From coffee machines to military boats – Designers from Belgrade-based studio Oneessentials draw designs for European brands

Young designers, Stevan Todorovic and Milos Ilic, founders of Oneessentials studio, proved that domestic artists’ talent can conquer the European market. The result of a long-term mutual work of these two authors was presented at their first individual White Planet exhibition which Milos Sobajic, a painter, opened April 2 at the Progres gallery in Belgrade.

The exhibition comprises two parts- design which represents commercial aspect and art works which reflect modern art. The objective of the exhibition is to show their work and to start exhibibtion which will continue abroad for cooperation with foreign clients.

- The White Planet concept does not represent a kind of a sky objects, but the moment of inspiration whan an artist is in his own world and creates. The state is illustrated on photos and a movie which were presented in the artistic part of the exhibition at the lower gallery level. Progres where visual identity of our studio was presented- Stevan Todorovic says in his interview for eKapija and adds that the work on the movie gathered a group of creative people- Spring Onion studio for animation, studio for photography of Zlatko Kostic Three dots , studio Zepter , while Aleksandar Randjelovic did the music.

The second segment of the exhibition, industrial design, was presented at the second floor of Progres. These are items which are produced or are under production process for domestic and foreign producers.

(Stevan Todorovic and Milos Ilic)

- The entire exhibition is what our studio can offer to other companies – from design to final product as well as visual identity – Todorovic explains and adds that it is the mission of Oneessentials , which is described in the name, to offer everything that is essential for a visual identity.

Stevan Todorovic and Miloš Ilic acquired their first professional experience in the office of the German company, Teams Design in Belgrade. Thus, they had an opportunity to project engineering products for big German companies.

From boat to ski path

Wanting to start their own business where they will provide the entire visual identity, they set up a Oneessentials studio two years ago. This is at the moment the first and the only studio in Serbia which deals with exclusively industrial design and their first project was a pioneer try for our region.

- Our first client was Advanced Boat for which we designed a rubber boat, six and a half meters long. This is the first time that everything, from original design to production, was done in Serbia.

Advanced Boat has daughter companies, Adverski and Advertout for which Todorovic i Ilic designed artificial ski path for skiing, snowboarding and tubing which can be used everywhere even in inaccessible areas without snow during the entire year.

- We won Serbian Chamber of Commerce award for that project and the industrial design. Apart from having this ski path in Serbia, export to Russia was agreed as well – Todorovic says.

Plastic items design

After Advanced Boat , there were clients which have become partners today. Although in Serbia we did not get used to designing items from plastic, Oneessentials resisted that stereotype projecting for Drina plastika .

- These are rare good examples we have. Serial production is the most important for industrial design. This field originated from serial production which today culminated when everything is designd, from a car to a mobile phone – a collocutor of our portal thinks.

Worts Teams , for whose brands Lorme , Bauer , they designed household appliances and wood program are among the constant clients of Oneessentials .

Our collocutor stresses out cooperation with Polimark design team for whose design they did 3D projecting.

- It is interesting that for Belgrade-based company, Smart Phone we did design for mobile phones and then design for Fashion TV phone –Todorovic points out.

Submarine, yacht, headphones…

Apart from these works, designers from Oneessentials studio have conceptual works such as a submarine, a yacht, headphones-glasses, watches, interesting pieces of furniture. They have not been implemented but they are waiting for a client’s offer which will turn their creativity and idea into reality.

The White Planet exhibition was opened until April 13. On the last day of the exhibition, a web site where Oneessentials will present their work will be released.

Irina Milosevic