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Carlo Giovani

Carlo Giovani is a graphic designer, illustrator and

animator. A few years ago de-cided to work on projects as diverse as impossible, blend-ing techniques and media to achieve unusual results. Don’t rely on the expertise and be-lieves that the most important work is the creative process. With this thought, Carlo was the founder of Atelier Ludovi-co, a creative studio focused on meetings between profes-

sionals, new ways of looking at exchange processes and in generating ideas.

These creative packaging ideas was made by Carlo Giovani, a Graphic Designer and Illustrator from Brazil. He has a genius in the art of pa-per engineering as he is able come out with absolutely witty and unique packaging design. He took the art of packaging to a whole new level!

Julia Brodskaya

Yulia Brodskaya (born in 1983, Moscow) is an artist and illus-trator known for her hand-made elegant and detailed paper illustrations. Originally from Russia (Moscow), she is now based in the UK. In 2004 Yulia moved from Moscow to UK where she continued her education in art, at the Uni-versity of Hertfordshire, grad-uating with a Master of Art in Graphics Communication degree in 2006. Prior to mov-ing to the UK, Yulia Brodskaya became interested in diverse creative practices, ranging from Textile Painting, Origami and Collage, to more tradi-tional Fine Art practices. Soon after her arrival to the UK, Brodskaya started working as

freelance graphic designer, while studying for the Masters degree in Graphic communi-cation, but she very quickly switched to the illustration field. However, the graphic de-sign background has an influ-ence on her art work as most of the pieces have a strong typographic focus:

Much of Brodskaya’s work uses an old technique called Quilling, in which ribbons of paper are used to create in-tricate designs; however she takes it to an entirely new level. She has swiftly earned an international reputation for her innovative paper il-lustrations and was named the ‘breakthrough star’ of the

2009 by Creative review mag-azine (Dec 2009, p32). Her work for g2 (The Guardian) has been included in D & AD Annual 2009. To describe her craft works Yulia uses the term ‘papergrafics’. In April 2009 Yulia has been invited as a speaker to eighth annu-al Friends of St Bride Library Conference. The topic of her talk was ‘Reviving paper craft: quilling in a new context’. In her presentation Yulia spoke about how making creative use of quilling can give this paper craft technique a new life and significance in the context of graphic commu-nication. She also designed one of the Google Chrome themes Yulia Brodskaya Goo-gle Theme.

“Typography is my second love, after paper and I’m really happy that I’ve found a way of combining the two. Having said that, I don’t want to

exclude non-typobased designs, I’d like to work on different projects.”

Where are you from and where did you study

I am from a small town called Gatineau. It is nearby Ottawa, which is the capital ofCanada. I’ve studied three years in Montreal (about 2 hours drive from Gatineau)at the UQAM and at the ESAG Penninghen in Paris (France) for a year

Tell us outstanding projects of your career

I had the privilege to work on a number of really cool proj-ects. One I really likedto work on was stop-motion for the New York Times Maga-zine. We spent hourscalculating each letter for each frame, because we want-ed to unroll them withan easy of motion from the beginning of the title to the end. There was so much

to manage considering the frame per second and each letters. More recently, Ihad the opportunity to work on an opening for MTV hits in Australia. Their onlyrestriction was to use the col-or pink. This was the perfect opportunity to refinesome ideas we were toying with for some time. Amongst other things, we wantedto play some more with black

helium balloons and sticks we used for anotherproject for Cully Jazz. That was a lot of fun.

Your work has a particular style, unique, one might say, what aspects are withinyour graphic?

I like when you can under-stand an image directly, but where you can also take

JULIENVALLEE

The young Canadian designer Julien Vallée is a leading expert at melding a variety of analog and digital design techniques into out-

standing work.

Julien Vallee.

time to enjoy every small de-tails. I think it that styIe may come from those details.What makes a strong mini-malist image is when you can understand quickly themessage with a simple com-position, and still enjoy small details by looking at itclosely. I like to tell

Talking about the role of the paper I think is a crucial point. Tell us Why youchoose to work ‘’Handmade’’ and why the paper is such an important element foryou

I think in some way it’s the joys to transform a single flat sheet of paper into anobject that can communicate something that made me go into this direction. But I

think since I started into de-sign I was always in love with manual art. I’m attractedby theatrical scenes, land art and staging. I’ve been limited to work with basic

material in a matter of budget and tools for a certain time. But I love to work withother solid material like woods, plexiglass and even lights.

There are other recurring ele-ments in your work as colors and shapes youuse. Tell us a little of this

Playing with haptic forms and materials is something that ev-ery one of us didas a child, and I think peo-ple can relate to this uncon-sciously. They know how itfeels, how it weights, their smell or how tick it is... Then it’s easier to understandhow things are made and why they are disposed this way. It has always beenimportant to me to connect with the audience trough fas-cination and fantasy.

As for colors, I guess that it al-ways depends on the purpose. Colored imagesversus black and white images

give a totally different feeling. Colors canenhance a simple composi-tion, but I also believe that it can be inappropriate.I think it comes with the proj-ects. It depends, but I usually like the basic-flashycolors. I realize it’s very im-portant to pick the right one, and often when I work onmy images and I feel there is something wrong I find out that it’s a wrong use ofcolor.

The roles assumed by the computer and hand-made are very significant in yourwork. Tell us what represent each of them for you.I think technology act more as a tool than a part of the cre-ative process. I thinkabout the idea first and then if it possible after. It is then that technology can becomehandy. I believe that technol-ogy always push the limit of what is doable or not but Ihate to be a slave of the next

Julien Vallee

Julien Vallee

Bert Simons created these paper sculptures after digi-talizing the model and recon-structing it in 3D with Blender 3D. After that he printed every part of the head, cut into poly-gons, and assembled them like a paper toy.

I can only imagine how diffi-cult creating faces must be for an artist, because the slightest distortion could make the character unrecognizable. In-stead of struggling with the art of perfectly replicating facial proportion by hand, however, Bert Simons sculpts people digitally to increase accuracy. The Dutch artist creates 3D

papers sculptures using a “dot per dot” method.

“These are papercraft sculp-tures made in the same way as the familiar papercraft houses and animals,” the artist says on his website.The first step is digitization, which is what you see in the images with the little marks dotted over the head in some of the images below. Simons then uses Bender, a 3D pro-gram that allows him to make planes, then creates texture maps that he cuts and glues together to create the 3D por-traits.

BERT SIMONS

“I hope to speed up the next portrait by using my laser

scan setup which I am exper-imenating with right now.”

JEN STARK

Jen Stark is a woman who knows how to make an

unforgettable entrance: literal-ly. Not only has she managed a smashing debut as an offi-cial LA-based artist, moving here from her native Miami a matter of weeks before the opening of “To the Power Of;” but the most dazzling of all the hypnotic works in that show are a pair of sculptural objects carving out geodesic portals that shimmer like rain-bow rifts in the fabric of space. Both the freestanding Cosmic Distortion, 2012 (standing 36 1/2 inches) and the wall-em-bedded recess Whole, 2012 (with a radius approximately 42 inches) are impressive feats of patience, precision, and advanced fractal mathematics

that beckon viewers forward, daring them to lean further, to reach inside when no one is looking, to go in. These negative spaces contain with-in their receding dimensions crisply defined, twisting stacks of cut paper, orchestrated to replicate geological, cosmo-logical, and striated optics. Engineered through a process of algorithmic measurement and chromatic zestiness, her results speak to both the mys-teries of sacred geometry and funhouse psychedelia.

By way of contrast, the wall-hanging Cascade (69 inches long) is made with the same classroom-simple set of materials, but references loos-er kinds of fractal math, such

as that which might formulate the patterns of a waterfall, or a peacockÕs feathery spread. The level of dense, tiny detail in all the work seems to defy the limited powers of the hand and eye, rendering with a mi-croscopic precision and mac-roscopic perspective at the same time, laying claim to the universal fundamentals of ma-terial structure, and to the joy of pure delight. Other acrylic paint-based works reference the striated fields, or alterna-tively set them to dissolving in waves of layered, organic, expressive abstraction. Those paint and felt-tip on paper works are vibrant and organic and quite beautiful, like ram-shackle English-style gardens

Jen Stark is a contemporary artist whose majority of work involves creat-ing paper sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation.