Gone Fishing is a name you would sooner expect on a note stuck to a closed door than on a production company’s business card. Behind it, however, is not a team that has left work, but a team whose thoughts are so absorbed by film that everything else can wait. Agency Señor built the identity around the difference between the first impression and the way the team works.
Director Ivan Grgur’s new project introduced itself through the people behind it, rather than through cameras, sets and finished footage. The focus shifted to situations from the team’s everyday life, moments when production takes over the day, changes plans and pushes everything else aside. The slogan Totally focused on film brought these small absurdities together into one idea, while the humour revealed something more important: what the people clients actually enter the creative process with are like.
But an amusing scene is not yet an identity. In a conversation for the Behind the Winning Idea series, Tomislav Fabijanić, Head of Design at Señor, discusses how they developed the name into a visual language that can grow with the production company, why they did not try to prove professionalism through a serious tone, and what it took for the idea to win gold in the Branding category at IdejaX.
What position did Gone Fishing want to take among production companies, and what did the new identity need to convey about the team that could not be shown through a portfolio of completed films alone?
Gone Fishing is director Ivan Grgur’s new project. In both concept and execution, the identity needed to reflect the character of his work: a serious focus on daydreaming, often infused with black comedy, after which he always professionally returns to the concrete task, deadlines, agreements and execution.
We aimed to position it as a production company that is not just an executor of film projects, but a creatively and professionally fully dedicated production partner. We brought together two seemingly opposing sides: imagination and play with responsibility and a professional approach to work.
In this way, the new identity also communicated the working process to potential collaborators, everything that a portfolio of completed films cannot always fully illustrate: the idea that, once production begins, the team immerses itself completely and the rest of the world temporarily fades into the background. This very attitude, summed up in the positioning “Totally focused on film”, represented the key value that the new identity needed to make visible.
The name does not refer to fishing, but to a state of complete absence from everything except work. To what extent did its existing meaning guide the development of the brand, and to what extent did you need to give it a new interpretation of its own through the slogan Totally focused on film?
“Gone fishing” is an English idiom that, among other things, carries the meaning of “wandering in thought”. It captures beautifully that moment of being preoccupied with another subject rather than the one seemingly in the foreground. The name itself entirely guided the development of the brand. Of course, since it is not a descriptive name, the other elements of the identity needed to communicate what had not been said through the name or the logo. In our case, the slogan tells us which industry we have “wandered into”, or that everything else takes a back seat while we are focused on film / production.
Instead of showing dedication to film through sets, equipment or finished work, you build the identity through everything that gets neglected because of production. To what extent did these situations emerge from the real lives of the Gone Fishing team, and what did this reverse approach allow you to do?
The inspiration for the situations did indeed come from aspects of our film crew’s everyday life. Given that this is a project launched by a director, we tried to tell the story of his vision through the identity, while also incorporating the personal element that is strongly present in the creative process.
As for the approach, I would not say it is particularly reversed. A message works best when the text (in this case, the name) and the image (photo and video assets) complement each other. Here, we did not illustrate the industry (there are other means of communicating that), but found a visual language that emphasises the idea behind the name and contributes to the brand’s character and distinctiveness, and we structured it to allow for further development of assets, i.e. potential future creations.
Humour is very prominent, but Gone Fishing still needs to present itself credibly to clients who entrust it with serious production projects. Where did you seek the balance between a playful character, the team’s authenticity and professional authority?
Playfulness and humour serve to attract attention and convey a cheerful, approachable, creative and slightly quirky character, while the overall idea behind the branding conveys dedication. But the overall perception of a brand is not achieved through a key visual alone; it is the sum of all other communication tools / channels, the relationships the production team builds with collaborators, clients, etc. I would say that professional authority is definitely best demonstrated through credentials and a portfolio of work, the approach and culture of the entire team, while on our side, in terms of branding, we polished every letter and pixel of the identity so that the overall impression of the brand would be credible and professional.
Gone Fishing won gold in the Branding category at IdejaX. What did the project need to offer beyond a strong witty idea to function as a complete identity that could be used over the long term?
Alongside a good idea, a complete identity that can be used over the long term should also be well executed. Briefly, it should be simple, yet distinctive; specific, yet adaptable; it should not rely on trends, but consistently build its own style.
