review 2018 / preview 2019
It has been a while since i wrote my last post. Not only because I spent more time with my daughter, but also because the end of the year was rather busy and I simply could not keep up with the weekly writing. I want to pick it up again in 2019 and continue writing about projects, processes and behind the scenes (maybe not with the ambition to right weekly). To kick off the year I always love to look back at last year’s projects – so I tried to summarize 2018. Attached you will find a little summery of projects, things that have not been published and plans for 2019.
WOMAN
One of the biggest projects I worked on 2018 was the image campaign for Austria’s biggest woman’s magazine ‘WOMAN’. read all about it here. The great thing about the collaboration with this brand is, that they fully trusted us with a rapid visual change and we not only did the ad campaign with them. over they year we also helped them evolve the ad look within the magazine, did small campaigns around events, helped them launch an app and repositioned their new CAMPUS (more to come soon). I am looking forward to continue the collaboration in 2019.
XENOX
Another really big project was the repositioning of the jewelry brand XENOX. Together with design studio VERSUS, who brought me on board, we helped this Austrian brand with great heritage to evolve from a B2B brand to a strong and tangible brand for consumers. The collaboration with VERSUS led to a new brand positioning, a new brand identity, some brand implementation with the new in-house design team and some help to bring their online shop on the road. Since I can’t show everything only a few pics.
WOOM
The third big branding project was to work with WOOM kid’s bikes on a new (still secret) product range, the positioning of it and a launch campaign that will see the light of day this spring. This was all very exciting because I could be part of lots of product evolutions and decisions along the way. The in-house team is super talented and it was fun to come up with the campaign, the visual language and all of the new collections beginning together. As soon as everything is launched i will write about it in detail and show visuals.
ANYLINE
Anyline is a great Austrian company that is market leader when it comes to OCR aka text recognition technology. 2018 we developed a new brand and communication strategy to stay ahead of the competition. All of it will now be transformed into a new visual language and communication tools and actions. So more visuals to come in 2019.
LIGHTBRIDGE
I continue to work with Austrian start up THE LIGHT BRIDGE. They continue to rethink lighting in film and come up with amazing products that go beyond that usual lighting equipment. In 2019 new products will be added so the branding and communication journey will continue.
OTHER BRANDING PROJECTS
Over they year I worked with 22 different clients - most of them being clients I handle directly and a hand full of agencies and studios I collaborate with closely. So there are all sorts of “smaller” branding and art direction jobs that I do. here are only a few:
- together with Philip Reitsperger I worked on stuff for hallertau.de and the media house kastner ag
- I worked with rückenwind on their new identity and homepage
- I developed a corporate identity together with tech2people
MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC
In 2018 I was commissioned two do the art direction for two record art works. BREAK THE SILENCE by Desoto and MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING by Amongst Giants. It was super fun to come up with visual concepts and execute them with hands on set designs - I love to do those “staged real life illustrations” and to paint pictures with tangible stuff. Both covers shot with amazing belle&sass.
TEACHING, TALKING & WORKSHOPPING
I am proud that I started as a guest lecturer for the master degree at FH Salzburg and the multi media degree in 2018. I am teaching “WHAT THE F*** IS BRANDING” and I am trying my best to show my students, what it is all about when it comes to a good branding process. I gave a couple of talks and interviews about branding and my work this year and I was lucky to get invited from a couple of agencies and studios to do custom workshops for their teams. I would love to continue all of it and I am looking forward to get more invitations and opportunities to do so in 2019.
LOOK OUT 2019
I am super excited that in December 2018 Tobias Federsel and I won a sports related pitch together with TBWA (more soon). I started to work with a great family owned business that works in food and wine, I will work with a textile artist and with mySugr - an app for diabetes on strategy, brand positioning and design.
I also will give talks and work closely with Design Austria on a series called ‘FRAG FRAU SANDRA’, where young designer and students can have one-on-one sessions with me for mentoring, coaching or simply answering questions related to the industry and business.
This lookout is super exciting but one thing I am most stoked about is to continue to work on my self initiated project called IT’S A PASSION THING with a bunch of amazing creatives. This baby will launch in spring 2019. So you better all stay tuned! Happy 2019!