Vanessa Eckstein & Marta Cutler
Vanessa founded Blok in 1999 and later invited Marta (who had a background in advertising agencies such as MacLaren McCann and DDB) to join. Together they run this successful agency, gathering a ever-growing portfolio of meaningful projects with brilliant execution. Power duo.
Blok Design is in an unusual location for a design studio. It’s not in downtown Toronto, where you’ll find plenty of trendy boutiques, galleries and studios on King Street or Queen Street. Instead, it nestles in the western part of the city, somewhere north of the university district, and not too far from the up-and-coming Junction neighbourhood. And perhaps that’s fitting because, both visually and philosophically, Blok Design likes to find places that are yet to be defined.
“Conceptually, we like the space in-between,” says founder Vanessa Eckstein. “In every project there’s a point of contradiction and we like that to be a point of discussion – like the juxtaposition, that point where everything is opposing each other. Trying to understand the balance is very interesting. So we like those spaces where people are not working, or where we haven’t worked before. We like the challenge of, ‘What is this space about?’”
In practice, this has so many manifestations in Blok’s output. Coffee at the studio is served in cups that are part of a crockery range that Blok designed some years back. The studio drew its own font design for a book it created for México Ciudad Futura, an environmental project in Mexico. Soon, it’ll be designing an experimental audio site for a musician it’s working with. Blok has just done the branding for a high performance road and track car, but it’s also co-publishing a range of children’s books. It’s even branded an airline.
Blok’s physical space chimes with that open mentality, too. It might be in-between neighbourhoods, down a little back road and next to the railway line, but the designers here get to work in a big, airy studio with plenty of room. Natural light streams through the windows, with leafy views. The floors are stripped wood, and reference imagery and work in progress is regularly posted on the bare brick walls.
With just six staff – including two interns – there are no fights over desk space. And near the entrance you’ll find a huge collection of inspiring books covering art and design, photography, philosophy and more. To round things off there’s a 1963 Vespa parked in the centre of the floor.
There are no partitions or closed doors at Blok, either. The designers all sit down and discuss things at a big table in the middle of the room. According to Marta Cutler, who joined as partner two-and-a-half years ago, the studio loves receiving guests.
With a background in advertising at agencies like MacLaren McCann and DDB, Cutler was invited to join by founder Vanessa Eckstein, who set up Blok back in 1999. “I have a six-year-old daughter. I was at the point where I was starting to think, ‘Well, what’s my legacy? Where do I want to grow? We met at a coffee shop, and Vanessa put a café grande in front of me and hit me with the words ‘value legacy’. I went home and thought, ‘Oh God’.”
Cutler joining the studio concluded a period of change for Blok Design. For some years Eckstein had been running the company out of two studios – one in Mexico City and the other in Toronto. She too has children, and so decided to rethink her situation.
Blok still has a small office in Mexico, and several important clients there. However, Eckstein is now more focused on Toronto, and the creative community there has more than embraced Blok Design. When a blogger posted a list of the ‘23 design studios in Toronto you should know about’, Blok was omitted. A number of comments popped up, one saying, ‘Tough list to trust without Blok on it’.
Eckstein is on the board of the Advertising & Design Club of Canada – the nation’s equivalent of the Art Director’s Club in the US. She mentors design students at George Brown College, which is just down the road from the studio, and is an advisor at the acclaimed Ontario College of Art and Design. Blok also gets involved in a range of events outside graphic design – the team recently spoke at a food industry symposium, for instance.
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Vanessa Eckstein & Marta Cutler / Blok or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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Terrific!!!
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