Image of the day: Artfreak by Mik Muhlen

Computer Arts: Tell us about Artfreak ... 
Mik Muhlen: The brief was a relatively simple one. Every year, the Mudam does a series of workshops and artist studio visits for kids and young adults called Art Freak, and since I'll be opening the doors to my studio this year, they asked me if I would be up for designing the poster and leaflet for the season.

CA: Describe your workflow ...
MM: I usually start off a project by mulling it over for anything between a couple of hours and a couple of days. Not the most proactive approach, but it helps me weed out those bad initial ideas. I then sketch the idea out in order to get an idea of the composition. The rest then depends on the project. Either I'll redraw it by hand, or I'll scan it in and rework it in Illustrator or Photoshop. If I redraw something in Illustrator it will usually take me a couple of days to finish a piece, as I'll usually zoom in on tiny little details and fiddle about with them until they're exactly the way they should be.

CA: How did you get into design?
MM: As a teenager, I'd hang around local, underground metal bands. Since I didn't play any instruments, I put together the flyers for their concerts. They were terrible, in retrospect, but that's probably what got me interested in graphic design in the first place. I went on to study graphic design in secondary school and discovered illustration during my foundation year, which drastically changed my plans. I think my style still feeds off of both, as I like to work with clean lines, and nice and even gradients, but sometimes I'll just need to do something completely by hand. It all depends on what I'm working on and what message I'm trying to get across.

Check out more from Mik on his website. 

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