Look who's been featured in the latest edition of BranD Magazine!
Our branding projects for Maria Almenara's pastry Shop and Ronner, where chosen to appear amongst some really awesome stuff. They have also included an interview (transcript below) with us, where we got a chance to discuss a bit about the way we get inspired and some thoughts around the current state of design.
This guy's have done it again, a beautiful edition with really smart usage of paper, color and print execution. They even have a section just on tea packaging which comes in handy as great inspiration for a few packaging projects we have coming up!
You can find the magazine here: http://goo.gl/YdXjJj
Check some snippets of the magazine below.
Dialogue with Cristina Londono:
1. There are many fresh hand-drawn illustrations in your works, they evoke a sense of retro & elegance, could you share your design ideas with us?
We wouldn’t necessarily call them retro, although sophistication is very much part of many of the client’s briefs we receive. We love how textures, illustrations and patterns enrich a brand and provide it with additional. There are many fresh hand-drawn illustrations in your works, they evoke a sense of retro & elegance, could you share your design ideas with us?
2. Speaking of retro, which period of style do you prefer most?
Oh this is a tricky one, every project is such a different journey that we can end up soaking up great influences of Art Nouveau for a while and then jump straight into colorful Art Deco or even 80’s punk for some others. It really depends on where we are at at the moment, but specially, what the project requires. As a team we all have different influences but we do aim to stay focused in the brief rather that getting distracted by our own thing.
3. We spotted you have created different kinds of illustration, most of them were tend to be fresh & elegant. Were they your personal preference, or they just happened to be more clients were fallen into this category?
We have specialized in industry sectors like boutiques, pastry shops and beauty packaging that plays really well with this type of developments. So in a way, by having incorporated that type of work once, our portfolio started portraying how we enjoyed doing this and then more clients with similar requests followed. As said before, we rarely impose our personal preferences to a brief, as we tell our clients all the time, we are just a communication tool for them to express what their company’s voice is about and what their audience is in need of, so personal preferences don’t play as much in that type of scenario really.
4. What kinds of clients would you consider to cooperate with in the future?
We are quite lucky with the clients we attract. They understand the importance of details and creating brand touch points in what they do, so various categories can fall into place. Doing something that involves spaces, like Hotels, and Spas could be quite a delightful project for example… creating their amenities packaging and applying prints either in their textiles or space could be an interesting one.
As long as the business has a heart, we tend to get interested and engaged, it is the business owner or the leader with its vision and passion and dreams that makes us get excited and follow their cause. We are also always measuring the impact our clients have in the world, we are a small studio and can only collaborate with a limited amount of clients per year, so picking the ones that will have a more positive impact, leverages our creativity in greater ways.
5. Are there any cultural influences in your region that would influence your works?
Our team is spread around the world, from Latin America, to Australia, India and United states, so in a way we are all looking at different stuff and completely different markets that inform they way we work with a project. Its quite enriching and gives us quite an edge in understanding how some markets are more appropriate for some developments than others.
As a designer I have always been very influenced by my time in India, my awe for Scandinavian textiles and the hallucinating color palettes that I see coming from contemporary Japanese graphics and textiles.
6. Could you share with us what things you are concerning lately?
I’m quite concerned about the sustainability of graphic design as a craft, in the original way that I learned it and practice it. From being a conscious process of working with a concept, a strategy and then evaluating different avenues for communicating it. The world is changing very quick and many people that know how to work with the technical tools are practicing graphic design, focusing greatly on the aesthetic aspect of the trade but in my opinion, leaving behind so many other aspects that create great design. Many times, clients can’t tell the difference and the opportunity to educate them isn’t always there.
I am also concerned about the development in young designers. I collaborate with them all the time and in a world of Pinterest and immediate references, I can see how that intimate and precious time for incubating an idea is almost wiped out by an array of information and the habit of jumping into doing before much thinking. The aesthetic results again, are quite attractive but I find the message and the general thread, many times lost.
