Career
Originally from Russia (Moscow), she is now based in the United Kingdom. In 2004 Yulia moved from Moscow to United Kingdom where she continued her education in art, at the University of Hertfordshire, graduating with a Master of Art in Graphics Communication degree in 2006. Prior to moving to the United Kingdom, Yulia Brodskaya became interested in diverse creative practices, ranging from Textile Painting, Origami and Collage, to more traditional Fine Art practices. Soon after her arrival to the United Kingdom, Brodskaya started working as freelance graphic designer, while studying for the master"s degree in Graphic communication, but she very quickly switched to the illustration field
However, the graphic design background has an influence on her art work as most of the pieces have a strong typographic focus:
(Computer Arts projects issue 133, p87).
Much of Brodskaya’s work uses an old technique called Quilling, in which ribbons of paper are used to create intricate designs. However she takes it to an entirely new level
She has swiftly earned an international reputation for her innovative paper illustrations and was named the ‘breakthrough star’ of the 2009 by Creative review magazine (December 2009, p32). Her work for g2 (The Guardian) has been included in Doctorate & AD Annual 2009.
To describe her craft works Yulia uses the term ‘papergrafics’.
The topic of her talk was ‘Reviving paper craft: quilling in a new context’. In her presentation Yulia spoke about how making creative use of quilling can give this paper craft technique a new life and significance in the context of graphic communication. She also designed one of the Google Chrome themes Yulia Brodskaya Google Theme.
