federico de luca, rome 1975.

Digital Retouch, Graphic Design, Illustration.


I grew up drawing. My first job was as a comic strips illustrator and inker in 1995, while I was studying Sociology at the University. In 1999 I started working with digital imagery and illustration doing retouching for Giovanni Cozzi, a famous Italian photographer of celebrities and other subjects.

In 2000, with some friends, I opened a studio for graphic design and digital retouch called Spazio360. It had been my first opportunity to coordinate a team and work with high-profile clients from the Italian society.

In 2003 I took the decision to pursue a different professional carreer and I left the studio to undertake my own individual profession as a graphic designer.

I started to collaborate intensively with Alessandro Dobici whom allowed me to work closely and in a very productive way with Contents Studio, a fashion-specialized agency based in Rome.

At the end of a very proficuous and satisfying collaboration with them, in 2009 I decided to turn my attention to new and more stimulating professional environments and – also driven by personal motives – I chose to move to Berlin and begin a new experience in a fantastic city with a unique history; a place full of contradictions, some resolved, some not. A city where different elements, apparently distant, can coexist. Harmony and chaos.

Today I work as a graphic freelancer, in Berlin.


Digital Retouch

I always thought that graphic retouching is not only a method of adjusting pictures: I regards the digital retouch as an essential conclusion to the work accomplished through photography. I began when this type of work was performed in darkrooms and, up to nowadays, I still “feel” the pictures as it was done in the past, integrating this with the new tecniques and opportunities given by the digital era: modern instruments as a support to a sensitivity old like the photographic language itself.


Graphic Design

My idea of graphic design goes back to its own origins: a mix between image and message, image and text and image and promotional purposes.
I am convinced that digital era is bringing us back to what was the origin of graphics, beyond antiquated and rigid distictions of elements. Distinctions arised from technical limitatations which are now surpassed. Something that we are still experimenting each day through the adoption of a newly liberated language of communication.


Illustration

Illustration for me is simply natural: Probably, drawing has been the first language that I ever felt as mine. Is very often more like a need than a work duty: I love to create visions which connect real elements to emotions, dreams with sensations, in a context moving across the concious and subconcious.


clients

McCann Erickson, Grey Italy, Armando Testa, Vogue, Max, Maxim, Vanity Fair, Reebok, Honda, Tim, Alice, Sony Music, Valtur, Minerva Picture, Sanmarco Film, Mondadori, RCS, RAI, Opel, Claudio Baglioni, Laltramoda, Sandro Ferrone, Grimaldi & Giardina, NWY, List, Stretch Couture, Compagnia Italiana.