NOVUM | THE WORLD OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

The tools of the trade may be the same, whoever the designer; it’s the approach that differs. Katja Peter, for example, who founded the Swiss design agency Visual Dope, finds that in tackling branding projects in particular she works like a film director. »First, I need a main protagonist,« she explains. »That might be a visual brand. Then perhaps you might need an adversary, something that obtrudes visually. Walk-on parts are the neutral elements, like lines or patterns – and then your background elements correspond to what in the film is backdrop and scenery.« Having completed her casting, the designer begins on staging her production: here, from her toolkit of creative resources, she must choose the right components. These are rigorously classified: some are information carriers; others get emotion across.

As in films, the crucial thing is the mixing, and Katja Peter says: »The compositions come over as a narrative, though I don’t need an actual storyline, and the range of applications is endless. Over the long term, with this approach, you can turn out all sorts of communication products without repeating yourself – while still being confident of high recognition value.«

Using these principles, Katja and her team of three have had successful experience in various design fields; however, Visual Dope’s major activities are branding, concepts and illustration. Its creatives, based in Zürich, are in demand right across the board, listing clients from such categories as financial services, architectural design and the public sector, not to mention biotechnology companies and restaurants. In this last field, gastronomy, in particular, the team’s blend of skills has produced outstanding results in strengthening a visual identity by appropriate restaurant design. For the Chez Nhan restaurant in Zürich, for instance, Visual Dope wove Buddhist resonances into an all-embracing colour scheme of gold, orange and deep red, featured on the restaurant’s print products as well as in the wall graphics. The really challenging parts, according to Peters, were to get the look of the print products replicated on the walls – including dealing with the different degrees of translucence of the metallic shades – and to pick up elements of the CI in the room decor, so that the visual concept is recognisable throughout.

A similarly attractive interplay between spaces and graphics has been created in the visitor centre at Grube Messel, near Darmstadt, which documents the fossil finds at this site, now part of the Unesco World Cultural Heritage. Visual Dope took care of the signage and exhibition graphics for this project, echoing the unconventional architecture consistently, but in their own formal language. The graphics were required to integrate as naturally as possible with the structure, so signboards, for instance, were not used. Pictograms and texts were stencilled directly onto the concrete surfaces, and a coat of clear lacquer then sufficed to create a sophisticated »wet look«. Whether working on company reports, packaging, orientation systems or CIs, the team at Visual Dope aim to bring pragmatic, can-do attitudes and intelligence to every project they tackle, and to create designs that are meaningful and will stand the test of time. »To be genuinely good,« they say, »it has to be still good fifty years hence.« On the fast-moving design scene, that is quite some ambition.

www.visualdope.com