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continue to work with him. The project has also b
een a really good profile piece for us and won us the award for best packaging in this year’s IDIs. – The perfect client in three sentences... S: 1. Comes to us because they like our previous work. 2. Is nice to work with. 3. Is willing to work with us collaboratively to create something unique. – If you had to do it all again, what three things would you do differently? C: I’m not a big believer in looking back. I think everything happens for a reason. Any mistakes we made or make are all part of the learning process and it helps to build a more robust way of working. – The perfect project you have yet to be commissioned for… S: I’d still love to work on the branding for a festival or cultural institution like a museum, theatre or venue. C: Personally I love art direction, so a beautiful product photoshoot with an amazing creative team would be my dream project. I also love the thought of designing for a hotel or restaurant where we have been involved in every inch of the identity creation – from textiles to delph design. – The one thing you hate doing but it comes with the role... S: I’ve never been a fan of presenting… boardroom tables are the stuff of nightmares for me. Clockwise from far left: Sean and Clara, photos: Myles Shelley; Juspy illustration: Hedof; All Tvvins cover, photography: Myles Shelley; Dishy photography: Sean Breithaupt; Spike Island, photography: Brendan Ryan; The Nature of Things, illustration: Tom Abbiss Smith; CES, illustration: Ben the Illustrator There are lots of other aspects to running your own studio that I didn’t realise would take up quite as much time; admin, proposals, scheduling, responding to emails. C: It’s funny I don’t mind presentations but I don’t like artwork and production which Sean executes perfectly! We were fully transparent about our strengths and weaknesses and luckily we can support each other in the areas that we don’t feel fully comfortable in. I don’t think any creative really enjoys the admin parts but it certainly plays a huge part. – You mentioned before about seeking out a better work and life balance? How do you achieve that without letting the stress take over, maybe you just don’t stress? S: Work/life balance is really important for the two of us. We both have young families and partners who sometimes need to work unpredictable hours. It’s important for us to have flexibility without our work suffering. Design is one of those professions where projects can become personal, we always want to do the best job possible, so it can be difficult if things don’t go the way you had originally planned. Ultimately, we’re not saving lives so I think it’s important to keep that in mind. C: The flexibility is great. Young school age kids require a lot of extra curricular time, so it’s really important that I’m there for that and don’t miss the golden years. It might mean working in the evening or over the weekend in order to attend a mid-week school commitment but it’s worth it. As a service industry it’s hard not to feel tenacious about projects and let them seep into your personal life but I think you become used to it over time. Our industry allows us to dip our toes into a myriad of worlds and meet interesting, diverse people. One day we’re chatting about government policy and the next about the consistency of a chocolate drink… being able to step back and recognise how refreshing that is can help minimise stress, I think. – Do you intend to scale more over the coming year? What’s a nice size for you all? S: We’d like to take on an intern this summer. I started out as an intern way back and I think it’s a really useful introduction to the industry. It’s also a really good way of finding the best talent as it comes on the market! In terms of how we’d like to grow over the next year or so, it’d be great to get someone to help with the admin and business side of things, then ideally we’d like to take on another designer. We don’t ever want to be a big studio, five people seems like a nice number. C: Yes, we hope so. I’m finding it harder to get the creative non-screen time I need. I think more clearly with pen and paper. Getting ideas and thoughts down in my notebook is how I do my best work and planning. Having more people in the studio, will hopefully free us up to do more of that thinking. Extended interview at totallydublin.ie soandso.ie 17