Koln Studio's new website displays their extensive and inventive graphic design

Madrid-based design practice Koln Studio has launched a new website depicting its accomplished use of type and layout design. Pablo and Daniel met while studying graphic design at Madrid University naming their studio after a failed final project. “We travelled around Europe documenting our time and rejection from our favourite studios,” Pablo explains. “On the last day while visiting Germany we lost the majority of the project after being robbed at Koln Station, and from this came the inspiration behind our name.”

Finding positives in a negative situation is a trait displayed in their design, often challenging themselves with creative new briefs, “we are constantly looking for new ways to learn and develop as a studio.” This receptive approach to design has resulted in a broad and open-minded portfolio from the studio. “We prefer to work mostly in print, however we enjoy a challenge whether it be art directing an exhibition or developing a new website.” Consequently the pair’s website is filled with unique posters, websites and publications each coated in a Koln Studio swish of refined design.

One project that displays the studio’s amenable personalities is Retina Platform, “a cultural promotion platform based on contemporary visual culture”. For each release the studio set another brief as part of an experimental collective alongside visual artist Geray Mena and cultural manager Olivia Lorraine. These briefs are both extensive and inventive, including one curated from a five minute recording of the different artists’ personal mobile phones, another was an open call for the delivery of selected screenshots. Each project provokes unlikely responses from the collective, but the result is consistently rapped up in the thoughtful design of Koln Studio.