From Northern Italy to Amsterdam, Lorenzo has developed a raw and distinctive visual language shaped by hardcore punk culture and cyberpunk aesthetics. His drawings, filled with robots, violence, decay, and mechanical mutations, reflect both personal rage and the darker realities of the world around us, while remaining deeply connected to the DIY spirit that first pushed him to create. In this interview, we talked about his creative process, his relationship with zine culture, the evolution of Do You Care? zine, and the role the underground scene continues to play in his life and work.
First of all, thank you for accepting to do this interview. We’d love to get to know you a bit from your words, could you briefly introduce yourself?
Yo!!! Huge thanks to you for having me!!! I love to connect through zines:) I'm Lorenzo, an Italian illustrator from Northern Italy living in Amsterdam! I wish I could say I'm a full time illustrator but the truth is (and it hurts), I'm a 9-5 guy working as a UX designer for a small company here in the Netherlands. It pays the bills... But anyway, things that I love: hardcore punk, zines, birds, fishes, insects, my dog, robots, bionicles, horror movies and crying watching movies.
Your work has a very distinctive and personal aesthetic. How did you develop this visual language over time? Could you tell us a bit about your creative process, the methods and practices you use while producing your work?
Dang I sometimes try to think about how I got here, but it's very blurry! I would say I started it all by drawing moshing guys at the end of high school (I'm 27 now) when I started going to HC shows around Venice, and really stuck with those for a long time. Like, compulsively drawing hooded moshers and classic hardcore imagery. It was my way to get to learn what the culture was about, the story, the old school flyers and zines... I've always been highly visual so it resonated with me a lot. Plus, HC culture had (and still has) this thing of "just do it", that pushed me to start drawing without thinking "Am I good enough?". Enough for who?! Do it for the people and people will eventually appreciate it! This was the foundation of my early works. No skills, just the will to do something for the scene.
Then, manga came into my life with Tsutomu Nihei's works and everything changed. I've always been reading comics, mostly american and some italian ones as well, but his style is mind blowing. And he did this one shot that blew me away: Abara, crazy biopunk story with sick ass biomech suits and huge ass monsters – and then BLAME! with crazy dystopian aesthetics, insane android designs and shit... I was like "I MUST draw like him". And that's where my robot era started. For a while I had Nihei's manga next to me while drawing, I kept looking at the panels to understand the anatomy, the joints, the details... And then I added more manga and anime with cyberpunk and related topics. I needed more references!!!
So I would say my creative process was just draw draw draw. Some robots were easier, others more complex and at one point I decided which elements would have been more recurring in each artwork. Like cables, I love to put cables and wires everywhere. But drawing robots and mechas is hard as fuck! There has to be some "sense", otherwise a robot won't move. Whenever I draw, I'm thinking "If I draw it this way, how is it going to raise the arms?" and stuff like this. I like the functionality part of it. So I just look at various mechanics on the internet or search for other references in manga to see how they do it (Battle Angel Alita is one of the coolest for this). And when I draw, I make sure to draw everything! I'm still not able to just "imagine" where a piece would go, I need to see it first. So for complex robots I draw each single limb even knowing most of them won't show in the final output. It's a sort of exercise as well:)
How do you balance digital tools and analog production in your work? How important is it for you to create things by hand?
I am not scared to say that I am 90% digital! I have no academic foundation in my background and I've always felt the lack of basics. So digital production has always been my main focus. I had a period 2 years ago where I went back to analog for a while, thinking I could draw an entire comic that way, but it's just not for me (yet). I am ctrl+Z boy in the end, I have a clear idea in my head of how the artwork should be and digital helps me get to it more efficiently. Also, I do think that 18 hours on Procreate and many more on Photoshop are as valid as the same time spent on paper. What counts for me is that in the end it has to feel mine, no matter the brush I use for it.
But that being said, I still draw on paper! I always have a sketchbook and a brush pen with me. I like to draw on the metro or when travelling, it's therapeutic and I try not to look at how good it is in the end. If you see them, you notice they are very different from my digital works but that's fine! It's just a different process.
The most important thing for me is that one way or another the artworks have to go on a piece of paper like a zine, a shirt, a poster or a sticker! I don't like to see stuff hidden in my laptop's folders... I want to see them live, so in this case the analog plays the main game. I would print everything if I had the money hahah:) Recently I tried to buy a printer for printing quick and fast zines myself but I bought the worst printer ever, lost a lot of money, ink, paper and time... and sold it away:(
Are there recurring themes or images in your work? If so, what do they represent for you? How do these repetitions shape your visual identity?
As of now: robots, violence, war, destruction, decadence, cybernetic mutation. Pretty much these ones. I feel like this is a hyperbole of where we are today. To me, there is little to none to be happy about how we are living nowadays. You hear about technology advancements and it just a fuckin ultra rich guy developing an AI software to target civilians with a button. Lots of new robots are being developed and countries are already looking to deploy them for war. Oppression is the most common trait of modern societies, everywhere, and violence looks like the only solution. Each one of us should be constantly angry with all the terrible events that are going on. And I guess this is my way of representing all of this. I know that it eventually translates into something "catchy" or cool to show on Instagram, but that's just a side effect and that's how the capitalist beast feeds on us.
But really, rage has always been part of me. I am heavily opinionated on a lot of topics that sometimes clash with people around me because "living this way will make me lose it"... Well fuck that, I'll lose it if it means being fucking aware of the reality we live in. I'm not that good with words, I draw so if my drawings can convey this somehow then I'm doing it.
You seem to have a strong connection to the DIY scene, producing show posters, album covers, and other works within it. Where do you think DIY culture stands today? Could you tell us about your relationship with your local scene and how it influences your work?
The DIY scene started it all! First poster was for a hardcore show, first T-shirt for a hardcore band, same for my first album cover. I am still doing most of the work for the DIY scene! It's where my heart is at. Where does it stand today huh? Tough question!!! But truth is, it is where it has always been. In the underground community. Period. Whenever there's an event labelled as "DIY", and then you see a lot of poshy and swag people never before seen, buying zines and shit for 30-50€ "because it's DIY" – to me that's not DIY. They like the idea of it, but not what it really is. DIY is the counterpart to whatever puts profit before ethics, value of money before value of life. If you are trying to maximize the money you can take from people with some stupid reasons, you are doing business not DIY. To me, DIY is giving first and nothing else.
DIY is the counterpart to whatever puts profit before ethics, value of money before value of life.
Then, if we want to be realistic. Because of the reasons stated above, DIY doesn't pay the bills. Let's face that, you do it for the love of it, not for the profit because you need to pay rent, health insurance and groceries... That's something I've been telling myself a lot lately. Here in the Netherlands "bernuggets" is now a proper company (lol), I pay taxes and shit. And I was like, ok we need to step up. If there is a way to live by doing what I love to do, I need to think about the economical side of it. Thing is, that's not how it works boy if you are in a DIY scene. I soon realized I was already losing the focus of it. Hardcore and DIY communities are not supposed to represent a huge money income. Everyone inside is doing their thing because they love to do it. That's it. And I cannot charge a flyer as a graphic designer would. It's unfair.
DIY is helping me a lot in understanding how to work inside the scene. It's a small scene here in Amsterdam and most of the stuff I do, I do it with and for World's Appreciated Kitsch. And my friend Apostolos (the man behind it) always makes it clear, he's doing all of this because he loves it – not because he wants to get rich. And it must be the same for me!
So right now, whenever I take commissions if the project I have to work for is DIY, I try to come close to them and help. It's a give and take, so I like to let them tell me what they need and what they have. You always find a solution together:)
With Do You Care? Zine, how do you balance visual production and editorial content? Which areas do you mostly contribute to? Also, could you tell us about the origins of the zine, its journey so far, and your plans for the future?
My baby <3 So, I am a graphic designer on paper. I studied visual design and built a mindset on the things I learned. That's why I love methodology when approaching any editorial project. I look for how to be efficient first, how to organize the content and how to manage the art direction. Graphic design for me is order and art is pure fucking chaos – that's the mixture of Do You Care? Zine.
We want DYC to be a place where people can either approach hardcore in a healthy way or grow with it.
DYC is a 2 men project, Luca (my goat, my god @thisisallwewilleverbe) and I. He's taking care of basically all the written content. He loves to run interviews, to study people and projects, to write reviews. I love to translate everything visually. Each one is the expert in his own field. I think this is the best alchemy we could ask for. We trust each other's direction blindly. Together we usually think of which content would be nice to have in every issue, the timelines and all that stuff. Then Luca gets the written content and the photographers, while I think about the artists and illustrators to invite to join the issue with some of their works and the art direction of the zine. That's always the most exciting part, every zine changes drastically and usually also the digital communication goes along.
From the latest issue I told myself "Fuck all the editorial design trends", the minimalistic look that most of the magazines around have and also stop trying to make zines like old punk zines. It's 2026!!! Let's evolve, a zine can be colorful and shouldn't be that bound to tradition. So for ISSUE #6, I really tried to mix a lot of artworks of mine inside each page, and each one is different. The only thing that had to be clear and structured was the text. It's a lot of work and the process is way longer than the others but I feel like this is what makes it so personal for the 2 of us.
The zine is going to be 4 years old in September!!! It's being a wonderful journey and we evolved so much. The first issue was a folded A3, now we have like 11 different editorial projects. Luca and I didn't even know each other that much back in the days, we were just going to some of the same shows around Italy. Now we speak everyday about zines and hardcore that we feel sorry if we don't speak about DYC for one day. We just never stop, literally. It takes some crazy dedication for the zine to grow this fast – Luca does hundreds of kms every month to bring the zine to different events and shows while I spend most of my free time working on the zine and related projects. Everything we do is for the zine. The investment we put blindly is always a death toll on us for a while but we have one goal: make people feel seen. We want DYC to be a place where people can either approach hardcore in a healthy way or grow with it. I want artists to be seen, I wish everyone joining one of our projects will have a possible spotlight, where someone can see their work and think "Yo I should commission them something". Because hardcore made me everything I am today, so I want to be able to give something back.
Our monthly newsletter is the proudest work so far, it puts a light on everything (well not everything) that is happening around Italy and the cool people and projects everyone should be aware of. Our ARTCORE section in each issue displays some incredible talents that sometimes only need a little push and place to express. Our benefit zines state that hardcore isn't just about having fun at shows, mosh, having cool merch and shit... It's about bringing a message, conveying that rage I was speaking about. Hardcore is fighting against injustice, oppression, fascism, zionism, tyranny. It's speaking up for those who cannot. I think these are all our plans that we want to keep doing. And the bigger we can get, the louder we can speak.
Do you feel a difference between producing work for the underground scene and creating for a wider audience? Do you consciously draw a line between these two worlds?
Hell yeah I feel it. But I feel like it can't be avoided. Especially right now where people are so attracted by the idea of the underground. It's always been there! It was just not cool enough for brands to be interested. So, while I am happy to reach a wider audience I also want to make sure the people outside my circle know who they are following and what I stand for. I do what I do because of my beliefs, I care for them to resonate with whoever is interested. Now I'm bringing up social media, especially Instagram, because that's where I mainly share my work as most of us do. And social media don't fucking care about any line you draw. You can write in the description "This is for my scene and my scene only fuck you" and nobody will care and the Devil Algorithm will just push you in the explore page together with everyone else. That fuckin sucks but it is what it is.
So drawing the line is very difficult, right now I have a 9-5 that gives me enough freedom to say no to stuff that really don't resonate with me but if I want (and probably will) to try to go full time with my art... compromises will have to be made. I worked with some brands recently and you can tell that at the end of the day they don't give a fuck about what you stand for. They need the artworks ASAP, they have to be cool and trendy. That's how the art business goes I guess. Yes, I still do what I like but it's the kind of money that can pay the bills. In that case, I will make sure to draw the line for myself, what is for the DIY and what is for the outside world:)
In today’s visual culture, where content is consumed very quickly, how does your slower, more physical approach to production resonate?
I'm so relieved to be perceived as slower hahah! Truly, I always think I am behind and should do more stuff... but this stuff needs time!!! To do a zine as I want to, I need to really put my 100% in it, otherwise I waste time and money. Plus... no one is paying me or Luca to publish tirelessly! We want to create products that have value for us. Our zine publication is very inconsistent, because we need time to gather materials and the correct space to later bring them around. We are still selling all the last 3 issues, so at one point we told ourselves "Why running?". Again, DYC is alive because we love it and we do it for us and for the people. Not for the money. And we always speak with friends in the field about this. No one is after you, the people who care about the content know the dedication required even for a 10-page zine. Also, most of the time what makes a zine valuable is the people you do it with:)
Thank you so for your answers. Is there any project, idea, or plan that currently excites you? And finally, is there anything you’d like to say to the readers of this interview?
Thank you again for having me and sorry for the length and digressions here and there heheh. There are always projects running behind the scenes! A short story comic is coming in June! It's my first try, I am so happy and proud just for doing it from 0 to 100. It's about technology, nature and human greed. DYC ISSUE #7 is coming out in September with a new visual identity which I still have to put into practice but the cyberpunk theme will always be there! And then yeah a huge thing will be me trying to pursue my illustrator career full time... I feel like it's a weird time to do it but I'm willing to take the risk and see!!!
One last thing I would say is: embrace hardcore music not because it is fun, you mosh, it's badass... embrace it because it can be the place where you can grow personally, helping yourself finding your own way and also helping others. Care about what is going on in the world, use music to share messages, anger, hope. Use art to show what's wrong, to show what you can do to help even one person. Don't be a tourist, care for the people who are there and respect them and their beliefs. Go to local shows, buy merch, buy a zine instead of a beer.
Always and forever free Palestine, Iran and Sudan, fuck zionism, Trump and fascists, fight homolesbotransphobia and death to everyone who thinks they can decide for our lives.
