My name is Benjamin Guedj,
I live and work in Paris as a freelancer.
I share my studio with another collaborator who is a freelance creative developer.
We have been working as a team for a long time.
I worked for Ultranoir three years ago in Paris
but I currently work totally independently for brands, agencies and lots of start-ups.
Above all with web and app contracts.
70% of the projects that we carry out are for web and 30% are for apps and services for start ups.
It’s quite varied and sometimes we work on brand creation and identity.
It’s an honor to win,
there was a lot of competition this year,
even between designers and developers,
there were lots of people
I am very proud to have received this exclusive award
which is really hard to get,
it's still 12 months in the year to fight and survive
so it’s really cool to have won, it’s a beautiful prize.
I am quite interested in print,
in what branding does and also in fashion.
I have worked with lots of clothes brands,
what they do is a source of inspiration.
They aren’t exactly very digital
they are very analogue, branding, very visual,
which is what happens at a photoshoot or a music video.
I have always been really interested in the world of fashion, print and magazines.
They are things that have endured and on top
of that there are new modes of fashion that evolve,
so they are things I can get passionate about, really passionate about.
It’s now and today that this comes into play.
I think that being Independent Designer of the Year is a great award
and in my case, for my short career, still young,
it’s good to have.
Last year I was lucky to win Apple app of the year for a video app.
It was an important moment, much like this one,
I am excited to see what’s coming next.
I think that me and my colleagues in Paris
are going to try and do something big, to grow.
It’s true that we are independent and we work with people from all over the world,
but we would like to, in a chosen moment,
sit down and think of a model together,
to grow and above all transform with a global vision
for potential projects and collaborations.
It’s something we have been wanting to do for two or three years now
and we are waiting to sit down and reflect.
I believe that in 2016 and 2017 we’re going to try and structure ourselves in an even better way.
That’s a good question,
I believe there is a lot in webGL that has become very important in the last 6 months.
Everything that has the flat design trend begins to decay a little
and we try to look for things that are more graphic,
more emotional, with painting and shadow and more graphic things,
a bit like what we had five years ago,
and we have tried to mix it.
Always lots of typography, that is everywhere.
So a mixture of print, magazine and moving things that you can find in videogames.
We’re going to try and include more 3D and interactions in 2016.
We’ll see where the web takes us and how we’re going to fuse it,
but I think there’s a fusion that is happening between old and new practices
the technology and webGL that is evolving and functioning better every day
that you can embed in a web page,
before it was more complicated to make an experience with webGL,
but now it’s a lot more accessible to everyone.
I think that we’re going to have this and that it will work well,
being mixing with good content and good information.