Meet Lab Partners, the illustration and design duo of Sarah Labieniec and Ryan Meis. They’re inspired by nature, traveling to new places, and the endless antics of their studio creatures. As Lab Partners, Sarah and Ryan work together as a means to share and explore what they love. (Oh, and did we mention they’re married? As a matter of fact, they met in art school.)
Prior to establishing Lab Partners, Sarah worked as an illustrator at San Francisco based stationer Hello!Lucky and also at design studio Tomorrow Partners. In addition to his Lab Partners duties, Ryan spends his days working as an art director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.
How did the two of you meet?
S: Ryan asked me to help him smuggle out ice cream from the campus cafeteria for a photography project, it was very smooth.
R: Very smooth, haha!
How would you describe your work in a couple of words?
Colorful and playful.
How do your working styles complement each other?
We have a pretty good system that just feels like second nature at this point. It involves at lot of passing of drawings and files back and forth so on most projects both our hands are pretty heavy in there. Sometimes one of us will be more of the lead on a project if it speaks to them and the other one will help out with smaller elements and the final stages.
How do your interests differ?
S: I really enjoy playing with pattern and color and lately Ryan has been interested in working in a sort of modified realism (such as seen in old posters and advertisements.) How these will come together we’re not sure, but we’re excited to see what happens. We always try to keep exploring, learning new approaches, and evolving our work. This keeps things fun and makes it easy to stay amped about what we do.
How does your energy level and process differ on an editorial job with a quick turn around vs. a project with extended deadlines?
The nice thing about an editorial piece is that it’s quick and you just have to go with your gut since you don’t have time to noodle every little thing. At the same time, we love projects that you can sit with and really give a lot of thought and care to. It’s nice when there’s enough time to step away from the project and come back to it a few days or weeks later. You’ll always be able to see what wasn’t working so much quicker and will often have a renewed energy toward it as well. We really like having a mix of both going on, it helps the workweek have a nice pace.
Who’s your latest design crush?
S: Kate Spade & Vera Neumann
R: Donald Brun & Herbert Leupin
Outside of design, what do you find inspirational?
S: We’ve been doing a bit of gardening in our back yard lately and that’s really been great. I grew up in a very wooded area and spent a lot of time outdoors for hours on end in my own little world when I was a kid. Being able to be out there planting and listening to the little hums of nature brings me back to that time which is nice when living in such an urban environment. Other than that, just little walks in San Francisco or our neighborhood, our feline studio companions, people watching, visiting foreign lands, and having fun in the kitchen. Sometimes the silliest and most random things inspire an idea, you just never know.
What art is hanging on your wall?
Donald Brun’s amazing Zwicky cat poster, a lovely painting by Jen Corace, and some great prints by Eight Hour Day, Tim Biskup, Susie Ghahremani, Office, and Jason Munn.
What are the latest tunes on your playlist?
The Mary Onettes, some Tchaikovsky, Georges Brassens, My Bloody Valentine, and a bit of Tony Bennett.
If you could do a different job for a day what would it be and why?
S: As a kid I dreamed of being a nature conservationist and studying big cats in the wild so I’d love to follow National Geographic explorers Beverly and Dereck Joubert around for a day.
R: I think I would like to try out building sailboats. I admire how the craft is built on a balance of both tradition and innovation.
You’re stuck or need a break from the studio, where do you go?
Most likely someplace food related! Taking a walk into the Piedmont hills which is behind our house and has lovely views of the bay, or grabbing noodles in Japantown and popping by the Kinokuniya bookstore.
What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
S: To type up a compilation of all the notes and scribbles we make after a client meeting or phone call. It makes you organize your thoughts a bit more while the meeting is still fresh in your head and is super helpful to refer back to later. I tend to write fast all over the page on calls so this has helped me immensely.
How do you know when you are done with a project?
S: This is something that has gotten easier over the years and it’s definitely a fine line between trying to make a piece the best that you can and overworking it so that it loses that initial spark and freshness that it had in the early stages. Often we’ll look back and dislike or laugh at some things we’ve made even a year or two in the past which I think happens to a lot of people, but you can’t get down about it, it’s all part of the process. We like to have the mindset that we should never get too comfortable with our work or feel that we’ve mastered something completely, that way we’re hopefully always learning and trying to push our work to be better.
See more inspiring work from Lab Partners here.
The AIGA San Diego Y-Conference is March 25 & 26, 2011 at The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego.
Spark your creativity and register today.
Return to Y16
Photos by Kirby Lau
