Rebel Design Agency DE:STRUKT
DE:STRUKT, a new design agency set up by three friends based in Glasgow.
Since forming in February 2010, they have already worked with clients such as T in the Park, IRN-BRU, Reebok/Monorex, Rebel Rebel and many more. The group are becoming synonymous with a graffiti aesthetic, producing a plethora of design pieces embodying that ubiquitous expression of urban rebellious youth culture. I catch up with Ricardo Chapmen, one of the company’s founders to discover what the team are getting up to, how they are keeping it fresh and original and where they want to be.
What kind of services do you offer your clients?
Our services are pretty much the same as other design agencies. We do Brand Identity & Development / Websites / Print / Illustration / Digital / Photography but what we feel sets us apart from the other agencies across Glasgow is that we offer Interior wall art. We have amazing in-house street artists who can create fantastic interior art which we can offer for our clients.
How long has your business been up and running?
We formed in February 2010. The reason for this was because the team and I kept applying for the same design jobs and quite often being ignored and we were pretty much sick of it. So we had a chat and thought we should do it ourselves and put these so called respected agencies to shame. We wanted our company name to be recognised but also have that sort of Dutch/German look to it. And dos far it has worked and we are getting noticed.
Is there a usual type of client you most often work with?
Yeah we pretty much don’t deal with boring corporate clients (unless someone comes in and offers us great cash 
). Our client base is mainly through bars/restaurants/cafes, cool hair salons, retail, fashion, photography, graffiti/street art, anything that is cool really and that suits our style of work. We have been approached by some amazing clients that suit our style and this is already getting us noticed as people have seen our work out in the streets of Glasgow.
What is the creative process you go through to come up with your design ideas?
This is one of our fun bits of our design process. We always like to celebrate when we win a new client, once everything has been confirmed we have a lot of beers and pizzas to celebrate. We then all sit down the next day (slightly hung-over) in front of our whiteboard and start to bounce ideas of each other, we’ll go online and see what’s out there, write notes, have a few more beers and most importantly we have some epic good tunes playing in the background. There is never a day that we don’t play music. But we have some fantastic guys who can come up with original ideas that work really well and our clients are always happy with what we produce.
Have you found the current financial downturn has affected your roster of clients and your business?
Well we were worried about this but because we have started something different we have been constantly busy and at the moment we have another few potential clients coming on board so we are planning projects already for 2011. But for sure we know that we will have a blip and might not have any work coming in for months but we’re hoping that won’t happen any time soon.
We were recently approached by a London client and it got us thinking that we need to start aiming bigger. So our aim for the start of 2011 is to get more London based clients as well as hitting USA. One of our idols in the creative industry is I Love Dust, the guys are awesome and it’s exactly the kind of thing we are promoting ourselves in Glasgow.
What advice would you offer to freshly graduated students attempting to get involved in the design business?
We are all graduates (we graduated last year) and it is tough getting a job in the design industry. There aren’t many places that will take on graduates these days, I would probably advise that if you have just graduated start freelancing and getting that experience. Build a really cool portfolio and keep up to date with design blogs and improving your style of work. Most importantly, if you want to apply for a job DO NOT send just a standard word document CV. If you are supposed to be a designer then design your CV, the amount of word doc CV’s I received from people was ridiculous. We don’t want to read, we want to see your designs!
For more information on DE:STRUKT please see their website www.destrukt.co.uk or email hello@destrukt.co.uk
Interview by Arts Editor Lowenna Waters
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