Martina Mut

Introduction

Matthew Munger: Hey Martina, thank you for joining me.

Martina Mut: Hi Matthew. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Matthew Munger: Yeah, my pleasure. Let's have you start off by telling a bit about yourself and who you are.

Martina Mut: My name is Martina. I’m a brand designer and I run 473, it's a brand and web design agency, with my partner Juan, who is also my husband. We do brand design projects and what we call, like, the visual universe of brands. We like to bring brands to life, to all the touchpoints of the brand. And that includes, most of the time, the website. 

And when we started working, we did mostly branding projects. And then a few years ago we stumbled up with Webflow and we were really excited to find a tool that could work for us and could give us more control and freedom of what we wanted to do with that visual universe of the brand, in terms of design. So we can expand that universe into a very cool website and functional website, and a more polished and better online presence. Now we do branding and web projects for most of our clients. We also collaborate with other professionals like developers or Webflow agencies, and we do the design of the website the others do like the development part of the project.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Matthew Munger: Where are you located and what is it like living there?

Martina Mut: We live, now, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in South America. Most of our clients are located in the US and in Europe. We have a very nice time difference with the east coast of the United States and with Europe. So it kind of works for us to live here.

We live in a very residential place outside the city of Buenos Aires. We have a lot of space. We have a lot of air, trees, green grass, a lot of animals around. We have birds, so maybe you will hear some of the birds,

We are close to the city, and we can go there anytime we want. I love the food scene in Buenos Aires. So it's something that we really enjoy doing– going out to eat. The food, the coffee, the ice cream, it's absolutely amazing in Buenos Aires. And we really enjoy that. And it's growing so much. The other day we were in Palermo, where everything happens, and we saw like, 10 new restaurants that were open in the last six months. So it's crazy and it's great and something that we really enjoy doing. So we love living here.

It is, actually, very calm. It has a lot of silence. We have a lot of houses here. It's a very residential neighborhood, so less commercial buildings and stuff. We have lakes, we have rabbits, we have owls, we have beavers. And I really like being in touch with nature, in a way. Our kids can ride bikes and play football in the streets, it’s really nice.

And I can see the sky all day, which is something that I love. We have a huge window in our studio, in our home, and it's something that really calms me and peaces me whenever I'm stressed. I love having this kind of light, and to be able to see the sky every day long. But it's mostly a quiet scenery here. A lot of people are working from home, but it’s very silent.

Workspace

Matthew Munger: So what does your actual workspace there look like?

Martina Mut: We have a very nice office. We have a huge window. We can see the sky day long. We have a great light. We have, always, maté while we are working. We are from Argentina, so we drink maté. I like to write and draw things down, so I always have papers and pencils in my desk. Every museum that I visited, I buy a pencil– I have a very big collection that I adore, and I use it all day to draw, to write. Kind of gets me focused.

Juan is a musician, so we have guitars, we have a bass, we have even drums in the office as well. We have very nice chairs, like Eames chairs that we bought recently that we love.

I always have something to eat because I like food. And yeah, we are building the office step-by-step. But we really like our office. We have these wood tables that we love. We try to be as comfortable as we can. We spend a lot of time here, so we are trying to build a place that gives us less stress and more joy.

Matthew Munger: Do you also listen to anything like music while you work?

Martina Mut: Juan is in charge of music. He loves music, so he's always trying to bring new stuff to the office when we are working. I love Radiohead, and it has been something that I've been listening to since I started school. So it's a constant, you know. Every now and then a Radiohead record, it's on. It's a great album. Yeah, but he's in charge of music, so most of the times I don't know what I'm listening to, but it's always something new.

Hobbies

Matthew Munger: Other than playing music, is there any other kind of hobbies or interests that you have?

Martina Mut: Yeah, we go for a walk every morning, or at least we try. We use that time to discuss work stuff. We are much more creative when we are walking in movement. So it's kind of an hour that we take every morning to discuss what we have to do that day, or anything that we are planning, or anything in our minds.

It's kind of therapeutic being outside and getting to discuss work stuff. I have many hobbies, actually. I love cooking, so I try to cook as much as I can. It's something that I spend a lot of time on the weekends– cooking for my kids, for the week, for the family.

This year I joined a football team, so I play football now. It's soccer in the US, but here it's football. So it was really great. And I joined the team. I met a lot of friends. 

I also love to knit and crocheting, so it's something that really relaxes me. I kind of get stressed very easily, so I always have some things that help me relax. I always have, like, a thread and needles in my nightstand, and at night I get to knit a little bit. So yeah, I do multiple things.

Surprise

Matthew Munger: What do you think is something that would surprise people to learn about you?

Martina Mut: I don't think anyone knows this, but I'm a pastry chef, actually.

Matthew Munger: Wow.

Martina Mut: I love cooking. So a few years ago I decided, “Hey, let's go full on this” and started cooking more professionally. But not a professional. So I did a year of pastry school, I dunno, a while ago.

It was beautiful actually. It was very fun. I met a lot of people and I learned a lot, and it was a completely different thing that I did every day for work. Sometimes what we do, it's kind of abstract and it was very nice to do something with my hands and get a tangible result,

Role

Matthew Munger: So can you describe your role and kind of what you do on a daily basis?

Martina Mut: Yeah, my main role in the agency is as Creative Director, but I'm also co-founder, so I wear many hats, of course. But I do lead generation, I do networking, I do business strategy, I do paperwork, legal stuff. I talk to the accountants. I do multiple things. But my main focus is to remain as Creative Director and keep as close as I can be to the creative and design process. I enjoy being on Figma rather than being on spreadsheets, of course, and I will always try to remain in that role. 

But as founder of a small business, you are constantly doing multiple things. So this year one of my goals was to be more active in the community and try to make more networking and meet new people. And that's something that I think I'm accomplishing. I've been talking to a lot of people this year. I'm an introverted person, so it's kind of getting out of my comfort zone. But it has been great, actually. We did some things for the community with great people, so I'm really happy I did that. I will say that's kind of part of my job as well. But it's a very cool part of my job. I got to make new friends, so can’t complain.

Motivation

Matthew Munger: What would you say motivates you to keep doing what you're doing?

Martina Mut: When I started working in design, I worked in a big branding agency here in Buenos Aires. They had big clients: banks, trains, malls, all very big projects. And it was very cool to see those projects come to light after years of working on that. But I always had side projects, like very small side projects I worked on. And one day I discovered that I was enjoying those projects more than I was enjoying my job at the big agency. 

And Juan had kind of a similar experience. He worked in very big agencies as well, and we always had these side projects together that we worked on. They were small projects for clients that– they had, like, this startup vibe: something they were creating, something that really was important for them, and something that they really cared about.

So one day we said like, “Okay, let's start working with these kinds of projects. Let’s make a real impact on these people, on this project that they are building, and let's help them create something great, something that they care about. We decided to quit our jobs and we decided to start working on these kinds of projects. We wanted to be less corporate, more personal, and we found out with the years that we really wanna work with projects that excites us.

So finding the people to work with and finding the projects that I really enjoy, something that motivates me every day. Learning to say no to the stuff that I don't believe in, to the people that come with red flags. And learning to say no, and attracting the type of projects and people that we wanna work with.

Advice

Matthew Munger: Do you have any advice for attracting the projects or the types of clients that you want to work with, now that you've kind of identified what that looks like? 

Martina Mut: The first advice that I have is share your work, but share the work that you are proud of and share the work that you wanna show. The one thing that I've learned is, like, when we started our agency, we were reading the brief, reading the client's meeting, and trying to understand what the client wanted instead of trying to understand what was our point of view and what we thought about that brand. We were just trying to get things approved. So we ended up presenting something we were not proud of, but the client approved. 

And one day we discovered that this was not working for us and we should be doing stuff that we are really proud of and we really wanna show. And that ended up attracting the type of work that was similar to that projects that we were showing. And yeah, try to trust yourself and trust your point of view. It's very valuable. 

In this context where we have a lot of technology– we have AI, we have stuff. As a brand, our point of view is kind of the most valuable and strategic advantage our agency can have. So bring that to the table. Embrace your point of view and have an opinion, and stand by your values. Don't try to chase trends. Just have a point of view and share it with the world. And that will be something that people will value. Some people won't, and that's okay. You just need to be valuable for the people that you need to.

Resources

Matthew Munger: Yeah, that's really great advice. What is a resource that you'd like more people to know about? 

Martina Mut: A few months ago I started on TikTok. It's kind of weird but I downloaded TikTok. I have never used it before, I felt so old. But I kind of learned a lot, surprisingly, in TikTok. A lot of resources and tools, a lot of AI prompts.

I kind of started following a lot of new designers and I met some of the designers that I was following on TikTok, that I’d met them on Twitter. So yeah, if the algorithm understands you, TikTok is a great place for resources. But for me it's kind of been a place to find a lot of inspiration, shockingly.

Inspiration

Matthew Munger: Then, definitely, more people should know about it. Who in the Webflow community inspires you?

Martina Mut: There's a lot of people that inspire me in the community, but I would love to make a special mention to all the women in the community. There's a lot of girls doing amazing stuff. Claudia in the Floxies team, Melissa, Mirela, Grace, Penny, all of them are amazing people and they are very generous and very welcoming to the community.

I also love the work of Mason and all the Edgar Allan team. Florencia, Jack– All great people, very kind people, very generous, so talented. I love what they're doing. 

I also love what Serggio is doing– Serggio Montilva– he's doing amazing stuff. He's a designer and web developer. I love what Matías is doing with interactions– Matías Pitters.

I have always followed Timothy Ricks. I love his YouTube channel. I think everyone here mentions him. The Webflow community has been a huge source of inspiration for me. I've met so many people. The guys from Friends Agency are doing amazing work and I love what they're doing, and they're also very good people and nice persons. 

But in all my years in working in design, I have never found a community as powerful as the Webflow Community. The people are just amazing and everyone is so welcoming and so kind, always there helping for others. And yeah, I met a lot of friends, so I'm really happy to be a part of the community.

Connect

Matthew Munger: All right Martina, how can others in the community reach out and connect with you?

Martina Mut: I'm very active on Twitter. I also use Instagram, but for personal stuff. But yeah, Twitter is my main point of contact.