Greetings From North Albania - Pop Style Postcards And Post Stamps

I am Marilyn Tota, and I am a young graphic designer, with a MSc on Applied Design, based in Tirana Albania.

I’ve been in love with art and design since the day I picked up my first crayon. Constantly drawing, doodling and making things as I grew up, I always knew that I wanted to pursue a creative career. While I spend most of my days on the computer, I am passionate about finding ways to work with my hands. Art has always been my first love and I continue to practice with mediums such as painting, printmaking or cut paper collage. I’m a firm believer in the power of a strong concept with an unexpected execution and with these beliefs in mind, I challenge myself to explore with every project.The idea of being a damn good designer is what wakes me up in the morning.

The initial idea of ​​this project was to create a bundle of postcards and post stamps in order to promote the North-West part of Albania. For this projects are selected some objects with the most characteristic features which remind us of those areas.

The fact that objects such as: lahuta (lute), kulla (tower), xhubleta*(no enaglish name for it), djep (cradle), opinga (Albanian leather shoes like moccasins) etc are selected, is because they are objects that have been used and existed in the past, but are now towards extinction. They are now represented as "gifts" and also an important part of the Albanian cultural heritage. Formerly they were very representative of the area, but nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to access and locate them. This is the result of the great misuse and, most importantly, most of these facilities are no longer produced in Albania, only in rare cases when the inhabitants of those areas still preserve the tradition of production and processing of these facilities in a traditional way.

This project was inspired from the Pop Art colors, which are vibrant, strong, fresh colors and have strong graphic contrast. But also the traditional folk costumes of this specific area, in Albania, have these kind of colors, mostly used as details. Enjoy

More info: behance.net