How JUNIQE gets things done

JUNIQE is a lifestyle brand for curated and affordable wall art and home accessories based in Berlin.

JUNIQE’s mission is to transform their customer’s homes by bringing art into their everyday. JUNIQE works with over 600 artists to create beautiful posters, wrapping paper, notepads, and even shower curtains.

Thanks to the rich imagery on the JUNIQE website that places different sized prints in actual rooms, you can get a real sense of how big the artwork is before making your purchase. They frame the prints for you, so all you have to do is hang them. JUNIQE also have curated collections to help kick-start your gallery wall.

We chatted with JUNIQE Photography Manager Sabine Zoltnere about inspiration, their creative process, and how the team uses Dropmark to get things done.

Tell me a little about JUNIQE, how did it get started?

Our mission at JUNIQE is to make amazing art accessible to everyone, by curating exciting designs from our artist community and inspiring our customers to make art present in their everyday lives.

We went live in January 2014, and it’s been a wild ride ever since! From a small start, we now count over 600 artists as part of our community, and each design at JUNIQE is handpicked by our curators before being made available on posters and prints, home accessories, and stationery.

How does being in a creative city like Berlin impact your work?

Your environment is really important when it comes to creativity, and Berlin has a lot to offer: from great art galleries like C|O Berlin and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art to the amazing electronic music scene.

The city is made up of hundreds of little pieces that make living and working here special. There is also a growing startup scene, and the rhythm of the city is getting more dynamic while keeping its creative twist.

Is your office beautifully curated and full of JUNIQE gems?

It is! We have gallery walls featuring designs by JUNIQE artists everywhere, as well as two murals painted by JUNIQE artist Jilli Darling and our former creative director Daniela Roessler. Besides that, we have a chill area packed with our all-over printed cushions.

We need all these bright designs to survive the Berlin winter - it’s six months long!

What does your creative team look like?

The JUNIQE Creative team is a mix of digital and graphic designers and photographers, but most importantly we are all huge art enthusiasts.

Our team is very international. In our big, open-plan office we speak English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swedish, Vietnamese, Russian, French, Dutch, Italian, Latvian, and many other languages. We’re pretty multi-kulti, as the Germans say - it’s one of the things I love the most about JUNIQE and Berlin.

How does design fit into JUNIQE’s company culture?

Since JUNIQE is an e-commerce company, most of our customer interactions happen online. It’s essential that the onsite experience is smooth and that the visual material and content is inspiring and engaging.

What inspires your team?

We are inspired by our artists and JUNIQE’s mission to make art more accessible. We’re also really happy to support emerging artists by helping them make a living doing what they do best: creating art.

What’s your team’s creative process?

The creative process in the Photography team really depends on the project at hand - and that’s what we love about it! Art direction, production, location scouting, set styling, arranging lighting, shooting, retouching: it’s a big mix of office work and hands-on work at the studio or other offsite location.

During the busy sales seasons, the Photography team’s work can get a little stressful - we need to deliver the highest quality results with a very short turnaround, but it’s also the most fun time of the year!

How does Dropmark fit into your workflow?

Dropmark is a really useful tool for the everyday life of JUNIQE Creative team. We in the Photography team manage the company account and keep it updated with our newest imagery, which we use Dropmark to share with other teams like Graphics, PR, Marketing, and Social Media.

We use Dropmark to tag, sort, and store all of our photography assets, which makes it easier to browse and find the right asset for every project.

What’s the most interesting you’ve Dropmarked recently?

Our pop-up store images! JUNIQE recently opened a pop-up store in Berlin, which is the first offline shopping experience for our customers. Our Berlin customers have an opportunity to see, touch and feel JUNIQE products before purchasing them, and it is a very different experience for them - and for us.

See more of JUNIQE’s atwork at juniqe.com and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.