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-otional decisions, more instinctive decisions, than budgets and marketing strategies.

Gelman: Do you enjoy dealing with those issues?

Dimitri: They’re not a problem for us-

Gelman: Is it harder to get interesting, experimental results?

Dimitri: Yes, but I think everything has a place, also. A company that has existed for 25 years and makes millions of dollars in a certain way, you have to go step-by-step. You're not going to make decisions as if you're would for an up and coming little brand in Amsterdam. You know, you can go and do experimental things on the appropriate subjects. I think you have to choose where you should and where you shouldn't do it. It's still their business, finally. Marketing directors have something so say, and management has something to say, and we have something to say. When the marketing director starts to choose the type that you use, then it goes wrong. When we start doing marketing analysis­you know, I've always called it bonsanse.

Geoff: Common sense.

Dimitri: Common sense. You know, we think in a way, and-

Gelman: Does it happen often?

Dimitri: That we have to do marketing research?

Gelman: The switching-

Geoff: Role reversals.

Dimitri: No, and I don’t think we should switch responsibilities. I think everybody has an opinion on a subject, but still an electrician is an electrician, and a graphic designer is a graphic designer. So I think everybody has their place, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to listen to them, because they have a good opinion.

Gelman: So you moved from Europe to New York, and you’re living here now?

Dimitri: Yeah, yeah. I live here now, since the end of last year.

Gelman: How do you like it?

Dimitri: Depends. Today, yes, because it’s really nice weather. [all laugh] No, it depends. It’s—yesterday I was having a conversation with a designer, and we were saying that New York is a really tough city. The lifestyle is really, when you compare it with Brussels, it-

Geoff: The quality of living is much lower here when you compare it with the rest of the world.

Dimitri: On the other hand, you meet very exciting people, and it’s all about who you meet and who you collaborate with. Yeah, it’s exciting to be here. But I’m not gonna be here all the time. I’m not gonna stay here. I leave on Friday. [laughs]

Geoff: Not permanently.

[all laugh]

Dimitri: That’s one of things about having a team. When listen to somebody who works in Barcelona, when you listen to Geoff, or you listen to Tjeri, you have other perspectives, then essentially, everything falls together, and it puts a good balance in the business.

Gelman: Do you ever argue? Do you yell at each other?

Dimitri: Sure. I yell, at least every two months at Tjeri.

Gelman: What are the usual subjects of your arguments?

Dimitri: Everything, from, "Are we doing this job or not?" to "Why/why not?" to "Fuck, this doesn’t work," to just strategies of business.

Gelman: So there are jobs that you are rejecting?

Dimitri: Sure.

Gelman: What would be the reason for that?

Dimitri: We don’t do cigarettes.

Gelman: Well there aren’t - [laughs]

Dimitri: [laughs]

Geoff: There are certain— we would reject some jobs on moral grounds, like cigarettes-

Dimitri: Yeah, but that’s not a lot, because our morals are, like- [makes wide gesture with hands]

Gelman: Do you smoke?

Dimitri: I did. I stopped smoking about ten years ago. But that's a joke, like we were involved at a certain point with an ad agency who was involved in the whole "strategic advertising" approach of cigarettes, and it was really disgusting. At a certain point, we said we don't want to do this anymore. So that was one thing. But I think the jobs that we refuse are more because we don't think it's interesting or interesting for us, or appropriate, or it's a timing issue.

Gelman: So you just say, "Sorry, we’re not qualified," or "We're not interested," or, "Call So-and-So?"

Dimitri: Mostly we would say "Call So-and-So."

[all laugh]

Dimitri: No, we’re very honest again. We would usually say, "We don’t think we’re the appropriate firm for this. You should look up these or these or these guys," or "We don’t have the time now, it’s too urgent, the time schedule doesn’t allow us" or whatever. Or "We need more money."

Gelman: Do you hang out with other designers?

Geoff: Graphic designers?

Dimitri: At the moment, not a lot. I hang out with people like photographers, designers, whoever.

Gelman: What do you think is the difference between the design community here and, let’s say, in Brussels?

Dimitri: The design community in Brussels is very, very small, almost non-existent. It’s not like in Holland or in Switzerland, or-

Gelman: So the design community in Brussels is Base?

Dimitri: I think I know, maybe, ten designers there. There are like three, four, five studios. It’s upcoming; there are younger designers starting their studios, but in the 80’s or 90’s it was very rare.

Gelman: Because there is no work? Or because all the work goes to Amsterdam?

Dimitri: I think it’s cultural, yeah. I think the edition work doesn’t exist, like magazines, because it’s split up between Dutch and French. There is a sort of Flemish style now, out of the Academia of Genz–but graphic design, it’s not like it is in Holland, where graphic design is a cultural thing that has been around for a century.

Gelman: Where it’s an institution.

Dimitri: An institution. And in Switzerland the same, it’s like some big names that are the locomotive of the train. In Spain there was a certain point in the 80’s where there was a community and I think now there is much more of a community than here. France is sort of in between, and Belgium is sort of the same. It’s not like the fashion industry, for example, or fashion designers, where they have a roof, they-

Geoff: They’re very much a part of the social fabric.

Dimitri: Even furniture design is much more established than graphic design. Look at all the institutions; look at the Post [postal service]. Look at the logo of our Post, it’s a catastrophe.

Gelman: I don’t think I’ve seen it.

Dimitri: It’s good! [laughs] No, but that’s the difference between an institution where they take a good designer in Holland going from the stamp, to the image, to the post package, to everything, it’s well done. And in Brussels, or in Belgium, they don’t have the knowledge. Yet.

Gelman: Well, so is anywhere else. So is here.

Dimitri: So is here, yeah. I think it’s a very difficult it’s–New York is particular because it’s people from all over and it’s where things are happening, going from the magazine world to the fashion world to everything. We have a very hard time finding people in America that have that we feel very comfortable with, designer-wise, that come out of an American culture. It’s different.

Geoff: Hence the reason I’m the only American.

Dimitri: And there are people from everywhere: from Switzerland, from Holland, from Spain, from Chile, from Taiwan. The only American is Geoff, and he’s not a designer. But it doesn’t mean that—there is a lot of talent here, it’s just our sensibility is a little bit more European, I think.

Gelman: So it relates to what you said creative sensibility.

Dimitri: It’s the sensibility–you know if America everything is entertainment, it’s fluff. You know, if you use 16 types on a page, it’s better than just using one. We’re just the opposite. We try to find the right one and just use that, maybe in different sizes.

Gelman: But you manage to get through to American business fairly successfully.

Geoff: Perhaps because America is like that, there are more and more people that want to get back to the essence of things. After the MTV-era where more is more, there might be a group of people, not to say they’re from one industry, but there are certain types of people in different industries that are looking for-

Dimitri: For something else.

Gelman: For some relief.

Geoff: Yeah. Because there are commonalities, when you look at clients and you look at those people that are making the decisions, whether it’s for a fashion company or for an institution or for a photo studio or for a restaurant, the people that are making those decisions are similar. They have a similar approach, they have certain similar sensibilities.

Dimitri: What’s great about here is that everybody is conscious about image, which is not the case everywhere in Europe, that’s why there is a lot of business here. Everybody wants the cool-everybody is conscious about image, like a logo and an image and how to get it out there. And I think more and more when people become educated and sensible and certainly here in New York people see a lot of things, when you see the level of a lot of smaller little boutiques or restaurants or things, people become very smart... so that’s cool.

Gelman: So you see it as a tendency.

Dimitri: A consciousness. I think everybody wants to be a part of-doesn’t want to neglect it. And I think here in New York, it’s very obvious that it’s very-they even think about making budgets for it. In Europe, that’s not the case. You know, if you have a restaurant, you have a chef, but you don’t think about the graphics when you open a restaurant in Brussels. At the end, they’re like, "Fuck, we need a name!"

Gelman: With the exceptions of London and Amsterdam.

Dimitri: Yeah. Yeah. London. Amsterdam, sometimes.

Gelman: In London, the chef and the food are the last thing.

[laughter]

Gelman: It’s all about the logo.

Dimitri: And then again, you have to put one before the other. Which sometimes in Belgium is a good thing, because you go, and you don’t know what the name is, and you can’t find it, but finally when you’re there, it’s great food.

Gelman: Oh yeah, I was going to ask you why you changed your website, but I think I know the answer.

Geoff: What’s that?

Gelman: Clients couldn’t use the keyboard?

Geoff: [nods head]

Gelman: It was really nice, is it still-

Geoff: It’s still accessible. It wasn’t the most user-friendly—

Gelman: Pretty friendly; it was just difficult.

Dimitri: That was the age when we just wanted to experiment with what websites were, this whole Flash, experimental-you talk about experimental; we thought it was appropriate to do an experimental project more than a very conservative website.

Gelman: Well I don’t think your current website is very conservative.

Dimitri: Maybe not in the visualization and the sort of complexity, but the fact in how you use it, and it’s very-it starts with a very conservative idea, to make it as direct and as simple as possible. And then it becomes a little bit -

Gelman: But you made it intentionally ugly.

Dimitri: It’s not ugly!

[laughter]

Gelman: And that is kind of-that is a risk component. You go to your website and it doesn’t look like a designer’s website. That’s where it comes into your hatred of graphic design. You made it to look like -

Geoff: Our book too. Is not a typical designer book—throwing things on the floor and shooting them.

Gelman: Yeah, it doesn’t have like little -

Dimitri: Fancy little pages with varnishes and-

Gelman: Yeah.

Dimitri: Then you never finish a book, you know?

Gelman: How long did it take you to put this together?

Dimitri: Two months. Because we did the first one, we knew that we had to photograph different things.

Gelman: Is there any text?

Geoff: No text.

Dimitri: We never know what to say.

Gelman: Well I think we’ve got, what, 45 minutes of your saying something.

Dimitri: Yeah, when you have a conversation. But when you start putting it on paper, it's like, whoa, every word has so much weight. I can already read the title: "They hate graphic design," we're like "Fuck! what did we say?" It's like the other day, I was saying to somebody, referring to that book, "Oh yeah, this book, we put together in two or three months, we didn't take ten years like Peter Saville to make a book." And that, of course, is one of the people that I admire and love most.