Vonik Design

Working under the name of Vonik Design, Esther is an illustrator from the Netherlands, currently living in Hilversum (a small-ish city next to Amsterdam). Here, she has a little studio at home where she creates most of her digital work, and is also a member of the local Graphic Workplace where she works on her Lino prints and stamps.

As probably most illustrators would say, Esther “loved drawing as a kid”. Back then, she didn’t think it was an option making a living with ‘drawing’, but after some nudges from people around her Esther applied to Art School… and got rejected. But, she tried again a year later and luckily got accepted. After graduating from Willem de Kooning in Rotterdam, Esther felt frustrated with the competiveness she felt around her during her school years, and ended up working in kitchens for 2 years before being ready to ‘get back in there’. She worked partime jobs as an illustrator (at uncoverlab.com & Clarify.nl) and started freelancing on the side. In 2017 Esther figured her client base was big enough and dared taking the leap into fulltime freelancing.

For quite a long time, Esther’s aesthetic focused on colourful, super-detailed, happy, dreamy, digital vector illustrations. The illustrator tells us; “The end results were satisfying but the process felt more and more anoying. I’d spend hours clicking and dragging anchorpoints in Illustrator, redoing every little detail because I would ctrl-z endlessly. None of that felt like actual drawing to me, more like ‘computering’ for a lack of a better word. So at some point I just needed to switch, dropped that style complety and had to re-invent myself.”

Thus, Esther started a lino print course, which forced her to simplify and pay more attention to bold shapes, strong contrast, and compositions. Her Father taught her the basics of ceramics and painting with glaze, which brought Esther a lot of patience and experimenting joy. Then, together with Lienke Raben, she started a mural company; “slowly moving brushes and markers over wall is just the most relaxing feeling”. And last but not least, Esther bought an iPad, so if she had digital jobs she could draw them on then and there, which she found a real gamechanger.

Everything she makes is still flowy, happy, quirky, clumsy in a cute way, often patterned, and featuring hand-lettering, (bad)puns or easter eggs,  but the process of getting to that end result is now “much better”.

Nature is a big inspiration for Esther’s works; the colours, the patterns, and the shapes. However, she also takes a lot of inspiration from graffiti, how people distort and reform type, as well as from tattoo artists, and how they are able to simplify and stylise the subjects they’re drawing in so many different ways.

Esther owns a tiny camper van car, built from a Renault Kangoo, with her boyfriend, which they use to travel Europe for a couple of weeks each year. She tells us; “It’s the greatest feeling being on the road an ending up where ever. But the car is so tiny that it hardly fits us inside, let alone chairs, a table, a lot of art supplies or a computer screen. So we’re saving up money, so we can hopefully buy a decent sized van and start combining travel and work a bit more.”

Describing herself as “not the kind of artist who works with intense deep meanings or layered concepts behind each work,” Esther, instead, chooses to focus on fun, silly, relaxing, and beautiful things, bringing smiles and positive vibes.

Esther’s current printing crush is the Riso process, and she has just released a beautiful new print, Garden Birds.

@vonikdesign
www.vonikdesign.com

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