Sulima Ekaterina
Multidisciplinary Designer & Illustrator.
Merging vibrant illustration with graphic design to create bold visual worlds. I turn unusual imagery and creatures into structured, design-friendly forms across print, identity, and sculpture.
My work always begins with a hunt for unusual imagery and expressive references. I use these raw concepts as the foundation of every project, and then I morph them into a more structured, design-friendly form.
I am passionate about the power of illustration and am never afraid to bring it into commercial design. Whether I am building a brand identity, designing a printed object, or creating a sculpture, I apply my distinct, vibrant style. As a creative partner, I am highly adaptable: I can take an art director’s existing idea and put my unique twist on it, or find a strong creative compromise.
Working across multiple media, I bridge the gap between graphics and illustration, ensuring that every project feels cohesive, playful, and alive.
Branding
Yavya is a conceptual brand of guardian lamps designed to protect people from shadow entities. It is an imaginary brand concept that reimagines the ancient idea of an amulet for the modern home. Instead of a simple light source, the lamp becomes a personal keeper of the space. It creates a boundary of safety, returning confidence and turning the home into a protected place where there is nothing to fear in the dark.
This project is a prime example of my playful approach to branding, built entirely on custom illustration and pattern design. I didn’t just design a logo; I created a visual world. The identity features unique and unusual designs of the shadow creatures themselves, which are integrated into the lamp’s patterns.
Asaphus is a visual identity for a fossil exhibition, built entirely around a bespoke typeface designed from scratch. Every single letter in the font not only maintains a unified visual style, but its form is directly inspired by different fossil shapes and textures.
Unlike my illustration-heavy projects, this case highlights my deep focus on typography and graphic systems. The project demonstrates how I construct a custom font and integrate it into a layout, allowing the type to dictate the graphic language. The result is a vibrant, eye-catching visual identity where the typography itself becomes the main graphic asset.
Physical print media
Bestiary of the Mind is a visual research project built on the principle of an associative chain. 50 historical illustrations of monsters and bizarre creatures from the 16th to 19th centuries are arranged in a cyclical sequence. Each image is connected to the previous one through a single shared feature—be it a shape, a detail, a motif, or a gesture.
The book has no fixed first page. The sheets are bound on metal rings and can be rearranged, allowing the book to open from anywhere. This non-traditional physical form emphasizes the idea of an infinite circulation of forms and meanings, where one monster flows into another, and the viewer decides where to enter this stream. An accompanying booklet contains archival captions and references, keeping the main physical object as a pure visual statement.
This project demonstrates my passion for deep visual research and my ability to rethink standard formats. Instead of a traditional bound book, I created a tactile, interactive art object. It highlights how I work with historical archives, extracting unusual imagery and structuring it into a modern, playful, and dynamic design system.
A functional calendar reimagined as a decorative art object. It features custom die-cuts that trace the organic silhouettes of various hanging plants, with a new botanical species introduced for every month to reflect the beauty and diversity of flora.
