Tomislav Zlatić – Designer

Hello, my name is Tom.

I think we live in a highly visual world now. At the technical level, we have endless creative possibilities. This helps us to experiment and explore. To seek out for the new paths and delve into old ones as well.

Throughout my career (over 15 years), I have had the opportunity to work on many different projects. From preschool picture books, mid grade books, covers, magazines, animations, commercials, editorials, city maps... Every project is unique and different in its own way. What is wonderful about our work is that, regardless of past experience, each new project is a fresh and exciting new challenge.

For me, the most important part of illustrating, and sometimes the one that takes the most time, is preparation. The process of envisioning the story. It's like setting up a new world from the beginning. I sketch, I do layouts, I try colour schemes... If there is text involved, I design the page layouts to get a good flow between illustrations and text. I think about the characters, the backgrounds, the composition, and especially the style that would work the best. This helps me to explore and widen my artistic skills. In the end, I like to look at the finished project and feel I've made a step further.