Stefan G. Bucher

Stefan G. Bucher works as a graphic designer, illustrator and writer, and his style does vary between the formats he is creating. Now based in California with his one-man-band company 344 the German designer has a very playful style to his illustrations, using colourful character design creates one of his best known pieces, his blog Daily Monster. I saw this as a clear connection to the works of A+M as he also creates these ‘Monsters’ through his own visions of what the world could be.

I find his technique for drawing these creatures interesting as rather than envisioning the idea and trying to get it onto paper he uses ink blot splatters to form the basis of each character and then links the elements together to create a final ‘Monster’ for that day. This holds many benefits as it enables him to come up with designs that never look the same through the random creation but then also the keep continuity as certain aspects of the blots show through on the final piece.

Another aspect which is repeated through his work is his love for hand drawn circles, he uses them to border images add depth to his typographic designs and also as the basis for some aspect of his character design, I feel that this simply represents further the playfulness and childlike aspect of his illustration work, keeping it simple works.
One good example of his playful work is the cover to the Bumper Summer Fun Issue of Creative Review the idea that the cover can be interacted with the show the flat images surfing on a summery day.

He has also written many books on design but one of my favourites is All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers which focuses on the way that design has changed the personal life of some the worlds most prolific designers and also how their lives have changed the way that they design.