www.gringo.nu

Design Studio | São Paulo, Brazil

Could you tell us about Gringo?
Gringo was formed in early 2005 out of a common wish of my partner Fernanda and I of creating an agency that would be different form all that was around in Brazil. Much smaller, more dynamic, and with focus on very impactful mini-sites, usually some form of advertainment.

Why did you choose this name?
Gringo means “a foreigner” in Brazilian Portuguese. It’s not pejorative at all. I guess the mane Gringo personifies out work methodology and structure. I’ve taken a few of the best practices I’ve seen while working around the world: extreme care for poetry and design form Japan, the nonsense humor and horizontal working processes of Sweden, the total professionalism and metrics of success and how to conduct business I found in Canada, etc. I guess Gringo is a little of all this.

How is your work team group and what is the function of each one?
We are currently 12 people. I can say that we are 80% in the creative zone - and 20% in the managing/business/financial. We have currently 5 Flash developers, so you can tell our focus is creative and technology.


Which are the principal customers of the Gringo?
We work with several clients form around the world through international agencies. We’ve already done rather large work for HP International, Honda Canada, Gatorade Canada, Sony Japan, Kaupthing Iceland, Ray Ban USA, North Face USA, etc. These projects come and go depending on the need of our partner agencies.
We currently hold the Absolut Vodka account in Brazil, so that means we create the strategy and execute most of their moves in Brazil, considering that they are today 100% focused on online campaigns.

Can you explain us the steps you are making to develop a web site?
Understand what are the business objectives and the background info.
Create a strategy for the campaign or an idea of concept for the site
Go back and forth until we have a perfect fit
Move to suggesting a budget and timeline and feature set
Tweak further
Solidify the content
Start production (AD, Dev, 3D, Film, Photo, Copy, Audio.. all that’s needed)
Go through Quality Assurance, where we test and have some time to pre-test the site
Delivery
Metrics and analysis.

Tell us more about the creative process of Absolut Brazil.
It all started with the idea of bringing “art” to Brazil in the context of the Brand. After a few initial ideas, we’ve decided that we wanted to launch 2 new bottles made by Brazilian artists to celebrate this event. We were also tending to ask for art submissions form users.
Later we’d set on creating further prototype bottles commissioned to amazing Brazilian illustrators.
Once the idea was set we put the gears in motion to set fire on POV material, an event, an offline exhibition, media, PR, and the site itself.


Which is the best work you consider you’ve ever done since Gringo’s birth?
That is hard… I guess you can measure that in so many ways. The most technical (which we like), the most effective, the most fun, the one that we couldn’t stop playing with.
Absolut Brazil comes to mind right now because it was a huge effort for many people in the team and it took months and months from early talks to finalizing. And the results were brilliant.

Do you have any new projects coming up soon that you can tell us about?
I can talk about one. We are creating the worldwide campaign for a deodorant brand, commissioned to us from NYC. The site will be a huge interactive 3D experience set in the future! Launching in January 2008!

Where are you getting the inspiration for your works?
From the whole team, from reading interesting people’s words, and from being discerning in order to separate the hype from what really has the potential to work out and make a difference in the end.


Do you think that flash is cool or overused?
Super cool. We couldn’t live without it! The web would be rather boring…

Do you prefer hi-tech websites or with simple but cool design?
Both. It depends on the mindset. When I check my webmail, please give me something simple and clean. When I want to kill some time and get entertained, please give me an awesome site with amazing graphics and a storyline that intrigues me.

Are the Gringo projects made intern or are you hiring freelancer for the works?
Both. We have a base group and we hire freelancers according to production needs, like 3D artists, video designers, illustrators, audio designers, etc…


Please tell us Gringo’s future vision?
Not to be the biggest, but to be the best.

What do you know about brazilian web designers or graphic designers?
I know it all! :)

Any final comments?
You guys are always very kind to us. Thanks for showing a bit of advanced Brazilian work to your audience!