Okto Bureau on designing for the second year, not the launch
The Rotterdam studio talks ferries, museums and why the best identity systems are the ones clients can still run without them.
Okto Bureau works out of a former print hall on the edge of Rotterdam’s old harbour. The six-person studio has spent the last decade building identities for ferry operators, regional museums and a handful of very particular bakeries, and it has a reputation for systems that keep working long after the launch party.
We sat down with founders Lotte Bakker and Aram Visser to talk about restraint, handover documents and the projects they would still redo.
You often say you design for “year two”. What does that mean in practice?
Lotte: Launch is the easiest day an identity will ever have. Everyone is excited and the studio is still in the room. Year two is when an intern is making a poster at five o’clock on a Friday. If the system only works when we are holding the pen, we have failed.
How does that change the work itself?
Aram: We spend more time on rules than on hero moments. Fewer typefaces, fewer colours, very clear grids. Then we test the system on the dullest things we can find: parking signs, invoices, a timetable change. If it survives those, the exciting pieces take care of themselves.
If the system only works when we are holding the pen, we have failed.
Is there a project you would redo?
Lotte: Our first museum identity. We built a beautiful variable logo that nobody on their team could animate. It taught us that a system is only as good as the people and tools that inherit it.
