How a Mangrovia collage is made

“TREE, the very slow explosion of a seed.” I always think of this sentence by Bruno Munari, like a haiku, when I look at one of my collages on the site.

My tree is that collage, standing there all arched up, full of its details and meanings, filled every inch of it with scraps of combined images and colour. But what was there before? An empty sheet of paper inside post-production software. That sheet is never empty for me, it is a fertile soil full of potential, to be cultivated with patience, trial and error. The first timid gem emerges when the idea that had been in my mind takes shape: from there on, the composition works, the colour begins to dialogue with the collage, and the elements come to life and begin to branch out into the board. But it is not always easy to break through the cold barrier of the whiteboard: it can be a scary moment! Over the years, I have learnt to get through it through a small routine of a series of well-timed actions, not only to complete the cover but to do it on time. This was also the case for the making of A city for all. Or the art of living together.

9:00 A.M. The morning starts with a bancha tea, strictly in the cup with a Maneki Neko¹ drawn on it, and with this playlist playing in the background.

9:30 A.M. I read all the information that has been turned over to me by the editorial team on what the article will be about. The production flow involves the creation of the covers a month before the publication of the piece. The first reading is always relaxed and relaxed, the second is more analytical: I start saving evocative words, interesting concepts and excerpts of quotes.

10:00 A.M. I jot down some keywords and insert them in a scattered and haphazard manner within the white sheet of my vector graphics software. At this moment, all the words are written with the same size and in a regular font (i.e. a neutral and simple typeface, no bold or italics).

I take a deep breath. We are in the crucial phase, the moment when the seed is inserted into the soil. I group the various words in a reasoned manner: those that seem to me to be most evocative become larger, highlighted graphically, even in bold type, while I position the others in a corolla, to enrich their meaning. Each keyword thus finds its place, its size and its “weight”.

10:30 A.M. This map so far is only textual: to turn it into a mood board, I do an image search. What is a mood board? A collage of small ideas, created with images, text and other design materials, which is intended to evoke or represent the particular style or tone of a project. In this case, the concepts of “sustainability” and “water” become wind turbines, that of “relationship life” a heart. At this stage, it is essential to stick to simple visual ideas, with a direct (and, if you like, “obvious”) reference to the keyword: from this simplicity come the suggestions that will lead to the final idea.

11:30 A.M. The practical phase begins: the creation of the digital collage. I set the format to 1920×1080 pixels, whiteboard and off we go. To search for images to assemble for my collage I mainly use sites with photos and illustrations in the public domain, with very high quality and a search possibility by tags and filters. Before placing the elements on the board, I go back to the moodboard, where I choose to focus on the keyword ‘relationship life’. On the sheet, I associate the classic image of two hands sharing a paper heart. I look for other images of hearts and come across the anatomical one, shown inside a tangle of veins and arteries: the word “arteries” recalls the “tangle of roads” and the life that flows chaotically within it, among cars, buses, bicycles and other means. I think it is a good starting point: the city as a human body, where each element is related to the other, functions thanks to the other, and where energy is the engine of everything.

I draw the silhouette of a body and begin to ask myself how to place these ‘organ-buildings’ in space. How to make them dialogue? How to bring nature and the concept of new energies into this image?

Or rather, even before that, I ask myself: How to represent the heart that moves this body-city?

I am starting to think that the backbone of this body could be a river, to visually insert another of the keywords and also highlight the concept of viability (perhaps reinforcing it with the inclusion of a boat). To include the theme of “energy sustainability”, I take inspiration from the position of Botticelli’s Venus², where the lines of the hair convey the idea of movement and the hair itself can become a flow of water that continues the river of the body. At this point, I realise that the very arm of this figure could become a road: a circulatory system that keeps the body alive and takes the form of plants, branches and roots that, by insinuating themselves into the urban elements, allow their symbiotic survival.

Exactly at this moment, I understand the style this cover will have: a mixture of collage and illustration. I will draw some elements, in a “cut-out” style, and cut out and combine others. I will intervene with textures to give homogeneity to the whole.

3:00 P.M. Coffee break: I need a few minutes to distance myself, physically and temporally, from the project. I think about something else, look out of the window, listen to music. This phase is essential: by distancing myself, I can go back to looking at the cover with relaxed eyes, as if I were looking at it for the first time. Does it all work? Do the elements tell the idea of “one city for all” well?

One should not be afraid to answer “No, something does not work, something is out of tune”

It has often happened to me to trash all, or part, of a collage that initially seemed to work perfectly. In Mangrovia, it sometimes happens because the writer of the article, to whom I send this semi-finished version of the collage, points out to me that certain concepts – central to the story they are going to tell – are too weak in their visual counterpart. In producing the collages for Mangrovia with the editorial team I dance on the fine line between representation and interpretation of the theme of the article. 

It is always a game of parts: the writer often wants to find in the collage all the micro-stories that the article will tell, while I tend to choose one and from there fill in the inside and outside, following associations by images and not by concepts. So what comes out is a collage that instead of explaining the article, tries to make it “feel”.  

3.30 P.M. Time for the internal post-revision. It’s time to finalise the image: in this case, I adjusted the edges of the various cutouts here and there, added details such as shadows and birds, a bit of colour correction and the background elements. Now, the cover is ready to “dress” the editorial and I dedicate myself to the next tree to be planted.

---

1. Also known as the “Lucky Cat”, it represents a cat calling to those who look at it. ↩︎
2. Sandro Botticelli’s tempera on canvas painting The Birth of Venus is one of the iconic paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Painted for the Medici villa of Castello in the late 15th century, it is currently housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. ↩︎