Datagif

What is the story of Datagif? We (Gaëtan and Florent) met in our previous company (an advertising agency) around the coffee machine (it was twenty cents and frankly bad). We had the urge to work together. We knew each other just around coffee break, lunchs and evening drinks. We had a lot of fun, so we thought we were not old enough to get bored in this agency. We really did not have much to lose… so we decided to go for it. At first the idea was not to set up an agency, but rather to enjoy working together on cool projects. We wanted to create well finished and personalized projects, for clients who make sense. It may seem obvious, but it is already a good anti-bullshit basis. We started from a simple collaboration between two freelancers to set up our own studio, which slowly became a small agency. Since the beginning of this adventure, we have not stopped learning, on the administrative side of course, but especially on the human side, thanks to our clients and all those who spent a bit of time with us. It has been already eight years, we still have a lot of fun, not only the two of us, and we drink good coffee. Q>We noticed that your graphic identity is very connected to the digital world, combining colors and emojis. How do you adapt your signature to the variety of media you work on? It is true that some clients come to see us for the ‘Datagif style’, but this seems to be the basis for any studio that has a strong identity. The web culture is clearly part of our daily life. We use what we experience every day, emojis, gifs, sometimes memes, graphic references that are part of the language… As for our style, our job is to create and we try to exceed the strict limits of the strict charters of our clients to bring them into a universe a little more pop and colorful. Otherwise we would spend our time getting bored and developing chatbots, it would be sad, wouldn’t it? In one word: I N T E R N E T!

What was your most important project? It is quite complicated to choose only one project… Working for the media is what strucked us and still does. In the digital field, the redesign of the Libération website remains a very good memory. If we think about printed matter, the redesign of Têtu was an incredible experience, where everything was done at the same time, with crazy stakes. Working for the press today may seem a little bit adventurous, but in reality, it is really worth it if you are very creative, dust off brands that have lived, and support new projects that are launched to make things change. Very exciting !

In your opinion, what are the technological innovations on which graphic design need to look in the coming years? We are constantly bombarded with innovations. Did you know that we can compare the evolution of Internet to life in dog years ? One year = one generation! What will the future be like? For us, it is not the technology that prevails, because we are living with it; it is rather the uses and habits that are changing. Now, we create our websites for a mobile first, whereas five years ago it was rather an adaptation we did at the end of the project... In ten years, it will be a joke that designer and developer were two different jobs. Interview conducted in March 2018 ©ktlg