Not only did John Cinquina start his own business, it’s now won him a few awards.
This year, the work the Curtin graduate’s design company Red Meets Blue did won his team two International Creativity Awards. The company took out a Gold award for their work for the frozen yoghurt store The Mix and a Silver award for their work for the Riverview Church, both in the Brand category.
“It is nice though for the team when you get recognised for the hard work you put in,” says John.
“For us, it’s certainly helps our reputation and credibility. If we continue to build great brands for our clients and continue to win awards, then it’ll be a win-win all round.”
His ‘light bulb’ moment came in his final year of school when he realised how fascinated he was with finding solutions to problems. He realised that he would rather start his own company than work for another one.
“What I love about starting and running a company is being able to create something meaningful,” he says.
“I wanted to create a company that people wanted to work for.”
Red Meets Blue works with a motto in mind: ‘strategy based design’, borne out of Mr Cinquina’s time as a student at Curtin, enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts course majoring in Design and learning theory.
“Branding is very close to my heart,” he says.
“It takes the best from marketing and the best from design and puts them together in a process that focuses on engaging with the audience in the right way.”
He maintains strong ties with his fellow graduates and former lecturers from Curtin.
“The lecturers continued to be really supportive after graduating and when we’ve looked for new staff, they’ve been great in helping us find them,” he says.
”I still see the friends I made at Curtin – you go through some great experiences with them. As creative people, we’re always looking for others to motivate, inspire, challenge and push us to be better – and the student culture gave me that at Curtin.”
So what now? Well, in November this year, Mr Cinquina’s book Build Great Brands on how brands are connected to business growth will be released. It will offer practical advice and processes that organisations can use to succeed.
Right now though, Mr Cinquina is focused on work.
“Our company purpose is to Build Great Brands and that’s what we’ll keep doing,” he says.
Along with that might come a few more awards.
