Profi Aesthetics design a tongue-in-cheek university campaign with Jan Buchczik

The decision to go to art college rather than studying a traditional academic subject is a choice we imagine many It’s Nice That readers made at some point during their teenage years. The relatable feelings that surround this decision have formed the basis of Profi Aesthetic’s advertising campaign for HfG Offenbach, sporting a tagline which translates as “I wish I could be interested in law studies,” brilliantly illustrated by Jan Buchczik.

Rather than playing the same game as many other creative universities and using the campaign as an opportunity to show what courses you can study, or how great the universities statistics are, Profi Aesthetic decided to “address a more general topic,” the studio tells It’s Nice That. The campaign’s slogan provided by Daniel Brettschneider “plays with the stereotype (at least in Germany) of studying something conventional and “reasonable”. Maybe it’s also something parents may wish for.”

Creative subjects are ones people dive into studying because of an enthusiastic love for it. However, when Profi Aesthetic’s designers Jan Munz, Benjamin Franks and Phillip Moller were studying, “law was just something that many people started to do, but nothing they decided to do with heart, and apparently this is still true today,” they explain. “This is, of course, meant with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. There are also super cool lawyers, and without lawyers, times would certainly be harder!”

However, in its playful irony, Profi Aesthetics’ campaign aims to show an alternative route for prospective students. “We wanted to point out that there is another way, studying art and design for example, which might be a bit more uncertain but sure is an exciting one.” The designers know the excitement of this particular art school well, all three of them and Jan studied there too.

Working with Jan, therefore, was a natural decision and whose brightly coloured characters jump off against other university announcements. “Working with Jan is great because we are good friends and our studios are next to each other, meetings often feel like a coffee break,” the studio explain. “Since we exchange ideas anyway, we bounce ideas back and forth quickly and were able to skip the get to know each other phase of the project. Jan’s illustrations work great and make the whole topic not so serious. He has this, simple, very humorous style that we like.”

Going against the curve of other, possibly more serious-minded designers, is an attitude Profi Aesthetics continuously adopt. “We are always looking for a suitable look that we like borrow from other contexts to create something interesting,” the studio points out. “The poster should look “cool” so that the kids can identify with it through an aesthetics.” To do this, the designers applied contrasts which reminded them “of posters for a party series,” rather than something directly academic. “We’ve been trying to take away as much information as possible to give priority to the visual," it explains of the design decisions made for the campaign. "It’s quite funny, this little poster is a good example of what you can learn at design school.”