Marina Willer
Bio
Marina Willer is a Pentagram partner and creative director with a background in graphic design, branding and filmmaking. She has led the design of many iconic brand identities such as Tate Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, Southbank Centre, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Macmillan Cancer Support.
Before joining Pentagram, Marina was head creative director for Wolff Olins in London where she was responsible for major identity schemes including Tate, Southbank Centre, Schaulager Museum in Basel, Beeline (Russian Telecom), Oi (Brazil’s largest Telecom) and more recently the new Oxfam brand identity. Marina was also part of the team that created the new brand for Macmillan Cancer support.
Marina’s films have been shown at Fondation Cartier in Paris, the ICA in London and various prestigious film festivals including Clermont Ferrand and Rotterdam Film Festival. Amongst others, she made “Exposed”, a film to introduce the exhibition of Richard Rogers at the Pompidou Centre and the Design Museum.
Her awards include best Brazilian short film at the São Paulo Film Festival, 2004, Best British Promotional Film at Promex 2000, Grand Prix for Oi at the 2002 Design Effectiveness Awards and Gold for Macmillan 2007.
Session
Every time I’ve been dumped
Marina will talk about ideas, projects and creations that never saw the light of day. Coming out of Pentagram’s drawer of impossible creations, this talk explores how creatives deal with failure and success, how things are made and the challenge of making change.
Designers are human beings, we get pushed, dumped, hurt and inspired constantly in a battle to create change. It’s often easy to create lovely ideas but hard to bring them to the real world. The odds tend to be against us.
Falling and being able to stand up again is a constant part of the life of anyone in a creative industry, it’s just not often that people like to admit it.
Marina will discuss from her very personal perspective the constant tension between vulnerability and strength, from tough times the courage to create the best work can be found.
