My name is Elisa and I spent most of my life in Sacile, Italy. I also stayed briefly in Milan and Berlin, to then stop in London for a Master at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Currently, I live in Reykjavík ( Iceland ) where I work mostly on editorial projects and illustration. I enjoy abstraction, satellite footage and empty spaces. I would have probably made a brilliant astronaut.
WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE? ANY FAVOURITE MUSIC ARTIST?
I’m very passionate about music, I listen to plenty of it, and my interests are very broad. I can’t really say who is my favorite artist, but I can tell you what I’m listening the most to at the moment: the album Curtains from Tindersticks, Timber Timber by Timber Timber, as well as italian songwriter Vinicio Caposela and In Our Head (Hot Chip). Also living in Reykjavik, I’m enjoying a lot of live performances here: my current favorite albums are Enter 4 (Hjaltalin) and Ojba Rasta (Ojba Rasta).
TELL US SOMETHING THAT YOU LOVE AND SOMETHING THAT YOU HATE.
Clearly I love music. Also, I really enjoy going to the cinema, watching whatever on a big screen. I love and collect old prints, especially maps, and books; I also like glaciers and their textures. In general I enjoy complexity and abstraction in visuals. I hate lots of small things too, like making mash potatoes (though I love to eat it), ironing, begin in a crowd and talking on the phone.
WHAT DOES DESIGN MEAN FOR YOU?
Design and Illustration are like a second language to me. I use graphic tools and illustrative skills to express my point of view and to explore my own imagination and reveal it to myself.
WHICH ARTIST HAS MOST INFLUENCED YOUR STYLE? WHY?
My influences are extremely broad, from both contemporary artists like Anish Kapoor, Roni Horn, Gerhard Richter to directors like Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson, Win Wenders. I’m very fond of Scandinavian design and patterns, abstract paintings and landscape photography. I also follow a lot of talks on TED TV, of any sort, and watch plenty of documentaries about Space, Geology even Neuroscience, especially the BBC’s ones. I guess what charms me the most is when striking visual meets storytelling.
WHICH IS THE THING THAT YOU USUALLY FIND EASIER TO DO IN YOUR WORKS?
I find fairly easy the brainstorming part, gathering visuals, references and ideas. I collect a lot of old books, maps, paper, postcards, even pictures from my family archive. I scan them, re-print them, fold them, sometimes freeze them, melt them and scratch them. The playful research is necessary to the development of the idea. I enjoy experimenting with printing processes and spending enough time to find the right paper. The illustration making process is very physical, hardly intellectual and it is a discovery process for me also.
AND WHAT ABOUT THE HARDER ONE?
The digital part is a bit painful sometimes, I don’t necessarily enjoy spending so many hours in front of a screen, clicking on a mouse. Also, since my illustrations are very abstract, both the phases of starting and finishing are often quite energy consuming. Is not always so evident when an illustration is finished, when to stop adding, it is are very personal calls that requires a lot of time and confidence.
Mockingbird
(Music video for Snorri Helgason’s song
Mockingbird off of the Winter Sun album.
Co-directed with Claudio Gasparollo
and Tim L. Schafer. 2012)
This video won the FIT 2013 Award, the Annual Award for Graphic Design of the Year in Iceland.
MinimalMag