San Fransisco

Just got back today from San Fransisco where I visited five design firms around the city.

Landor - Huge corporate identity and package design firm, 23 studios around the world. San fransisco is the world headquarters. Amazing building and amazing work. The currect main clients for the SF studio were Frito Lay, Charles Schwab, and Coors. Landor is the top of the top.

PrimoAngeli : Fitch - Package and Identity studio. Fitch : Worldwide is the 2nd largest branding firm in the world. 22 studios around the world. SF studio was no were near the size of HUGE landor but it was a bit more cozy and they do awesome work.

Salt - Medium sized independant studio. Small firm with only 10 people working, only 3 designers. More toward the corporate branding aspect. Has worked with provititi and microsoft.

Paper Plane Studios - Single designer studio. Ran independantly by Jennifer Olsen. GREAT WORK. Very small studio but with only one person it is more than enough. Mainly works with print work, but does an amazing job.

Old Navy - In house design studio. Located in the Gap Inc world headquarters building. HUGE building. 18 designers total for the oldnavy line. Very nice atmosphere and seems to be a fun place to work at.

Landor's studio was my personal favorite. Huge 3 story building. Paper plane was my favorite work. All the studios had an ASU alumn that was nice enough to get my GDSA group (Graphic Design Student Association) a tour of the place. I took some pictures of all the studios. Although all of them except PaperPlane wouldn't let us actually take photos of the work station of the designers. Fitch and Landor made us all sign a paper that we would keep everything thing we saw confidential, so most of my pictures are around the lobby. Im glad we got an good range of studios, from inhouse with oldnavy to million dollar studios like landor to a single designer studio. It was a great experience.

Heres the pictures.

http://www.linequality.com/firms/

seems like it'd be really cool. Nice pics.

Nice.. I wonder if the design firms here are as pretty as those..

Redeye are you looking for a company to start working for or?
yeah it's pretty wierd when it comes to companies like these.
I mean when there are so many people with their own little businesses that are working form their own homes and make awsome work and then there are these huge companies that does the same stuff...
*remembers back when I did my internship on this huge webdesign company that was SO elegant and clean and with so many people working there.*

pretty pictures...man those guys are big...
same as bjorn - I wonder howcome people at home can do the same kind of work and not have nice jukeboxes and shelves filled with candy and stuff

*decides to fill a shelf with candy*

[QUOTE=3jorn]Redeye are you looking for a company to start working for or?
yeah it's pretty wierd when it comes to companies like these.
I mean when there are so many people with their own little businesses that are working form their own homes and make awsome work and then there are these huge companies that does the same stuff...
*remembers back when I did my internship on this huge webdesign company that was SO elegant and clean and with so many people working there.*[/QUOTE]


Well I will be graduating in one year so yeah i am looking to get a job at a company. The thing is about the little businesses its so hard to get work if you dont have the right connections. Paper plane just gets so much GOOD work is because she worked at 3 big firms before starting her own. So clients from the old firms come to her now, and also the old firms that dont have the time to work on certain jobs send the work for her. Its all about connections, or you wont get anywhere.