A stolen bag from a german train station sparked the beginning of a studio—after an amazing journey, Dani and Pablo started up Koln Studio. With beautiful experimental typography and true tenacity Dani and Pablo are big believers of working hard to make your dreams come true. Read on for more details on their awesome journey and the studios they've been inspired by.
Where did you study and what were some of your first jobs?
We studied together at ESD Madrid, the public School of Design in Madrid. Since we were in second year, we started to share projects (from class and also creating our own projects. Most of them at the beginning were made up, but we learnt a lot with these projects). Some of our first jobs came from friends who like our work and wanted to give us an opportunity. A poster for a concert, a fanzine for a photographer, the design of a EP cover…
What was your plan for graduating and what actually happened?
Our plan was to take a trip around Europe, connecting with our favourite graphic designers and visiting studios.
Our idea was to create a documentary, recording our visits and interviews. The principal aim was to meet and learn from them and share all the knowledge with our colleagues. Also we thought it would be an amazing experience for us.
We did the whole trip and all the travel, and all the interviews with nice results. But when we are on the way back to Spain, we were in Koln Station (in Germany) and a guy stole our bag, with the camera, and the hard drives, including all the recorded interviews.
We didn’t give up, and tried to continue the project. We created a project explaining what we had done during our trip (before, during and after). Years after when we created the studio, we decide to use the name of Koln, as a tribute of what we lived.
You can watch a video of the project here vimeo.com/76261451
Who are your top five design crushes right now?
There is a lot of great designers that we really admire and people making great things nowadays . Its hard to pick only five, but we re gonna try…
—Our big reference since the beginning is Experimental Jet Set, we've learnt a lot from them (even when they never answered our letter to visit them and participate on our project jejeje)
—We are also huge fans of the Patrick Thomas Studio.
—The Eike König / Hort works just blow our minds
—We are also fascinated with the work that DIA Studio develops.
—We really love the work of SpaskyFischer.
Are you involved in any teaching and if and how it shapes your practice?
We are collaborating with IED Istituto Europeo di Design, developing workshops and summer courses.
We're really enjoying this opportunity because we've learnt a lot from the students. We're finding it very interesting to work with them, we've learnt that while at school it is the perfect time to experiment and try whatever you want without the fear of failure. With real projects many times this is impossible, but when you re learning the best way to learn is to fail, and fail and fail again.
What advice would you give students starting out?
—Work, work, work and follow your desires (and never give up) till you reach them. Probably sounds like typical advice, but for us is the truth. With work and patience, you can reach every goal that you want. When we started our design studies, we dreamed about creating our own studio, and working on big projects. After years, we have been working hard, and now we are reaching our dreams of those days. Nowadays, we are very happy with our small studio, working with a big client like the Madrid City Hall, something that we had dreamed about.
Whats the big goal in the next five years?
Continuing working hard with clients that like and respect our work. Enjoy the projects and be happy. That´s all.
Where to find Koln Studio online.
Website: kolnstudio.com
Instagram: @kolnstudio
