What is your first step when you start working on a project? And how do you resolve any doubts or difficulties you encounter during the actual production process?

DRThe first step is to talk with our client/collaborator about the project— whether that is a musical artist, a cultural institution, a wine shop, a sportswear brand—and about the world they want to create. Usually from that conversation we can gauge the sort of direction they would like to go in, so together we will go back and forth over Slack or WhatsApp discussing our ideas and then we both create visuals or concepts individually that we would then present to who we are working with. From there, they will usually select a specific direction eventually and then whatever idea they liked the best, the person who created that idea will take the lead and project manage, creative direct and design the campaign/project while asking for feedback from each other along the way and inputting where necessary. That is what we found works best for us—rather than sitting beside each other holding each other’s hands, it’s a more efficient way of working that allows us as a relatively small studio to manage multiple projects at once. We have each other if any issue arises so we don’t burden any difficulties alone.
MEIf it’s a client based project, we always make sure that we get some kind of face-to-face meeting whether that’s over Zoom or in-person. It just helps so much talking with a person: nothing is missed, and you get a feel for their personality which is hugely important to any project.

In 2020, your publishing arm, Waiting Room Press, released Not Dead or Famous Enough Yet, a monograph documenting the studio’s first decade. How did you perceive your own transition through your own aggregation of your activities and works? Also, were there any new themes or issues as the studio that you found yourself facing in the process?

DRWe used to make lists every year of “unachievable goals” and at the end of every year, we would look back and see if we ever achieved them. I think on the first or second year—almost twelve years ago now— we wrote “make a DR.ME book”.

Fast forward ten years later, in the midst of a pandemic we found ourselves with a bit more time on our hands than usual, so we decided to attempt to achieve this goal. It feels like cleaning out our closet. The act of documenting the first ten years of a studio that we had built together in print, all together, in one place for the first time was almost in a way like wiping the slate clean—like what’s next? If anything, it pushed the studio forward and made us more hungry to make even better work. On the 2014 list we had “exhibition in Japan”— I feel like this interview is pretty close to that.
MEWe were writing in the midst of the first UK lockdown so I guess it came at a good time as the amount of work we had was less than it might have been. It was a real undertaking: a mostly mental, but sometimes physical, archeological dig through the years of the studio.