Founded in Valencia in 2008 by Jorge Herrera, JHS is an interdisciplinary design studio that guides its clients through the entire process of product design and space creation, from conceptualization to the development of brand materials that drive their business goals.
Specializing in product design, art direction, and spatial design, JHS has brought its expertise to international companies and major brands such as Flos, Porcelanosa, Miyazaki Chair Factory, Sanycces, Forma 5, LedsC4, Bover, Cridea, Nadis, esPattio, Oiside, Todobarro, and Idée.
We spoke with Jorge Herrera, who told us about his career, how he designs and approaches a project, and the work he is currently involved in:
Interiors from Spain: It has been more than a decade since we first interviewed you. How has the studio changed over the years?
Jorge Herrera: The studio has changed significantly over the years, including physically. In 2018, we moved to a new location and created a larger space with lots of natural light, designed so that the environment itself would be a daily source of inspiration. This environment allows us to work in a more open and stimulating way and, in a sense, also reflects our way of working: personal, collaborative, and closely connected to the creative process.
The team that makes up the studio has also evolved, and above all, so has our way of understanding and approaching projects.
Ultimately, we have grown and matured, but we continue to uphold the same approach to design: simple, honest, and focused on creating products that add value.
Interiors from Spain: Could you define in one sentence the essential elements of your designs and your approach to design?
Jorge Herrera: If I had to sum it up, I would say that we seek to do more with less: simple, well-proportioned, functional, and honest products, where every detail has a reason for being.
It is difficult to define essential elements that are exactly the same in all our projects, because each one is a response to a different need, brand, and context. What remains constant is our way of working: we seek simplicity, pay close attention to proportion and functionality, work with honest materials, and devote great attention to detail. We strive to find a balance between beauty and functionality, because we believe that when the two coexist naturally, the result is a product that endures.
Interiors from Spain: You take an interdisciplinary approach, combining product design, art direction, branding, and spatial design. How do you approach each project? Are there any you would like to highlight because of their innovation, difficulty, or client satisfaction?
Jorge Herrera: We remain essentially a product design studio. Product design is our core and the area where we have the greatest expertise. But over time, our experience and knowledge have grown, and our vision has become more global. Experience allows us to better understand not only the object itself, but also the brand, the space, manufacturing, the market, and the experience surrounding the product.
Today, we can begin by working on a product and end up shaping its identity, its presentation, the space it inhabits, or the art direction that goes with it. Experience has shown us that, in order to design a product well, it is often also necessary to understand everything that surrounds it: the brand, the space, manufacturing, and, ultimately, the experience we want to build around it.
One project I would particularly highlight is everything we are building together with Sanycces. This is an opportunity to approach design from a cross-disciplinary perspective, starting with the product and its materials, but extending that perspective to the brand’s language, its identity, space, and all its related communication.
When we began working with Sanycces, it was a brand with a much more generic presence. Over the years, we have jointly built a much more clearly defined identity, with its own positioning and international reach, while also creating a more emotional and accessible brand. The evolution of the concept of Mediterranean identity has become one of the guiding forces of this process, permeating the different areas where we have collaborated: product, branding, art direction, stands, photography, renderings, communication…
Ultimately, the goal has been to build a brand with its own personality and value, capable of connecting not only through the product, but also through emotions and the way spaces are experienced. And within that transformation, the product remains at the center.
Interiors from Spain: Tell us about the process of listening to the client. How do you ensure that your approach to design connects with the client and their brand’s DNA?
Jorge Herrera: For us, design is born from a conversation. A conversation with the client, but also with the materials, the industry, and, in a way, with time itself.
Each project is a co-creation process, although our role as a studio is to lead the process and contribute our experience to transform the company’s needs into a design proposal.
We seek to gain a deep understanding of the brand: its history, its positioning, its production capabilities, its objectives, and also the direction in which it wants to evolve. The client contributes highly valuable knowledge about their market, product, and company; we contribute our experience, our vision, and an external perspective that allows us to interpret all that information, give the project a clear direction, and identify new design opportunities.
And the ultimate goal is not merely to create a product that is attractive in terms of its form. It has to work for the brand, for the user, for the manufacturer, and commercially as well. For us, a project’s success lies in combining a good design solution with a product that has genuine market potential.
Interiors from Spain: The durability of an object is part of your identity. How do you ensure that a product stands the test of time?
Jorge Herrera: Good design is never rushed.
For us, durability has a physical dimension, but also an emotional one. A product must be well made and use materials and solutions suited to its intended use, but it must also retain its appeal and relevance over time.
We try to avoid anything that caters too closely to a specific trend. We work with proportion, geometry, materials, and details in pursuit of a certain timelessness. These may seem like small decisions, but they determine how we perceive an object today and how we will perceive it 10 or 20 years from now.
But transcending time does not mean creating neutral objects. A product can have personality and remain relevant long after it has been created. For us, the key lies in finding a balance between beauty and functionality, without either depending on a fleeting trend.
We also believe that durability has an emotional dimension. A product can endure because it is well made, but also because it forms a connection with the person who uses it. There are objects that seem simple yet gain value over time and end up becoming part of our lives. That is the kind of lasting presence we seek.
Interiors from Spain: The studio collaborates with companies from various countries and sectors. What have you learned from these experiences with manufacturers from such different cultures and sectors?
Jorge Herrera: Working internationally forces you to step outside your own frame of reference. Each culture has a different way of understanding time, precision, the relationship with the manufacturer, or even how decisions are made.
From Japan, for example, we have learned a great deal about discipline, attention to detail, and respect for the process. Other markets have taught us speed, adaptability, and an enormous openness to experimentation.
But we have also discovered that there is something universal: a passion for doing things well.
When a designer and a manufacturer share that attitude, cultural differences cease to be a barrier and become a source of learning. Very often, an idea arises precisely from that blend of knowledge.
For us, working with international manufacturers does not simply mean working in other markets. It means expanding our own way of thinking and designing.
Interiors from Spain: Looking to the future, what new areas - materials, typologies, collaborations, or markets - would you like to explore through Jorge Herrera Studio?
Jorge Herrera: I would like to continue growing in those sectors where design has to solve more than just an aesthetic issue. I am particularly interested in products that need to address specific functional needs while, at the same time, creating a certain experience. That is why I am particularly drawn to the lighting, bathroom, and office sectors, where form, function, technology, and the relationship with the user must coexist.
Lighting is a field in which we would like to continue growing, and one where I am particularly drawn to the possibility of establishing a distinctive position of our own and becoming a benchmark. I am also very interested in home furniture, given all that it involves in terms of how we inhabit spaces and the relationships we establish with the objects around us. Outdoor living is another area I would like to explore further, because it expands on the idea of extending the home into the outdoors.
There are other areas, such as small appliances or gadgets, that have always been very interesting to me, although they are more specialized sectors with very particular industrial and market structures. Precisely for that reason, they also represent an appealing challenge.
And there is one area I would particularly like to promote: continuing to collaborate with more Spanish brands. We have a business ecosystem with tremendous talent and industrial capacity, and I believe design can help many of these companies create products with a stronger identity and expand internationally. We would like to contribute to this by drawing on our experience and continue demonstrating that we can also create product design with an international vision from Spain.
Ultimately, rather than seeking out new sectors simply to broaden our scope of work, we are interested in projects that align with our way of understanding design and where we can contribute our experience, our sensibility, and our way of working.
Interiors from Spain: And right now. What projects are you currently working on?
Jorge Herrera: Right now, we are working on quite diverse projects, but they have one thing in common: they all stem from product design and, in many cases, extend into other areas.
We are developing several lighting projects for different international markets and working on a new hybrid collection of bathroom faucets. For the office sector, we are developing a table system and are also preparing two stands for Orgatec and ISH.
We are also in the midst of preparing several photo shoots for products we have designed, which, if all goes according to plan, will be unveiled next year. They are very different projects, but they show quite well where our studio is today: continuing to delve deeper into product design while exploring everything that happens around it.
