The “Epson 2024 Calendar Spectacular” is a front-row seat to a year-long performance of movement, color, and pure artistry. Italy’s Balbusso Twins turned dance and sport into a symphony of bold lines, electrifying patterns, and a kaleidoscope of colors that practically jump off the page. With each illustration, they’ve captured the raw energy of motion, blending traditional craft with Epson’s cutting-edge printing tech. The result? A calendar so stunning you’ll forget it’s meant to mark the days.
By: Anna & Elena Balbusso, Designers, The Balbusso Twins
The Epson Calendar was created in 2000 as a way of showing off the high quality of Epson photo printers. For 20 years, the calendar has featured the work of Italian photography masters, becoming a real collector’s item. Since 2021, Epson has dedicated this artistic calendar to illustration. We had the chance to work on the fourth edition in 2024, giving life to a narrative of 12 months. This new collection of artwork is printed directly on fine art paper with Epson technology and inks and is a limited edition.
When Epson commissioned us for this fascinating free-theme project, our first thought was to reconcile its communication needs with our boundless passion for art and the desire to rediscover the origins of our artistic education. We learned about color theory and visual perception at the Brera Academy in Milan, where we studied painting. Our work combines two core elements—graphic design and painting—with a clear reference to art history. For the Epson Calendar, we wanted to create a visual narrative with a human focus and a strong perceptive and emotional impact, enhancing the expressive power of color. The idea for the narrative path from dance to sport came from the famous sculpture “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by futurist artist Umberto Boccioni, which represents speed and dynamism. We created compositions in which geometries, patterns, circles, and lines interact with the human body in motion, creating ‘abstract spaces’ that stimulate vision. In dance, as in sporting disciplines, the body becomes a spectacle, expressing talent, commitment, and the determination to overcome your own limitations. The title “Spectacular” was born at the end of the job when we put the 12 final works in order. Looking at the whole project, we had the sensation of attending a show with dance and sports performances, a succession of different stages in motion with lights and colors. The subject of the cover image was born from the title. The two dancers are inspired by the Kessler Twins, a German artistic duo famous in Italy since the 60s. To create their costumes, we thought of futurist theatre. The dancers wear two headdresses in the shape of eyes because the show is, first and foremost, a visual experience. We depicted them holding hands in balance while opening a virtual curtain made up of a composition of lines inspired by the graphics of Franco Grignani and the optical art of the 60s and 70s.
In the Epson Calendar, we wanted to test the high quality of Epson photo printers by choosing a technique that combines traditional tools (pencil, tempera, acrylic spray paint, collage, frottage) with digital (Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop). We created chromatic shades using acrylic spray paint for layers of color. This mixed technique has given the Epson prints the effect of acrylic or tempera on paper with a tactile perception of the pictorial material, similar to hand painting. The Opificio Arte Stampata, a Digigraphie-certified laboratory, has printed the calendar with Epson SureColor SC-P7500 printers and Epson UltraChrome Pro12 K3 inks. From a chromatic point of view, “The Flamenco” was the most complex artwork for printing because we used exclusively different tones of warm, cold, light, and dark red up to black. We used collage to create the tulle ruffles of the dancer’s skirt. We made numerous color tests with many adjustments before reaching the final red palette, but in the end, the print result was surprising. The excellent result of the Epson print is equal to artistic prints.
We hope to have succeeded in creating images that are a visual pleasure for the observer!
The 2024 Epson Calendar was presented last November 2023 in Milan at a special event with an exhibition of our works in the Cavallerizze rooms of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology. This motion video was projected during the Epson Italia – Calendar Spectacular 2024. The calendar had a remarkable visual impact and was highly appreciated. It was featured on Print magazine’s The Daily Heller blog, and in addition to winning the prestigious Platinum Award from Graphis, our illustration series won the SI66 Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York and the Merit Award from the 3×3 Magazine Annual 21.
Thank you so much to Epson Italia and the team members: Gianluca Folì (art director), Marco Goran Romano (graphic design), and Opificio Arte Stampata (printing). We give special thanks to Graphis, who has highlighted our work through its prestigious competitions and is among the most important design awards in the world. We are very proud and honored to be included in such prestigious publications among internationally amazing artists and designers as a point of reference for creative communities around the world.
We would like our work made for the Epson Calendar to continue after this project. We will not abandon this theme of dance and sport and will continue to develop it through new personal artworks in order to find new collaborations and new areas of application, not only in the illustration market but also in interior design, fashion, theatre, events, and the art market. We are open to any collaboration.
We look for the quality of the project that allows us the freedom to experiment because two souls coexist in us: an artist and a designer. It’s necessary to be unpredictable so you can continue researching and experimenting with an open-minded mentality within commission projects, which is important. Our goal is to create elegant images that arouse curiosity and emotions. This is the daily challenge for all our projects. In general, we think the drawn image has enormous potential for communication, but it is essential to always look for new perspectives and not fall into stereotypes. We believe it is important to renew and evolve to continue progressing, but we do not follow the trends of the moment because trends pass. We attempt to create images with a universal visual language, both contemporary and classic. Our advice is to be daring, without fear of changing direction, but with honesty and authenticity. Working in many different areas of design has increased our professionalism and competence.
Anna and Elena Balbusso, known as the Balbusso Twins, are an award-winning Italian artist duo working internationally in illustration, art, and design. Based in Milan, their work has been published by major publishers and companies worldwide, including newspapers and magazines such as The Economist, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, and Corriere Della Sera. They have illustrated over 50 books, including the luxury limited edition of The Great Gatsby for Beehive Books and deluxe Folio Society editions of The Handmaid’s Tale, Pride and Prejudice, and Atlas Shrugged.
Throughout their career, the Balbusso Twins have received over 100 international honors and awards, including four Gold Medals, a Silver Medal, and the Stevan Dohanos Award from the Society of Illustrators New York; two Joseph Morgan Henninger Awards and a Silver Medal from the SILA of Los Angeles; the V&A Illustration Award for best book; and Platinum, Gold, and Silver Awards from Graphis Inc. They were also awarded “Best of Show” in the 3×3 Annual 20.
Their work has been exhibited internationally, and the Norman Rockwell Museum included the Balbusso Twins in its History of Illustration, recognizing them among the Illustrators of the Decade from 2010-2020. They are also part of the Tolerance Project, a traveling poster show curated by artist-activist Mirko Ilic, which features renowned artists and designers worldwide.
Their work regularly appears in leading international trade publications. In 2023, Graphis featured the artist duo in The Graphis Journal #377. Their work has recently been included in volumes published by Bloomsbury UK, such as The Power and Influence of Illustration and Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective by Alan Male, as well as Editorial Illustration: Context, Content, and Creation by Andrew Selby. Art historian Paola Pallottino also included Anna and Elena Balbusso in Le Figure per Dirlo, a history of female Italian illustrators from the 17th century to the present, published by the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani.
