Studio Visit: Mike and Maaike
Located in a clandestine storefront in a sunny San Francisco neighborhood sits the working studio of Mike and Maaike, a design duo making a name for themselves in the colorful world of product, furniture, and environment design.
The pair, whose full names are Maaike Evers and Mike Simonian, first met while working at a consultancy in Columbus, Ohio called Fitch, and started collaborating on side projects soon thereafter. Simonian and Evers used there time together during off hours as an experimental outlet, an alternative to the client-driven world of consulting where mistakes were welcome and corporate tenets like workflow efficiency and hourly billing took a back seat to the creative process.
Time passed, jobs came and went, though their explorations continued. After several years of slugging it out in the consultancy world, and an enlightening presentation at the RIT, they decided to make the leap and start their own venture. The revelation came after sifting through hundreds of slides, and the realization that of the dozens of ideas Simonian and Evers had generated, only a handful of the designs were actually made. Moreover, they liked an even smaller fraction of the completed products.
It was the ideas left on the cutting room floor that lead to the formation of Mike and Maaike. “We like the surprise”, says Maaike alluding to the unexpected developments born from such creative explorations. Casting off the constraints of the consultancy environment enabled the couple to digress, to pursue more eclectic concepts, which ultimately lead to more rich, narrative designs.
Mike and Maaike now split their time between straightforward client work and the more avant-garde one-offs that helped shape their experimental process. They’ve worked with companies such as Steelcase, Belkin, BlankBlank, and Council, and exhibit regularly with San Francisco-based gallery Velvet da Vinci. Click below to see a slideshow of their work.
The pair, whose full names are Maaike Evers and Mike Simonian, first met while working at a consultancy in Columbus, Ohio called Fitch, and started collaborating on side projects soon thereafter. Simonian and Evers used there time together during off hours as an experimental outlet, an alternative to the client-driven world of consulting where mistakes were welcome and corporate tenets like workflow efficiency and hourly billing took a back seat to the creative process.
Time passed, jobs came and went, though their explorations continued. After several years of slugging it out in the consultancy world, and an enlightening presentation at the RIT, they decided to make the leap and start their own venture. The revelation came after sifting through hundreds of slides, and the realization that of the dozens of ideas Simonian and Evers had generated, only a handful of the designs were actually made. Moreover, they liked an even smaller fraction of the completed products.
It was the ideas left on the cutting room floor that lead to the formation of Mike and Maaike. “We like the surprise”, says Maaike alluding to the unexpected developments born from such creative explorations. Casting off the constraints of the consultancy environment enabled the couple to digress, to pursue more eclectic concepts, which ultimately lead to more rich, narrative designs.
Mike and Maaike now split their time between straightforward client work and the more avant-garde one-offs that helped shape their experimental process. They’ve worked with companies such as Steelcase, Belkin, BlankBlank, and Council, and exhibit regularly with San Francisco-based gallery Velvet da Vinci. Click below to see a slideshow of their work.
View a Slideshow of Mike and Maaike
Posted by: Christopher Bright on Mar 26, 08 at 12:00 PM PDT
