Zuzunaga by

Lines, pixels and geometric abstractions

Zuzunaga is a design company specialising in home and fashion accessories, founded in 2007 by artist and designer Cristian Zuzunaga who is now based between Barcelona and London. Strongly inspired by a supermodern urban aesthetic Zuzunaga creates beautiful and high quality products for the contemporary living that seek and find a charming warm humanity within the digital world. In Zuzunaga products, the pixel rises up like the icon of our time: starting from this digital atom, abstract and colorful geometric compositions shape all Zuzunaga’s products, combining them with analogue and traditional ideas of being. Working with Zuzunaga has allowed us to cover much of the diverse facets of the creative process involving us completely— from art direction to web design, from packaging to editorial design— in an ambitious and interesting project. We luckily happened to cross paths a few years ago. Cristian Zuzunaga was in London and stumbled upon the ICEX catalogue that we had designed. After a while he got in touch with us as he needed somebody who could care for the image of his brand-new company, and so our long-lasting collaboration begun.

Enhancing a brand, smoothing out an identity

The original logo was designed using the geometric classic Futura LT: its sharp Z’s were giving the logo a slightly aggressive look. We introduced the A bar (which was missing in the original logo design) and smoothed out the two letters, changing the acute shape of the original Futura. The two ZZ became then the reduced version of the logotype.

As the main structure was already built we started designing the website following its original architecture. Our work was primarily aimed at implementing brand image and improving usability and clarity, whilst making a smart and attractive website rich of data and information.

Take a blanket to the outdoors

Building a solid visual communication for Zuzunaga was fundamental. Being in charge of the communication art direction, we chose photographers that resembled the aesthetic of cleanness and warmth. We collaborated with the young and talented photographers Denisse García and Anne Roig for pictures of products in settings while our long-lasting collaborator Marçal Vaquer was in charge of the still-life collection pictures. He also realised the suggestive and colourful shots for the launch of Zuzunaga’s new towels collection. For Re-architecture, the first campaign we released for Zuzunaga which was featured in all specialising magazines and publications, we entrusted the photographer Teddy Iborra. The print-campaign had a great success and visibility.

After that, playing with the intriguing dialectics between the digital and the analogue — the Zuzunaga supermodernity and the purity of Nature— we took the Bitmap blankets to the open outdoors. The campaign, shot by Fernando Farfán, portrays two young people wrapped in a pixelated blanket on the peak of a mountain surrounded by mist.

The zinesters’ path

A series of printed publications soon followed. Following the zinesters’ path, a publication representing Zuzunaga’s statement was designed. The About, released in the framework of the Re-Architecture campaign, contains Zuzunaga’s take on supermodernity as well as an interview with founder and artist Cristian Zuzunaga. These elements characterise the other two publications from the series: the lookbook and the product catalogue.

Go unnoticed

Cristian Zuzunaga feels almost an adoration for Apple’s machines, which have been crucial to the development of his work since the late 80’s: the Roots collection’s covers for iDevices are a tribute to the brand from Cupertino. The packaging we conceived for this collection follows the line of simplicity: black typography screen-printed on a rough cardboard case.