ART DIRECTOR

ILLUSTRATOR  +   WRITER

What if you’re a lawyer and the shark populated arid waters of Law doesn’t suit your artistic needs?
Well, then, serendipity made me, a top of the class lawyer, discover graphic design and fall in love. And I think that choosing an artistic career was the wisest decision on my part. I mean, how many people can honestly say that they work in the exact field they love?
I was fortunate enough that shortly after graduating from a design program in London (UK) I worked for challenging brands such as Playboy Enterprises, Madame Figaro, and Tabu Magazine, where my creative ideas were encouraged and appreciated. Where innovation was held as a virtue.

My childhood limitless imagination which I didn’t lose in my adult years, helped me become an accomplished art director, as well as an award-winning speculative fiction writer and screenwriter.

I am a visual storyteller, proficient in marketing and promotional material design across a range of traditional and digital platforms, branding development, cover design, editorial design, and infographics design. I created new brands to become successes in a very competitive market, such as Tabu Magazine and ETF Guide. I am recognized as an innovator and ideator with a holistic approach to my design projects.

I’ve directed dozens of pictorials, fashion editorials, and advertorials photo shoots, coordinating photographers, set designers, fashion editors, photo-editors, stylists, and producers. For both Tabu and Playboy Magazines, I created a new brand of pictorials — an editorial series of images narrating a story that evokes strong emotional feelings in the viewer’s psyche.

While I worked as a design instructor at Humber College (Toronto) I loved teaching and mentoring the next generations of visual thinkers.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Costi and watching him work with graphic designers, editors, freelance photographers and stylists, as well as his own staff, with whom he offered patient and wise tutelage, building a graphics resource that served not only Playboy but a host of other publications in the market.”
David Walker–VP, Editorial Director, International Publishing, Playboy Enterprises

Technical Skills: Adobe Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro), QuarkXPress, Final Draft, CSS, HTML, WordPress, Sketch.