NIM BEN REUVENLETTERING AT

ITS FINEST

HORSEHOOD STUDIESNATHALIE VASSALLO:BIZARRE MEETS ART

MR GABRIEL MARQUESPOP ART MAKES

A COMEBACK

YANN & DANCOLLECTIVE ART

ACROSS HEMISPHERES

A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF ART & DESIGNNO. O1 | MAY 2015

A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF ART & DESIGNNO. O1 | MAY 2015

NIM BEN REUVENLETTERING AT

ITS FINEST

12MR GABRIEL MARQUES

POP ART MAKESA COMEBACK

22 HORSEHOOD STUDIESNATHALIE VASSALLO:BIZARRE MEETS ART

34

06POEM

GREGORIO DUVIVIERTALKS NYC

14COVER STORYWHAT IT TAKES

TO BUILD A STARTUP

28YANN & DAN

COLLECTIVE ARTACROSS HEMISPHERES

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REFINDING A LOST ARTGRAPHIC ARTIST NIM BEN REUVEN FINDS IN

LETTERING HIS TRUE PASSION

Letters are everywhere – from simple communication to elabo-rate signage. But they don’t just appear out of thin air. Lettering

is a craft, and it’s not going anywhere. Having an audience is a powerful

thing. With a relatively modest number of people dedicated to your brand and products, you can easily sustain.

You don’t have to have millions or hundreds of thousands of followers—the beautiful thing about the inter-net is its ability to bring people with unique interests together. Even if you have a very specific focus, there are

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a ton of other people across the world that share those interests and that adds up quickly.

Yet, many people worry about narrowing their focus. It feels like you’re excluding a bunch of peo-ple! It seems counter-intuitive: What if the niche dries up? What happens if interest suddenly goes?

The good news is, you don’t need to be afraid to niche down.

If you’re about the people and serving their needs, you’re going to adapt naturally without even noticing it. You might suddenly realize you’re in a different indus-try because you followed the peo-ple—that makes you immune to an industry going away or drying up. I recently witnessed someone say they were going to start a new vid-eo show. In an introductory video,

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they were trying to build up mo-mentum to the launch of the show.

They mentioned it’d be a week-ly show, but then they said some-thing that made my heart sink a little: “It’ll usually be on Fridays.”

Does that word sound familiar? “I hope to stick with my new blog.” Ever catch yourself saying that? “I’ll do my best to get a new pod-cast out weekly.”

It’s flattering and at the same time a very strange feeling. On the one hand, it feels good to be asked for advice, but on the oth-er hand, something seems a bit weird about the exchange. I love the cozy mood my office has.

The colored lighting adds such a neat dynamic to the room. I’ve been using it on seanwes tv to col-or coordinate with the desktop. ▪

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Made by Persons, the BRAIN is a curated social platform - an online community for artists and creatives. The space brings together graphic and web designers, program-

mers, writers, musicians, photographers, videographers and other talented and skilled artists - as well as creative project managers to brainstorm, collaborate, work together, exchange services and

materials. In addition to the platform.

Persons will offer free and exclusive content for its members such as graphic files, media and news.

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12 | MADE MAGAZINE Illustration by Jessica Dougherty

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New York, New Yorkby Gregorio Duvivier

Pegue um papel, ou uma parede, ou algoque seja quase branco e bem vazio.Amasse-o até que tome formade um animal: focinho, corpo, patas. Em cada pata ponha muitas unhase em sua boca muitos dentes. (Casoqueira, pinte o focinho de qualquercor que pareça rosa). Atrás, na bunda, ponha um fiapo nervoso: será seurabo. Pronto. Ou quase: deixe-o láfora e espere chover nanquim. Agora dê grama ao bicho. Se ele rejeitar,é dálmata. Se comer (e mugir),é uma vaca que tens. Tente outra vez.

POP ART NEUE

POP ART NEUE

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Born and raised amongst the muddy fields of Nor-folk, Andy Smith studied illustration at the Univer-

sity of Brighton and the Royal Col-lege of Art, London.

Graduating in 1998 he estab-lished a client list of advertising, publishing and editorial clients including Orange, Mercedes, Mc-Donalds, The Guardian, Expedia, Sony, Vodafone, Random House

and Penguin Books, directing Run London a commercial for Nike in 2000. His work combines illustra-tion and typography to create im-ages that have humour, energy and optimism and all are executed with a handmade, hand-printed tactile.

Quirky characters find them-selves in absurd situations, often with a large piece of lettering Peo-ple magazine profiled him in its Guide to the Up and Coming. ▪

With a remarkable illustration techinique, Mr. Gabriel Marques turns pop culture into art

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MOST PEOPLE FIND

ATTRACTIVE THE

IDEA OF BEING

THEIR OWN BOSS

BUT DO THEY KNOW

WHAT IT TAKES TO

BUILD A STARTUP?

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Before starting work on a new brand identity, draw up a brand strategy to form a set of values and a proposition upon which the client and you agree. If this doesn’t happen at the start of a project the client will have time.

If design concepts are created without thorough briefing on the brand, then both creative and cli-ent end up relying too much on an intuitive idea of the solution, and accordingly run the risk of feedback being subjective. A brief that’s drawn up from a clear brand strategy enables both parties to rationalise the design decisions. Understand the personality of the brand - its history, function and the ethos behind it all. Extract every nuance of who the client is and what the company’s about.

It can be a valuable exercise to ask clients to do their own ex-ploration into finding referenc-es for their branding: you’ll soon see what they like, and - usefully - how broad their understanding of design is. Look at the colours, typefaces and visual styles used by rivals, and then create some-thing truly unique, positioned away from them all. Think of the varied uses, colours and sizes of your design. Then stand back.

MAPPING YOUR DREAM

WORKING FOR YOUR VISION

GOALS ANDINTENTIONS

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Understanding the client’s needs is the first step to creating a great brand identity. By limiting colour palettes, details and typography, a simple identity can become time-less and move alongside the cli-ent’s ever-changing visual.

If that ‘something special’ about the product or client isn’t iden-tified at the beginning, you’ll be missing a massive opportunity to connect with the people you’re creating the brand for, and the au-dience it must attract. Get this bit right and you’re already halfway there; get it wrong and you’ll end up with little to spur your imagi-nation on. Impact Conference is a new event brought to you by Com-puter Arts that celebrates creative.

MANAGINGTIME

BUDGETS& BUDGETING

PLANNING FORSUCCESS

While a logo is sometimes the linchpin that holds a brand identi-ty together and makes it instantly recognisable, brands aren’t built on logos alone. When creating a brand identity, don’t focus on the separate elements. make sure you always consider the bigger picture and how all the smaller elements interact with one another. No matter how much experience you have, the client knows the product better than you ever will. Rushing in with a set of en vogue visuals might get you praise from.

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A SUCCESSFULSTARTUP STORY

Persons is a full-service creative agency connect-ing brands across all industries with talented creative professionals, hand-picked to suit the brand’s specific needs. Our in-house team, part-ners and wide network of prescreened freelancers include graphic designers, social media experts, marketing strategists, copywriters, photogra-phers, web programmers, video producers and more. From the beginning, the partners focused on developing Kate Spade’s identity--a complete brand instead of an ad campaign. “It was about this world we were creating, which was about gra-ciousness,” says Lemos. “We built it around Kate’s personality.” Developing that identity involved making hundreds of decisions that don’t seem to be about marketing or advertising,

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MAKING IT ALL LEGIT

A traditional branding agency might have parlayed the success of the J.Crew Liquor

Store project into an aggressive round of pitching to other mass brands. Spade and Sperduti in-stead retreated to a downtown storefront and turned the front of the shop into a tour of their eccentric brains.

They held art shows (vin-tage Playboy photography, a performance piece that in-volved someone providing free tax advice), published pho-

to books with HarperCollins, and designed products, like hand-painted neckties, to sell on the weekends, when they opened their workspace as a store. If it all sounds like little more than creative self-indul-gence, consider that in addition to being fun, every project was designed to make money or break even. More than that, the projects helped the partners re-fine their own brand.

“We’ve seen a significant shift in the way consumers embrace brands,” says Kelly O’Keefe. ▪

Valuable tips on how to solidify a brand in the market

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n vassallophotoshoot

HORSEHOOD STUDIESPhotographer Nathalie Vassallo portrays loneliness and the feeling of not belonging with her signature masks

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Up CloseYann Hatchuel & Dan Butcko

Dan, American, and Yann, Brazilian, met in New York City 5 years ago on a dating website. After 13 happy months together, they were caught

by surprise and Yann was forced to return to his motherland without notice.

Dan runs a studio where he produces paintings for the Fine Art Gallery market. He also “practiced graphic design from various boutique design firms in Chicago, worked as creative director for Britannica.

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MADE How do you want people to feel when they see your work? YANN I want people to smile. I hope they might say, “Hey I never imagined a Robot or boombox or banana would look like that”.DAN Same here. One the things that bring me joy about creating art is being able to bring people some happiness and joy.

M What made you two get into collaborative illustration? D I’ve always enjoyed drawing but I never felt I was good enough. Julie, my wife, and I owned our company (Cosmo Cricket) pro-ducing products in the scrapbook industry. It was 2007 and I had started to design this baby line but I wanted illustrated charac-ters to help express the theme of the line. Because I couldn’t find illustrations that seemed to work for the collection I started drawing my own friends and family.

M How has being an art director and designer influenced your approach to illustration?Y As an art director you concept a lot. I remember creative directors telling me that I needed to come up with 100 ideas to find the best one. I don’t know if I ever came close to that but I tried. D As I would concept for a new ad or brochure I found myself asking, “what if” alot. “What if” is a ques-tion I ask a lot as I consider.

M What do you like about illus-tration? vs art directing? What do you like about art directing?D I love that people come to me because they like my style. I like that my illustrations will not be subjected to comments like “make the logo bigger” or “we’ll need to focus group this work”. What I have loved about both illustration and art direction is the creative process. Y We learned a lot from our first licensing experience! Our num-ber one lesson is that you must research the companies you work.

M Can you tell us your experience in the art licensing industry?Y I work from home on an iMac. I use a Wacom tablet and will never ever go back to using a mouse. I always have a sketchbook nearby which is where I usually begin.D This includes understanding their distribution channels, mar-keting power, customer service...Y It will all reflect on you and your brand once you affiliate with them.

M What is your working environment like? Y I really love jazz and listen to it a lot. It really helps me clear my head as I work. My favorites are Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Chet Baker and a lot more.D One of the things that I really love about my work space is that

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I share it with my wife. Julie and I work on several projects together. We have our desk along one wall and work about 4 feet from each other.

M Do you meet up with other il-lustrators in person? Who?Y Once in awhile Cathy Heck is very outgoing and invites us to dinner and events every now and then. We just had dinner with her and her husband Jim where she introduced us to Laura Wisburn

who we had met briefly at Surtex a few years ago. We have also hung out with Malka Dubrowski, a fellow Moda Fabric designer.

D I have learned that I have stopped worrying (almost com-pletely but not quite) about wheth-er or not people like my illustra-tions and art. I have learned that the more you draw the more solu-tions you come up with to solve a creative problem. I would love to do work for Blue Q sometime. I loved the design work I was see-ing on PBS Kids and Nickelodeon

a few years ago and would love to do some work for either company.

M What illustration related proj-ects would you love to do in the future?D I loved the design work I was seeing on PBS Kids and Nickel-odeon a few years ago and would love to do some work for either company.Y I have yet to live off illustration as and only source of income. In the past I have worked in a kitch-

en, as a cleaner in an old people’s home, a super- market assistant, carer and teaching assistant.

M There are lots of plants in your work, why is that?Y As a child I spent a lot of time in the garden playing. I always liked to creep into bushes like an explorer and go as far back into the foliage as I possibly could. The suburban garden was transformed into a tropical paradise. D I see myself as that same ex-plorer when I draw. Plants contain their own symbolism and folklore

“The fact that we’re creating art together while living in different countries

only makes our love grow stronger.”YANN

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and artists throughout history have always studied them. I find this reference to still life and na-ture really interesting because I am constantly fascinated by their strange their worldly beauty and seductive qualities of shape and colour.

M Can you explain why you like to use lots of different mediums?D I am always experimenting. For a long time my work has been pure-ly monochromatic. It felt natural to only work in shades of black and white to explore different ap-proaches in mark making. Y Absolutely.D But recently I have been intro-ducing more colour and discover-ing that through digital techniques I can bring all these different me-diums together.

M What is your favorite type of commercial project and why?Y One which involves lots of na-ked ladies and plants or a botani-cal guide would suit me fine.D I have lots of ideas - pattern de-sign, book covers, editorial illus-tration, gallery shows, animation, comics, rugs, mugs and trinkets. Even if I don’t achieve all these things I think its good to keep op-tions open and be resourceful.

M How would you like your work to be used in the future?D This is really dependent on the

project. The decorative and con-ceptual cannot be entirely sepa-rated – they need each other.

M Is your work more conceptual or decorative?Y Some pieces are more dec-orative and some have greater conceptual meaning but all have a little of both. If something is beautiful or strangely beguiling it will pull the viewer in and it can a powerful tool to bring a concept across.D I don’t have an agent. I have always liked the idea of being very self- sufficient and I think it particularly important in the ear-ly days to gain experience from dealing with clients myself.

M Do you have an art rep? Why or why not?D I set myself small goals through-out the day – it’s always a good feeling to tick everything off a list! During the day I just like to immerse myself in drawing. When the evening comes I move on to computer-based work. Scanning, colouring in and updating my blog or website.Y As an art director you concept a lot. I remember creative directors telling me that I needed to come up with 100 ideas to find the best one. I don’t know if I ever came close to that but I tried. D As I would concept for a new ad or brochure, I found myself. ▪