It’s not every day that we get the color fever. But scrolling through Alycia Rainaud’s Instagram page is a sure recipe to make your head dizzy. The graphic designer launched her color project, Malavida, in 2016, exploring feelings and life’s complexity through daily abstractions.
Inspired by Jungian therapy and creative exercises, Malavida also remains a way of self-expression as well as a tool to raise emotional intelligence and mental health sensitivity, claims her site. Whatever it is – it seems to work.
“Being a graphic designer in the first place, I’ve also always been drawn to abstract and experiments in general,” said Rainaud in an interview with the Ohh Deer blog. “As far as I remember, before creating Malavida, I started playing with textures and visual effects for my graphic design projects while I was in school. I truly wanted to, one day, be able to build my own identity, based on the things I like and the way I am as a person. This trippy yet dark vibe has always been a part of my life, so I guess that my style and designs had to convey these aspects, in order to stay as true to myself as possible.
“My work always has this tangible to digital dynamic,” she adds. “I usually start by working with a mix of different types of paints, inks, and materials to create a base movement and vibe. In this step, I’m not bothering too much with the colors or displacements to look perfect. The second step is digitalizing the artwork through a scanner or a camera, and then moving on to my favorite part, post-production. This third step is all about movements enhancements and adding all these signature vibrant colors. To achieve this effect, I usually work with algorithms, 3D software such as Cinema 4D and of course Photoshop.”
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