Chau Luong dips her toes in many a creative pursuit with vibrant illustrative results

Chau Long is a communication designer who embraces the title to the extreme. “I like many things, therefore I don’t try to limit myself when it comes to creating new work,” she tells It’s Nice That. “Honestly, I would get bored if I did the same things over and over again, this is my way of keeping myself excited to create new work.”

After studying communication design in Mainz, Germany Chau is currently studying an interdisciplinary arts program at the University of the Arts in Offenbach, “to further expand my field of work,” she explains. Chau’s decision to keep things creatively open is purposeful, to “engage with as many different things as possible. It doesn’t matter whether it’s going to be a book, a poster, a piece of clothing or a branding project”.

However, a creative discipline Chau has momentarily settled upon is illustration, but of course each project embraces alternate styles. Her introduction to the multifaceted abilities of the medium was while she was interning in fashion. “I interned in London for fashion designer Mary Benson. I saw illustration in a totally different context than usual; most of all in not only being limited to be seen solely as a “drawing”. It gave me the confidence to experiment more and not care too much about a certain style”.

The result is projects such as Superstitious Mangaka, a poster series “that deals with east Asian superstitions my mom used to tell me in a sarcastic way,” she explains. Inspired by Ukiyo-e art and Roy Lichenstein’s enlargened comics, the drawings are a graphic novel style, in a vibrant colour palette that packs a punch of vibrancy and humour.

On the other side of the illustration spectrum, is a branding project for musician Rina Sawayama. In “exploring human interaction with digital media and her identity struggle of being an immigrant,” the imagery is a mash of colours, photography and typography. This project embodies Chau’s feels of “sometimes feeling sort of like an art director who uses illustration as a means of expression,” she explains. “Although my work varies a lot style wise, it embodies a lot of my personality and interests, like my love for psychedelic and surreal cinema, comics and east Asian culture.”