The
heart of most creative work is purposeful play.
The best definition that I've heard so far about play is from a psychology book which
says that play is really a flow state where we're reaching this optimal balance of opportunity
and challenge given our skill sets and it's really the ideal human state because we're
completely absorbed in the activity at hand.
We lately have been really interested in magnets and their effect on iron fillings and how
they react to magnetism and various sound waves.
This editorial illustration piece for the New Republic seems like a great opportunity.
They said we've completely opened creative freedom to do whatever we wanted in the shape
of an ampersand.
Using photography in my work I can create objects or design sets and create the final
result whether it be an illustration, an ad campaign, or a video piece.
The computer is an amazing tool in the creative industry but it's not always the right one
for every single project.
Sometimes you can get even more interesting results getting off the computer and working
with your hands.
These are the eyes on campaigns determining what maxims or proverbs that we want to use
and then based on that we all strategize and bring those words to life.
Once that's approved then you know comes the hard part of actually producing these images.
It's often quite a big process involving stylists and hairstylists and photographers and behind
the scenes video artists so they're quite big productions creating these lines and making
them come to life.
I actually don't think that designing for fashion is much different than for any of our other
clients.
I really see all our various projects that we work in at the studio as unique problem
solving challenges.
For Oshty we wanted to portray luxury, sophistication, elusiveness.
We started off by running an image of their prized orange gift box which is quite well
known in that region in the Middle East.
Over time we started adding in fashion models and manipulating the box in various ways.
Eye zone is the younger line to Oshty so the images really need to feel more youthful,
playful and stylish.
We originally worked under the limitation of making everything black and white which
is how we designed their identity and store materials but over time this creative constraint
evolved into working more with these typographic maxims.
So last season was the first one where we introduced color.
We decided to kick off the color theme with throwing around holly powder and having some
powder wars around the studio which is quite fun.
I think that limiting the color palette can be a great aid in creating a memorable visual
language for a brand or for a campaign in Portugal where we redesigned EDP's identity.
Anytime someone sees basic shapes or simple iconographic imagery using red they pretty
much know that it's from EDP.
Any of their promotional or advertising materials becomes like one giant logo without even having
to show the logo or ever say the company's name.
19 years ago when Sepon first launched his studio, Sagmecer Inc. he sent out a nude photograph
of himself.
When it came time to announcing our partnership last June we decided to kind of make a remake
of that original mailer.
Within an hour of sending out the email blasts we were getting you know thousands of blogs
and retweets and messages from people all over.
So in that aspect it was quite a functional piece of design.
I admire Sepon's work long before I started working with him.
His work always touched me in some way whether it was through beauty, wit, humor or even
the shock value of some of what he was doing.
Not much graphic design these days does that for me and since that's the kind of work that
I wanted to be doing as well I always really wanted to meet up with him you know and see
if there was a way that we could collaborate together.
I would say through working with him I've absorbed a lot of knowledge particularly on
how to run a design studio and how to successfully get good work through to your client because
you can be a super talented, creative and do amazing work but if you don't know how
to talk about it and sell that to the client then no one's ever going to see it.
I actually had found a list in my diary of things I've learned in my life so far.
After the first client for a year we actually started to get clients that gave us an incredible
amount of freedom.
That list was sort of a safety rank because I knew that it was true for me.
We got great feedback, we did a second one, we got great feedback on the second one and
then it sort of self-perpetuated, people came to us and said we want you to do a maxing
for us.
I think that's sort of what attracted me always to Stefan's work and the studio's work.
My mom actually had handpainted signs all around her house with various proverbs and
it becomes some of what she actually used in like the IZOK thing.
It's been fun working on them.
I could go far further, lots of times, and would wind up with better work and there's
plenty of days when I'd much rather or not do something non-risky just because it's
the safer, easier.
So the days when I get my shift to get and say, oh no, it's like, you know, really to
take a risk and it's those days when stuff comes out of it.
I haven't had a bad experience yet in taking more risks.
