balcony design: February 2006

New canvas painting - Reggae queen

Fl.ag magazine interview on Balcony

FL.ag: Let me start by asking you how the both of you got together on Balcony?

Des: We both had this idea in our minds for years.
JT: The Idea was rather sudden and we do not wish to shelf it any longer, the rest came on pretty naturally. We sat down, trashed out ideas and started conceptualizing our first collection “ The Minamalist Collection”
Des: Yeah, definitely we had our fair share of hiccups and screw ups, but it kind of just spurred us to move further and faster. In fact the first design “Balcony” surfaced on our very first day!
JT: Exactly, Des got a good shot of a balcony somewhere in Thailand and we like it so much we named ourselves Balcony.

FL.ag: Describe the moment when the both of you conceptualised Balcony.

JT: Ideas kept storming into our mind.
Des: It was so fast that we had to jot down what we thought of, forgetful people. Subconciously, we had the idea there, we wanted to develop and design tees that carry a certain aura and charisma. They all had a meaning somehow, that’s why we chose to name all our designs. Tees with souls, that is what we want.
JT: Basically inspiration for us are derived from our daily lives, things we see and how we perceive.
Initially we revolved around mixed concept, fusing 2 totally different culture, feel or era together. This way things become fresh and innovated.

FL.ag: Tell us more about the idea behind the Minimalist collection and the Baltasy collection.

Des: Basically the Minimalist collection revolve around traditional cultures/era/feel, that’s where we draw our inspiration from. Colours and print used were subtle.
JT: Baltasy collection has been a very well received collection, here’s where we sneaked into the fantasy world. Creating designs that held a mystical feel. Personally we both like this collection a lot too. Who knows, we might do “Baltasy 2” .

FL.ag: How important is product packaging as far as the buyer is concerned?

Des: we always believe consumers will make the wise choice of getting something
unique and nicely packaged. It will be good if the product is not overly mass produced. You wouldn’t want to be caught in a situation where everyone in town wears the same as you. We rather focus on unique packaging. Product design, an area we hope to develop further in the future.

FL.ag: And we hear 'The Cell 2' is out. Tell us more about it.

JT: Definitely one of our favorite packaging, we love wood and so this time round we incorporate that into “The Cell 2”. The tees are encased in a 12cm x 12cm ply cube. Portraying the timeless, classic element.

FL.ag: 2006 looks like a promising year for Balcony with new designs on the production line - Sneaker, Revolution, Rebel and Execution. What can we expect?

Des: We are in the midst of experimenting with various new techniques and designs, I am sure more illustrative designs will be coming along, we might stray away from vector designs for the moment.
We will be working on more graphic artwork and we might take a step further and produce fashion based tees. It is an exciting year for us also as SoDa , a graphic design magazine from Switzerland, featured Balcony in their 'Go East' issue.We are also looking forward to the book 'Tshirt360' from Barcelona to be published in April, which showcases our designs on an international platform.

FL.ag: Are there any collaborations on the horizon? Tell us who you would do anything to work with and what kind of a collaboration would it be?

JT: We are so busy lately that we haven’t had time to think about collaborations, however we figured a cross disciplinary design collaboration would be great.
Des: Right, a matter of time. Hah

FL.ag: We'll make the last one easy. As an artist where do you find your greatest source of inspiration?

Des: greatest inspiration lies within you. Freedom to express you can even find inspiration is the toilet. hah
JT: we travel, traveling exposes us to alot of stuffs and great design inspiration.On the contary, we like to say, “Never look too hard or too far for inspiration, it should be just beside you”

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