Luise from Container Plus

Dear Gemma,

please find answers below.

I hope they are helpful.

Apologies again for late reply.

Best wishes,

Luise

On 19 May 2010, at 21:57, Gemma Beaven wrote:

Hello Luise!

I would love for you to answer my questions as they will definitely be still relevant. I would like to continue viewing your work and use you as inspiration for other projects as i study into my third year, so any advice or input would be much appreciated!

Many Thanks!

Gemma

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I was also wondering (if you do decide to reply) if i could possibly get your permission to show this email and your reply on my blog?

It's fine if you want to show it on your blog.

These are the questions I would really like to ask you:

What sort of things inspire your work? whether it's designers, illustrators, environments or themes?

Our work is inspired by things outside of the arena of illustration. Illustration is a medium and not content. All 3 of us read a lot of fiction, we all love immersive storytelling, so we try and create an atmosphere in our projects that takes you out of the everyday. Usually we start by having conversations - bouncing things backwards and forwards between each other. We pick up each other's threads. I might have seen something at an art gallery that links to some film Nicola has watched which in turn relates to some childhood memory of Patricia's. Between the three of us we can weave a web of ideas.

How would you describe your working method or style?

We combine illustration, photography, set design and performance to create immersive narrative pieces or environments.

How do you work so well as a team?

We listen to each other.

We understand each other's strengths and weaknesses.

We bring each other cake.

But the most important thing is listening.

There is no place for big egos in a group.

What project/client did you enjoy the most and has made you want to push your work even further?

We really enjoyed working on the website for The Assembly Agency.

We were challenged as designers, as the client kept asking if there was a better way of doing it.

Because the deadline wasn't prohibitively tight we were forced to redo things a number of times - with a really strong result (we think).

We were also challenged technically. We worked with a programmer to build the site in flash, but we had to prepare all the assets and do some stopframe animation. To be able to do that we had to understand the whole process of web programming, which was initially hard.

Thank you for taking the time to read my email, as I've said i'm a MASSIVE fan of your work and i'd love to hear any input or advice you have as illustrators.

I look forward to your reply,

Best wishes

Gemma Beaven