Josh Brill

Josh Brill's shapes are certainly more digital compared to Charley Harper's work, and these birds look almost typographic in their abstraction. I found quite an intersting interview with Josh Brill as well:

How did the flora fauna bird series come about?
I used to design fictional birds and animate them in interactive art pieces. When I started making print pieces again, they carried their way over into some of the pieces. It wasn’t until I started collecting field guides that my focus opened to making referenced birds. The books got me into interested in exploring and cataloging the visual identity of plants and animals. I paired that up with a visual look that I was developing based on typography, iconography and character design.

Who/ what are some of your biggest influences?
My early influences, as a kid, are the ones that got me interested in art. They were comics, animation, skateboard graphics and in some subliminal way Nintendo. This led me into studying cartooning and animation in my first year of collage.

Later when I transferred to a fine arts school, Constructivism, Alfred Hitchcock, Saul Bass, Reid Miles, George LaRou, Matt Owens, Chris Ware, Dave Mckean and Mike Mignola were influential in my development as an artist and a designer.

After school when I became more confident as an artist, I found myself less influenced by artists and more by subjects like nature, culture and science.

What are some of your favorite objects in your studio?
That’s a hard one because it changes often. Currently, it’s a copy of Monocle magazine called “Criminal Omnibus” by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, “The Hunter” by Darwyn Cooke, a penguin cocktail shaker and a small pinecone resting a top of Tim Biskup Totem figure.

What are you currently working on?
I’m kind of pushing it past the limit right now in a good way. The Flora Fauna series has turned into a weekly edition. I make a new piece a week. The subject matter will be a bit more random, not just birds. There will also be a limited iphone wallpaper of each piece.

Zero Station, a local Portland, Maine art gallery, has asked me to guest curate some group shows. The shows will be under the Lumadessa umbrella. The first one is titled “Pattern Recognition.” It’s a perspective show on the influences and uses of patterns in modern artwork. Each artist will make several pieces based on the theme. I, too, will be making a few pieces for the show. Hopefully, its something a little unexpected from what I currently do for Lumadessa. The show opening will be on May 8th. If you are not in the area, the Lumadessa site will be doing extensive coverage of it.

I also have some other projects I’m working on in the background. One is a new collection based on a mixture of 60’s design, old travel posters, different cinema genres and pulp magazines. I’ve also designed a Lumadessa iPhone app and am slowly learning to program it. In addition, I’ve also been looking into licensing some of my designs for some products.