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DESIGN DESIGN COUPLING Claire Brennan & Freddie S
tevens are partners running a creative agency specialising in design, brand identity and communication over the last four years. They discuss their origins and the distractions while dining out. words Richard Seabrooke – How did Brennan & Stevens come about? Before setting up as a studio, we spent a couple of years working on some really lovely freelance jobs, together and separately. We worked from home, or from cafes, or clients’ restaurant tables, depending on the job. We had both always intended to set up a business of our own and the projects we were working on were gaining momentum and leading to bigger jobs so we decided the time was right to set-up fully. We took a few week’s away from work, found a studio space, and launched Brennan & Stevens. – The upsides of working with your partner? A lot of people can’t understand how we work together at all but we’ve found a pattern that suits us. One of the upsides is being able to speak openly with each other. We are sharing the running of the business and have to be able to discuss ups and downs in an honest way. If we were friends or purely business partners some of these conversations could be tricky, but we know each other so well we can say what we mean without taking offence! We are also complete opposites to each other in a lot of ways. We have always had very different design styles, something we were aware of since studying together in college, but our working styles are very different too. We’ve always said the business wouldn’t work if we were both like Freddie or both like Clare. The balance seems to be what makes it work. – Any downsides? Be honest ;) It’s become impossible to eat out without looking at the experience as we would look at a project (we have unofficial brand audits of every Dublin restaurant we’ve eaten at in the last few years). So we don’t really switch off from work in that way. We’re constantly looking, thinking, wondering about certain elements. We love our job but sometimes we have to stop and say, let’s just eat. We also had to learn how to communicate with each other creatively. It sounds funny but when you’re working in a creative environment you need to be able to read the other person’s design and thinking process and be able to give and take criticism quickly and move on. Being able to get to the root of disagreements has definitely helped us communicate in our own relationship. – You do a lot of work for the hospitality industry. Was that a conscious decision or did it just happen that your first client was in that space? It has been a conscious decision, really. Hospitality design is an area we have always been drawn to, there are a lot of opportunities in this sector. A brand is so much more than a logo over the door or a good-looking instagram profile and as this market continues to be more competitive it’s even more important to be able to stand out. A strong brand is a big part of that and we hope we can fill that space. Hospitality design is unique because it’s an area within the private sector that allows for creative outcomes. We really enjoy dealing with business-minded clients to help them deliver their goals in a smart way. – The perfect client is… Open-minded. Plain and simple. – The perfect project is: One with an open-minded client! We really love being brought on-board at the very early stages of a project, and we’re lucky that it happens quite often. We’re often hired before there is a name for a particular restaurant but sometimes it’s before the type of 16