In the last couple of years alfalfa studio has been so fortunate to have worked on two large scale projects: The Library Mural for P.S 196 in the Bronx (designed in collaboration with the genius and generous designer Michael Beirut) for The Robin Hood Foundation and the Design Journals mural for the AIGA National Design Center in New York City. I must confess, as a designer, seeing your work at such scale is an amazing feeling (specially if it doesn’t suck).

I was happy to, serendipitously, have found the large scale work of Europen duo, Gilles and Cecilie. Their work definitely doesn’t suck. Gilles & Cecilie Studio is a French/Norwegian partnership based in London providing illustration based design and art direction for various clients in a wide range of sectors. Their signature large scale murals can be found in the UK, USA, Japan, Italy, Norway, France and Brazil.

Here are some of my favorites:

The Blue Wall in Vila Madalena, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A project that inspired them to start their own studio. They wrote “During two somber Brazilian nights in february 2004 we created this wall in Vila Madalena, Sao Paulo … Surrounded by lively kids from the neighbourhood and the rhytms of Kid Loco escaping from a VW Beetle something magic happened. This trip to Brazil gave us motivation and urge to start our own studio.”

Stor-Oslo Mural Prosjekt

A mural showing the intersection between urbanity and the nature, as well as the transition between public and private spaces.

A Hundred Ways to Speak Up for PepsiCo Headoffices, Theale, UK

To create this participatory project, they set 4 stations with the following activities: make colors, make graphic elements, make poems and make your mark. From these activities they gathered visual elements made from the employees.
At the end, they illustrated 100 ways to speak up, different ways to communicate from smile, shout and talk to jump and wave or wink makes the manifestation friendly, fun and encouraging.

The main boundary wall for the Danse Artes Cultural Center in Mozambique

Murals for fashion brand Paul Smith

All images © Gilles & Cecilie.

Exactly two years ago, I interviewed with Rafael at alfalfa studio. I was clearly excited…or crazy…or both.

A week later I started my six month internship at the studio, which turned out to be a greatly memorable and enriching experience.

It was then that we were prepping for alfalfa seeds‘ launch, and the Latin Divas Collection was in the making. One of the first projects I got my hands on was the Evita Peron illustration. The only blond diva in the collection, it was a challenge to get her hair right. By the end of it, we had plenty of Evita Peron ‘wigs’.

Evita illustration in the making

Simultaneously, I was involved in the new season look for Amphibian Productions, a project that formed a major chunk of my work at alfalfa. We changed formats for their 10th anniversary season, with the announcement posters, postcards, and other collateral material.

Initial sketches for A Room of One's Own

Postcard for A Room of One's Own

In addition to working and the usual things you’d expect to experience at an internship, we had our share of oddities, like our routine 5 minute exercise at 5:30pm or ‘chair time’, supported by some eclectic song from alfalfa’s endless music library.

Work, play, food, goof ups, lessons learned from the goof ups, workouts, dancing on the streets, a sketch book, was all that I was planning for when I wrote that note.

Today, on the same day two years later, Rafael and I are planning a schedule for me to step foot in the studio again, this time as a freelancer. Thank you, Rafael! In case you’re wondering, the schedule does not look anything like the one above.

The floor is now yours for any questions about planning.

The Vogue Italia August 2010 issue has created quite some stir amongst its viewers. What did it do? It made superficial fashion meet the dirty reality of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill…on purpose.

Steve Meisel’s ‘crude’ images of model Kristen McMenamy, dressed in feathers and smeared in oil, serve as a harsh reminder of the disturbing scale of the spill. Yes, we saw the oil-soaked pelicans, the brown waters, time and again. But here’s a new, all the more provoking visual of the situation the was. Love it or hate it, it certainly leaves an unsettling feeling in your mind.

More from the magazine issue here.

Today we present the Seven Latin Divas Look Book. In the introduction, I wrote about the reasons why dedicating a collection to remarkable Latin women. Below is the text included in the Look Book along with few spreads. Feel free to download it and share it with anyone who, like me, appreciates the legacy of these seven immortal women.

WHY LATIN DIVAS? WHY NOW? WHY SEVEN?
by Rafael Esquer

Think of one Latin graphic icon…

No doubt the one that comes to mind is that stencilled image of Che Guevara.

But I often wonder why Latin culture is not represented by a female icon. After all, Latin America has given birth to some of the most charismatic women of our time.

Spread showcasing Carmen, the lady in the tutti frutti hat

My admiration for strong, resilient Latin women began, of course, with the women in my own family in Mexico: my mother, a hard-working ranchera; and my grandmother, a wise matriarch with 14 children.

To honor and celebrate the spirit of Latin women, I have created Seven Latin Divas, the second T-shirt collection from alfalfa seeds. Seven immortal women from the worlds of film, art, music, and politics are the stars. I believe any of them deserves to become the Latin icon for our century.

Spread showing Frida in male and female cuts

I have created these original graphic images in a striking posterized style. Hand-drawn, they are reminiscent of the statuesque image of Che Guevara that instantly deified him as a symbol of defiance—and later as an icon of radical chic.

This spread honors the Queen of Salsa music

Seven Latin Divas captures the irresistible charisma of these seven goddesses from Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, and the USA. The collection pays homage not only to them, but also to all Latin women who share in their character and spirit.

The seven images in this collection are manually silk-screened on our 100% Peruvian pima cotton T-shirts, in limited edition.

Part of the proceeds from the alfalfa-seeds will support minority scholarships in design.

Download the Seven Latin Divas Look Book here.

Spread from The Latin Divas Look Book

Let’s face it, who doesn’t like food? One aspect that makes food look so appetizing is the vivid and brilliant colors of the ingredients. Photographer and food stylist Linda Lundgren takes food color to a whole new level. She separates food by color, and mixes them with frozen food packaging, then organizes them in a tear drop shape composition.

See more of her work after the jump.

The photographs are very stunning and engage the viewer to see food differently. Red, green, yellow, purple, and blue … which one do you like best?

We are very excited to learn that our Role Models Campaign celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month (in collaboration with Nickelodeon Preschool Television) has won the Imagen Award for Best On-Air Advertising.

Tito Puente spot, animation stills

The animated shorts introduced preschoolers to 4 Hispanic men and women who reached the top of their fields: musician Tito Puente, astronaut Ellen Ochoa, inventor Narcís Monturiol and Olympic swimmer Dara Torres. Their dynamic professions and achievements make them highly engaging role models in the eyes of children.

Alfalfa studio conducted the research, designed the characters, created original collage illustrations, produced dozens of hand-painted backgrounds, directed the stories and animation, and supervised all production and post-production aspects, including sound effects, music, and voiceover.

Tito Puente was the winner spot. You can see the entire campaign in our website:

Go to WORK > TV > FILM > ROLE MODELS CAMPAIGN

Tito Puente spot, animation stills

Or you can read from The Imagen Foundation’s official announcement below:

August 15, 2010 – Beverly Hills, Calif. Winners of the 25th Annual Imagen (Spanish for “image”) Awards, honoring positive portrayals of Latinos and Latino culture in entertainment, were announced today at a star-studded luncheon ceremony held in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.  The awards were handed out in front of an audience of approximately five hundred attendees representing the entertainment industry and Latino community.  Among celebrities in attendance were Edward James Olmos, America Ferrera, Luis Avalos, Jon Seda, Maria Canals Barrera, Lupe Ontiveros, Oscar Nuñez, Michael DeLorenzo, Danny Pino, Nestor Carbonell, Cesar Millan and Nestor Serrano, among others.  Also in attendance was U.S. Secretary of Labor and former local congresswoman, Hilda Solis.

Tito Puente spot, animation stills

Artist Christopher Marley puts together bugs for your walls. The kind you would actually like to display, with exotic neon colors and beautiful shapes.

From beetles to crabs, flowers to fossils, Christopher sets a stage for these wonders of nature by neatly setting them in dazzling compositions. The tight alignments and intricacies in his pieces resonate with the marvel we see in nature, one that always seems to amaze us humans. If the vibrant beetles don’t do it for you, the butterfly compositions could mark the start of your fascination with insects. If real creatures just don’t do it for you, you can always get the prints on canvas.

Turns out Christopher didn’t always love bugs. He says, “Though I spent most of my childhood catching snakes, raising lizards, and dreaming of Komodo Dragons, I was terrified of anything with more than four legs.”

Saga Spectrum

One from our many favorites is the Saga Spectrum (P-8). Check out the rest of the hypnotizing compositions here.

All images © Christopher Marley.

Concept animation projection on building from NuFormer Projection.

Have we had enough of the 3D experience yet? Going by what NuFormer is up to, probably not.

The digital media company based in The Netherlands has taken the experience of 3D and applied it to building facades, creating yet another medium of outdoor advertising and experiences. Their projection for SONY featured on buildings in Spain in May with the theme of ‘Imagine Football in 3D’. The football being kicked around from one window to another makes for an engaging virtual experience.

NuFormer – Sony, Madrid, Colegio San Augustin, May 2010 from NuFormer Projection.

In a similar realm, the projection for Samsung in Amsterdam is pretty captivating too.

Check out their play with 3D on different buildings on their vimeo link here.

Now, for us New Yorkers, let’s hope NuFormer’s work makes an appearance in our city some time soon. The Schwarzman building would make a good contender for facades to project on, don’t you think?

The Design Journeys Mural was created exclusively for You Are Here, an interactive exhibition at the AIGA National Design Center in New York. Like the exhibition itself, the mural was designed to help increase diversity within the design profession: it celebrated the lives and careers of 25 outstanding designers from culturally and racially diverse backgrounds, and it encouraged aspiring designers from all backgrounds to consider design as a viable and rewarding career.

In an unbroken line drawing, the mural weaves the last names of the 25 designers within an abstract composition of organic and geometric forms. One name fluidly leads to another in this exuberant visual feast, inviting the viewer on a journey of discovery through the interconnected shapes, letterforms, and textures. The mural graphically communicates that each designer’s journey is unique yet part of a larger professional tradition and community.

Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to creatively participate in the mural’s ongoing composition. The original design was put up only in black outline on a white wall. But at the show’s opening and throughout its 2-month run, hundreds of colored markers were supplied for visitors to use for adding color and their own inspiration to the mural. By the close of the exhibition, the mural had blossomed into full-spectrum color, becoming a graffiti-like work of art celebrating the talent not only of 25 honored designers but of all the visitors to the show as well.

alfalfa studio team putting final touches minutes before the opening.

Opening night, May 19, 2010. Audience painting mural.

One day after opening night.

One week after mural was unveiled.

One month after the opening.

This post features an array of our favorite cooking utensils that we found out there. Joseph Joseph are famous for good cooking wares. Their latest edition “Index,” a set of chopping block that are color coded, is designed so you can prepare vegetables, fish, raw meat and cooked food separately.

What is chopping board good for without a knife? Mia Schmallenbach designed this knife set for Deglon, a French company specializing in cutlery. This functional knife set proportions is designed based on Fibonacci sequence. They’re compact, beautiful, and come with a very handsome price tag.

Seen any cool cooking utensils lately?