KATHERINE MCMAHON
Habitat is a weekly series that visits with artists in their workspaces.
This week’s studio: Louise Fili; Kips Bay, New York. “They were going to raise their rent from $12,500 to $50,000 per month, just like that!” Louise Fili said, discussing a Manhattan restaurant whose logo she designed and which was recently forced to close. “When I started my studio, I realized that you can never really depend on any one client. The other thing I learned quickly is that you really have to balance your own projects, because that’s the only way you can grow creatively and find your own voice.”
Fili is perhaps best known for her influential hand-drawn logos and branding, which she’s created in her studio since 1989, but she has also photographed signage in Europe for close to 40 years. “The photos were meant for my own enjoyment and reference—reproduction was never my goal,” she said. “But as technology improved, I reached a point where I could consider putting these photos into a book. Ironically, it was the same technology that was making the signs disappear—to be replaced with clumsily crafted computer type. I felt a sense of urgency to record as much as possible before these images were gone forever.”
In addition to her day job as a designer, Fili teaches at the School of Visual Arts and recently created a line of pencils that she says has become popular with the burgeoning community of adult coloring-book enthusiasts. Fili collects pencils from all over the world, and named CW Pencils on the Lower East Side as a recent source of inspiration. “It’s a young woman who is really passionate about pencils and just sells pencils from all over the world,” she said. Fili has work in permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Below, a look around her workspace.
ALL PHOTOS: KATHERINE MCMAHON
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"I was 16 years old on my first trip to Italy, and the first thing I saw was this Baci billboard. I always say I saw this billboard and had a three-way epiphany. I fell in love all at once with food, type, and all things Italian."
"This is how I used to catalogue all my photography of signs—I’d arrange them in albums by city. "
"The first thing I started with was a series of books on Deco graphic design. The first one we did was Italian Art Deco. This is the French one. I did these with my husband, Steven Heller. He’d do the writing and I would always hand draw the font for the cover and chapter openers."
"I photographed all the signs using a telescoping pole from Paris and in different cities in Italy for inspiration, and ended up turning it into a book. Once technology got so much better, I photographed all the signs and turned it into a book."
A design for the Manhattan restaurant The Mermaid Inn. "My mantra," she said, "is never illustrate the title, so you never have to show a mermaid and say “mermaid” but for this I wanted to do something a little funky. I normally would never hyphenate the name of the restaurant, so I broke lots of rules on this one."
The room where Fili consults with clients. "If the food doesn't taste good, I don't work with them," she said.
"I collect pencils and old pencil boxes. That’s what inspired me to do my own pencils. The colored ‘Tutti Frutti’ pencils have been doing incredibly well now with the current boom of adult coloring books. Manhattan Fruitier, whom I did the logo for, started putting them in their fruit baskets."
Inspiration above Fili's computer.