Italian-Polish illustrator Filippo Fontana has made a name for himself creating editorial illustrations and comics. Creating comics means Fontana is telling long, often multilayered stories with just images, but through these restrictions he feels it allows him to be more concise. “While using words could allow me to express and communicate more complex messages, the absence of text makes the comic immediate and, above all, international,” he notes. “Anyone can read them. This is a major strength of [this artform] in my opinion.”

The difficulty of course is that clarity is key and when he first started out Fontana says comprehension was one of his biggest obstacles. “It was challenging for the reader to grasp everything I wanted to express correctly. I had to learn to direct the communication of the stories to the essential elements,” he reflects.