We Have Been Designing Experiences Since 1996
Heretakis & Associates began in 1996 with very little except curiosity, determination and a belief in the extraordinary power of visual communication.
There was no grand business plan. No carefully constructed agency proposition. No talk of ecosystems, touchpoints or brand experiences.
There was simply a desire to make good work, work with good people and create things that meant something.
In those early days, design was physical. Ideas began with pencils, paper, conversations, photographs, photocopies, books, type and ink. We drew. We made. We experimented. We got things wrong and made them again.
And slowly, project by project, client by client, the studio grew.
But something more important was growing with it:
experience.
Experience of people.
Experience of organisations.
Experience of culture.
Experience of what happens when a beautiful idea encounters the complicated realities of the world.
Founded in 1996, we became a visual communication agency with extensive knowledge and experience across the creative industries. Over the years, our clients have included dreamers, publishers, magazines, multinational advertising agencies and ambitious entrepreneurs—people and organisations united by the desire to communicate something worth noticing.
From the beginning, our approach has been guided by a proactive commitment to our partners' needs, combined with electrifying originality, sound judgement and a strong moral compass.
The work itself has always resisted narrow definitions.
We have moved between handmade corporate identities and bold publishing, between graphic design, illustration, photography, advertising, editorial design, strategy and visual communication. Some projects have been intimate and carefully crafted by hand. Others have operated at international scale.
The media changed.
The technologies changed.
The countries changed.
The people around the table changed.
The fundamental question did not:
How can we make somebody see something differently?
Because that, ultimately, is what communication is about.
Not decoration.
Not another logo.
Not another campaign disappearing into an endless stream of content.
It is about interrupting familiarity for a moment. Creating curiosity. Making somebody stop, look, think, feel or act.
For many years we described ourselves through the language of visual communication, and that remains at the heart of what we do.
We once described Heretakis & Associates as fluid energy, pure oxygen and lucid water wherever visual communication is paramount.
That language still feels true.
Because the best creative work should bring energy into a situation.
It should create space.
It should clarify rather than complicate.
It should give an idea oxygen.
And somewhere along the journey, we began to realise that design itself was becoming too small a description of what we were doing.
Our work had moved beyond designing things.
We were designing conversations.
Workshops.
Encounters.
Stories.
Learning experiences.
Communities.
Events.
Strategies.
Collaborations.
Connections between people who might otherwise never have met.
The studio gradually became something broader.
An experience agency rooted in visual communication.
Not because we abandoned graphic design, but because almost thirty years of graphic design taught us to see the larger picture.
A book is an experience.
A brand is an experience.
A classroom is an experience.
A conference is an experience.
A podcast conversation is an experience.
A workshop bringing people from different cultures together is an experience.
Even a single piece of communication can change the way someone understands an organisation, an idea—or themselves.
That is where Heretakis & Associates operates today.
Between design and education.
Between strategy and making.
Between analogue and digital.
Between culture and commerce.
Between Europe and the wider world.
Between the people who have an idea and the people they hope to reach.
And although the tools around us have changed almost beyond recognition since 1996, some things have deliberately remained stubbornly unchanged.
We still believe in ideas before software.
We still believe in drawing, making and experimentation.
We still believe in originality that has a reason to exist.
We still believe in sound judgement.
We still believe that ethics and responsibility belong inside the creative process, not somewhere outside it.
We still believe that technology should amplify human intelligence rather than replace it.
We still believe that collaboration works best when people genuinely listen to one another.
And we still believe that good work carries a responsibility beyond simply selling something.
Today, almost anything can be generated instantly.
That makes experience, judgement and humanity more valuable—not less.
Nearly three decades of practice have taught us that there is rarely a straight line between a problem and its answer. Sometimes the answer is an identity. Sometimes it is a publication. Sometimes it is a workshop, a conversation, a film, an educational programme, an event or an entirely new way of thinking about the problem.
So we no longer begin by asking:
“What do you want us to design?”
We begin by asking:
“What are you trying to make happen?”
That small change contains almost thirty years of learning.
Heretakis & Associates began in 1996 as a young visual communication practice with something to prove.
Today, it has become an international experience agency with something far more useful to offer:
perspective.
The perspective that comes from making thousands of decisions, meeting extraordinary people, working across disciplines and cultures, teaching, listening, travelling, questioning, succeeding, failing, starting again—and remaining curious throughout it all.
We are still designers.
We are still makers.
We still believe passionately in visual communication.
But today our canvas is larger.
We design the conditions in which ideas become experiences, experiences become relationships, and relationships create change.
Fluid energy.
Pure oxygen.
Lucid water.
And after almost thirty years, we still believe that the next idea might be the most exciting one yet.
Thank you!