INTERVIEW NO. 8
Mildred & Duck
Australia
Introduction
We are Sigiriya Brown and Daniel Smith and together we run Mildred & Duck, a Melbourne-based graphic design and communication studio. We started our studio in 2011, and by keeping the size of our team to predominantly just the two of us we are able to be highly involved in all of your projects and take care of every single detail during the design process.
We work across a variety of sectors with a range of clients, designing for print, digital and environmental media, creating solutions that communicate and connect with people.
How do you describe your work?
We try to respond to each project we take on in a different way, it’s really important to us to move away from a heavily formulaic approach to design and let each project dictate the outcomes in a natural way. However, we always like to start with a clear vision and concept in response to any new brief, and then the design flows from there. Lasting design needs to come from a well-informed and highly researched place, so this initial phase that comes before we even begin designing anything is important to us.
A designer o studio you admire?
We admire the work of M/M Paris, a Paris-based agency run by Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag. We particularly like their ongoing collaborative work for Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk, and how they conceptually visually represent her music through typography, photography and illustration.
Both of us are also interested in design in a much broader sense than just graphic design, and how design (good or bad) can enhance or alter experiences. We are both really interested in architecture and interior design, along with product and object design. We find we take a lot of inspiration from things like colours and textures used in interior design, and in this way we try to incorporate our interest in design in a wider sense into the work our studio produces.
Could you tell us about any of your projects?
We recently finished the visual identity for Bicker, an interior design studio also based here in Melbourne. Our brief was to create a relaxed and approachable identity for Bicker that would serve as a clear visual support to their body of work.
We used a colour palette carefully selected to compliment the Bicker aesthetic, along with lowercase type and a playful design that doesn’t conform to the heirachy and convention often seen in identity and business card design. The result is a deceptively understated design that celebrates the approachability and warmth of the spaces Bicker create.
