To the moon: How start-up CFOs turn ambitions into reality
This magazine article gathers the experiences of senior CFOs embarking on new adventures as they begin working with young startups, highlighting both the benefits and challenges. In my drafts, I focused on two aspects: the youthful work environment and the resulting need for adaptation, and the iconic imagery of startups as launchpads. I envisioned the CFOs’ journey as that of astronauts. The first image represents the first day on the job, with the CFO heading toward the startup. The second depicts the effort and weightlessness of the role, and the third was a direction proposed by the agency. Proposal Drafts
LLC’S Website
I created these images for LLC (Labour Law Community), a web platform for labor law professionals. The client was open to experimentation, and the human-centered nature of labor law allowed me to explore visually rich, metaphorical concepts. For the HOME image, I depicted a large community atop a tree, nurturing the world below—a metaphor for humanity and labor law. I enjoyed portraying these professionals with a fresh, dynamic feel. “The Landing” was a second HOME concept, based on the client’s idea of a journey: I imagined the platform as an island where they arrived safely to build something meaningful. Home Home (version2) About Us Interviews Research Pathways News Teaching Horizons Reviews Proposal Drafts
Agnese’s Story
This commissioned animation tells the story of Agnese, a young environmental engineer from Puglia who returns home from Milan—the emblematic city of career-driven migration—to contribute to the development of agrivoltaic panels, helping shape a more sustainable future.
The Life of a Turbine
This animation began with a voice-over written by the company’s communications team. I built a narrative to accompany the images, pairing the life of a turbine with that of a family across generations. The story traces their deep connection to the territory and to the technological roots of the turbine. For necessity, I also included infographic elements to illustrate technical components.
Ettore The Great
The Puglieser is one of many imaginary magazines inspired by The New Yorker covers, showcasing various illustrators. This issue focused on themes from Puglia, my home region. I was assigned the “Disfida di Barletta.” After studying the historical duel and creating several sketches, I chose a side view composition—as if watching from the edge of the field. I gave the piece a protagonist: Ettore Fieramosca, the Italian knight who led the troops. I affectionately called him “Ettorone” a nickname that means ‘Ettore the Great’, throughout the process. I researched heraldry and armor, applying emblems to the knights based on their regions, imagining them approaching from the left. My goal was a visual style balanced between cartoon and painting—ironic yet full of character. The composition also allowed for a glimpse of the countryside. I had fun working on the battlefield textures, aiming for a camouflage blend of dry soil and wild grass to reflect the land of Puglia.
Scherzi di Anton Čechov
This series of posters, created for Scherzi — a theatrical staging of Anton Chekhov’s one-act comedies (The Bear, A Marriage Proposal, and A Tragic Role) — explores the tragicomic essence of everyday life through irony and subtle visual cues.Rather than focusing on the protagonists’ overt drama, the illustrations highlight secondary elements — the caged canary, the indifferent dogs, the portrait of the deceased husband — which quietly upstage the human characters. These details, absurd yet tender, become symbolic anchors that both diminish and illuminate the human struggle, echoing Chekhov’s vision of fragile individuals entangled in trivial conflicts.The result is a visual narrative that blends humor with melancholy, borrowing from theatrical lighting and composition to achieve immediacy, while inviting viewers to notice layers of irony and meaning at a closer look. In these images, life’s chaos is not resolved, but gently mocked — just as Chekhov himself might have intended.
La tua più bella estate italiana
Marinobus Summer campain illustrations. I took inspiration from the travel agency posters of the 1920s to 1950s, capturing that nostalgic vibe. The star of the posters is none other than the company’s very first bus.
Mysterious Island
Since 2020 I collaborate occasionally with Report, the investigative Rai3 broadcast, creating animated illustrations that serve as intros for certain services that speak of technology. The one below is Jules Verne prediction about a water as powerful creator of electricity. For these animations, as usual, time was limited—just two to three weeks per piece, depending on programming schedules. It’s always a challenge to strike a balance between quality and storytelling, especially for such a prominent client in Italy.
Lupiae Maris
This animation also started from a script by the company’s communications team. I imagined the ancient wisdom of “old sea wolves” (the Latin name of the company) as an old fisherman releasing a small fish back into the sea—a metaphorical cue for narrating marine life development and the positive impact of offshore wind farms.
A Collective Message
This project was a race against time: I had just ten days to go from script proposal and storyboard to client approval and final delivery. Commissioned by Peplo—an agency managing HR communication for various Italian companies—the piece was for Hera Group’s HR team as part of the Best HR Team competition. The only brief: “People matter more than roles.” I imagined a collective voice message from the HR team to the company, blending anecdotes and small reflections that revealed the human side of the organization