Deeper into the point or David Foldvari

A bit of a para­dox. Or at least declar­a­tion that such para­dox exists. Certainly, maybe, not to those, who tend to think that col­ors and pos­it­ive moods are great illus­tra­tions or a base of graphic design.

“Ugly=beautiful”.

Precisely from these words I star­ted my visual–verbal acquaint­ance with David Foldvari. After open­ing the book with vari­ous illus­tra­tions, the eyes catch some­thing that falls out of the over­all con­text. A dark and “unlicked” till the end graphic, with its entity shout­ing more than “I am a concept of a pretty illustration”.

However, for the fur­ther begin­ning – an amount of neces­sary know­ledge about the author him­self. David Foldvari – one of the most dis­tin­guished illustrators–graphic design­ers of this time. His roots reach back to Hungary, the city of Budapest. However, his last 20 years were spent liv­ing and cre­at­ing in Great Britain. “<…> cur­rently liv­ing in Brighton, always look­ing for some­where else to live.” The cre­at­ive and life­like incon­sist­ency, from Latvia to New York and so on.

The depend­ency. However, David is not a total example of a freel­an­cer. Now he’s keep­ing him­self under a wing of a quite power­ful com­pany “Big Active”, which unites more than ten vari­ous spe­cial­ists of graphic design. And in the entirety itself, turns its action mostly towards books’, music album cov­ers’ illus­trat­ing and the visual present­a­tion. The con­tri­bu­tion of David Foldvari is not very feeble and, as one of the most suc­cess­ful pro­jects, we can men­tion the typo­graphy of Beck’s album “The inform­a­tion”, which was almost “none”. But no, don’t be sur­prised, not such, in which there was noth­ing. The buyer him­self simply could have cre­ated whatever cover he wanted on a presen­ted white back­ground with the band’s logo­type, from the graphic add–ons, given in the set. Precisely for the con­tri­bu­tion to the men­tioned pro­ject and involve­ment in the “Run London” cam­paign for the Nike Company, in 2007 David Foldvari got a D&AD award. The list of other cli­ents of his is quite impress­ive: “New York Times”, “Texas Monthly” edi­tions, gladly pub­lished abras­ive and more or less polit­ical illus­tra­tions. Also, the organ­iz­a­tion “Greenpeace”, “Penguin Books”, “Island Records” etc. I should not for­get exhib­i­tions that let people to get a closer look at the cre­ation of the illus­trator, from per­sonal exhib­i­tion in London to Illustrative show Berlin and Paris.

People say: what the fuck is wrong with you?

A stand­ard reac­tion to a bit or even very non­stand­ard object. In the shortened mean­ing, such defin­i­tion fits the David Foldvari’s cre­ation. No one is left apathetic and if they are, it touches the sub­con­scious­ness of apathy so that he won’t feel it. As I men­tioned earlier, we won’t find an abund­antly col­or­ful and fine – cut “eye candy”. The author strikes grossly and often there, where it hurts the most. Social and polit­ical themes are def­in­itely not strange to him and, moreover, includes the global rel­ev­ant dis­asters, such as ter­ror­ism. Often indir­ectly, not obvi­ously, so that there would be some space for the viewer’s ima­gin­a­tion. The people in the illus­tra­tions are sort of affected by some sort of neg­at­ive, not so eas­ily iden­ti­fied emo­tion or cyn­ical, baffled, down­trod­den. Also, com­pared with anim­als, wolfs, dogs. Maybe it’s a reac­tion to the pro­cess of today’s soci­ety, the decay of val­ues and more per­sist­ent ali­en­a­tion. And the roots of Eastern Europe leave their fin­ger­print as well.

There is still a fear of the unknown and a lack of trust that exists in cur­rent art dir­ec­tion, which in turn leads to design­ers and illus­trat­ors all too often pro­du­cing com­fort­able and unchal­len­ging work in order to survive.

It is notice­able that this illus­trator is not one of those, who would even go in that non–committing dir­ec­tion. When you have some­thing to say, it’s pos­sible to find ways to express it without becom­ing a point in one crooked line.

Do some­thing ori­ginal and show that to every­one. — D. Foldvari.

About author:

Kristina Alijošiūtė
Kristina Alijošiūtė is Art Pit’s editor and blogger, also contributing in design solutions. She mostly focuses on quality and freshness of topics, but also values motivated irony and ability to stand out. Writing was always more a pleasure than an obligation to her. She also respects those who are not afraid to write subjectively. Kristina ... Read further >