Alen Pavlovic is a nice guy and a brilliant brand and identity designer. What sets him apart from the others is that he is tireless. Quite literally! There is an energy about him that manages to spill over even in his emails. I can vouch for that. A few correspondences with him and I wanted to spend 20 hours a day creating simple and effective designs that work beautifully in the real world, just like his. If you still don’t know who I am talking about, think “Type08″. A-ha! I knew that would ring a bell. That is Alen’s online moniker and personal brand, about which he talks in this interview he so graciously granted despite living his life on several very busy time zones. And if you really want to know why he is also known as Jack Bauer, skip to the last question and once your curiosity has been satisfied, scroll back up and join me in welcoming Alen Pavlovic aka Type08 to this fun interview.

Thank You Alen for doing this interview for us. It is much appreciated.

1. Who is the real Alen Pavlovic? Tell us a bit about his personal side.
Hello everyone! The best way to answer this question is probably this: there’s no other side of me, there’s only the REAL me all the time! Hehee, a bit philosophical maybe, I know, but really this is the best answer. I am who I am all the time and people know me that way. I am always open, honest, very positive and dynamic person. I love nature, I love life! I have a lot of positive energy and always try to share it with others. 31, love my girlfriend Renata, live in small but very beautiful Croatia, passionate about too many things I guess!

2. Can you shed some light on Alen Pavlovic’s professional side? What have you studied and what do you do?
I have a Project Management diploma which I studied at the Civil Engineering section of the Zagreb University here in Croatia. Since 1998 I own a company called ”Artra” that deals with a lot of business areas, from design over architecture to marketing and consulting. I have outsourced a nice team of very capable people and we just love working together on various kinds of projects. Besides that, the reason I am probably doing this interview is that I also do a lot of international freelancing in graphic design, especially the visual identity section of it mixed with the ‘taste’ of the branding.

3. For those who don’t know, why “Type08”? Can you share with us the story of the beautifully lettered “mark” for Type08? How you created it and what was your thought process for the urban, street-style scrawl?
Hehee, people always ask me about my alias. Simple and short side of the story is that I started to listen to hip hop music back in 1989, and got this ’street’ name in 1993, but since it has some nice hidden meanings in it I decided to keep and use it ever since. Since graffiti art is one of the 4 core elements of the hip hop culture, using this urban/handwritten style was probably the most logical move when designing it. It is a version of my tag that you can find on some of the buildings in my country, but I don’t do graffiti that much anymore.

4. Why logos over buildings? What excites you the most about the process of visual identity creation?
Well, it’s not really one thing over another, I do those things in parallel. Since my father is a product designer, design and architecture have been my biggest passions from my early days and if I really had to decide to pick one of those, committing suicide would probably be an easier way! All of those projects require a huge amount of brainstorming and conceptual thinking and that part is my favorite.

5. What goes through your mind when you see a well designed logo? Do you mentally dissect it, stowing away information?
I am happy, really! I love graphic and logo design and superb creations always push me to try to do something even better than that! We designers are very visual and aesthetic people and dissecting is a very common process I think, or it should be. This is our profession and thinking about some project result, analyzing it to the smallest part and trying to rethink the creation process used, is the part of the whole package in my opinion. But of course, being original is the only right way, I hate copycats from the bottom of my heart.

6.What is the biggest hurdle you face when developing for a client who is in another timezone? How do you overcome that?
It was a bit hard at the start but I got used to it. It looks something like this: 9AM client from Sydney, 11AM client from Singapore, 2PM client from Israel, 3PM client from London, 6PM client from The Netherlands, 11PM client from the East Coast USA, 2AM client from the West Coast USA. Sleeping only 4 to 5 hours a day. I caught a rhythm and it’s working so far.

7. What has been your most unusual source of inspiration for a logo? Did it work?
That would probably be when I was washing dishes! It may sound strange but I use this technique for relaxing!! I got an inspiration for my StylePots logo. I polished this pot so hard that I was able to see a reflection of my sweatshirt on it, and the result of it was a pretty elegant logo.

8. What is your take on “fake” logos, the fictitious brands that designers create for practice, portfolio and sale?
I love it and support it! Why not? Designers should practice a lot in my opinion and sometime results of ‘fooling around’ get extremely interesting. So what if someone made some money that way, as long as it has some original and interesting features, share it with the world and wait for reactions. But of course, such a logo should be a result of a very similar process to the one that is common for a ‘real’ project, especially if it includes branding as well.

9. How is designing a “fake” logo different from a “real” logo in your opinion? What are the challenges faced in doing so?
There are a lot of differences there, but the main one is probably the ‘creativity effect’. Designing a ‘real’ logo is trying to graphically show the message that your client is sending out, using his brand name and usually some of the strong guidelines as the base for it. Designing a ‘fake’ logo has no creative boundaries and any kind of restrictions, especially not the ones related to deadlines or complexity of design. Designing the ‘real’ logo is definitelly a much bigger challenge for every designer, no matter the skill or experience level.

10. One logo you wished you had designed but haven’t?
Superman! The best logo ever!

11. Out of your own creations, which one is your favorite?
I think it is the ‘Moving Water’ logo. That logo shows my minimalistic style the best.

12. Can you tell us about the very first logo you developed for a client? What was it and what did you learn from that process, that you didn’t already know?
That was ages ago and I hate it, of course! I don’t even show it in my portfolios. It was for a small furniture company and the concept wasn’t that bad but I wasn’t thinking that much of the application phase. And that is extremely important. Logo should offer a nice background for the rest of the branding process.

13. How do you educate a client about your process and what he really wants, if he is ignorant about most of it?
At the start I always present a standard brief form and working process details. That’s important for a project communication. If the client knows about the design process before he contacts me that can help a lot, but if he doesn’t, my duty is to ‘welcome him to the beautiful world of graphic design’, no matter how hard it sometimes gets!

14. If you wouldn’t be creating brands, what would you be doing?
My biggest dream ever was to break a record on 100 meters! I would probably train all my life to achieve it.

15. 5 gadgets you couldn’t live without?

1. Black Berry
2. Bicycle
3. Bose surround system in my car
4. My car
5. And of course my computer with the internet connection.

Those are maybe not quite ‘gadgets’ but certainly the stuff I couldn’t function without.

16. The most valuable physical object in your design arsenal?
I have an extremely expensive and totally sexy Mont Blanc fountain pen with the golden top! It has never been used and I keep it for signing the biggest contract ever!

17. On a day off [if someone really forced you to do that], what would you do that had nothing to do with technology?
I love outdoors! I hate when people spend their spare time locked inside the house! On any of my rare day offs I try to spend as much time outside as I can. No matter the season. The problem is that I never leave my Berry at home, so much about the tech-free day!

18. What do you envision for the logo designing/brand creating industry in the coming year? What do you predict will change about the way we design our logos?
In the coming year not really much. If you check out the so called ‘logo design trend articles’ they look more like a ‘list of all the logo design techniques used at the moment’. The thin line between the making an illustration and designing a logo becomes thinner every day, and personally I don’t like or support that. When it comes to branding and naming, I have noticed that a lot of people are doing that for themselves when starting companies, thinking about the brand name even before creating the company’s vision and/or mission and making the market/business area analysis. They are not aware of the amount of the energy they will spend only to explain what they meant by that. Branding and logo design should be left to the pros, if you know what I mean: for example, I am not trying to fix my microwave when it breaks down, I call a specialist to do that for me.

19. Can you give us a sneak peek at something that is “in the works” for you? What are your plans for the next 5 years?
I got some pretty interesting projects on the table at the moment. Some of those have really nice budgets but also required a certain ‘confidentiality’ agreement to even start them.
But the one that makes me really happy is the branding system I did for a charity organization called ‘The Family India’. It was pro-bono work because I really support all of their efforts. And when it comes to plans, as I said in a few interviews before, I really want to write the book about the design, probably covering all the design areas that I tangle with through my company and freelance work, having a “project phases” as the theme or cross-element of their similarity/connection.

20. Any parting words of wisdom for logo designers, old and new?
Old logo designers – stay who you are, don’t follow trends if you don’t feel like it, I need you, some of you inspire me to be you, to be better then you!
New logo designers – practice a lot, make ‘fake’ logos, make ‘fake’ brands, show off with your skills, be original, respect the rules of the trade but also change some if you feel that you can! Do you think that Michael Jordan stayed at home and watched soap operas between the games? All logo designers – please don’t do logos for $30, or for $50, or for $100, you all know what ‘the professional minimum’ is! These are the hard times for all business areas, including ours, but only the strong designers ready to fight for design and to think about it on the long term will save our trade. Let’s start the age of the ‘design honor’!

And since Alen signed off all our correspondences as Alen “Type08″ Pavlovic aka Jack Bauer, I just had to ask him this next question.

21.  Why Jack Bauer?
Jack Bauer is the man! I love ‘24′ and hardly wait for a new season each time the current one is over. It is also a bit of a long story, I have some personal reasons of really liking this character, but the name Jack Bauer is a really perfect match to my Type08 story. I also had a cool situation with one of my clients from Los Angeles. She was just watching the last season of it during the project and every time we met on chat she was really tempted to talk about the episodes. If nothing else, this element connected us and made our project atmosphere really nice, friendly and casual.

Thanks for this opportunity Sneh!

And Thank You once again Alen. We wish you the very best with your future endeavors.

To see more of Alen’s work, please see his website Type08, his Brandstack Profile, and his LogoPond Showcase.


Sneh Roy is a designer and creative trends blogger. You can follow her @LBOI on Twitter and keep up with her at her site, Little Box of Ideas.