very popular in the ’70s and ’80s. His mother, whose stage name is Chelo, was a popular Mariachi singer and the first Mexican woman to receive a Grammy nomination in 1984.

In his youth, Flores would explore his family home, which was filled with books (including encyclopedias, collections of botanical illustrations and compilations of the birds in America that served as early influences on his nature drawings); various instruments (such as his father’s drums, which he enjoyed playing with his friends, ultimately prompting him to assemble his first rock band); and musical albums (when he was young, his mother performed “tropical music” with his uncle Mike Laure of Mike Laure y Sus Cometas, another music icon in Latin America).

“Music has helped me to stay focused when I’m working on an illustration because when you study, you have to focus until you master the exercise before you can move on to the next level,” Flores says, explaining how his interests in music and art feed one another. “It has also helped me to learn to pay special attention to details, such as specific compositions, and even to be silent and work as part of a team.”

When he was a child, Flores would spend hours listening to his mother’s expansive record collection, and while he did so, he became fascinated with the artwork adorning them. As a teenager, he gravitated toward rock albums like Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, which the renowned English art director Storm Thorgerson designed.

As Flores told the blog Muse.World in 2023, “Surrealism is undoubtedly my most direct influence. The work of Salvador Dalí, when I met him at a university, blew my mind. The possibility of a surreal world seemed fascinating to me.” Flores continued, explaining that these dreamlike visuals helped him see new artistic possibilities and how they connected to his love of music: “This ‘chance’ meeting allowed me to live during my adolescence with the art of [English art and design group] Hipgnosis, made up of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. These covers, full of details and such powerful messages, showed me in a very natural way a narrative that was based on concepts. In addition, the musical and graphic way of expressing it was so seductive because it came hand in hand with incredible music. In discovering Radiohead, I also discovered Stanley Donwood, the graphic artist of the band.”

Music remained an important part of Flores’s life through his adolescence, and he even considered pursuing a career as a professional musician.

“When I was eighteen, I won a scholarship to study music at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma, but when the time came to leave home, I froze and didn’t know what to do,” Flores said, reminiscing on his decision to study visual art instead of music. “I was very scared, so I didn’t go. I am a multi-instrumentalist; in fact, I won a scholarship for playing drums and percussion. I also play the piano, guitar and bass, and I sing and compose as well.”

Though Flores remained interested in music, he ultimately decided to pursue a career in visual art. In 2004, he graduated with a degree in graphic design, specializing in animation and web design, from Universidad del Valle de Atemajac in Zapopan, México. During his time there, he took classes in photography (which he still practices today), drawing, painting (including watercolor and acrylic) and screen printing.

“I actually learned a lot during university, but what I’m most proud of is that I’m the first college graduate in my family,” Flores said. “For a long time, I was a UI/UX designer, a website programmer and an animator. I also took classes with the great Rigo Mora, a key figure in Mexican animation and collaborator with the acclaimed film director Guillermo del Toro.”

Now, in 2025, Flores has been working in the creative field for more than 20 years and has garnered various accolades, including from the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards and American Illustration 42. Over the years, his process has developed, and his practice has increasingly turned towards illustration and animation. Whenever Flores begins a new illustration project, he schedules preliminary meetings with the client. Then, he researches the topic and starts to create the illustration; this part of the process can be very lonely because he spends a few days in isolation developing concepts and preliminary sketches. Though Flores often works alone, he occasionally partners with collaborators to execute assignments. When doing so, he typically works with them remotely to develop strategies for completing design work, and they create a plan for each design with achievable daily and weekly delivery goals.

Mat Voyce, an animator and one-time collaborator of Flores, says that he is an excellent associate because “not only does he work with an open mind, accepting new ideas and alternative solutions, but he has an ability to see that shining end result,” as he says. “In other words, he has an amazing foresight into the final piece, even when things start in the form of basic storyboard or sketches.”

For example, in his campaign for Honeyeater, an ethically produced honey brand based in New Zealand, Flores crafted an image incorporating native birds, insects and plants that pays homage to the country’s natural landscape. These visual cues also help reflect Honeyeater’s mission to, as it describes on its website, “produce honey that supports [its] ecosystem for every hive that [it] places, [planting] extensively to ensure there is ample native nectar for all species to thrive.” Such deft compositional choices and visual motifs enabled Flores to portray the company’s mission.

Similarly, in his 2024 splash screen illustration for Adobe Photoshop, Flores employed natural elements to craft a captivating illustration. For this project, he used unexpected combinations of plants, animals and objects to create a dreamlike environment: the design depicts a toucan sporting a tall black top hat and an oxblood long-sleeve shirt. This is also an impossible bird with an impossible body—he has a torso with human proportions and a human hand decorated with a floral tattoo and bright blue nails. Yellow blossoms, monarch butterflies, and vibrant blue and green peacock feathers surround the drawing’s protagonist. A full moon looms behind him in the background.

When reflecting on the piece, Flores explains: “It is inspired by the portraits created by Gerard van Honthorst during the 18th century. In this illustration, I got the head of the toucan from Adobe Firefly and used the vast majority of collaged images from Adobe Stock. During the process, I experimented with different bird heads, such as a rooster, cockatoo, peacock, woodpecker and hummingbird. In the end, we unanimously agreed that the toucan was the perfect fit for the composition.”

The artist’s ability to weave together such disparate elements enables him to create new worlds that prompt us to ask questions about the toucan’s story, about how he came to have a top hat and full flowers, and the meaning behind his defiant expression.

“His vibrant style is bursting with life and passion, but it’s also full of wonderful contraditions,” says Finn. “His work feels incredibly personal, and yet there is something universal about it; he embraces maximalism while, at the same time, showing just enough restraint; he injects a particularly Latino sensibility, but it speaks to a global audience. And yet, this precarious balance seems so natural to him. It’s something he leans into.” ca