On the first day of school during the campus tour, she met her husband,
a film major. “Art Center couples,” she laughs. “Lots of people get together as students. Many split up.”
These two have
stayed together. “Fernando and I have always supported each other, and moved to the city where the other got
the best job.” After graduation it was two-and-a-half years in New York, where Eckstein was involved with major
Drenttel Doyle projects for Martha Stewart, Champion Paper and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Then back to L.A. so Arrioja could find work directing commercials. Then came what she describes as “an amazing
opportunity” in Toronto. “I'm an entrepreneur at heart,” she says. “I knew absolutely no one there, but the
design community was warm and welcoming.” After freelancing at various offices she began cultivating her own
clients, beginning with Industry Films–naming the company and collaborating with architects on integrating the
identity with the company's space. It was the first of many film company projects.
Multidisciplinary collaboration
is a role that Eckstein sees as integral to
blok's own identity. “Blok is more than design. It is a space for collaboration,” she emphasizes. “The name
blok was
taken from a political magazine from the Russian Revolution, but it could be from Scandinavia, Russia, Argentina.
Bring your own interpretation. I lived through the military dictatorship and believe in activism. For me, design is
a means of communicating, serving, being part of society.”
After a few years in the Toronto design community,
Eckstein became a vice president of the
Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (rgd). “In Latin America we don't have professional
organizations,” she muses. “You have to do it on your own. I admire people with clarity, vision.” She and Arrioja
spent
five years in Toronto, frequently criss-crossing the U.S. by car “to get to know America.” She recalls, “We would
take
two weeks to get from L.A. to New York, traveling on small roads and stopping to see what interested us.” | | Right now, the firm's diverse Mexican clients include
Tequila Jose Cuervo, for which they're designing packaging; Nike, which commissioned retail store designs and
collectible World Cup soccer star cards; and Taller de Empresa, a start-up incubator and financing source. Blok
has also retained its Canadian clients, including Roots, a major consumer apparel brand headquartered in Toronto,
and Change, a Vancouver-based sustainability branding company. Says Marc Stoiber, Change's founder: “I knew from
day one that the way to make our company successful was to find the best talent. I called Vanessa when we got our
first big project, for a company that turned garbage into fertilizer. She took our concept –dubbed R-Earth– and
turned what could have been hippie compost into a fashion icon. She
transformed another green project, for wooden cutlery, into high design. Vanessa and her team are easy to work with
and generous,” he says. Guadalajara-based art curator Patrick Charpenel, who worked with the firm on an art
exhibition and book, calls her “una diseñadora
sensible que se compenetra a fondo con los contenidos de cada proyecto [a sensitive designer who plunges deeply
into the content of each project].”
How does she do it all? “I try to be very, very organized,” she says.
It helps that professional-class Mexican households have live-in maids and nannies, but Eckstein is hands-on, both as business
owner and mom. Every day at noon, she zooms off in her black suv to pick up Luka from Montessori school and feed Uma before
returning to the office for a full afternoon's work. On the day of my visit, that included completing an agenda for Nueva
Escuela Tecnológica, a trade school for low-income students, which Patricia Kleeberg, who came to Mexico in 2005 from
Frankfurt, is designing. With this project, Kleeberg might be taking blok in a bolder direction: lots of bright yellow
and large type. “I'm more a strong color person,” she says. |
