We, as the Designer Interviews ("DI") had the distinct pleasure and opportunity to interview award-winning, most creative and innovative Rice Creative ("RC").
Rice Creative is a multidisciplinary design agency set up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2011 by Chi-An De Leo and Joshua Breidenbach. Out of huge global branding & advertising agencies respectively, the duo sought a smaller more personal environment to offer a new set of clients, world-class creative solutions, with emphasis on well informed concept. The Duo have now enlisted a small handpicked team of creative, planning & production talent to expand the reach of the agency. Rice Creative have engaged with number of like minded start up companies including Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat, to give them voice & visual identity. Rice creative plans to remain lean & focused forming long lasting bonds with their select clients to produce striking, long lasting creative work. Rice creative's core practices are in brand identity, art-direction, packaging, interactive, & print.
Rice Creative Designs
We are pleased to share with you original and innovative design work by Rice Creative.
Designer Interview of Rice Creative:
DI: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
RC : Chi-An De Leo is a true multicultural & international individual, he speaks 5 languages and has lived in 5 different countries including a major stint of 9 years in the Uk in cities like Cambridge, Exeter & Cambridge. Wanting to get back to his Vietnamese roots, he made the move back to the country where he spent the early years of his childhood. Chi-An has a background in Design and Advertising both in Europe and Vietnam. His passion for Design & Communication has helped local brands reach World Class standards. Chi-An met Joshua Breidenbach at Lowe Vietnam and helped him set up the new design division. They built a partnership early on working together on brands such as Nescafe, Prudential, Vinamilk and Unilever. Chi-An went on to set up Rice Creative together with Joshua. Joshua Breidenbach began his career at global branding powerhouse, Landor Associates. He Quickly became heavily involved in a multitude Branding & packaging assignments for Multinational giants such as P&G Joshua was also nominated to brand and campaign many of Landor’s internal initiatives. Seeking new challenges, Joshua moved to Asia 5 years ago, accepting an Art Director position at Lowe & Partners Vietnam. Joshua developed 360 Integrated advertising campaigns. After a brief stint in Bangkok, Josh returned to Lowe Vietnam after being asked to build & lead a new design team as Design Director. A drive to offer clients to the best possible creative solutions led to the founding Rice Creative with Chi-An De Leo.
DI: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
RC : Rice Creative is a multidisciplinary design agency set up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2011 by Chi-An De Leo and Joshua Breidenbach. Out of huge global branding & advertising agencies respectively, the duo sought a smaller more personal environment to offer a new set of clients, world-class creative solutions, with emphasis on well informed concept. The Duo have now enlisted a small handpicked team of creative, planning & production talent to expand the reach of the agency. Rice Creative have engaged with number of like minded start up companies including Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat, to give them voice & visual identity. Rice creative plans to remain lean & focused forming long lasting bonds with their select clients to produce striking, long lasting creative work.
DI: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
RC : Rice creative's core practices are in brand identity, art-direction, packaging, interactive, & print.
DI: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
RC : Marou Chocolate was our first client - a designers dream client, a great way to kickstart Rice Creative. Our first meeting was at Samuel Maruta’s house, they showed us their home-made grinder they had set up in the back room & we had our first taste of Marou Chocolate. We got along great & it was the start of a great & long journey. Since all of us we had quit our full-time jobs, we worked out a way to help each other grow and sustain a working relationship. We had a lot of fun coming up with the Marou brand & spent a good few months on the packaging design with many long discussions.