Francesco Gisonni

How did Tall Boy Water start for you and Phil?

We were the people who brought water when the rest of the room brought something else. Phil cared about the ritual of opening a can. I cared about whether that can could hold a table before anyone tasted what was in it. We wanted an object that could sit there and be understood, without a speech beside it.

Toronto made that practical. The people who would hold the can were people we would see again, in ordinary light. We did not start with a brand world and then go looking for a liquid to put inside it. The liquid was the reason. The can had to be good enough that the reason survived the photograph.

What does the creative director job look like on an ordinary day?

It is a can, a line of type, a photograph, and a page. The question is whether they still belong together once you separate them. I will rewrite a sentence because the photograph beside it is quieter than the sentence. I will reshoot because the type is more confident than the picture.

At this size the job is also production. A crop. A colour that still reads after the file has been compressed. The order of a page for someone on a phone, on a street, with one hand free. I am suspicious of any choice I cannot explain to Phil in one sentence. Until I can, it is a preference I have not examined.

How do the two of you split a decision?

Phil holds the product, and the reason someone would pick it up a second time. I hold the way it looks and the way it speaks. There is no wall between those jobs. A design that makes the water harder to understand loses. A product decision that makes the can look like every other can in the fridge loses.

We argue in front of the object. Put the new thing next to the last thing we shipped and ask which one we would still stand behind. The one that needs a paragraph of defence is usually the wrong one. The useful disagreement is specific. This word. This crop. This much empty space. Vague disagreement is just two people being tired.

What does the can have to do before you call it finished?

The can is the brand. People meet it in a hand, in a photograph, and on a shelf we do not control. It has to read at arm’s length and at the size of a thumbnail. The name has to be the loudest thing on it. Everything else is there to make the name feel inevitable.

I care about the silhouette before I care about a pattern. A can is a small tower. If the type fights the tower, the tower wins and the type looks nervous. We kept the face calm. A calm face is harder than a busy one, because there is nowhere to hide a weak word.

If the can only makes sense on our own site, it will fail the moment it leaves the site. That is the standard I keep coming back to. Our photography can be kind. A shop counter will not be. The can has to survive the unkind version.

What have you refused to print?

The paragraph that tries to turn water into a lifestyle. People know what water is. They do not need a myth before they open it. We have also refused decoration that does not come from the name, the place, or the object. A pattern can be beautiful and still be a costume you could hand to any other drink.

The stricter refusal is the one that costs time. Specific does not mean loud. It means you could cover the name and still have a decent chance of knowing who made it. We would rather ship later than ship something that only works because the logo is in the corner.

How did you approach the Shopify store?

We treated the store as a room, not as a pile of features. The first job was a single product, understood. What it is. How it arrives. What the person is actually buying. Tools came after that was clear. I would rather a plain page that loads and tells the truth than a page that performs.

Shopify let us change the room without rebuilding the building. The work that mattered was unglamorous. Photographs at an honest size. Type you can read on a phone without pinching. A product page that does not ask someone to assemble the offer themselves. We added a tool when a job kept repeating. We took it off when the page got noisier than the can.

How do you think about selling direct and selling through shops?

Direct is a conversation. Someone finds us, stays long enough to read, and decides. A shop is a room we do not design. The can has to speak while we are somewhere else, next to other drinks, under different light, to a person who has never heard the story.

Those are not two brands. The site can say a little more, because the person chose to stay. The can cannot depend on that patience. When the two disagree, the can wins, because more people will see the can than will ever read the page. Selling through shops is the test, not a compromise we make after the real work. If the object only works in our own photography, it is not ready to leave.

Water is heavy to ship. How does that change the offer?

You learn it the first time you carry a case down a flight of stairs. The idea of a brand ends at the door, and the weight is what is left. We plan for that the way we plan for type, as a constraint that should make the offer simpler. Fewer ways to buy, and clearer ones. A case that protects the cans and does not dress up as something it is not.

The page has to say how it leaves, and what the person should expect, before they pay. I am not interested in shipping as a trick, or in hiding the plain fact that a case of water is a case of water. Hand someone an object you are willing to watch them carry.

What do gatherings in Toronto do that the site cannot?

A gathering is the only time the can, the person, and the room are in one frame. An evening will show you what a month of staring at your own site will not. Someone holds it up to the light. Someone asks a blunt question you cannot edit. Someone photographs it badly, which is useful, because that is how most photographs of it are going to look.

Toronto is small enough that you see people again. A feed will let you perform once and disappear. A room will not. We would rather be there than buy our way into someone’s afternoon. These gatherings are how the brand stays answerable to the people who actually drink it.

What would you tell an operator who is about to launch a physical product?

Decide what you will not do before you decide what you will post. A physical product has weight, a cost, and a face. Those three will embarrass a brand that was designed as a grid of pictures. Start with the object in a real room. Show it to someone who does not love you yet. If you have to explain the joke, take the joke off the object.

Then build the store for a person who is tired. One product story. One clear way to buy. Photographs that match the thing that will actually arrive, including the dull parts. The operators I trust can point at the object and tell you what they refused. Everything after that is just the work of getting it into hands.