Meet Javier Reboursin

We were lucky to catch up with Javier Reboursin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Javier, thank you so much for making time for us today. Let’s jump right into a question so many in our community are looking for answers to – how to overcome creativity blocks, writer’s block, etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts or any advice you might have.

I believe that when facing a creative task, intuition plays a fundamental role. When I speak of intuition I do not mean a superficial or naive approach, on the contrary, I am talking about a strongly exercised and methodical intuition. After almost 20 years in the creative industries, I trust more and more in the first ideas, where I find a much greater audacity and freshness than in other moments of the creative process. I began to come to this conclusion as I realized that when I suffered the most from a creative block was when I had the most time to think, re-think and then be able to distrust my own ideas. I confess that I’ve even forced my intuition (and why not my adrenaline) to get dangerously close to a deadline, but it is a very stressful practice that I would never recommend (neither would my psychologist). That’s why after a first talk with a client, the first reading of a brief or the beginning of a project, is when I exercise my head the most to think of ideas. Then come the research and the deepening of the project to make those first ideas grow and reach another level.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Precisely one of the most difficult tasks I have to face is to introduce myself and tell what kind of projects I do. In times where specialization in each discipline has become a value and, sometimes, an obligation in the market, I have taken the uncomfortable position of wanting to do a little bit of everything (maybe I don’t do it well at all, who knows). What I do know is that my name is Javier Reboursin, that I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and that I am a graphic designer and university design teacher. Up to that point it’s easy. I can say that as a designer I work mainly on projects for the cultural and creative industries: film, art, music and literature, although I also do branding and advertising projects. At one time I even illustrated several children’s books and magazine articles (I’ve been leaving my role as an illustrator over the years). Depending on the project I can be creative director, art director, designer and sometimes even producer. I work individually but I also have an animation studio where teamwork is fundamental. I do posters, film main titles, art samples, magazines, album covers, branding, animated commercials, packaging and once I even got to design a merry-go-round. I enjoy moving from project to project and facing different creative challenges. I get bored staying in one field, and I try to work on short projects or participate in the first stage of creation. I have given talks and workshops at universities and festivals and my work has been exhibited in different countries such as Argentina, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Mexico and China, among others. I have received some design awards for different projects but I think the most important is that a poster of mine has been selected as permanent archive of the Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie in Warsaw, Poland, the first and most important poster museum.
In short, I do a little bit of everything and I specialize a little bit in nothing.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think that the diversity of projects I face made me realize how important it is to have a well-defined point of view and way of thinking.
The key is not so much in my visual skills or my graphic style, but in the way I think about any project I am faced with. It is in the posture that one develops in front of the discipline that one differentiates oneself, as well as it is also useful to group with different people, build teams and discuss ideas from different points of view.
Staying attentive, curious and up to date is vital. Teaching at design universities, for almost 15 years now, has kept me in an intellectual and theoretical exercise that I can then translate into practice.
Having fun. In the end I think that’s what it’s all about.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I think I always have the challenge ahead of me to be able to sort and organize my time to be able to alternate with leisure, entertainment and well-being. I think when you are passionate about what you work on those barriers can become blurred and even more so when a big part of one’s job is to think. There is no button (yet) to turn off for a while that function in our heads.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reboursin.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/javirebour/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-reboursin-a2a1002a/