Edinburgh is not a city with a great variety of concept stores. When it comes to independent places hosting a nicely curated selection of high-class products from designers and creatives from across the globe, only few come to mind.
This is the case of Life Story, a concept store owned and run by designers and partners in life Fee and Adam Storey. It brings together a contemporary collection of clothing, shoes, jewellery, homeware, furniture & taxidermy, making the store a must-shopping destination in the Scottish capital.
Two young designers, Amy Dolan and Fiona Purves, are bringing their products together and hosting a Pop-up Shop in Edinburgh, to celebrate their businesses’ first birthdays.
Amy rescues old, forgotten pieces of vintage furniture and gives them a new lease of life through lots of TLC and fun blocks of colour. Fiona is the owner of stationery business Paper Aeroplane. Inspired by life’s little quirks, she uses her colourful and playful hand-drawn illustrations and lettering to create cards and prints that are to be treasured forever.
This is the first time that the full Ziggy Sawdust and Paper Aeroplane ranges will be shown in their entirety and the main aim the project is to reflect on the exciting year both businesses have had, and also act as a way to start their second year of trading on a positive note.
“The first year in business is notoriously the hardest, but the fact that we are still here and still extremely passionate about what we do is something we feel to be worth celebrating”, says Amy. “We don’t want our Pop-up Shop to just be our products in a space. We want to create an engaging environment that people can walk into and really get a sense of what our businesses are all about. We want to take this opportunity to show you what it is we are capable of.”
Oisín Share is an Irish graphic designer based in Manchester, UK. Though Oisín specialises in print-based projects, he also creates corporate identities and other communication imagery for art exhibitions, and photography for leading international publications.
Oisín is the first to contribute to our new One Question Interview.
What is the most exciting thing about working in the creative industries? What do you enjoy about being a freelance graphic designer? What are the challenges?
I think I still have the mentality of someone who’s just flown the nest, in that seeing my work out in the real world is still a tremendous thrill. The more creative work I do in the industry, the more I get to see it out there around me, which is something I might never get used to.
At present, a lot of the design work I do is for small independent businesses in my local community and it’s exciting and encouraging to see something that was previously a thought in my head or a pixel montage onscreen, to suddenly being in the hands of people around me.
Working as a freelance creative is something I never thought I would do, and each day I am so thankful I get to do it – it really is close to ‘living the dream’. I always feared there were already enough designers out there going it alone, and perhaps not enough clients out there to merit our efforts, but I have (thankfully) been proven wrong. It is an industry like any other, and the same rules apply to it that would to a coffee bar or bakery: supply and demand, quality and skill, and passion. It’s incredible to be making a living doing what I have a passion for, it’s something I know is rare in the diverse world of careers. I really do my best to make what I do for people as great as it can be, no matter who the audience. It comes with countless challenges though – the leading one of course being financial. Every project comes alongside a tiring chase for payment, or even uncomfortable janglings of terms and agreements during the quotations and invoices. And of course, the famous ‘clients from hell’. When I realised that most of my work would be directed by clients and infrequently self initiated, it really drove me to ensure I had other parts of my life to exhibit creativity or follow other interests of mine. I’ve been lucky to finally get a website of mine off the ground after years of mulling it over – the European Post – which keeps every day colourful and diverse. I am oddly obsessed with European identity, news and politics and decided to create a site that combines these things. So many designers out there illustrate and create little elements that together add to a wonderful collection of updates and visuals, documenting this continent around us.
It’s certainly a challenge to ensure that I don’t treat freelancing as a job and nothing more, but at that, it’s a challenge that I’m indeed lucky to have. There are few things as energising as an enjoyable challenge, don’t you think?
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