The Stone Twins presentation to ICAD (Institute of Creative Advertising & Design)
The Morrison, Dublin — 05.02.09
Heavy snow did not stop the fans and the curious coming out to see the Stone Twins at The Morrison on February 5th. Their star has been rising steadily ever since their first presentation to a Dublin audience at the Guinness Storehouse in 2001. Andrew Fallon of Tel Design fame was also on the bill that night, giving birth to that occasional series of 'Dubbel Dutch' events Design Factory have been running in association with ICAD over the past eight years.
Despite a recent (harmonious) parting of the ways and stints in separate big name agencies — BBH/New York and 180 Amsterdam — one thing hasn't changed over the years, wit and ideas are still at the core of what drives this dynamic duo.
For this Amsterdam based team, branding is not about coming up with a natty little logo and sticking it top right or top left on a letterhead. The Stone Twins create dynamic brands. In the case of the the Usual Suspects, an experiential marketing company, top photographer Krijn van Noordwijk was commissioned to create a series of portraits where all staff members were bound and gagged with specially designed packaging tape. The tape became the brand mark, stuck randomly on everything from letterheads to staff members.
This approach was also evident in their work for SoundCircus, a company that creates music and voice-overs for advertising. The brand mark resembles a pattern of sound waves, but on closer inspection reveals subtle typographic messages like "The greatest sound studio on earth featuring Kees and his amazing twiddling knobs." SoundCircus was crowned 'Best Corporate Identity' at the Dutch Design Awards 2008.
Their identity for Dutch advertising agency ONLY was always going to play second fiddle to that company's ultimate calling card, their stunning waterfront offices designed by architects Ontwerpgroep Trude Hooykaas (OTH) in Amsterdam North. The logo makes reference to the heavy concrete language used by OTH in their design.
Inspired by Zeeland, the ZL brand name and visual identity is somewhat more traditional than their usual offerings, but appropriate, and a reflection of the fact that there is no defined Stone Twins house style. And once again this brand is not just about the logo, photography of the collection — which is inspired by the traditional clothing at the Zeeuws Museum — has been carefully art directed, creating something new and intriguing from a traditional source.
Revisiting an earlier identity project, MassiveMusic — a sound studio with offices in Amsterdam, New York and Los Angeles — the Stone Twins were in more comfortable territory. They argued that traditional print-based identities have become increasingly irrelevant, with mobile phone and email technology almost consigning business cards, letterheads and faxes to the bin. And yet the most enduring elements of the overall MassiveMusic "communications plan" are their unique personalised business cards complete with AutoTrace style portraits and listings of their favourite things.
MassiveMusic is renowned for holding the coolest and most coveted party during the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. The idea to buy a second hand BMW for €3,000 as a mobile advertising space to promote the party was typical Stone Twins lateral thinking. The light bulb invitations to the same event and the requirement for arriving guests to put their bulb into the 'light wall' at the party entrance and 'light up' the event with their presence, was pure genius. Here Stone Twins thinking led to an architectural installation, hardly traditional graphic design. This is the type of work I most enjoy from this duo.
Van Ij tot Zee, a series of specially commissioned art installations along the route of the North Sea Canal to mark its 125th anniversary, is a similar example. The graphic design solution was standard enough — the logo was based on the concept of a canal as a straight line linking two points — but it was the idea of applying the logo onto large orange shipping containers and placing them in the landscape along the route that made the concept truly memorable. "Why does a logo have to be a 2D graphic? We saw the containers as the logo." Massive talent indeed.
The presentation then brought us along the route of Declan and Garech's recent journeys into the world of high-powered advertising. In 2005 Declan was made an offer he could not refuse by Kevin Roddy at BBH/New York to join them as head of design, representing what Roddy called "the first domino tipped over" in his overall design-infused creative plan for the agency.
Declan found the experience "exhilarating but exhausting". Huge campaigns, a 300 strong creative team to look after, meetings about meetings, endless presentations and 24-7 partying formed the agenda for his demanding new lifestyle. He described the type of work he was doing as "content rich advertising for the YouTube generation. Kids today don't like things looking too slick, they prefer if it looks like something they could've made themselves in their bedroom."
The Gamekillers campaign for Axe anti-perspirant was a typical example. The marketing challenge was to make Axe relevant to 18-24 year old guys trying to hook up with girls. To do this Declan and his team tapped into the universal truth that in the mating game there are forces working against young guys, people whose sole mission in life is to ruin a guys chances of hooking up with a girl. They called them The Gamekillers and they were out to "kill your game". This massive campaign included an MTV show, a microsite and traditional advertising.
Simpler, and a project that resonated strongly with the typographer in me, was the product launch book Declan designed for the Levis Premium brand 'Capital E'. The jeans were photographed against stark white in a landscape format. On the opening spread the legs of each pair formed the negative space of the letter 'E' — the opening gatefold page then revealed the rest of the product. Photography as typography and for me, a design classic. My favourite piece in the presentation.
Garech's experience at 180 Amsterdam was just as hectic. "It's a young person's game, all right if you're in your 20s." he revealed. Garech really pushed himself and his colleagues at 180 to the limit with his work on the Adidas campaign aimed at FCKs, Football Crazy Kids, demanding that typography be crafted for each of the many territories the campaign reached, including Japan.
Happy to be back together again, the Stone Twins are working at a pace that suits their creative approach, and more importantly their lifestyles. Declan couldn't cycle in New York and is glad to be back on his bike in Amsterdam. The scale of the projects they are now involved in might be smaller, but the type of creative challenges that continue to come their way in Holland have kept this duo busier than ever. With the invaluable experience of BBH/NY and 180 Amsterdam now part of their armory, they are a highly sought after creative team for Dutch agencies. Not that they are afraid to poke a bit of fun at the advertising community that feeds them, far from it. Invited last year by the ADCN (Art Directors Club of the Netherlands) to design their 2008 Annual, they then invited the Dutch army to shoot a bullet hole through each book. "We wanted to metaphorically suggest creative targets. We wanted to create a concept that didn't compete with the award-winning work. We wanted to take a shot at the egos and the self-aggrandising of adworld."
To underline the level of respect that they have achieved within the Dutch design community, the Stone Twins were recently appointed as the Head of the "Man and Communication" department of the Design Academy Eindhoven, one of the most highly regarded design schools in the world. Coincidentally this post was last held by the great "graphic agitator" Anthon Beeke, who spoke to an ICAD audience at the Morrison in 2007. Declan and Garech rightly see themselves in the same mould.
