All posts tagged: Illustration

Going round & round: YamanoteYamanote

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Travelling around Japan earlier this year has got me seriously falling in love with the country’s beautiful places, people, food and culture. Give me a little nudge, a gentle reminder of Nippon life and I’m easily thrown into a nostalgia-induced state of wanderlust and itching to jump on the next flight eastward. Thus, I was more than fair game for Tokyo-based Swiss graphic designers Julien Mercier and Julien Wulff, who yanked me from my daily routine with excellent poster project YamanoteYamanote. Following the eponymous circular train line that whirls around the bustling metropolis and serves downtown hotspots Shibuya, Shinjuku or Akihabara, the duo creates two corresponding designs for each of the 29 Yamanote stations and their characteristic surroundings. Every new design, combining minimalism, hushed colours, a clever mix of Japanese kanji and Latin letters, is then presented at a one-time exhibition at a venue near each station. 素晴らしい! Keep up to date with the Yamanote Yamanote project here: yamanoteyamanote.com @instagram @facebook

Spot On: Marco De Masi

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Have a browse on my blog and you’ll quickly figure out that I’m in love with clever, conceptual designs and illustrations that explore an idea with simple but beautiful ingredients. Marco De Masi is an Italian freelance graphic designer and illustrator from Lecce, whose thought-provoking and eye-catching works are right on the money. His crisp and minimalist style, his selection of rich colours and the way he plays with the viewer’s perspective is just oddly satisfying. @facebook @instagram

‘Fixed It’: Obscured Portraits by Henrietta Harris

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Henrietta Harris is a super-talented Auckland-based illustrator and painter, who already left her mark on the art world with exhibited works in places like Tokyo, London, New York or Miami’s edition of Art Basel. Her signature portraitures depart into the surreal with faces sometimes obscured and misplaced by the clean sweep of a brush stroke – something you can see in her cool new oil painting series ‘Fixed it’. Absolutely amazing, isn’t it?   henriettaharris.com @twitter @instagram @facebook

Illustrated film goodness: Delve Weekly

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One of my favourite mags and absolute movie-go-to source undisputedly is Little White Lies. Well-informed writing, fabulous reviews, sleek design and each issue accompanied by a beautifully illustrated cover for the next exciting, upcoming film release. If only they’d release an issue more often than just every two months. Maybe I’m just being greedy here, but in the meantime, a cool newsletter service luckily dropped in my lap that comes in with a fresh idea to celebrate film week-by-week. Probably still flying a bit under the radar of many, Delve Weekly is the brainchild of London-based creative agency Human After All (who co-founded Little White Lies, btw) and recommends one new film that’s most worth watching at the cinema, bite-sized to our inboxes every Friday. And aside from a well-rounded review by the likes of Peter Bradshaw or Karen Krizanovich and a bunch of intriguing links that compliment the weekly feature, delve also offers a pretty tasty treat for design lovers like me: Alternative poster designs. Once the panel of critics decides on a feature they deem unmissable, the studio bucks up and tracks down just the …

Spot On: Chris Delorenzo

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Sometimes it doesn’t take more than a few simple line drawings, striking patterns and elaborate geometry to create something incredibly expressive and graphic designer Chris Delorenzo certainly has the artworks to prove it. Playful, witty and fueled by his love for literature, poetry and cinema, his practice is all about crafting a visual narrative that invites the observer into a different reality or questions the very one we live in. Once an art director for Saatchi & Saatchi in NYC, the Massachusetts-native works as an in-house design weapon for clothing brand ‘Johnny Cupcakes’, juggles with brand design, logo, typography and editorial work and yet finds time to chase some pretty cool personal projects. If anything, check out the Be Brave Podcast he co-produces, which features interviews with young people who made a name for themselves in the creative industries and has Chris’ quirky style written all over it. Oh and have a look at his ongoing ‘Nude with phone’-series, which is, well, pretty hot right now. @Instagram @Twitter @Dribbble

The Monsters By My Side: Lucas Beaufort

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If you’re into surfing, snowboarding or skateboarding, you might’ve come across one or two of Lucas Beaufort’s rad artworks. Be it for magazine covers, photo series, ads or even whole board graphic series, the French illustrator and painter bursts in on the scene with his acrylic drawings of edgy, colourful monster characters. And as they’re peering out of a window, lurking in a sewer tunnel, drinking beers, having fun and cheering the riders on, he gives the rough, jaw-dropping shots a twist of humour and weirdness that surely leaves you with a big fat grin on your face. While the artist draws inspiration from his dreams and particularly his nightmares, not every stunning photo he finds fits his painting makeovers. It’s not so much the action or the trick that he looks for, but all the elements that make up a great piece of photography. So before he experiments with the canvas and lets them creep right into the open, Lucas makes sure his monster brigades have enough space to hang out and support the cover boy/girl in their own, adorable way. Astonishingly, …

Artist Conversations: Q&A with Mark Boardman

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I love geometry, colour, depth and simplicity when it comes to illustrations – have a look at these or these. Yet simple textural designs, storytelling & dense atmospheres don’t always go hand in hand. My newest interview partner got all bases covered, though. Mark Boardman is a Bristol-based illustrator who divides his work between editorial and advertising commissions as well as his many exciting freelance projects. I dropped him a line and had a chat about the perks of working with various media, the influence of literature, scouting locations on google.maps and yeah, heavy metal. Hi Mark! What have you been up to lately? At the moment I’m working on a lot of new portfolio pieces. I’m trying to push myself technically while putting together a collection of work that’s attractive to prospective clients. Often if I’m left to my own devices I’ll end up producing illustrations that don’t have a great deal of commercial value so it’s good for me to refocus on commercial subject matter every now and again. You were shifting from traditional oil painting …

Spot On | The mystical world of Daehyun Kim

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We always want to explain everything. Find an answer to the question. Find a reason for doing something this way or that way. Even vindicate why we adore or reject something. Sometimes, you see things that are just so breathtaking, there’s not much you have to explain. A simple ‘W O W’. That was pretty much what my brain was able to piece together at the mere sight of Daehyun Kim’s deeply mysterious, captivating and yet so simple Moonassi-series. Taking influence from his own studies in traditional East-Asian art and painting, the Seoul-born illustrator creates intricate ink drawings of characters symbolising ideas and aspects of daily life, relationships and the search for identity in an incessantly philosophical manner: ‘I wanted to draw something I really know and something I really can speak about. It was my inner feelings and my intimate relations that give me various emotions. What I like to create is a drawing as an empty space between me and the viewer, so that people can talk and find their own story from my drawings.’ …

On The Bookshelf: The Boy Who Made Faces

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Probably every kid I grew up with has encountered, loved and dreaded the pretty dark and subtly evil stories by Wilhelm Busch. Does Struwwelpeter or Max and Moritz ring a bell? Well then you might see the connection here. At least for me, Marco Bevilacqua‘s little booklet The Boy Who Made Faces brilliantly catapults me back into this chapter of my childhood. Under his alias of Want Some Studio, the Edinburgh-based designer and illustrator creates artworks that fuse traditional hand crafted and digital processes, taking influences from street and pop art. The 70 page volume The Boy Who Made Faces contains 13 shrewd illustrated poems filled with heaps of black humour and reflections on the multi-media culture and shifting society we live in. Just take The Boy Who Ate Himself, The Mean Bean or Freddy and his Finger: Wilhelm Busch would’ve been proud for sure. Have a look at these fab teasers below: Check out more of Marco’s illustrations & get in touch on social media! Want Some Studio Twitter Instagram

Those Familiar Ghosts: Iselle Maddocks

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So far, this was probably the quickest and most straight-forward artist interview I’ve ever done. Once these wonderfully strange ghostly creatures surfaced on my instagram feed, I couldn’t help but fire over a few questions & literally got the answers back with next-day-delivery. Everybody: Meet Iselle Maddocks, illustrator and doodler from Gloucestershire, who runs small independent press Opposite The Alley. Hello Iselle. Thanks for taking the time for a wee chat. Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? Hello! You’re more than welcome! Well i’m an illustrator living in Gloucestershire. Drawing and strange monsters/characters is my thing. I’m addicted to coffee and bright colours. The more garish the better. I have a hamster called Kirby. I like circles and can’t draw elbows or knees but that won’t stop me. I totally fancy your little illustrated creatures exploring the landscape! Where do you mostly draw your inspiration from? And did any of your friends or features serve as a model for these? I love nature, so I aim to choose photos that make me want to be in …