Ben Tallon and Danny Allison

Join Ben and Danny as new hosts of I Am Not Creative from 06 April

Ben Tallon

Ben Tallon combines illustration, art, and writing to craft rich narratives that explore the human condition.

He is the founder of 'The Creative Condition', through which he writes, podcasts, and coaches others to reveal their story so they can become the author of their own lives.

Driving Ben’s work in illustration, art, creativity coaching and writing is a deep love of storytelling and the human condition.

From Keighley, a working-class mill town described by a local character as ‘one giant Star Wars bar’, the personality of place runs throughout Ben’s raw, organic, irreverent way of making.

His early editorial breaks illustrating for The Guardian, When Saturday Comes, and The Big Issue, tackling current affairs and thought pieces with his visual playfulness and naivety led to global work across all media.

His debut book, Champagne and Wax Crayons was published by LID in 2015, a warts and all memoir of turning creativity into a career, and was followed by the launch of the Arrest All Mimics podcast before the show evolved into The Creative Condition podcast, a part of the Creative Condition, Ben’s platform for coaching and supporting others in maximising their creativity, and elevating the role of creativity itself in our societies.

He is the author of eight books, including The Creative Condition, Héctor Ayuso’s biography, The Reason You’re Doing It, and numerous short fiction collections.

Danny Allison

Danny is an illustrator and photographer, bringing his mixed media organic energy, motion and dynamism to work across campaigns, editorial, animation, and publishing for clients including Dr Martens, Eastpak, Under Armour, Versace, Hugo Boss, BBC, Adidas, and Cartier.

Energy, motion and dynamism explode from each one of Danny Allison’s artworks, as he pulls together photographs, brushstrokes, textures and vibrant colours to create something edgy and unique for every client he works with.

Now based on England’s rainy northwest coast, Danny’s nomadic journey around the world and back has informed his artwork and found him a global client base. His background in photography gives him an expert’s eye for composition, and material to work with in his illustrations. He has a degree in Illustration from the University of Lancashire.

Always exploring and experimenting, Danny doesn’t follow a set process when creating an image. He sketches and builds up a composition, then works with numerous layered, photographic elements, colours and textures in Photoshop, balancing them out with bold marks with subtle detail.

Bringing the same raw energy to his photography work, his cinematic, atmospheric, intimate style has been described as having ‘half a foot step out of reality’.

Danny and Ben met in 2005 while studying illustration at the University of Lancashire and have shared studios, collaborations, and the darkest pits of each other’s subconscious minds since.