The Studio Topie Interview

Let's talk with and about Studio Topie! His work ranges from large-format murals to detailed hidden object pictures and editorials to animated illustrations for trade fairs and brand communication. In this interview, we talk not only about his new motifs, but also about his creative approach, versatility without arbitrariness, and the role that research, storytelling and visual clarity play in his work.

How would you describe your illustration style to someone who has never seen your work before?

I am not committed to one style and see the common thread in my work more as a certain way of thinking. I can work in a flat, vector-based style as well as in a complex and detailed style. I like to bring together different thematic layers in one motif, whether bold/striking, subtle or metaphorical.

My ideas often originate in my head, where I engage intensively with a topic before I start sketching. Either the appropriate style emerges from the idea, or I consider and try out different approaches.

What originally drew you to illustration – and why is it still your medium today?

Illustration simply offers so many incredible opportunities to explain the world. To tell stories, big and small. It can give a face to the inexpressible, to horror, without (re)traumatising. It can make you smile, make children happy, adults too. It can make numbers tangible and illustrate complicated relationships. It is ideal as part of corporate identity and branding. It can do so much, and yet it is still underused.

I came to professional illustration through storyboard drawing. In the early 2000s, I drew my first feature film storyboard for Ayse Polat's En Garde, as well as for various short films. The storyboards led to my first requests for other illustration jobs. In 2003, I founded the illustration studio Spielplatz3000 with a colleague, which we ran together until 2009. Then I received a request from Kombinatrotweiss asking if I would be interested in a representative position. I don't know if I would still be working as an illustrator today if it weren't for that.

Many illustrators specialise in a particular area, but you have deliberately chosen to cover a broad spectrum. What does this versatility give you, and where do the biggest challenges lie?

I have always enjoyed trying new things and I like to do things myself. Not because I don't like working collectively or in coordination with others, but because I like to implement ideas directly, especially for freelance work.

Personally, I would find it boring to always do the same thing in endless variations. At the same time, I admire colleagues who can do that and sometimes find this versatility to be a curse rather than a blessing. Thanks to my versatility, illustration has allowed me to explore so many topics that I might not otherwise have dealt with, and I am grateful for that.

When we started in 2003, our studio's slogan was ‘We do the illustrations’ – we both had different styles and saw ourselves not only as artists but also as illustration service providers, and we quickly began working conceptually in order to develop suitable illustration concepts for different clients. In addition, at the same time as I started my own business, my father became dependent on care and I had to earn money regularly as quickly as possible with my work. Today, as the father of a young daughter, I find myself in a similar situation.

The big challenge in my day-to-day work is working on completely different projects at the same time. It sometimes takes a lot of discipline to jump from one project to the next, using different programmes and different ways of thinking.

For example, in May I finished my first documentary film about an Ethiopian activist, which premiered at the Short Film Festival in Hamburg at the beginning of June. So I spent my days painting a mural and my evenings editing the film on my computer. Last August, when I built a large outdoor sound sculpture for the Universum Museum in Bremen and then spent my evenings in the hotel illustrating a very technical editorial series, it was similar.

What role does storytelling play in your work?

Storytelling is almost always part of my work, which is why you'll hardly find any beautifully illustrated oranges or everyday objects in my portfolio. Since I always approach a topic from an initial idea and don't feel bound to any particular style as an artist, I always consider which elements of my technical and stylistic repertoire best suit a concept.

What was your guiding principle for these new illustrations?

I had a lot of material and figures from my almost two years of working with Zukunft Nahverkehr, and I wanted to try something with them that we hadn't pursued further during the conception and design process – something less explanatory and a little more abstract.

You have already helped design a poster campaign and a stadium mural for Zukunft Nahverkehr, as well as their trade fair appearance at the IAA – very different formats indeed. How do you manage to unite all these media under a common visual concept?

It's actually quite simple, and usually one thing leads to another.

In this case, I had a lot of freedom. The collaboration with the Hamburg agency DeDrift and Zukunft Nahverkehr began with a film poster that I made in 2023 for the documentary ‘Mobility is a human ride’. Last year, I then developed a concept for an installation for the Innotrans trade fair in Berlin, which was intended to visualise the complexity of the public transport system. Unfortunately, the trade fair appearance was cancelled at the time for political reasons. At the same time, DeDrift approached ZNV and Deutsche Bahn with a concept for the planning and realisation of a public transport experience world on Munich's Königsplatz as part of the IAA supporting programme, which I supported with illustrations and concepts. My work as an illustrator and artist enabled me to develop objects and installations in such a context, which was a great advantage.

Even though not all ideas could be implemented for technical or budgetary reasons, it was nice to see in Munich – and the client could hardly believe it themselves – how close the actual implementation ultimately is to the initial sketch.

The campaign motifs for ‘Mobility in Numbers’ are part of the presentation and accompany ZNV's public relations work in various formats.

How do you find visual metaphors for ‘mobility in numbers’?

The figures from the statistics are sometimes a bit abstract, and I find it exciting to translate them into reality so that they become more emotional and tangible. I had a free hand in designing the motifs and did not receive any specific briefing. So I started by looking for metaphors.

If a car takes up around 65 square metres of urban space, what is a comparable size from the perspective of city dwellers and urban planners? A two- to three-room flat within the outline of a car. Urban space is limited, and a car not only competes with other modes of transport, but also with the use of urban space as a whole.

The lungs as a park function in a similar way. One of my favourite motifs is the heart with the rolled-up road and the children playing. The statistic that children in traffic-calmed streets have on average three times more friends and are more independent shows how closely traffic and urban planning are intertwined with individual and societal developments.

How do you develop a concept from initial sketches that can be flexibly transferred to different media?

Basically, almost anything can be transferred to different media. When I work with vectors, I keep all options open in terms of scalability and animation so that I can also implement the motifs for other media. With the chatbot character I developed for Haufe in 2023, the client knew that I also build sculptures and asked me if I could also turn it into a sculpture.

To what extent does the versatility of formats also play a creative role for you – does it open up new design possibilities?

Absolutely. I never get bored :) And I can bring my different skills to bear. Illustrators are often only involved in projects at a late stage. I sometimes find that a shame, because as someone who can approach a topic in different creative ways, I would sometimes like to be involved earlier on, even during the conception stage.

How do you ensure that your style is flexible enough for different contexts – while remaining recognisable?

I don't know to what extent it remains recognisable. That's for others to judge. I have a certain way of thinking, and that comes through particularly in my freelance work, whether as an illustrator or an artist. When illustrating, I have a certain style when working with vectors, another when doing technical illustrations, but I am genre-fluid in a way. And I wouldn't have developed different illustration style guides if I weren't so versatile.

What opportunities do you see in the fact that clients are increasingly thinking cross-media and planning projects for different channels from the outset?

As illustrators, we can certainly help to ensure that we don't get lost in the flood of images and visual content. If visual sensitivity is becoming dulled due to the increasing prevalence of deceptively realistic AI-generated images and videos, it may be small, charmingly animated illustrations that stand out pleasantly from all the madness.

What is your next project, what are you currently working on?

In addition to ongoing assignments, I am working on a larger project of my own, a playground where both children and adults can explore the human body in a playful way and learn about various health topics. Between 2017 and the turn of the year 2019/20, I lived half the time in Uganda. There I met two brothers from Gulu in northern Uganda whose father was a highly respected doctor in the area who died of Ebola in 2000. We had the idea of supporting the hospital where he worked with artistic activities.

For various reasons, the overall project didn't come to fruition, but I can't get the idea for the playground out of my head. My dream would be to build a playground like this here in Germany or elsewhere in Europe, and one in northern Uganda. The fragmented anatomical human figure could be used for workshops and educational programmes, the bones could be used as seesaws, a lung could be a climbing frame, and so on. Unfortunately, playgrounds with custom-made play equipment are very expensive, so in order to get potential investors excited about the idea, I am currently building the playground in 3D. So if anyone reading this is interested in supporting such a project, has enough money or knows people who do, please get in touch with Kombinatrotweiss! ;). There are also ideas on how to spread the costs across different shoulders as much as possible ;)