Interviews

John Mastro is a designer and creative director from Melbourne, Australia, with over 15 years of experience in brand strategy, identity design, and packaging design. In 2015 he founded Date Of Birth, a brand creation agency specializing in identity and experience design. We caught up with John to talk about design, creativity and living and working in the city.

Currently living and working out of New York City and Portugal, the Argentinian native Constanza Vallese developed an early interest in art from observing the projects of her family. She was encouraged by her grandmother’s oil paintings, her father’s experiments in sculpture, and her mother’s affinity for interior design. After studying film at UBA (University of Buenos Aires) she moved to New York. We caught up with Constanza to talk about creativity, the inspirations behind her work and living and working in the city.

Born into a working-class family in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Jorge Camarotti is a Brazilian filmmaker based in Montreal since 2003. Since his beginnings in filmmaking 10 years ago, Jorge has directed a dozen short films, both documentary and fiction, remaining true to his mission of giving voice to the most aggrieved individuals of our society. His most recent project 'Ousmane' has been screened in more than 60 festivals around the world, and the film won 15 awards including two Academy® Awards Qualifying Festivals.

Alice Mourou is the founder and creative director at .Oddity Studio, a branding and innovation design agency based in Hong Kong. She believes in simple ideas that build brands stories, from strategy to visual language and tech. Her designs are often described as distilled to the core essence where nothing can be added or removed. Her work has been appreciated by international design associations such as D&AD, One Show, Art Directors Club, Asia Pacific Awards and Hong Kong GDA.

Emma Eriksson is currently living and working in New York City as Head of Creative at Forsman & Bodenfors with brands like Crocs, Inkbox, and Diageo. With more than 20 years of creative experience in Sweden and the US, Emma has developed award-winning work for Häagen-Dazs, Absolut Vodka, H&M, MTV and Åhléns Department Store. Prior to joining Forsman & Bodenfors, Eriksson co-founded the creative agency Le Bureau in Stockholm, where she spent 12 years.

Rafael Prieto is the Founder and Creative Director of Savvy Studio a design and branding practice based in New York and Mexico City. The studio's core practice is based on research and exploration of culture – inspired by art and materiality – creating each project in a deeply contemplative manner.

Felix Pfäffli is a graphic designer based in Lucerne, Switzerland. He founded Studio Feixen in 2009 and was inducted into the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) in 2013 as its youngest-ever member. His work includes projects in various design areas. Whether it’s graphic design, interior design, fashion design, type design or animation, the only constant remains the in-depth examination of color, shape and typography.

Élise Rigollet is an independent graphic designer and creative director based in Paris, working in the fields of design for culture, music, publishing and more. She likes focusing on playful combinations of image-making, typography and colour. In 2018, she founded Élise Rigollet Offices, a creative practice and design studio focusing on creating visual and conceptual stories across brand identities, art direction, print and digital design, and illustration.

Happening Studio is an international design studio, cultivating global minds with local sensibility. Specializing in identity design as a studio foundation, they output a wide range of work, from screen-based experiences to printed reading experiences. Often working with small to medium sized cultural institutions and museums, Happening Studio function as a design mediator and facilitator between in-house design, marketing staffs and high level stakeholders. Since 2019, the studio went fully remote and worked from 3 different continents to further establish their design practice and research.

Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, and “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, Debbie Millman is also an author, educator, curator and host of the award-winning podcast Design Matters. Design Matters is one of the world's very first podcasts. Broadcasting independently for 17 years, the show is about how incredibly creative people design the arc of their lives. Debbie is the author of seven books. Her most recent book, Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People, was published this year by Harper Collins.

Reeme Idris is an Irish-Sudanese freelance writer based in London. She contributes ideas and interviews for various independent publications about people and places, art and design. We caught up with Reeme to talk about design, creativity and living and working in the city.

Megan Bowker is a practicing graphic designer who is interested in evolving beyond our current definition of those words. After years of practicing commercial design at scale for top branding agencies, she has began an independent practice seeking unlimited and non-traditional applications of these skills.

Baltimore’s Julien Chang writes music that tunnels towards a series of deeper truths, investigating everyday existentialism, love and life, art and the artist. Arriving in 2019 with his critically acclaimed album ‘Jules’, Chang set a precedent with his dreamy debut and is now exacting his focus on 2022 with his forthcoming new studio album ‘The Sale’ out on November 4th, via Transgressive records. 

Dylan Mulvaney is a New York-based graphic designer and head of design at Gretel NY. His expertise lies in translating core values, strategy, and voice into striking visual executions for clients like Apple, Netflix, MoMA, Vice and RISD. He has been honored by the D&AD, the Art Directors Club, the Type Directors Club, and the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards.

Khyati Trehan is an independent graphic designer and 3D visual artist from New Delhi, India. Her work is textural, playful, emotive and driven by an ache to make the intangible tangible. Khyati’s career has seen her work across disciplines, drawing inspiration from the context of the work and often exploring the edges of all things visual for the likes of the Oscars, New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, Apple, Adobe, Absolut, Instagram and Snapchat. Khyati was one of Print Magazine’s 15 New Visual Artists under 30 in 2017, was chosen as the Artistry Creator of the Year at Adweek’s Creator Visionary Awards, won the ADC Young Guns 19 and most recently, made it to the Forbes 30under30 India List.

Shira Barzilay is an artist whose iconic work is globally recognized through her influential @koketit platform. Her unique and captivating style of drawing and mixed media art has brought her to the attention of some of the world’s leading brands. To date this includes art collaborations with Cartier, Elizabeth Arden, Vogue Portugal, Harper’s Bazaar, N’kd, Lenovo, Revlon, and most recently a design collaboration with Zara. In May 2022 Shira launched her first cover collaboration with international publication Elle Norway. Her distinctive style is recognized for it’s evocative and philosophical musings on our world. “The world is her canvas”

Bénédicte Burguet-Journé is the senior editor of Vanity Fair France magazine and author of the book: What is it about Paris & Fashion. With 10 years of experience as a journalist and editor, she worked as an expert lifestyle writer for Le Figaro and wrote political stories for Shanghai Daily.

Jody Hudson-Powell, together with his brother and life-long creative collaborator Luke Powell, joined Pentagram as a partner in 2015. Originally hailing from Somerset, England, the brothers had great success with their independent design studio Hudson-Powell. Jody has always been interested in the ways technology shapes the way we view and experience the world around us. These interests culminated in an experimental practice developed at Central Saint Martins and a Virtual Environment MSc at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture.

Sophie Willison was born in London in 1995 and studied fine art photography at the University of East London. In October 2015 she moved to Sydney to rediscover her love of Australia, now working between London & Sydney. Willison publishes an annual magazine terra firma and produces an annual diary.  She is currently working on the 8th issue of terra firma magazine, and launching a small one off publication as part of an online gallery she runs called Sandalwood Project.

Koos Breen stretches frontiers of disciplines and pushes them to edgy limits. He fluently shifts between being an art director, designer and artist: continuously expanding his expertise and interests, while challenging himself as much as the possible boundaries. In the same vein, Koos hardly distinguishes between autonomous works and commissioned projects: different worlds blend, as he imagines how objects and forms could function within divergent disciplines, scenes and environments.

Kellen Hatanaka is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto living and working in Stratford, Ontario. His vibrant, figurative work is centered around heritage, tradition, identity and representation. He has exhibited in Canada and internationally and created many public works. He has worked with a variety of clients including Nike, The Wall Street Journal, The Polaris Music Prize, Bruce Mau Design and Absolut Vodka. He was awarded the Governor General's Award in 2016 along with Jon-Erik Lappano for their book, "Tokyo Digs a Garden."

Tadas Karpavicius is an art director and graphic designer from Lithuania working in the fields of art, fashion, culture and commerce. Between self-initiated projects and commissions, he works with a variety of clients from different fields, maintaining a strong focus on the cultural sphere and collaborating with visual artists, designers, curators, galleries, institutions, commerce, businesses and individuals.

Johanne Lian Olsen is an internationally experienced graphic designer working within type design, editorial design and illustration. Additionally trained as a photographer, she focuses on both print and digital media. Her clients include such international brands as IKEA, NIKE, Whitechapel Gallery and Thames & Hudson Publishers.

Paw Poulsen is a graphic designer currently living and working in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Danish School of Media and Journalism in 2018 with an exchange at the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague. He co-founded together with Emil Hee and Jakob Slebsager Nielsen a publishing company called Amulet where they publish literary activistic literature. They have just released their first publication, Amulet Magasin 1.