Sharing the desk with your partner ❤️
Notes from the talk we held at Blend 2017.
1/3
Hey, we’re https://illo.tv/ a design and animation studio based in beautiful Turin, Italy. We’re very honoured for having had the chance to talk at Blend this year. So a special thank must go to Jorge, Teresa, Claudio & Sander for organising an event where every detail was just perfect.
For those who were there in Vancouver, and for those who weren’t fast enough to get a ticket (as the event sold out in just 12 hours!) we’re sharing our 25 minutes speech divided into 3 small articles, respectively focusing on how we started working together (being a couple creatively and affectively), on how we built our team and on how we ended up sharing our desk with machines, thank to our automated video project https://algo.tv/.
This is the first one, focusing on what looks like to share the desk with your significant other.
Let’s get started!
❤️
2012
This is when we started ILLO — but at that time the name we picked for the studio was crazy: ilenoliukgo.
Trust us, this wasn’t a random choice of letters to spot a .com domain available. It was the unfortunate acronym of our names and random people were asking us all the time (1) are you Japanese 🇯🇵 (2) are you Swedish 🇸🇪 (3) can you change your name pleeeeease?
We guess this is another story. Just, if you’re willing to start a studio or a company and you’re stuck finding the right name, our suggestion is don’t give a fuck about it — start doing things, the right name will find you soon.
So we started our company on our very own names, because -you know- at that time our studio was made of just the 2 of us.
When we funded the studio we have already been a couple since 8–9 years — according to different historical interpretations.
A LOT
Now we’re together since almost 14 years, we got married, but above all we’ve been business partners since almost 5, that’s way more tough.
If you’re considering the chance of working in couple, consider this first:
👍 Pros
Straightforward communication Great stability if ❤️
Seeing each other 24/7👎 Cons
Excessively straightforward communication.
Crazy lack of stability if 💔
Seeing each other 24/7
Consider that you’re going to fight for:
contract terms / the order of keynote slides / color palettes / dishwasher / using slack or not / quote a work / laundry…
One of our favourite casus belli is the selection of the thumbnail of a portfolio update. For a thing like this, one of us can easily sleep on the couch for at least one night.
On the other hand, jokes aside, although sleeping on the couch was real shit — we think that having different visions and being able to always have an open debate on what matters, and finally agree on one version, is one of our keys of success.
Nowadays we’re taking care of different aspects of the studio, we happen to be less operational and more keynote-people, but sometimes we’re still working together on direction, sets, and on the Algo projects.
This is one of the last pieces we directed and worked on together (of course, with other talented team members) — which we fought for and are pretty happy about.
So, how is sharing your desk with your partner? Hard — but in the end it’s the most trustable partner you could have.
Continue reading our Blend talk wrap-up in the second article focusing on how we built our team.
👉 https://medium.com/@illotv/sharing-the-desk-with-a-team-b04aceea84eb
