Getting to know people

During the last lesson of PPP we were split in 12 groups in order to analyse different studios and present them to the rest of the classroom. I was in group 1, so we had to research about Studio AH-HA.

Studio AH-HA is based in Lisbon, Portugal and it was founded by Carolina Cantante and Catarina Carreiras, two designers that met each other during their studies at university. They do interior design, branding, identity work, advertising, new media, traditional and fine print, retail and product design, photography and illustration having a holistic approach towards design and branding. As many other studios, they work with customers through different stages of their designing processes and, like they say, "filtering their inspirations, ideas and motivations" in a way that the message is clearly conveyed.

They are quite unique in terms of designing as they really focus on make even photography tangible using paper techniques. They really know how to manipulate geometrical shapes to make minimal and abstract designs using unusual colour palettes.

I also made a table of the different studios based on notes of the other groups presentations.

Studio	Who?	Where?	What?	How?	Why Unique?
Hey Studio	Veronica Fuerte +4	Barcelona, Spain	Branding, Illustrations and editorial work	Through Personal projects	Attitude first, Style is secondary
Sagmeister & Walsh	Stefan Sagmeister, Jessica Walsh, Zipeng Zhu and Molly Brunk	New York, USA.	Advertising, Art Direction, Branding, etc.	With great concepts well executed.	Unique Colours, 60’s pop art.
Heydays	Team of 6 designers	Norway	Logos and visual identities	‘Design visual identities and websites for small and big clients’	Colour Palette
Lust	Jeroen Baarendse, Thomas Castro and Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen +13	Netherlands	Abstract and post-modern work similar to David Carson’s.	They grew from a magazine	Experiment to push boundaries
Studio Dumbar	Liza Enebeis and Tom Dorresteijn +5	Netherlands	Online branding	‘Our style is that we don’t have style’	Abstract, geometrics, complex typography and distortion
Build	Michael C. Place and Nicky Place	London - Yorkshire	Branding	‘I really don't understand people that try to be cool’	Type orientated. Simple. Limited colour palette
Elmwood	A team around 130 people.	Hong Kong, Leeds London, Melbourne, New York and Singapore	Branding, Print, internal comms, writing, packaging, environments, digital activation	‘We're the most effective brand design consultancy’	They are all over the world, even Leeds!
Bleed	Svein Haakon Lia, Dag Solhaug Laska and Kjell Reenskaug +10	Vienna and Oslo	Visual identity from photography and illustration	Geometric work	Algorythm for designs
Face	Team of 10 people	Mexico	Music branding	They ‘keep it simple’	Set of questions for customers
Dessein	Geoff Bickford and Tracy Kenworthy	Northbridge, Australia	Branding and packaging	Minimalism	Diverse cultural background
Wolff Olins	Team of 100+	London, San Francisco, New York, Dubai	Branding	Vibrant colours	Sculpture, Tv presenter, carpenter, DJs, comedians, cage fighter…