Interview: Stellavie, Subtle and Streamlined Printmaking

Recently, BroadwayWorld got in touch with the founders of Stellavie, a printmaking that elevates charts, maps, and movie images with its own brand of sublime minimalism. The leaders of Team Stellavie, Steffen Heidemann and Viktoria Klein, have given us an overview of what makes their company -- and their distinctive prints -- unique.

Tell us a little about the origins of Stellavie. When and how did you begin, and what goals did you set for the company early on?

We are Stellavie, an independent and creatively led design studio from Hamburg, Germany.

Being educated in communication arts & design and strategic thinking we are working in the creative field for clients both national and international. Stellavie began as a small side project a couple of years ago and is the direct result of our passion for paper, print, production, typography and concepts.

From our early days we intended Stellavie to be an open-minded and playful safe ground set up to purchase ideas that were true to itself. We have not looked back ever since.

People have been really kind to us, response has been great. And we try to be really open-minded and kind with customers, partners and everyone we meet.

Stellavie is a true passion project.

How do you decide what projects to pursue? Is there any one print or project that you remember as particularly rewarding?

One of our earliest goals was to become independent enough to be able to focus on projects that we truly wanted to get involved with. We are looking for ideas that challenge us from both a professional and personal point of view. Thus most of our recent projects have actually been incredible rewarding. We truly enjoyed working on our stellar maps, the espresso prints and our recent release of movie director prints.

Can you sum up a single art or design philosophy that informs your work? Or are you drawn to a few different major ideas?

We are probably drawn towards a couple of different ideas and philosophies, eclecticism might be what best describes our approach. Though definitely obsessed with visual details, we believe in function rather than form, we focus on simplicity, we do believe that great design solves relevant questions and that design is closer to culture than to commerce.

Our process always involves a mix of abstract thinking, bare hands, pen & paper and computers - all can be infinitely exceptional tools.

Physical momentum is something that we are truly inspired by. Getting connected with the process. Smelly ink, tearing paper. We are changing and developing almost continuously, every project inspires the next, creatively and from an entrepreneur point of view.

But we are growing slowly, with intent.

What does the future hold for Stellavie? Are there any upcoming projects that are especially exciting, or any new avenues for art and publicity that you think could be especially promising?

We are really looking forward to a couple of new projects. There are some things we are going to explore with Julian Rentzsch, the illustrator behind our movie director portrait prints.

But there are so many things happening! We are actually working on a lot of new projects right now, which we can not disclose, but all will be focusing not only on what they are about, but also how they will be produced, with letterpress techniques, blind embossing, foil-stamping, silkscreen printing..

We will also be focusing on finding new partners and retailers, both online and offline.