One of the best parts of my job is finding the inspiring stories behind incredible art, design and photography. It's that person brimming with talent that caught a lucky break and whose life changed because hard work finally met opportunity…through an enthusiastic audience. So it was for Matteo Civaschi, executive creative director and senior designer at H-57 Creative Station in Milan, Italy. Last week, the internet took Matteo's creative Star Wars typography posters and spread them all around the web. Though the posters are clever for what they are, read his story, below, and you'll love them even more.
How did the idea come about to use Star Wars characters for your posters? Since I was a child, I was really fond of the graphics world. I'm also from the lucky generation who actually got to see the Star Wars movie at the cinema. My work is to create ideas, design, and typography. Letters are already designs which tells everyone that we want to synthesize a concept, an idea through the use of typography. The choice of a character establishes the tone of voice you want to use, it can communicate anger, kindness, research, provocation, innovation. Therefore, as in the Matrix movie, I see typographic characters all over. This particular project is born from a small home accident. My cat “Rommel,” a real naughty boy, was playing in the library and made my Darth Vader mask fall down. When I picked it up, the mask was upside down. I looked at it from another point of view and I casually started examining all the elements which formed the mask. Looking at the upside down mouth part, which is made in a shape of a pyramid with some slits, I realized that it formed a “W.” From this point on, I had the idea to recreate Darth Vader's face using only typographic characters. What has the response been like online? After developing the three subjects, we created some posters as a gift to our clients. A simple image operation for our studio. We thought it was funny work and we tried to post it on some design and advertising blogs, just to show some of our work to people. We never expected success of this proportion, the online response was surprising, huge, and beyond our wildest expectations. Unknowingly, we created a viral advertising campaign based on simple posters. It all started as a funny game but it happily forced us to contact Lucasfilm to find an agreement. We receive hundred of emails every day from all over the world and I really want to thank everybody for the nice words, encouragement and appreciation for our work. How has this impacted you and your business? I'm a positive person and I really love my job. This pleasant and unexpected event has only strengthened my enthusiasm towards what I do. Receiving such big encouragement from people all over the world is, for me, already the greatest gift. We are a small design and creativity studio based in Milan. We want to do our jobs with enthusiasm and that's all. If our clients like our work and are happy with it, that is enough for us. What's next for you? I don't really know what there will be in my future, but if I can make a choice I would choose to do what we are actually doing. My dream has always been to wake up in the morning and feel happy to go in my studio to create something new. Finding my collaborators happy and satisfied to be in the studio with me, together to create design and ideas. Our effort is to keep the sensation that H-57 is a ” big family” more then a job place. The happiness of all of us at H-57 is my biggest project.
Matteo Civaschi H-57 Creative Studio
