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

Julien Tavelli
Born in
1984
Education
Graphic Designer

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