Digging into design: Leta Sobierajski

Written by Margherita Visentini
Posted on: October 16, 2024

As part of FIDO contents, we’re gathering here some women designers to talk about some of their works. This section focus on case-studies aims to focus on the method and the strategy to approach a design project, presenting specifically the ideas that stand behind it and the step-by-step process.

Leta Sobierajski is a New York-based artist and designer known for her vivid and colorful compositions and installations. With her husband Wade Jeffree, she runs a studio called Wade and Leta and together they have collaborated with world-leading brands such as Comme Des Garçons and Herman Miller. Leta’s work specializes in quite a range of things from large artwork and installation—physical manifestations as she has called them—as well as art direction and photography campaigns where she always adds a bizarre new twist to the brand. Leta uses a very nice word to describe the collaboration with Wade and it’s balance, which is also what she appreciates in many design festivals’ lineups, and the same she’s missing sometimes in work meetings:

For this new chapter, we talked with her about the Big Bang! Solo Exhibition at the E03 Gallery in Beijing, on show from September 28th to December 17th 2023. For this project they were contacted one year before by the gallery, “so we had about a year ahead of time to think about the show. We thought about it gradually as we were traveling and working on other projects, and we came across this idea of the Big Bang for a couple of reasons” she explained. “One, as it’s our first solo show in China, we wanted to make a big bang (and she smiles while saying this, editor’s note) and, two: a lot of art that we were gravitating towards had this focus on something that was exploding out of something else, there was an impact so we were thinking about the concept of making an impact.” The show was put together during 4 or 5 months but, as often happens with artists and creatives in general, what we can find here are some ideas that Wade and Leta had in their heads for 4 or 5 years, and finally found their way to come out:

That peculiar use of the colors, the “Wade–and–Leta–way” like she said, is at the core of almost all of their creations, such as client work as well as personal or side projects, and it’s also at the core of this solo show. She admits that creating a color palette and choosing colors for a project sounds like it should be the easiest thing but in fact it is quite complicated: “I feel like we really can’t decide on the color of the artwork until maybe everything else is complete. It’s like putting together the entire puzzle and then slowly changing either a shade of blue or a shade of orange to ensure that the entire palette feels holistic.” Leta also told us that one strategy may be quite simplistic but functional, that is to say thinking about hot colors that go well with cold colors and what feels like an ideal balance. Another strategy is the use of the same colors in different projects, maybe with a very slight variation on the temperature of a color. And to be back to our case study, about the Big Bang! Exhibition, she said:

Wade and Leta have been strongly influenced by another artist duo, Arakawa and Gins, and their experimental architecture: their projects were always extremely colorful with large blocks or fields of color juxtaposed against one another, and this led Wade and Leta to learn a lesson that has become very important for their workflow, too:

Crucial for an artist or a designer may be the creation of a sort of trademark which allows everybody to recognize your style and your work among many others. And we all agree that Wade and Leta have achieved this goal so we chatted a little with Leta about this issue of being distinctive, and keeping on being creative and creating something different every time. Like Leta, many other female designers we interviewed so far told us that clients often come to you to have a copy of something you’ve already done, “they expect that you create the same or similar motifs over and over again, that’s what you become famous for, and others don’t want you to divert from that style and that motif” she said. The key, according to her, is constantly experimenting: at their studio, they are constantly pushing their mediums and thoughts, and pushing their ideas to progress, “otherwise it’s really hard to evolve.” And, most importantly, “always ask yourself if you’re happy with what you’re doing” she adds, that may seem very basic but in the end that’s all that matters.

As previously mentioned, the existing balance between Wade and Leta is what makes their work successful, but to our last question about the strength of their studio, she added that also the compatibility—”it’s really hard to be with somebody 24/7”—and the flexibility to be able to work in different conditions play a key role in making things work.

A pity that this new chapter of Digging into Design has now come to an end. We wanna thank Leta very much for waking up so early in the morning—while in Japan—to answer our questions and talk about their Beijing solo show. We appreciated her honesty and the detailed description of the making of the exhibition. See you in the next episode with another exceptional guest.