Owen
   Gildersleeve

An expert in hand-crafted illustration, set design and art direction, Owen’s creations are carefully constructed from paper. Bold yet delicate, his works make use of light and shadow, and hand-rendered typography, for clients including, for clients including Apple, LUSH, Penguin Books and NASA.

His practice sees him collaborate with other creatives, including photographers, animators, stylists, and developers, to design dynamic installations and bring them into being. Published in 2014, Owen’s first book, entitled Paper Cut, celebrates the skilled creative practice of 25 leading papercraft artists from around the world.

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The initial idea, 'Like No Other', was to do with individuality. We are all one-of-a-kind and all the more amazing for it. As the project expanded so did my repertoire of references, responding to song lyrics, and passages from books and poems.

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Inspired by the Kepler Spacecraft, these seemingly abstract pieces tell the tale of newly discovered exoplanets; planets that orbit stars outside of our own solar system. 

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I enjoyed the playful nature of these covers, it was a real pleasure bringing Holly Webb’s tales of four friends who want to make the world a better place to life.

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Creating over 30 illustrations and animations for Vista Print's holiday collection was a real challenge, but I loved getting to work on such a large array of themes and styles.

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It was a real dream collaboration getting to work with NASA on this piece for their Earth Science division, portraying the west coast’s Atmospheric River – concentrated streams of water vapour in the atmosphere that have been likened to rivers in the sky.

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Self-initiated work really gives you a chance to experiment and explore new ideas and processes, and I often find that it’s these pieces that lead onto the most interesting work.

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A fun collaboration with photographer Owen Silverwood and Art Director Gem Fletcher which gave me a chance to play with abstract representations of the 5 classical elements through different folding techniques.

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A series of 15 window displays for Lush really allowed me to take my work off the page and into an installation space. For the London store we even went a step further, adding mechanical elements to the flower heads to bring them to life.

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Working with products is a whole different challenge, making sure that what you build is complimentary to the items and allows them to sing, whilst also leading to a beautiful and engaging image.

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Off the back of the cover image I created for Lapalux’s new album it was fun to then design a series of icons representing each track in a graphic and abstract manner to use within the sleeve I put together.

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I love experimenting with new type ideas and approaches, playing with different processes that can be used to create abstract and warped type solutions that still read clearly.

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Kris Andrew Small

sofia_iva

Sofia Iva

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London

Somerset House
West Wing M19, Strand
London, WC2R 1LA


+44(0)2033 322 582

hello@grandmatter.com

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