Alex Trochut

In His Own Lane.
A conversation with Alex Trochut

We sat with typographic designer extraordinaire (and studio neighbor) Alex Trochut to chat about life… and design.

Barcelona born and Brooklyn adoptee, Trochut’s work is at a cross road of design, illustration, typographic and animation. Drawing on a mix of styles and genres, inspired by Pop Art, street culture, fashion and music, he is pushing language to its limits.

How did living in Barcelona shape your artistic style?

I guess more than I realise I guess, but at the same time is not something that I can really frame consciously. Barcelona is a very unique place, with a huge concentration of creativity, hungry for something fresh, more than anything growing up there and surrounded by that melting pot of cultural diversity, street art, music, meditarranean living, somehow transfered to my way of doing things, but is hard to know for sure in the age of internet.

Who are your greatest influences artistically?

So many, from Pop artistst like Litchenstein, to the Kinetic Master Carlos Cruz-Diez, to Sol Levitt, Terry Haggerty, Tony Cragg, Felipe Pantone, Revok,... to name a few

What prompted your decision to move to New York?

The city called, and I decided to give it a go...

Describe a career highlight. What made it so memorable ?

Getting nominated for a Grammy for the Alagoas record packaging.

What does your ideal project look like?

It starts with an unexpected challenge, then there is a huge internal battle, almost painful, but then at some point, you find what you were looking for but had no idea what it was.

What about design and type fascinates you?

It’s abstract nature and how flexible they can be. Type design is so open to change as Music, Fashion or Cooking.

Are you able to balance your personal projects with your work projects?

These days there is a big mix of both kinds on my days, and I love it, to me this is the perfect balance to keep you motivated and always learning, when you can combine both, doing just commercial projects always ends up in a dead end, I think is important to shift towards your own personal interests and experiment within your own time, this way it can fuel your ideas on commercial projects and make you more prepared and motivated during commercial projects.

https://alextrochut.com/
@trochut

Interview + Photos: Hayley Hill