Porto Rocha, (re)iterating and the almost lost art of rigor

Leo Porto and Felipe Rocha's talk at the Kikk Festival in Namur, Belgium, has got me thinking lately about this almost lost art of rigor and decanted thinking. It also made me think of Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai (2003).

Edwark Zwick's 2003 film is a loose adaptation of a traditionalist samurai uprising in Satsuma, Japan, in 1877. The incursion becomes caricatured when the story focuses on Nathan Algren, an American veteran played by Tom Cruise hired as a mercenary-ish to train troops in combat in a last-ditch attempt to quell the rebellion.

The interesting thing about this film is not the narrative. Rather, it's the way in which the samurai rhythm is described. An art of living in which rigor is a habit, and reworking a hundred times is a valued normality.

After hearing Leo Porto and Felipe Rocha, co-founders of New York agency Porto Rocha, it became clear to me that both men are in fact modern-day samurai. 

I say this because, at a time when everything seems to be speeding up and deadlines are getting shorter and shorter, they made me see once again the virtue of slow, progressive and rigorous creativity.

Like samurai art, design and strategy are disciplines that should never be rushed, and where habit confers a distinct advantage. Daily reflection and numerous iterations serve the product well. They allow us to fine-tune, to think about different possible uses, to test, to counter-propose, to reinforce. But you still have to be open to it.

In their conference, the guys from Porto Rocha demonstrated the underestimated power of rigor. Whether it's their 217 iterations for the Nike Be True campaign (I'm hardly exaggerating) or all the thought behind their branding proposal for PAC NYC, you can see that everything is thought out, considered. We take the time to project ourselves into various brand applications. We design according to the customer or user experience, but also according to the meaning we wish to communicate through the brand.

This art of rigor is learned the hard way. In fact, it's much more than a skill or a mindset that can be activated when needed. 

At Porto Rocha, it has become a veritable credo that serves these brands marvelously, allowing the agency to (re)iterate until perfect mastery is achieved. The results are simply breathtaking in their beauty, quality and meaning, in stark contrast to the rigor of the caricature of The Last Samurai.