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Simone Legno
Japanese love: An interview with the famous Italian illustrator by Mark McGough

Simone Legno is a new breed of digital artist. He has been featured in Computer Arts, New Design Portfolio from the Icons series by Taschen, New Masters of Flash, Fused magazine, Vogue and Elle. His clients range from Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen to Hello Kitty, New Era and Apple.

His illustrations are such a phenomenon that they have transcended into the physical realm in the form of bags, cosmetics, jewelry, stationary and even toys. And if your lucky enough to be wondering down the streets of Milan you can check them out first hand in his new store.

What follows are 8 carefully selected questions.

1. Although your drawings are very stylised some of the poses are quite complex. Do you draw from your head or life and where do you think your understanding of human anatomy comes from?

Sometimes I start from my imagination, sometimes it can be from a magazine image and sometimes it can be from an observation. I read a lot of fashion magazines. Most of my characters (Asian women in this case) have exaggerated movement, torsion and perspective. I sometimes exaggerate them to highlight their femininity, kindness or strength.
I developed my style after discovering traditional Japanese woodprints, where the two dimensional women in kimono's are very soft, flat and gentle and reinterpreted them in a modern way with a European twist.

2. On average, how long can a single image take to illustrate?

A couple of hours. Some take less and some take longer. I start with sketching and then make them into vectors using illustrator. It's easy to go crazy on detail though and loose track of time.

3. Do you have any rules when illustrating, such as with colour, space, perspective, etc?

Every design project is different and so rules change for each illustration... It's more instinctive... Sometimes the illustrations are very minimal and other times they are very flashy pop. My main rule is that you have only truly finished when your gut says so. I generally don't use gradients. I like flat colour because it's easier to use in silk screen printing, which is used for a lot of the merchandise I do. Thick lines are good because they make the images stand out more. The perspective of the character and the background tends to be pretty flat. Their should be a good colour weight balance though, to make the character jump out.

4. As a designers, do you believe in working for a design company first or starting up on your own?

I think it's good to work for a company first. You learn a lot technically from people more experienced than you. You learn more from life before entering the shark pool of ingenuous young artists that are out there. It's also good to learn to work in a team, so that you can coordinate and lead with a nice positive energy. Working for someone else also gives you the opportunity to work with big names.

5. You have been published in a lot of books and magazines. What marketing advice can you give to young artists & designers?

Create your own website. Tokidoki means 'sometimes' in Japanese and chose this name for my website when I was still studying. I put it out like a message in a bottle at sea. I then started to write around, to various design, graphic, illustration communities hoping to be reviewed. From there
I started a series of links, and link exchanges between artists and portals, interviews, promo art projects, etc. This increases the number of hits on your website and opens new doors.

6. People always dream of getting their big break. How did you get in contact with your first big client and how did this lead to getting the commission?

My first "big" job was even before tokidoki.it It was very big for me. I got it when I was a student at my design school and a professor asked if I wanted to visit the agency where he worked as a copyrighter. The agency was located on a very beautiful street in Rome called Via Veneto. The job was for an Airline called Air Europe, who needed some illustrations for a summer advertisement campaign in print. The pay was amazing and it only took me 2 days to complete. He was a very nice guy. After that there was another teacher that made me work for weeks always promising to pay me but never did. It was the beginning of many hard lessons.

7. For young budding illustrators and designers, what action do you recommend they take in the next week if they are serious about succeeding?

Again build a website but don't put it out until you think it rocks. Sometimes putting out something that is not professional can be hard to fix later on. Also it is often the case that the first impression is the last impression. You should always show your best weapons at the right moment. That doesn't mean you should spend your whole life working on it though. You need to work fast but at the same time be patient. Once it's up you should continuously update it and improve it.

8. What was the best piece of advice someone from the industry gave to you?

Always be nice to everybody because the people you meet while climbing up, will be the same ones that will help you up when you fall.

To find out more about Simone Legno visit:
tokidoki.it