A big congrats to Amateur(Dot)Rocks, one of our 30 TDK Awards’ winners for 2018. A graduate duo from Berlin, their work was chosen by Will from It's Nice That: “Great portfolio from start to finish. Nice typographic work throughout, feels very relevant to today”. We asked them to answer a few questions for next years TDK Awards’ hopefuls.
What has been some of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt along the way?
Creativity has more frustrations than joys but a great idea makes us forget about all the possible drawbacks.
Design as a tool to express and communicate ideas.
Although we support independent design work, having an experience in a studio or agency is a very enriching and necessary process.
When creating a design, it’s better to explore other fields and expressions to find more genuine and novel inspiration.
Constantly re-thinking and questioning our creative process to be able to grow and progress towards our ideas.
Any passion projects/collabs you would like to share?
We consider Bocas Sucias as one the most representative projects of Amateur(dot)rocks. From the moment we decided to develop a series of posters with tough Argentinian expressions and released them in the streets, we experienced intense repercussions. At that time, Argentina was going through a complicated and violent political and social moment (as usual) and the poster series shook that context and opened a big debate about our relations in society. The idea was incredibly received by people; we got many positive and touching comments as well as threatening messages from those who found the project really offensive and aggressive. These kinds of impacts and effects are what we look for in each personal project we start to work on; we have the need to use design to start discussions and transmit strong messages.
Where do you think design is heading in the next five years and how will you adapt?
We believe that the most interesting things will keep happening in the personal and experimental projects. This will result from a more multidisciplinary way of thinking developed by the new generation of designers who are integrating and mixing new techniques, skills and tools and working collectively with other professionals from other fields. Also, the commercial work frustrations we are experiencing these days will produce a bigger migration of designers to visual arts and other artistic expressions so that they can find more creative environments and committed teams to take their projects to the next level.
Besides, we see how design is on the way to be another ordinary product in a bazar. The current context for independent designers is tough and we believe that it’s going to get worse if clients don’t stop underestimating design. Unfortunately, if this conception doesn’t change, we’ll continue competing with websites that categorize design or designers with algorithms and sell logos as a Coke in a grocery.
So, we will need to strengthen the link between design and the thinking process even more, create and develop stronger concepts and ideas that add value to our work and differentiate it from the massive and fordist design.
What advice would you give students starting out?
Generate and train the creative and aesthetic criterion.
