Dystopian narratives, nostalgia and love reoccur in multidisciplinary graphic designer Basile Fournier’s portfolio

Basile Fournier’s path to graphic design was set when, at around the age of ten, while tagging under a bridge, he met a fellow graffiti artist. Basile, who grew up in a small village in the south of France, was obsessed with graffiti and spent much of his time reading magazines about street and hip-hop culture. “I remember asking him what job would allow me to do graffiti for the rest of my life, and he told me that it was graphic designer,” Basile recalls. And so that was that. He pursued the medium throughout high school, then spent some time at Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg and eventually found his way to ECAL, from which he recently graduated with a bachelor in graphic design. A whole host of internships, including ones at Printed Matter, Golgotha and Bureau Borsche have helped him along the way too. “Each and every one of those experiences taught me something different and helped me to have a professional approach to the graphic design world,” he says, meaning that today, despite having not been out of university for long, Basile is already a technically and conceptually accomplished designer, with a portfolio that bears the hallmarks of a practitioner well beyond his years.

Basile’s time at ECAL has played a major role in shaping his meticulous, technical approach to design – it’s a school famed as a bastion of the Swiss style while also nurturing some of the most boundary-pushing and cutting edge creativity, after all. However, processes and techniques aside, Basile says the greatest thing the school taught him was to work hard. “ECAL taught me how to be rigorous,” he explains, “how to not be overwhelmed by working under pressure, and how to work on a lot of projects at the same time. And now that I’m freelance, it’s basically my daily routine.”

Although his degree is in graphic design, Basile’s portfolio is multidisciplinary, featuring photography and CGI alongside more traditional design practices. CGI, in particular, lends his work a certain aesthetic; it’s crisp, clean, precise and detail-oriented. “There are also themes that I like to explore within my work and through personal projects like our relation to technology, or feelings like nostalgia and love,” Basile adds. “I like to create beauty in something dark or frightening, like dystopian narratives.” In this sense, his practice borrows from the Japanese concept of ‘mono no aware’ which denotes sensitivity and empathy towards ephemera, giving his work a deeper meaning – an awareness of the transience of all things and comfort in this impermanence.

I also like the technical challenge that CGI software creates. There is always new software or plugins that I want to try and use. It’s so satisfying to overcome a challenge that you had with software, sometimes after days.

INT: You also work across typography, editorial, photography and more. What are the benefits of being a multidisciplinary creative?

BF: I think each medium should serve a specific purpose. Knowing what to use for each and every project is, for me, the idea of a good designer. Knowing what you want to express through one medium is what I’m striving for.

I think the more mediums you know and the more tools you have in your toolbox, the more versatile you can be, and you can respond to a broader need of creative services. It is important because it gives you freedom, and also varies the projects that you work on. I love to work on different projects at the same time, that way I’m never really bored, and learning every day.