MORE: Marie Kondo

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WOULD YOU BE HAPPIER WITH LESS STUFF ?

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THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP, BY MARIE KONDO

Art Director Jamie Prokell contacted us to both conceptualize and illustrate for the March issue.

The article was ‘a collection of five essays, where woman have considered their possessions and debate the merits of these things’, based on Marie Kondo’s method, a best seller author that invites you to re-evaluate the value of things by organizing and tyding up.

On this direction, we had the opportunity to elaborate three prints.

They also could be connected, so there was a chance to narrate a short-story. The art direction required to be minimal, to suit the magazine style and the article’s topic.

One of the core concepts Marie Kondo’s introduces relies in the following sentence: ‘Toss anything that doesn’t spark joy’; and that was strong enough to become instantly our starting point. After a first proposal and later corrections, we ended up simplifying the narrative to best fit the article: a selection process, where one object gets chosen among countless similar items.

This illustrations made it to the printed version of the article.

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FIRST APPROACH

We'd represent the journey of an object during the selection process that our mind do while trying to start from scratch (though Kondo’s philosophy can be applied to life in general, not only material things, but relationships, places, etc). The spark of joy can relate to what we really need or even something that, for some reason, make us happy, bring us memories or retain an emotional value.
Her key is getting rid of stuff, but there’s a few filters we have to apply.