My studio visits have not all been carefully premeditated.

The streets of Berlin offer a cacophony of visual material most obviously in the form of bill posters. The city walls are adorned with innumerable bill posters pasted up and pasted over. A closer inspection of one of these bill posters inspired me to contact Bank Associates.

Bank Associates are
a collective of young graphic designers producing work for both commercial and cultural clients. The studio has produced a diverse body of work for a variety of clients ranging from Adidas to the Institut für Neue Musik Berlin.

I very briefly met with Boris Brumnjak who showed me an eclectic collection of printed matter he had designed for the Institut für Neue Musik Berlin. He was busily working on a publication project for Berlin publisher Die Gestalten Verlag.

Most of my visit was spent with Sebastian Bissinger and Willem Stratmann. They also showed me an eclectic collection of work. It appeared that the work of the studio varied widely because the individual designers were able to express themselves without the bearing that a single creative director might bring. Sebastian and Willem described this condition as presenting a number of liberties and challenges.