We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Todd Watts about their original and creative Paper Crafted Sculptures design work. Todd Watts is an award-winning communication designer, that makes our world a better place with their original paper crafted sculptures works.
Todd Watts ("TW") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work The Power of the Paperback Paper Crafted Sculptures. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
TW : I wanted to create a visual representation of some of my favourite books. Paper-craft seemed the perfect medium to achieve this.
TW : I wanted to challenge myself with a passion project using paper craft to elevate my favourite stories into surreal and imaginative works of art. I wanted to create a conversation and a guessing game between the viewer of the art and the books they represented.
TW : I'd like to expand the concept, adding more compositions and eventually hosting a gallery exhibition with each piece on exhibit.
TW : This was completed over a period of 2 months.
TW : I moved house a few months ago and spent most of that time waiting for the internet to be connected. This led me to re-discover a love for reading books. I decided to challenge myself and represent this using paper-craft to achieve my vision.
TW : I'm open to discussion regarding selling the artwork and the concept but this was primarily a personal passion project.
TW : I love creating paper-craft designs. They're a test in patience and problem solving, it's very exciting when it works.
TW : There are lots of brilliant paper designers who I'm influenced by including Magda Ksiezak (Okkiosk) as well as Zim & Zoe, Lobul0 and Beci Orpin.
TW : Readers. Artists. Anyone interested in art and books.
TW : The ideas behind each concept is unique because it's my personal representation of a key element from each story. I've chosen a minimalistic approach to the photography and build of each composition.
TW : The entire project is representing the power of reading. In a digital world it's becoming harder to dedicate time to the classic paperback but reading from screens makes us read slower, learn less deeply, remember less and sleep worse. This why students prefer to print out their electronic textbooks. This is 'The Power of the Paperback'.
TW : I used 'Adobe Illustrator' to create the paper templates. 'Capture One' and 'Photoshop' to capture the photos and minimal re-touching.
TW : The paper sculptures are the most unique aspect of the design.
TW : There was a minimal role of technology given the concept. I wanted to keep this project as digitally un-touched as possible.
TW : I obviously had to read every book featured in my design to create a concept behind each composition.
TW : The paper sculptures were sometimes very technical and their size made each composition difficult to perfect.
TW : I had seen some great work on A;Design Award and decided I'd like to place my work in that calibre of competition.
TW : I learnt much about paper-craft and photo compositing. Because I wanted the designs to remain as untouched as possible I had to work hard to perfect the lighting of each composition so there was minimal retouching.
