Design studio Post Spectacular Office on how its multidisciplinary practice has flourished

In 2017, we spoke to Post Spectacular Office (PSO) about its clean and artfully simplistic designs for the Thessaloniki International Greek Diaspora Symposium. Catching up with the studio recently, while viewing its new work for the Design Democracy Conference, it appears PSO are still producing powerfully minimalist designs with an important message.

Creating an intuitive visual identity for Design Democracy – shaped like a megaphone and featuring the conference's manifesto around its body – PSO intends to “create an object that expresses in a condensed way a citizen’s dynamics within a democracy”. Therefore, the studio utilise “a megaphone as a protest symbol,” which additionally “functions as a call for action to out, to demand to be heard”. This ability to think analytically about the meaning behind its designs is a central and indispensable feature of the studio’s work.

Initially training as architects, a profession that the studio explains is “primarily trained to work in teams”, creative collaboration comes naturally to PSO. Collating all of the team's everyday observations from as far as the books they read to “something we heard passing by in the grocery store”, the studio explains that “nothing is off the table”. “We are all trying to be involved – every member of our team – in all stages of the design and its execution.”

Prior to starting any project the team analyses all given data, from which PSO develops a narrative. “Doing this helps us to construct a meaning for every project to communicate. That meaning functions as a vital design compass that redirects us whenever we feel lost in the process.” This thorough approach allows for the studio to do what they most enjoy, throwing themselves into all different kinds of projects and topics. Never setting any limits on the studio's ambition, and being interested in all sorts of topics, from architecture, Greek rural life, Greek modernists and the interwar European avant-garde and its radical gestures, possibilities seem endless for PSO. An average day can range from dealing with the construction details of a stool, figuring out the placement of an ancient sculpture, to discussing the visual identity of a hospitality project in coastal Greece.

This broad focus and specific interest in Greek culture has helped the studio significantly throughout another long-term project with the New Cyprus Museum. Running for the past three years, the project plays strongly to the studio’s love of exhibition design and graphics. “Being part of the museology team and connecting with the history and the representation of a culture is overwhelming.” But, representative of their ability to show range and divert away from their usual work is their project, APOLLO18. Collaborating with the photographer, architect and artist Tereza Kourra, the team developed a concept for her apparel and accessory design. Fictionalising the next Apollo mission “No18”, the publication records the journey of the spacecraft as a travel diary and the communication process as a data board. The final design, with its clean cut typography, harsh robotic lines and block colour design certainly emulates a modern (and very stylish) space mission. Always “discovering” and uncovering new creative avenues, the team at PSO is sure to keep eagerly throwing themselves into every project they encounter.