Verve's Brand Design Lead, Nuria Cabrera: "The best projects are those where you can no longer tell who had the idea."

If you weren’t a brand designer, what career would you have?

Sixteen year old me would still love to be an architect. The kind that refurbishes existing buildings into new buildings. Especially in Spain, where there’s beautiful architecture, but very mismatched. 

Another thing that has grown on me would be teaching. Now that friends are having kids, I’m very aware of what’s going on in education. Primary and secondary education could use a proper art program. There’s lots of educational book knowledge for things like history and science, but we diminish creativity. I’m not saying everyone should be Picasso, but I’d love to teach design with a little charm. 

There’s this amazing Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson. He talks about how people misinterpret creativity. It’s not about being a person who draws, it’s about the way you think.

Architecture in a way of recycling old buildings into new ones. How does that work? 

When I was a kid, my mother always had interior design magazines laying around the house. I remember thinking, these beautiful, made from scratch houses look so cold, not lived in. Things are being torn apart to become something better, yet to me, it’s not. Beautifully engineered masterpieces always feel so self serving to me rather than about the human experience people have with it. I love the idea of using what’s there and making it better better.

Back then, there were a lot of abandoned buildings that nobody took care of. To me, there’s a beauty in that. It’s about how you repurpose it. There’s this amazing church in the East of Mallorca. There’s only a triangle of the old atrium left, but what they’ve done around it is what is beautiful to me – allowing us to experience it the way it was meant to be. 

With all these opportunities and dreams in mind. Why brand design? 

In all fairness, I didn’t know that design was an option when I was seventeen choosing a university degree. I was not exposed to it in Mallorca. There’s barely any culture for it. However, my aunty, who studied fine arts in Barcelona, started to point me towards these creative directions. 

Once I opened the school’s website I was shocked. I was like, what is this world? Triggered, in a good way. I had no idea what it entailed. In fact, my first degree was in product design. That seemed to be the closest to architecture. 

So I went into that. After architecture, I started grabbing smaller pieces of the big cake: the creative industry. And then the more I did that, the more I fell in love with graphic design. Branding happened very organically. For many many years, I was told that a multidisciplinary approach wasn’t desirable. You need to specialize and be good at one thing. And one thing only. That was your career path. And I didn’t fully understand that, because at some point, if you’re a creative mind, you want to put your hands on everything. It sounds a bit stupid, but it’s very difficult for me to choose. The moment I touched upon the branding world I thought ‘oh, this is my golden ticket.’ 

As someone who has lived in many places. What does design look like around the world?

Even when thinking of every country, they each have their own vibe within them. Take Japan. I thought it’d be very cohesive, minimal, looking like these stereotypical images I’ve formed in my head and then it couldn’t be more chaotic and varied. Kyoto has nothing to do with Tokyo, and even Tokyo was different with every corner you turned on. But that also has its charm. 

It's insane how things like concept stores that have very minimal identities vs. the busiest coffee shop on earth are all within one city. I wouldn't change that into ‘one size fits all’. I love the Spanish expression similar to that: Cortado por el mismo patrón.

But as for where I am now, Dutch design feels edgier and quirkier than anything else. Though I do have a soft spot for the vibrant, poppy, bold Spanish graphic design – it’s where I fell in love with design, after all.

What does design look like closer to home: in your unit?

In the last two years, our unit has doubled in size. With that comes a new way of working. Ideally, that’d be a more collaborative process. The best project starts have been those where everybody was onboarded, everybody knows what we’re going for and owns that idea.

A project can look super sleek, but if the team doesn't believe in it, it's not gonna cut it. It’s why I’m really excited about collaborating and everybody having a sense of ownership. The best projects are those where you can no longer tell who had the idea. Collaboration is the best sum of it.

In what part of the rebranding process do you as a brand designer come in?

I like having my hands on a little bit of everything. And that’s not about micromanaging, it’s about making sure it ended up with what it was intended to be. Again, collaboration between different departments is the real goal here. 

At Verve it is very A to Z. From that briefing stage and strategy sessions to idea generation, creation, and execution, to bridging into digital. Ideally, we’re involved every step of the way. It’s what makes an identity holistic. Sometimes, we even expand on that.

Sometimes, you can be so wound up in everything you know, that you might forget the unknown. How to stay in the loop of what’s new? 

Curiosity. But that’s the word for me. I love working for different industries, because that means, for a month I’ll become an expert on contemporary art, airplanes, African sounds, or anything you can imagine. To me, that’s curiosity. 

Yet all decisions are on the line of what the brand needs. It’s why every brief should be different and the outcome be very much what the brand needs, not just the clients. If you don’t like purple, sure, but your brand might need it. 

There’s this other side of me. I can’t describe it any other way, but I guess I’m good at obsessive searching. Hundreds of images and references that feel relevant to a certain project. And that ultimately informs the decisions and puts a lot of new stuff on your radar. The other way around too, I love it when people share their finds. And to be honest, I think we’re really good at that at Verve. 

So, you know, be on your inspo moments. Find your niche, find other people, and also try to find people that have other cultural backgrounds, like we have in the studio. Otherwise, we're all just eating and breathing the same references.