My familiarity with this boutique studio dates back to October 2012. In 2011, I participated in the second POPOK International Advertising Festival in Yerevan, Armenia as Iran’s representative on the jury panel of the ATL contest section. It was autumn again, and I was in Yerevan for the third round of the Festival. The first encounter with that year’s posters and advertising items was enough for me to notice a significant transformation of the identity of this young and dynamic festival in comparison to the previous year. I was eager to see the team behind this identity revision, particularly because I had also come across its other works during the Festival.
Before returning to Tehran, I had the opportunity to visit the studio responsible for these transformations and met its small, creative team. I was introduced to Stepan Azaryan, founder and art director, and David Simonyan, the studio’s executive director. They welcomed me with special warmth and acquainted me with the team members and the studio’s limited, yet sufficient facilities. It was evident from the beginning that the Studio’s creativity and motivational engine was Stepan.
Since the first encounter with the Backbone team, one could feel the prevailing creative spirit and the members’ strong desire to grow and break with tradition. This was very appealing and encouraging to me, since a decade ago I had spent more than five years working on a large scale in Armenia’s design market.
Backbone boutique studio was established in 2010 in Yerevan by two young Armenians, a designer and a photographer. According to Stepan, it took the core team almost one year to find a proper and distinguished name for the studio, and they finally chose the English term, Backbone. The philosophy behind this name was the central role the studio’s founders would play for their clients: laying the foundation on which the client’s brand is formed and developed.
Receiving an order from one of the greatest Armenian dairy producers, ASHTARAK KAT, opened the door to the huge success of this budding studio. Until 2014, they used to add the adjective “creative” to their name in order to describe themselves. However, with the passage of time, they became more self-confident in the branding domain and replaced this adjective with “branding.”
The main goal of the studio’s founders was to create a local alternative with international standards for native clients, so that clients were no longer obliged to rely on foreign studios to brand their products — specifically those products that seek to enter international markets.
Backbone took its first step towards cross-border expansion in 2012 with the design of “Bzzz Premium” honey packaging. A local producer ordered the design of its high-quality honey’s name, visual identity, and packaging. Inspired by the primary sketches of their art director, the Backbone team proposed to design the packaging based on the shape of natural beehives in the very first client briefing session. Thus, a modular wooden case holding a plain glass container was the design result. The brand’s name, “Bzzz,” was coined based on the famous onomatopoeia resembling the sound of a bee.
The unique work by Backbone for LERNATUN Health Complex LLC won eight international awards in the succeeding months; including the highly-acclaimed Dieline Award and Pentaward in 2013.
Such achievements not only attracted clients from other countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Ukraine, and the United State, but also boosted the confidence and raised the expectations of local clients in their interactions with Backbone.
One of the most interesting local cases is the development of a French café-bakery’s brand identity, called Louis Charden, in 2013. Inspired by common childhood images (of baking confectionary and bread within the home) and based on the client’s brief, Backbone created a fictional character for the brand named Louis Charden, and carefully developed his life story from childhood until the establishment of this café-bakery. The French café-bakery’s brand identity was developed based on the illustrations of the different stages of this character’s life, which could be seen all throughout the bakery and on its objects.
Louis Charden’s story received international recognition, such as the Dieline Award. Moreover, in a short while, it turned the place into an original haunt for native customers and a tourist attraction for people visiting Yerevan.
Backbone’s exceptional ability in storytelling for brands has become the basis of the projects it has accomplished in subsequent years for its clients from UAE and Russia — projects such as the Argentinian Café Diego and the Shack seafood restaurant in Abu Dhabi, and the Scandinavian MØS Gastronomic Smart & Casual Restaurant in Russia. In all of these cases, the brand is based on and evolved from a story — an attractive story full of details waiting to be discovered.
Currently, Backbone is comprised of 12 members working in marketing and creativity divisions. The creativity division is the studio’s skeleton, consisting of an art director, a senior designer, three designers, and two illustrators. The marketing division is in charge of specialized tasks such as brand definition, project management, and public relations.
During the recent years in Armenia, several small- and medium-sized design studios have been set up and are operating, especially by the younger generation (the generation
formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Without a doubt, Backbone Studio is a rare example that has been able to cross national borders and define new criteria for young Armenian designers — modern design criteria that is capable of transforming businesses (rather than hasty, temporary decorations added at the end of a product or service’s development). Backbone’s inspiring model has led to a serious commitment for its members: a commitment for continuous creativity and innovation in defining brands.
backbonebranding.com