Mr. Luis P. Fabra is the Creative Director of Unilever, J&J, SC Johnson in DDB Group. He is from Europe, but he ended up living and working in Singapore for 10 years.
It is our hope at LinkedtoAsia that our conversation with Luis can be inspiring for LTA participants, and are hopeful some of you can also see some of yourself in his story.
One of the first artists that influenced Luis was his cousin. He was 14 years old when he found out that his cousin was making art, and in every visit to his parent’s house, Luis would take a sneak peek in his bedroom to see if he had any new paintings. He was struck by his cousin’s work, and it pushed him to take his artistic interests further.
Luis was in a very experimental mode, and he did not follow any specific artist or designer as a point of reference when he was in college.
Instead, he was absorbing things and different media besides painting, like video art, sound, digital photography, and trying to make something that had his own view. After learning visual theory like Gestalt, and being influenced by contemporary visual culture from magazines, photography and music art covers, Luis developed a strong interest in design, and it gradually became a way of making a profession out of his main interests.
During his sophomore year of college, Luis was awarded an Erasmus Scholarship to study in Vienna. Although he was only in Vienna for three months, it was a revelation to see how art can be really part of the everyday culture, as it could be a party, and not something that is more elitist and mainly reserved for big museums, critics and a few galleries like it happens in Spain. In Vienna, Peter Kogler was the main lecturer for Luis’ creative studio project. Peter was a friendly and charming person and even if his art practice is extremely specific to one type of work, he didn’t try to influence or change the work of the students in a subjective way, and he pushed instead for expanding and adding more depth and understanding to the different practices or paths that each student was interested in. This also helped Luis and resulted in a series of wild and raw works. Looking back to his earlier work, Luis thinks that those works may have been less-thought, slightly rushed and naïve, but they were very genuine.
After graduation, Luis did a Masters in Digital Arts and became a freelance designer working with independent clients and agencies in Spain, Brazil, and Singapore. During this time, his interest in Asian culture grew and he developed the idea of living and working in Asia. As an international hub where there is a wide and vibrant mix of local Asian cultures (Chinese, Malay and Indian) together with expats from all over the World, Singapore made it a perfect spot for Luis to work and live.
In 2014, Luis joined a newly created office under the leadership of Till Hohmann with people from truly diverse cultures and background but at the same time complemented each other very well. In their first year working together, they have picked international awards and recognitions like Cannes Lions Health, and they were named Healthcare Agency of the Year at the Global Awards in New York City, which for a new team that was exciting and a remarkable achievement. One of the projects they were all especially proud of, was an awareness campaign they have created together with a Chinese calligraphy artist to draw an important healthcare message in the streets of Singapore, where spontaneous street art is banned, and they did it without leaving a trace.
When it comes to inspiration, Luis thinks that inspiration can come from any source. Sometimes it is just as random as having an idea while cooking, walking, or taking a shower. Sometimes you just seat in front of your desk take your pen and paper and activate a mindset where you do not stress too much about things, but you dive into your thinking by putting attention in thoughts from where ideas can just appear. Luis states “Like the fisher that knows the spot of the pond where there is a higher chance to find fish.”
One of Luis’s illustrations was inspired by an antique snake bangle bracelet. Instead of a single snake biting its’ tail, the idea was to replace it with a tiger and a mouse to convey how the duality and the roles of victim and predator end when the circle is closed. Another award-winning works he did with his team was for a healthcare product in Hong Kong. The idea was to communicate that a painkiller medicine for the joints helped people to move freely from pain. To convey that in a direct, simple, and less expected way, they have got a Shaolin monk to move and depict this message in Chinese while moving.
In his work, Luis has also met some difficulties, especially when the direction of a project gets challenged against multiple criteria’s. The way he approaches these situations is by trying to explain clearly and in a very rational way why some choices or decisions are critical to communicating what is needed for that specific project. But if the point of view with the client still differs after that, there is a need to find solutions where both parts can get what they think is best but without compromising completely any of them.
Apart from being a creative director, Luis is also a lecturer and artist. For him, these three roles are like his holy trinity, they are all important and he enjoys all of them equally. As a creative director, he finds thrill in being able to create and execute ideas for an very specific purpose while having to harmonize and balance a complex process where many people and departments are involved. When he is instructing students interested in the same vocational path that he had, it is always rewarding and at the same time it pushes him to find ways to help them follow their own path while keeping their spirits high. As an artist, there is no specific plan or agenda, it is a continuous work in progress where he is the captain, the crew, and the passenger of the boat. All of them have their challenges and moments of exhaustion or tension can show anytime, but they are highly rewarding at the same time.
In the field of design and art, Luis’ interests remained quite wide until now, and he had been influenced by photographers, visual artists, creatives, and designers. Some contemporary photographers that he likes and follows their work would be Edward Dimsdale and Jack Davison. As for graphic visual art, Luis would pick the work of Javier Jaen wo has that spark necessary to communicate with just images in a simple, bold and clear way while adding some humor to it.
During weekends, Luis volunteers for one hour as a tutor for a special needs kid and he dedicates the rest of the time to his art practice in the studio. When it comes to leisure time, he does some bicycle rides around the coast, watches movies, reads some books or just cooks.
Recently, Luis had two artworks on display in the collective exhibition Vintage Pop at the White Space Art Asia Gallery which is in the artistic, charming, and bubbling neighborhood of Tiong Bahru in Singapore. The main theme of the exhibition is to have a refreshed look at pop art by contemporary artists while including some surprising and interactive elements.
As a final note Luis is working on his own art gallery space to curate art and experiential events mixing different disciplines and themes from art to science, music, gastronomy, design, and technology. Follow his work on his site LUIS FABRA (lpfabra.com).
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