Well, I had yesterday a great evening by listening to Graphic Designer Mario Lombardo for two hours at Gestalten Space in Berlin. In the  exhibition place of one of my favorite design+art publisher young people crowed together to see his wide and really interesting lecture about his work and this of his team. Before the event started  the crowd was joking around, strangers laughed at each others, news were shared, one can eat ice cream, people took seats or pillows and looked with their open eyes on a screen where “THE TENDER SPOT” was shown.

the image below is just a short sketch I made during the speech from him.

and then he arrived, the real nice looking guy with his dusty pink jeans, a simple grey shirt, black sneaker, big Nerd glasses, trendy facial hair and some Britney Spears microphone wrapped around his head and welcomed the big audience.

In the following two hours he showed a “small” 500 sheets wide show of his last 10 years. Mario Lombardo did already a lot and with his young age he is fucking successful, totally down to earth and has a lovely daughter, who was not at all shy and interrupted him to assist her father!

The most impressive examples were the beginning, where he worked still in Cologne (nowadays in Berlin) for Spex and there he and his team were mixing analog and digital work really well, for example he did a magazine in the style of a stamp collectors book, by using a stapler for some cool typography or even was stitching for the magazine. Since 2004 he has his own agency and his favorite works are typography,mixing up established graphics and giving them a modern twist and Corporate Identity Design. He talked about working for DUMMY,LIEBLING, BIELEFELDER KUNSTVEREIN,DÜSSELDORFER KUNSTHALLE, BERLIN BERLINALE, the american musician SCOTT MATTHEW and even the more commercial ways for FIAT, TOYOTA, ZITTY, REVOLVERHELD and VIVA and lots of others which you can see by looking at his website.

thanks Gestalten and Mario for the two hours of pleasure!