Mat Maitland is best known for his award-winning music Design and Art Direction as part of Big Active, where he has created memorable music campaigns.

His aesthetic taps into different worlds: art, photography, music and fashion all collide, eradicating the traditional barriers that usually separate these entities.

Seamlessly blending beautifully kitsch imagery and psychedelic graphics Michaels unique aesthetic delivers a distinctively fresh twist on pop culture and image-making. Working in London and beyond, Michael exhibits internationally and works with both cultural & commercial clients.

In parallel to his freelance practice Michael also runs Panther Club. A publishing imprint and collaborative label P/C publishes limited edition printed matter and curates unique projects with boutique labels & creative initiatives. To find out more please visit Panther Club.

Antoine and Manuel is the theatrical Parisian duo above. I got my eyes on the stunning posters of La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand a long time ago and I’ve been admiring their work ever since. I remember being drawn to a fantastic World, crowded by colored layers, strange creatures and playful typefaces. I have a folder with their work in my computer, which I check from time to time, and specially when I’m facing a creative crisis. It’s like wandering in a beautiful park on a (sunny) Wednesday afternoon.

In order to proceed with my studies on the postmodernist issue, I gathered images that can express the results achieved through appropriating and exploring the visual possibilities of their sources. Again, there is no need to create the image from scratch. Instead, it’s about leading it to a new level, through the exacerbation of their obvious characteristics.

M/M (Paris) :

“For us there’s never been a question of purely expressive work versus purely communicative work, it’s all part of our body of work.”

“People want things to seem special or intimate now, because everything else is exploding around them.”

“This isn’t an egoistical practice, all about expressing ourselves. We like to have open exchanges and long conversations. That’s what helps us to go further in our work.”

I’ve been reading, seeing and visiting many stuff about designers and artists who deal with what we got used to call postmodernism, post-structuralism and deconstruction theories. A kind of revival has taken off, and the visual clues are well known: deformation, fragmentation, decomposing, vernacular and symbolic imagery, vibrant colors, distortion, quotation, repetition, pastiche, hybridism, collage, satire, exaggeration etc. In attempt to clarify what characteristics attracted me in the images above, I found myself also reading about anarchism, dadaism, surrealism and punk movement, as well their important connections with various school programs from 60s to 80s.

Once (1) I have no patience to make ‘Helvetica-on-a-grid’ projects, and (2) always tend to use my intuition and love for dialogue rather than the spirit of rationalism, these theories make sense to me. I do believe that design is not only about problem solving, and self-expression is relevant. I don’t see a deformed photo or a vernacular typeface as something impure, once they are communicating accurately an idea. Our history proved that anything or any movement who claims to build a ‘pure’ or ‘universal’-something is kind of Nazi. After all, what kind of structure prevails in the age of the conspicuous consumption, the overvaluation of the image, the loss of the meaning, the lack of historic sense? I don’t have answers but feelings about my growing interest in the brutal simplicity of forms created from the most honest expression of the self.

Posting my favorite studios here in High-Hi is the best way I’ve found to understand my own graphic design language – although I often think that I’m wasting my time here (in graphic design as well). It’s very difficult to achieve such a high level of creativity like Hort - this fuckin’ awesome German studio – does. Together with M/M (Paris) and Mirko Borsche, they are my holy trinity when it comes to art direction. After years of pursuing the quality of these blessed people, I ask myself whether to get into the bone of the design it’s necessary letting it get into yours first.

Graduated by ECAL and members of Maximage Societé Suisse, David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli are young graphic designers and typographers who combine low (mechanical systems) and high tech (scripts) to create their own language on typography.

The work of Vier5 is based on a classical notion of design. Design as the possibility of drafting and creating new, forward-looking images in the field of visual communication. A further focus of our work lies on designing and applying new, up-to-date fonts.

The work of Vier5 aims to prevent any visual empty phrases and to replace them with individual, creative statements, which were developed especially for the used medium and client.

It was under the creative leading of American artist Joel Evey (followed by talented designer Alex Witjas) that Urban Outfitters has become an important influence for me in terms of branding. Evey’s typographical approach, experimental layouts and concerning about the form link him with the postmodern aesthetic, from Wolfgang Weingart to Ed Fella and Neville Brodi. Witjas, in her turn, designs with such vibrant colours and patterns, just like April Greiman, Terry Jones (for i-D Magazine) and Michele de Lucchi (for Girmi) did during the playful 80′s.

Claudio Parentela was born in Catanzaro – Italy, where he lives and works as an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist and journalist. Parentela is a senior member of the international underground scene, having collaborated with an endless list of magazines, zines, album covers, books and other publications (including two sets of tarot cards). His works have been exhibited on art galleries of great import. He also keeps the blog of interviews The Extra Finger, which is worth visiting for his intriguing questions to other artists. I regard him as a very crazy person (take a peek at his website and you’ll understand what I’m saying), and also quite vigorous: Parentela seems to work restlessly.

I feel like recommending him to Arnaldo Baptista. Somehow I know they would become good friends.

Karl Nawrot & Walter Warton are Voidwreck, a design studio based in Amsterdam. Karl Nawrot graduated from Werkplaats Typografie, a very renowned graphic design school. True masters such as Ed Fella and Bill Sienkiewicz are among his influences. Together, Karl and Walter explore basic shapes and patterns, and also forge their own tools (ink stamps, circular record templates, geometrical stencils, cardboard typographical modules) to generate typefaces and powerful drawings.

Tibor Kalman said once: 1) fill boat with all influences 2) cut rope to boat. I definitely recommend everyone who loves typefaces putting Voidwreck on board.

Combining image and repetition is a fundamental rule of the pop and commercial languages. Put it in a bowl and add simplicity, rhythm and interactivity. Yugo Nakamura and Kashiwa Sato are Japanese artists who have a special capacity to enhance (often changing or inverting) the relationship between the object and the reader/spectator, just like American artist Jenny Holzer graciously does with her dynamic-typography projections. I always end up in a kind of hypnoses that takes me away from where I was, instantaneously.

I like the way William Crump uses single coloured backgrounds to enhance his works. Everything seems to fit very well on them. The lack of interventions (such as painting, prints, hand-made typefaces and so on) makes you look quite severely at each item, which in turn makes it more fascinating. The ability to balance elements like he does reflects the extension of his talent.

Travess Smalley is an American artist who graduated in Fine Arts at The Cooper Union, NY. His works have been featured in several publications and exhibitions through US and Europe. His compositions draw me to psychodelic movement and abstract art. Smalley’s process is an impeccable seam of analog and digital world (specially when it comes to colour). He has just published a book, called “Capture Physical Presence” – that showcases a series of his collages – and collaborated on the cover of PWR Paper #5.