MONOBLOCK

PEOPLEText: Gisella Lifchitz

Monoblock

Monoblock is an industry. And a real life couple with plenty of ideas and projects. They seem to be a big studio. But the biggest thing of all is their collaborative minds, which work together like a clock.

They claim to have “a simple idea: to gather artistic expressions through values, to create a pensive space from where we can share our senses in a playful, open and collective way. We want to both support and generate distinctive, highly aesthetic messages in which imagination finds no boundaries”.
So they created Monoblock, Industry of Imagineering.

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The members of this agency are Vik Arrieta and Pablo Galuppo. They are in a relationship almost since they met, and it seems one of the reasons for this encounter is their will to develop projects together. One of their mottos is, in fact, Live the Love.
And so they are, loving and living.

She came from communications and marketing and he studied graphic design, so they blended like a wonderful spicy dish.
At first they focused on branding, but that didn’t fulfill them at all. They wanted more.

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Please tell me about the Designers Notebooks.

The Designers Notebooks were made to daily accompany imagination, offering a beautiful and original support where to transport the fruit of its creation. Each cover was illustrated by different artists and designers under the same unifying concept: Happy together, Live the Love. ‘Cause where there’s love, there’s freedom, and if there’s love and freedom, there’s creation.

In 2007 we tested a notebook (we made the art ourselves) as a present to one of our clients. We really like the result, so we saw the product as a chance to commercialize illustration and design products.

We started to think about the sustainability of the project, in terms of business, apart from offering a place where illustrators could show their work in a nice top quality format.
Also, we liked the idea of seventeen authors working on the same concept, and the notebook as an object is more accessible than a painting, for example. These authors are some of the most famous emergent artists nowadays in Buenos Aires. We believe it’s great that massive public can get to know them and get in touch with the local design scene. Our aim is to get out of the ghetto.

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What’s the feedback you get from the public?

They don’t want to use it because it’s so nice! It’s very precious for someone that an everyday object has art and transmits at the same time a lovable feeling. We always say: we’re not killing a tree to print an ugly thing. We know people are going to treasure the notebooks.

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Which are the highest points in your career so far?

Our participation in Design Festival Trimarchi is one of them. This festival is the most important in Latin America. We could say we were born there, in 2007, the year we brought the Notebooks. We were so happy from the public’s reaction to our products! After that, we’ve been invited to seminars conferences, and this year, to Pecha Kucha Night Volume 12. Also, we’ve been to Puro Diseño, it was absolutely great. We brought vinyl toys and serigraphy.

Which are your next projects?

One of our projects is to launch another limited series of Author Notebooks, bigger and with different techniques. Also, we want to export this material to the rest of Latin America.
Our dream is to materialize this stuff into a big live show, an installation with all of the authors there. We are dreamers, both of us. We believe if you do what you want, you learn to love what you do.
So the world can become a better place for all of us.

Monoblock
www.monoblock.tv

Text: Gisella Lifchitz

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