Studio Portrait: AKU
We first met Alari Orav, Kaarel Kala, and Uku-Kristjan Küttis when Grilli Type visited Tallinn in February 2015. Showing us around town and bonding over beers and sauna, Estonian studio AKU and their friend and collaborator Ryan Chapman have become good friends of ours in the north. Over the years they’ve created multiple beautiful projects using our typefaces, so we thought we should talk to them about how things have been going lately.
Hi guys! How are things in beautiful Tallinn?
It’s going great! How are you doing?
We’re good! What do you think is great about your new space?
Moving to a new office is a practical choice. We didn’t have a meeting room in our previous office (we do now, and it’s great), making phone calls and organizing client meetings was creating too much noise. We didn’t have a bathroom and now we have 3, which is also great.
The new place is situated in the old town area of Tallinn, in a house that, during the Soviet time, served as headquarters to the notorious KGB (which was not so great), but has just recently been converted to apartments.
How have you grown as a studio in the last year?
34m2 in floor space, 2 cm in beards, 25% in hourly rate, 1 in newborns.
Is there anything interesting that you’ve learned?
That a single-cell organism can pick the right typeface for you.
Not only that, but it can challenge the way the Europe does banking! How did your amibitious project with Pocopay take shape?
We got a phone call from Linnar Viik, a somewhat legendary figure in the Estonian IT scene. At the first meeting he showed us something that said “payment droplets”. No, we didn’t understand it either. The service targeted the European market and was meant to change everything the banks are — big, slow, expensive. Next, he had some wireframes drawn up. These featured a big circle that was to become the central UX device, allowing users to drag and drop payments or requests. That sounded cool. Our initial task was to develop the brand strategy, create a visual identity, and help to implement it for the Android app. We ended up delivering much more.
Why do you think GT Haptik was a good choice for the project?
We think Haptik is a terrific typeface. We were drawn to it because it had a tactile narrative: being readable by touch, we thought this tied well with the tactile experience of dragging a droplet of money to send it to another user. We also liked the crisp and geometric look of it: it contrasted well with liquid visual aesthetics of Pocopay.
We ended up working with you to make a customized version for Pocopay, some of the uppercase letters were made narrower, crossbar of “A” is a bit higher than before etc. This also toned down some of the quirkiness of the typeface, without completely losing it. A special tabular-only typeface was added to be used for bank statements and other features inside the app.
A project like Pocopay is very tied to the commercial world, but we admire how you work with cultural clients as well. How do you find the balance between the two?
We try to work with cultural clients like they were commercial clients and vice-versa.
Are there any dream clients that you have as a studio?
Alari: Richard Sachs
Kaarel: Crocs
Uku: Spyderco
Sven: BBC
Jaan: Tallinn Crematorium
Maria: Keskerakond (Estonian Central Party)
We also love your collaborations with Ryan Chapman, an independent illustrator. How did that start?
Ryan moved to Tallinn couple of years ago and was looking for a desk to rent. He ended up at AKU and has now become one of our main collaborators. His illustration style is very clean and simple — that works well with the type of work we do.
Your work fits together well. Are there any projects you’re working on together at the moment?
We are just wrapping up a project for Huffington Post that we did together.
We can’t wait to see it! You also recently wrapped up your new site, congratulations! It looks lovely! Can you tell us why GT America felt like a good fit?
Thanks! We were playing with an earlier version of GT America for another project that unfortunately got cancelled. We loved the typeface and decided use it for own portfolio, picking a style out of the eighty-four available proved a challenge, so we we went with just one: Light. We also use only three sizes throughout the site, neat.
Your identity for the printing house Joon is one of our favorites. What made you choose GT Walsheim?
“Joon” literally means “a line” in Estonian. They specialize in personalised printing services and special solutions. The new identity leaves a lot of room for thought — clean, striped surfaces inspire to write down new ideas and make them happen. Three colours refer to the business’ main areas. The simple system adapts well to various applications and stands clearly out amongst competition. Using Walsheim was a personal choice of Jaan — the head designer on the project.
Please tell us about your beautiful Unreleased Material project.
We wanted to make a special event for the studio’s first birthday. The first idea was to make a “Poster exhibition”, however we realized we don’t have the time and the resources to create multiple posters. Thus we decided to turn the event into a poster exhibition, as in exhibition of one poster.
The graphic system is quite simple, all 3 of us had bits and pieces left over from various projects that didn’t get used for one reason or the other, so we combined them, each of us had a color/layer to work with. All 3 layers were then overlaid and offset-printed. Here is a gif to illustrate the process:
We have one last lightning round of questions. Can you please share:
One person we should know about:
One image we should look at:
One song we should listen to:
One link we should click:
One Estonian word we should all know:
“Töööö” — work night
Thanks!
AKU is a design studio based in Tallinn, Estonia. AKU was founded in 2012 by Alari Orav, Kaarel Kala and Uku-Kristjan Küttis, who share over 40 years of combined experience in design and communication.
