Jody Clark

Jody Clark was born in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England, in 1981. He grew up in the nearby town of Sevenoaks, where he attended Sevenoaks School, a prestigious independent school. It was here that Clark discovered his passion for art, and he excelled in the subject throughout his education.

After completing his A-levels, Clark went on to study Illustration at the University of Central England in Birmingham. He graduated in 2003 with a First-Class Honours degree and set out to pursue a career in art and design.

In 2015 Clark's anonymous submission to a design competition was chosen to become the fifth definitive coin portrait of Elizabeth II to feature on British coins. Clark was the first employee of the Royal Mint in over one hundred years to have designed such a portrait of the monarch. At the age of 33 when his design was chosen, Clark was younger than any of the other four designers to have created portraits of Elizabeth II for British coinage at the time their design was chosen.

In 2015, Clark was commissioned to create the fifth portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for use on all British coins. His design, which features a more mature and contemplative Queen, was created using computer-aided design software to turn his initial sketches into the required low-relief model, with no manual sculpting being used. In addition to his work on British coins, Clark has also designed coins for other countries, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Gibraltar. He has received numerous awards for his coin designs, including the Coin of the Year Award in 2019 for his design of the Queen's Beasts series.