With the emergence of digitization, every business has come to the online market and so have its customers. However, unlike consumers, the road is not that smooth for the companies. Bygone are the days when quality of product and services was the only concern for enterprises. There has been a rapid growth in customer awareness, which has led to a cut throat competition in the market. Now, the process of acquiring customers has become vast and includes numerous aspects including the quality of the content and design of the website, digital strategies and solutions, branding strategies, product placement, quality and appearance (both digital and physical) of the product. However, these tasks are of higher complexity and are difficult to implement especially when you have a business to run. This has led to the formation of an industry of solution providers which would render such services to companies. Navarra is one of such providers which are leading this industry.
Navarra is a Visual Communications practice founded in 2004 in Berlin. It is an interdisciplinary team of creative professionals striving to improve their living environment with smart, sustainable design that elevates the everyday experience, speaking to the needs of its clients and users alike and is here to stay.
It is quite an international team, comprised of creative and communication professionals from Milan, Melbourne, St. Petersburg and New York City, to name just a few. Navarra’s objective is fairly simple. It works with a range of clients from small grassroots startups to large infrastructure projects to improve the living environment with smart, sustainable design.
The company attempts to do this by looking at different economic, social, and environmental factors. It then creates a format of sorts to develop design systems that are informed by; Goals and challenges; Immediate environment and Socio-cultural context. This format often guides company’s brand strategy, digital solutions, editorial design, spatial design, packaging, motion design, and marketing.
Comprehensive Services Navarra aspires addressing as many needs as possible for both its clients and their customers. As mentioned, it effectively tries and considers various different factors before it starts to develop the packaging. This includes how the package is used, where it will be displayed, the contents of the package, etc. Using sustainable materials and processes is of course of paramount importance. The company also arranges site visits on typical bases to see where and how the package will be displayed.
In addition, Navarra considers the placement in the store. Will it be in front of the store, with its own stand, or next to the checkout? This also gives the company an idea of how other brands are packaging their products. What works with their packaging? What doesn’t work? It’s a little bit of subjective and objective information gathering.
A Leader of Experience
Bartosz Navarra is the Founder and CEO of Navarra and works for the cross media branding, design and communication in the company. Bartosz founded the company in May 2004, and has been working closely for and with the company ever since. In October 2017, He Co-founded and is working with VAUST Studio. VAUST can be best described as an experimental design studio. The collection derives from a shared aesthetic vision of a couple of friends. He has also worked as a Managing Director at Codete, a provider of cross-functional teams for its clients, providing them with audit, architecture design, and high quality full-stack development.
Sustainability Factor
One of the challenging factors of Navarra is that it always works with as many sustainable materials as possible. It also prefers to work with local suppliers. And in order to do so, the company believes that Berlin is a perfectly suitable city. There are a lot of interesting companies there, trying different things, experimenting, and working with new materials.
Navarra believes that visual communication resembles architecture in such a way that it contributes greatly to the built environment. It does so using very different means. The end, however, is similar. At the core of the company’s practice is an intention to improve the living environment with good, sustainable design.
Understanding Context
Navarra always tries to bring a wider context to each and every project for its clients. This goes back to its approach where it looks at the sociocultural context and the immediate environment. Sometimes this brings a new understanding to the project for the company and its clients. This is also why Navarra works in an agile way and tries to include its clients throughout the process. This is actually really important to the company. It doesn’t want to overwhelm them with multiple options or narratives. So, it tries and keeps it as concise and relevant as possible.
A Sustainable Future
Navarra has high hopes about packaging industry and that it has a more sustainable future. It believes, everyone in the industry is witnessing a shift in how most people view packaging and its impact on the environment, which is a good sign. But the company still has a lot of work to do. For the most part, it believes most of the users would prefer to buy products with less plastic, that doesn’t use gimmicky paper or wrappers whenever possible.
For Navarra, this shift in thinking is exciting. It really opens up new possibilities in how it can make packaging more personable and multifunctional. The company hopes to work with clients that share a similar outlook on sustainability.
