Studio visit: Two Points (Barcelona)

Two points is a design studio based in Barcelona, founded in 2007. The studio aims produce design work that is tailored to the client's needs, work that excited the client's customers, work that hasn't been done before and work that does more than work. 

A small group of us visited the studio to meet the designers and listen to a talk that they gave us on their journey as a company and all of the ideas and concepts that they have recently developed. It was interesting and useful to find out about the reasoning behind the design decisions, something that a lot of people do not share. This was the most important part of the talk to me as it is something that the degree course requires a lot of focus on, it isn't all about the final outcome. 

I Love Typeface Box Set

The studio have published a box set of books, each dedicated to a different popular typeface. The books demonstrate the influences on the perception of content and how the typefaces would influence many generations of designers and readers. 

The fonts:

- Futura

- Avant Garde

- Bodoni

- DIN

- Gill Sans

- Franklin Gothic

- Helvetica

- Times

The design studio mentioned that they tend to choose contemporary projects over historical projects as they are the ones that best suit their design style and way of creative thinking. They highlighted the importance of deciding for yourself what type of project best suits you as a designer, you do not need to be restricted to a particular style, but having an idea of what you are most successful at is important. 

About the presentation of the mock ups rather than just the concept

Context is so important, know the need so you know what people read and like. 

"Back and forth communication is vital for development and visual communication success"

QUADERNS

This is an architecture magazine which Two Points designed, focusing on the unfinished state of an immediate response to a specific moment and theme. They wanted to design it in a way that allowed for new questions to be raised, rather than giving answers. 

The idea that content and form work together is very important. The two elements cannot be planned separately as they will not effectively work together at the end. If both are considered from the start of the project, the final outcome will be successful and there will be no errors when it comes to layout or printing at the end.

The worse the picture, the less important it should be on a publication. Using nice paper but a bad photo would make it look much worse, so it is best to use a paper that reflects it so that it is seen to be a clear design decision. A design decision that I like about this publication, is the presentation of the pictures and how they have been changed to a Pantone colour so that it all fits together visually as a publication.

A cross section diagram of publication was developed before it was decided where the information was to be placed. This was because there were pages of different sizing, so it would be hard to visualise it solely on an Indesign document. This diagram was also sent to the printers so that they could visualise how it needed to be printed and stapled together. 

To get glossy pages and individual photos, they had to produce a diagram to illustrate this 

Thick line as cover and then lines above as flat lay double spread pages. 

Clients will often reduce the extra colours that are needed so that the printing costs are reduced. It is important to bare this in mind when designing for a client, find out at the start so that there is less editing at the end.  

Indigo is a company that can print Pantone. 

LEAP dialogues

LEAP dialogues offers readers a cross section of case studies and career trajectories of successful people. The book demonstrates how design matters in social change and how an education in design allows a professional to move throughout their career making contributions to the world. The dialogue is visually represented by the colours of blue and neon red, presenting the dialogue in a zig-zag grid layout so that the reader can easily follow each of the speakers. 

The decision to use an neon typeface was because the process was open, incomplete and highlighting that there was not set way of teaching.

Helsinki Design Lab

This book cover is printed with five colours (cmyk + neon pantone) and plastified. The books visuals inside are all blue, meaning that all of the diagrams and graphs that the client gave to Two Points to include in the book had to be redrawn. This meant that they had to charge more for this extra bit if design work, it was vital so that the diagrams fit in with the rest of the book and the line weighting and styles all matched. 

'Think with your hands, make with your head'