We recently connected with Fabrizio Scippa and have shared our conversation below.

Fabrizio, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.

Minimalism and simplification are the biggest trends I’ve been noticing. The simplifications can be seen on many large companies’ logo redesigns: Petco, Kia, Pfizer, Intel, Burger King, AirB&B to name a few. It’s definitely a visual trend but we can also easily attribute the change to designing logos that look good on mobile and browsers’ favicons, the restricted number of pixels makes it necessary to create a simple icon. Larger companies also try to communicate “maturity” especially when they simplify logos that were too playful and colorful. In my opinion, there are some cases where simplifications were not necessary and perhaps they were just trying to follow the trend.

Personally, I’ve been an advocate of simplification and minimalism since the beginning of my career thus I’m happy to see this trend. I have always felt that simplicity is the best form of sophistication.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was born and raised in Rome, Italy, and moved to San Diego in 1996. My college years were spent studying Sociology in Italy and Graphic & Multimedia Design in San Diego.
I initially worked as a designer at various design agencies and then as a Creative Director before forming Fabrizio Scippa Grafica in 2011 to better serve my clients directly and more efficiently.

During the agency years I was serving a variety of clients and offering many services, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the endless meetings and management that came with it, the creative and hands-on process became a lot smaller while the management part grew exponentially larger. There were also personal challenges that forced me to abandon the agency model and restart my design studio as a sole proprietor.

During the last 10 years I’ve been focusing on Brand-Identity and Squarespace website design, this allowed me to specialize more and develop a more efficient process for my clients. In fact, I now offer tiered packages for clients who already have a goal and general idea of their needs, this is a cost-effective and time-efficient way to approach brand and website projects. There are some situations where I offer a more in depth analysis, like a complete re-brand, and I have to work closely with the client to establish goals.

My design philosophy is anchored in simplification, and I strive to minimize both the visual and verbal communication. Part of it is because most audiences flip through information very quickly, and my job is to get their attention first and show details later. The details can be given by the company representative once he/she has the audience’s attention or through sub-pages in a website environment. The other reason is that most of my clients are in the hospitality business (food and beverage) and/or in the design and construction (Architects, Interior Designers, Landscape Design, Construction). These type of clients usually need more of a visual impact rather than complex concepts to be explained.

I’m mostly proud of the recent rebranding of Pappalecco because the client decided to move from a stereotypical Italian look to a more modern and minimalistic feel. The rebranding project included everything from their logo and identity guide to packaging, environment, displays, advertisements, presentations and website just to name a few.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Between 2009 and 2011 I lost everything I had built and loved during my 13 years in the United States: my first wife due to illness, my house, money and lots of friends. At that time I was an agency owner and had a partner and 4 employees. Between the personal tragedies and the economic crisis, we decided to break the partnership and go separate ways. In 2011, I restarted as a sole proprietor and slowly recreated my clientele. Professionally and emotionally it was hard to leave the company as I spent so much time building it and even harder to break-up from my partner and employees. It also took a lot of effort to learn to work by myself and manage the ups and downs that come with running a business. With time, I learned to intentionally make time to meet with my peers and create space to re-energize as needed. Working by yourself can be a lonely place if you are used to collaborating with others and feed from each other’s creativity. However, the most important part of recreating myself was meeting my wife and her daughter and the two beautiful children that came right after. Today I feel happy where I am in life and business and don’t regret the choices I have made.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I had the agency, I used to design websites in photoshop and have our programmers build sites in HTML and later on WordPress. In 2011 when I started to work by myself I continued to work the same way for a few years, but it was hard to find freelance programmers that were available when I needed them and took many hours of management to complete projects. Also, the timeline to complete websites was a lot longer and clients would become impatient. In 2015, I started to design websites in Squarespace and learned CSS to customize the templates. There was a learning curve, but it paid off almost immediately as far as having control throughout the process and providing a quick turn time for my clients. Since then, I have built over 100 Squarespace websites, and it has been one of my main sources of income.

Contact Info:

• Website: fsgrafica.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fabrizioscippagrafica/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabrizioscippagrafica
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabrizioscippa/
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AmoRomaShop