Leap Day edition with Timo Meyer
What is Bonn like? It’s a small city near Cologne, right at the river Rhine. I love living close to the river and having a bigger city nearby. It’s a 15 minute drive to Cologne.
Can you talk about your design for this Leap Day edition of Drip For Drip? I wanted to show the father of the leap day, Julius Caesar. He introduced the Julian calendar based on the solar year, including the leap day, with 45 B.C. being the first add-a-day leap year. I chose to depict Caesar holding a sundial and a sheet calendar.
Do you sketch first or start digitally straightaway? I start with pen on paper. It’s more natural to start on paper. I use sketching for quickly testing out ideas and then transfer that idea to illustrator. My style is very geometric with lots of symmetric shapes. For some projects, my digital work looks a lot like the sketch, but often the sketch is a bit chaotic which I then have to transfer to Illustrator.
You have a lot of playfulness going on in your shapes, color overlaps, and the use of negative space. Does that happen digitally? Sometimes I use copic markers do see if color choices work but most of the coloring process happens in illustrator.
Timo Meyer
Wijtze Valkema
Let’s talk coffee: Arabica or Robusta? Arabica.
How do you drink your coffee? Black or with milk, with cinnamon.
Cinnamon? Do you make that at home or do you have a favorite coffee spot? I work from home and usually make my own coffee, so I couldn’t name a favorite coffee spot. I have a grinder and make pour-over coffee.
Anything interesting projects coming up? Right now I am working on a couple of cover illustrations for a wine magazine. Cover artwork is always great to do, it feels more special than spread illustrations. I actually had to do a bit of research for this one which was fun to do. Just recently I worked on new projects for T-Mobile and WIRED – both will be published in March.
How do you do research for projects? When I have to do research, I use the internet. I do have books at my office, but almost all of them are art and design books, which I use more for inspiration than research. Books with works of Noma Bar, Golden Cosmos, Robert Samuel Handson – just to name a few.
Timo Meyer
The first time we were exposed to Timo’s work was on Dribbble where we came across his Rumble Rumble project. We loved the simple but interesting concept, but even more Timo’s elegant, geometric train wagon illustrations done in three colors. What catches our attention most in Timo’s work is where he chooses to let lines and shapes touch, and where he decides to break a shape into a negative space. It feels like his vector process is a playground where he is exploring the best way to capture symmetry, perspective and shadows in flat design.