Bráulio Amado: This year I will not eat at my desk

It’s Nice That has teamed up with Squarespace to commission four illustrators to create new works that depict their new year’s resolution on a Cover Page. We asked each illustrator to make a creative resolution for 2016 and create a new piece of work inspired by the commitment. Here, we unveil the third Cover Page created by New York-based illustrator and graphic designer Bráulio Amado.

This year I will not eat at my desk

“I was having lunch at my desk when I got the brief, so it was all quite easy in terms of inspiration and thoughts. I did have other resolutions, but this one made more sense for the project and I felt it would be more fun to illustrate. One of the things that I noticed when I moved to NYC from Portugal was that most people eat lunch at their desks. I used to make fun of it and then, inevitably, I became one of “those” people. It’s not that I’m even doing any work while I’m eating, most of the times I’m just scrolling down around the web because it’s messy to try to type anything or move my mouse. Anyway, 2016 will be the year where I’ll stop doing this and use my lunch break to be as away as possible from my desk.

My portfolio is such a mess of styles and schizophrenic work — but I do kind of like that. I like change and experimentation, so I’m happy to add this work to my portfolio as one of my first 2016 illustrations. My illustration style is a bit all over the place. I have recently started doing these vector drawings and airbrush the hell out of them after. I thought this project would be a good excuse to use this style again and play around to see where it would go.

For the rest of 2016 I’m still working at Businessweek and will do music posters on the side. I have a zine coming out soon through Look Back and Laugh from Slovenia and I’m now the art-director/designer of a night club in Brooklyn called Good Room. I have been making some music at the same time, just for fun, and will have some records out during the next months. It’s exciting to be creative without having to draw or move the mouse around.

In terms of keeping my resolution, it’s a case of so far so good. A few weeks have gone by and I haven’t eaten at my desk yet. I have been eating five meters away from my desk though, because it’s cold outside and I don’t know where to go since midtown NYC is a nightmare to find a place to sit down somewhere, eat and relax."

Bráulio Amado is an illustrator living and working in New York.

Check out Bráulio’s Cover Page here!

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