Karen Welman: Making design simple

Karen Welman is the creative officer and founding partner of Pearlfisher, a leading independent brand design agency based in London and New York. The agency has been going for 23 years, but it hasn't always been smooth sailing.

“It [Pearlfisher] started in a recessionary year out of the ashes and we didn’t expect to make something.”

Now a phoenix in the design industry, Pearlfisher gives design-oriented solutions to a wide breath of popular brands such as Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream to Pfizer’s Viagra and Roca Patron tequila.

In this interview Welman talks about Pearlfisher's interactive winter art installation, “JUMP IN!”, where the London studio was filled with 80 000 white balls and the employees were encouraged to jump in and have fun. 

I’ve never seen the team play so experimentally; they became like children again and it was fantastic. The learning out of that experience was that adults are allowed to play and express their creativity.

But Pearlfisher isn’t just about ball pits and fun: they’ve also weighed in on solving African dilemmas through design. Pearlfisher collaborated with the Kenyan-based Haller Foundation to create the an infographics app.

The Haller Farmers Web App presents vital information about farming to Kenyan farmers in rural regions through helpful pictures. 

“It allows people to live on and be self-sustained communities.”

A Design Indaba Conference alumni from 2006, Karen Welman divulges the secret to Pearlfisher’s success.

“The hardest part of design is simplification,” says Welman. “I think that’s what Pearlfisher does very well, it does it through understanding futures, innovations and what cultural shifts are happening.”