Carl Johanson

Carl Johanson was born on the west coast of Sweden, north of Gothenberg, where as a child he spent a lot of time drawing aquariums and dragster cars. After completing college he moved to London to pursue an Art Foundation course at Central St Martins, before moving to Stockholm to study Graphic Design and Illustration. He now lives and works in Bretagne, France and works across graphic design and illustration, with a big focus on children’s books.

To find out a bit more about Carl, we asked him the following questions:

What inspires your work?

 Lots of things. I’ve always liked to look at how things look, especially man made things. I guess it has to do with trying to understand how things are made and what whent through peoples minds when they created something. I guess that also connects to the fact that I like to look at how people dress, how they behave, manners and codes. And humour in a way, even though it’s a bit hard to describe. I guess it’s about seeing things (and people) out of their context, or in the “wrong” context – meetings that normally shouldnt take place. At least that is where I find things that amuses me, and for me that is a kind of inspiration. And books of course, since I learned to read, books has always been extremely important.

Tell us a bit about your process….

I always make ridiculously small sketches in the beginning (size of a stamp). After that comes a loooong period of trying different compositions and colors.



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