Pablo Martin on Building an Agency Culture In-House

0:00From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the Design Thinkers podcast. Design Thinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Since the year 2000, the RDD has been bringing together visionaries from a range of disciplines to explore creativity and the design process. Join our host and RDD president, Nicola Hamilton, as she sits down for casual and candid conversations with Design Thinkers speakers, both past and present. This week on the Design Thinkers podcast, I'm joined by Pablo Martin. Pablo's the creative director at MUBI and a legend in editorial design. He spent four decades shaping the visual language of publications and brands across Spain, the UK and beyond.

0:43His journey has taken him from a work placement with Massimo Vignelli to co-founding the Barcelona-based Studio Grafica and then Atlas, to leading major cultural projects for clients of all kinds, and to now steering the global creative vision of MUBI. At MUBI, Pablo oversees everything from brand identity to experimental publishing. That includes Notebook, the streaming platform's print magazine that treats cinema as both cultural archive and design playground. In this conversation, we talk about his path through editorial design, why he's resisted that specialization, and what it means to run an in-house team that thinks like a studio.

1:19But before we dive in, a quick word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service for great cinema from around the globe. You'll find films by legendary directors to festival gems you can't find anywhere else. There's piles to discover. If I was going to make two recommendations, I would suggest Vice is Broke, which is streaming now and will absolutely be on my weekend watch list. It traces the rise and very chaotic fall of vice media or lurker a paranoid parasocial thriller about the thin line between friend and fan it's set in the los angeles music scene and i can tell you that the soundtrack is very good lurker starts streaming october 10th if you're curious about watching either of these films or just poking around movie's platform then good news we have a 30-day free trial for you which you can access at MUBI.com slash design thinkers.

2:09That's MUBI.com slash design thinkers. I want to kick it off just by getting to know you a little bit because we've never had the opportunity to meet before. And I think this might be like one of the first times you're sort of speaking directly to our design thinkers audience. So what drew you to design in the first place?

2:29Pablo Martin:I was born a long, long time ago in Barcelona, a long, long time ago. And I was a terrible student. It just happened I could draw. I could draw when I was 12. When I was 10, I was kind of better than the others at drawing. I was really lucky that in my school, we had a design lesson at one point. And we did graphic design, product design, interior design. And I was attracted to all of that. And I had like a, it was kind of easy for me and math was really not my thing. I thought about going to architecture. I was really into architecture and spaces. and um but honestly i was i thought oh my god you're gonna you're gonna spend 10 years of your life doing this because you're terrible all the other stuff no and i did like technical drawing and art drawing so basically i was good at drawing and i was painting my my my mother would push me to to paint and i was terrible at the other things so in a way it was like okay what is this thing called design and i went to see a design uh i was also i mean i was this is really being at the right plays the very time maybe or luck which is um a girl in my class her father was a designer very famous designer if zimmerman who came from switzerland he's a guy who introduced alvetica to spain barcelona he came i think 1962 63 and i went to see him and he was a scary guy because he was really serious from switzerland he was really this family was like so intellectual and so incredible and i was like they're super shy asking and and my friend simon asked him Pablo wants to start a graphic design it's like who are you crazy no you just don't just don't do it I'm like why why I'm like oh my god why haven't I done so okay we're to Switzerland he's like I can't just go to Switzerland I just kind of my parents kind of afford sending me to Basel so I said well okay there's a combination between that school and that school so I went to visit those two schools in Barcelona and I just liked the program more of one of them and that one didn't have product design and interior design because I didn't know which one I would choose.

4:25Pablo Martin:So I ended up doing graphic design. But I did also art, just in case. I ended up understanding that my painting skills were not that good. And there was really kids that were really amazing. And then I fell in love with typography. As simple as that. So I discovered graphic design and typography. And I thought, yeah, maybe this is something I can do. Yeah, that was kind of 40-something years ago. So I'm still doing the same. That's why. That's how I started. I mean, you can also see that love of typography still coming through in your work. So that's pretty cool to see too. Yeah. So after that, I was offered by my teacher a third year to work for him.

5:06He got a big project in packaging and he needed two designers, two young designers.

5:10Pablo Martin:So I internship with him a few months and then he offered me half a day and then full day. And then I, Mario Eskenazi. Mario Eskenazi is really... Who's that? He was a teacher at third of the projects. So we do a project with him and he was... He was an instructor of yours. And he was the guy that actually introduced me to design ideas and thinking. He was really keen to... He was really following what was happening mostly in the UK with Alan Fletcher, with Pentagram, with all these great designers at the time. And then also, I mean, he introduced me to Paul Rand. And we talked about him in school, but basically he's got all the books.

5:51Pablo Martin:So he was really a big influence in terms of this is my way of thinking design. So I actually keep on doing the same as he does. And I worked with him for four years. It was great. And then he told me, you need to leave now. And I was like, what do you mean? You need to leave because I never left. He was born in Argentina. He came to Barcelona. And I wanted to go to London. I never made it. So I think you should go. And I'm like, okay, sounds good. And he was looking for ads in Creative Review Magazine. And he found one and said, this one's for you. Why, why, why? He said, non-smoker. He smoked a lot.

6:28Pablo Martin:And he's like, this is for you. This is a non-smoker. So I went to London to interview. I went to interview with two studios. And they couldn't hire me. Because at the time, Spain was not a member of the European Union. A full member, let's say. So hiring a Spanish designer was tricky for them. and they were like, well, if I get to hire you to teach me Spanish, that's easy. But as designers, it really took you a home office to actually prove you better than the rest. So yeah, I came back. I went back to Barcelona, sort of frustrated. Anyway, so what am I doing now? And then I had a phone call.

7:06Pablo Martin:And again, I was just like, I mean, I've been, I'm not asking for luck. I mean, I've been unlocking. So the things I don't talk about this now, but in terms of career. So I get a phone call from a teacher, two teachers, and say, do you speak English? I said, yeah. So I learned this while at school because I was raised in French, Catalan, and Spanish. But then I started learning English when I was 10. So I kept on what my mom would say. This design thing is not enough. You need to learn English. I said, oh, my God. So I did it in the afternoons. So I improved my English. And he asked me, do you speak English?

7:41Yeah.

7:41Pablo Martin:are you willing to stay in New York for at least six months between six months and a year yeah what is this about, they'll call you another teacher calls me, asks me the same questions what is going on oh this is a scholarship so you just go to with your portfolio write a CV and you have an interview so I had an interview with this architect very good architect Federico Correa from Barcelona and I didn't even know where I was going honestly and the interview, so I said read your CV which is in English and I read in English and in the middle of the CD, he stops and says, you see, this guy can pronounce this word.

8:16Pablo Martin:I forgot the word, but there's some, in Spanish we call it false friend. So there's some words that look, in Spanish we have a similar word, but it's pronounced totally different. It's in English. And he said, this kid can pronounce this word and the previous candidate couldn't. And I'm like, what? So you win, you're the winner. You got the scholarship. And he's like, what, just won? What happened? I won because I could pronounce a word better than someone else. It's insane. So what's the scholarship? They gave me a check on a flight to New York, returned, open for a year to go work with Massimo Vignelli.

8:53Pablo Martin:And I didn't know who Massimo Vignelli was. I was going to ask partway through, even if you knew where you were going, would it have meant anything to you? I have no idea. No, because this Vignelli has a studio and needs someone. And it's like, so what's the thing with the English? He said, well, the first candidate They went there, couldn't speak English. And he was a product designer. Second guy did it. He was an interior designer. And he left after three months. So basically, Vignelli said, please, please send me someone that can speak. And someone that can actually stay at least for six months.

9:24Pablo Martin:But he didn't pay me. So basically, they gave me a check. Literally, here's your check. That's your... Have fun. Goodbye. And I like the foundation and pay that. So I, September 11th, 1989, I took an airplane and left. And I went to Vigelli Associates in 475, 10th Avenue, New York City, top floor with 60 people. And I'm like, what the hell? Do you want me to speak? No, I'm loving this. So I get there. I get there. And of course, there was only one person in the studio, only one, who was lower in category or, you know. Seniority. Yeah, than me. It's a student, an intern from a student from a university that was basically delivering mail.

10:11Pablo Martin:So it's like every morning, he's like, hey, deliver me. And then he was just going through the studio. And then they gave me a booth next to Tracy Cameron, lovely designer. So I'm sitting next to her and she helped me a lot. I said, okay, you do this. And I was after five years of four, almost five years working with Mario, where I was starting to design. I was basically, I was a student, I was, you know, making some things and then he would like them and then some of the covers, book covers we made, they were mine, you know, they were like, that was my idea. I, all of a sudden, I'm just basically taking, making photocopies.

10:44Pablo Martin:And I say, can you make, can you, can you make 10 copies of this? And he's like, are you really? Can you do some research on embossing? And there's an archive at the back. Can you send me examples of embossing? I'm like, I can't, okay. I mean, it's great because you're in New York, so basically you're on holiday. You know, it's like, yay. Every time leaving the office was great. I was like, really? And Massimo wouldn't show up. Massimo would say, Massimo is those guys, I don't know if you've spoken with him when he was alive, but he kept his Italian accent, obviously in purpose, I think. After he's like, you've been here for 60 years, 40 years, and he would say to me, good morning, Pablito.

11:25Pablo Martin:How are you today? In the morning. but he wouldn't do anything with it. He wouldn't say anything about, you know, it's like, who's this guy? So I said to the studio manager, listen, Carla, I need to show you a portfolio to Massimo, to someone or to Michael Beirut. So Michael Beirut from Pentagram was actually the head of design. And I was like, okay, show the portfolio to me. And he's like, really? I mean, okay, with all due respect, but I would like a designer to take a look at it. And she started looking at my portfolio. So she's looking at it. And then Michael Beirut shows up in the room. He was always like, you know, Michael, he's always like, okay, okay.

12:03Pablo Martin:Hi, Michael. Okay. And then he sits, started looking at, and it was really nice because instead of moving forward, he went back. I said, okay, I'm going to start again. Let's start again. Show it to me. And he went, can you see me in my office? I said, yes, yes, of course. Yeah. Okay. I have this client who wants a logo for a jewelry. I don't have time. Can you give it a go? I said, yeah. Of course. I will give it a copy. So I did a logo for him. Then a couple of days after, I said, this is my logo. And he was like, my God, this is a great logo. I said, I love the logo. Great logo. Okay, let's show it to him.

12:37Pablo Martin:He showed it to him. The client doesn't like it. Oh, the client didn't like it. And then he went, can I ask you to do something else? So what was happening was kind of awkward because I was working on normal stuff. But I worked for JBL, helping a junior designer, a middleweight designer. I worked for, so I was involved with real projects that were Vignelli, but then I was doing Michael Beru's projects, almost like clandestine work, you know, it was kind of awkward. And he would tell the studio manager, Pablo is helping me with the magazine. And so I did a magazine for him and I learned so much with Michael, so much doing the magazine.

13:11Pablo Martin:So he would make a sketch of, he would sit with the text printed on the left and he would go, okay, this is like three columns and a half. and he would sketch the pages and I would do the actual artwork and he would just nail, he nailed it. He's like, oh my God, the guy just knows exactly where the text will end and he would end there, you know. So I was replicating his design. I was basically helping him and it was great. It was really great. But then it stopped. It did stop because, yeah, there was, I mean, you can't just have a guy who just came from Spain, who's young. I mean, not that young, I was 24, 25.

13:49Pablo Martin:all of a sudden the guy is working for Michael Beru and I think some people complain but then also what happens after that was also really cool because obviously the relationship with Michael was great and he would respect me as a designer we still keep in touch and if I go to New York I'll say hi to him and actually my plan going to Toronto will be to maybe come from New York and then what happened is that Massimo Vignelli was doing the monography Vignelli the Red Square Book and it was halfway through. I said, you're going to take over the book. I said, oh, cool. So I ended up finishing the Vignelli monography with Massimo.

14:29Pablo Martin:And that's how I connected more with Massimo. But that was, I'm talking about 1999, 1990 with real mechanicals, they would call them. Yeah. So pages like proper glued with all the specs. And I finished it. I worked with him. I would disagree with him sometimes. And at one point, so we would put the mechanicals on the floor. The studio, I don't know if you know how it was, and it's like a huge penthouse in midtown Manhattan West. We just put all the pages like a sequence, which is the way to look at books, you know? And we walked, and then he said to me, Pablito, I think we could add a ruler on top of every page, meaning a line which is something very vignelli something i actually also do something also microbe you know like you put a little line on and i go like hold on a second because putting a line on a on an artwork today is just an in-design thing you know but obviously on mechanical means asking a repro house to create a line glue it with walks and making sure it's perfectly straight because it can go like that.

15:41Pablo Martin:It's a long line across the page. And I'm going, I'm thinking, I'm not doing this. I mean, not because I was lazy, because it's like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And anyway, I went, I don't think we need a ruler. And I see behind Massimo, the designer I was reporting to, which was Michael Leone. He was like, this guy's Massimo Vignetti. You know, it's like, so, but we're good friends. You know, it's like, what can I say? And he said, okay, you're right. We don't have other rulers. So we need another ruler. And I locked the book. I finished the book. The proof, all my handwriting, it's there on the mechanicals.

16:20Pablo Martin:Those mechanicals actually saved by the archive. You know, this is Rochester, I think. The Vignelli found, yeah, something like that. And they posted them online on Instagram one day. And you won't believe this, but I went, oh my God, this is my handwriting. That's incredible. I still recognize the way I wrote everything. And the proofs came from Japan. The book was printed in Japan. It was published by Ritoli, but it was printed in Japan. And I was asking Massimo, Massimo, are we going to take a look at the book and the proofs? And he said, you know what? Deal with this. Don't worry. I'm going to, I'll trust you.

16:54Pablo Martin:So after that, I came back to Barcelona. And what happens? There's a Vignelli exhibition in Barcelona. Wow. And they called me and said, well, Massimo Vignelli told us that he wants you to do the catalog. work because he knows exactly because he knows you know how to do a vignette say i know exactly what he wants so i did i did that was my first project coming back and then i and then i went back to see the guys who paid gave me the money this foundation and i was like hi i'm just come to say hello i'm back thank you very much uh and the guy went you can't believe you you're the only nobody comes back and says anything to us.

17:34Pablo Martin:We just send them over to study journalism, to study design, to study other stuff, economics. And nobody ever comes back to say, thank you. And I'm like, okay. And they said, actually, give me a sec. And this foundation is part of a big, big editorial group in Spain, mostly Barcelona. They publish La Vanguardia. It's the biggest newspaper in Barcelona. And they have magazines and stuff like that. And I said, let me call the director of the newspaper. And he calls her and says, hey, I got this kit that just came back. You know, do you have any projects? I say, actually, yeah, there's a book. There's a little book that, and then I met her.

18:17I worked for them for 30 years.

18:19Pablo Martin:I started there, like little, that little thing. And they asked me something else. I redesigned the newspaper in the end. And the brand of the company, everything. I did everything. So that's how it went. But it strikes me how all of that was like the relationships were the important part of that. Like, of course, your talent and your skill was part of it, but the actual relationships. First connection was the teachers. The teachers. And then from there, the people who pay me. Then I met another client and I kept on building those relationships. It's one of those things that I talk to students about all the time.

18:55like your first network is your professors and your peers at school and the sort of value of that you won't recognize that value for 10 years but at the same time i think we when you meet the

19:06Pablo Martin:people you don't i mean in my case at least i never felt the purpose to actually i'm gonna meet people because they're gonna open the doors it's just like you do your job you're nice i don't know and you need to be willing to take opportunities also i i remember i remember years ago when I set up my first studio with Fernando who was from London, someone asked me, how come you get to work for London from Spain? And he's like, well, do you speak English? And he said, no, I don't. Then why are you going to, I mean, listen, just be there, speak English. And if someone calls you from the UK, just say yes.

19:42Pablo Martin:And just go for it, you know? So in a way, yeah, it's, you're in a place where, I don't know, it wasn't like that for me. And so that's the beginning. Then I set up my own studio. And then actually, in the winter, in the Christmas of 1989, when I came to Vignelli, to spend Christmas with family, I met Fernando Gutierrez. Fernando Gutierrez was a designer that was born in London, son of Spanish parents, and he was being hired by a studio in Barcelona. a friend of mine I subletted my apartment when I was in New York and they met also so there was this community of these young designers together we all knew each other and Fernando went to my apartment to see the other the friend and he went hold on a second this guy has the same books I have it's all the same books the Muller Brockman books the Autolike all the books this is like my library so I came back and we clicked basically we clicked with Fernando we thought we need to do we need to do something together.

20:43Pablo Martin:He went back to London and then I said, well, I'm going to come back to Barcelona and we set up a studio. And the first project we did was the IBM Spain annual report. He was in London. I was in Barcelona. And the cover was done by Mike Dempsey. We used to run Carl Dempsey and Thurkle. So he was, they asked him to do the design. It was too expensive. They said, well, you do the cover. I said, well, Fernando and Pablo will do the interior. And we did it. That was the first job we did together. And then he moved. He moved to Barcelona. in 1993, which is a really interesting period because maybe luck again, I don't know, we were there at the right time because either him or myself were never into the pre-Olympic design boom of Barcelona.

21:26Pablo Martin:There was this energy in 1989, in 1990, 1991. The Olympics are going to happen in 1992. There was a lot of work. Designers were doing a lot of things. People that were rebranding, banks were changing. Spain was like, you know, there was a boom. I mean, after Franco, the 80s, and then all the 80s were amazing. So everything changed. And I was too young, and I was not really having a studio. So we just started in 1993, where there's this big crisis. It's kind of the depression of post-Olympic depression. So Fernando Mii started in 1993. And all of a sudden, there's these two kids, because we were two kids, 26-year-olds, 27, maybe even less.

22:05Pablo Martin:And we just happened to be the cool kids somehow. It's like the new guy. It's very cheap. you know it's like okay we're new we're very cheap and then we got a very big editorial project and we did it and it was a big success and then we were like the kids would do editorial you know and we had a like a and that was that was the ibm annual report was that big project oh a different one okay no no that was that was then el país de las tentaciones which is a weekly this is a new concept that el país who was in madrid came up with which it's like print a weekly leisure supplement on Fridays. So for the weekend, you know, with interviews with musicians, with actors and CMA, filmmakers, etc.

22:48Pablo Martin:The sales of the newspaper increased in 60 ,000 copies, I think, every week on Fridays because of that. So that gave us like a big opening to all that also editorial group with other editorial initiatives. So we were like the new kids doing good editorial. And we had like this British flavor. It's like an international flavor, you know, somehow and we never we work in barcelona that was not perceived as a studio from barcelona somehow because also we our clients were in madrid and then we opened a studio in madrid also so that was the moment where we did grafica and we became kind of more the studio grew until we were like 12 people yeah well and also like a massively influential studio in spain but before we talk about grafica and then what comes after that i'm did you did you know that publication design that editorial design was the thing you wanted to specialize in like i know you do many many other things but that's the thing i know you for best yeah people know me for that best and i would say this is the the the part that i i feel no more comfortable with that i i really like there's a lot of letters you know in editorial that's what basically it's lots of letters no i was i was into i i never i was actually i was always against specializing yeah yeah always because I think the first project I ever did at school, or still at school, was actually a comics magazine.

24:11Pablo Martin:So it was a magazine. And then we did Tentor Theology with Fernando. Then we did a catalog with Fernando. We did IBM with Fernando. So there's a lot of it. Like we were pushed to editorial. And I ended up designing sport newspapers, economy newspapers. And I enjoyed it. But the editorial designers that specialize, for example, on press in newspapers, they only do newspapers. And I always felt that it's really interesting to do newspapers, but at the same time doing branding, doing some packaging, doing some signage. Because I think they nurture each other. I think a speciality can be like, okay, I did the five column grid last time.

24:49Pablo Martin:It's working. I'm going to do it again. I was always against specializing. And then actually with Fernando, we went, oh. Are you still against specializing? Yeah. And then many times I thought, okay, how do we get signage? I just want to do some science. And I just put some big arrow somewhere at one point. Come on, you know? Something physical. Yeah. Large size. Yeah. And then, so we were kind of pushing, trying to get other stuff. Or packaging. Packaging can be lovely. And then, so we, Grafica Atlas, my other studio, were never specialized in anything. We were, we had a reputation for editorial, which comes with people asking you for that.

25:33Pablo Martin:You could think, I mean, not famous, but you get known for that. And then Faden books calls you and then you just say yes. And then another publisher would come. But I was, for example, never hired by movie just for editorial. Okay, so you run Graphica for two decades, 20 years. If you're curious about design thinkers, our next event is happening October 1st and 2nd, 2025. Join us at Meridian Hall in Toronto or watch live online. This year's speakers include Chris Clark from The Guardian, Pentagram's Samar Macaron, the team from Pupilla, and so many more. With the theme, Shift Shapers, this year's Design Thinkers aims to give the industry a perception interception.