A catch-up with the always brilliant Cynthia Kittler

The lovely illustrated lines of Cynthia Kittler’s work is a style that we’ll never get sick of. Over Cynthia’s career, her work has grown in commissions and projects, but still manages to retain the little squiggles and wiggles of pencil marks that garnered her following in the first place.

It’s been a busy year for the Offenbach-based illustrator. She’s been commissioned by The New Yorker for the first time — a real highlight she counts herself lucky for, but one that is definitely down to her talent, not luck. She’s ticked off the illustrator bucket-list dream of doing a Google Doodle, held an exhibition with her friends Jan Buchczik, Oriana Fenwick, Benedikt Luft, Nadine Kolodziey and Max Guther in Frankfurt (dream team), created the illustrations for Japanese fashion brand Artida Oud’s packaging and is currently working on a children’s book too!

Over these projects and commissions, Cynthia’s style has always kept its charm and is certainly the reason why art directors around the world have her eagerly bookmarked. She’s not too sure how to describe the development of her work either, “but although slowly, and in nuances, the colour compositions change as time goes by and I’m using a lot more non-black outlines lately,” she tells us. Another consideration playing on Cynthia’s mind is the endless debate of being “torn between keeping it simple and the love for details and patterns, but I think it’s really dependent on what the illustration is about to communicate,” she says. “Now and then I’m working only digitally lately, but mostly I enjoy drawing outlines and brushes and pens on rough paper, and then colour it in digitally.”

With her children’s book illustrating 100 years of fashion still to be finished off and released in 2019, Cynthia is also looking into interdisciplinary work, expanding the remit that her signature style can inhabit. Chatting with photographer Diana Pfammatter “about what we could do together,” a collaboration is on the cards, “and I’m really looking forward to it,” she hints. Other ideas include spending time doing an artist’s residency, “and every now and then dreaming about drawing in 360 degrees with VR glasses”. But, if we’re honest, anything Cynthia turns her illustrative hand to is bound to be great.