10 Questions With… Gio Pastori

Gio Pastori Shares Insights into His Design Career  

Interior Design: What are your earliest memories of design? What sparked you to pursue a career in illustration?

Gio Pastori: My father is an actor, and theatrical sets are my first memories of design. I was fascinated by the illusion of spaces built from wooden structures, drapery, and lights. Another memory is the surfaces of wardrobes at home with 1980s textures like Ettore Sottsass’s Bacterio, hypnotic and rich fields of action for the imagination. Until the 2000’s an uncle ran a paint factory. Being able to visit as a child certainly influenced my career and the decision to never stop drawing.

ID: Why collage as a medium?

GP: Collage makes extreme synthesis possible. It enables me to not get lost in the details and forces me to keep my lines clean. I’ve always been a paper hoarder. When I started studying illustration, I was looking for a very graphic and clean, almost geometric style. I experimented with digital and vector illustration, aiming for maniacal perfection that ultimately wearied me.

ID: Milan is arguably the center of design, and you work in many of its aspects—from fashion to music, stage design, and furnishings. What is unique to each when working across these varied platforms.

GP: I’ve been working with style offices for only a few years. I love to observe the dynamics that enable the same design to become embroidery, print, or fabric. The metamorphosis from drawing to wearable garment. I see that the times are long but the approach to work more hectic than, for example, the design of a set or a simple image.

ID: How did you collaborate with Leftloft, another Milan-based studio involved in communication and branding?

GP: It was Leftloft that included me in the proposal for Salone del Mobile Milano campaign. I long wanted to work with them and what better opportunity. The work took several months of continuous exchanges of ideas.

ID: What are you saying with the Salone campaign? 

GP: The goal was to create an alphabet of objects that would invite the public of Milan and the world to relearn to read them, to look into their souls and free themselves from trends or brands. To achieve it, I identified a brilliant color combination, at some points disturbing, to hinder an immediate focus on the subjects. Clean lines and discreet volumes are inserted in a dreamlike and fluctuating atmosphere. The result is imagery different from my usual work. This led me to free myself from my own style. Not an easy operation.

ID: Where will these 26 alphabet posters be displayed in the city?

GP: They will appear in various places: urban advertising spaces, stations, LED walls, and probably publications. I’m pleased to know that they will be tram walls, my first work to end up on a tram.

ID: What are you working on now?

GP: I’m illustrating the campaign for an opera season and designing collage workshops for children and adults. Between commissions, I’m designing a series of big collages and paper sculptures to enter the universe of galleries.