Art director and illustrator Shorsh in conversation
Shorsh has illustrated book covers for Penguin Random House, built relationships with Sony Music and Universal Music Group from Buenos Aires, and still credits a painting teacher’s offhand advice as the compass for his entire career. This is the conversation about how he got there.
Dream Worlds Loading: an interview with Shorsh…
Think Art Director // Peer Perspectives Chapter 7
Let’s wake up to start dreaming…
Imagine ultra-bright, surreal art-scapes flash onto the city-sized LED screens as walking on a dream (Empires of the Sun) resonates through the auditorium. Jorge Luis Miraldo takes the stage with apple keynote style as his art loops behind him.
Shorsh is a senior level Art Director & Illustrator crafting digital works of art aimed to mesmerize global audiences with minted collections and printed matter. His shortlist includes Sony Music, UMG, Penguin Random House. And his artist persona has grown powerful, lapping around the globe from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles.
“As my preferred tools, color, composition, and texture traverse the realms.
My creations draw inspiration from contemplative observations of nature, my travels, life experiences, and surroundings. I also find influence in themes such as spirituality and science fiction, as l am an avid reader in these genres. By employing unconventional color palettes to depict these subjects, I aim to evoke a sense of psychic distance, altering the perception of familiar landscapes into something otherworldly and novel.”.
Shorsh on his unique style of creative direction
Think Art Director: If your work was made into a documentary, what would it be called?
Shorsh: If they ever made a documentary on my work it could be called “Universal Traveller: a journey beyond reality”. It would stream exclusively on Netflix or Paramount + as they have the best sci-fi titles, at least here in my region (Argentina).
TAD: We see a lot of ultra-bright colors and simplistic utopian themes in your work. How did that style develop?
Shorsh: I like to view my work as a journey to uncharted territories, mirages adrift in the cosmos of imagination.
I gravitate toward meditative and tranquil illustrations, particularly in my personal projects, often portraying scenes that seem distant from our reality. Color, composition, and texture are my preferred tools.
My work draws inspiration from nature, my travels, life experiences, and daily surroundings. I also find influence in spirituality and science fiction, both of which I read widely. For that reason, I use unconventional color palettes to evoke a sense of psychic distance, turning familiar landscapes into something otherworldly.
For me the creative process often begins with narratives. As I shared this work on social media, I noticed it fit naturally with electronic music visuals and dystopian stories. Eventually, I built relationships with clients looking for that kind of aesthetic. That direction has consequently pushed the boundaries of my work.
TAD: If an approved proposal had a theme song, what would it be?
Shorsh: The moment a client approves a proposal feels magical, so I’d go with “Magia” by Gustavo Cerati. It’s in Spanish, but it goes something like this:
“Everything serves me, nothing is lost, I can transform it. I know, it never fails, the universe conspires in my favor, and it’s so magical…”
Then it breaks into an epic, triumphal guitar riff, full of magic. To me, it describes how the creative process feels. There are ups and downs, until we find ways to transform things and extract beauty from chaos. Finally, when it all comes together, It feels so great. Almost like having superpowers.
TAD: How do you approach a book cover for Penguin Random House?
Shorsh: I find working with Penguin Random House particularly rewarding. It lets me visually narrate complete stories within the static space of a book cover. Each project combines excitement, enjoyment, and challenge, because I have to capture entire narratives in a single frame. That means synthesizing story elements and revealing what matters to the plot. In total, I’ve illustrated two PRH covers, both sci-fi narratives for young readers.There’s another one I’m currently working on, and it’s coming out in mid-2025.
“The Vanishing Deep” by Astrid Scholte, published in 2021, transports readers to a water-world dystopian future. Two sisters search for the truth behind their parents’ disappearance. The submerged city ruins, teeming with shells, crystals, corals, and sea plants, gave me rich visual motifs for the cover. Using Cinema 4D, I crafted each object in 3D and interlaced them with the book’s title in powerful capital letters. PRH’s art directors typically define typographic arrangements, and I incorporate those in post-production, in this case using Photoshop.
“The Dividing Sky” by Jill Tew, due out in October 2024, is set in the year 2460. In a dystopian Boston, a girl sells emotions to wealthy clients while navigating a hidden world of forbidden happiness. A rookie officer investigates her. Against a cityscape juxtaposed with idyllic landscapes, a love story unfolds. The complexity of the story led me to a hybrid workflow. I blended 3D-rendered city buildings with handcrafted 2D elements in Photoshop: character silhouettes, mountains, and skies. That combination let me show the contrast between the dystopian urban setting and the paradisiacal surrounds.
Both projects started with a brief that included the story’s central elements. From that point, I produced preliminary drafts that went through multiple rounds of feedback. The collaborative process with each team and author ran no more than two months per piece. Overall, we found clever ways to combine our visions, and the artwork improved on every iteration.
TAD: How did you build your career as an illustrator and art director?
Shorsh: I vividly recall meeting Rob Jelinski years ago through a Brooklyn-based art project. I mentioned that I wanted to start creating work guided solely by my own creative direction. Over the years, I’d used illustration events for experimental ideas. I was fortunate enough to see that vision come to fruition.
Rewind eight years before that: I started as a junior planner at Grey, the Argentine branch of a global advertising agency. About a year later, I moved to an art director role at a smaller Omnicom Group agency. That period was instrumental. During those years as an art director, I worked alongside many talented illustrators, honed my ability to communicate complex ideas visually, and got into photography and retouching. Working with those illustrators also confirmed that illustration was my true calling.
Finally, I made the decision to leave my full-time role. The transition from a monthly salary to freelance work required a real adjustment. And although it was quite terrifying in the beginning, I was genuinely excited about what I might discover.
The people who shaped the work
As I moved into freelance illustration, I started sharing my work on Instagram and at events. My piece “Ancient Headache” received an honorific mention and is part of 3×3 Illustration Annual No.18 (2022). I also had the chance to do solo shows, online and off. That opened up connections with other artists, short animations, and cover artwork for record labels and publishers.
Meanwhile, I’ve drawn inspiration from many sources. These include Bosch, Dalí, Magritte, Escher, Georgia O’Keefe, and Ernst Haeckel, and comic artists like Moebius, Charles Burns, and Daniel Clowes. My library is full of their art books and graphic novels. I was born in the eighties, so there are also undeniable echoes of that decade’s visuals in my work.
During my formative years, I found particular inspiration in Beeple. He committed to sharing a new render every day for a decade. His consistency and improvement over time taught me something essential. In short, show up and do the work, especially in the hardest moments. That’s the only way to make the good things happen.
One of the most important things a painting teacher told me: “Follow your curiosity wherever it takes you. Nourish it. Your soul communicates through these impulses.” That mantra has consequently guided me as an art director and illustrator throughout my career, leading me to remarkable opportunities. It has also shaped my style, through countless decisions and detours. Sometimes out of plain curiosity.
This interview was originally published in May 2024 on Think Art Director, a creative community blog that has since shut down. It is archived here as part of the Shorsh.com record. If you want to know more about my taste and my process, the Wacom Deep Dive interview from 2021 covers different ground, music, tools, creative block, the stuff that doesn’t usually come up in a career interview.
