Winner of the 2007 Adobe Design Achievement Award for Digital Illustration, Jörg Block created unique, eye-catching imagery for the Research Calendar of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences 2008.
Block worked several years as a graphic designer in e-business companies, handling print and corporate design, and Web and screen design. Then he started to study illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Department of Design, Media and Information). At first, he fully dedicated himself to artistic basics and to freeform graphic arts and painting. Now he wishes to combine his previous experience from graphic design with a more artistic approach. His special interest is creating illustrations that comment on editorial content in an idiosyncratic and pointed way.
These illustrations were created for the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences research calendar. Each month illustrates a different project to demonstrate the variety of the university’s research activities for the general public.
“I used striking, funny, or droll images to inspire spontaneous interest in the featured research subjects,” says Block. “I intended the images to stimulate viewer curiosity about the concrete research activities referenced on the back of each calendar page and hope the viewer reads the detailed information there. The illustration subjects include marketing bio food, logistics systems, anesthesia technology, joining technology, bio diesel, and packaging.”
He started by researching the featured subjects, then he created pencil-and-paper sketches and converted the sketches to vector art in Adobe Illustrator. “I created all the forms using the rectangle and ellipse shapes, the pencil tools, or by combining shapes with the Pathfinder,” Block explains. “I defined colors with CMYK values and built a color library. My illustrations feature pure color surfaces, linear and radial gradients, adjustment objects, transparencies, and various fill methods.”
To view the winners in each category of the 2007 Adobe Design Achievement Awards, visit http://www.adaagallery.com/winners/winners.php.
To take part in this year’s event, visit http://www.adobe.com/education/adaa/.