Our pioneer in Barcelona, Spain: Iris de Bruin

The post-pandemic push to make real-life changes has been felt in different ways by us all. For Art Director and Creative Designer, of it meant honoring a wish made to herself 10 years prior, leaving a successful career in Amsterdam's advertising industry , and departing from a 6-year-long creative partnership to move her studio to Spain. As part of our Pioneer series we catch up with Iris in Barcelona, to talk about positivity, life, and lunch breaks.

Why are you in Barcelona? What drove you?

10 years ago I was dreaming of one day living abroad. Somewhere sunny with great food, optimistic people, and an international mindset to match mine. Barcelona was one of the cities that I could see myself living in, but as time went by my focus shifted to building my creative career in Amsterdam and I forgot about it. Until the second year of the corona pandemic.

Up until that point, I had been working as one half of a creative team with Joëlle van der Geest. In those 6 years, we worked at NR6, Etcetera (now DDB Unlimited), and J. Walter Thompson / Wunderman Thompson. The hardest part was saying goodbye to my trusted teammate to go our separate ways. She’s still my biggest supporter and I’m forever grateful for our creative years together.

I moved to Barcelona at the end of May in 2022, together with my younger sister. For the first three months I continued my role as Lead Creative at Glasnost fully remote, but ultimately decided I wanted to go back to my roots: art direction and design.

What makes you feel at home?

I feel at home by consciously taking the time to explore and wander around. Walking, cycling or even skating through a city are my favorite activities. Discovering cozy cafés, art shops and beautiful streets with old colorful houses. I connect with people through shared passions: I find new communities by joining rollerskate meet-ups and boulder gyms. And less inspiring but very true: my cats help a lot. I have two clingy ladies that I brought with me to Barcelona. They made me feel at home instantly in those first weeks.

What stands out the most there (professionally)?

What stands out the most for me, is the work-life balance. In Amsterdam, it felt like work filled up most of my week and life. Here it feels less important in the grand scheme of things. Evenings seem to last longer. Not only because people go to bed later, but because they're filled with passions; exercise, food, people, drinks, walking… I’m watching less Netflix and leaving the house more than ever. The feeling of running ‘out of time' for the day at 20:30 PM has completely vanished.

I also want to highlight the one-hour lunch break in Spain, compared to the usual thirty minutes in The Netherlands. Thirty minutes of which we only take ten to fifteen for our lunch on average or, even worse, eat behind our desks. If you compare our lunch with those in other countries, we have the shortest lunch break and it’s impacting our health, happiness at work, creativity, and resilience.

What is your Random Pic(k) Of The Week?

I absolutely love the architecture in Barcelona, it’s my daily visual porn. Gaudí might be the most famous local architect, but my Random Pick Of The Week is Lluís Domènech i Montaner. He’s a Spanish architect responsible for many beautiful buildings in the city, such as the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Recinto Modernista de Sant Pau – the world's largest Art Nouveau complex and the most stunning hospital I’ve ever seen. Looking at Modernist and Art Nouveau architecture feels like a cleanse of my (insanely high) digital screen time.

Who’s the most outstanding creative over there?

I would like to shine a light on Rosalía. She’s from Barcelona and people celebrate her as a local hero. Kids are singing her songs in the streets, her face is on a mural in my neighborhood. She has been described as an "untypical pop star" due to her genre-bending musical style, known for her flamenco-inspired pop music. Her album ‘El Mal Querer’ was ranked at number 10 of the 20 best concept albums of all time by Rolling Stone. Her latest album ‘Motomami’ won Album of the Year 2022 at the Latin Grammys. The music video for ‘Saoko’ won Best Editing at the MTV VMA’s – I would recommend every art director to go watch the video. To me, Rosalía is the most outstanding creative in Spain and her visual style continues to inspire me.

What ‘souvenir’ would you bring home?

I would bring home enthusiasm, especially to the workplace. Cheering each other on, celebrating our creativity, ideas and designs with enthusiasm and joy. In my experience, working at a creative agency can be quite draining. Sometimes we tend to take things a little too seriously, which can dim our passion.

I would also try to hold onto my Spanish language grammar and vocabulary, the work-life balance, and that one(-and-a-half)-hour-long lunch breaks.