MacPaw - Olha Protasova

MacPaw Logo in Plasticine

Illustration, Corporate

MacPaw commissioned this interpretation for the company's anniversary.

The creative idea, developed by Creative Director Oleksandr Ageyev, was to create a visual metaphor for humanity, care and meticulous work — using the language of physical materials rather than digital imagery.

The challenge

How do you represent a technology company through something deliberately physical and human?

The image needed to incorporate the MacPaw logo together with visual references to the company's world: buttons, icons, surfaces and objects inspired by vintage Apple hardware from the MacPaw Museum.

Every element had to be recognisable and precisely constructed, while the overall image needed to remain restrained and subtle.

There was also a strict technical challenge: the final sculpture could not simply be photographed from one position without introducing perspective shifts and distortions.

The idea

We looked at the physical qualities of the technology preserved in the MacPaw Museum — the surfaces, buttons, materials and variations in texture.

The goal was to make the image feel almost as precise as a digital construction while keeping visible evidence of the human hand.

The contrast became the point: a highly technological company represented through a slow, physical and meticulous process.

Making it real

I experimented with different types of plasticine to reproduce the different surfaces and qualities required for the image.

Some elements were made from different materials rather than painted digitally. Some glossy buttons were varnished. The black part of the logo was physically inset into a white plasticine surface rather than simply placed on top.

The composition used only two main colours and their shades, making small differences in material and texture particularly important.

To preserve the proportions of the logo and individual elements, I worked with templates and tested different materials before committing to the final sculpture.

Photography

The final image was assembled from more than 50 individual photographs.

Photographing the entire sculpture in one frame would have introduced visible shifts between foreground and background elements as the camera perspective changed.

Instead, I photographed individual sections while maintaining the required viewpoint, then assembled them into one final image during post-production.

The result looks almost like a precise 3D render — but the physical construction and process tell a different story.

The result

The final image was created as an internal anniversary project and was used by MacPaw for the celebration. It was also proposed as a corporate wallpaper and became the subject of a video in which I discussed the making process.