B) Could you tell me briefly about the evolution of SidebySide studio and ow you came to work together?
D) I've know Ollie since year 7 so since we were 11 and we did school together, became friends, did college together and did university together and went off to work for different studios in Sheffield, then 4 and a half years ago we came together and decided the time is right to give us a shot. We had kind of reached a ceiling at where we were working before and got a bit fed up of working for 'the man' and people who wanted to dictate how we worked like sales people and got a bit fed up.
D) I worked in a low end design company just knocking stuff out for you know builders and plumbers and small businesses who just wanted business cards and flyers and stuff and so we just got to the point where we were sick of working with that sort of client who didn't really respect design all that much.
B) How did you find starting out on your own?
D) We weren't as scared as we thought.
O) We just jumped in pretty much, we planned it out for a few months and kept our jobs.
D) Ollie got sacked. So that pushed us a little bit quicker and then the first few months were all about getting out there and meeting poeple secretly trying to tap up our old clients from the other places and sell them the dream and that worked so we've been on a gradual upward road ever since.
O) We keep having to remind oursleves why we set sidebyside up and when we get a bit stressed or fed up or something happens we can do it the way we want to do it which is a good position to be in.
D) And we can say no to some stuff that doesn't seem as interesting. So we have the control. And that's why we've been burning grapes and stuff.
O) It's a nice position to be in, we get paid to do something which just feels like you're messing about with your best mate which is good.
D) We're happy that after 4 years we're doing something which is exactly what we'd want to be doing. We're not struggling and we're not taking on crap just to pay the bills.
B) Have you always been in this building?
D) Yes we have. In the first 6 months we were just working in kitchens on tables. Until we found this place that had just been renovated and we got in early doors and got nice cheap ass rent and we expanded into this room. Because as a couple of 25 year olds we needed something to give clients a good impression that we weren't just two young lads messing about.
B) How do your skills compliment or contrast with each others?
D) We have a very similar mentality in terms of end product and the sort of level that that should be at and how we get to that end product can sometimes be very different, i've not really ever considered how we compliment or contrast.
O) No we don't really necassarily have a set of different skills we just try it. try anything. You kmow Dave didn't do a degree in burning grapes but we are grafters and we're open to try anything and try new things.
D) We get oerly excited by a lot of things which just keeps spurring us on really. Doing things we've never done before is what interests us and then moving onto the next thing really, so we don't really want to try and become into a certain style we just want to try lots of stuff.
B) Have any projects changed your outlook on design?
D) Possibly the Grimm and Co. Project that we worked on because it showed us that design can be more than just selling things. Grimm and Co. is a charity that helps young peopel learn how to write stores and its a really inspiring place and what they're doing as a charity is amazing. And that was just quite a humbling project to be part of because it wasn't about just selling stuff or making an accountant look better.
O) It was design for good. you read a lot about how design can cange the world but that's the only thing that we've really done that made us feel like it could. Humbling was a good work for that one. Good project.
B) What's been your most satisfying project to date?
D) I think in a way it's always like the last project because we're always trying to better ourselves and even though Grimm and Co was amazing at the time that was a year ago now so we'd probably do something different this time if we not visited it.
O) But we never really finish do we?
D) No it's still ongoing, this is what we're working on today a little project for them and that's a great project for us because it's real end to end branding from the identity through to the products through to thr interiordesign of the place down to what the shop smelt like and the sounds in it so it was a really imersive experience for a brand so that took us to the next level in our career I guess because we started to see things on a bigeer picture. SO yeah that was a real nice one.
B) Does sidebyside studio have a motto?
D) Just do good shit. That was a bit of a motto that came around about 3 years ago in the first year when we found the best way of winning new work was to just do good shit because if you do good shit other good shit will happen.
B) If your studio had a mascot what would it be?
O) Thats a curve ball isn't it! erm.....gonna have to have a think about this. What did other people say?
B) You're the only people I've asked this
O) Do we look like the kind of people who would have a mascot?
D) I was looking at the stereo because music is an important part, we always have the stereo on. And the coffee machine.
O) If we had a mascot it would be a musical coffee machine. That is the answer!
B) What music do you usually have on?
D) We listen to far too much music to the point where we've completed music.
O) We've completed music.
D) We've listened to everything and that is the plus and the minus point of having spotify. It ruins your musical excitement. You don't get excited anymore. But er yeah a real big variety of stuff. Hip-hop wednesday. We don't have pop on that's probably the only stuff we don't listen to commercial pop. We have throwback thursday so give it 20 years and that stuff will probably be throwback.
B) What sort of opportunities do you think Sheffield as a city has to offer to young designers?
O) Very little. We didn't settle on sheffield. We're from Sheffield. We've lived here and we've never moved away from it. We never went to London. I don't know why? Its a very long way away.
D) I couldn't be bothered.
O) But in Sheffield it's easy to make yourself a big fish in a small pond as opposed to down there you're a small fish in a big pond.
D) Yeah, so there is the opportunity to make a name for yourself.
O) And everything is on the internet these days anyway. We get people coming to us from al over the place. Not because we're in sheffield but because of our online presence. Like at the moment we have this guy from America who wants us to do some stuff. Has nothing to do with where we are. We just like Sheffield as a city, we live here, it is a great city and you don't really realise you just take it for granted. Like we go to somewhere else and we go ahhhh when we get back. It's quite nice to flirt with other cities but Sheffield is nice to come back to.
D) It's all opportunity and opportunity is what you make of it like there wasn't a particular opportunity here for us other than to stand out from quite a lot of average studios.
O) The further you look, it's deeper than you think, just with a bit of fluff.
D) There's a handful of studios doing it right or they want to do it their own way. It is what you make it.
B) So basically it doesn't matter where you are as long as you get your work out there?
D) Well it depends, you could be in London but if you're doing crap design you're going to be in the exact same position. But it's much more expensive.
B) Where is your favorite place in Sheffield to go to get inspired?
D) We go down to Victoria Keys a lot, don't we?
O) We do yeah
D) That's just over here on our end.
O) It tends to be the grottier areas of sheffield aswell that we go to. We did a project with street words which were graffiti, little words, and phrases people write. And you tend to find those in the less affluent areas which is what we quite like. It's a great city theres lots of character, theres lots of amazing buildings and places we've never been in Sheffield so there's loads to get from it and then you have the peak district and all that kind of thing, but I'm not gonna make out that we're walkers because we're not but yeah we like going down to the keys and trying to get away from it. See the canal boats. Think of another life where you could just own a boat and sail away. Yeah there's lots of cool little places.
B) What do you hope for Sheffield as a city in the future?
O) That it gets people who are a bit younger and enthusiastic making some decisions and driving it forward.
D) yeah. Other business owners that are..
O) Want to push it and not just be stagnant and go for it. It's exciting when you see someone come up who wants to do that.
D) It would be nice for clients with slightly bigger budgets but that's only gonna come with bigger investments.
O) When sheffield win the premier league.
B) Looking back is there any advice that you would give to yourself as a young designer starting out?
O) Stop comparing yourself to other people. Especially these days it's very easy to look on Instagram and see what someone else has done and what other people are doing. 'we need to be doing that' and we've done that ourselves loads. So the realisation that that is the perfect polished world and it's not real. We go through stress, we go through pitfalls and it's all a part of life learning. So that's something that I personally have realised.
D) and as a younger designer think i wish I'd known that designers can be DICKS. As general people I'd sy that 80% of the designers I've met are fucking dicks and then it's so easy to get disheartened when you're a young designer sending off your portfolio and not getting responses and stuff like that and that's usually because everyone is just a fucking dick. And I wish someone had just told me that so i could take everything with a pinch of salt and not that I'm doing something wrong.
O) Yeah I think that's the old school mentality when you put all these designers on a pedestal and treat them like they're rock stars when in matter of fact they're just normal people. And everyone has to start out somewhere. Designers are dicks apart form us.
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