Let’s take it back to the beginning. How did your childhood influence your professional path?!

When I was little, I was a very restless child. I couldn’t sit still for long without going crazy. I think my parents got me crayons and paints just to get me to sit still! I would draw on the walls and windows, and because we lived on the 12th floor of our building, I had a great view of the sky. That must’ve held my attention because my parents noticed that I was always drawing or painting skies.

Then, when I was about six years old, my family had moved, and my parents enrolled me in an art school that just so happened to be on the same block as where we lived. I’d go to regular school for half the day, and then I’d go to this art school. This ended up being one of the most nourishing experiences of my childhood. This school had literature, they had music, and we would do ceramics and paint. I don’t think I ever felt freer!

I also got a lot of inspiration from my parents, who were both journalists. My mother taught me the importance of self-expression, albeit through words and writing. And my father worked for a newspaper that was also on the same block as my art school, and that place became a major part of my life. There were designers at the newspaper who showed me how to do art on the computer, as rudimentary as it was in the 1990s. And I was fascinated by the process of printing. When I grew up and started attending high school, which did not have all of the art programs of my childhood, it was this life at the newspaper that became my inspiration, which helped steer me towards a career in graphic design.

How did you get into the world of motion graphics?

Well, I finished university in 2009, right around the time that there was a boom in motion graphics and animation in Argentina. Now I was a designer, not an animator, but I was drawn in by the idea of making the things that I designed move.

I started working in Buenos Aires — there’s a saying in Argentina that God is everywhere, but He lives in Buenos Aires, so that meant you wanted to work in that city. I moved from studio to studio, and I soon realized that packaging design wasn’t for me in the beginning, I thought I wanted to work in packaging design, but I quickly realized it wasn’t for me. I felt more alive when I would be working with larger teams that understood animation and storytelling and music and sound design, and so on. It felt deeper to me; it felt like more. And so I spent a couple of years at a motion design studio that would do broadcasting identities for TV channels. I found that that brought together all of the best elements of my design background, such as developing design systems, and then seeing those things being brought to life with motion? That was magical.

“I thought I wanted to work in packaging design, but I quickly realized it wasn’t for me. I felt more alive when I would be working with larger teams that understood animation and storytelling and music and sound design...”

And so I worked in various studios over the next decade or so before I began freelancing. It was through this phase that I met my eventual life partner, Milton Gonzalez.

Life partner and future co-founder of NotReal? I can see where love is taking us!

(laughs) We started dating, and we eventually married. Milton had a studio around 2017, and I was freelancing there with him. One of his studio partners was moving away, so we started working on one project together, and then another, and then another, and then another. Eventually, we were like, okay, we have to put a name to what we are doing here, because this is something new.

Admittedly, it was hard in the beginning. I was hoping to have a love partner, somebody who would pull me away from work, not be part of work. But at the same time, I was frustrated because I was looking for something else, career-wise, and we saw so much potential in what we were doing together that I just couldn't turn my eyes away from it. Looking back, I think the whole thing was magic. It's that synergy of finding somebody who puts so much love and so much energy into the same kinds of things that you do. Finding that in another person made me fall a little bit more in love with him.

And that’s how NotReal was born!

I'm not going to lie; during the first couple of years. It was non-stop work. We wouldn't have any weekends, no free days, no holidays, nothing. But then you see the results and the wheel starts to turn, you just want to continue because you kind of have the feeling that there is something beautiful and magical and powerful being built, and whatever you put in will come back to you.

So how did the opportunity to work with us at The One Club come about?

Of course, we knew about the One Club. We had always hoped to win a Pencil or a Cube one day — we came close last year, winning a Merit in ADC104. You realize that there is something very powerful about how much engagement the awards have in the creative community and what the awards represent.

A while ago, some time after we moved NotReal to Madrid, we traveled to Barcelona to attend the ADCE Festival, which is part of The One Club’s events. We saw that the community had something different, a different energy than some of the other communities in the motion graphics industry that we knew. And there was something very sweet about everyone, which inspired us to attend Creative Week in New York the following spring. We were recognized for attending the Barcelona festival, and that began a friendship with the team. We attended the ADCE Festival again that year, this time participating in the Executive Creative Summit, where it was refreshing to learn that other companies were having the same challenges that we were facing. And when we returned to Creative Week in 2024, we felt that we really knew what this organization was about. That made it extra thrilling when we were asked to develop what began as 3D renderings of The One Club’s trophies but ended up being so, so much more!

“We saw that the community had something different, a different energy than some of the other communities in the motion graphics industry that we knew.”

Do you remember how the project moved from concepts to reality?

Well, although the project essentially began with “we want beautiful renders of our various trophies,” it quickly became evident that we would need to design an entire branding system for it all. Of course, that wasn’t the initial assignment, but as we say in Spain, we jumped into the pool without seeing if it was empty or not! We were nervous for our first presentation, but we knew that this needed to go beyond cool motion graphics. And thankfully, the team was very receptive to our ideas!

When we work with different brands, we try to do a lot of introspection. We realize that we are helping them understand what is it that they want to be, how they want to be seen, what are the things that they like about themselves, what are the things that they don't like about themselves, and so on. That's how you connect with clients; you connect to the brand, you connect to the work, because otherwise you're just doing a random beautiful thing and it won't have any impact.

“When we work with different brands, we try to do a lot of introspection. We realize that we are helping them understand what is it that they want to be, how they want to be seen...”

For me, the only way to have an impact is to understand, have a conversation, and do something that changes or do something that moves things forward or makes things more cohesive and changes the perspective in some sort of way. I am not saying it has to be radical. Every time you work for something, it doesn’t always have to be radical, but it should always be deep; when you go deep and when you have those conversations, that provides a path for the work to become powerful.

One of the things that was important for us was to develop a system that had room to grow. For this particular project, we were tasked with developing motion work for The One Show, ADC, and Young Ones, but we knew that whatever we created would have to work with other awards and initiatives that we weren’t tasked with at the time, such as ONE Asia and TDC, which were in the process of creating their first-ever trophy.

We also knew that it was important to make sure that the trophies, which are all quite different, would still work together. Most Pencils and Cubes are shiny and metallic, but the Black Cube is matte black. The Designism Cube and things like the Green Pencil are transparent. The SDG Pencil is prismatic. The Fusion trophies and the Best of Discipline Pencils use a mixture of materials. And all of the trophies are physically heavy. We needed all of this to be evident in the graphics, while still resulting in beautiful, captivating animations. I do have to be honest, though, our designers are material freaks — they loved the opportunity to see and feel all of these trophies and work on recreating their many different surfaces. (laughs)

What should the world expect from the NotReal team?

From the very beginning, our mantra has been simple: “We make things happen.” Just shoot whatever you need — we make it happen.

We are especially proud of how our presence and capabilities have grown over the years. Although our HQ is in Spain, around 90% of our work is for the US market, which shows that we have what it takes to operate on a truly global scale.

NotReal has worked with large global companies for many years, and we’re now evolving our approach to build deeper, more integrated relationships with our clients. We are developing more design systems and, while maintaining the quality of our work, we’ve realized the importance of truly understanding what our clients need. That’s why we’ve started contributing to the creation of their next briefs, rather than simply receiving them.

We’ve become much more than a “mere” motion design studio. As we demonstrated with the One Club’s awards project, our core now involves building design systems that are intrinsically tied to brand identities. To do that, we’ve become a more integral part of our clients’ DNA. Instead of just executing, we are actively shaping the strategic thinking behind every element of a project.

In short, even though we call ourselves “NotReal,” we’re more involved, more tangible, and more “real” than ever.