“The entire project is representing the power of reading,” he told A’ Design Award and Competition’s blog. “I wanted to challenge myself with a passion project using paper craft to elevate my favorite stories into surreal and imaginative works of art,” he explained the thought process behind his viral series. “I wanted to create a conversation and a guessing game between the viewer of the art and the books they represented.”

According to Watts, in a digital world it’s becoming harder to dedicate time to the classic paperback but reading from screens makes us read slower, learn less deeply, remember less, and sleep worse. “This is why students prefer to print out their electronic textbooks,” he says. “This is ‘The Power of the Paperback’.”

Which, of course, makes his day job all the more ironic. A multidisciplinary communication designer, Watts specializes in brand activation, promotional material, digital content, and conceptual development for brands and film or TV projects.

Take a look at some of his book sculptures in the gallery below.

The post Todd Watts Pays Homage to His Favorite Books appeared first on MobiSpirit.

With a BA in Industrial Design from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University and an MA in Fine Arts from UWE, Herrera’s studies included researching different materials. According to her website, her interest in economic materials in general, is based on their potential of transformation, using the simplest of techniques.

“When I started to work with paper, I was developing very structural elements,” she told My Modern Met. “I used to have a lot of strips of paper that I used to cut and glue to form a volume.” Much like patterns found in nature, her sculptures comprehend massive groups of elements that together compose a major complex system.

According to Herrera, there’s inherent flexibility with paper. “I spend a lot of hours collecting images of the subject in different positions, then I do some reading to find the right measurements,” she explains. Her finished products are exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. But you can also follow her online, via Instagram.

The post The Birds and the Bees: This Paper Artist is Worth Following appeared first on MobiSpirit.

And so, after five years of graphic design studies, and four years working as a junior art director, during which she moved around quite a bit, hopping back and forth between Montreal, Paris, and London, Bee decided to take a leap of faith into paper art. Now based in Berlin, she runs her own creative studio alongside other fashion designers and illustrators.

A paper prop maker, among other things, her creations include paper food, animals, and objects, ranging from the miniature to room-sized sculptures. And much like her creations, Bee’s inspiration consists mainly of paper.

“I have a box full of sketchbooks, lonely sheets of paper, Post-its, napkins… all waiting to be presented and used,” she said, noting the paper items in her possession. “I also keep all the sketches from previous projects. They’re not useful anymore, but I have fondness for them. I can recall the time I discussed that idea with someone and scribbled out the project. It’s not just a napkin anymore; it’s a real memory!”

We highly recommend you follow her on Instagram.

The post This Art Director Finds Inspiration in Paper appeared first on MobiSpirit.

“The inspiration can come from anything,” said Vantours in an interview with Jung Katz, “an exhibition, a book, an advert. I try to vary my trend inspirations because I want to propose something new for every project, to try something I’ve never done. I do lots of research, samples and try more complicated shapes, new graphic designs, colors or materials to find new orientations.”

Born in 1985 in France, Vantours’ professional background is in textile design and materials research at ESAA Duperré. But as time went by, she found that paper was the very specific material she liked best. “What I like about paper is its flexibility,” she explained. “It’s a material which offers many textures, aspects, and colors, and I like to mix all these possibilities.”

Vantours divides her work process into four steps: first is finding an actual concept or idea; second, is creating a graphic design; then comes the color matching, a crucial step in her design process; last, is the actual production, creating volume with paper. But she notes that every project is different, and can take anything from three days to three months to complete.

Take a look at some of her eye-popping designs.

The post Maud Vantours’ Paper Art is a Bit of Mix and Match appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Zim&Zou recently presented their own fleet of paper ships, but their works are nothing close to 5-minute crafts you’ve learned in school. Instead, the duo has created amazing paper ship models that are inspired by steam-punk motives and incredibly detailed.

The ships are completely made by hand and contain various geometric patterns that are highlighted by the use of colorful paper. According to the duo, this is their “ode to travel.”

“Thrown in an endless movement, the aircraft colony crosses time and space toward an unknown outcome. Like birds stuck in an eternal migration, they’re pursuing their dream of an elsewhere,” they said about the project.

Currently, their fleet is made out of three ships, but there is no doubt that they might join them a few more considering the popularity of the pieces.

The post Check Out These Amazing Steam-Punk Paper Ships appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Her creative process is three-fold: hand drawing first, then digital rendering, and lastly, hand cutting. “Typically, I develop drawings before making a digital template on the computer,” she told Design Boom. “After completing the template, I print it out and use it as a positioning and visual guide. the template is largely photographic and I spend a lot of time translating continuous tones into patterns of solid and void. The final step is to spend lots of hours, hand cutting the image.”

But long before she was a paper magician, Lee took to other forms of art. Born in Hong Kong, she practiced Chinese calligraphy since the age of ten and went on to study painting and drawing in her formative years. With a BA degree in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she came to the US in 1993 as a painter and went on to earn her first Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a second MFA in computer graphics and interactive media from the Pratt Institute in New York.

It was only in 2005 when she created her first cut paperwork. “After practicing digital arts for years, I began to miss creating with my hands,” she recalls. “I sought an expression to satisfy my creative impulses and combine my skills.”

Take a look at some of her artwork in the gallery below.

The post Bovey Lee is a Paper Magician appeared first on MobiSpirit.

With a background in architecture, both Judith and Rolfe (who go by their first names only), are drawn to modern, simple and clean design, with themes like geometry, nature, and typography constant throughout their work. Their inspiration includes things like Japanese Kumiko screens, Islamic tile designs, Rosemåling, Art Deco details, optical illusions, wallpaper patterns, album covers, and vintage botanical illustrations.

“The reason I was initially drawn to paper is because of its availability and ease of use,” Judith relayed in an interview with Make MN. “It’s not an intimidating medium; everyone has experience with paper.”

Her techniques include quilling, folding, cutting, and layering, with the finished product handcrafted piece by piece. “I started rolling paper coils, totally fell in love with the process, the repetitiveness of which I find both meditative and relaxing,” she says.

Follow JUDiTH+ROLFE’s work on Instagram.

The post JUDiTH+ROLFE’s Paper Art Features Elements Found in Geometry and Nature appeared first on MobiSpirit.

These materials are collected from a variety of sources: the flowers she grows in her garden, second-hand picture books, and butterflies from the botanical garden in Utrecht. The finished artworks are kept under glass, reminding of botanical specimens meant to be preserved.

“A damaged butterfly, a broken twig, a bumblebee, some strangely grown weeds: I find all these unique discoveries in my path and then take them home to my studio,” writes Donkelaar on her website. “Here, I take my time to explore the objects and try to work out how I can show each one to its best advantage.”

Being led by the materials themselves, she hopes to give her found objects and specimens a second life, inviting other people to imagine what this life can look like. Take a closer look:

The post Anne ten Donkelaar’s Art Is a Continuation of Nature appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Evocative of organic processes, her work is simultaneously irregular and ordered, with her pieces bringing to mind aerial landscape views, satellite imagery, and biological cellular processes. Through the use of paper, her pieces also explore the ways in which texture, pattern, and color interact.

“It is perfectly imperfect,” she explained her creative process in an interview with Zoneone Arts. “I love all kinds of organic processes. They are visually intriguing and engaging.”

As such, her inspiration comes from nature itself. “We spend a lot of our summers on the beach in Rhode Island,” said Genser. “I love watching the water, the rocks, and the light. Our beach has rocks with these really neat barnacles and seaweed. Their colors are always changing. Sometimes there’s a lot of it, and sometimes just a little. It’s neat to watch the progression. One day when the seaweed was purple, brown, yellow and green, my husband made the awesome observation that nature never clashes. I love that.”

Follow her progress on Instagram:

The post Amy Genser’s Paper Art Reminds of Satellite Imagery appeared first on MobiSpirit.

“Our approach is mainly focused on the use of handmade crafts to create visuals, window displays, installations, and so on,” they explained in an interview with Adobe’s online magazine. “We have a predilection for paper because it’s a versatile material, easy to sculpt, and very rich in terms of color or texture.”

Their creations naturally take a lot of time but the end result seems to be worth it, garnering the attention of brands like Hermès, IBM, Microsoft, and TIME, all who’ve collaborated with Zim & Zou

“At the very beginning, we started working with paper just for fun between graphic design commissions, and of course because Lucie’s family was working in a paper factory in the Vosges Mountains,” explains the French duo. “We had access to a lot of paper sheets, so we just played with paper. That’s how our first paper project came out. Then we dropped it on the Internet, we had some positive feedback, and we were quickly contacted by a client for our first commission.”

They haven’t looked back since.

The post Zim & Zou Are Self-Proclaimed Paper Pirates appeared first on MobiSpirit.

“The entire project is representing the power of reading,” he told A’ Design Award and Competition’s blog. “I wanted to challenge myself with a passion project using paper craft to elevate my favorite stories into surreal and imaginative works of art,” he explained the thought process behind his viral series. “I wanted to create a conversation and a guessing game between the viewer of the art and the books they represented.”

According to Watts, in a digital world it’s becoming harder to dedicate time to the classic paperback but reading from screens makes us read slower, learn less deeply, remember less, and sleep worse. “This is why students prefer to print out their electronic textbooks,” he says. “This is ‘The Power of the Paperback’.”

Which, of course, makes his day job all the more ironic. A multidisciplinary communication designer, Watts specializes in brand activation, promotional material, digital content, and conceptual development for brands and film or TV projects.

Take a look at some of his book sculptures in the gallery below.

The post Todd Watts Pays Homage to His Favorite Books appeared first on MobiSpirit.

With a BA in Industrial Design from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University and an MA in Fine Arts from UWE, Herrera’s studies included researching different materials. According to her website, her interest in economic materials in general, is based on their potential of transformation, using the simplest of techniques.

“When I started to work with paper, I was developing very structural elements,” she told My Modern Met. “I used to have a lot of strips of paper that I used to cut and glue to form a volume.” Much like patterns found in nature, her sculptures comprehend massive groups of elements that together compose a major complex system.

According to Herrera, there’s inherent flexibility with paper. “I spend a lot of hours collecting images of the subject in different positions, then I do some reading to find the right measurements,” she explains. Her finished products are exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. But you can also follow her online, via Instagram.

The post The Birds and the Bees: This Paper Artist is Worth Following appeared first on MobiSpirit.

And so, after five years of graphic design studies, and four years working as a junior art director, during which she moved around quite a bit, hopping back and forth between Montreal, Paris, and London, Bee decided to take a leap of faith into paper art. Now based in Berlin, she runs her own creative studio alongside other fashion designers and illustrators.

A paper prop maker, among other things, her creations include paper food, animals, and objects, ranging from the miniature to room-sized sculptures. And much like her creations, Bee’s inspiration consists mainly of paper.

“I have a box full of sketchbooks, lonely sheets of paper, Post-its, napkins… all waiting to be presented and used,” she said, noting the paper items in her possession. “I also keep all the sketches from previous projects. They’re not useful anymore, but I have fondness for them. I can recall the time I discussed that idea with someone and scribbled out the project. It’s not just a napkin anymore; it’s a real memory!”

We highly recommend you follow her on Instagram.

The post This Art Director Finds Inspiration in Paper appeared first on MobiSpirit.

“The inspiration can come from anything,” said Vantours in an interview with Jung Katz, “an exhibition, a book, an advert. I try to vary my trend inspirations because I want to propose something new for every project, to try something I’ve never done. I do lots of research, samples and try more complicated shapes, new graphic designs, colors or materials to find new orientations.”

Born in 1985 in France, Vantours’ professional background is in textile design and materials research at ESAA Duperré. But as time went by, she found that paper was the very specific material she liked best. “What I like about paper is its flexibility,” she explained. “It’s a material which offers many textures, aspects, and colors, and I like to mix all these possibilities.”

Vantours divides her work process into four steps: first is finding an actual concept or idea; second, is creating a graphic design; then comes the color matching, a crucial step in her design process; last, is the actual production, creating volume with paper. But she notes that every project is different, and can take anything from three days to three months to complete.

Take a look at some of her eye-popping designs.

The post Maud Vantours’ Paper Art is a Bit of Mix and Match appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Zim&Zou recently presented their own fleet of paper ships, but their works are nothing close to 5-minute crafts you’ve learned in school. Instead, the duo has created amazing paper ship models that are inspired by steam-punk motives and incredibly detailed.

The ships are completely made by hand and contain various geometric patterns that are highlighted by the use of colorful paper. According to the duo, this is their “ode to travel.”

“Thrown in an endless movement, the aircraft colony crosses time and space toward an unknown outcome. Like birds stuck in an eternal migration, they’re pursuing their dream of an elsewhere,” they said about the project.

Currently, their fleet is made out of three ships, but there is no doubt that they might join them a few more considering the popularity of the pieces.

The post Check Out These Amazing Steam-Punk Paper Ships appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Her creative process is three-fold: hand drawing first, then digital rendering, and lastly, hand cutting. “Typically, I develop drawings before making a digital template on the computer,” she told Design Boom. “After completing the template, I print it out and use it as a positioning and visual guide. the template is largely photographic and I spend a lot of time translating continuous tones into patterns of solid and void. The final step is to spend lots of hours, hand cutting the image.”

But long before she was a paper magician, Lee took to other forms of art. Born in Hong Kong, she practiced Chinese calligraphy since the age of ten and went on to study painting and drawing in her formative years. With a BA degree in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she came to the US in 1993 as a painter and went on to earn her first Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a second MFA in computer graphics and interactive media from the Pratt Institute in New York.

It was only in 2005 when she created her first cut paperwork. “After practicing digital arts for years, I began to miss creating with my hands,” she recalls. “I sought an expression to satisfy my creative impulses and combine my skills.”

Take a look at some of her artwork in the gallery below.

The post Bovey Lee is a Paper Magician appeared first on MobiSpirit.

With a background in architecture, both Judith and Rolfe (who go by their first names only), are drawn to modern, simple and clean design, with themes like geometry, nature, and typography constant throughout their work. Their inspiration includes things like Japanese Kumiko screens, Islamic tile designs, Rosemåling, Art Deco details, optical illusions, wallpaper patterns, album covers, and vintage botanical illustrations.

“The reason I was initially drawn to paper is because of its availability and ease of use,” Judith relayed in an interview with Make MN. “It’s not an intimidating medium; everyone has experience with paper.”

Her techniques include quilling, folding, cutting, and layering, with the finished product handcrafted piece by piece. “I started rolling paper coils, totally fell in love with the process, the repetitiveness of which I find both meditative and relaxing,” she says.

Follow JUDiTH+ROLFE’s work on Instagram.

The post JUDiTH+ROLFE’s Paper Art Features Elements Found in Geometry and Nature appeared first on MobiSpirit.

These materials are collected from a variety of sources: the flowers she grows in her garden, second-hand picture books, and butterflies from the botanical garden in Utrecht. The finished artworks are kept under glass, reminding of botanical specimens meant to be preserved.

“A damaged butterfly, a broken twig, a bumblebee, some strangely grown weeds: I find all these unique discoveries in my path and then take them home to my studio,” writes Donkelaar on her website. “Here, I take my time to explore the objects and try to work out how I can show each one to its best advantage.”

Being led by the materials themselves, she hopes to give her found objects and specimens a second life, inviting other people to imagine what this life can look like. Take a closer look:

The post Anne ten Donkelaar’s Art Is a Continuation of Nature appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Evocative of organic processes, her work is simultaneously irregular and ordered, with her pieces bringing to mind aerial landscape views, satellite imagery, and biological cellular processes. Through the use of paper, her pieces also explore the ways in which texture, pattern, and color interact.

“It is perfectly imperfect,” she explained her creative process in an interview with Zoneone Arts. “I love all kinds of organic processes. They are visually intriguing and engaging.”

As such, her inspiration comes from nature itself. “We spend a lot of our summers on the beach in Rhode Island,” said Genser. “I love watching the water, the rocks, and the light. Our beach has rocks with these really neat barnacles and seaweed. Their colors are always changing. Sometimes there’s a lot of it, and sometimes just a little. It’s neat to watch the progression. One day when the seaweed was purple, brown, yellow and green, my husband made the awesome observation that nature never clashes. I love that.”

Follow her progress on Instagram:

The post Amy Genser’s Paper Art Reminds of Satellite Imagery appeared first on MobiSpirit.

“Our approach is mainly focused on the use of handmade crafts to create visuals, window displays, installations, and so on,” they explained in an interview with Adobe’s online magazine. “We have a predilection for paper because it’s a versatile material, easy to sculpt, and very rich in terms of color or texture.”

Their creations naturally take a lot of time but the end result seems to be worth it, garnering the attention of brands like Hermès, IBM, Microsoft, and TIME, all who’ve collaborated with Zim & Zou

“At the very beginning, we started working with paper just for fun between graphic design commissions, and of course because Lucie’s family was working in a paper factory in the Vosges Mountains,” explains the French duo. “We had access to a lot of paper sheets, so we just played with paper. That’s how our first paper project came out. Then we dropped it on the Internet, we had some positive feedback, and we were quickly contacted by a client for our first commission.”

They haven’t looked back since.

The post Zim & Zou Are Self-Proclaimed Paper Pirates appeared first on MobiSpirit.