Cheers to Till Hafenbrak for some truly captivating illustrations

Cheers to Till Hafenbrak. Detailed, very well worked, and full of fun, the Berlin-based illustrator refreshes the traditional visual languages and processes of graphic design and reminds us of their extraordinary illustrative power.

Often using restricted palettes of only two or three colours, he conjures up creatures, cityscapes, and social situations that are nevertheless arrestingly appealing. Here and there, we see nods to older reproductive processes than the digital ones we currently take for granted. The details of Landscape with Fishermen, for example, bear resemblance to early twentieth-century woodcut pictograms, while many of his images either mimic, or are produced using, screenprinting processes. The overall result is that of carefully worked and juxtaposed shapes that vividly evoke landscapes, wildlife, aaaaand… Batman!

Hafenbrak is one of the three founder-members of Biografiktion , which was set up with two fellow classmates from the Universität der Künste Berlin (University of the Arts Berlin) when they graduated in 2009. Wunderbar!