Guelph freelance illustrator and artist, Cai Sepulis, has created quite the creative presence in the city
I arrive through the front door of OX and spot a head of shoulder-length jet-black hair in the back of the restaurant. I assume it to be Cai Sepulis, with my only knowledge of Cai’s appearance based on a 2×2” profile photo from LinkedIn. We are meeting for the first time. I wave, walk over, and take a seat across the table. We go through the typical first-time introductions, order a couple beers, and lightly discuss the plan for this article. The waiter comes by and drops off two coasters. “Your beautifully designed coasters,” the waiter says, looking over and making eye contact with Cai. We all laugh.
You see Cai is responsible for all the branding of OX, the new-ish restaurant located next to the Bookshelf in downtown Guelph. “I was brought in before the place even had a name,” Cai mentions. The entire branding process started from scratch – figuring out the emotion, the interior design, and then “coming up with sketches and sketches of how it will look,” adds Cai. The finished work is displayed on everything from OX’s coffee sleeves, to their business cards, labels, and more.
Cai likens branding a company to acting as a dating coach. “I’m going to dress you up, and I’m going to make sure you attract the clients you want,” Cai explains.
You have no-doubt seen Cai’s work in more places than just the OX, because it’s just about everywhere. With a portfolio spanning 10-years experience, including graphic work done for the City of Guelph, Downtown Guelph, Hillside Festival, Cornerstone, Red Brick, and On the Verge, among many others, Cai’s work has quite a presence across the city.
“I kind of always knew that I liked doing illustration stuff and marketing,” says Cai, speaking about journeying into the field of graphic design. With time spent attending architecture school, one can see how this type of experience leads to the prominent theme of hand-drawn buildings in almost all of Cai’s graphic work, seemingly mending together a passion for both architecture and illustration.
Cai’s artistic endeavors originally began in a different field – silkscreening. “That’s where I started meeting everybody in Guelph, because I was kind of a young and upcoming artists,” states Cai, who then began designing postcards and websites. From there, Penguin Books initiated contact and presented the chance to design book covers. “Everything just spun from there,” Cai adds.
Experience in the field of silkscreening did seem to go hand-in-hand with Cai’s shift into the graphic design field. Enjoying the idea of working in multiples, which meant not ever having an original piece, is what originally drew Cai to this line of work. Speaking to other more-traditional artists, such as oil painters, they would often mention never wanting prints of their work, but Cai would always retort with the same sentiment: “What do you mean? I want my work everywhere.”
Creating covers for Penguin Books and exploring other avenues, such as CD cover designs and other forms of branding and advertising through graphic work, allowed just this. There is an appreciation of the multiples aspect that comes along with graphic design, “even for the reason of artwork being more accessible,” continues Cai. “You think of stuff that’s in a gallery and it’s just stuck in a gallery, whereas you can go downtown and see my banners along the street. It’s like everybody can see that and everybody can kind of share in that.”
As for how Guelph influences Cai’s work: “I know most of the town and most of the town knows me…in a way it keeps me accountable to what I’m doing.” Not allowing oneself to be flippant with a client or to create something “awful” helps generate more business through referrals, and this in-turn allows Cai to establish a base of customers in the city.
“I love the vibe of Guelph…I like that you can come downtown and you can generally find a seat on a patio somewhere…if you go out to a cafe to brainstorm and sketch, you’re not cramped into a spot, there is that luxury,” says Cai, comparing Guelph to experiences in hometown-Toronto. “And then it’s nice too that you do bump into people that you know…sometimes I’ll show somebody [my work] and say ‘what do you think of this? This is what I’m thinking.’ It’s kind of different having a giant office where everybody in town [is involved].”
Though, when speaking of the future, Cai admits: “It’s hard to say, I think that a lot of my work is starting to get beyond Guelph,” adding, “the part of me that likes seeing my work on so many different things and in so many different places – it really excites me.”