{"id":5535,"date":"2025-12-16T13:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angesfinanciers.org\/?p=5535"},"modified":"2026-02-20T09:01:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:01:02","slug":"craft-type-print-and-passion-come-together-in-fraise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2025\/12\/16\/craft-type-print-and-passion-come-together-in-fraise\/","title":{"rendered":"Craft, Type, Print, and Passion Come Together in Fraise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two creative directors and a type designer get into a cab \u2026<\/h3>\n

You know it\u2014that craveable moment that sometimes happens when working with others, when you leap over the boundaries of commoditized deliverables into beautiful, essential territory: the creative jam session. Nothing compares to this experience\u2014the riffing, the esoteric exploration, the genuine connection. They can remind us just why<\/em> we do what we do, and they can jumpstart ideas, from the oddball to the brilliant.<\/p>\n

When Synth<\/a> founder and creative director, Liam O\u2019Neill, finds himself in Sweden in a cab with Dalton Maag<\/a>\u2018s Pablo Bosch and Zeynep Akay, they experience one such moment. They talk creativity for the right reasons and about passion projects (serendipitously, both companies were in the throes of a project that ticked both boxes: Dalton Maag with the release of a new typeface, Fraise<\/a>, while Synth was experimenting with a new R&D process). O\u2019Neill, Bosch, and Akay decided to continue the exchange; their ensuing collaboration stars Dalton Maag\u2019s Fraise in animated 3D form. <\/p>\n

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Abstracting the letterforms was only the beginning. The collaborators planned an industry talk for London creatives focused on the art of the passion project and produced an accompanying OOH campaign. <\/p>\n

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Passion projects often involve going down roads that aren\u2019t always linear or logical, and that\u2019s part of why they are so essential to craft. The ensemble always had the idea of creating something tangible out of their playful experiments. Dalton Maag and Synth had already abstracted a 2D typeface as animated, 3D letterforms, so they brought in GF Smith<\/a> to turn it into something brilliant on paper \u2014 a memorable, printed specimen.<\/p>\n

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The process of taking the typeface, extrapolating it into a 3D world, lighting, materialising, allowing physics to animate the motion, and then capturing it in a printed form was something that excited us.<\/p>\n

Liam O\u2019Neill<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fraise, the event, was held this month at GF Smith showroom on Clink Street; there\u2019s something poetic about creatives getting together to talk about breaking free of soul-draining drudgery down the street from one of England\u2019s most notorious prisons.<\/p>\n

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I asked O\u2019Neill a few questions about the collab with Dalton Maag and GF Smith. Our conversation, below, is lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious about the conversation in the taxi in Gothenburg that kicked off the idea for an event and collaboration. <\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time (November 2024), I was in Gothenburg, testing Volvo\u2019s new typeface, which had been created by Pablo and Zeynep at Dalton Maag. We were testing and iterating certain elements of the typeface on the fly, flowing it on certain test screens in the car rig, to validate and ensure we had left nothing to chance. It was an exhilarating experience. <\/p>\n

In the taxi on the way from Volvo HQ, I asked Pablo about a typeface I saw on the Dalton socials [Fraise]. He told me all about this expressive typeface that he and the team had created; he explained that they started it as a passion project, as there was a gap in the market and a need for it.<\/p>\n

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The language you used to describe the event\u2019s impetus was \u201cCreativity for the right reasons.\u201d What does this mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a few ways to look at this. Creativity is such an expansive term, and rightly so; everyone is creative, for a start. I wanted to put that out there as I think it\u2019s something people are missing from their day-to-day lives. We are so limited by the identity we place on ourselves, and also by society. Being creative is our true identity.<\/p>\n

Solving a problem through creativity is a right reason for creativity. Another (and important) one is that you love what you are doing. Once you get in the spot, that creativity is a means to an end, then you are fucked. And I am speaking from experience here, I have been in that situation in a large agency where you are doing the work, and that is pretty much it. I had to work hard to get out of this situation and fight to bring the fun back into my day-to-day practice. Don\u2019t get me wrong, it\u2019s not all fun and games, and just because it is fun does not mean it is easy.<\/p>\n

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Was it just that the studio had taken Fraise on as a passion project, and so it meshed with the project \u201cwhy,\u201d or were there other structural, cultural, or stylistic aspects of the typeface that felt right for this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Building on my answer above, the main driver for this was that nothing quite like [Fraise] existed. Dalton Maag wanted to put their take on a mid-century typeface by injecting some energy and their personality into the shapes and characteristics of the letters. DM treats passion projects like client projects; they have clear deadlines and deliverables, and their overall objective is to make them commercially viable. I feel like that is a good metaphor: Passion sells. When you work with a client, and you need to get a concept across, the energy you put into the work comes through. That energy gets the client excited when you present the work, which earns their trust, and the project can take on another dimension. All of a sudden, you are collaborating with the client and not just serving them.<\/p>\n

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What about the pillars of craft, type, and print were important to express in the campaign? What about this moment in time felt important to elevate these three facets of the modern creative life? Can you take me through your thinking about the campaign\/event frame?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The original direct mailer was the initial idea for this campaign. The process of taking the typeface, extrapolating it into a 3D world, lighting, materialising, allowing physics to animate the motion, and then capturing it in a printed form was something that excited us. There is a lot of noise out there. We wanted to create something that felt very intentional, with the event at GF Smith\u2019s London show space, to the envelopes, which are hand-folded by the GF Smith team, which are a work of art in and of themselves.<\/p>\n

We really wanted to go back to craft on this, but also encapsulate the whole process of how this campaign was brought together, including:<\/p>\n