Justyna Stasik’s illustrations are distinctively flat, based around organic shapes and limited color palettes. The result— cartoonish, vibrant, and all-around playful—cuts to chase, translating complex ideas into bite-sized solutions.
According to her bio, as a teenager in Poland, Stasik avoided doing her homework in favor of making collages and doodling. She continued this hobby throughout university (surprisingly, not art school) experimenting with a Wacom tablet. But it was only when she landed an internship at a game tech startup that she really honed her craft.
“I never went to art school and I’m 100% self-taught,” she stressed in an interview with Sense of Creativity. “At some point I’ve landed an internship at a small Polish tech startup creating iOS games for kids. I was offered a full-time position there and that’s how my career started.” According to Stasik, being the only creative on board she had to learn a bit of everything including illustration, animation, and graphic design.
But after some time she found she needed a change of scenery, moving first to France and later on to Canada. Now based in Montreal, Stasik works as an illustrator full time, with clients that include giants like Apple, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Sony. “I don’t think it’s about learning the creativity itself but more about figuring out how to access what’s already inside,” she says. “And that is definitely something you can learn later on in life.”
