Featured Designer: Tiger and Hare

 

FK chats to Amanda and Maree from Melbourne based design label, Tiger and Hare

Can you tell us how you met and began your label, Tiger and Hare?
We met each other while doing our graphic design degrees at Swinburne Uni. We both had big dreams of starting up our own little business selling gorgeous homewares and handmade books. However work life and travel adventures took over and it was not for another 10 years that our business idea began to emerge again. We were in search of a fun, creative outlet from our everyday jobs and we had all these ideas that never saw light of day. It was only when we tried out screenprinting that we knew this was the direction we wanted to head in as we could have fun with our designs and illustrations plus experiment with colours and techniques and apply it to various materials. Consequently, Tiger and Hare was born!

What are your individual backgrounds?
Amanda is originally from Singapore and moved to Melbourne to go to uni. After graduating, she stayed on in Melbourne to work at various design companies and is currently freelancing in packaging and corporate design. Maree is a Melbourne girl who has freelanced as a graphic designer as well as worked in various retail and administration positions. When it came to naming the business we thought the name Tiger and Hare worked as a nice combination of our backgrounds using our Chinese Horoscopes.

What do you love most about living in Melbourne?
Melbourne is a great place to live. It’s a real creative hub that just seems to keep growing with so many talented artists and designers. There is always something new to discover, whether its a cute little shop you stumble across or a funky cafe or bar that you never knew existed.

Who and what inspires you?
Travel is definitely a huge inspiration for both of us. We love to get away and explore new cultures and discover their unique design style, food and shopping. But also we find that simple things like everyday life and nature are great sources of inspiration too. We also love reading blogs, checking out beautiful illustrations and art. Camilla Engman, Lotta Jansdotter, FiFi Lapin are a few of our favourites.

What advice would you give to others about running your business and balancing being creative?
We enrolled in a mentor business course which really opened our eyes to all of the different areas involved in running a business. Coming from a creative background doesn’t prepare you for all of the other skills required to build a business. Lots of hours are put into the business side of things, research, production and even packing orders, sometimes the creative bit gets pushed to the bottom of the list so it’s good to tear yourself away from the computer and go sit outside with a sketch book and draw.

What can we expect from Tiger and Hare this year?
This year we plan to release some new cute and funky designs, introduce some more items into our product range and venture into wholesale. Lots happening and the to do list keeps getting longer, but an exciting year to look forward to.

www.tigerandhareonline.com

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