Poster I illustrated for the brilliant people of Parkly.
They are some sort of urban architecht design wizards who always seem to know what’s the next big thing.
This poster is thought to be given as gift to their collaborators and clients.
Commissioned portrait of Mark. I was told Mark loves playing records so I decided to build the portrait around Mark’s favourite albums, all of which are imaginary, but related to different people, places or events during Mark’s life.
Illustration for the Rakkautta & Anarkiaa - Helsinki International Film Festival 2021 poster.
Each year the festival chooses a new artist to design the festival poster, and I was lucky enough to be chosen for 2021.
Brilliant art direction by Samppa Ranta.
When It’s Too Late We’ll Dance
In 2022 I held a future studies based exhibition in Galleria Kuvitus, Helsinki. The exhibition consisted of these 7 illustrations, one audiovisual installation and an essay written by future researcher Marianna Mäki-Teeri.
Sami Viljanto:
“In the 1960s, the future was seen bright. By the 2000s, we believed we would be traveling by flying cars, living under glass domes on alien planets, or at least underwater. Now, in the 2020s, instead of the horizon, our gaze is on our feet and the discussion about the future is largely focused on dystopias. What kind of future are we creating without utopias? In addition to this core question, the works in the exhibition reflect on e.g. our perception of time, the impact of our history on how we see our future, and understanding of our role in the long chain of humanity.”
When It’s Too Late We’ll Dance
In 2022 I held a future studies based exhibition in Galleria Kuvitus, Helsinki. The exhibition consisted of these 7 illustrations, one audiovisual installation and an essay written by future researcher Marianna Mäki-Teeri.
Sami Viljanto:
“In the 1960s, the future was seen bright. By the 2000s, we believed we would be traveling by flying cars, living under glass domes on alien planets, or at least underwater. Now, in the 2020s, instead of the horizon, our gaze is on our feet and the discussion about the future is largely focused on dystopias. What kind of future are we creating without utopias? In addition to this core question, the works in the exhibition reflect on e.g. our perception of time, the impact of our history on how we see our future, and understanding of our role in the long chain of humanity.”
Commissioned portrait of a labradoodle called Winnie. He’s known for his interest in birds and rabbits, so they’ve been included in the portrait as well.
When It’s Too Late We’ll Dance
In 2022 I held a future studies based exhibition in Galleria Kuvitus, Helsinki. The exhibition consisted of these 7 illustrations, one audiovisual installation and an essay written by future researcher Marianna Mäki-Teeri.
Sami Viljanto:
“In the 1960s, the future was seen bright. By the 2000s, we believed we would be traveling by flying cars, living under glass domes on alien planets, or at least underwater. Now, in the 2020s, instead of the horizon, our gaze is on our feet and the discussion about the future is largely focused on dystopias. What kind of future are we creating without utopias? In addition to this core question, the works in the exhibition reflect on e.g. our perception of time, the impact of our history on how we see our future, and understanding of our role in the long chain of humanity.”
Illustrations for Psykologi - magazine about being a self-employed entrepreneur as a psychologist.
Ad campaign illustration for city of Parainen.
Together with the people of Å Communications
It’s not always easy.
This illustration was made for and first published in a group exhibition in Soul Illustration Fair 2018 curated by Insu Lee.
Lastenklinikoiden Kummit Ry (The Association of Friends of the University Children's Hospitals) organised a campaign to raise awareness and to collect funds to help children with anxiety and other mental issues.
For the campaign they first asked children to try and describe their anxieties in written form. These texts where then given to 10 different finnish artists to visualise.
I tried to visualise the following:
”I’ve been bullied since pre-school. No one even looks at me. It feels like I don’t exist. In the evenings I just want to go to bed. Sometimes I’m too afraid of the following day to fall asleep.” - Girl, 9 years old.
You can learn more about the campaign at www.kummit.fi/mielentila/
A family portrait of dear friends. Together with a group of common friends who commissioned this projected for me, we tried to collect loads of anecdotes, interests and history around their lives, and combine as many of them as possible into one illustration reflecting their journey in life so far, up to this point of his 40th birthday.
Illustration for a portrait exhange with one of my favourite artists, Kalevi Helvetti, who happens to be also a poet and a ghost.
You can see Kalevi’s work at: www.kalevihelvetti.fi/
Between years 2018-2021, I illustrated roughly 20 re-written fairytale illustrations for Spotlight Magazine in Germany. We went through most of the classics from Rumpelstiltskin to Jack and the Beanstalk to Goldilocks.
Here’s a selection of some of those illustrations.
Set of illustrations for Psykologi magazine. The article was based on interviews of 5 psychologists about how they feel they’re able to continue helping their clients during these uncertain times of remote work and covid.
Editorial illustration for Gasetti magazine about circular economy.
Illustration for Firstdays.eu, a company aiming to help parents during their first days of parenthood.
Illustration for a group exhibition called The Stupid Exhibition, held in Hotel Klaus K, Helsinki 2019. We all worked around the theme of post truth world.
The exhibition was curated and organised by a fellow artist Ville Salervo.
This is an editorial illustration I did for Gasetti magazine for an article about the future of emission free transportation. The brilliant art direction was done by Nora Kolari.
2018 was the year I got interested in portraits.
I tried to implement as many features of the portrayed people as I could by referring to the hobbies of each individual and then bringing them both together around their common interest - music.
This is a self-initiated project.
It’s been called the middle-age crisis, or the one about existentialism. Anyways, we’ve probably all been there at one point or another.
This one is my interpretation of the subject. Like I guess many of us at some point, I felt that I’ve been just rushing my life forward without ever stepping off the paved path to actually have a look at what life has to offer. The constant browsing of social media not really helping the issue.
This is a cover design, illustration and handmade typography project for Metsä Board Magazine. Art direction was done by Hanna Kinnunen at Miltton and the special printing on Silver Cover paper at Markprint.
The best coffee shop in the planet, Good Life Coffee, asked me to design an enamel mug for them.
I stirred in some elements of both, city and camping life together with their famous tag line Avoid Bad Life to make a wrap-around illustration that will hopefully be fit for all your adventurous purposes.
As long as they last, get yours from Good Life Coffee Webshop.
All the product photos are by Emalco.
My advice for you.
(Officially not based on any self-learned situations)
This one is a self-initiated project about the magical feeling you might come across during those long nights around finnish midsummer.
This is a self-initiated project.
The illustration has been featured in Soul Illustration Fair 2017, as well as in Sideways Festival 2017 courtesy of IMAGE magazine.
Cover illustration for Telia’s Childrens Advisory Board research. Kids in primary school were asked to imagine the future of our technology, and I got to illustrate some of those (brilliant) ideas into one cover illustration.
This is an illustration for IMAGE magazine about the buffet eating culture of our times, where nothing is enough.
Art directed by Anna-Mari Tenhunen.
This stands here just as an example of digital doodles I sometimes post to my Instagram account.
It’s a magical chicken. Very rare.
During 2014 we had a group exhibition called Avara Luonto together with Joonas Rinta-Kanto and Jonna Uhrman.
Avara Luonto is a legendary finnish television program that features high quality nature documentaries from around the world.
This illustration was one of the pieces I made for the exhibition.
Editorial illustration for Chydenius magazine for an article about the digitalisation of our health care services. A cropped version of the full spread illustration was also used as a cover.
This is a big one. The illustration was used as a Tintamarresque wall on a campaign by Helen and Helsinki Zoo. The final size of the wall was 4 meters wide and 3 meters tall.
Mandarina Duck asked me and three other illustrators (LOULOU & TUMMIE, MUXXI and PIERPE) to customize their iconic utility back pack. We each got to pick one major capital of the world as our theme and then illustrate the back pack accordinly.
Can you guess which city I chose?
Once every three years, there is Mikkelin Kuvitustriennale - the Illustration Triennale of Mikkeli. And once every three years I manage to miss the application deadline.
So I decided to arrange my own, called The Imaginary Illustration Triennale of Mikkeli - Mikkelin Mielikuvitustriennale.
During 2016-2018 I got to illustrate a calendar page for IMAGE magazine. The page was about the current affairs of the upcoming month written in hand-made typography and often surrounded by an abstract(ish) illustration.
These four are a selected example of the illustrations featured on the page.
An illustration for a 2 x 2 meters tintamarresque wall for Fazer company’s christmas party.
Art directed by Hanna Kinnunen at Miltton.
Logo character design for a finnish job search service - JobRobo. This guy was designed to personalize the often inanimate feeling of job searching.
A record cover design for a great Bergen based band called Herr Nilsson.
One of my favourite bands Panssarijuna released their third album in the autumn of 2017 and I got to design the covers for it.
Style wise this differs a bit from my other illustrations, yet I’m really happy with the outcome.
Local tennis club wanted to have tennis related t-shirt design without actually portraying the game of tennis.
This is a portrait of young Björn Borg.
Every once in a while I travel to our summer cottage for a few weeks to get away from all the city hassle.
This is an illustration I made during one of those trips.
Handmade typography. This one is a quote from a song called “Brutus” by one of my all time favourite bands - Damn Seagulls.
We’ve been working together with the nice people of FatCloth for already several pocket squares during the years.
This is a project I did together with the good people of Boutique.
I designed the visuals, including characters and the wizards at Boutique did the rest.
The animation is about the benefits of age restrictions in movies and television series.
During 2014 I belonged to a London based illustration co-op called PUCK. This piece was done for our promotional newspaper.
Hand-made typography poster asking what George Lazenby would do.
If you’re not familiar with George Lazenby’s history he is a living example of the phrase “Fake it ‘till you make it”.
His wikipedia page offers several stories of how for example he ended up in the James Bond role.
Gösta Sundqvist (1957-2003) was one the most important finnish musicians. When listening to his music in the autumn of 2013 I suddenly realised it’s been exactly 10 years since his death, and no one seemed to pay any attention to that. So I made this small portrait illustration of him to commemorate his passing.
Once I listened to Alexia’s “Summer is crazy” for too long, and started drawing things like these.
This is a selected collection of some of my older illustrations. It includes some personal projects, magazine and book covers as well as an ad campaign illustration for Heinz. Precious stuff and good memories!
