Designer Marina Willer’s Advice on Collaboration and Curiosity

The award-winning Pentagram partner talks us through her approach to finding inspiration and working with other creatives in this Domestika Maestros

In the world of design, Marina Willer needs no introduction. Celebrated for her unique approach to the creative process, she has led projects for clients including Serpentine, Rolls-Royce, and Sight and Sound. Marina also became the first woman to be offered a partner position at Pentagram London, the design consultancy which describes her as “a leading figure in UK design.”

Her Domestika course, Creative Brand Identity: How Ideas Find a Home, explores the process she goes through when designing for some of the world’s leading brands. In this new episode of the Domestika Maestros video series, she shares her inspirations, the unique and experimental methods she has become known for, and her advice for a successful career in design.

What makes a good designer?

As a multi-faceted designer, Marina’s job is to create imagery for brands, mainly in the form of a logo or identity design—a role which has seen her win many prestigious awards and honors including Creative Review’s Creative Leaders 2017.

But, despite being recognized as a leader in her field, design for Marina is a collaborative process. She explains:

“To me, a good designer is someone who is able to collaborate with others to create a balance of originality and amazing ideas that are relevant.”

That originality is key to Marina’s work. She considers it an essential part of designing something that doesn’t work universally but, instead expresses the needs of a particular organization or client.

“You can find poetry in very simple things”

Marina’s childhood and family life have hugely impacted the way she sees design: “Growing up in Brazil, my dad being a modernist architect, there was a whole utopian way of seeing the world…that influenced me a lot.”
She also reflects on the impact of moving abroad on her artistic style: “When you move from your country, I think you become more aware of your identity in a way because you have more freedom to be yourself, and you start to incorporate things that you had lost from college times.”

Today, she’s just as inspired by her own children, as well as the objects she comes across in her everyday life. “You can find poetry in very simple things,” explains Marina, “the more curious you are, the more you look around the world, the more unique your work will be.”

A new way of working

Studying at the Royal College of Art introduced Marina to a new way of working, which was less conventional and less commercial. From there, she developed a process that got her out from behind a computer to creating with her own two hands: “I find it really magical to create mechanically, without any control”.

Now her creative process combines many different methods and materials, from working with retro projectors to ink, and lightboxes, as well as digital tools like Photoshop and After Effects. For her, it’s a combination of these techniques that defines the end result and creates something that is truly unique.

Her redesign of the Tate logo is just one example of her process. During her time as the creative director of Wolff Olins, the firm was tasked with creating a family of logos that united each of its sites ahead of the launch of Tate Modern in 2000. Her way of doing so was anything but ordinary: “I had a little room and every day was doing a different “Tate” and projecting it, like an installation… Then I took lots of photographs, and we animated them, then did screengrabs of the animation, which became the final mark.”

Top advice for designers

1. Understand your problem
No matter what design project you’re working on, Marina emphasizes that having a good grasp of the concept and the challenge it’s trying to solve is a crucial part of the process. She adds, “If you go through a method of really distilling and understanding the problem and bringing the creativity…you will find the solution, and it will be strong.”

2. Keep curious
It comes as no surprise that curiosity is one of the qualities Marina considers key for budding designers since it plays such an important role in her process for finding inspiration: “Keep curious, keep looking for ideas in unusual places, and not just try to be like anybody else.”

3. Make it unique
Standing out from other designers is essential to making a name for yourself in the industry. Marina recommends drawing on your personal experience as a way to achieve that: “We all have a story and a history, and from that story, we can bring our own identities into the work that we create and make it unique.”

Want to know more about the creative methods Marina has become known for? Check out her online branding course.

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