We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Clara Fernández a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Clara, thanks for joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think this is not a simple question because the definition of success has changed considerably worldwide and especially in our industry. Before I think about what it takes to be successful I need to think about the definition of success. What is to be successful for me? And this is a question I have been reflecting about a lot considering quite extensively lately. Is it to have big clients? Is it to earn a lot of money with your business? Is it to be recognized and celebrated by the design community? Is it to be happy with the work you’re carrying out?… For me the correct answer is closer to the last question. Being successful is to be happy with whatever you like to do, it is to achieve what you want to do in life and enjoy both the process and the results.

What does it take to be successful? First you need to know yourself well enough to know what you want. This sounds easy but is not always so. In order to know what you really want, what would make you happy and what are your deep desires you need time, self knowledge and also courage. That’s the second thing I believe is required to be successful: you have to be brave enough to embrace what you really want to do, no matter how difficult, strange and apparently distant it may be, and try to do it. The last thing I feel is key to being successful, no matter what the field or task is, is hard work. I am convinced that it is impossible to achieve anything really special without working a lot on it, no matter how talented you are. The good thing is, if you are really passionate about what you are working on, that hard work could feel very natural and even be a moment of joy.

It may sound corny but just embrace what you love and enjoy doing and your work will be successful.

Clara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a graphic designer who graduated from Buenos Aires University. In 2015 I founded my own branding and design studio, “Asís” with Francisco Andriani, my partner in business and life. Asís is a graphic design studio based in Buenos Aires and focused on visual identity projects for brands, books, cultural events, people and anything that comes up that we find interesting.

We’re a very small team in a Latin American country doing work that aims to achieve the level of any other big agency in the top cities worldwide. Since the beginning we dreamed big, not in relation to being a big company, but thinking of the quality of the design we wanted to achieve. When we started we didn’t have any business contacts, we didn’t have rich parents or entrepreneurial friends, we didn’t know anybody from abroad, we only had a couple of very important qualities that I think identify our country and also Latin America: courage, passion and the willingness to work very hard whatever the circumstances.

Francisco and I founded the studio together in our apartment. Since then we have been very lucky and we had the opportunity to work with people all over the world, our work was featured in several places, and we developed a bunch of exciting projects. It was a period of growth, big effort but lots of fun. We were two young designers working from home, in love and making “the dream” come true.

After the pandemic time we considered the importance of a studio space as a catalyst of creativity and specific environment to work in so a year ago we rented a shiny new studio space. Spread across two floors, the space is both an office and a second home for us. From there we work on design projects every day trying to create authentic and long lasting work while being true to our uncompromising commitment to always do the best work possible.

I think we make a very good team. While I am the one with the dreamy mind, constantly bringing ideas to the table, Francisco is the pragmatic one, putting together the fragments into one big picture. Although our similar design taste and academic backgrounds brought us together, we learned that it is our different ideas and talents that make our designs special so we try to take advantage of our differences because the best of Asís comes up when our individualities, different interests, and different skills combine into something neither of us would develop on our own.And I think this is one of the reasons our projects are diverse and pretty heterogeneous.

In Asís we don’t focus on just one niche, we are curious people and we love connecting with clients in areas we know nothing about. I like the fact our work is a way to connect with others and explore new worlds that we never would have imagined otherwise. We are able to work on multiple scales and experiment with very different styles which make our daily work a pretty challenging but also fun experience.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think about this everyday and I don’t know if I have a proper answer. I care so much about good design and the work I do. When you are creating things, your work is very personal and is very much connected to who you are as a person so in my case it is very difficult to separate my creative journey from my life journey. Considering my partner is also my lover, that makes the separation even more complicated.

I don’t know if there is a particular goal or mission in my creative journey but I really want to keep doing things I am proud about, being engaged with people and work that align with my soul’s calling and always stay open to learning and growing as a designer and as a person.

I would also love my work to have a real impact on people. Capitalism took hold of graphic design, like many other areas and I would really like to run away a little bit from that by working on projects that challenge the supremacy of the market and have the focus on improving people’s lives.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

We met at the Buenos Aires University while we were studying Graphic Design. There we became friends and fans of each other’s work and some time later we fell in love.

The summer after our graduation I took a trip to Europe with some friends, and Francisco was in France because he used to spend summers working in a ski restaurant on the top of the Alps. When my trip ended and my friends returned to Argentina I took a train from Paris and went to look for him which was a pretty risky thing to do because we were just friends at that time. Finally I also stayed to work in the restaurant and we started dating. It was a very romantic adventure.

Back in Buenos Aires we were both working for other local design studios but we already knew we wanted to have our own so some time later we quit our jobs, we moved in together and we created Asís.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://weareasis.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weareasis.co/
• Facebook: https://es-la.facebook.com/weareasis.co/
• Linkedin: https://ar.linkedin.com/company/as%C3%ADs.
• Other: https://www.behance.net/weareasis

Image Credits
All images are property of Asís