Koivo

Koivo was born in Russia in 1982 and has been living in Vienna since 2017, where he is studying art history and philosophy. He started his career as a graphic and web designer but found illustration much more exciting and has focused exclusively on his work as an illustrator since 2014 to make the world a little more beautiful.

 It took a while for his very own graphic Koivo style to emerge: The monumental art of the Eastern Bloc shapes his work, like mosaics or stained glass, but also the illustrations of days gone by, as found on stamps or old posters. Travelling is particularly inspiring for Koivo – but due to the restrictions of the pandemic, he also likes to be inspired by colleagues, by architecture and by art history. Koivo found the theoretical basis for his style in ancient philosophy: Plato propagates the mathematical harmony of the world, for him, the square and the circle are the ideal forms.

 Koivo works purely digitally in vectors, but also likes to take on the challenges of screen printing to make his work more vivid.

In terms of content, Koivo enjoys topics such as travel, medicine, sustainability or education. His geometrical, clean style is abstract and humorous, his aim always being a perfect composition of shapes and colours. One particularly exciting project where he succeeded in this was an advertising campaign for OHSU Health, for which he implemented various themes very graphically in the corporate colours.

In the future, Koivo would like to create more murals and continues to search for the ideal composition – gladly for companies like Adobe, Nike, Wired or Monocle.

Feature: Koivo on form, colour and clear visual language