In 2012 Heineken selected a team of young graphic, product, motion, fashion and interior designers from Tokyo, New York, Milan and São Paulo to re-imagine a nightclub experience with design at its very core. The culmination of a year-long process resulted in Heineken’s Open Design Explorations, an ambitious collaborative research and design project launched during Milan's Design Week. Working with an expert team of coaches, the designers started to work up concepts using an online collaboration portal. The theme chosen was “changing perspectives”: the different elements of the club should interact with each other, creating surprising effects — lighting interacting with bottles, dance floor interacting with music, bar interacting with clubbers. Uniting The Club's three spaces, which included a lounge, bar and dance area, there was an origami theme that is applied to every element. Finally, the RGB lighting effect played an important role in separating the pop up club areas while also creating surprise elements that reflected the concept that fueled the project.
The RGB concept fully incorporated the Changing Perspectives idea that fueled the project.
The pattern was meant to represent the concept and be universally adaptable.
Another special edition of Heineken’s bottle—in a collaborative project with Matt W Moore, for 2013 Milan’s design fair. The black light reveals the two colored UV origami-like pattern.
During 2014 London Design Festival, Heineken unveiled an ultimate pop-up lounge for the second edition of Open Design Explorations.
Project 1 | Freelance work | Project Managers: Mark Van Iterson, Caroline Van Hoff | Mentors: Ramses Dingenouts and Eugene Bay (graphic design), Luc Schurgers (motion design),
Henk Stallinga (product design), Kim Leemans and Merel Wicker (fashion design), Fabio Rotella (interior design) | Graphic Designers: André Coelho, Sandra García | Product Designers: Giuseppe Conca,
Emanuele Magini | Motion Designers: Fabricio Lima, Yukihiro Shoda, Philip Sierzega, Gianluca Macaluso | Fashion Designers: Michelle Wu, Patrick Kampff | Interior Designer: Lee Gibson
Milan-São Paulo-New York-Tokyo, 2012 | Awards: Red Dot Award 2012, Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial 2013
Project 2 | Freelance work | Project Managers: Mark Van Iterson, Caroline Van Hoff, Mariana Suarez | Graphic Designers: Matt W. Moore, Ramses Dingenouts, André Coelho
Amsterdam-São Paulo, 2013 | Award: The Dieline Awards 2014 – beer and malt beverages (2nd place)
Project 3 | Freelance work | Project Managers: Mark Van Iterson, Caroline Van Hoff, Mariana Suarez | Graphic Designer: André Coelho
Product Designer: Ricardo Casas | Interior Designers: Victor Hugo Jimenez, Kevin Lim, Scott Taylor | Fashion Designers: Kim Leemans, Merel Wicker, Jorge Delfin, Pawel Pyzik
Mexico City-New York-Warsaw-Singapore-São Paulo, 2014