123buero

Whilst in Berlin a select few of us that was interested in typography and had examples of good editorials and typography in our portfolios were chosen to visit a small graphic agency called 123buero. The main man was called Timo.

My first impression was that I could not believe how much space they had in a room where they work. It consisted of 2 chairs, 2 Macs and a huge shelf of design books. Here is an image below:

Timo was very nice and completely honest and critical about our portfolios. He firstly made us some ginger tea which seems to be quite popular in Berlin and we after we had all settled in a little we started going through our portfolios. He told us straight away if he didn't quite understand why something irrelevant was put in our work and he gave good constructive criticism about how we could make our portfolios better. He said that with mine I should have more scamps and the thought processes behind the final idea as he said it would be easier for a employer to understand your way of thinking. I found this very useful and have since

changed it and added more recent thought processed work.

He then started telling us about his company and what he had been up to recently. He also showed us his portfolio which obviously consisted of mostly typography and he showed us his high quality print outs that he had made in to books. One piece of work that I was very impressed with was A.D.Deertz which they are currently working on the future positioning and rebranding of the fashion label ADD, which will be redefined toA.D.Deertz with the collection of Fall/ Winter 2009/2010 and will be shift from a unisex concept to an all menswear line. He had directed the photography too.

Here is an image of one of the catalogues below:

Timo and his colleagues have also created a few of their own typefaces using Fontlab which he showed us the basic of how to use it which was very interesting. A couple of fonts to look out for when they are ready to be downloaded are: Maison and Naiv.

I overall really enjoyed this visit as it gave me an insight to how a small company works hard and is now getting big clients. He said it's always important to be able to get on with and work with somebody that is on your wave length so that there is no conflict and this gets the cogs of the company turning.