“Let type do the talking”: graphic design studio Our Place

Introducing independent graphic design studio Our Place. From a space on the fringes of the A12 in deepest, darkest Hackney Wick, the studio’s founders Ted Heffernan and Alex Gross – who met studying foundation at Camberwell – pioneer a simple but distinctive approach to graphic design. “We both rushed into running a studio pretty quick after university not really knowing what we were doing,” the duo tells us, “but we started getting the hang of it, learning from our mistakes and teaching ourselves a lot of what we now know.”

This might be the first time we’ve written about the studio, but it’s not the only occasion that Our Place have made their way onto It’s Nice That. Back in September, the duo took part in our Roald Dahl feature which had them applying their knowledge of structure and layout to Dahl’s fictional word “muggled”. “We always approach our projects typographically and try to be quite playful with it. We don’t like to confine ourselves to a particular style as such, but we’re big fans of letting the type do the talking, and keeping it as a focal point of our work.”

Elsewhere, Our Place has impressed us with its branding, editorial, typographic and digital projects executed across websites, identities, typefaces, record sleeves (“the LP sleeve is one of the most enjoyable formats to work with, and so much can be done with the space you have”), CDs and cassettes, exhibitions, lookbooks, posters and more for clients including British Fashion Council, Ninja Tune, Local Action, Playlister, Romy and architecture practise Studio Bark.

“We initially started focusing on print projects and then naturally progressed to digital work as we grew,” the studio explains. We were particularly struck by their fresh posters for Left Alone, the club night and mix series which Ted and Alex run with friend DJ Ashton Holland at east London basement venue Waiting Room. “Our interests outside of work lay in music, fashion and food so as a studio we love to take on this kind of work,” they say.

Our Place has also been working with Seetal Solanki to develop Ma-tt-er’s identity and website. “It’s a constantly evolving project and has been a great ongoing collaboration and a brilliant project to be involved with from the start,” the studio says.