With an affinity for the natural world and its inhabitants, Alexander Vidal fills his illustrations with the wonderful forms of the planet’s wildlife.
You can find his many decorative beasts on dinnerware, packaging, and various other kinds of product design.
Alexander’s love of animals is apparent in the attention he gives to their many forms, but a you can also see his interest in shape and pattern clearly too. While they flutter, dive, and roam, he breaks the creatures’ structures down in to simple blocks, dots, and patches of decorative marks.
Below, Alexander talks to us about where this interest came from and why he thinks it’s an important topic to cover in his work.
I’m originally from the US, but before becoming a full time illustrator and designer, I lived in Africa and Asia, and spent several years traveling. I think the curiosity to explore the world is still what drives my work today.
I spend a lot of time illustrating real places and real creatures, because I want people to appreciate the incredible world we have.
That’s a big part of why I’m really drawn toward Midcentury work— there was still an un-ironic optimism to it, and thats a spirit I try to harness.
My illustration is primarily about shape and color, and I hope that it can always have a sense of joy.
I work in a combination of digital and traditional processes, scanning cut paper shapes to make illustration that plays big simple shapes against areas of patterning.
Below: Packaging design for ‘Tenok’, a line of snack foods based around cricket proteins.
© Alexander Vidal, 2015
