George Chalkidis & Stefanos Evangelou, Co-Founders of iFrame Design Studio:

A story of chance meetings, shared values, and choosing to build outside the capital.

Stefanos and I met in the most unlikely place: the army base in Konitsa, during our military service. Besides a few random exchanges we were just 2 strangers having to fulfill our mandatory army duty.

Fate, however, had us crossing paths again after our military service.

Stefanos was working in Events, and I already had work experience as a designer. He reached out requesting that I help him build a website and the rest, as they say, is history. We discovered how much we had in common, how similarly we thought, and slowly a partnership formed.

When we launched iFRAME, it was challenging. In Epirus at the time, concepts like brand or visual identity weren’t widely understood. Having a website wasn’t considered essential like it is today. In 2010, at the start of the financial crisis, we made the decision to open our design studio in Epirus, deliberately steering away from Athens. It felt risky, but also right. And in many ways, it feels like it was meant to be. We’re still here.

Our design philosophy hasn’t changed since day one. We’re inspired by Scandinavian minimalism: calm, clean, modern, and simple. For us, simplicity is sophisticated. It’s quiet confidence. It’s creating clarity instead of noise. We’ve come to understand that designing something simple is the hardest thing to get right.

Ioannina is a city we love and we moved here 5 years ago.

Our home. Our families are here. Distances are short, life feels human, and when you have kids, that matters more than anything. The wider region of Epirus offers mountains and sea, beauty and safety, great food, and a quality of life that’s hard to find elsewhere.

What we want most is opportunity, so our children won’t have to leave to build a future. To entice people to stay, Ioannina needs to be part of a larger, outward-looking ecosystem across all industries, not only tourism. It’s already a year round destination. Maybe we need to be a little more demanding. Because life here is great and no one should have to abandon their roots to grow elsewhere.