History

Originally founded in 1995 by British born art director, Anthony M. La Pusata, coming from the editorial sector and major ad agency experience, Republika Design & Media Production Bureau has now entered it’s fifteenth year.

Today, in 2010, Republika D&MPB prides itself on a steady and continuous growth within the print and media industry and above all on having provided the best possible solutions for international clients such as Vodafone and Nokia to smaller local companies such as Chema Sapori.

Designed in English, Made in Italy. This is our story so far…

1995

On 28th August 1995, Republika D&MPB opened it’s doors to the public for the very first time offering general graphic design services, photo retouching and photocopies.

1996

We proudly became the very first company in the south of Italy to invest in and install EFI Fiery technology combined with state of the art colour-copiers bringing cost effective yet high quality short run digital print to the masses.

1997

With the internet boom expanding around the world, Republika D&MPB definitely didn’t want to miss out. But due to a lack of local bandwidth in the region, at that time, we took it upon ourselves to become the first internet provider in the area bringing ISDN/64kbps internet access to public subscribers.

1998

Business as usual with the development of various projects including experiments with HTML and Javascript which led to our very first company website, a celebrated portal for local produce and an interactive CD-Rom.

1999

Due to Republika D&MPB’s increasing popularity and word of mouth recommendation we were fortunately subjected to an ever increasing workload and as a consequence we decided to triple our staff.

2000

We entered the new millennium with our own bug as we invested in industry standard Hot Press Metallic Foil printing, Die-Cutting and Embossing machinery. We were so enthusiastic about our new investment that we decided to create our very own line of wedding invitation and greeting cards.

2001

Republika D&MPB’s founder and Creative Director, Anthony M. La Pusata, amongst other internationally reknown designers such as Joshua Davis, Nicola Stump and Matt Owen, was asked to participate in Spain’s very first ‘Bienal de Valencia‘, in the interactive section ‘El Mundo Nuevo‘ with a Macromedia Flash based application called ‘Hell.O Head‘.

The show, one of the first of it’s kind and header to a new phenomenon known as ‘Web Art’, was an acclaimed success. Later the same year it was also shown in Rome, Italy and documented on a specialistic technology program, ‘Mediamente’, aired on the Italian TV channel RAI 2.

2002

This was definitely another year to remember. After the success of the exhibition in Spain, Anthony was asked to develop a new piece, ‘Karmadrome’, which was taken to the ‘FlashForward’ Exhibition held in San Francisco (USA) and then on to New York later that year.

Simultaneously the work was shown at a three month expo in Rome, Italy. These exhibitions gained Anthony and Republika a lot of international exposure within the design world. In fact, organisers Oliviero Toscano from Benetton publicity fame in association with Achille Bonito Oliva invited him to participate in the ‘Biennale di Carrara‘, an important annual arts event held in Carrara, Italy for which he exhibited ‘Channel 9. This same piece was then featured at the GAM (Galleria di Arte Moderna) in Turin, Italy, for a whole year.

With this kind of exposure Republika D&MPB soon gained interest from international agencies and clients such as ‘Nokia’ – Singapore, ‘Flamebooks’ – UK, ‘Qapco’ – Qatar, ‘ForumEngelska’ – Sweden and was even contacted by ‘Dik’ – Australia to design an original collector’s Tshirt for their on-line magazine campaign.

2003

Another year of exhibitions. Again, Anthony was asked to participate in Farm’s ‘Religion’ a traditional art exhibition for which he created an ironic advertising package for a hypothetical church system, ‘Trinity Bank’, which stole the show and gained numerous reviews in some of the worlds most reknown art magazines such as Flash Art, Van Art, Random Magazine and Rhizome. Also in 2003, a book cover design for UK based Flamebook’s ‘Living Rights‘ novel by Marisa Antonaya received a featured article in QWF Magazine (Quality Women’s Fiction), written by Fi Benson.

2004

Republika decided to introduce and take the concept of personalisation one step further. Therefore through the public front end of the company it now offers the possibility to customise and personalise one off items and objects, anything from a calendar, puzzle, Tshirt to a plaque or trophy.

2005

This year we celebrated our 10th Birthday! As a surprise to us all, one of our website designs for Swedish based company ‘Pageplay’ was proudly featured on page 88 of Gunter Beer’s ‘Web Design Index by Content’, an annually released book and collective of the year’s most innovative websites judged on both technology and design.

2006

With the introduction of affilliate branches both in the UK and France we have decided to introduce 3D Animation, Video Editing and Sound Design into our service roster under the Media Development category.

2007

From this year on, Republika D&MPB is proud to announce that they are now present in the ‘Creative Review – Good Design’ company listings.

2008

With the opening of a fourth affiliate branch in Germany, Republika D&MPB decided to revamp their own identity with the universal ‘R’ logo. They also decided it was time to take media development up to the next level as they venture into the world of TV and Film production and began developing character designs and concepts for a 3D animated show for pre-schoolers and later in the year a TV drama series aimed at 15 to 40 year olds.

2009

With the constant need for clients to update and restyle their website content on a regular basis, Republika took it upon themselves to develop their very own user-friendly CMS (Content Management System) on which to build simple websites, Rich Interactive Applications and eBusiness solutions.

2010

After what seems like only yesterday in terms of work years from when we first started out, this year and gateway to a new decade will see us celebrating our fifteenth anniversary. Therefore we have decided to chronicle our history, work and accomplishments into a celebratory book and hope that you will enjoy what we have done and will continue to do as much as we have.