Explose

A good indicator of the new direction that ‘designers’ are headed as exemplified by Explose.

This creative team is a jack-of-all trades. As it says on the website, the company is “not an advertising agency”, but rather a collective of Image and Sound Artists, as well as Freelance artists.

Aside from the extremely strong portfolio of web, print, photo, illustration – standard repertoire for a design firm – they also have people on board that make MUSIC. The tracks are cool mixes of everything imaginable – urban sounds, hip hop beats, instruments and musical influences from the Middle and Far East and Eastern Europe, and the occasional vocals. It makes for a good metaphor of what design is quickly becoming: no longer restricted to the people that are waving some diploma or degree saying they’ve been educated in design, this collective did not come from a design background per se, but they’re doing some pretty serious stuff regardless now.

Seriously inspiring stuff. And I love their music – their attitude and take on design really reflects the direction that design is headed in the near future.