Digital Issue 19: Studio Visit – U-P

Excerpt taken from Paper Journal Digital Issue 19, available to download now.

Elliott Webb: I recall a line on how we form meanings and social constructs—‘identity is formed through collision’, and it was a general remark about how we use language to form identity—that if you’re not in it, getting dirty, exchanging ideas, being corrected and having disputes, you don’t form new ideas about who you are, and adapt the meaning you apply to things and yourself. I guess that is an important thing with identity and branding work, that it must get a bit messy before you deliver a project.

Paul Marcus Fuog: Yes, it does! And that’s a really good point because design has to be open at both the beginning and the end, it can never be fully closed and fully resolved. I think that is exactly what we have an issue with; when design is absolute, a ‘here it is, you can frame it and put it on your wall moment’—that’s not what we are searching for. We’re not interested in what we do suffocating or dominating a space or the content, we want to leave space for other bits and pieces to sit next to it, either in harmony or in conflict with what we do. We like the idea that it can also expand into something else. It’s that openness that is important, to allow things to grow and evolve.

Uriah Gray: Openness is a really important aspect of our work and collision is a really interesting way to think about how we get there. 

A lot of your new work has utilised photography, is that something that  always sat alongside your work?

Paul Marcus Fuog: It’s not something either of us did but when Will Neill joined us, we started exploring how to involve photography in our practice. We had always been involved in art direction for photography but not with photography itself. We shoot predominantly on film. We’re interested in exploring the juxtaposition of the highly controlled, highly polished space of art direction and the grain and tactility of shooting on film. It’s the idea of being tight in some areas and letting go in others and seeing where it frays.

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