Marine Duroselle is a young graphic designer whose vibrant, playful practice encompasses an unusually wide range of materials and techniques, extending from 3-dimensional ceramics to 2-dimensional print. As a result of her visual research she has developed a rich language of pattern, shape and colour, one that is inflected by expressive nuances that include texture, transparency and the chromatic qualities of saturation and luminosity.

The ability to systematically order and classify information is essential to her work as a designer, and she applies a similar approach to her more experimental representations of letters and words as shapes or images. An example can be found in one of her ‘Alphabet Books’ where the letter ‘W’ is associated with a pictogram expressive of water. This shape is reiterated as an element of a ceramic form, comprised of symbols representing a waterfall and waves. She explains: ‘I like to associate one shape with another - to make it speak.’

Other influences that she acknowledges date from childhood years spent overseas due to her father’s job. These include the colours and patterns of Peruvian woven textiles and features of the commercial and residential architecture of New York. Her flag shapes were inspired by International maritime signal flags and they make an appearance as stitched-on elements in her Wal-Mart series of books in which numerals, symbols, phrases and architectural photographic images are brought into close families of association. A related installation of flags, formed by a layering of coloured paper shapes, employs the changing qualities of translucency, light and shadow as significant characteristics of the overall design.

Text by Tessa Peters

Marine Duroselle (b. Lyon, 1984) studied at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2004-2009) and at the Royal College of Art, London (2009-2011). She undertook a residency at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Centre, Denmark in 2011. Her practice as a graphic designer and art director is based in London. Some of her recent projects include exhibition graphics for the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Rivington Place Gallery, the Jewish Museum London, and the Imperial War Museum.