3 Artists that inspired me as a Brand Designer
After heading to TOCA ME Design Conference in Munich this April, I thought I’d share 3 artists that inspire me as Accurx’s Brand Designer.
A quick intro to Conference TOCA ME
If you haven’t heard of it Conference TOCA ME is an annual conference that features artists and professional creatives and offers guests a one day journey full of creativity and inspiration. The name of the Conference TOCA ME is Spanish and means ‘touch me’ — which outlines purpose of the event — showcasing creative work which touches people on an emotional and intellectual level.
Heading to the Munich with my fellow Accurx designers was a brilliant experience. As well as offering the chance for some team bonding, the event brought us face-to-face with some incredible creative design. Here are the three artists that most stood out to me!
My top 3 artists from Conference TOCA ME
1. Marylou Faure
Marylou Faure was one of the main speakers I was curious to hear about at the conference. She is a French artist and illustrator specialising in character design, using bold colours and graphic compositions. She aspires to create artwork that invokes joy with her cheeky and playful style.
One of the topics of her motivational speech took us on a journey from the very beginning of creating a sketch of one of her — now famous — bubblegum-pink skin tone and voluptuous curved characters to a 5m tall inflatable based on her ‘Daydream’ piece, exhibited in Shanghai.
She explained that 3D was the natural next step for emphasising the “bubbliness”, “curviness” and “glossiness” of her characters. It was very inspiring to hear her explain why she wanted to go from 2D into 3D. She always felt like her characters were almost a living thing, and that they could move, that they had a physical presence in their curvy shapes and their confident attitude.
Having created illustrated 2D characters myself for the Accurx brand, it is always a creative challenge to make them work for different outcomes of all sizes. I haven’t made them in 3D just yet but who knows in the future we might go to an event with our brand characters standing at 5m tall.
Find out more about her bold work on maryloufaure.com
2. Mitch Paone
Mitch Paone opened the day with an eye-opening talk about typography and motion inspired by rhythms in music and movements of animals. Mitch is the Principle and Creative Director at DIA Studio, a branding and graphic design studio specialised in kinetic identities and typographic systems.
The focus of Mitch’s talk was how different and sometimes unexpected influences can come together to inspire visual form and movement.
As well as a deep love for jazz, Mitch and the studio research the worlds of science, nature and biomechanics for inspiration, creating moving type that has its own dynamic energy. He gets his inspiration for those motions from the way elephants walk or caterpillars and snakes move to the principles of physics. He then translates those movements into typographic motions, how individual letters or words can move around and attract the viewer.
As a visual designer it is so important to know that you can get inspiration from unexpected things in our everyday life. Looking at how plants or animals in nature move, seeing patterns in music beats, all of the aspects that Mitch mentioned can give you new ideas when creating for different media.
Find out more about his work on dia.tv
3. A Light To Remember
One of the highlights of the conference was the interactive light painting Bernhard Rauscher and Ulrich Tausend from A Light To Remember created together with the audience.
A light painting is created by the movement of lights within a dark environment, photographically captured with a long exposure time that ranges from five seconds to several minutes. During this timeframe, it’s possible to draw with lights (in this case everyone’s phone) in the surrounding space. The camera captures the motion of the lights, transforming a performance into an energetic ‘painting’.
Without the use of computer technology in the form of image processing, light painting is able to produce fascinating and magical effects. Light painting in itself is not a new technique (Pablo Picasso, for example, experimented with Light Painting in the 1940s), but the technical developments of recent years (such as digital cameras, LED lights, computer controlled light sticks and live-view) allow for ever-evolving forms of expression — there are almost no limits to creativity.
As modern digital artists we are so used to editing our work using the computer to create special effects. It was quite refreshing to see a digital piece of work being made without the use of computers.
Find out more about their work on alighttoremember.de
The TOCA ME conference left me very creatively inspired. The day had a great variety in topics from graphic design, illustration and typography to motion graphics, creative coding and artificial intelligence. I will definitely return for the next edition next year!
Resources:
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/marylou-faure-art-030822
https://alighttoremember.de/light-painting-technique/?lang=en
