[…] The real change, at least for me personally, was coming to LA, meeting Alex and Mackenzie, getting to work with people that thought the same way I did. It also came from working with Ben at BASIC–the first time I was focusing on digital experience alone. […]

[…] She just threw me in the fire: “Here’s your chance, what are you going to do with it?” Through that experience, I learned how productions get made, how creative gets sold to a client, how you actually secure budgets by selling creative. And, while Abe was teaming up with Ben down in San Diego at Basic, we were both learning rapidly, but weren’t fully happy with the types of projects that we had to work on. We felt as if it could be so much more than what it ended up being. After doing that hard and fast for a year, we thought we could do this for ourselves. […]

[…] I just didn’t know what Strategy was. I was strategic at heart, but I didn’t know it was a thing. Or that you could sell it or do it for other people. It really came to fruition one day when we were working on a pitch for a client, and the deck just had images and design on it. And we thought, “It isn’t good enough. We need to show them what we’re going to do with it.” And so we were really learning our roles and learning our places at the same time as starting the studio. You can learn by having somebody teach you, or you can learn by doing. And we’re maybe one of the strong case studies for what it looks like to learn by doing. Because we went in with a loose plan. A lot of it was trusting ourselves and trusting our intuition. […]

[…] The influences have changed over time and I’m definitely still learning. People all the time expect me to know this artist, or know this person, or know this work. And sometimes I just don’t. And I’m still having to learn those things. […]

[…] the studio is really just going to be one arm of the things that we’re trying to develop. One new vertical of the company that we’re working on standing up right now is called Mouthwash Research Center, and that is a space within the studio that is designed to give our team space to explore new territories within art, design, technology, and research. If there was no client, what would we make? What are the things that we’re interested in? What are the things that wake us up and keep us going? So that’s one part of it. […]

[…] Then we have Mouthwash development, which is web development, with a roster of developers. And the hope is that it will allow us to get into software and out of client services, trading time for money. […]

[…] One of the most overlooked things that people do in business is that they prioritize experience over people. Yeah, there is a level of experience that is required or needed, but we’re always looking at people for who they can be versus who they are now: “Are you able and compatible to learn and grow alongside us?” Because we most certainly haven’t arrived yet. It’s less about where you’ve worked, what you’ve done, the things you’ve accomplished, or the awards that you’ve won. For us, it’s more about “Are you going to show up every single day and give it your best?” […]

[…] in the larger scheme of things too, we’re not just a studio that makes stuff that people ask us to make, but we can self-initiate ideas too, we can make a cafe, we can make a technology studio, we can make software. And hopefully that communicates to the world too, that Mouthwash are ideas people, they have the chops to make it happen. […]

[…] There’s this book called Mastery by Robert Greene that I read when I was 20. I don’t know what I would think about it now, but at the time it was so impactful, to realize that mastering something, whether it’s in sport or design or cooking or education, requires the same mindset. And the steps that are needed to get there are the same. So the light bulb moment for me was, life is not about what you’re destined to do or the thing that you’re passionate about. It’s about the thing that you can create discipline around or create a sense of mastery around, and that methodology is applicable to literally anything. […]

[…] It’s challenging to build an agency with a graphic designer’s mindset because it requires a broader vision that includes business development and networking. […]

[…] This has been a lengthy process, but it has involved engaging in self-initiated projects like organising concerts, exhibitions, and producing books under the Studio Blanco name. These weren’t just branding exercises; they were passions of ours that connected us with artists and a larger world. […]

[…] Moreover, starting a studio in Reggio Emilia, a city within one of Italy’s wealthier regions, definitely had its advantages compared to, say, a smaller town in Sicily or other parts of Italy. From the get-go, we had certain opportunities that stemmed from being surrounded by industries. So, it wasn’t just a stroke of good fortune or having a good idea; we were also strategic in tapping into an existing market and elevating our services beyond just local clients. We didn’t settle for a comfortable niche; we pushed ourselves beyond that. […]

[…] Our priority was to attract engaging endeavours to our town and beyond, as Reggio Emilia alone didn’t suffice for our ambitions. I began organising events at 16, starting with a punk hardcore festival, learning the value of self-initiative and self-sufficiency early on. Rather than complaining about the lack of offerings, I sought to create them—whether it was inviting artists or setting up exhibitions. In the end the goal was not to meticulously plan for financial gain but to find a balance that allowed commercial work to subsidise our artistic aspirations while maintaining the ‘Do it yourself’ ethos. […]

[…] Our team, being younger and more attuned to digital media, saw an opportunity. It was around 2010, we were in our thirties, and many of the established art directors were a decade or more older. So, we began creating small websites and special digital projects for various brands […]

[…] I didn’t limit myself to just being a musician playing bass in a band: I was in charge of managing the band, booking tours, promotion, press… and I would look for deals. When you start making music, when you’re looking for a label, you have to send demos all over the place. As a music fan, I was interested in the music industry, I was familiar with this or that label and I knew who I should send my demo to. (…) I already had that determination to understand the industry within me, so when I started working in graphic design and fashion, I just applied the same process of trying to understand where I was, how the industry worked, and who the key figures were. […]

[…] To take the next step as an artistic director, I needed to have my own platform for expression, like all those from the previous generation of artistic directors who developed their own magazines. Except that, I thought the world didn’t need yet another fashion magazine. I then started thinking about what this magazine could be and what it could be about. I wanted to talk about art, culture, travel, the world we live in, our society, but in a slightly different way. Most magazines published today are beautiful objects with a series of beautiful images, but you learn nothing from them […]

[…] I feel like I’m at a turning point in my development. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years, so I’m fast. I can get a lot of work done on my own and because it’s my passion, it has somewhat consumed my life. There is no real separation between private and professional life anymore. I’m getting to a point where I’m starting to lose patience with certain things, and I think that I should start changing some things. I am starting to develop my team around me so as to be more efficient. I am learning to delegate more… […]

[…] I’ve been doing this job for 20 years, so I’m fast. I can get a lot of work done on my own and because it’s my passion, it has somewhat consumed my life. There is no real separation between private and professional life anymore. I’m getting to a point where I’m starting to lose patience with certain things, and I think that I should start changing some things. I am starting to develop my team around me so as to be more efficient. I am learning to delegate more… […]

[…] Today, young students should learn about critical thinking.
They should open new ways of getting commissions, by acting and being active, not by remaining passive.
They should really work on this. Another idea is that they have to act. Don’t wait for the project to come: go look for opportunities. Even fictional ideas can become real if you look at them with an active gaze. This is how I have been working, by looking for opportunities where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. At the office, we observe, we listen, and we ACT. […]

[…] you say to yourself: I want something, but do I really want it? And if I really want it, how do I get it? And as soon as you put everything in place to get it, the rest is just a matter of priorities. […]

[…] In fact, the idea is to give yourself very high goals without temporality. Concrete goals with little temporality. Well, that’s my technique anyway. My goal is really to inspire. It is in no way a competition or a war. […]

[…] “We’re going to stop waiting for Galerie Kreo, we’re going to stop waiting for the galleries on Rue de Lille, we’re going to stop waiting for the brands. What we need to do is self-production. I need to do this on my own.” At least I won’t have to wait for anyone.” […]

[…] But if you want to establish and expand and strengthen your position, I think you need to be in a city where things happen. Milan is good, you can go to an opening and meet somebody very interesting and start a relationship right then and there. We see it. There is also a huge fashion industry here. In the last two months, we have been meeting with practically all the CEOs of all those companies, one way or another. Not only for work, sometimes it was only because we were at a dinner or something, so it’s also very easy to stumble into jobs. […]

[…] I liked the manifestos of other studios. So I set up my own as guidance. I am not educated as an entrepreneur. I was not trained. I knew how to deal with bosses, but didn’t know about having my own clients, working on my own, how much I should charge… And writing that set of rules helped me to stay closer to me, to always stay close to my original principles for starting the studio. That was my ideal working environment. I always kept them in the back of my mind and I would bring them back to the front to check whether I was still connected to the rules. I still look at them. […]

[…] I was still motivated and could still learn a lot. I suddenly understood that I can be off for 3 months (in Rome) and it still works: this consciousness of how unnecessary you can be, but still breathing. I was amazed by the things that had been done. I was full of energy. I had this idea that I was going to work more on my artistic practice. I felt like I was coming back from a spa, completely recovered after nineteen years of work. […]

[…] Do I want to go full metaverse? Am I doing more https://danae.io/collections/7: NFTs? Is this really what I want to do? It’s such a blur, and this medium is so new… Of course, it is very interesting and makes sense with my work. I am super curious to know about the future of beauty and self-expression in this virtual world. But sometimes I think, “This world is kind of weird. Do I really want to go there? Is this thing truly good for us? Should I be doing physical artwork?” That’s another thing that bothers me. […]

[…] SE
Trust is probably the most important thing, because you have so many ups and downs and sometimes things don’t work out with clients, or not in the way that you were hoping and then you really just need to trust. I think it comes before skill or aesthetics or any of that design stuff. If you’re not able to almost blindly trust someone, then you shouldn’t go into an endeavour with them. […]

[…] SE
If you see a chance, then you just have to go for it. You have to take the risk. I don’t believe in luck so much. There’s an amazing quote: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” It’s a good one, but sometimes you also need the right momentum. Natural talent, I don’t believe much in that so much: the more you practice, the more you improve. […]

[…] SE
Usually, when I practice a new magic trick for a show, I practice for a half a year to a year before I show it to anyone because it needs to be perfect. You can’t just go halfway and then be like “Oh, I messed it up.” Then your trick is ruined. That’s why you need to practice, see the opportunity, and then go for it. […]

[…] AR
Learning by doing is important. Obviously, reading, listening, and talking about subjects you find interesting. That’s the key. Maintaining that level of interest in subjects that inspire you. Whenever I find myself having a debt in creativity, it’s so simple to get out of it by just reading something interesting, which triggers your brain to start making connections between subjects and finding new context. […]

[…] SE
We always want to stay in our design bubble. We love pretty books, we love really nice posters and just nice stuff, but for strategic purposes, you almost have to go hardcore business and read those boring things. You have to get a bit uncomfortable when they talk about negotiation practices, then once you know them you can be sitting in a high-stakes meeting then you’re sort of like « Oh my god, they just did that technique! I know what that is now! ». It’s more about learning the mechanics of business. It’s actually fun sometimes. […]

[…] SE
We tend to slowly grow. Very slowly. We want to have intensive relationships with our people and team because we spend so much time with them. I spend more time with my team than with my family, almost, during the day, so for me it’s really about just the team and getting the right people. I don’t want to grow fast. I want, in terms of business, to grow successfully over time. Step-by-step. Maybe in three years’ time we will want to be larger or not, but for now I think the team size is great. […]

[…] SE
You don’t have to develop yourself, but you have to understand what is powering it. If you understand the principles, if you understand how those things are connected, you will be and become a better designer (…) I want young people to lose a little bit of respect for technology. Like, “Oh yeah, I know how to put a poster up on TikTok or Instagram and design that.” No. Download stuff and hack it. Be disrespectful to technology. Try to break it. Try to hack something. Make your own thing out of it instead of hopping onto these big platforms and playing within the rules. Try not to do that. Try to do something else. […]

[…] Around 2015, we had the epiphany — that sounds like a grand statement but it’s true — that culture is not limited to visual arts. Brands, events, music and fashion, play an integral, and sometimes greater role, in shaping the culture. We also realised that we could facilitate opportunities for brands to support culture (…) Our focus has expanded from Culture with a capital “C” to “culture” with a lowercase “c.” It then became a deliberate choice to expand who and how we work, even if what we do is the same. […]

[…] It might sound counterintuitive, but my advice would be to avoid perfectionism. You should ask yourself two questions. Is it done enough? And, is it good enough? If the answers are yes you should move on. Perfectionism ultimately limits and inhibits creativity. […]

[…] The best business development is to do great work and make sure the right people see it. […]

[…] Since my university was in Osaka, it was natural for me to base my design company in Osaka. Tokyo is the center of design in Japan, so everyone wants to go to Tokyo, but if I had been to Tokyo, I felt that I would have only been working for Tokyo and focusing on Tokyo. I probably couldn’t have worked for clients abroad. I chose a local city called Osaka, where it is possible to have an equal perspective with different cities in the world […]

[…] Until now, we have responded to requests from clients, but in the future, we would like to create more and more of our own projects. […]

[…] I see teams and projects in France as a way for the studio in Japan to expand our knowledge and experience. At the same time, there is a physical advantage to being closer to European clients. Since Japan is an island country, we need to cross national borders. We should have an environment where we can always think about different cultures. Connecting through various cultures such as art and food are important areas of interest for us. […]

[…] I didn’t feel like myself doing this so in my free time I would always try to work on personal projects, things that I liked, my own ideas and designs how I imagined them. That was on the weekends or during off-hours.
Without realizing it, things started changing and there was a kind of snowball effect: the more I created things I liked, shared them and drew attention to them, the more other commissions would come in. […]

[…] There are three of us, but two more guys will be joining our team. For the next couple of years, my plan is to keep a super solid, small team, to work well together, to execute the ideas the way I envision them, for me to be able to keep doing what makes me passionate, which is to sit down and design, but in my own very personal way. […]

[…] Six N. Five Objects was meant to turn these projects into objects: a chair, a table, a sculpture, or whatever it was. It was a bit frustrating because it’s not my area of expertise and we had to start from scratch. There were a lot of limitations which was expected, but my creative process was always so tied to the digital side of things. When suddenly you find yourself in another realm, everything feels quite different. You have to wait two or three months to see a prototype, then make changes that take another two months… There are limitations, things you can’t do or things that need to be adapted, but I eventually got sort of used to it. I’m still learning and yes, I would like to get more involved in that. […]

[…] Then for the brand identity side, that’s really me. I do it in my free time. Sometimes at night an image comes to me of something we did a long time ago and I post it. I got on Twitter because it’s very connected to communities and to the NFT world, and also my idea for the future is to have my own community of collectors, of fans, of people to talk to peer-to-peer. Instagram is more like a portfolio. I manage all the social media […]

[…] Now for Tools’ issue number 2 we’re getting more professional, we’re asking for grants and subsidies and we put together a nice press kit for the cool brands that contacted us, the idea being to leave some space for ads. We’re not looking to turn a profit, just make enough to pay the people we work with. […]

[…] Producing objects is a rather heavy undertaking, so we could perhaps begin with a very limited number of pieces and see how it goes, because it’s an amazing experience as well as a great way of communicating. […]

[…] I know I’m good at certain things and suck at others. When you start out at school you get the impression that you’re going to have to know everything. But it’s not true: you don’t do everything well. There was also the idea that once you get out of school you’re a graphic designer, you can create models, etc. The profession has evolved a whole lot, and so have we. Now we do more art direction than graphic design. I like to do art direction and hire a good team of designers. […]

[…] We learned to structure: we created our company, whereas up until then we had been kind of freelancing; we learned how to prospect, we were introduced to some people, and things took off again. We became more professional. I think we became more adult, and we recruited people to work with us. We should have done that a lot earlier, but they don’t teach you that at school. […]

[…] There’s one thing that comes with age and wisdom, and that’s self-confidence. In the beginning, I was intimidated around clients. That state of affairs lasted a long time. Now they trust us more and it’s easier to get our ideas across. Well, it doesn’t work systematically and sometimes you have to know when to throw in the towel. […]

[…] Design is my occupation, and I’d say painting is my personal hobby. I paint every morning, when I arrive at the office. Doing so, there are chances this hobby turns into design opportunities, making them into a product, such as a carpet and furniture. Eventually, when I turn over 70 and retire, I’ll become an artist. […]

[…] WGNB is, I believe, very well known in Korea, and potentially in Asia but is hasn’t been spreading its name throughout the world yet. I guess it is because there are not many references for the global clients or clients in foreign countries to realize who we are. We are working on creating those references for them so that they can believe in what we do and what we can do for them. […]

[…] We always have a balance between these two: self initiated projects where we have full autonomy and control, and commissions where we open up space for an outside party to develop a dialogue. Both are extremely interesting and rewarding. But with commissions there is often a danger of time pressure and therefore compromises. Not that everything always has to be our way. But we really dislike shipping things that could be improved. […]

[…] jokes aside. When there is bigger question marks growing at Dinamo, we sometimes take out some time and visit our friend Michael on his farm in the south of Germany. He’s a sort of crossbred between business adviser, philosopher and grandfather to us. And always has great ears and thoughts for our troubles. […]

[…] I just need some way to grow and create my ideas; this is why I am trying to do art in my personal projects and the NFTs. It is also linked to the fact I’m building my team now, and I have much more time to create something personal. […]

[…] Build your own style and stick to it, so no one can copy-cat you. Do that to stand out. […]

[…] I don’t want my studio to get too big: the mechanical side sets in, it becomes all about organisation and logistics and that can really kill you in terms of creativity. […]

[…] intuition rules because intuition makes sense. There is obviously a reason for spontaneously choosing this or that artistic or graphic solution. […]

[…] I forced myself to do what I felt like doing, with my infamous unpaid personal projects, and in this manner I got it all out. Now I have more technique, more confidence. […]

[…] People want to work with you because of what you have already done. So if you want to do this or that, you need to do it proactively, beforehand, to give direction to your work and portfolio. […]

[…] It sounds strange, but I have this internal feeling that I don’t need to worry about money – which is paradoxical because I don’t come from a rich family at all and we lived in quite complicated conditions for a while. (…) I guess I just hoped that if I created something that is unique enough, then money will come automatically.
Obviously, from my perspective now, I am surprised by my younger self having this very stern confidence. But it’s the same me and it’s the same confidence that I have now when I say: “In a couple of decades, I will be known as this and that”. It’s just an inherent knowledge about yourself. Who are you going to be? Who are you going to become? Who you are inside, is it just a certain chemical process – at least in my brain – or a certain knowledge of my soul? It depends on what you believe in. […]

[…] In every city, I do have a team I know who are like my family. Then I really like to try new people as well. If I have a project, I will try to put my family on the project, but then if I understand that it is a project where I could really try to work with this set designer, that it would be up his alley, I would definitely give it to them. […]

[…] When I started, I had this feeling that I was going to be who I am, but I didn’t have a real idea of what I had to overcome, or how hard or how exactly I had to work to reach my strategies. And since I have never assisted anyone and I have never really put myself in the context of working with another fashion photographer, I had to learn all of these things myself piece by piece. At the same time, there was a big resistance in me to really play the game and enter the stage, meaning being social, creating a network, and working for free, and all of these things. It was just a big step that I had to overcome for myself and decisions that I had to make, and I didn’t make those decisions for a very, very long time. […]

[…] I felt trapped: “What else can you do? How can you break the ceiling?”, and that obviously meant entering the “ring” and playing the game. It means a lot of investment (free editorials) and a lot of hard work. It means reaching a very new stage of you being social and building your network around you. […]

[…] (Strategy) is realising who you are, what you really like, who you want to surround yourself with, who are the people that you really want in your life. Who benefits your mind and your passion? Who contributes the most to your art? Who makes you ultimately better? […]

[…] Today I feel really good, in a responsible position. And I like taking responsibility. I like deserved attention if I feel I’ve accomplished something. I mean, it’s not that I particularly enjoy compliments or anything like that – neither compliments nor “hate” influence my creative decisions or my determination. But what I do enjoy is taking responsibility, doing it, and taking a risk. […]

[…] You also shouldn’t be trying to be a good client. You should be exactly who you are. Obviously, trying to be the best version of yourself, but not accommodate yourself to any agent out there. You need to find the one who is truly going to be compatible with you, just like clicks. I don’t think you can understand that as long as you haven’t experienced either that or the opposite. When you try to be a good patient lying to your therapist, you’re like: “Oh, everything’s fine, I haven’t cried”. And it’s not fine, you’re trying to be easy, but you’re actually intense and annoying. You want to know every single detail about the job and the client, and you shouldn’t try to accommodate your agent, but you should actually be aware that you need to be exactly who you are. Because this is how you get the best results. […]

[…] I have a 50/50 approach – or maybe it’s a 30/30/30 approach – where I have a list of people that I want to meet. It’s a long list that my agent and I have created together: models that I want to work with, talents that I want to work with, sometimes ideas that I want to work on. Sometimes it’s something that I already fixed in the beginning, and then a lot of these things (that’s the other 30%) get born out of creativity with my creative family. (…) And then there is the last third, where I know that I have long‑term goals like exhibitions, books, experiences, experiencing other formats in my work. Then I go about them methodically and cautiously. I try to select the best venues, the ones that will be the most compatible with my work and my ideas in how I want to show my work, and selecting publishers. […]

[…] DL
Sometimes commercial work is a great opportunity to have a budget to make stuff that you could not do on your own. When you don’t have commercial projects, you can develop ideas, concepts, to keep your notebook alive. […]

[…] MM
“Wasted time” was more about making images, so it was an easy exercise in the sense that images are lighter to do than building a space. It’s stuff that you can do without money or budget. That’s what we used to do: close the door of the studio on a Saturday morning and come out on a Sunday night, so at the end of the weekend, you have a couple of images you’re proud of. This is like a fitness exercise. […]

[…] DL
We worked with a philosopher, Andre Platteel, to create a strategy for our studio. As mentioned earlier we live in challenging but also interesting ever‑changing times. We were looking for a strategy that felt more like a fluid construct. Something to refer back to, but also something that was able to change and adapt. […]

[…] DL
With Research & Development, it’s like: “What are we gonna get?” That’s the whole thing: we don’t know yet, we’re gonna explore together and it could be viable but could also hit a dead‑end, and you’ve sent money and we’ve at least learnt that wasn’t right. We can now answer questions that we were unable to answer back in the days. So we see that there is a value there and therefore we want to nourish that and become better at it. […]

[…] DL
We look at ourselves, our own patterns (…) On our personal and work life. You can’t separate these. My fears will be projected on my sons as well as our staff, clients. etc. And vice versa. It really helped to start understanding my own dynamics. […]

[…] DL
How to work with staff, where do you project your reality and your fear on someone and where does the other person start. How can you create space for the other to feel safe in a studio like ours – but I guess there are moments of tension between people everywhere. And I want to try to have a culture where irritation, fear or whatever is blocking us, can be discussed and resolved, and so build trust and grow together. […]

[…] RM
We work a lot with Jack Self, and he’s a very important collaborator. He always has a special way of talking about his career in 10 years plans. As a way to kind of conceptualise a career, or a project, a career as a project, and I think that’s something that we also tried to do because it’s an interesting exercise. We do talk about this kind of idea of where we are headed, what’s the project, what’s the concept of the studio. […]

[…] RM
We also wanted to strategically question, but also perfect, a financial model that would allow and support the work to take place in another way. So by owning the economy of the work (editor’s note: InOtherWords), we can start to generate opportunities for ourselves, and we don’t have to be the victims of budget issues, which are very passive when you’re a designer relying on commissions. We can start to be a bit more entrepreneurial, which is useful. […]

[…] OK
Find a project. I don’t mean a commission. What is it that you want to spend your life working within? I think it’s one of the big questions for design, because you can be a designer on millions of different types of projects, with different messages. What is it, as a designer, that you believe? (…) It’s more about a discipline within which you operate. Because design is a tool at the end of the day. […]

[…] JE
The realisation that we needed to be strategic was one of necessity (…) and when you realise that your choices actually make the success you have, you can’t help but be more interested in it. So what other decisions can we make? Where else can we bring change? […]

[…] JF
The nature of things is that there’s constant flux and change and to be flexible with that reality is a far more effective way of navigating a career. […]

[…] JE
you have to be willing to tear things down and start again. As hard as that can be, it can be very rewarding. Both personally, as a business and creatively, you have to be willing to tear things down. […]

[…] I love what Ben Gorham, the founder of BYREDO says: that he makes his money with perfume and reinvests everything in the narration, because the stories he tells will always contribute to better defining the brand’s conceptual and artistic identity. […]

[…] A
Very early on we wanted to make money so that the structure could give us the freedom to do exactly what we want without becoming less relevant creatively speaking. Sometimes we take on very commercial projects that we’re less fond of in exchange for the money and time necessary to produce (…) the projects that really define us and that we love doing. […]

[…] Today we realise that growing doesn’t preclude expanding. We’re able to take on more creative tasks while delegating more and more of the production. […]

[…] A
In order to grow our business we need to undo the connection of labour to value. The labour we provide is finite, but the value has to be infinite. And you have to try to achieve that through sexiness, storytelling, and everything else that can be brought to bear. […]

[…] A
To create a studio such as SG you need no investment other than time. For people who are less attracted to entrepreneurship and corporate management – the truly business side of a creative design studio – it might be a good idea to join forces with someone, to get trained and team up with a business angel. […]

[…] It’s this harnessing of other people’s talents and creativity. […]

[…] You’ve just got to do what you want to do. The satisfaction will follow – not necessarily the money, but the satisfaction. You just need a client and it’s quite good to have somebody to work with, because it’s quite lonely otherwise […]

[…] GH
When we don’t know how to do something we figure out how to do it anyway. Sometimes it turns out the way we wanted, sometimes not… […]

[…] Perseverance quite simply. The mental fortitude necessary to totally get behind each project. And not be strictly beholden to the budget. […]

[…] Now if someone wants to invest in our company, in our talent, if we retain 100 %creative say‑so, we can always sit down and talk. If it’s in terms of administrative duties or other things of that nature, why not, some are very talented and it could be very profitable for us. But control over the creative process and decision‑making comes first. […]

[…] GH
If you get out of school and go to work for someone, even if it’s going well and you’re happy you will never say to yourself that you’re going to launch a studio. It’s too late. Whereas the opposite is possible: try it out and if you fail you can go work elsewhere, no hard feelings. […]

[…] We wanted to pivot and expand, not just be the guys who were doing cool music stuff. I think we enjoyed that, but we have much larger inspirations. […]

[…] Design just sort of pours out of me and I don’t know any other thing I would do, it’s just who I am, my nature. Some designers find this is similar to exhaustion and being burnt out, but you can find new places to experience visual media, you take a break, have a conversation with people and it reinvigorates that. […]

[…] We are able to make products and make ideas and develop things for others, but we want to make things that represent us. […]

[…] We want to expand and do bigger projects, but we also want to build our own intellectual property, our own work, and work for ourselves. Moving forward that’s sort of a big thing. We are able to make products and make ideas and develop things for others, but we want to make things that represent us. […]

[…] I think as a designer we are constantly jumping from making something that’s print, making something that’s moving, making something that’s real, making something that’s 60 feet, making something that’s one inch. […]

[…] Unlike agencies, we don’t take financial risks that force us to land enormous moneymaking projects just to be able to pay our employees. […]

[…] I was talking about this with a friend the other day who told me that Tom Dixon lost control of his furniture company after he brought investors onboard. The idea, for me, is to keep control of my businesses. Which is why I created a holding company. […]

[…] Mathieu Lehanneur summed it up for me when he said he wanted to be an author rather than a service provider. […]

[…] What I wonder is if there is a business model for this kind of thing, i.e. getting brands to pay us to make magazines for them and for other brands – their potential competitors – on the same premises and by the same team. And use the money and my staff to publish my own magazine or other magazines. Production and organization are the crux of the matter. […]

[…] In our business there’s no reason not to adopt forms of equity payment or royalties. […]

[…] I have a great thirst for knowledge about the ways other people go about their business (…) I like to talk with product designers, I like to talk with architects, with the guys who build my skis, etc. And see how business models in other fields can be applied – or not – to our profession. […]

[…] When I did my first magazine it was for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which is one of the biggest daily newspapers in Germany. It was a magazine for young people, which came every Monday as a supplement in the newspaper. They didn’t have any money at all, so we actually could do whatever we wanted. I had the chance to do my own illustrations in the magazine because we had to save money for some photoshoots.
Even if the photographer was a student and didn’t get that much money, we still paid the travel expenses. Jurgen Teller, at the end of his twenties, did his first photos for this magazine, and Wolfgang Tillmans too. A lot of actually famous German photographers started in that magazine. […]

[…] We’re in the middle of a new transformation. We have some basic ideas for the future. We don’t want to just offer services, we also want to offer products which normally, as a design studio, you would offer, like t-shirts, sweaters, posters, books, whatever. But actually our real aim is digital solutions for a kind of communication around smaller businesses. That’s also part of what we’re discussing at the moment, which would also allow us to move to a different stage. It sounds super boring, I know. […]

[…] It used to be the same here. They wanted to buy my office for ages, but we never sold it. Now it turns out that we have better clients and better connections than they would ever have. […]

[…] DEMO, it’s for Design in Motion Festival is definitely one of my favourites. We initiated, organised and designed the largest motion festival in the world!
I think it was as early as 2017 that we had the idea to share the beautiful work we were seeing with a wider audience and create an exhibition accessible to a bigger public (…) 24 hours to showcase motion designs from designers all around the world. […]

[…] Nowadays, most design studio or agencies integrate strategy within their work, I see that also in smaller studios. In the past that wasn’t really in the vocabulary of a designer. […]

[…] with the studio in the last years, we focused more and more on motion. This didn’t happen accidentally, it’s something that we really looked into, something that we wanted. It felt comfortable in the development of our work but also, we felt that within design, it was the next step. If motion is the next step, then that means you need to make room for designers to learn more motion, or the next person you hire needs to have motion skills. […]

[…] Long-term focus really helps you, and it helps you personally. […]

[…] When it comes to taking the next step in digital, you either grow a team or combine forces with someone who is already strong in digital. We could have made the team grow, but we got the opportunity: we were asked by Dept if we would like to join them. […]

[…] (LA) Also as you grow older you may want to stay healthy. If you are always in a red race and only work like hell to pay the mortgage, it may not be an interesting place to be in the future. […]

[…] If you don’t create your own organic buzz, if you don’t go viral or if you’re not Swiss — that is to say if your reputation is not already made — it all comes down to investing in communication. However, if you don’t have the money to do that you have to build by focusing on your company’s core values, and the talented designers whose work you promote. […]

[…] The thing I enjoy in this business is meeting people. Learning from them, sharing viewpoints, talking. That is perhaps why I could never myself be an employee, because after a while unless you take a lot of meetings your job ends up being repetitive. […]

[…] My metaphor is Super Mario 3: to get Mario to fly you have to press the A button repeatedly. It’s through action that you stay in the game. To stagnate is to perish. […]

[…] Critical distance, introspection, and a talent for self-criticism — these things are essential. […]

[…] Grow and expand your network. If purchasing databases was all you needed, then everyone would be successful. Essentially it all boils down to being a nice, fun and interesting guy to meet, someone who not only doesn’t waste your time but actually brings something to the table. You’ve got to have humanity, that quality that makes meeting you a pleasant experience. […]

[…] People won’t hire you if they don’t know what you do. If you are not getting hired, then just make things, it’s not that complicated. […]

[…] You’ve got to look at the whole package: good design and a good visual identity. You can have good design but completely screw up your image. You’ve really got to strike the right balance. Products, photos, models: a brand is so many things; and design isn’t necessarily the most time‑consuming aspect of it. […]

[…] A collection should express a variety of things. And that comes with experience. You look at what sells because you’re a brand after all, you need to be successful to continue, to keep hiring and growing. […]

[…] But since it’s impossible to do everything, I need people I can trust. I made sure to have people around me who are competent in fields that I am not competent in. […]

[…] I can’t say I made bad choices or mistakes and even if I did, that’s how you learn. I think I’ve got the right people around me and I was prepared. One of the reasons it worked out is because I had experience. […]