Davor Bruketa and Nikola Žinić would like to collect football stickers, but are too busy producing award-winning design

The appearance of Bruketa&Žinić in the mid-90s marked, in some way, a generational shift in Croatian design. They themselves say they started to be recognized as strong individuals – at Greiner&Kropilak and studio Božesačuvaj – just at the right moment, when there was no one else out there other than a handful of older, well-established designers.
Today the situation has changed radically, the scene itself is charged and diverse, but the dynamic duo of Davor Bruketa and Nikola Žinić has stayed right up there at the top. In the meantime they’ve received hundreds of awards, and their studio B&Ž oblikovna manufaktura in Zagreb has expanded into a firm employing some fifty creative individuals.
A fresh visual approach, and clear, communicative concepts, often spiced up with a healthy dose of humour, has gained them a long list of clients in the widest variety of fields in communications. Some of the larger companies include Podravka, Ledo, TDR, and Privredna banka; but they’ve handled clubs (Škola, Gjuro II), bands (Cubismo), electronic media (Radio 101), even activist poster campaigns such as those for Autonomna ženska kuća Zagreb. “We’re just happy being able to work for clients that know what they want, that trust us, and for those in whom we can put our trust. The mere form of particular projects is not all that important” says Bruketa.
For their first retrospective show back in 2000, B&Ž were assisted by another design team, Numen. Here Numen employed graphic symbols from the game of X’s & O’s to visualize the structure of B&Ž’s creative interaction. “It’s a kind of game where no one wins at the end of the day”, says Žinić, “and Numen did quite well in analyzing us through that image”.

MG Do you entertain any romantic nostalgia for the old days when you were still working largely as a duo? Has the growth of the firm – and it’s expansion into an advertising agency proper a few years ago – significantly changed the way you work?
Žinić: I think we still work the same way we did from the very beginning. At some point we just felt the things we did within the narrow field of design were just too limited for our ambitions, so we looked to extend our work with other tools of communication. Today we’re a full service agency, and design is just one of the tools we’re using. Davor and I are still doing projects that are pure design, but there’s a difference in that we also have around fifty creative individuals who work as a team on most of them. So, in a way we’ve just transposed all that we’ve learned when we were small onto a larger system.
Bruketa: Actually, before that we were still working with big advertising agencies, and we got a bit tired of not having more control over the whole process. This way we can direct the projects all the way through and do things just the way we want. You know, one doesn’t feel like doing the same job all one’s life. Some people choose another job – and others, like us, start an advertising agency.
The problem with small firms is that they really can only handle smaller projects. On the other hand, the problem with big agencies is that they feel like working with a supermarket, without being able to look forward to any kind of personalised service. We tried to combine the advantages of both, to come up with a flexible business model encompassing all of their qualities.

MG You’ve managed to preserve a personal image in which you still identify yourselves as two kids playing games with design. Like the ads for positions at the agency, with headlines like “Bruketa&Žinić would like to collect football stickers but unfortunately they have little time for that”, or “Bruketa&Žinić writing a letter to Santa Claus…”.
Žinić: Yeah, but that’s really us! We’re trying to challenge some taboos and stereotypes in advertising and communication. And we’re also in a position to be able to do things like that.
Bruketa: It also has to do with the culture of a community. I think our (company) culture is still the same as when there were five of us working at the agency. Formally we’re a firm, but actually, we’re a community of people who share not only a particular field of work but other things, as well as points of view. It’s important for us that we can still go out for a drink after work. It’s easier and truly satisfying to work in that kind of environment, knowing that the people around you are not only your colleagues, but also your friends. The best results come from a synergy in a group of people. It’s like football – a great player on a bad team is worthless.

GB Is there any identifiable visual element or quality that is immediately recognizable as the work of Bruketa&Žinić?
Bruketa: The way in which we deal with things is recognizable, but not the result itself. It’s never the same doing graphic design for a shoe manufacturer or say, foodstuffs. Similarly, 50 people can never think in the same way. Even the two of us don’t have the same visual style – and that talks only about graphic design – while at an agency design is only one of the tools you employ. Actually, being able to offer diversity in personal approaches is a huge advantage for us.
Žinić: Very often people come to us and say they saw a poster in the street and immediately knew it was our work. But we’re the last ones who could actually say what this identifiable element is. If there is something like that, then it’s probably reflected in our way of dealing with certain situations – it’s often unexpected, unusual, or different from the stereotypes we see every day.

MG You’re just back from New York. Can we assume you went there to receive yet another award?
Žinić: Yes, we received a Gold and also a Grand Award at the international ARC Awards, which specialises exclusively in annual reports. There were around 2000 entries from around the world, which means all the mega corporations like Coca-Cola and IBM were there; and we were awarded again for our annual report for Podravka.
Bruketa: While we were there, we were also notified via e-mail that we’ll also be receiving an award at the New York Festival; and about the same time we managed to find out about another award at another event. It was a crazy week.
Author: Marko Golub, with Davor Bruketa and Nikola Žinić
Portrait: Marko Golub