Why two former Nike creatives set up Free Practice in Málaga, Spain — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Free Practice makes global brand campaigns and experiences for a client list including Nike and The North Face. Co-founders Daniel Whiteneck and Adrián Mora met whilst working together in Nike’s in-house Brand Creative team in the Netherlands. Once they had decided to start a studio of their own, COVID showed them that they could likely run it from anywhere with an airport nearby, a compatible time zone and working wifi. They chose Málaga, Mora’s home city. In this conversation, they talk to us about what changed when Nike became a client, a one-night drift circuit outside Belgrade for the Air Max Dn8 and why taste can make or break a good idea.

TBI Hi Daniel and Adrián! How’s autumn in Málaga treating you?

DW Hi! So far it’s great! It gets a little bit ‘warm’ in the summertime here, but fall, spring and most of winter are basically 18° - 22° and sunny.

AM Still some beach time over the weekend…

TBI What made the two of you decide to start a studio together?

DW Ultimately, I think we were both looking for a new challenge that would allow us to grow creatively and also from a creative leadership perspective. We were both working together at the in-house Nike Brand Creative team in the Netherlands, which was actually a great job with some great people, but we were both thinking about what would be next and whether or not we wanted to stay in the Netherlands. We also enjoyed working together and realised that we have a good combination of skill sets and a similar taste level and design sensibility.

AM I am more from a graphic design background, and Daniel comes from an architectural background, but we both ended up doing art direction. I guess it felt like it was time to do something new, and really nothing else seemed all that interesting, aside from forming our own creative practice. We just wanted to do the actual work and develop our vision and taste.

TBI How did you land on the name Free Practice?

DW After lots of practice haha. ‘Free’ is anti-disciplinary. We don’t want to be thought of as a design studio that can’t do art direction or a creative agency that has horrible graphic design or an art direction studio that has no strategy. We want to be free to do it all and do it properly so it all works together. ‘Practice’ is how we’re organised – a small core team that brings in the right people for each project, rather than a traditional agency structure. Together, it’s a studio that’s free to work across disciplines and built to flex around the work.

TBI Why did you end up in Málaga as the studio’s base?

DW After we made the decision to form our own company, we started thinking about where it would be. COVID was really the catalyst to open our eyes to the fact that we could likely operate from anywhere in the world we wanted, as long as there was an airport nearby, the time zone was compatible, and the wifi worked. Even when mostly everyone is in the same room, you still end up doing business on a call practically 100% of the time, so why not go somewhere with a high-quality life and a beach at the front door? The bonus was that Adrián is from here, so he has family close by, and my family was up for the adventure since we're already quite far from where I grew up in the USA.

AM There was some sort of urge also to find a new angle to the established parameters in the industry where your day-to-day work with global brands needs to be in one of the major cities, and we think the world has changed so much that we could challenge this and offer something completely different. Other studios and some directors and photographers that we know were already doing it, so… why not?

TBI Has being based there had any direct impact on your approach to work and business?

DW Definitely. Being in an up-and-coming, mid-sized city removes a lot of the friction of somewhere like London. Our office is a proper space in the city centre, and more accessible than having the same space in Northern Europe. We’re already planning to expand it… so more to come.

AM Also, for us is to have a fresher POV on certain aspects of how you develop creative thinking. We are constantly travelling to all the major cities, and we are obviously always online, but there is something really refreshing about coming back to a smaller town like Málaga. We strongly believe that you can do relevant global work from a less expected scenario.

TBI Free Practice calls itself an anti-disciplinary studio. What does that mean day-to-day?

DW The brief usually tells us what we’re making. A campaign, an identity, a physical experience or something completely different. What it doesn’t dictate is how we think about it. We don’t have a home discipline, but we do have a specific taste and always start the same way – find the insight, develop a strategic base, build the creative concept, then design the system. That grounds every project in an idea, not just in what looks good. Hopefully people feel that connection to the work, even if only subconsciously. And it usually ends up looking good too, in our opinion.

AM For me, it is also about taste. Somehow, in the industry and in a creative degree (university), no one talks or teaches you about taste; it is almost like a taboo, because it is supposed to be ‘subjective,’ and in reality, taste is what can make or break a good idea. For instance, when someone says “oh this director is very expensive…”, my question is “Are you sure?... How much does good taste cost? How do you value this?”

Taste is what can make or break a good idea.

TBI You both spent years at Nike. What changed when Nike became a client?

DW Having worked in-house, we understand the pressures our clients are under: timelines, approvals, brand guardianship and having to work in a hundred markets at once. Being independent lets us take creative risks that are harder to take from the inside. We have the freedom to play and present wild card ideas from a different vantage point. That combination is where we can push the ideas further to make sure that the outcome is contemporary and crafted.

TBI If you could show one project to explain Free Practice, which would it be?

DW Infinite Drift, for the launch of Nike’s Air Max DN8. We went into Belgrade’s underground drifting scene and built a one-night-only figure-eight drift circuit outside the city. Eight local drivers were each paired with an international artist, and together they turned the driver’s character into a custom livery: Drift Demon, Diamond Diva, Mechanical Butterfly, etc. Henrik Alm filmed it with infrared drones, CCTV and spring-mounted cameras, and Gabriela Alatorre shot stills that made the chaos look like a painting. It’s a motorsport event, an art project, a film and a design system all at once – basically the right mix of madness for us.

AM We love working in that intersection of contemporary culture where fashion, sports, design and even architecture can coexist.

TBI Walk us through your work on Nike's PSG home kit launch campaign. How did it come together?

DW We started by working with local researchers to better understand the club, the fans and city after they won the previous year’s Champions League. Basically, they were a bunch of young players who came together after all the big stars left and beat the world. They were hungry and full of confident energy, with an undeniable aura. We tried to translate that aura into the visuals, with photographer Matthias Leidinger, by finding the unstaged moments where a person’s aura can be felt, but without doing the traditional perfect kick shots.

AM Our Creative Director, Jamie McIntyre, had this sick idea to make the whole AV in reverse… like the future was already written. We also love how director Marius Gonzalez created the feeling of the unwavering confidence the players and fans have – they knew they were going to win all along. It helps that in the end they did end up winning the Champions League again a little bit after the campaign was released.

TBI Why did you start making your own graphic tees?

DW For fun. We always had the thought that as a studio we need to always have a few non-client, self-initiated projects going to give the team the opportunity to expand their creative skills. It’s actually much harder than we ever thought it would be haha. On the one hand, we’re always very busy, so it’s hard to make the time, and on the other hand we are the hardest and most challenging client in existence in that we are indecisive and constantly rebriefing.

AM There are more of these projects in the pipeline, but as you can imagine, we are always moving the deadline. But more to come!

TBI Where would you like Free Practice to be in five years’ time?

DW Great question. We have been steadily building our team in Málaga the past year and want to continue in that direction. It’s great to feel like we are building a creative culture as much as we are building a creative business. I think we’ll always be a partially remote team that works with freelancers, but we believe that everybody should enjoy coming to work every day to create interesting work together, so for us, we’re slowly building that culture in Málaga, and hopefully it’s something that can keep growing.

AM We have so many ideas to work on… we just need more time!