Anton & Irene « Equal partners »
DUO:
anton & irene
DUO: magazine Issue n°2 - Spring 2017 DUO: magazine is a collaboration between Adrien and Clotilde Heury, brother & sister — both designers.
Concept, design & PUblishing Heury & Heury In conversation with Anton Repponen and Irene Pereyra CONTRIBUTORS Anton Repponen for the pictures of the duo Picture of Karel Martens by Anton Repponen Picture of Issey Miyake by Brigitte Lacombe Picture of Naoto Fukasawa by Design Indaba (source Vimeo) Picture of Wim Crouwel by Dezeen (source Vimeo) PRINTED BY Newspaperclub FONT IN USE Circular Std + Garamond MERCI à Moo, Indesign, the Christmas spirit, Lilipuce.
CONTACT US hello@heuryandheury.eu
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Edito Thanks for even reading the editorial. Voilà, the second issue of DUO: magazine has been released. For this new edition, we got the chance to interview the inspiring duo Anton & Irene. "Incredible, fantastic, finally!" was the first thing that sprang to our minds when they agreed to take part in the project. The joy was all the greater because we no longer expected it. But let us begin at the beginning. Anton Repponen and Irene Pereyra are two fascinating designers we have been following for several years now, when they were still working at Fi. It was such a great surprise to hear that they have decided to combine their talents to create their own studio and to name it as simple as "Anton and Irene". Needless to say more, we were all willing to dedicate a number of DUO: to them. Unfortunately, willing is not enough - you know that - and some obstacles can occur. Indeed, because the tandem was regularly on the road, giving conferences all over the world or working on demanding projects, it was not so easy to interview them. After an initial refusal due to a lack of time, then a temporary deferral and finally some patience, a positive answer arrived unexpectedly during the holiday season like a Christmas gift. The right time came. We wanted to introduce this issue of DUO: magazine with this little story, not to complain for the time we waited - we are most obliged to Anton and Irene for taking time to respond kindly and carefully to our questions - but because it has taught us something important. Sometimes, things don’t go as fast as we wish, sometimes they go differently than expected. It is what it is. We can not control everything but at least we can control the way we react to it. In that endeavor, not being discouraged and keep trying is essential. And eventually, as Confucius said "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop". When we came up with the idea of creating our own magazine, we never thought being able to interview such great people as Berger and Föhr (for the first issue) and Anton and Irene. We just tried, naively and it just sort of happened. In this interview, the duo said "If we want to explore a topic or technique or discipline that we are not experts at, we just try it and do it. Usually, we will be able to figure out". These words reverberate within us because this is basically what we do with this magazine. We hope to be able to continue this journey because the world is full of interesting duos to discover and to converse with. In this new copy, you will meet a refreshing duo of designers, mixed and equal partners. Through our layout, we tried to explore and to convey their colorful, singular style. We hope that you will enjoy this interview as much as we do. And if so, just let us know!
Adrien & Clotilde Heury Duo of editors
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Introduce each other with few words. Anton —Repponen
Irene is my counterpart.
Irene —Pereyra
Anton is my counterpart.
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To us it means that both of us have an equal part in a perfectly balanced partnership. Even though we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, together we make a complete and stronger whole. Like Yin and Yang. Like Bert and Ernie. Like Chocolate and Vanilla.
anton & irene
What "duo" means to you?
DUO:
We decided to start our own little studio and named it after ourselves, which in a way ensured that we would always be the primary designers of our own work. Being hands-on and staying hands-on is something that is very important to us.
As the years progressed, we realized we were doing less and less design work and we wanted to put an end to that. It’s unfortunate that when you work for a successful agency like Fi you tend to get promoted away from the thing that you are good at, and we knew that if we wanted to make a change, this was our chance.
For example, when you are a director you end up spending way more time in meetings, performance reviews, and finding work for designers than you do actually designing.
We decided to leave Fi when we had both turned 30 years old. As much as we loved working there, and were extremely comfortable, there were things about it that felt like it was going against our grain as people.
Why did you decide to start working together?
What is the difference between your previous work in agency at Fi and your present work with your own studio?
There are many differences, but the main difference is that we have decided to spend 60% of our time on client work and 40% of our time on self-initiated work (which the client work pays for). This allows us much more space for experimentation and let’s us try our hands at things that we wouldn’t have been able to at Fi. Another thing we decided was to not hire creative teams, and just do all the creative work ourselves, which forces us to only work on one project at a time. The people we have hired are people who have very different skills from ours and are more like collaborators than employees. We also decided to build a large network of creatives we can tap into when we need specific skills on a per project basis, which allows us to have greater variety in the work we are able to take on.
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Anton —Repponen
Anton Solving problems and creating new visual languages is my biggest passion. My architecture background makes me think of design in a structural and humanistic way. Everything will need to make perfect sense and will need to be designed around the user since the place I’m designing might end up being the place where some people will spend their entire lives.
Growing up in Amsterdam I was constantly surrounded by modernist design, which very heavily influenced my taste and sensibilities. To me, great design is practical and starts with breaking things down to its simplest form, the straightest line from A to B. Anything superfluous makes me uneasy. I frequently have heated debates on how things can be done better with less stuff.
Irene
Irene —Pereyra
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What is the you’ve learned
If something doesn’t feel right, if the project or client doesn’t feel like it quite fits, don’t do it.
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If we want to explore a topic or technique or discipline that we are not experts at, we just try it and do it. Usually we will be able to figure it out.
top 2 lessons starting your duo?
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What was the first project you worked on? When we started our own studio, our very first project was the website redesign for Karim Rashid, which is incredibly lucky if you think about it.
Looking back, how do you see the first years working together?
1. Can they pay us? 2. Do we like them? 3. Are the expectations and timelines healthy? 4. Is the work interesting? 5. Would this project allow us to learn something new?
Have you a motto? Perhaps. It is something that Irene’s mom always used to say to her as a child: "You already have a no, but you might get a yes". We always try to push through our own embarrassment of asking for things. It’s been extremely valuable advice.
They find us. We’ve never had to go out and find clients. They typically find us through something we have done before and they liked, or from a referral of a former client.
How do you decide what project you want to work on?
How do you find clients?
We were much much younger back then, in our early twenties, and our work completely dominated our lives. We did not have much of a personal life back then and we spent more time with each other, in the studio, or traveling, than with anyone else. Now, we are much more relaxed. We have more of a work/life balance and more complete lives outside of the studio that no longer includes each other 24/7.
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How do you work together? Though we are equal partners, we have a very clear distribution of work, which stems from our personalities but also our abilities. When a project first comes in, Irene handles all the client communication, the negotiating and writing of the contracts, and making sure we get paid. Irene stays the client’s main point of contact throughout the project. Once we have a project in the door, we always concept together. We sit down and sketch and discuss, and make sure we agree on the overall structure and concept together. Then we work on the design component simultaneously. Irene in Omnigraffle in wireframe format, and Anton in Photoshop in final visual designs. Throughout this process we constantly swap our work back and forth providing input on each other’s work on an almost daily basis. Even though Irene is responsible for the structure, Anton is the one who actually studied architecture, and even though Anton is the one who is responsible for the final visual design, Irene is the one who actually studied graphic design. We trust each other’s opinion’s fully and very rarely disagree on ways to move forward. Then when it comes to develop the product, Anton is responsible for handling all the communication with the developers and ensuring that what we have in mind gets implemented correctly.
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You travel a lot. What influence does it have on your work? We both really love traveling, and it’s a great way to get out of our daily grind. Typically we travel to speak at conferences and that allows us to explore places we would never have considered visiting like the Philippines or Slovakia. We love that aspect of the job, and we also love the fact that we keep running into the same group of designers who are very close friends of ours who also speak at these conferences but don’t live in New York. Sometimes we see our conference buddies more frequently than our own friends in New York! The influence in our own work is that it expands our way of thinking about our own self-initiated work. We see the work that our friends have done, and then get inspired to start creating something ourselves.
Do you think that your "european" origins have an impact for your duo in the US? Well, there really is no "Europe", each country in Europe has its own design culture. For Irene for example, she grew up in the Netherlands which is completely immersed in modern design. This has very heavily influenced her design abilities and taste and it’s something that comes back into her work quite frequently. Anton growing up in Estonia in a Russian community was very influenced by the fact that his parents were fashion designers. He spend most of his childhood surrounded by fabrics and sewing machines.
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Do you think that being a male/female For sure. Not that Irene is such a typical female, and Anton is such a typical male, but the balance is very good.
"We notice that pe us interesting beca male/female and t a lot of rumors goi the nature of our re is quite funny."
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What skill do you want to steal from the other? I have more patience. I can sit through long hours meticulously designing and redesigning things for a long period of time until the final result is perfect.
I am more social and better at talking to people, listening, and understanding their motivations.
What are you better at than the other? Irene is way more organized and structured than I am. She sets clear goals to get things done and tackles all items off her to-do list one by one. I get caught up in things that are not that important or sometimes irrelevant.
I would like to be able to be more disciplined like Anton, I can get bored with routine.
What have you learned from the other? I learnt to look at things more holistically and see structure in that. Then distill things to what is important and what is just complimentary. I learnt how to communicate with clients, though she’s still way better than me and I have a lot left to learn. I learnt and still learning how to tell the story no matter in which format it is.
I sometimes want to fly through our tasks more quickly, thinking that slowing down is a waste of time. Anton taught me that slowing down is sometimes better.
What is the best quality of the other? She can find common language with everyone and have a fruitful discussion communicating her thoughts clearly. Obviously that is super important when working with clients, as they can’t get away from her.
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When Anton says he will do something, he will do it and he will do it well.
"We are equal partners."
A day at the studio
There really is no "typical" day as it changes from day to day. Sometimes we will be doing a photoshoot, sometimes we’re on-site with our client, sometimes we’re in the concepting phase of the project where we spend the entire day brainstorming together, and sometimes we are in the middle of the project and more heads down in the design work. Typically we get in between 9:30am-10am and spend the first hour answering emails or responding to the developers. Then we spend a good couple of hours working at our desks on our own tasks, and then we take a break for lunch and eat somewhere outside where we discuss any pressing items regarding the administration or management of the studio, or discuss what project requests have come in and which we find interesting. Then depending on what we have slated for that day we wrap up around 6pm and go home.
What tools do you use? Omnigraffle, Photoshop, Keynote.
What do you like best about your studio? We have recently rented a large studio that we share with many other creatives. It’s a gorgeous loft with great light in an awesome part of Brooklyn. It’s a pleasure coming into the studio every day.
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"We have recently re that we share with m
ented a large studio many other creatives."
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The funniest thing that happened to us was when we were working on the Chrome Store in the Google HQ at Mountain View. Neither of us are morning people, and we had to get from our hotel to the Google campus on time. Irene was waiting for Anton in the lobby, and when he came out we realized we were dressed EXACTLY the same. White shirt, black skinny jeans, and red shoes. We looked at each other in horror and realized we didn’t have time to change. We got to the Google campus and were met by Rahul and Sundar (who is now the CEO of Google, but at the time was heading up Chrome), and they laughed at us. Then we got teased relentlessly for the rest of the day by literally every single person we met at Google. We looked like moronic twins.
What the funniest thing that happens to you?
DUO: anton & irene
What drives you to design?
Solving problems, figuring out something we don’t quite know how to do yet. Learning. Curiosity.
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What does your work teach you? More than anything how to handle people and how to work with people. Whether it’s other collaborators, or clients, or developers, you need to know how to work with people in this line of work.
What did you learn last year? How to make an interactive documentary.
What are you working on right now? We just finished up our interactive documentary "One Shared House", and are in the process of finishing the website redesign for the artist Shantell Martin.
Do you think that "Anton & Irene" has a specific style? I think yes. Even if art direction is different due to working with different clients and their guidelines or even when working on personal work, I think we still maintain certain style that is not necessary visible. It’s in our process, the way we structure things, our overall approach to design and visual aesthetics.
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What is your next challenge? Finally finishing the Nuro watch and producing it. This is something we want to accomplish by 2017.
What is your top 2 goals for the future?
Keep learning.
Keep doing interesting work.
In what new areas are you interested in working? I would love to redesign the interface of a digital camera.
I would love to design an exhibition (or even better, redesign the entire Air & Space museum in DC!)
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Which designers inspire you? Karel Martens, Issey Miyake, Naoto Fukasawa.
Wim Crouwel and Karel Martens.
Which artists dazzle your eyes and stir your soul? Matisse.
Dan Flavin, David LaChapelle, James Turrell, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bosch, Karel Appel, Rothko.
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The random quiz
Books that change your lives There are many books that I enjoyed reading in the past, but none of them really changed or turned around my life.
"Guns, Germs, and Steel" J. Diamond, "The Singularity is Near" by R. Kurzweil.
Musics for intense working No specific bands, I like minimal house for intense working.
Jazz or electronic.
Musics for relaxing Bonobo or Air.
Brazilian music or Indie Rock.
Top mobile apps Alarm.
Wikipedia.
Péché-mignon Japanese and Peruvian food. Home-cooked meals.
Ceviche with a chicha morada.
The best typefaces that work well together? There are too many good combinations, I don’t have a favorite one. For me it’s always two very contrasting typefaces.
Anything that has good contrast.
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