Stefano Marra’s illustrations have a playful flavor to them that invites the viewer to join in. Based in the south of Italy, Marra works as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, attracting a small but meaningful following to his Instagram page.
His illustrations – bold and vibrant – tend to be character-driven, based around an idea or narrative he tries to communicate. “I think that the idea is the center of my work,” he told Illustrators’ Lounge. “If the original idea is good, if it can transmit something, then you can work on it in many ways. Never be trivial, try to find your own way to communicate something.”
Growing up, Marra was fixated by Popeye and Donald Duck cartoons, that he used to try and replicate himself. “My parents stimulated my passion for drawings. I wanted to be an animator, I always wanted to tell a story,” he says.
“At the end of the high school I decided to study at the School of Design in Vietri sul Mare, a beautiful place near Salerno,” he recalled. “There I continued to study graphic design and illustration. After school, I met Ilaria Grimaldi, an illustrator (who became my friend) and taught me a lot of things of the illustration world and suggested I stick with it, even if my education was more focused on graphic design.”
His work deserves all the hype it can get!
