Base Design

What is the story of Base Design ? Base was created more than twenty years ago in Brussels by Dimitri Jeurissen, Thierry Brunfaut and Juliette Cavenaile. Historically, we opened studios where we had work... Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Santiago de Chile all hosted Base studios for a longer or shorter period. Base is a branding studio. We design brands based on one idea: one idea is all we need. We design ingeniously simple brands and build unique personalities. We humanise corporations, launch visions and clarify the complex. We specialise in not specialising, our only requirement is an open mind. We have offices in New York, Brussels and Geneva. We are dreamers, doers, thinkers, makers. Collectively — We are Base. 

Base supports the idea that graphic design can extend beyond geographical barriers. What interactions exist between the different divisions of your agency around the world ? Each of our teams has its own particularity. Well almost... Obviously, we are graphic designers for the most part. But today some offices have teams more specialised in digital, font design, copy or global communication strategy. We use our differences to build teams which are able to work together despite the kilometers that separate us, as often as possible. We share the same team spirit, and our creative processes are rigorous and aligned. For example, we follow our manifesto. It guides us and brings us together so that we are constantly all on the same page. Each job has a context. We study it before we start. First, concept. Then, design. We don't design for designers. We design for people. Every item we produce is a communication tool. We challenge design habits and medias. We play with codes. If it looks familiar, we will try something else. We freely mix our creative disciplines. We are not afraid to make mistakes. We learn from them. We believe there is no bad taste or good taste. We surprise. We want people to smile.

Design has never been so global and deterritorialised, paradoxically many designers continue to claim the importance of proximity and locality in their practice. Do you think there should always be a focus on these values in 2016 ? How would you describe your relationship with your clients ? We have an international aura. Thanks to some iconic projects, we have the chance to work for brands with a global reach. This is for example the case with one of our projects in Geneva: Caran d'Ache. Strange as it may seem, this involves both understanding the issues of an international trade and matching to a firm rooted in its local environment. Caran d'Ache is a Swiss, Genevan and family brand. It is this set of parameters that must be respected in order to create a good branding. It is its legacy and its ambitions that must be reflected in our work... We work mainly in our geographical area. We value our relationship with our clients. It is therefore essential that we can see them as often as possible. We always offer them our international expertise. We enrich our work with our collective and multicultural experience.

On your website, we noticed that you propose among others, three different types of services (start/evolution/revolution). Could you tell us more about that ? We recently changed the way we introduced our projects. It was a little unclear for the ‘non-designers’! The idea was to classify our projects according to what we have done: creating a brand identity from scratch, redesigning all or part of an identity, and redesigning a project. We like the idea that we have to adapt, to comply with a request. We are not the kind of designers with a particular signature. Some of our fellow workers and friends handle the design in a specific way: they respond in a personal way to an order, with style like artists, we are not in this category. We like to support our projects with the added value of the relationship we have with our clients. We specialise in non-specialisation. This is why we have so many different projects. Public transport of cities and neighbourhoods, artists' books, books of architects, brand identity for restaurants, museums, operas, biscuit companies, banks, olive oils... Our solutions are always different, but consistent as a whole thanks to our Base mind. Interview conducted in Juin 2016 ©ktlg