The Wolff Olins London team in 2011, fundraising to help victims of the Japan tsunami
13 years ago I was lucky to get a job in a place called Wolff Olins, it was the best restaurant in London with a lovely design/strategy wing attached to it. Besides the banoffie pie I quickly fell in love with everything and everyone and realised that it was the hottest studio in town: for its thinking, its imagination, its parties and a crazy ambition to change the world.
So, many years later, the food just gets better and I feel so lucky, proud, privileged, honoured to have worked with some of the most talented, challenging and inspiring people in the industry.
Besides that, having had clients like Tate, Amnesty International, Southbank Centre, Macmillan, Oi in Brazil, Beeline in Russia and most recently Oxfam, is just unbelievable. Wolff Olins is just such an inventive and generous place, from the vegetable roof garden, the bee and honey club, to mumble jumble and so many other initiatives to do good for the world.
Together with a bunch of very special people, we composed a wonderful design team that is a fruit salad of talent, skills and cultural backgrounds. They are the most inspiring people I have ever worked with.
I will miss everything, banofie pie, bees, fruit salad and the most amazing people on the planet.
That was one of the real gems from the Brand New conference in SFO last week, a thought from Bruce Mau’s studio shared by Paddy Harrington. I love their thinking, their philosophy, their design and their modesty.
When I was last in São Paulo, we did some workshops for a wonderful bunch of designers. Our task was, in just one day, to create a brand for a co-op of people who collect rubbish from landfill sites for recycling. As an organization it’s a model in terms of democracy, collaboration, support and idealism. The profit is shared equally between all the workers, all the way up to the president.
People who would be otherwise excluded from society, can get work, can get a sense of pride in doing something so crucial to the planet. On the day, we all created an idea that would help them focus as an organization and some routes for the visual language. After the event, one of the routes was selected and then further developed here at Wolff Olins London.
Have a look at the result. The overall idea is about recycling lives.
That is based on the notion that besides recycling materials, the co-op creates new opportunities for people, for communities and for the environment.
The visual language tells the story of transforming waste into opportunities.
Someone once said that if humanity ever runs out of hope, it should turn to Brazil for inspiration. The country has so much optimism, generosity, noise, and a real sense of future. What I love most is how everything is improvised (in Rio people print T shirts with the seat belt on them, just so that they can drive without!!).
Last month, I was in Sao Paulo for an amazing event organised by ABC Design (you might have seen my previous posts on it). I was there with Karl Heiselman, our CEO, and we got a glimpse of how much buzz and energy the place has at the moment.
One of the things we did while in Brazil turned out to be really special. ABC asked me to run a couple of workshops for designers. We decided to create, in just one day, a brand for a coop of workers that recycle rubbish in Sao Paulo called Cooper Yara. Their work is so crucial and yet they have no way of articulating or expressing what they do and no clear direction for how they want to grow.It was amazing to have the coop workers + designers thinking together. Great to create something useful, to help them build pride, grow and have more impact in the world.
During the workshops, designers (who had brought along a selection of rubbish from their homes) developed different routes for a brand for the cooperative. Here in London we’ll help turn the best route into a brand for Cooper Yara and in Brazil a group of designers offered to bring their brand to life: build their website, create actions that reflect their purpose in the world. Check back in soon to see the work develop.
I feel so lucky and privileged to be able to do that through our work, And to meet so many wonderful people. Thank you ABC, CooperYara and the designers, all of whom got super engaged in the journey.
Have a look at this: I was in Sao Paulo a week ago and came across some amazing graffiti, different to everything else you see there.
It was the work of young artist Andre Farkas.Sooooo cool,in a city that can be so oppressing, polluted and chaotic.
Then I discovered his videos and had even more fun.
It’s great to see people trying out, making, doing, not being too grown up, getting arrested (!), not staying comfy. Brilliant workDéco.Really fresh, really brave, and sometimes random is good! Good luck.
It was great to get together and talk logos with Angus, Tony, John and Patrick for this month’s Creative ReviewLogo Issue.
There was a time when a great logo could make a big difference to how a company is perceived. Now brands rely on so much more than that, more than looks, what matters is how a company behaves, its role in the world.
Still, it’s wonderful to see how much creativity, craft and synthesis goes into marks like the Deutsche Bank and the Wool mark. I also love the Michelin man and The Stones symbol, they are just like nothing else. The I love NY logo is great because it started a whole new way of doing things. The mark as a statement that generates a movement.
Looking to the future, I think mark and identities can still play an important role.That is, if they are at the centre of systems that incorporate co-creation, content, different points of view. Systems that embrace change.
(Marina Willer)
(P.S. Because I worked on the Tate logo, I didn’t vote on it :0)
