Amsterdam Under Consideration
Brand Nieuwe Conference in Amsterdam
By Graham Sturt
Creative Director at VBAT
Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit are co-founders of UnderConsideration LLC, a graphic design firm based in Austin, TX. The firm primarily generates its own projects, initiatives, and content whilst taking on limited client work. One of their key initiatives is the Brand New Conference, an event on corporate and brand identity with some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world.
For the first time, Bryony and Armin are taking the conference outside of the US when The Brand Nieuwe Conference hits Amsterdam this Summer between June 20–21.
An event we love to see coming to Amsterdam is reason enough to ask them a few questions:
It must be a big step for you to take the Brand Nieuwe Conference to another continent. Why Europe? Why Amsterdam?
It is! We’ve been thinking about it for 2 or 3 years and this past Summer we were looking at what we had upcoming in terms of work and where money would be coming from and noticed there was a hole for Spring of 2016 so we decided to take the plunge and bring the conference to Europe. We have a large European following on the Brand New blog, and every year since we started the conference in 2010 we’ve had more and more people traveling from Europe to the U.S. to attend and we constantly hear that if the conference were in Europe people would go in a heartbeat. So we knew there was demand. Europe also makes more sense than Latin America or Asia because there is an insane amount of great designers and firms that will last for many years and a large percentage of speakers and audience speak English, so it’s what made the most sense.
In terms of choosing a city, we had narrowed it down to Berlin, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. Berlin was our first choice but because we were aiming for a Spring conference we were going to be too close to TypoBerlin, which is a very big conference. Barcelona was the cooler of the three choices but it was the least central place. Amsterdam has a large design community and heritage, it’s more central, it has a good airport, and it’s a beautiful place that would attract people from outside. Bryony’s cousin lives in Amsterdam, and she’s a designer, so it’s a nice bonus to have someone on the ground who is on our side.
Can you already reveal a bit about the program?
Without naming names — as we take the reveal very seriously, for better or worse — we will have speakers from London, Barcelona, Paris, Budapest, Helsinki, Bangkok, New York, and, of course, Amsterdam. We will have a couple of legends, a few expected choices, and some relatively less known designers that are usually the best surprises at a conference.
Around 10 days after the Brand Nieuwe Conference, What Design Can Do will be taking place in Amsterdam. What are the major differences between WDCD and the Brand Nieuwe Conference?
From the name alone, WDCD establishes that it wants to present topics and speakers that talk about how design can affect different aspects of life so it’s more of a bigger-picture kind of conference and perhaps more social-minded. We are unabashedly about celebrating great identity and branding work. We are not out to save the world — other than from crappy logos.
Will you visit WDCD?
I wish. But right after we finish our conference, we have to come back home and start working on the U.S. version of BNConf in Nashville.
We are curious to know more about your Mexican roots. After working for Pentagram in NYC you set up your own business in Austin. Why did you leave Mexico in the first place?
Because of a girl. For real! My now wife/business-partner and I met in Mexico City while we were still both in college — different colleges but both of us studying graphic design. After a year of dating she realized she hated her college and decided to study abroad. I had a year left of college and as soon as I was done I followed her to Atlanta, GA. She had been my only girlfriend and I figured I would stick with her. After she graduated we moved to Chicago, IL, still with the possibility of moving back to Mexico but a year or so later we realized we wouldn’t have the same professional opportunities there, so we decided to stay in the U.S. for good.
(Note of the editor: Check out these pics of Bryony’s and Armin’s 10th wedding anniversary).
You started blogging in 2002 with Speak Up, which proved to be very popular, and in 2006 you launched Brand New. Why did you stop with Speak Up?
Both the writers for it (with me writing 75% of the posts) and the audience ran out of steam. The energy and buzz wasn’t there anymore. It was hard to sustain a habit of writing something thoughtful everyday that would generate a minimum of 100 comments, which was the norm when it was at its apex in 2004–05. We could have kept it going all this time but having experienced the high that it could achieve anything under that felt like a let-down for us.
What other blogs do you publish?
Right now, Brand New is our main blog and the others are Art of the Menu, which has a simple premise of showcasing restaurant menus; FPO (For Print Only), which showcases cool print projects; and Quipsologies, which is a broader link blog where we just post whatever is creatively cool.
Where do you find inspiration for relevant content?
For Brand New, FPO, and Art of the Menu, we get submissions and we pick the best. Brand New is a little different in that we get dozens of tips from our readers who are always alerting me to identity redesigns and then it’s my job to figure out which ones are worth a story. For Quipsologies, we also get submissions but most of the content comes from the 50 or so blogs I follow as well as all the Twitter and Instagram accounts I follow, so that blog is basically my excuse to surf the internet and look at cool things.
You and your wife have published a number of books. Tell us more about them.
We’ve done a couple of books for publishers. The first was “Women of Design”, which came out of a large discussion on Speak Up back in 2005–06 about lack of women representation in design conferences and juries, so we decided it would be a good idea to do a book that featured the work and stories of some of the best women designers working at the time. After that we did “Graphic Design, Referenced” which was a grueling 400-page book on everything a designer should know about the industry and its history. Then we self-published a book on how to make a portfolio, the physical thing a designer takes to interviews. There was no book like it and we figured we could skip the publisher and do it ourselves, and it worked out great. Called “Flaunt”, we first published it in 2009, went through 4,000 copies and recently published the 2nd edition. It’s been a very well received book and we loved not having to work with a publisher.
Do you already have plans for a new book? If so, can you tell us more about them?
We have two ideas currently in the works but haven’t had time to do them. One is about something and the other is about something else. (We don’t want anyone stealing the ideas before we get to them!).
UnderConsideration LLC is a graphic design firm, but you mainly work on your own projects. What kind of commercial work do you take on?
It can be anything really, as long as there is something interesting about it. We’ve done coffee table books, websites, and a couple of corporate identity projects. Since we don’t do it as much we don’t specialize in any one kind of project or any one kind of industry.
You get to see lots of branding work from all over the world. Which parts of the world does the most interesting work come from right now? Are there any trends?
Finland, Norway, and Sweden (particularly Stockholm) are probably three places that stand out right now. Lots of great vibrant work coming from there. There is a trend of “ugly” design or unconventional approaches that are pushing identity in interesting and unexpected ways.
I just started my own series on our blog about Dutch Design Heroes. If you would have to name your personal design heroes, who would they be?
It would be a mix of things: Rudy VanderLans at Emigre, who pushed the self-publishing approach and entrepreneurial spirit (and happens to be an amazing and underrated typesetter); Michael Bierut of Pentagram and my former boss, for his ability to do simple and smart designs; and in terms of design aesthetics, there are a ton of people I admire from Ed Fella to Aaron Draplin.
For us it’s an ongoing challenge to connect with the very best young talent. Do you know where they are hiding and how can we make working at a big branding and design agency interesting to them?
I would think working at a big branding and design agency is inherently interesting and any young designer should be grateful to work at one and get the experience necessary, so as long as you do good work young people SHOULD be interested. Where are they? I’m hoping at design school!
We are member of BNO NEXTpack, an initiative to bring Dutch packaging design to a higher level. Will you place any focus on packaging design during your conference in Amsterdam?
Not really. That has never been a big focus of our blog. We touch on it every now and then when the redesign involves a change in the identity as well. None of the speakers we have specialize in packaging and in the past, of 64 speakers we’ve had, maybe 1 or 2 had a big bulk of packaging in their portfoliio.
What are the ‘Must Visit’ events around branding and design worldwide?
Luckily, for us, there aren’t that many! Most conferences and events are on general design or creativity so you might get 10% or 20% of speakers or programming focusing specifically on branding but it’s not the main attraction.
Is there a project you are dreaming about?
We currently have on hold a line of t-shirts very specific about Texas (the state we live in) and are excited about the potential. Hopefully we will get it going this year. But literally, we have a lot of dreams, like literal dreams, about the conference. Although most of them are nightmares, like there not being a screen or projector at the venue, speakers caught in quicksand, venues too small to fit everyone, etc.
If you could rebrand any big brand, which one would you choose?
This is a U.S. only brand but it’s called Uline and they provide every piece of shipping material imaginable, from boxes of every possible size to foam peanuts and they have a decent logo and identity right now but it could be so much better and the identity would have to be extremely adaptable and flexible to work across all their products so it would be a great challenge.
You and your wife are the team behind all the projects you work on. Why not expand the team?
We work from home, which is a very conscious decision we made from the very beginning in 2007 when we started our business so that we could spend more time with our kids. We don’t have a huge home so physically having more people is difficult. At some point we had 2 interns coming in and it was okay but it felt crowded. We like staying small so that our overhead costs stay small and we don’t have to worry about taking on work just to pay the bills. We could probably do more things with a bigger team but those things would have to be much more profitable and with the kind of stuff we do, profit margins aren’t that high. Also, we are control freaks and like to do everything ourselves, and we work together very well so things move along quickly and efficiently.
And finally: Austin or Mexico City?
For food and culture, Mexico City, without hesitation. For quality of life, raising kids, and not losing your mind while trying to run a business, Austin. We also have killer margaritas.
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written by Graham Sturt
Creative Director at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme
PR at VBAT
