“This approach allows us to work with uncommon subjects and is also our way to redefine our profile depending on the kind of work we want to do,” they say. By consistency they mean “dedicating the same efforts to projects of varying scale, relevance or field” which leads to Folch undertaking self-commissioned work and collaborative projects alongside their bread and butter commercial endeavours.
That’s not to say they practise a house style or only produce similar projects – far from it. At the heart of everything they do is a belief in consistency. This restriction on size is important to how the studio perceives itself. Seven years on the studio numbers five‚ having peaked at an impressive eight in 2009‚ but their intention is to remain small, allowing Albert to comfortably maintain a creative steer over the studio’s output. Certain that this roster would require his services on a more regular basis, he began amassing a select list of collaborators, growing and shrinking the studio dependending on the nature of his current projects. In 2005 Albert Folch was a freelancer with an ever-growing list of clients in the fashion, editorial and arts sectors. Whether the people responsible for that will acknowledge it or not is another matter altogether.įolch Studio began almost by accident. All things considered, we’re confident that Barcelona’s star will continue to rise. In February BCNxMCR, a show of five of Barcelona’s top talents, took place in Manchester, cementing Barcelona’s rise in the UK design community’s consciousness. They enjoy the work of La Mosca, Lo Siento, Bendita Gloria, Mucho, Alex Trochut, Andreas Recquena, Josep Basora as well as PAR, Astrid Starvo, Mario Eskenazi and Klas Ernflo – an enormous number of practitioners all living and working in the same place.Īnd it’s not just within Spain that this talent is recognised. Although Two Points, Hey and Folch are keen not to exaggerate the quality of work they produce, nor the calibre of the community that they’re part of, ask each of them whether they respect any other Barcelona studios and they’re swift to respond. Each studio is producing work at the cutting edge of their discipline and operating in an environment of complete mutual respect. Despite their insistence that it’s not as up-and-coming we’re led to believe, their protestations seem like false modesty. So what is it exactly that’s drawn people to this coastal city to ply their creative trades? When we went to meet three of Barcelona’s brightest talents, one thing became abundantly clear the designers of Barcelona don’t rate their own city’s creative output. Twenty years ago this wouldn’t have been the case. But in recent years things have changed, not least because Barcelona now has its own centre for design education, Elisava, an institution that’s produced an impressive list of alumni and provided teaching positions for many of its most reputable designers. It has been said the ongoing political tensions in Spain, a lack of respect for commercial creativity and the absence of a formal design education system have all prevented Barcelona from hitting its creative stride until now. The prevalence of Barcelona-based international publications like Apartamento might have drawn attention to some of the creative talent on offer, but there are greater forces at work than a few magazines’ worldwide success. Over the past few years the city has witnessed a surge in quality design with new studios and individual creatives arriving on the scene at an incredible rate. Which is really how we feel about Barcelona the new kid on the design block that has nothing to lose and everything to prove.
Having design pedigree is all well and good, but we’ve got a soft spot for the young upstart, the latecomer to the party, the kind of people who make the best of things even though the odds are stacked against them. The Swiss nailed typography, the Germans made more functional objects than the world knew what to do with and the Dutch created design systems with a modular flavour, pushing the experimental nature of visual communication to its very limits. These countries in particular have long-held, hard-won reputations for defining the way we create objects of use and communicate visually, laying down principles and methodologies for good design over the last century that still influence how we create work in the digital age. Ask anyone where the home of graphic design is and they’ll likely point you in the direction of Switzerland, The Netherlands or Germany – at a push maybe France or the UK.
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