Welcome to LOLA, Office for Creative Direction
You are here, at the #betaforever LOLA web presence. We believe in design-thinking, transdisciplinary approaches, in paradigm changes. We are not your typical design studio. We are a restless, stubborn, curious bunch of explorers. Because innovation, like true love, is a question, not an answer. / Andrea Steinfl, founder
This is just an introduction to everything that happened before Lola. Because it's important to know where you are going, but it's essential to remember where you come from.
Design is first of all a way of thinking and looking at the world.
Design is about invention. Is about beauty. Is about consistency and integrity. Is about love. But first of all is about identity. About the choices that make anyone who she really is. If you don't choose or you don't know how to choose or what position to take - you are simply not a designer.
Always wanted to learn how to jump and float between worlds.
As a designer, I really wanted to try everything, to work in different places on very different projects: TV, Architecture and Industrial Design practices, traditional graphics and branding companies, typohraphy and videos. I wanted to experience everything, from stop motion animation to archigraphics. I just followed my instincts and went through many different places following the projects I was most attracted to: I recognize now that this way I began building my very personal transmedia travel kit.
From design to fashion and all the way to moods and desires
Fashion is a whole different world. The mindset of the people is different. You learn to think about desires and estethics in a different way. Every time I work on a fashion project I feel I come so near to the human nature and yet so distant from what we live everyday. Swatch was my very first truly fashion design experience.
Nofrontiere Operating System 2.0
Here is the publisher's intro: "There's virtually nothing that can stop or limit Nofrontiere" is one of the slogans found in this glorious manifesto-like new book introducing Europe's best-known multimedia designers. The book is itself a monumental leap in the evolution of design, brazenly challenging the limits of book design in a no-holds-barred spirit. Nofrontiere takes us through the challenges of the new technology and extends the dialogue further. Nofrontiere Operating System is devoted to the work of the Nofrontiere Design Studio in Vienna and its founders Andrea Steinfl and Alexander Szadeczky. Works shown include the winning design for the Lego international competition, multimedia design for the study of Freud's dream theory, a CD for the Austrian National Bank and Austrian TV, as well as the product catalogs from snowboards to furniture.
Lego, knowledge bricks in the real and digital world.
Working with Lego in Billund was a lifetime worth experience. You are so near to the source of such a strong and coherent vision that thise powerful values embedded in my practice and just stay with me every day after. I think that the virus of my eternal love towards simplicity was born that days.
Nofrontiere, first experiments with multi culti innovation teams.
I strated Nofrontiere in 1990 and left for new adventures in 1997. At 25 you are a visionary landmine ready to explode at every step. Everything was great most of the time, everybody was special, we were working 24/7. It was more than a company: was school, design parctice, technolab, pub, mental asylum, kindergarten, global gateway for what at the time we called new media designers.
In the place of Coincidence
I saw the second Nofrontiere book in Rome, I had already left Nofrontiere - but seeing so many projects we did together is still a nice experience. One can find in the pages of this beautiful book some of the most important assignments Nofrontiere did when I was still there and some of the works I love more.