Head of the week: Designer spirit
Rolf Widmer defines the term «design» as the process of creating products and services that make our lives more pleasant, smarter, and more environmentally friendly in the long term. Through his company, Designstudios GmbH in Ostermundigen, he has been working toward this goal for 25 years.
Good design is simple. Simple in design, in production, in logistics, to understand and to handle. Simple is not simple, but "simply good". It fits in with this philosophy of Rolf Widmer that the designer from Ostermundigen has been practicing karate as fitness for mind and body for exactly the same length of time as he has been running his company - for 25 years already. The seemingly simple movements require high concentration, discipline and promote mental strength.
One of the strengths of the design studio team is its ability to recognize and analyze interrelationships and to implement complex tasks in a simple and understandable way. Widmer sees the combination of creativity and methodology as the basis for finding solutions.
The core competence of the design studios in Ostermundigen is the solution of design tasks. The company covers a broad spectrum. Above all, customers who do not want to call in several specialists to solve a problem will find everything they need from a single source at Designstudios. Solutions in the field of corporate design, print media such as brochures, company profiles and annual reports are conceived and realized. In this context, design solutions for the Internet are also implemented. The programming of these projects is done by a partner company in the same house. In recent years, corporate films have also been increasingly realized in cooperation with network partners. The company's core team consists of six employees and is supplemented by qualified freelancers as needed.
Create clear spaces
Rolf Widmer has been managing the fortunes of Designstudios GmbH since 1989 together with his wife and business partner.
Asked about the change in trends over the 25 years of his profession, Widmer sees that today many things have to be freer. In the past, "thick manuals" for the CI would have helped to block the development of a company. Today, a CI must be formulated in such a way that it supports developments. "Clear freedom must be created that promotes a company's potential in addition to the important fixed points. A company must recognize new challenges, changes in the environment and new trends at an early stage so that it can act accordingly."
In this sense, Widmer worked for several years for the client Bauhaus in Germany. During this time, his design studios created up to 400 packs a year for this specialty store. It all started with the "Alpha Tools" product line. The successful concept led to the team eventually managing more than twelve comprehensive product lines. A reorganization at the customer would have required a larger team expansion and a second location in Mannheim. The resulting one-sided focus on a single major customer did not fit in with the strategy of Widmer and his partner. Rolf Widmer does not want to take on primarily management tasks in the future. He still loves the challenge of varied tasks, for which he seeks solutions with new ideas and creativity. To do this, he likes to pick up a pencil, paintbrush and sketchbook before using state-of-the-art technology to bring these ideas to production maturity.
Today, the design studios are looking for creative solutions in the field of packaging design, for example for Chocolats Camille Bloch, and in corporate design for ARA Thunersee or SQS, among others. In the field of industrial design, Rolf Widmer has drawn various seating furniture and tables, won a design competition with a design for the car body of a monorail and was involved in the development of the passenger information system "iQube2 for Précimation SA in Biel. In this context, he designed the signal ethics solution for VBB for the station square in Biel. Currently he is working on the signal ethics project for Verkehrsbetriebe Tübingen (D).
Swiss cross inlay
An exhibition pavilion designed by Widmer and its partners on behalf of the Federal Office of Transport for the Neat information campaign has provided information on the Alpine transversals in Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg and Vienna. This pavilion, which Widmer designed as a three-dimensional version of the Neat logo with two mountain peaks and the two tunnels, demonstrates how the design studios know how to create an impressive overall work, from architecture to furniture to multimedia with three films as well as graphics, information panels and print media. The effect on a large scale is perfected by the attention to detail - for example with a luminous Swiss cross as an inlay in the counters or as a handle for cabinet doors. The realization of this order had to be completed just as quickly as the job for Switzerland Tourism, where within five weeks 24 tables from 6 to 14 meters in diameter in the shape of the well-known Edelweiss logo had to be developed, built and transported to the Jungfraujoch for the event marking the opening of the winter season. In such moments, where the planning before the budget decision took much longer than the time for the realization, a solution on schedule can only be realized thanks to an excellent and well-rehearsed network.
His 25 years of experience flow into such projects. "I was lucky enough to do my apprenticeship as a graphic designer in a company where, in addition to classic advertising, they also designed exhibitions and worked in trade show construction," he says. And because there are always seasonal peaks with tight deadlines in trade show construction, the graphic designer was also regularly employed in trade show construction during this time. "In addition to my design skills, I was also able to use my manual skills." For the designer, that meant, "It taught me a lot in the three-dimensional area and how to work with a wide variety of materials." These assignments awakened Widmer's interest in the third dimension, so he supplemented his graphic design training with a part-time degree in industrial design in Germany.
However, Rolf Widmer is not only storm-tested as a designer and project manager. Five years before founding his company, he had already sought out the challenge of sailing on the world's oceans. Alongside his job and family, he still regularly finds time to pursue this passion for recreation.
Andreas Panzeri
One of the strengths of the design studio team is its ability to recognize and analyze interrelationships and to implement complex tasks in a simple and understandable way. Widmer sees the combination of creativity and methodology as the basis for finding solutions.
The core competence of the design studios in Ostermundigen is the solution of design tasks. The company covers a broad spectrum. Above all, customers who do not want to call in several specialists to solve a problem will find everything they need from a single source at Designstudios. Solutions in the field of corporate design, print media such as brochures, company profiles and annual reports are conceived and realized. In this context, design solutions for the Internet are also implemented. The programming of these projects is done by a partner company in the same house. In recent years, corporate films have also been increasingly realized in cooperation with network partners. The company's core team consists of six employees and is supplemented by qualified freelancers as needed.
Create clear spaces
Rolf Widmer has been managing the fortunes of Designstudios GmbH since 1989 together with his wife and business partner.
Asked about the change in trends over the 25 years of his profession, Widmer sees that today many things have to be freer. In the past, "thick manuals" for the CI would have helped to block the development of a company. Today, a CI must be formulated in such a way that it supports developments. "Clear freedom must be created that promotes a company's potential in addition to the important fixed points. A company must recognize new challenges, changes in the environment and new trends at an early stage so that it can act accordingly."
In this sense, Widmer worked for several years for the client Bauhaus in Germany. During this time, his design studios created up to 400 packs a year for this specialty store. It all started with the "Alpha Tools" product line. The successful concept led to the team eventually managing more than twelve comprehensive product lines. A reorganization at the customer would have required a larger team expansion and a second location in Mannheim. The resulting one-sided focus on a single major customer did not fit in with the strategy of Widmer and his partner. Rolf Widmer does not want to take on primarily management tasks in the future. He still loves the challenge of varied tasks, for which he seeks solutions with new ideas and creativity. To do this, he likes to pick up a pencil, paintbrush and sketchbook before using state-of-the-art technology to bring these ideas to production maturity.
Today, the design studios are looking for creative solutions in the field of packaging design, for example for Chocolats Camille Bloch, and in corporate design for ARA Thunersee or SQS, among others. In the field of industrial design, Rolf Widmer has drawn various seating furniture and tables, won a design competition with a design for the car body of a monorail and was involved in the development of the passenger information system "iQube2 for Précimation SA in Biel. In this context, he designed the signal ethics solution for VBB for the station square in Biel. Currently he is working on the signal ethics project for Verkehrsbetriebe Tübingen (D).
Swiss cross inlay
An exhibition pavilion designed by Widmer and its partners on behalf of the Federal Office of Transport for the Neat information campaign has provided information on the Alpine transversals in Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg and Vienna. This pavilion, which Widmer designed as a three-dimensional version of the Neat logo with two mountain peaks and the two tunnels, demonstrates how the design studios know how to create an impressive overall work, from architecture to furniture to multimedia with three films as well as graphics, information panels and print media. The effect on a large scale is perfected by the attention to detail - for example with a luminous Swiss cross as an inlay in the counters or as a handle for cabinet doors. The realization of this order had to be completed just as quickly as the job for Switzerland Tourism, where within five weeks 24 tables from 6 to 14 meters in diameter in the shape of the well-known Edelweiss logo had to be developed, built and transported to the Jungfraujoch for the event marking the opening of the winter season. In such moments, where the planning before the budget decision took much longer than the time for the realization, a solution on schedule can only be realized thanks to an excellent and well-rehearsed network.
His 25 years of experience flow into such projects. "I was lucky enough to do my apprenticeship as a graphic designer in a company where, in addition to classic advertising, they also designed exhibitions and worked in trade show construction," he says. And because there are always seasonal peaks with tight deadlines in trade show construction, the graphic designer was also regularly employed in trade show construction during this time. "In addition to my design skills, I was also able to use my manual skills." For the designer, that meant, "It taught me a lot in the three-dimensional area and how to work with a wide variety of materials." These assignments awakened Widmer's interest in the third dimension, so he supplemented his graphic design training with a part-time degree in industrial design in Germany.
However, Rolf Widmer is not only storm-tested as a designer and project manager. Five years before founding his company, he had already sought out the challenge of sailing on the world's oceans. Alongside his job and family, he still regularly finds time to pursue this passion for recreation.
Andreas Panzeri
