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TRANSCRIPT
Xavier Encinas is a French Art Director living and working in Paris. He is currently Art Director at Petronio Associates, Design Director of Under The influence magazine and founder of typography and graphic design blog Swiss Legacy.
Not only does Xavier Encinas have a sonorous name that rolls off the tongue, he is also a man of many talents, including art and design direction, blonning and olaying jazz trumoet. While he has .. . . . .. nowestablished himself in the graphic design community as the Art Director of Petronio Associates. it was not his initial career choice. Encinas didn't take the typical educational route to a career in graphic design: unlike many of his graphic design contemporaries, he never went to art school. Instead, he chose a business degree.
'It's not that I didn't want to go to art school', he says, 'I just wasn't thinking of becoming a graphicdesigner. I wanted to be a computer manager'.
By the age of eighteen he had already started designing, though he may not have realised how close he was to graphic design at the time. His first design project was a genuine labour of iove- his jazz band needed a website, so he put his skills to the test and designed one. That was the project that would launch Encinas's career in web design, even if he didn't know it yet.
'More people started to ask me for website design so I kept doing it, without thinking it would be my field of work. i designed websites for a long time before discovering print and typography:
Encinas made the transition from web to print when he discovered the work of The Designers Republic. 'Their ability to create an avant-garde yet playful graphic aesthetic always appeaied to me', he says. It was then that he started to experiment with typography on his personal projects.
He got his first commissioned print work through an artist friend, who referred him to an art gallery that was looking for Someone to design an opening invitation. It was a dream job-there were no budgetary constraints, so Encinas had total freedom to experiment with anvthinu he wanted. This was the collaboration that exoosed ~ncinas's work to the design community and helped kicksta'it his design career.
Apart from The Designers Republic, Encinas lists the books from Muiler-Brockmann and Wlm Crouwel as his biggest inspirations. He describes his personal design preferences as influenced by the Swiss/Dutch typographic style.
'What attracted me in that school was the minimaiism and organisation of content for that aesthetic', he explains. 'But after a while I realised I was looking at books and other designers' work too much, so one day I decided to box everything and start something that was coming from me. I haven't bought a design book since.'
In September 2008, after working five years as an Interactive Marketina Manaaer in a maior French ~ublishina comDanv. Encinas left to st&t his own studio.'
At the same time Mark O'Sullivan, Creative Director of fashion, photography and art magazine Under the influence, was looking for a design director. It proved to be a propitious coincidence. They started working together, along with Art Director Susan Connie Marsh. Encinas became a partner and they built the publication together as creative team.
In this role, Encinas designs the layout, develops the typography and takes care of the ~ r i n t ~roduction. 101-021 The team oriainallv , . changed the layout with every issue.
'We liked the idea of an ongoing creative process with lots of freedom. But we also realised that we needed to bring more maturity and consistency to the publication. We decided then to establish an identity and a more structured design direction.'
In order to improve upon the design, Encinas believes one must rake the risks that come with experimentation and failure. But with the third issue of the new ident~ty on the way, Encinas 1s hopeful that this change in direction hasn't disrupted the magazine's core design values. 'Working on it still feels right', he adds. 'So maybe we did a good job!'
In addition to his work with Under the Influence, Encinas is also Design Director of culture magazine The Lab, which he started in 2009. Plus he has recently taken on the position of Art Director at Petronio Associates where he works on, among other projects, the fashion publication Self Service. 'Over the years fashion became a strong point of interest t o me', Encinas relates. 'Fashion is a creative discipline that allows me to arrange visual conversations.'
Encinas appreciates a systematic and structured approach t o his publications, something he says designers need if they are to create a readable and understandable product. But that's not to deny the emotional labour involved in the creative process. 'For print collateral projects I've been working on, it's more about a "feeling" approach, especially regarding the final product', he says.
Encinas has been lucky t o have worked extensively with his oreferred clienteie-artists. Even back when he started out as a graphic designer for print, he wanted to work mainly with art clients. He believes that communication is a key factor in art institutions, and that they have a better understanding than most of the artistic side of graphic design. But he soon realised that art, especially in France;occupied a distinctive market that looked for a very specific approach to graphic design, which didn't fit with his own style. With his fashion clients, this was not the case.
'I found the same interest in innovative print communication. Also, fashion and luxury brands always look for very refined print pieces, which wasexactly what I was trying to do and develop:
I Encinas's portfolio includes work for clients around the globe, including in Seattb, Vancouver and his home city, Paris. ~ommunica t ing across international time zones ;equires hard work. he savs. 'The time difference obliaes vou t o oraanise vour - ,
workin a different way: But he's quick to point out that he's been lucky t o have international clients who have understood the n:ed to organise their work too, so that the project can run as smoothly as possible.
As if he weren't busy enough in his art and design direction roles, Encinas has also been running design blog Swiss Legacy for the last four years. At first, he says, it was difficult to continually find new content for the blog. Now things are a little easier-with the growth in readership that the blog has attracted. his inbox is overflowina with ideas for content. While he now has ~ l e n t v of material from which to pick and choose, he is still mindful ' of the need tostay ahead of the game. 'I always try to be one of the first on sharing something so I'm always prepared to fire up new posts in a hurry.'
One might be forgiven for thinking that Swiss Legacy would have gained Encinas contacts for his design work andraised his profile, but accordina to Encinas. that hasn't ha~oened. 'It's kind of funnv. - , ,
as I started the blog to promote other talents and share things that I iilce, all t o gain exposure for my work', he says.
That being the case, he still receives many emails from designers thanking him for posting their work on the blog and giving them the opportunity to gain new clients. Though i t may not have produced the results he was originally seeking, he believes Swiss Legacy serves its purpose well as a publication for the design community, and he's more than happy that it does.
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