judges’ picks >> armin vit
5 Bruketa&Zinic
Design 100 judge Armin Vit, founder of UnderConsideration and a senior designer at Pentagram New York, says that while he doesn’t typically go in for sentimental visual cues, he was nonetheless drawn to Bruketa&Zinic’s all-white annual report for Croatian food distributor Podravka. Titled “Excerpt of the Eternal Debate About the Heart,” it’s bound with a romantic white ribbon and emblazoned with pretty cursive script. The exterior certainly could yield associations with Victorian-era love letters or similarly syrupy ephemera, so Vit was pleased to see that the wry humor within quickly silences any proverbial violin strings.

The most striking defiance of expectations comes early— in a 12-page photo series of a little old lady demonstrating the difference between cooking with and without love. On one lefthand page, for instance, she scowls and rolls dough—with a beer bottle; the Podravka logo on her apron appears to have been singed off with a cigarette. But on the facing right-hand page, the same lady—now cooking with love—uses appropriate utensils to roll the dough, and the warmth of her smile could melt Lucifer’s heart.

“The actress was an amateur, but she was extremely talented. The only time she hesitated was when we handed her a high heel and asked her to tenderize raw meat with it,” says designer Davor Bruketa, referring to another left-hand (i.e., loveless) page, which shows exactly that. “She’s a fine granny who knows what is not polite at all, but she ended up doing what we asked.”

Bruketa&Zinic also explores love as it relates to Podravka with a refreshing lack of irony. In an autobiographical text, Croatian writer Ante Tomic recalls the role of Podravka—and its smells and tastes—in the emotional texture of his life. Printed in cursive, Tomic’s script—along with the handwritten recipe notes throughout the book—can at times be difficult to read. “They’re not trying to perfect the human touch,” says Vit, “and I think human imperfection is what gives people heart. It makes us each different—and a little bit hard to understand.”

The design firm abandons matters of the heart only once— in a section featuring the number-crunching work of an outside accounting firm. Printed on 1980s matrix printer paper, “it’s the part of the annual that doesn’t come from Podravka,” explains designer Nikola Zinic. “The data come from people who work with numbers, not with heart.”

“I love the concept of this annual report,” says Vit, “because cooking really does come down to that. When you put love and heart into cooking, it becomes an experience that you want to share with others. Like when your grandma cooks for you, you know it’s something special.”

That’s assuming, of course, she’s a right-hand-page kind of nana. by Tiffany Meyers

BRUKETA&ZINIC
CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zinic
DESIGNERS: Imelda Ramovic, Mirel Hadzijusufovic, Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zinic
PHOTOGRAPHERS: Marin Topic, Domagoj Kunic
COPYWRITERS: Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zinic, Imelda Ramovic, Mirel Hadzijusufovic
PRODUCTION: IBL Osijek
CLIENT: Podravka Food Company
CONTACT: www.bruketa-zinic.com