Studio Emmi

posted by Emily Gosling January 14, 2021

Emmi Salonen is a beacon of positivity in London’s design scene, and a formidable woman indeed: she’s single handedly helmed renowned eponymous agency Studio Emmi for the past 15 years, and in doing so has worked with clients including the BBC, Somerset House, the British Council, University College Hospital, Tate Britain and so many more.

Salonen moved to London in 1996 having just turned 19 and keen to do a Foundation course in Art and Design, something that wasn’t available in her native Finland, or indeed elsewhere in Europe at the time. After taking her foundation at Central School of Speech and Drama, she went on to study at the University of Brighton. “Back then, the internet was something that we had access to from internet cafes only, so inspiration and influences came mostly through books, zines and culture around us,” says Salonen. “Finland has an exciting design scene at the moment, but all those years ago, I yearned to expand my surroundings and expose myself to more varied influences.”

After uni, Salonen took the impressive trajectory of working at Fabrica in Italy and then for Karlssonwilker in New York. Since setting up Studio Emmi in London, it’s safe to say that working in design has changed a fair bit in a decade and a half. According to Salonen, perhaps the most noticeable change is the prevalence of one-person studios. She puts that down to the fact that social media, and the online world in general, means that creatives can create their own followings without needing to work their way up in big name studios. “The playing field is much fairer in that sense,” she says. “It doesn’t really matter where you are based geographically either, be it urban or countryside, you can get noticed all the same.”

A less positive development has been a noticeable increase in requests for free pitches; something generally seen as pretty bad practice in design, and an unhealthy precedent to set. After all, you should be paid for time and creativity, right?

Having worked across a huge breadth of clients and sectors and on numerous types of projects from title sequence design to exhibition, app, identity design and even authoring her own book, Salonen struggles to pick highlights from her portfolio. “I enjoy working on identities and layouts as much as I enjoy working on event graphics or teaching design. It’s the multidisciplinary outputs that keep my days varied that gets me excited still after two decades in the industry,” she says.

What remains constant is her drive to build sustainable, long term relationships with clients—essentially, for everyone to get on, to arrive at the best design solution and just have as decent a time as possible doing so. “This way we can push the designs further and make sure their communications are on point,” says Salonen. This way of working is exemplified in her recent work for the Finnish Institute, who she’s worked with for at least a decade with various in-house teams there.”It was a fantastic opportunity to be able to work on their new identity, and bring all the experience and stories from over the years into something new, forward looking,” she says.

As a way of balancing work output and creative input, Salonen’s been running the Creative Ecosystem project via the @StudioEmmi Instagram account, in which she speaks with creatives of varying disciplines and backgrounds about everything from racial discirmatino to the meaning of success; with a few sessions taking a more physical bent with guided walks and movement classes. Other inspiration has come to Salonen a little closer to home, or at least to her family: “I’m continuously inspired by my Fine Artist sister Elsa Salonen. She works with alchemy and animism and is forever impressing me with her thinking and artworks.”