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Championing creativity

Advertising • Animation • Film • Graphic Design • Illustration • Photography •

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Work / Art

Zander Olsen

Words by Alex Moshakis, Thursday 01 December 2011

Channelling the great walker-scupltor Richard Long, Welsh-born artist and photographer Zander Olsen is slowly wrapping the UK’s woodland in white material. Tree, Line, Olsen says, not shy of a pun, is “an ongoing series of constructed photographs rooted in the forest” – one that explores the relationship between “tree, not-tree and the line of horizon.” A frustratingly focussed website suggests Olsen has all of his time wrapped up (sorry) in this one project, but that’s fine – these images are cool as hell!

www.zanderolsen.com

Words by Alex Moshakis, Thursday 01 December 2011

Most Recent

Grace Miceli’s bold and playful illustrations re-interpret brands in humorous ways 18 June 2018
Tsto returns to design Flow Festival's identity, pushing and playing with its typography 18 June 2018
Rosie Yasukochi's vibrant comic reflects on post-generational trauma 18 June 2018
Patrick Kyle's helpful advice on how to start out at illustration fairs 18 June 2018
"Don't drink and dance in front of your peers": ten creatives on their biggest mistakes 18 June 2018
Rachel Louise Hodgson’s drawings challenge traditional ideals of beauty 15 June 2018

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Work / Art Rachel Louise Hodgson’s drawings challenge traditional ideals of beauty

Rachel Louise Hodgson’s drawings break from the ordinary. Their bright, sickly colours unsettle the viewer, challenging traditional conceptions of beauty. Rachel initially studied fashion photography at The London College of Fashion; where she tells It’s Nice That, “the teachers never understood my work, I stuck out and received a terrible grade”.

Emma Latham Phillips — 15 June 2018
Work / Art Dario Maglionico’s impeccable paintings of partly-transparent, trendy young adults

Dario Maglionico’s paintings of young adults wearing Adidas trainers, working on Apple Macs and drinking glasses of red wine in their shared apartments don’t seem too far off from reality do they? Except they are. Despite the photographic accuracy of Dario’s skilfully crafted worlds, the inhabitants often appear multiple times, either blending into the furniture or sporting missing heads and invisible torsos.

Daphne Milner — 08 June 2018
Regulars / Ones To Watch 2018 "I feel empowered in my queerness and hope to also empower others”: artist Jeffrey Cheung

It’s Nice That’s Ones to Watch shines a light on 12 emerging talents who we think will conquer the creative world in 2018. From a global pool of creative talent, we have chosen our 2018 Ones To Watch for their ability to consistently produce inspiring and engaging work across a diverse range of disciplines. Each of our selections continually pushes the boundaries of what is possible with their creative output. Ones to Watch 2018 is supported by Uniqlo.

Daphne Milner — 06 June 2018
Work / Art Soufiane Ababri's vibrant drawings are driven by political activism

Soufiane Ababri is tired of the status quo. Angry at society’s underlying racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic biases, Soufiane’s work is characterised by a political agency. The Tangier-born artist has been living in France for the past 14 years since studying at the National School of Decorative Arts and completing a master’s at Lyon’s School of Fine Arts. “My drawings tell the stories of the communities in which I belong. I am a homosexual North African immigrant who is part of a small middle class in a postcolonial generation. My experiences are central to my drawings and I hope they can highlight some of society’s stigmas,” Soufiane tells us.

Daphne Milner — 04 June 2018
Work / Art Artist Mequitta Ahuja's self-portraits shine light on the construction of identity

For centuries, artists have used images to convey ideas about specific identities. The visual language they have used has shaped and moulded how we perceive gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Artist Mequitta Ahuja hopes to shine light on the construction of identity in art through her large-scale self-portraits. “I am African-American on my mother’s side and South-Asian on my father’s side. I use my work to unify my mixed heritage. As I got older, concerns about my identity become less pressing and, instead, I find myself reflecting on self-portraiture as being about the artist as a picture-maker. In other words, I increasingly focus on the artist’s self-portrait as a discourse of representation,” Mequitta tells It’s Nice That.

Daphne Milner — 31 May 2018
Work / Art Rade Petrasevic reimagines still lifes in his vibrant, large-scale drawings

Whether it’s Paul Cezanne’s The Basket of Apples or Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, we’re sure you’ve seen more still life paintings than you can name. But we’re also certain that you haven’t seen a still life quite like Rade Petrasevic’s interpretation of the genre. Rade, who lives and works in Vienna, decided to pursue art after leaving school at 14 as “there was no opportunity to study anything else”. The Austrian artist now spends his time reimagining and revising the traditional still life through his delicate and deceptively simple large-scale drawings of chairs, vases, flowers and sculptures.

Daphne Milner — 22 May 2018

Work / Illustration Grace Miceli’s bold and playful illustrations re-interpret brands in humorous ways

Grace Miceli developed her signature bold and playful style once she’d left Goldsmiths university. Wanting to “get over the expectation of what type of art [she] should be making and instead connect to a more genuine expression of self”, Grace’s child-like illustrations embrace a candid messiness and inaccuracy, which she feels is more true to her.

Emma Latham Phillips — 18 June 2018
Work / Graphic Design Tsto returns to design Flow Festival's identity, pushing and playing with its typography

Back in 2011, Helsinki-based studio Tsto designed an identity for Flow Festival featuring a bold typographic treatment that has become synonymous with the festival’s name. Over the next five years the studio continued to roll out the festival’s identity under this visual language, before taking a three year break. 2018 marks Tsto back in the graphic design driving seat, and pushing the identity further seven years later from when it first sat down to do it.

Lucy Bourton — 18 June 2018
Work / Illustration Rosie Yasukochi's vibrant comic reflects on post-generational trauma

Rosie Yasukochi’s work is accessible, skillful and highly political. The California-based artist’s ongoing illustrative project explores her dual Japanese-American identity, the history of both nations and how her heritage impacts Rosie today.

Daphne Milner — 18 June 2018
Media Partnership / Illustration Patrick Kyle's helpful advice on how to start out at illustration fairs

Illustration, photography or design fairs, fairs of all kinds really, are some of our favourite weekends of the year. It’s a day or two where many of our beloved creatives are in town, travelling in with suitcases stacked full with prints and publications for us to pour over, and write about for you lot to see a couple of days later.

Lucy Bourton — 18 June 2018
Regulars / The Graduates 2018 "Don't drink and dance in front of your peers": ten creatives on their biggest mistakes

Art and design schools everywhere preach the importance of failure. Tutors encourage students to let go of any preconceptions of what their work should be and, instead, try everything under the sun, using their mistakes as a means to learn. James Dyson famously made his way through over 5,000 prototypes before discovering the solution for the modern-day hoover, for example. Creativity and the generation of new ideas seem to go hand-in-hand with making mistakes, with the best ideas the result of learning from one.

Ruby Boddington — 18 June 2018
Work / Art Rachel Louise Hodgson’s drawings challenge traditional ideals of beauty

Rachel Louise Hodgson’s drawings break from the ordinary. Their bright, sickly colours unsettle the viewer, challenging traditional conceptions of beauty. Rachel initially studied fashion photography at The London College of Fashion; where she tells It’s Nice That, “the teachers never understood my work, I stuck out and received a terrible grade”.

Emma Latham Phillips — 15 June 2018

Regulars / Nicer Tuesdays Sam Conniff rouses the Nicer Tuesdays audience to Be More Pirate

In past lives, Sam Conniff was the founder of creative network Livity and media platform Don’t Panic, but recently he’s gone rogue with a new mission: to encourage everyone to Be More Pirate. Born from research into the radical strategies of Golden Age pirates, his new ethos and book of the same name (with an added explanatory strapline “Or How to Take On The World And Win”) adapts these strategies for 21st Century work and life, and aligns them with modern day innovators or “rebels” like Elon Musk and Malala Yousafzai.

It's Nice That — 15 June 2018
Work / Publication Koln Studio designs artist's catalogue using improvisation and fun

The work of Spanish artist, Eloy Arribas is energetic, using a multitude of materials and lines to explore the representation of an object and the materiality of the object itself. In their production, his paintings are “almost paleontological”, revealing themselves in a sporadic fashion to him as he works. It’s only right, therefore, that the catalogue to accompany his recent exhibition Niño Fósil / Fruta de Piedra reflected his energy and spontaneity.

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Regulars / Friday Mixtape Friday Mixtape: a collection of hits from music focused design studio Lost Art

This week’s Friday Mixtape is by Chris Hopkins, the creative director of Melbourne based studio Lost Art. The studio’s portfolio is full of amazing music campaigns, from creating artwork for The Avalanches for nine years and, more recently, working with Phoenix and David Byrne!

Lucy Bourton — 15 June 2018
Features / Publication Khichdi (Kitchari) brings together 846 photographs of India, and its people, taken over ten years

“I’m the first one in my family to be born outside of India so I’ve been travelling there my whole life,” American-born visual artist, Nick Sethi tells It’s Nice That. Having grown up in Floria, his family moved to India for a year in 2007 when he was 17. Despite his heritage, Sethi didn’t grow up speaking Hindi and so the move confronted him with things he didn’t understand but things he wanted to explore further nonetheless. “I started using photography as a way to interact with the country and people,” Sethi recalls. “2007 was a pre-mobile phone and selfie era so having your photograph taken was a bit more special, especially in a country like India.” It was during this trip that Sethi unknowingly began a decade-long project; one that charts the rapidly changing identity of a country through its people and their relationship to technology, gender and the influx of Western culture.

Ruby Boddington — 15 June 2018
Regulars / Nicer Tuesdays Offshore Studio's Christoph Miler reveals the ideas behind Migrant Journal

Zurich-based graphic design studio Offshore is one of It’s Nice That’s Ones to Watch 2018 and with good reason. Founders Christoph Miler and Isabel Seiffert are behind the design of Migrant Journal, for which the duo created a bespoke typeface and visually arresting design. Politically conscious, sensitive and striking all at the same time, it sums up the designers’ capability way beyond their years.

It's Nice That — 14 June 2018
Work / Illustration Benedikt Rugar’s illustrations for the German Design Glossary use elements of the surreal to tell a visual story

“I like to keep an open mind towards the ideas that I am asked to illustrate,” German illustrator Benedikt Rugar tells It’s Nice That, of his latest project with Lambl / Homburger studio for the German Design Glossary. “It’s how I usually like to work: first to sketch out what spontaneously comes to my mind in relation to the brief, and then to grow on this with the help of my image research so that I can gain confidence on the subject. It’s very important to start with these rough sketches so that I don’t get lost in the research later,” Benedikt explains.

Laura Isabella — 14 June 2018

Work / Photography Robbie Lawrence’s photographs beautifully capture the feeling of a particular moment

Drawing inspiration from the Dutch Masters, Robbie Lawrence’s images strikingly juxtapose light and shade. His photographs feature vibrant blocks of colour, which instantly steal your gaze. Throughout his career, Robbie has worked for an impressive range of clients, from the Wall Street Journal Magazine to The New York Times and the U.N, each one drawn to his ability to tell a compelling photographic story.

Emma Latham Phillips — 14 June 2018
Work / Photography Ryan O’Toole Collett’s portrait series in Kenya bridges the gap between photographer and subject

When one of photographer Ryan O’Toole Collett’s friends decided to travel back to his birth place of Nairobi, Kenya, Ryan and his group of mates decided to join him. It was Ryan’s first spontaneous photography project — no formal structure envisioned, just the open intention to capture this important moment in time.

Laura Isabella — 14 June 2018
Work / Publication Chris Harnan's World Problem Solution Book is a diary, but not in the traditional sense

World Problem Solution Book is a diary, but not in the traditional sense. Produced over two years, the book is a visualisation of sporadic moments, conversations and memories penned by illustrator Chris Harnan. “It’s a representation of a period of time in my life, for sure,” he tells It’s Nice That, “but one that has been bastardised and spoilt through re-evaluating the events again and again.”

Ruby Boddington — 14 June 2018
Work / Animation Greg Sharp animates a video that builds in momentum for the catchiest song of the year

Anyone who has had their ears switched on over the past couple of weeks will have heard a song so catchy, it’s probably starting to drive you mad by now. The tune is Hunnybee by Unknown Mortal Orchestra with a melody as sweet and as its title. Just as we thought we were sick of it, Greg Sharp’s come along and made the loveliest animated video for it that we can’t stop watching now either. For God’s sake.

Lucy Bourton — 14 June 2018
Regulars / The Graduates 2018 All internships are not created equal: how to spot the best opportunities and have the courage to reject the duds

Back in March Amalia Illgner wrote a long read on The Guardian describing why she is suing Monocle over her “dream internship”. The article pinpointed many of the issues of internships and how it “excludes the less privileged from the arts, media and politics”. Below, Amalia talks of her experience and the research she has found on the creative industries, providing some golden rules that graduates should be aware of.

Amalia Illgner — 14 June 2018
Features / Photography The porous and sometimes political work of legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz

Having read so much about legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz and his beginnings capturing the mean streets of 1960s New York, I am unprepared for the person I eventually hear down a phone line from Italy. I’m expecting to hear a voice with hard edges cut with a sharp tongue; instead I’m met with a languid, calm voice and an apology for having missed my first call.

Jenny Brewer — 14 June 2018

Regulars / Nicer Tuesdays Erica Dorn shares the intricate process behind the graphics for Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs

If you stopped to admire the incredible graphic details in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, you were most likely admiring the work of Erica Dorn. As the lead graphic designer on the film, Erica was responsible for bringing together everything from the Japanese woodblock-inspired artworks to printed documents, product packaging and signage, which added beautiful intricacies to the dystopian future world Anderson was creating for his canine stars.

It's Nice That — 13 June 2018
Work / Illustration Thibaud Herem gives an illustrated tour of his garden in Raising A Forest

Though widely known for his intricate architectural black and white illustrations, French artist Thibaud Hérem harbours an unexpected passion for gardening. His latest book Raising A Forest reveals so, and in turn uncovers an entirely different facet to his practice that sees his work break from the straight lines of brick walls and windows. Instead, the pages are filled with beautiful, delicate and colourful drawings of trees, leaves, plants and seeds, plus some gardener’s tools, laid out in a meticulous way that hints at Thibaud’s famous attention to detail.

Jenny Brewer — 13 June 2018
Work / Illustration Take a trip inside the cutely sinister world of illustrator Pablo Orrego

When asking Chilean illustrator and graphic designer Pablo Orrego (who goes by the name Peiper too), on what influences have informed his practice, the list is endless and maybe one of the most varied we’ve heard.

Lucy Bourton — 13 June 2018
Work / Publication Why counter-culture matters: Rough Trade launches publishing venture designed by Craig Oldham

Rough Trade has announced a new publishing venture, Rough Trade Books, embodying the “same original spirit and radical direction” that the independent label has cultivated over the past 40 years and counting.

Lucy Bourton — 13 June 2018
Work / Photography Max Miechowski's adept observations of light create honest and intimate portraits

At the age of 25, Lincoln-born photographer Max Miechowski quit his job to go travelling around south-east Asia with a group of friends. It was there that he began photographing en masse: “being in new and beautiful places, and experiencing different cultures, it felt really natural for me to photograph everything around me,” he recalls. Finding himself travelling to places specifically to photograph them, getting up early to capture the best light and take peoples’ portraits, he cut his trip short and returned to England, using the money he had left to buy a better camera.

Ruby Boddington — 13 June 2018
Regulars / Printed Pages Cover Stories: The Guardian's Chris Clarke on the magazine covers that influenced him and his work

In the run-up to the release of Printed Pages SS18, we’ve asked a selection of influential people in creative publishing to choose the seminal magazine covers that they loved, and made an impact on them and their work. The magazines could be from any time, place or niche of the publishing world. In this series, they’ll tell us why these particular covers left a lasting impression.

Jenny Brewer — 13 June 2018

Work / Publication Charlotte Wales and Chopova Lowena combine 80s wrestling and Bulgarian folklore in Kukeri

Fusing 80s wrestling culture with Bulgarian folklore might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but by golly, it looks good on paper. Fashion photographer Charlotte Wales has collaborated with recent Central Saint Martins graduates, Chopova Lowena, to release a new book that combines just those two things – along with the designers’ latest collection.

Ellie Robertson — 12 June 2018
Work / Digital Pitch Studios creates mesmerising, immersive digital experiences which invoke unique moods

A breathtaking recent project from future-forward thinking Pitch Studios has caught our eye and captured our mood. Back in May, the Australia-based studio collaborated with New York artist Matthew Keff and Melbourne music producer Lewis Cancut to create a mesmerising, immersive digital experience, Mood Machine, exploring the emotions induced by modern technologies.

Emma Latham Phillips — 12 June 2018
Regulars / Nicer Tuesdays Kyle Platts explains why teaching himself to animate was valuable to his practice

There’s no mistaking the handiwork of illustrator and animation director, Kyle Platts. Vivid and cartoonish compositions filled with strange, wobbly characters, their ballooned foreheads in profile bearing enlarged eyes, are his forte, and a long-time favourite of the It’s Nice That team. Here, he speaks about his recent dabblings in animation and the increasing desire to make his characters move, making utterly brilliant and hugely popular gif artworks.

It's Nice That — 12 June 2018
Work / Photography Sarah Pannell’s photography captures the places where people and landscapes interact

From candy-coloured Australian suburbia to sushi menus in Japan and carpet picnics in Iran, Melbourne-based photographer Sarah Pannell has an innate knack for presenting scenarios which tantalise our metaphorical tastebuds.

Laura Isabella — 12 June 2018
Work / Graphic Design Graphic designer Cécile Legnaghi questions the role of display and caption fonts in her practice

“The project was born from questioning the use of a typeface today, and its trends, especially concerning its body size,” explains Paris-based graphic and type designer Cécile Legnaghi of her diploma project. While studying at École Estienne, she became fascinated by designers’ choices to utilise display typefaces at caption size – and vice versa. In response, Cécile set out to design three of her own, with the intention of them being used in both contexts.

Ruby Boddington — 12 June 2018
Work / Graphic Design Yale graduate and communications designer Polina Vasilyeva is a conductor of content

The portfolio of Russian-born Yale graduate Polina Vasilyeva is an amalgamation of communication design bits and bobs. The mix of styles and applications Polina dips and dives in and out of is easily seen on the designer’s website, which places them all together, on top of one another and side by side. “My website came from the initial desire to see the collection of my work as if it were laid on the table in front of the viewer,” Polina tells us. “A lot of my work as a designer deals with the performance, I believe that graphic design is a form of theatre, in which the designer is a conductor of the content that is being presented to the world.”

Lucy Bourton — 12 June 2018

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