From paper sculpture, detailed draughtsmanship, papercut, and plasticine modelling, they have been keeping it exciting with a spectrum of different ideas, we can’t wait to see what they have in store for us next. They tell us more about their studio and the project, and give us a glimpse of the backstage process.

The studio began in 1998 in Verona, the romantic city of Romeo and Juliet. In recent years we have worked with both large and small clients, for local agencies and major international companies.

Our approach to design is always the same: designing a logo, an advertising page, a wall or directing a commercial offers the same opportunity to deal with a problem. With time we have become quite good at solving problems. 

Mixing complexity, order and fatigue is our formula for beauty. Always, in addition to the commissioned work, we spend plenty of energy in research and testing. Visual art, typography, graphic design, illustration, animation, film direction and music. We like contamination between creative disciplines and diversity in general.

We don’t like to do the same thing twice and prefer to go beyond what we are already able to do. It is tiring but satisfying. 

We started collaborating with IL – Intelligence In Lifestile Magazine, supplement of Il Sole 24 Ore. Under the creative direction of Mr. Francesco Franchi, each month we develop the title typography for the brand new column “Remo Contro” written by the italian philosopher Remo Bodei. 

© Happycentro, 2012

I make all of my work with a Macbook, a printer, and flatbed scanner.  I usually begin by acquiring reference images for the objects in each scene, then I model them in Wings 3D, a free modeling application.  I’ll have anywhere from 10-20 reference images open at one time so I can quickly glance around and find the form from different perspectives.  

I try not to be rigid during this process – often, I’ll end up disregarding the references and finding the form more organically— almost like a 3D doodle.  After I’ve completed all of the models, I bring them into Cinema 4D and begin arranging, texturing, and lighting the scene. 

I work primarily with isometric perspective.  Because the perspective is fixed, much of this time is spent scaling, rotating, and arranging the objects to my liking.  Sometimes, I’ll spend days on this— rendering and re-rendering and comparing the images.  After this, I print the image on a cheapo home printer and scan them back in.

For me, this is an important step because the images becomes tangible for a minute.  I’ve had bad experiences in the past with crashed hard drives and corrupted files— days or weeks of work disappearing in a flash— so, during this step, I can hold the work in my hands for a minute before sending it back into the digital nether.

Because I work from my Mac, I have the luxury of setting up shop wherever there’s room for my mousepad. Most of the time, this in a workspace in my room, and occasionally Spencers Coffee house— an awesome little cafe in my hometown of Bowling Green, KY.  

Right now, I’m on the road— driving the band Sleeper Agent on a US tour and working wherever/whenever I can.  

Usually, this means a hotel, a friend’s house, or the back of the van.  Because of this, I’m attaching an image of the world I’ve seen the most over the past few months— the US via the open road.

© Jordan Speer, 2011.

We were eager to find out more about how they work as a collaborative pair and how they’re pushing Brosmind as an all-inclusive brand.

Having studied art separately, did you actively try and develop a cohesive style or has your work always been similar to one another?

We have been a creative couple since our childhood. When we were kids, we spent all day making comics, building vehicles for our action figures and creating our own movies with a domestic camcorder. 

Juan is only three years older than me (Alejandro) so we have the same background and influences, we think in the same way and share the same kind of ideas. Having said that, it’s true that there were some slight differences between our drawing styles, but when we started our studio we naturally developed the actual Brosmind style.

How does your process as a duo differ from how you’ve worked previously?

Now is easier for us. We can quickly explain an idea to each other and be sure that he is going to understand it perfectly. The cool thing about being brothers is that we can be totally sincere in our criticism or have really big arguments and still be friends. That helps, for sure, to take our work to a higher level than before.

Is all the work produced as Brosmind totally collaborative or do you sometimes allocate individual parts of a project to one another?

We develop all the ideas in common and also develop the pencilled drawing together. When we decide that the pencil stage is finished, Juan does the ink and Alejandro adds the color on the computer.

As well as your work, you get a lot of positive attention as yourselves as artists. Is this something you’ve always thought would be part of the branding of Brosmind, or is it something that’s happened naturally because of people’s interest in you?

We would love being only artists, but for the moment  it’s easier to live from commercial work. For the moment, we’ve just reached a balance between commercial and personal work that makes us feel really comfortable.

Would you recommend working as a team to other artists out there?

Each person is different. For us, it’s great to work together, but our relationship is so special that it would be really difficult to have anybody else in the studio. We also know really talented artists who work alone and also other studios, which create amazing things being a big team.

Continuing from your venture into other products, such as Brosmind Army and Brosmind City, can we expect to see any further expansion of the Brosmind universe in the near future?

Of course. We have two great projects!

We got invited to do the Main titles for the OFFF Festival in Barcelona 2012. And we’ll be working together with Upper First, and that’s going to be big! We are really excite about this project : ) 

We”ll be presenting them on May 2012, so stay tuned!

And, probably on the same dates, we’ll launch an amazing personal project, but unfortunately for the moment we can’t say WHAT’S INSIDE?, so stay tuned!

© Brosmind Studio, 2011.

The categories on her site alone, which include ‘light boxes’, ‘body paint’, ‘xxx’ and ‘kamasutra’, illustrate versatility and willingness to try new things. Check out her trippy video, ‘Cream Guru’.

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“I work with a variety of materials depending on the project. For my pieces on paper or wood I use gouache, pencil, and ink. Sometimes acrylic. I’ve been making sculptures out of expanding foam recently and am releasing a video later this week that uses digitally shot live-action stop motion that I animated over frame by frame using Photoshop and AfterEffects. After finishing the digital version of the video I recorded and added text with VHS. I’ll be posting both versions on my website.”

“For Cream Guru I animated my drawings and paintings then mixed them in with live video and stop motion. I got the idea from reading ‘The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep’ by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. There are 12 spiritual practices the Tibetan Buddhists use when lucid dreaming and I included some of their techniques into the content of my video.”  

© Celeste Byers, 2011.

“FRESH combines a collection of international contemporary illustration used in a wide range of styles and techniques. Presented as a series of three volumes: Object, Public and Print. From personal work to commercial illustrations, from fashion to street art, from two-dimensional to sculptural approaches.

The FRESH series features more than 1,400 works of illustrative art. The selection of works reproduced in FRESH was considered by a jury of professional illustrators including Johannes König, Michael Luz, Mone Maurer, Raban Ruddigkeit and André Rösler. FRESH is edited by designers of Slanted magazine and weblog from the German Studio MAGMA Brand Design.”

“FRESH 1 – OBJECT explores illustration situated within a sculptural or spatial environment as well as celebrating various techniques of applied illustration for three-dimensional objects and products, from fashion to industrial design.”

“FRESH 2 – PUBLIC studies ideas behind the notion of street-art, graffiti and illustration in relation to architecture, in-store graphics and public space. Questioning the boundaries of staged illustration, the concept of permanence and spatial awareness.”

“FRESH 3 – PRINT provides a cutting edge presentation of illustration using its immediate material. Revealing personally ornamented relations to fashion illustration and commercially produced work for books, magazines, flyers and brochures. “ 

© DAAB Media, 2011.

“A direct response to the D&AD Student Illustration Awards brief, which was to interpret two tracks by the same artist in an innovative manner. I chose two tracks from Broadcast’s 2005 album ‘Tender Buttons’, the tracks, being ‘I Found the F’ and ‘I Found the End’, mark the album as bookends, the former opens the album whereas the latter closes it.

Not long before the brief was set, the lead singer, Trish Keenan, died of pneumonia after complications from contracting the swine flu virus. Not only did this spur me on to push the boundaries of how I normally worked, it suddenly made the tracks I chose much more poignant and personal.”

“I chose the object of a synthesiser because for me it’s synonymous with Broadcast’s sound and image. I wanted the synth to look organic as their music is comprised of both the digital and the analogue in an unusual and yet distinctive way. The interface was key to the success of the project, I wanted it to look retro but modernist, colourful yet considered, I wanted it to look playable but incomprehensible and totally bizarre at the same time.

Most traces of a traditional synthesiser are lost and instead replaced with strange dials and weird buttons, odd images full of nostalgia. The synth is a response to the first track, ‘I Found the F’.”

“It seemed only natural to include an instruction manual to work alongside the synth, ‘I Found the End’, represents death and loss, it stands as a shadow of its former; no lyrics are sung, the only noise heard is a slowed down instrumental loop taken from ‘I Found the F’. The manual features imagery from the synth, altered and redesigned to work with and also against the synth, the words are cut out as there are no lyrics in this song, yet it still hints to something that once was.”

 © Jack Hughes, 2011.

It seems to have also been quite an undertaking but definitely presented well, having not only a collection of miniature installations around town but also a screen printed, embossed book documenting the project and a larger installation within the walls of the degree show. He tells us more.

I love ideas. The final outcomes of my projects tend to be driven as much by ideas and concepts as aesthetics. Much of my recent work has focused on reusing objects, materials and spaces in ways that give them new life or meaning, allowing them to serve new purposes. I also enjoy physical, tangible objects and being hands on and making things, which is why I think a lot of my work recently has taken a three dimensional form.

This project looks at how today space is at a premium, especially in towns and cities, and with available land steadily disappearing to development, free space is becoming increasingly hard to come by. With this project I aimed to seek out dead spaces, unused spaces, spaces with no visible purpose; spaces that may usually go unnoticed unless brought to your attention, and offer them up for rent as a tongue in cheek comment on ‘free space’.

I found a variety of these spaces in different shapes and sizes around Brighton, settling on 12 to use for my final selection. I then recorded all their measurements and constructed a Perspex fascia to sit in each space. The dimensions, details, prices etc. are all screen printed onto the Perspex and are specific to each individual space.

After installing and photographing all the ‘free spaces’, I collated them into a 26 page estate agents style catalogue with their dimensions, details and prices. The cover is screen printed, embossed and debossed, with screen printed end papers and yellow page details.

Photo of Brighton in the lego model village, from a club excursion to Legoland. 

© Matt Lyver, 2011.

A pic of one of Tom’s favourite places is at the end of the post.

I am an illustrator currently based in London, recently graduated from Kingston University Illustration & Animation.  I have found that there are 3 areas of illustration that drive my want to make new work and challenge new projects; they are idea generation/problem solving, production of the work and the print process.

My working processes are heavily lead by these three stages. Once arriving at a solution that communicates, I compose my image, designing and drawing out my imagery in layers using a range of mixed media before it is compiled digitally. I try to ensure that my final outcome is always taken to print, for me there is nothing more rewarding than seeing an edition of hard worked prints finished and drying. 

© Tom Clohosy Cole, 2011. 

The difference, however, is that Ciara’s work is carefully considered design and has been sought after by big companies such as Orange, and been on more than one cover of well-know art and design publications. Below, Ciara tells us about herself and her work.

I am a freelance illustrator, I work from Open Studio in North London. My work is predominantly collage based, I like to mix vintage imagery found in old encyclopaedias and children’s books with modern geometric pattern and vector shapes.  

My collage work is mostly created digitally on the computer as I  find this the easiest way to manipulate the forms and create interesting composition. In addition to my collages, I also work with paper to create elaborate sets and objects that I then shoot in my studio before digitally re-touching.

© Ciara Phelan, 2011.

Can you tell us a little more about your background as a designer?

I graduated from illustration at Bournemouth Arts Institute in 2006, following that I moved over to Vancouver B.C,  I was born in Canada and always wanted to move back there after university.  After freelancing there for a year or so, I decided that if I really wanted to purse my career in illustration and design, I would have to head back over the pond and set up in London.

After a week in London, I landed an internship in the print department at Alexander McQueen, this was my first experience in a studio environment, it was an amazing experience and I ended up designing quite a few prints for the pre spring/summer 2011 collection. After McQueen, I moved on to an internship at creative agency YCN.  This then developed into a full-time job on the design team. During this whole time, I was still pushing my freelance work and making contacts with people in the industry.

It got to the point where my freelance work was taking over so I made the decision to go freelance on a full-time basis.  And thankfully the guys at YCN let me continue to work from their studio in Shoreditch, freelancing can be a pretty lonely pursuit, so sharing a buzzing studio with other creatives is really valuable.

Have you always had a photographic element to your work?

My dream commission would have to be some form of ad campaign for Nike, they always work with amazing artists and have a great understanding of contemporary design and illustration.