Behind the scenes Tobias van Schneider X Unsplash
The other day we released our summary of the collaboration between Tobias van Schneider and Unsplash on their new sweatshirt. We were super pleased that when we sent the article over to the team at Unsplash that they were pumped to chat and discuss the collaboration in an interview format.
We spoke with Annie Spratt who is head of curation on the site. She’s also a blogger and photographer who lives in the New Forest, UK and works remotely as part of the Unsplash team. You can find her twitter here.
If you enjoy this interview, hit that heart button below ❤ Would mean a lot to us and it helps other people see the story.
How did the collaboration develop, was it one of the two of you proposing a plan or more of a mutual love for each other’s design and work?
We have always been fans of Tobias’ work, and he’s been an Unsplash member and supporter for quite some time. Not only do we support each other’s work, but we’ve been friends with Tobias and enjoy the creative work that he puts out. After a recent trip to visit us in Montreal, Tobias brought up the idea of working on a collaboration together, and we couldn’t have been more excited!
What was it like working on something with some distance between you, did you ever have any time zone issues (we saw Tobias was travelling recently)?
Most of the Unsplash team is remote, so we are completely used to working remotely. Tobias also has experience with this, as his cofounder for Semplice is also remote. We found it to be very easy to manage the project remotely, and used tools like Trello, Slack and Google docs :)
It must have taken a while to design and create, what was chosen first, the design or the material for production?
The Urban Exploration idea was decided from the very beginning, since it represents a lot of what Unsplash is all about. You can read more about that here and here. Tobias was inspired by the original Unsplash sweatshirt so that was also decided early on, and the design came shortly after.
We love the colourway you’ve chosen but we wonder if you ever considered any others? Maybe a grey that’s more urban (road) colour?
We are huge fans of the black and red — for us, it represents excitement, urban, discovery, exploration and a feeling of wanderlust. We definitely had a few different types of design directions, but black was always one that stuck with us from the very beginning.
What’s next for Unsplash collaborations? Any insider information? Or maybe another VanSchnieder collab?
Maybe! We’ll continue to work with members of our community in different ways since we’re all about collaboration, supporting and being creative!
And we’re always open to working with Tobias again — it was a real pleasure, and we had a lot of fun.
