With a new year comes new design challenges. Here are 10 designers who are meeting those challenges head-on, and blowing right past them.
A Charlotte, North Carolina native, Farquharson become the Senior Graphic Designer for Kompleks Creative not long after graduating. But her big project is curativ, an independent digital news reader that focuses on underrepresented professionals, cultural diversity and diverse thinking in creative industries. Set to properly launch this spring (though you can sign up to access the beta version now) curativ is set to be strong voice in the creative industry.
You’ve probably seen Pagan’s work without realizing it; the New York based designer is responsible for Pinterest’s branding, as well as work for MTV and Three Olive’s Vodka. Despite the all the serious work in his relatively short career, Pagan’s designs carry with them a playful edge. Pagan sits somewhere between fine artist and cartoonist, and bridging that gap is what makes him so sought-after.
8. Taylor Goad
Born in Oklahoma, Goad is currently ensconced in San Francisco as part of Hatch Design. As those fictional bottle designs for Northcoast Brewery shows, Goad has a knack for taking chunky, mid-century-inspired design elements and fusing them into a relentless modern shape.
7. Leigh Guldig
Guldig lives in Boston, MA, and has cultivated a detailed style that combines scanned engravings and textures with delicate, intricate linework. There’s an intellectual refinement to Gulidig’s work, so it comes as no surprise that her clients have included NPR and Scientific American. Print Magazine recently did an article delineating the how her assemblages come together into a unique, pleasing whole.
6. Zipeng Zhu
Currently designing in New York, NY for Sagmeister & Walsh, Zhu born and raised in China. Zhu has made a splash with his affection for negative space, as shown in his branding for The Museum of The Moving Image, inspired by chopped frames of film strip.
Goran’s studio is located in Navigli neighborhood of Milan, Italy, near the Darsena. He’s currently teaching Digital Illustration and Visual Storytelling at the European Design Institute in Turin, and clear to see why. Goran’s ultra-clean hyper-modern graphics are a bastion of clarity in a world full of overly-cluttered aesthetics.
4. Tran Nguyen
Nguyen was born Vietnam and raised here in the United States, and her paintings are suffused with a dreamlike essence. Simultaneously detailed and diffuse, Nguyen’s combination of colored pencil and acrylic are evocative of a forgotten story. With clients as diverse as Playboy, Tor, and McDonald’s, Nguyen work packs at lot of power for images that barely seem there at all.
3. FAUST
The mysterious New York City artist known as Faust describes himself as someone who enjoys “long walks on the beach and writing on other people’s shit.” Combining graffiti styles with classic calligraphy letterforms and an impressive sense of space and scale, Faust as carved out a name for himself, turning other’s people’s shit into his canvas.
2. Anna Bond
Originally from New Jersey, Bond now resides in Florida as the co-founder, creative director and the sole illustrator of the Rifle Paper Co., an international stationery and gift brand. Bond’s hand-painted, colorful works have also been commissioned by Mad Men, InStyle, and The Wall Street Journal.
1. Zim&Zou
Lucie Thomas and Thibault Zimmermann have made a study of whimsy in their Nancy, Fance, workshop. Zim&Zou is aggressively anti-digital, creating arresting imagery out of paper, wood, thread, and whatever else they might have around. Their handcrafted imagery flirts with a cockeyed kitsch aesthetic, but ultimately presents a fully realizes, tangible world of bright colors and cohesive shapes.