Our Putting Pen To Paper series, features different individuals & showcases what they use their favourite notebook for. It could be for to-do lists, sketching, design, song writing, illustrations, notes, daily gratitudes & everything in between. This month we went inside the notebooks of Annabel Smart & Marijne Vogel, the talented duo behind Studio 11:11, an award winning design studio operating in multiple disciplines.  

Occupation?

Interior architects, designers and object collectors 

First things first, tell us about your story & how Studio 11:11 began?

We met 6 years ago whilst working at an Interior Design firm in Melbourne, Australia. It was apparent we had similar design values and interests outside of interior design and we soon discovered that we worked well as a duo. Our obsession for all things design, led us to collaborating with a local leather maker to produce a large tote bag to take our architectural drawings to meetings, in a well-presented and considered way. 

That first bag attracted interest and soon after became the start of Studio 11:11, at first purely focused on leather goods. In 2017 we made the decision to take the leap and run Studio 11:11 full time – including what we know best - interior architecture. We decided to run with the same brand for the interiors as the leather goods and we are now working towards a more multi-disciplinary studio. With every project we undertake our process and values remain the same, so that no matter what the output is, we have one collective narrative.

Plain or Lined Paper?

Plain - boundless and fancy-free.

When did you first start putting pen to paper?

Notebooks have always been used by the both of us, there is something that an Artline 0.4 on a good piece of paper can do that a computer just can’t. We used our journals to sketch our first leather bag design together – communicating our ideas quickly on the pages of our journals was where it all began.

Talk us through your creative process & how you use your notebook day-to-day?

It depends on the project but we start with a context - whether that is a space, a site or a brief from the client. We start with rough doodles to flesh out our ideas, then work simultaneously between the computer screen (a quick and helpful tool for accuracy) and our notepads (a critical way to develop more creative thought processes). We also use our notebooks for list-making and jotting down client feedback and meeting notes.