Inspiration can come up anywhere, you only have to be receptive and let it flow
Technical skills may be the must, but only passion makes the difference. The Italian graphic designer Giulio Rossi, working on his studio in L’Aquila, is no doubt a flow of passion, and his works have gained international momentum, reaching out Madonna, who picked up one of this artworks in February 2014 for her Art For Freedom project.
After his initial experiments with acrylic paint, ink and charcoal, this autodidact soon jumped onto digital art as his new mean of creativity profusion. His works are pop and iconic, a modernist story telling of a kind of feminine weird beauty and sensuality.
Your work is pervaded by female heroines, do you see women as the protagonists of modern era?
I think women have always been the greatest source of inspiration since the dawn of time! Mostly because of their undeniable power of embodying beauty, sensuality, maternity, sweetness…could they also be symbols for strength, fierce and all sorts of values usually related to men not just because of their physical appearance? Of course they can! So what I’m saying is that they always are protagonists of the art field and I hope their presence will be more relevant and powerful also in other branches of human societies. By the way, my actual boss is a woman…and I love to work with/for her!
Your subject are mostly declaredly sensual and provocative, still they never miss a touch of weirdness, is there a reason why you tend to distort their regular appearance?
Many times I’ve been told that my style is evil/beauty or creepy/sweet and those adjectives usually come together in the same sentence! It probably means that I like to create under dichotomy and contrasting meanings which is cool because you can push the viewer to pay more attention to what you’ve drawn and, at the end of the day, this is what really matters to me.
You have declared several times your deep love for nature and trekking. Do you happen to think of naturalistic pattern as the next inspiration of your job?
Do you mean quit the drawings and get yourself lost into the wilderness? hahaha… Well not really actually, I used to get inspirations from my naturalistic surroundings when I painted landscapes with the more traditional methods…Today my job as illustrator is more urban- society inspired BUT nature is always beneath the surface, so you could probably find it on a color palette combination that I’ve picked from a seascape photo and then I adopted it to color something else…
If you had the chance to pick up an artist for your next big collaboration, which name would you choose?
Really hard to select only one! There are so many artists out there I really admired…But to give you a name…I would say Ruben Ireland, I really love his delicate female portraits! Who knows? I guess it could be really interesting and rad creating something together..
Do you think people are highly receptive when it comes to vehicle messages and promote values through visual design?
Absolutely yes! The really first moment I decided to undertake my career as an illustrator was right after my participation to a poster design competition, organised to raise money for helping the Japanese population affected by the 2011’s earthquake. I designed a typographic poster which says “Never Give Up” written in red bloody strokes coming out from a huge dark sea wave. It made me feel so proud to take participation in a valuable cause like that! We all live in the “screen era” surrounding by visual messages everywhere; in my opinion good visuals should always go with valuable communications.
Given that passion, quality and care for details lead the way, what do you think is the future of graphic design, and how it will integrate in the ever-evolving social medias?
I think the role that social medias played to my career was crucial, and I’m not talking about the visibility and worldwide exposure, it’s not all about that! The most important thing, above all, was the possibility to enter in contacts with new realities, get introduced into new working collaborations and experiences, meeting and exchanging thoughts with professionals as well as pure design lovers… Compare your works with others, cooperate in projects with different creative minds from all around the world, expand your visions and test your abilities, all good ways to enrich yourself as a designer.
I actually don’t know what to expect from the future of social medias, what I know is that I will keep trying to enrich myself as I said before.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve just finished to draw textile patterns for a male beachwear collection of an upcoming Italian fashion brand and right now I’m working on the visual parts of its promotional campaign.
