For Brazilian illustrator Gus Morais, illustrating this incredible book was a labour of love, even though he knew little about Taylor Swift when he set out.
Dazzling. Beguiling. Sometimes overwhelming. 100 per cent entertaining. That’s what a Taylor Swift show is like, and the same can be said about Taylor Swift: Unofficial Search & Find Biographies, illustrated by Gus Morais. And we say this with confidence – a copy of this beautiful book has just landed here at Creative Boom HQ.
Whether you’re a Swifty or not, you’ll find the design and artwork outstanding. Pink block foil frames the cover, and it has wonderful baby blue endpapers featuring London and Paris. The book is packed with Gus’s ultra-detailed illustrations, all executed in his light-humoured cartoonish style. The game is to find Taylor Swift across the 11 eras of her career, from Debut Taylor (2006) to The Tortured Poets Department (2025).
Early sketch from Debut Era illustration.
Detail from Debut Era, with wider crop below.
“Taylor Swift has very strong and rich visual concepts for each album, which unfold into cohesive elements in her lyrics, music videos and stage designs,” observes Gus. “Each Era has its own unique atmosphere and, as an illustrator, I wanted to respect that aspect of her work and create visual worlds to match each one. For example, the Lover Era illustration is all about love, with pastel colours and rainbows, while the Reputation Era illustration brings a darker, urban, cyberpunk approach.”
Within each illustration, 10 items have been hidden throughout the psychedelic chaos for the reader to locate. Each will resonate with Swifties as it locks in with either the artist’s visual style or the subject matter of her songs. Can you find her white guitar? 13 red scarves? Or a yellow rotary telephone?
The astonishing Eras Tour gatefold illustration.
La pièce de résistance is Gus’s gatefold illustration for the Eras tour itself, which is preceded by a backstage mood illustration to set the scene. Within the plus-size search and find illustration, there are 11 Taylors to locate. The first is easy, at centre stage, but then you have an entire stadium to scour.
While the results can be astounding, creating search and find illustrations is challenging. With 15 illustrations to complete in total, all on the same subject, this was a repetitive project for the Brazilian artist, who is now based in Spain.
“I try to keep the process fun,” explains Gus. “It’s easy to get distracted when doing repetitive drawings, so I pay close attention to how I’m feeling while I work. If I get tired of drawing people, I switch to drawing objects or painting background areas. If I have been painting for a long time, I move on to testing lights and shadows on finished parts of the illustration. And if I’m not in the mood to draw many repetitive objects, like windows and roof tiles, I take a break to imagine and draw funny new situations for the characters in the crowd.”
Detail from Lover Era illustration, set in Nashville.
Detail from the Debut Era artwork.
Taylor concepts for you to find.
The elements of each image began life in Procreate as the artist sketched on his iPad Pro. These were exported to Photoshop, where Gus built up the illustrations using layers, layers and more layers, perfecting every detail from line widths to lighting.
“I think it’s my best work so far,” says Gus. “It pays tribute to the tradition of search and find, like the Martin Handford books. It’s detailed, every single person interacts with each other, and there are no generic fillers. But it’s also a search and find for our times. I didn’t only draw jokes, I drew cute and emotive situations that fans will surely relate to, recognising feelings Taylor wrote about in her songs that resonate deep in their hearts.”
Next up, Gus is working on a Halloween search-and-find project, so watch this space…
