 |
Nov. 9 - Nov. 16, 2003 |
A Roman Heart And Mind Designer
Italian native graphic artist Claudia Neri creates evocative and innovative work
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2003-03-30
 |
|
Samples of Claudia Neri\'s commercial designs
|
Claudia Neri may have left Rome, but Rome has not left her.
The work of the Toronto graphic designer is infused with lessons learned in the great city, where she was born and raised. Chief among them is that if one produces creative work, it had better be good. "You can't get much more perfect than Rome," says Neri, sitting down to an interview in her modest fourth floor office in a building at the edge of Toronto's Chinatown. "Whatever you add better be amazing, because it's going to be standing next to the most amazing art that the Western world has been able to produce," the designer says. Rome is also a humbling backdrop for a young designer, she says. "You don't have this arrogance to think that you're creating a brand new thing. In Rome, you're aware that everything has been invented. It's an old world."
Graphic design is a hybrid of art and commerce, a profession that is as much about positioning a client and their product as it is about an aesthetic presentation. Working under the company name Teikna Design, Neri directs graphic design programs for products, brands and events for clients such as the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Design Exchange and contract furniture manufacturer Nienkamper.
She often collaborates with Toronto photographer Evan Dion to create strong images for clients. In a recent project for European office furniture manufacturer Sitag (distributed in Canada by Inscape), Neri and Dion worked together on a series of images that reflected a typical office workspace, full of stacks of paper. For Neri, this imagery rings truer than common product brochures which feature pristine offices with a few carefully placed accessories. "I'm an extremist," Neri says of her design approach. "I like either full reality or fantasy."
Fantasy was the option for a series of images for a seating series by Toronto furniture manufacturer Nienkamper. Neri likes to convey a narrative through her use of images and for the company's Wavelength seating line she and Dion created product shots which suggest the glamour and romance of a fine hotel. A casegoods series by Nienkamper was given a similar fantasy treatment - transparent human figures become props for the office furniture in a series of brochure images directed by Neri.
Page 1/...Page 2
|
| Home / Back to Top |
|
|
 |
|
|
</ td>
