Posts in Illustration

Mads Berg is by far one of the most refreshing illustrators I’ve seen in quite sometime. His works range from a crisp, modern Art Deco style to more 3-dimensional environment illustrations. Each of his pieces have such an engaging style that immediately welcomes you.

What I take from these illustrations is the execution of the core concepts. The amount of riffraff in these is nil—it’s down to the bare essentials which leaves us with a very simple illustration and clear message. What more can you ask for?

It’s a shame that I haven’t seen this style reflected more in today’s design trends. However, it could be that I’m just not tapping into the streams that they’re in.

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Witness the unchained creativity of Julien Vallée. I suppose this is a little more whimsical than my average post here, but I can’t get over how awesome his work is. The combination of hand-made elements, motion graphics, and unparalleled ingenuity create some stunning work. He also does a great job documenting his process — his behind the scenes videos are just as entertaining as the actual finished product. The last video above is a “Making of” for Danse Dance. You can view the actual interactive video here.

As he says in his Gestalten interview about his work, “I got bored with the computer technique and a pre-formatted way of working”. Good thing he did — it’s refreshing to see work like this that jumps off the page in more ways than one.

Lately i’ve looking for a good illustrator to animate the Moodgadget logo and put it in natural environment for a short video and came across Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva who has such a great imagination and strong ideas for different drawing series that I had to share it with you guys.

Local San Francisco studio Lab Partners is Ryan Meis and Sarah Labieniec. I recognize a lot of their work from Monocle (a magazine with a real knack for sourcing mega talented illustrators). Lab Partners’ work is great because of how well movement is conveyed. You can really sense the hustle bustle in each scene. Just look at Monsieur Boudin (the stylish dachshund)! He is cruising on that Vespa. Of course the color is great too — not to mention a bit unusual — I don’t usually post yellows, purples, and oranges all in the same post.

I loved Perry Bible Fellowship, a while back i’d check it everyday that I knew that a new comic was coming in, I just went back to it hoping the illustrator started back up but no luck. I wish we could start a petition to get him to do more, does anyone know what he does now?

Matthew Lyons is an incredible illustrator. Just about every blog in existence has written a piece about him recently — and it’s no surprise — his work is absolutely stunning. As I mentioned in my post, the combination of his vast imagination and impeccable eye for color and composition begets some really exciting work.

I asked Matthew if he would prepare a short process description about one of his recent works. What follows is Matthew’s description of how he created the piece you see above, The Snide of a Scoundrel Man. Take it away Matthew!

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Loving this illustrated type from Michele Angelo. The “W” is giving me some nice Roger Dean-meets-Avant Garde Magazine flashbacks.

If you’re a fan of the 60’s style illustrations I’m fond of posting sometimes, you will love this book: Naïve: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design. I picked it up the other day to assist me in an illustration project I’m working on now (more on that later). It’s been especially great for sourcing inspiration about color palettes. Could use a little more text though (there isn’t a word in there). There are a lot of familiar favorites inside (was nice to see Siggi Odds make an appearance), and also a ton of artists I had never seen before. Highly recommended if you’re on an illustration kick.

Naïve documents the extraordinary renaissance of Classic Modernism, from the 1940s to 1960s, in contemporary graphic design. This compilation introduces a new wave of young designers who are rediscovering the stylistic elements reminiscent of classic graphic design such as silkscreen printing, classical typography, hand lettering, woodcutting and folk art and integrating them into their work. [Link]

Absolutely loving Jelle Martens’ work. Raw and inspired, I want a print. More work can be found at his flickr.

Via Matthew Lyons’ incredibly excellent Inspiration Tumblr

Absolutely killer illustrations by Matthew Lyons. My first assumption was that these pieces were very old, and the work of a grizzled old artist, who had developed exceptional skill and craft over years and years of animation grunt work. I was incorrect. Matthew is actually a 21 year old student at his final year at the Loughborough University in England. He’s clearly a natural. Not only is his eye for color and composition spot on, he also clearly has a vast imagination. I want to get in my spaceship and explore each of the scenes he has presented.

via Kitsune Noir