eBoy is a pixel art studio founded in 1997 by Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig, and Svend Smital. It is based in Berlin and Los Angeles. The studio's 8-bit-style work draws on popular culture and commercial imagery, rendered as three-dimensional isometric illustrations of cityscapes populated with robots, cars, and topless women.
eBoy has attracted a following among graphic designers. Design critic Steven Heller compared them to "what Roy Lichtenstein was to Ben-Day dots and comics." Their illustrations have been reproduced as posters, shirts, and souvenirs, and exhibited in galleries.
Background Sauerteig and Smital grew up within blocks of each other in East Berlin and met as teenagers. Neither had access to video games or computers; they learned about Western culture from John Peel's radio programs and punk shows staged in churches. Sauerteig took part in the Leipzig demonstrations that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall, and later studied video arts at the Berlin Institute of Design. Smital studied typography and magazine design at the same school.
Vermehr was born in Germany and raised in Venezuela and Guatemala, where his father worked in pharmaceuticals. He grew up with Apple II computers but felt culturally isolated, and moved to Berlin after finishing school. He studied design in Cologne and later joined MetaDesign, where he met Sauerteig, then a student intern, in 1994. They began publishing pixel art on a website after Sauerteig graduated in 1996, and brought Smital in soon after to form eBoy. Earlier work had been distributed on floppy disks passed among friends.
The studio's work is inspired by "shopping, supermarkets, TV, toy commercials, LEGO, computer games, the news, magazines". Vermehr has also cited the picture books of Ali Mitgutsch as an influence.
Process Vermehr began experimenting with pixel art in the mid-1990s because digital images could be reproduced without any loss in quality. The studio works within an 8-bit style but rejects the retro label; Vermehr has called the association "a very common misconception," saying the choice was technical rather than nostalgic. Sauerteig has said the medium appeals because "you are forced to simplify and abstract things."
The studio maintains a shared database of more than 5,000 modular elements, accumulated over its history and recombined for each new project. A detailed cityscape takes roughly six to eight weeks of full-time work by all three members.
Collaborations eBoy's first major commission was a Pac-Man-style online game for MTV's Spring Break website in 1998. The studio has since worked with Adidas, Adobe, Bungalow Records, Coca-Cola, DKNY, FontShop, Gola, Honda, Kidrobot, Louis Vuitton, MTV, the New York Times, Nike, Paul Smith, and Xbox.
They designed the album covers for Groove Armada's Soundboy Rock (2007), Yuzu's YUZUTOWN (2020), and the Wombats' Fix Yourself, Not the World (2022).
Pixoramas The studio's largest works are Pixoramas, detailed isometric cityscapes that can take more than 1,000 hours to assemble. The studio has produced more than 20 since 1998, including: Baltimore Berlin London Los Angeles New York Paris Rio San Francisco Tokyo A selection was published as a book in 2008.
Exhibitions
Year Title Venue 1999 Game Over Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland 2000 Expo 2000 World's Fair, Hanover, Germany 2002 postscript Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria 2002 the book and the exhibition Magma, Clerkenwell, London 2002 I love to meet you new graphic design, Venice, Italy 2003 Super, Welcome to Graphic Wonderland Festival of Posters, Chaumont, France 2003 GraficEurope Pan-European Graphic Design Conference, Barcelona, Spain 2003 8th International Design Conference Typo 2003, Berlin, Germany 2004 Paul Smith – eBoy IDEE shop, Tokyo, Japan 2004 Pixelesque Maxalot, Barcelona, Spain 2004 Superbroncobattle Minuco Underground Gallery, Clerkenwell, London 2004 Mural design to be built with LEGO bricks on student wall MIT, Boston, USA 2004 Tokyo Designers Block, Tokyo, Japan 2005 CR9, Madrid, Spain 2006 BUILDING SPACE CTM, Berlin, Germany 2006 Todaysart Festival Nederlands Muziek Instituut, The Hague, Netherlands 2006 Play Typo 2006, Berlin, Germany 2007 Hello Tokyo artbits, Vienna, Austria 2007 The Digital Aesthetic 2 Digital Aesthetic 2, Lancashire, UK 2007 Happy Living Museum of Tomorrow (MOT), Taipei, Taiwan 2007 Todaysart Festival, The Hague, Netherlands 2008 eBoy LA Concrete Hermit Gallery, London 2008 Pluto Festival, Brussels, Belgium 2008 Vertrautes Terrain ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany 2009 Pixorama ROJO artspace, Barcelona, Spain 2009 Centre Design Marseille, France 2009 Exhibition and workshop Nave, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2009 Since, Paris, France 2009 Pixorama We Love Asbaek (ROJO artspace), Copenhagen, Denmark 2009 Pixorama Milk (ROJO artspace), Istanbul, Turkey 2011 DC Gallery, Seattle, USA 2011 madformacs, Barcelona, Spain 2011 OFFF, Barcelona, Spain 2012 De Sein: German Graphic Design from Postwar to Present BODW, Hong Kong 2013 Save Point Floating World Comics, Portland, USA 2013 Berlin Graphic Days Kater Holzig, Berlin, Germany 2013 Drones of New York Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, New York 2014 Digital Revolution Barbican Centre, London 2017 64 Bits Here East, London 2017 Upstream Music Fest Pioneer Square, Seattle, USA
Publications
References
External links
eBoy - Official database