George&Harrison – “We hear that our work is really Dutch”

We talk to George&Harrison about style, projects and exposure.

Creative Chair is back, and this week we’ve been talking to Martijn and Maarten of George&Harrison, a design studio with an outstanding visual style and numerous projects that have been featured on the Behance Network.

You can see more projects on their website and Behance portfolio.

Tell us a little bit about George&Harrison, the work you do, and how the studio came about?

George&Harrison is an Eindhoven, The Netherlands, based design studio, founded in 2013 by Martijn Maas and Maarten Stal. The studio creates projects for clients in the cultural and corporate field – in the form of publications, digital media and visual identities. We focus on clean, content-driven design that is deprived of any unnecessary noise.

It is our aim to create design solutions that balance the desire to connect with individuals on an emotional level. Context, research and dialogue are key to George&Harrison’s approach.

Your projects have a unique visual style. Who/what are some of the inspirations behind it?

Our work is firstly inspired by our personal context, education and history. We do sometimes hear that our work is really Dutch. Although being Dutch is never a goal in our work we do value some characteristics that are linked to Dutch Design such as having a sense of humour (very underrated in the design world), and being helpful to the client first and our personal portfolio second.

Next to this we are both huge film and music-freaks and are inspired by people like Kubrick, Jim Jarmusch, Nicolas Winding Refn, Thom Yorke, Sufjan Stevens, Nick Cave, and Mark Kozalek to name a few.

Which of your projects are you most proud of and why?

That’s a tough one. We have been too busy this last year to update our portfolio. We’ve been doing the branding for a cosmetics concept, designing a new online and offline news platform and will start with the sleeve design for a Jazz collective soon.

So there are a lot of new projects, big and small, that we are really excited about but not in our online portfolio at this time. I guess if we had to pick one it would be one of those projects but that’s no fun for your readers ;-) maybe we can dodge a bullet here and honestly tell you that we don’t really have a favourite project. One of the best things about our profession is that we get to dive head first into new knowledge that new clients bring. It keeps the job fresh and the mind flexible.

You have had numerous project featured on the Behance network. How has this increased exposure benefited you, as a business?

The good thing about Behance is that it allows you to share your work with the world and hopefully inspire someone somewhere. We are grateful for every response – negative or positive because it shows someone was interested enough to care. Actually it is quite overwhelming to see all the design studio’s on Behance, a feature does two things; First we are happy that a lot of people will see our work. Secondly it reminds you that what is hot today is old news tomorrow.

Finally, if you died and got reincarnated as a song, what would that song be?

Here comes the sun by George Harrison!