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Focal Point: Working in chalk and cheese with Studio C&C

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Studio C&C is design duo Adam and Donal, who complement each other's strengths to produce collaborative design, art, publishing and fashion pieces. Their trippy, tropical style caught our eye...

First off tell us who you guys are, what you create and why:

Studio C&C is Adam Bletchly and Donal Sturt. It is a platform for experimental art and design projects, commercial work and collaborations. We work with people whose work we like and vice versa.

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You work across the mediums of design, publishing and art. How important is this crossover to you?

For us it is exciting to see our work in as many different mediums as possible. The crossover between art, design and fashion is where things get really exciting.

There is a huge community of creatives in London doing all sorts of interesting things. We live, work and party with these people on a daily basis, so projects seem to form quite naturally. We choose the medium that we are going to work in based on the nature of each individual project. Sometimes the result is a 100 page book in a fluorescent yellow velcro envelope, sometimes it’s an animated GIF and sometimes it's a cocktail pitcher.

Working with the girls from Bonnie Fechter was great fun. Seeing our designs translated into embroidered jumpers as well as all over jogging bottoms was hugely rewarding!

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Do you have any freaky rituals, mantras or habits when you receive a new brief?

We put a huge amount of thought and consideration into our output whilst trying not being too precious about the final outcome. We prefer to see our output as a fluid evolution of our ideas and process. In some cases we'll work on something until it's 'finished'.

We usually approach projects in a collaborative manner and play to each of our strengths. Sometimes 'commissioning' each other in house, for example one of us could be working on something but decide to pull in the others strengths for a certain element. Donal struggles with his attention span of about three seconds but occasionally manages to stay focused for just a little bit longer. Adam is more the draftsman and can prepare documents for print like you have never seen. Between us we manage but alone we would fail.

Sometimes one of us will draw something and the other will copy it but with a new approach. Working collaboratively is great, we can get projects finished twice as quickly and it prevents things from becoming stale.

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If someone said you could only produce work in one medium for the rest of your career, what would you chose?

Chalk & cheese.

What's the dynamic like in your studio?

Only ever half serious. Italo Disco. malnourished plants. Occasionally stressful. Lots of visitors.

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Tell us about your S.A.D project, it looks fun!

The aim of the S.A.D publication was to act as a sort of rescue pack for the coldest and darkest months of winter. An acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder - something which affects pretty much everybody. It's a completely OTT anthology of illustration, design and comics, full of our own work as well as over 30 other creatives. The brief was to create something colourful that explored the idea of S.A.D in a way personal to the person creating it.

It was an extremely intense non-profit project that took the best part of a year to put together. Each book was painstakingly assembled by hand and came in a handmade screen-printed envelope that sealed using velcro. It was an edition of 100.

Then we threw a tropical themed launch party at Protein in February 2015 to cheer everyone up. It seemed to go down pretty well!

If you're a bit stuck what's the one thing that inspires you?

We are based in London and love everything about this place (apart from the price tag). It holds the inspiration behind so much of what we create, from dodgy shop signs and discarded okra boxes on Rye Lane to obscure church logos and coach graphics. There are so many silly yet beautiful things to look at, it's pretty overwhelming if you keep your eyes open.

If we have downtime though, you’ll most likely find Adam in the National Gallery or British Museum. He'll be looking at Renaissance art, Dutch still life and Greco Roman sculpture whilst listening to Legowelt.

Donal is more likely to be in an Asian supermarket in Elephant & Castle shopping centre, collecting sweet wrappers and looking at packs of miscellaneous vacuum-packed snacks (probably listening to Novelist's Toddla T freestyle for the eighth time that morning).

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