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Maximage

Awarded

Maximage: David Keshavjee / Julien Tavelli

'Super Litographie', various printed matter

Graphic Design

Jury report

Magic Prints
How is it pos­si­ble to com­bine high and low tech in off­set print­ing? The graphic de­sign­ers David Ke­shav­jee and Julien Tavelli from Lau­sanne are de­vel­op­ing their own in­de­pen­dent hand­writ­ing on the basis of their de­con­struc­tion of off­set tech­nol­ogy. They de­scribe their re­search as 'Super Lith­o­g­ra­phy – Ex­pe­ri­ences in Off­set Print­ing'. The cre­ative duo has worked to­gether ever since they grad­u­ated from ECAL with a diploma in the year 2008. What sets them apart from other de­sign­ers is their hand­writ­ing style and colour palette, some parts of which are ex­tremely colour­ful. Off­set print­ing is now typ­i­cally based on the 'com­puter to plate' process, whereby the print­ing plates are gen­er­ated di­rectly on the basis of the draft in the com­puter. Ke­shav­jee and Tavelli enjoy work­ing in the print shop and tak­ing a hands-on ap­proach to the print­ing plates: they com­bine com­puter drafts with man­ual in­ter­ven­tions straight on the print­ing plate where they use chem­i­cal de­vel­op­ers, en­grav­ing, photo com­po­si­tions or heat mark­ing. For a con­tract as­sign­ment, the album cover for the band 'Honey for Petzi', they only drafted the ty­pog­ra­phy on the com­puter. Every­thing else was done by hand, based on the prin­ci­ple of ad­di­tion and sub­trac­tion of off­set colour on four square sur­faces. The con­trast be­tween com­puter tech­nol­ogy and man­ual in­ter­ven­tion gives rise to an in­no­v­a­tive and in­de­pen­dent lan­guage. Some­times David Ke­shav­jee and Julien Tavelli dis­pense with the com­puter al­to­gether. Their non-com­mis­sioned work 'Les im­pres­sions mag­iques' was cre­ated ex­clu­sively by hand. Using chem­i­cals, the two de­sign­ers made the draw­ings di­rectly on the off­set plate. Since no step in the draft­ing process could be re­versed, chance played a de­ci­sive role. The work of the de­signer duo is orig­i­nal and un­com­pro­mis­ing. They greatly ben­e­fit from their re­search on man­ual print­ing processes and play skil­fully with the con­trast be­tween the pre­ci­sion of the draft on the com­puter and the crude­ness of man­ual in­ter­ven­tion. The re­sult: magic prints.
Peter Stohler

Biography

David Keshavjee
Born in
1985
Education
Graphic Designer

also in

2009

2014

Julien Tavelli
Born in
1984
Education
Graphic Designer

also in

2009

2013

Web

www.maximage.biz

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