The quiet man who makes fashion brands stand out

For about a decade, people in New York’s art and fashion scene have relied on Eric Wrenn, an unassuming designer known for his minimalist touch, to shape the images of their brands.

Mr Wrenn, 38, has worked on advertising campaigns, logos, books, websites, stationery, business cards and invitations to catwalk shows. Through it all he has kept a low profile, but his client list reads like a who’s who of downtown bluechips.

“Eric feels like an industry secret,” he said Emily Bode Aujlathe designer and founder of the Bode brand.

“He has a feel for the art world, and talking to him about a project can feel more like a therapy session,” she continued. “I rely on Eric to help me conceptualize Bode’s entire brand identity. When I hear about a brand working with him, I think, ‘Oh, they know.‘”

While Bode was becoming the menswear brand of the moment, Mr. Wrenn has redesigned the logo into something sober yet punchy. And when the gender-fluid fashion brand Eckhaus Latta was still barely known, he started a sustainable creative collaboration with the founders.

The invitations he designed for one of the brand’s first runway shows were printed on Ziploc bags. He went on to direct almost all of their campaigns, including the provocative ads featuring Heji Shin’s photos of couples have sex.

Mr. Wrenn has also lent his sensibility to books by artists Glenn Ligon, Wade Guyton, Jessi Reaves and Seth Price; his other art world clients include Greene Naftali Gallery and Artists Space.

He became a downtown player at the age of 28, when he was hired as Design director of Artforuma position he held until 2020. The magazine covers he oversaw featured the art of Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Susan Cianciolo and Ms. Shin.

“To work with artists, you have to understand them, and that’s why I trust Eric,” Ms. Shin said. “His style is minimalist yet confident. And he is sensitive to what something needs – if it needs anything at all – which is also an act of trust.”

“He’s an insider tip,” she added. “He is very traditional and his focus is on the work.”

Mr. Wrenn’s fingerprints also appeared on the debut album of Sophie, the influential hyperpop artist, whom he met in Berlin. As part of his collaboration with the musician, who died in 2021 at the age of 34, he helped choose the signature font used for her name.

British designer Martine Rose hired him to revamp her brand’s logo and visual identity, asking him to direct an ad campaign photographed by Dick Jewell. Mr. Wrenn also designed the menus and stir sticks for the River, an arts and fashion hub in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

During a recent interview in his airy office in the Cable Building in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood, he appeared to squirm on his couch as he adjusted to the experience of discussing his work.

“I don’t think people come to me because they know what they want,” said Mr. Wrenn, who wore a blue cap with the folksy Bodega Bay Oyster Company logo embossed. “I help people figure out what they want and then I make that thing for them. I’m trying to help crystallize an idea for someone – an idea that’s formed, but not quite there yet.”

When asked to describe his signature look, he was silent for almost a full minute before answering. “I try to give someone a design that says something about their brand, but that doesn’t say too much,” he says. “The idea is that you say something without saying anything.”

His desk was partially covered with stationery he had recently designed for Empty Gallery, an art gallery in Hong Kong. It contained soft paper with an eggshell texture of minutely different weights and business cards with black borders.

He sat at his computer and clicked through some of his designs and campaigns to show the thinking behind them. He politely refused to open the file labeled ‘NIKE BODE’.

Scrolling past images of Sophie’s vinyl LP ‘Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides’, he said: “For the gatefold of the album I was a bit inspired by the gatefold in Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller.'”

When Mr. Wrenn got up to prepare an espresso, he noticed a frame on the wall containing a stack of unadorned black paper. It was a Comme des Garçons runway invitation from 1982. “These old CDG show invitations are so hard to find,” he said. “To me it is an incredibly minimalist work of art in itself.”

Before Mr. Wrenn became a minimalist George Lois in downtown Manhattan creatively set he grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. His mother was a high school teacher and his father was a computer software marketer. “My earliest memory is of an Amoco gas station logo that I saw in the back of a car as a boy,” he said.

He moved to New York at the age of 18 to study at the Pratt Institute. His first job at a branding agency after graduating was at the Wolff Olins company. “It was a crazy time when people were eating Souen and spraying liquid amino acids on salads,” he said.

Because he also worked freelance, these were two of his first clients Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, who were just getting their label off the ground. After designing a logo for them on his laptop from his bedroom, he went on to develop their clothing labels, website, advertising campaigns and invitations to their must-see shows during New York Fashion Week.

“We first saw Eric’s work on a Tumblr account,” Ms. Latta recalls, referring to a student project he created at Pratt. “He had done these Barneys ads, but he was doing what you would see ads in the windows of a grocery store. The work had an anonymous sensibility and we initially had no idea who was making it.”

“If Eric has retained an element of not being easily accessible, or being a word-of-mouth guy,” Mr. Eckhaus said, “he’s had that analog vibe from the beginning.”

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Wrenn visited the Strand bookstore. He was on a mission to find something very special. “It’s for a project I can’t talk about,” he said, “but I’m looking for an old piece of paper in an old book.”

Wearing a blue cap and a trench coat, Mr. Wrenn searched the stacks of vintage art books. He took one off the shelf and looked at it.

“Not old enough,” he said. “No, this is all too much fun.”

He finally found what he was looking for in a 1950s hardcover published by Abrams, “Art Treasures of the Uffizi and Pitti.” It was in the back of the book, one of those blank pages known as an endpaper.

“What have I been looking for?” said Mr. Wrenn. “I don’t know. Something blank. A page that looks like nothing.”