TOP: THE FOUR SEASONS posters are a personal project Stavro worked on during her last year at the Royal College of Art (2004–2005). BOTTOM: Cover for GAS, a perfectbound catalog for Pocko Agency to promote GAS JEANS, January 2005.

Astrid Stavro Latin Name: Barcinonae Pupae Age: 33 www.labmagazine.co.uk

Astrid Stavro likes to “touch and be touched” through her work as a designer. “Graphic design is a source of inspiration, frustration, and perspiration. It inspires me to work for a client who challenges me as much as I challenge them; where intelligent, critical, groundbreaking ideas and solutions are allowed space to breathe and develop,” she explains. “It frustrates me to see such abundance of decorative, aesthetically beautiful, and totally empty designs— not to mention the ugly ones—or the obsessive, mantric repetition of certain styles and formulas.”

Currently living in Barcelona, Spain, Stavro keeps close ties to London (where she lived for nine years) by doing work for the Royal College of Art (RCA), where she received her master’s degree. She’s designing the Buryport Critical Forum for RCA, published by David Blamey, a tutor in the Communication Art and Design department. “This forms part of the Loman Studio Award, which I won on graduating from college. The book is a visual and theoretical representation of a series of eight critical forums that were held at RCA during the 2004–2005 semesters,” she says. Stavro has specialized in editorial design the past six years. She designed her own magazine, Lab, and works for publishing clients such as Pocko, Everyman Books in London, and McSweeney’s in San Francisco.

Former design instructor Dan Fern says, “Astrid was one of those rare students whose technical skill as a designer was matched by her intelligence, energy, and ambition; although she works at breakneck speed, her work is conceptually sound as well as formally interesting, and her ability to motivate others is also very impressive.”

Stavro notes, “I also like writing about design. I often wonder: What is design? It’s such a broad word. There are so many inbetweens. Designers that write, that play the trumpet and find their inspiration in their record collection; designers that sculpt, make films, music, fashion, architecture. It is perhaps in this vast and still invisible cross-fertilization where the danger, as well as the challenge of the future of design lies.”
Emily Potts