Creative Spaces — Fox & Co. Wellington
Creative Spaces is a series exploring New Zealand creative and design workplaces, giving you a sneak peak into the space and behind-the-scenes.
This series is proudly brought to you by Atomic Coffee – Fuelling creativity.
In the third of this series we went into Fox & Co. — a Wellington-based creative motion design studio, and had a chat with Phyo Thu, Founder and Creative Director, and Melissa Buisan, Producer.
Set up in 2015, Fox & Co. is a collective of talented folk gathered together by a common passion for motion graphics.
Phyo and Melissa
Do you have daily rituals?
Every Monday we have a check-in meeting with the whole team – catch up on each other’s weekends and come up with a game plan for the week. In terms of daily rituals, it’s imperative that we have coffee brewing no later than 8:35am and that we’ve picked out our Spotify playlist for the day (current favourites include We Be Vibin, Mellow Beats and Khalid). Can’t have an uncaffeinated or quiet office…
What’s your favourite thing about your space?
Open concept, natural light, lots of plants, these are a few of our favourite things… And, lucky for us, they’re all incorporated into our work space. Working in a creative industry, it is vital to have a space that encourages creativity and that’s definitely something we’ve embraced at the Fox&Co office. Another favourite, the newest office addition: our office puppy, Harley the Pug!
Do you have an artefact you keep in the studio that has special meaning to you?
Phyo likes to collect designer vinyl toys and is also obsessed with astronauts. We have an astronaut print called “Hypostasis” painted by Jeremy Geddes (a Melbourne based artist) as well as a 12-inch dead astronaut gangsta art toy from Ashley Wood (yes, you read that right). We’re definitely fans of unusual and quirky art, which you can see colourfully displayed throughout our office.
Walk us through your creative or design process.
Our process for a typical project consists of three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. The creative process falls in the pre-production phase while design is the production phase for us.
As a smaller team, we rely on everyone’s ideas and input and really embrace a team effort when it comes to brainstorming and concepting. Once an idea is approved, we begin the design process. The first step in this phase is for our Art Director / Graphic Designer to nail down the look and feel of the creative and then share it with the rest of the team who provide internal feedback (to say we’re particular about our work is an understatement, in a good way).
Once the style is approved, we can get down to the nitty gritty. For us, it’s easiest to break down the project into small tasks, using apps such as Asana and Harvest. Approaching a large project in smaller steps not only streamlines our process, it also allows for more efficient collaboration and communication, which are key in creating work we are proud of. Throw in a couple rounds of client feedback and voilà!
What do you do or where do you go when you get stuck?
We’re lucky to live and work in a time where inspiration is literally at our fingertips. One of our go to places to turn to when we’re in a creative rut is Motion Graphics Collective. Not only is it an awesome publishing platform for motion designers, it also collates the top content from Instagram and displays it an easily accessible hub. We also frequent Behance and Vimeo as well as sites like Motionographer to keep up to date with the latest trends, projects and techniques. There really is no shortage of amazing content and resources to keep us inspired.
Images thanks to Kyoko Locussol.
