Interview with tin&ed

Interview with Tin Nguyen and Edward Cutting of tin&ed
Website: http://www.tinanded.com.au
e: design@tinanded.com.au
p: 03 9671 3777
a: Level 8 Room 15, Nicholas Building
37 Swanston St, Melbourne 3000

tin&ed

How and when did you guys meet and how did the idea of forming tin&ed come about?

We met at the end of first year in uni, working on a punk rock magazine with a few others. Forming tin&ed was more a natural process then an idea, from the end of first year we continued to work together on projects outside of university, and it just sort of developed from there.

How long has tin&ed been operating?

tin&ed has been operating for nine months, before that we worked together as part of a larger collective called small corner creative for two years (this was whilst we were at uni).

So is Still Corner still around?

Small Corner is still around in an unofficial sort of way, there was never a decison to end it, we're still good friends. After Second year John and Pete went into the honours stream, so we got separated in a way and it got harder to get together and do work. I think our lives took us in separate paths. We're not ruling out working on something together in the future though.

How would you describe tin&Ed?

We work mainly in print and do publication design mostly. We’ve also started taking part in some exhibitions. We work for mostly cultural clients at the moment, but we’re not restricting ourselves to that though.

Is tin&Ed still the two of you?

From a design point of view yes it is, we have a friend Pip who helps us out with other areas related to business.

How do you guys work together?

We work on everything together basically, It’s quite hard to dissect the work, we get asked a lot who did the illustrations for the next wave festival, each of the drawings are composites of both our drawings, people seem to find that quite difficult to understand. But even when we are laying out pages, we’ll share elements, and we’ll be talking and consulting each other about things. We do see things from slightly different angles though too, we’re quite different people, but we can work together quite well, that’s always better then working with someone exactly like yourself.

It's very inspiring to hear that you guys just got started and went and did your own thing. Do you see it as a brave move yourselves or did it just happen that way?

From a personal point of view we don’t see it as a brave move because this is what we want to do, but from a financial point of view it’s not the easiest path to take because there is a lot of uncertainty involved.

BACKGROUND/TRAINING

How did you guys become interested in graphic design and illustration?

We’ve always just enjoyed being creative.

What training have you guys done to get to where you are today?

Ed: Studied visual arts for a year, then moved on to multimedia, finally ending up in a graphic design course.

Tin: I studied graphic arts for two years, then I went on to study Graphic design for another three.

How did you find the uni experience?

There were definitely good and bad aspects to it, I mean from the perspective of meeting people and making friends it was really good. For the most part the course that we did was very geared towards producing only one type of designer, we didn’t really fit into this and so it was quite a struggle sometimes to make it through. There were a few things which saved the course though, namely Art History with Denise, and Publication Design with Andrew Ashton.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Do certain themes recur through your work?

Constructing worlds, everyday things, seeing beauty in quite banal things, childhood. Some of our work can be a little dark sometimes.

How long does it take you to create a new project?

Depends on the project, we worked on Next Wave Festival for 6 months, it was quite a large project, we had to produce a whole range of things, from the 100 page program, to invitations, advertising, envelopes and business cards, posters etc The illustrations alone took up a lot of that time.

We Designed issue 4 of Spinach7, which is a 65 page magazine in 2 weeks.

How do you approach a new brief?

We always approach a new brief by talking; we do that for quite a while, maybe too long before we actually start doing anything.

I've noticed some of your illustrative work is very detailed, how do you start a new illustration?

The process is quite different depending on the illustration. The Next Wave illustrations for example took about 3 months to do, there were quite a few compositions. We started by talking about the idea, we did that for a about a month before we stared physically doing anything. The next step was research, we looked at a lot of photos and took quite a few trying to figure out what we wanted to put into this world that we wanted to create. It was going to be quite a dense world, so we had to a lot of research for it. Then we started drawing. The illustrations were done with a fine liner. We take the illustrations into the computer in the final stages.

What are your work tools?

We use Photoshop and illustrator, indesign, flash and a bit of 3d studio max, we shoot on both SLR and digital. We use a lot of hard media as well, pens pencils, scalpel, brushes, water colours, anything we can get our hands on basically.

Can you run us through a 'typical' day in the life of tin&ed?

There’s no such thing as a typical day for us, everyday is quite different. We don’t usually start till around 12 o’clock, but we also work till quite late.

Is graphic design a creative, research, technical, analytical or intuitive process?

Definitely all of those.

What does it take to do great graphic design?

We think a great concept is essential. Then executing that in a competent way.

How did the idea of Randal the Robot (Lucky Magazine #10) come about? What does he represent? Do you still have him in your studio?

We use to be part of a collective called small corner creative, that was us and two other guys John and Peter, Randal was a project we did together for a Lucky Magazine cover.

Randal was a reaction to our own work, and also the conventions of media representation. We looked at our earlier covers that we designed for Lucky Magazine and also a lot of fashion magazines and asked ourselves why there were always these beautifully made up models on the cover. I think It was Pete’s idea to build a robot. Randal is a bit like an anti-hero. He’s this melancholic robot, just trying to find his way in the world. He’s got this hole in his heart, and it’s like those kids toys where you put the square peg in the square hole and the round one in the round hole, he’s trying to find the right thing to put into the hole in his chest. Randal’s heart is made up of the bit of the box that’s says ‘handle with care’. He’s got his own website which you can visit from tinanded.com.au, and we’ll be updating it with what his been up to. He’s just made an appearance in the latest issue of Spinach7.

MARKETING AND PROJECTS

How do you market your services and find work?

We’ve been quite lucky so far; a lot of the stuff we’re working on now has been from people contacting us. We also met a lot of interesting people from working for Next Wave, and we’re working with some of them now.

TIN NGUYEN AND EDWARD CUTTING

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

We both really like quite banal things, things that happen all around you, to everyone, everyday, so much so that people forget the beauty in them. We’re inspired by quite everyday things, its more fun to find the beauty in banal things. It’s like if you took a photo of the ground and something about the way that it is lit, it’s texture, the wades of gum which look a bit like clouds because each one has been there for a different amount of time and is a different shade, it’s like looking back in time almost, it’s how the ground remembers, seeing the beauty in all that, and somehow trying to represent and share that. I guess that opposed to taking a photo of a rose or something, we all know it’s beautiful we don’t really need another photo to prove it, that’s sort of boring. I guess the point is that you can find inspiration in everything, and for us it’s usually in the more every day things.

Who are some of the graphic designers, illustrators, artists etc whose work you like and why?

Graphic Designers : Tibor Kalman, Vince Frost, Deanne Cheuke, Andrew Ashton, MMParis, MeCompany, Marc Atlan,

Other people we’re inspired by: Rei Kawakubo, Yayoi Kusama, Bjork, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tilmans, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Yoko Ono, Gregory Crewdson, Bill Henson.

Our friends.

What are some of your favourite magazines, books, films, websites etc?

Ed: Movies: Being John Malkovich, Adaptaion, Ghost in the Shell.

Tin: Books: Sarah & The Heart is Deceitful by JT Leroy, The Power of One, The Little Prince, Where the Wild things are. Magazines: colors, another magazine, neomu, national geographic, ABCD, Doingbird, TANK, Zembla.

Do you also have any personal/r+d projects that you're working on at the moment?

tin&ed: We are taking part in an exhibiton called ‘surface: subject to change’ as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival.

tin: I’m working on a book on vomit, and an exhibition with a friend Pip at platform2.

What do you guys like doing in your spare time?

We don’t have that much free time but when we do, spending time with friends, living life.

tin&ed's GRAPHIC DESIGN TIPS

Do you guys have any words of wisdom for graphic design students or practitioners starting out?

Just do what you want to do, and be dedicated, work hard. But enjoy it.

Do you have any graphic design tips you've picked up along the way?

Yellow prints out green sometimes when you convert it from RGB to CMYK.

FUTURE

Are there any projects you'd like to work on or things you'd like to do in the future?

Top secret.

Are there other areas tin&ed might venture into, in the future? (eg film making, web design, set design, industrial design etc)

Anything and everything, we’re doing some art based stuff at the moment, and want to do some short films in the near future.

Where do you guys want to take tin&ed (eg in terms of scale, and direction?)

Can’t imagine it being a huge studio, has to remain quite personal. We just want to continue doing what we want to do, having fun, being inspired.

Any plans to work overseas in the future? If so, where?

Yep, Guatamala. No we definitely want to start doing work for overseas clients, doesn’t matter where they are, that’s the plan.

View tin&ed's online gallery: http://www.chaosgeneration.com/gallery/tin&ed
or go directly to tin&ed's website at: http://www.tinanded.com.au