FeedMeCoolShit.com » Babekühl Design Boutique

Babekühl Design Boutique

This week we interview Sam Painter, Billy Ryan and Pat Santamaria, Directors of Babekühl Design Boutique.

FMCS: Hi tells us a little bit about yourselves and your backgrounds. (Don’t make it up… we don’t want to hear the cave/sheep/spaceship story again).

We come from very different artistic backgrounds; Pat spent his teenage years painting train carriages, Sam developed his illustrative styles in fine arts schools, and Billy has been messing around with video, animation and motion graphics since he can remember.

We’re just a bunch of friends who share some ideas.

FMCS: Where are you currently living? And where are you working from?

We live in Sydney, working by the beach, a couple of minutes from our city’s cultural centre.

FMCS: Why design? Why the internet? Why Babekühl on both? And more importantly how did this wonderful project develop?

Because of our diverse artistic backgrounds, our collaborative work has always lent itself to multimedia applications. We met at Uni where we were all studying Media in 2002. At that point, we just started hanging out, jamming on projects, ideas, collaborations, and whatever else we could think about doing.

Babekuhl went from being a loose creative crew, to a proper company in 2003 when we finished Uni and decided we didn’t want to work for real (we also realised we could make some coin out of our work).

Since then we have continued with the same ethos that we developed together at Uni – mashing styles, techniques and concepts.

FMCS: Is it true that you guys don’t design anything for Babekühl anymore and in-fact you have a group of dwarfs to do all that dirty stuff?

For shizzle. Dwarfs have no union, and they’re cheap to feed because they’re so small. Also, owning dwarfs is a good party trick whenever we’re entertaining ladies.

FMCS: We love the design style you guys are pushing how did that materialize?

Thank you! Our style comes mainly from hanging out with each other so much. We are each into a lot of different things – it all finds its way into our work.

Also, we don’t forget about our old influences and discard them, we just keep adding to them. What we have now is such a ridiculous melting pot of ideas and styles that we’re not even sure what’s going on ourselves!

FMCS: How are you guys looking to push the company in the future what intentions do you have to make Babekühl a stand out success? Obviously competitions strong these days!

There is a lot of inspiring stuff going on these days, if you think of it as competition then it can seem a bit intimidating. But then again, I don’t think we’ve even begun to scratch the surface of what we are capable of.

We’ll just keep working on developing our styles and techniques as we have in the past, and try to never become complacent or stagnant. That is the most important thing for us.

FMCS: How do you see design especially net based design in this day? Are there any developments which excite you guys? And developments you’re keeping a close watch on?

When it comes to web, we definitely lean towards that clean style of design favoured by the Fins and the Swedes – your website can be about shit as long as it looks nice.

We appreciate all types of net based design, but we’re mostly into flash ourselves, so the most exciting developments for us are what is happening in the newer versions: integrating video and flash and that sort of thing. It’s great that the web has become more diverse and multimedia oriented and we no longer need to worry about dial up or 800×600 Res (we don’t anyway) – flash has become a lot more fun for us to use.

Billy is excited about High Definition (HD) video hardware becoming more accessible – it will be interesting to see what people do with the technology.

FMCS: Mobile communications are increasingly becoming more visual widening the channels for creatives to express themselves individually and in business… How do you guys view this new medium?

It’s about time. Although, Pat doesn’t even have a mobile phone, so maybe we can’t talk.

FMCS: What projects are you working on right now? What can we expect from Babekühl in the near future?

Although we’re always trying to move forward, we think its really important for us to keep in touch with our roots. That means working on canvasses, objects, sneaker customisations, drawing, painting, etc etc.

We’re talking at the moment about putting together an online publication, holding an exhibition, putting on parties and launches and stuff like that. That’s on top of all our usual client and multimedia work which we still love.

FMCS: Does the design and creative scene where you’re at inspire you? Or do you look further afield?

We’re really lucky our everyday network of connections and friends consists of artists, musicians, promoters, illustrators, fashion and jewellery designers and all sorts of creative/design types.

It seems like everyone is doing something interesting at the moment and its great to be an active part of this little scene that is happening around us.

Having said that, we’re also really mindful of what is going on around the world- you don’t want to get too caught up in your own world and forget about the incredible shit that is happening all over the place.

FMCS: What motivates you? (Apart from cold hard cash and all-woman volleyball)

The life that we’ve got now is pretty ridiculously fun. Maintaining this sort of shit and building upon it is something we’re all looking forward to.

FMCS: Who flicks your switch? And how do you kick back?

Our lives are pretty chilled out.

FMCS: Inspirations?

Kung fu, video clips, Chinese lollies, hi-tops, graffiti, anime, asterix, pop, architecture, industrial wastelands, electro, myspace!, the bang gang, girls!