From visuals showcasing iconic New York landmarks seemingly teleported to bizarre remote landscapes to distorted urban moments capturing lone figures in a temporal bubble, the creative oeuvre of Anton Repponen dapples with the mundane but plunges it into the unfamiliar, toeing surreality. A Brooklyn-based interaction designer who co-leads the design studio Anton & Irene—with a career spanning over two decades—he engages with building products, digital experiences and user-centric solutions. With clients ranging from cultural institutions such as the M+ Museum Hong Kong and The Met, New York, to technological giants like Spotify, Netflix and Google, Repponen’s approach to building his multidisciplinary practice draws from his architectural education and an ever-exploring designer’s lens; he believes “if you can design a spoon, you can design an entire city”.

The Tallinn-raised designer and educator speaks to STIR, reflecting on his journey and discussing his creative impulses. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Zohra Khan: What was your childhood like, raised by parents who are pattern makers?

Anton Repponen: When I was growing up, our entire apartment was filled with paper patterns, rolls of fabric, boxes of buttons and zippers, sewing machines and overlocks tucked into corners and scissors everywhere. It had a huge influence on me. By the age of six, I already knew how to use a sewing machine and was cutting textiles on my own.

I remember one time, while my parents were at work, I decided to make myself a cool pirate vest. I found a piece of leather they had and cut the shapes I needed—right out of the middle—and stitched it all together on the sewing machine. One of the key skills of a pattern maker is figuring out how to lay out all the pattern pieces efficiently on the fabric to minimise waste. Cutting right through the centre is exactly what is not to [be] done. When my parents got home, they nearly ‘killed’ me. Not only had I ruined that piece of leather, but it turned out to be a very expensive one they’d been saving for a special project. But the vest did look very cool!

Zohra: What were some of your earliest memories that perhaps shaped your affinity for design?

Anton: My earliest memories that shaped my affinity for design weren’t about beautiful things. I wasn’t surrounded by well-designed objects or aesthetics. None of our furniture was ‘design-y’—we lived in a grey panel house, one of thousands that looked the same. There was no inspiring branding or typography around me.

Being born in the ‘80s and growing up in the ‘90s, I didn’t have gadgets or the internet, so I spent most of my time making things by hand and experimenting with whatever tools were around. I still don’t know how I didn’t cut my fingers off during all those years. But in a way, my job today as a designer isn’t that far removed from what my parents did. I gather requirements, break things down into components and figure out how to assemble them so that—once ‘stitched’—they form a cohesive experience people can actually use.

Zohra: Despite getting a formal education in architecture, why did you never pursue a career in one?

Anton: I think some context is important here. When I finished school in the early 2000s, interaction design barely existed as a discipline, especially in Estonia, where I grew up. There were no programmes to study it, so it wasn’t like I was choosing between interaction design and architecture. I knew what architects did and I thought that’s the kind of work I wanted to do.

At the same time, I got my first computer and a dial-up internet connection and discovered an entirely new world. I wasn’t interested in computer games; instead, Photoshop looked like magic to me, like something from another planet. Then there was HTML and websites, the idea that you could build something and anyone in the world could access it just by clicking a link. That was mind-blowing. I spent all my free time designing completely random things and learning whatever tools I could find. No YouTube, no tutorials, just trial and error.

In my second year of studying architecture, we were required to do an internship at an architectural firm. It happened that both of my parents lived and worked as pattern makers in India at the time and they knew an architect in New Delhi who was kind enough to take me as an intern. I went to India to spend time with my family and complete my first internship. Honestly, I wasn’t a great intern—I couldn’t really do the things they asked me to and most of my work had to be redone by someone else.

But there was one thing I was good at. Every time the firm submitted a project, the presentations were dry – just CAD drawings. You needed an architect’s imagination to visualise what the building would look like. So I started taking those CAD files, rendering the buildings, adding clouds and people in Photoshop, building physical models and photographing them, transforming the technical drawings into images that anyone could understand and get excited about. Once the architects saw that, it became the only thing I was doing until the end of the internship. To me, that was a signal.

There’s no international 'design police', you can design whatever you want. – Anton Repponen

Zohra: When did interaction design become a real, tangible profession for you?

Anton: Around 2005, my portfolio—filled with random digital projects, logos and illustrations—somehow caught the attention of a well-known digital agency at the time called Fantasy Interactive. They were based in Stockholm and had just opened an office in New York to work with large American clients. They convinced me to join them as a junior designer and in the summer of 2006, with just a backpack, I moved to Stockholm.

My plan was to spend the summer at this agency, learn a few things and eventually return home. But on my very first day, I walked into a studio filled with real teams—designers, developers, producers—working on websites for clients such as MTV, Ford, Time Warner and Porsche. There were actual meetings, requirements, deadlines and budget constraints. That was a holy shit moment for me. I was 22, inexperienced, not nearly as skilled as the other designers there and I realised: this is what I want to do. I barely slept those first few months, doing everything I could to make sure my work was at least up to the level expected of me. That was the moment it clicked: interaction design is a real profession.

Zohra: Your practice combines architecture, photography, furniture, products and graphic design. Do the overlaps hinder or liberate the design process?

Anton: To me, that’s a kind of liberation. We live in a world of hyper-specialisation, where design roles are increasingly fragmented; you’re expected to only do one thing. You must be a designer who only makes apps, only for banks, only in red. That kind of thinking feels bizarre to me.

I’ve always been drawn to the philosophy of many Italian designers whose approach was “from spoon to city”—the idea that if you can design a spoon, you can design an entire city. Whether or not that holds true in practice is up for debate, but to me it was always a signal: you’re allowed to try.

There’s no international ‘design police’, you can design whatever you want.

Zohra: In our digitally overstimulated lives, words such as sensorial and experiential have been vastly exploited and overused. For you, what makes a design achieve both qualities?

Anton: That’s very true. The vast majority of digital products we use today don’t leave a good impression. They’re either frustrating or just… fine. Nothing is memorable. Designers often avoid comparing digital products to physical ones, but the reality is [that] we spend far more time interacting with digital tools than physical objects.

The way I see it, a great tool should be both beautiful and useful—something you want to use. Think of a well-made kitchen knife. Just the act of pulling it out makes you excited to cook, because it feels good to use. That’s the kind of experience digital products should aim for, too. There are so many digital tools that, when I run into a problem, I’m not looking forward to using them.

Zohra:  In your works such as Spaces & Object, Colour Coded Pole and Street Signs of New York, there seems to be a constant fascination for you with the pedestrian side of New York. The roads, signals, signage and people waiting or running about. Why would you say you keep gravitating to that space? 

Anton: I’m very drawn to the everyday, often overlooked parts of the city—not just in New York, but everywhere I go. I think that comes from the designer in me, observing how things are organised and composed to function together—the hidden infrastructure that makes a place work.

Projects like Spaces & Objects or Colour Coded Pole and Street Signs come from noticing these mundane details and trying to extract something interesting by isolating them, reframing them, or manipulating a single element to create something new—something that didn’t exist before.

Zohra: Tell us about Time Stretched. How did the project come about?

Anton: Time Stretched grew out of several ongoing fascinations of mine: photography, design and time. The exploration began in 2016, when I started documenting facades in New York and later, in other cities I travelled to.

Early on, I started experimenting with removing these facades from their original environments and placing them into isolated, unfamiliar contexts. That exploration became the Misplaced series.

Every now and then, I’d revisit the facades archive to explore new visual directions. One turning point came when I was looking at photo finish images—those high-speed photographs used to determine race winners. I was fascinated by the way motion was rendered: the surreal blurs, the stretched distortions and how time became visible as a kind of artefact of speed. That idea sparked a deeper visual investigation into the interplay between time, motion and human perception.

In each image, time appears fractured. The environment stretches, as if warped by speed, while the central figure remains still—trapped in their own temporal bubble. Unlike athletes racing toward a finish line, the people in these photographs are just passersby—everyday individuals moving through the city, experiencing time like the rest of us.

Zohra: Both Time Stretched and the Misplaced series, as you stated, spotlight a sense of distorting the surroundings while the subjects remain unchanged. What has been the idea behind manipulating context?

Anton: As a designer, I often come back to a quote by American designer Raymond Loewy: "To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising." Neither of these projects is about selling anything, but the principle can still be applied.

In the Misplaced Series, the buildings are familiar—iconic New York City architecture—but they’re placed in entirely different, unexpected environments. That shift in context creates an emotional response that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The intent was to ask: these buildings were designed for New York, a city with a very specific character—what happens when we change the setting? Do they still make sense? Do they still hold the same visual power?

With Time Stretched, the original images are fairly mundane—just people walking through a city. However, when I manipulate the environment to look as if time is passing around them, those same images take on new meaning. Some see a commentary on human resilience in a rapidly changing world, with the blurred, overlapping bands of colour representing our digitised, accelerated lives. Others find something more personal—an emotional reflection on how they experience time, either rushing through it or feeling left behind.

Zohra: Tell us about the book that you are currently working on?

Anton: The Time Stretched series, which I started in 2022, resulted in 60 images. I wanted to give all the visuals a proper home and that’s how the idea of a book was born. I collaborated with my friend Lorenzo Fanton, an Italian graphic designer based in New York, who conceptualised and designed the book. His design not only brings the series together but strengthens it—turning the individual images into one continuous narrative. We’ve just finished the design and are now looking for a publisher.

Zohra: Is there a design advice you swear by?

Anton: Yes—if you have an idea, just try it.

Zohra: What is NEXT for you?

Anton: As a studio project at Anton & Irene, we gathered everything we’ve learned and created an online guide to digital accessibility—by designers, for designers. It launched recently and is available at designbeyondbarriers.com. We’re currently working on the next phase: a book on the same topic, which we’re writing and designing. It’s scheduled for release next year.