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About Nothing But Everything That Surrounds Us - an interview with Julien Vallée

By Ziggy Nixon

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If you believe the “blogosphere” (which, I believe, Al Gore invented), Montreal-based designer Julien Vallée is a young man who is very much on the fast track. His talents, listed on the Internet, include several “cutting edge”, “hot”, or however you want to phrase them talents such as art direction and installation, motion graphics and animation, print, graphic and video design, film direction and installation, he’s a “cut & paste master” and sculptor … and more.

Vallée’s work can perhaps be best summarized using a description he had for one of his own projects. He said that the project was meant to question “the relative roles of the computer and hand-made processes in design.” The aim therefore was “to create something hand-made but that also had a clean, almost digital aesthetic.” Viewing Vallée’s works gives just that impression, whether it comes from a wild, visually enticing video, a crisp design for a magazine cover complete with shadows and a real sense of depth, or even a 3D paper-based sculpture illustrating an explosion of vibrant colors on one side of the “screen” and little but a black spray-can on the other. Vallée continually tries to get in touch with every aspect of his environment, using manually-created art strongly supported by the technological tools of today to create successful bridges across as many of these disciplines as he can.

Vallée’s wide variety of work might also be summed up by noting that this is a great example of where graphic design may well be heading – or where it’s at already – even if he doesn’t necessarily want it to be that way. Still, keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground, this recent ADC (Art Directors Club) Young Guns participant and avowed freelancer definitely appears to be on to something. Ziggy Nixon was very pleased to catch up with Julien Vallée to find out more where both he and these myriad of different media might be heading …

Julien, considering your body of work so far as well as your career targets, is there a definition that you yourself think best describes YOU? What should appear on your business card: “Julien Vallée - __________”?

That’s a hard one! Actually, I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like to get stuck into a given sphere of expertise or get categorized as a specific type of artist.

Black & White teaser by Julien Vallée on Vimeo.

This video was created for the “Black and White” division of Bleublancrouge in Montreal, also known as “BW Upperground Agency” (the video is listed only as a “teaser”, so please do your best to feel teased). Julien describes the objects popping out from the books as being representative of the tools that were used to realize the collection of articles, all animated by stop-motion video.

You see this as well in my work and how I’ve managed it so far. When I feel like I’ve been working on the same type of work and have been exploring the same kind of technique for too long, I try to get projects that give the opportunity to try something else. I’ll look for different types of projects then instead of ones that are just asking for the same thing over and over again.

For example, if I’ve been doing a lot of motion design for a stretch of time, I will want to and try my best to make print work for the next months.

Vallée was recently featured on the cover and inside the magazine IdN (International designers Network). The article can be viewed on-line via this link.

The recent IdN (International designers Network) crafts issue said that your “works tend to be ... treading a “fine line” between design and illustration”. In your mind, is there really such a line, or barrier, or, if you will, are such distinctions even needed when discussing design and illustration, or even art, for that matter? I think art, illustration and design can live and co-exist quite well together. I also think that it’s fantastic that we – designers I mean – have had, over the past few years, such a wide range of opportunities to create bridges between these fields. It opens up so many possibilities of using space and to work with such a wide range of different media. I just think that being a graphic designer in the 21st century involves so much more than only working behind a computer ... and that’s great! How important is typography to your work in terms of getting across your message(s)? Have you had specific training in this area or does it just sort of “happen” when you need it? I actually have a base in typography from my university studies. Apart from that, I don’t have a deep knowledge about type, even though it has always interested me. For me it’s a lot of learning-by-doing, because I think I learn more and more through each of the projects I have that involve type in some form. Vallée was featured in the 2007 edition of Die Gestalten’s “Tangible - High Touch Visuals” (as part of the Young Designers Youth Contest for Print Magazine), where he created both the 24 foot long x 140 inch wide banner shown at right (click on image to see full picture) that he says was “about nothing but everything that surrounds us and from which we should take more inspiration.”

Sure, I was always fascinated by characters and the different aspects of typography. But I realize now that for me it’s really more of an interest in form than an interest of rules on how to use fonts per se.

You also quite clearly balance a great deal of your work between visualisation in the 2D and the 3D worlds. How do you approach the difference between the two, for example, when laying out a complicated 3D scene for photographing when finished in 2D? I would imagine that there is a lot of trial and error involved?

I’ve always been interested in working in 3D and how objects fit into an environment. I’ve come to realise that I often prefer to work in such a space instead of working only in 2D.

Print magazine cover making-of by Julien Vallée on Vimeo. For the same project for Print Magazine, Vallée also created another set of images, including this bird’s-eye view of the making of the cover he did for Print Magazine.

But as you just said, it does have an interesting dynamic when a 3D scene is translated into a 2D image for print. Still, I think this is part of the magic of photography and it’s a lot of fun to work on both. In fact, I often work with a fellow photographer, Simon Duhamel. In my case, I’ve found it very beneficial to work with the same photographer because he knows how to light the scene and knows how to capture what I’m looking to say. We always seem to grow in our experiences together, which, of course, always acts as a valuable tool for the next project.

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