Rock, Paper, Scissors by Julien Vallée
A young graphic designer’s first monograph is full of color and motion
A lot of artists might think twice about issuing a retrospective before they
reach 30. But the young Canadian graphic designer Julien Vallée—
whom we covered earlier this year—already had a considerable
body of work from which to choose. Vallée’s art is distinctive for its daring combination of traditional handcrafts and
digital manipulation, and his painstaking combinations of cut paper and stop-motion
animation are by turns whimsical, dazzling and baffling. People leap through screens
and turn into shreds of paper, while smoke, light and glass mingle in seemingly impossible
combinations.
“Working on this book was an amazing opportunity to take a look at the
work [I’ve] produced in the last few years. I never really had time to do it before,” said
Vallée. “There was a lot of behind-the-scenes material, and it was hard to cut it out without losing details behind the process.”
In Rock, Paper, Scissors, Vallée pulled together a selection of his commissioned work for clients as diverse as The New York Times, MTV and AOL, as well as a few of his
personal projects. In keeping with Vallé’s multimedia approach, the reader can also access exclusive videos—both of the projects and behind-the-scenes work—through
Gestalten’s website.
The monograph took seven months to compile with the aid of several friends and
collaborators. The text was written with Montreal-based artists Eve Duhamel and
Mike Canty. “For the design, I started myself but realized soon I was still too close to my work. I found out it was better to have someone that was not involved in the projects,
looking at them with fresh eyes,” said Vallée, who turned to Montreal-based design studio Feed and a friend, Matthias Hübner, at Gestalten for help.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors” will be available for purchase in
the United States through Gestalten’s website by the end of October. For a closer look at Vallée’s work, check out his website here.
