Illustrator Vanessa Branchi describes herself as a city person. Originally from Italy, where she studied Graphic Design, Branchi moved to London in 2012 and then hopped on to Berlin in 2018. Inspired by symbolism, surrealism, and dreamlike states, her graphic illustrations have a detached big-city feel to them, attracting clients like Google, Siemens, Time Out, and The Telegraph.
“Being a city person I’ve always loved the thought of combining my illustrations with architecture and space,” she shared with Inky Goodness. “I would like to see my work in large scale, possibly in the form of decorative panels or shapes that become an integral part of an urban experience. I like the idea of my work being educational and functional within a city environment.”
“Over recent years my visual identity has evolved a lot,” she admitted. “It’s been a very interesting and fun journey even if sometimes the direction I was taking wasn’t always clear… even to myself. The change of location, from Florence to such a big city as London and then Berlin, exposed me to meeting artists and having more access to art in general than I had before. This really helped me to express myself and be able to experiment with the message I wanted to convey. “
“With time I decided to slowly ‘abandon’ the graphic design world and learn to develop my own visual identity,” she added. “Gradually, and with a lot of practice, I moved from a more hand-drawn and rough style to a more harmonic and clean one, where my execution of shapes and lines became more refined, getting closer and closer to the visual style I had set out to achieve. At the same time the color palette that I’m currently adopting emerged naturally.”
Check out some of her illustrations in the gallery below.
