Sydney creatives Joshua & Megan McKean are the couple behind
McKean Studio. I've had the honour of interviewing Megan about their work and plans for the future. I hope you get inspired by how hard-working yet so happy the couple appear...
Ps - McKean Studio is coming to Sydney's Finders Keepers Markets! Eeep :)
Q. Please share some history of both of your background careers before starting McKean Studio?
A. We started McKean Studio while we were both still studying at university. Joshua finished his degree in Industrial Design in 2011, just a few weeks before we got married. I spent another year after that completing my honours year in Visual Communications. We've worked on various projects individually and together and now McKean Studio is our side project that we tend to when we're not working our other jobs!
Q. What made you decide to start McKean Studio?
A. We were both blogging individually for a few years, working on individual projects and freelance jobs, but decided since we spent so much time working with the other it would make more sense to just combine things! 6 months before we got married we combined forces, I figured I'd be taking on the McKean name soon enough anyway, so it just felt like it made the most sense!
Q. Whats the best part of owning your own business?
A. The flexibility to work on things when it suits us best and when inspiration strikes! Also being able to develop our own products and work on what we want to.
Q. What has been the hardest part about running your own business?
A. I think trying to get everything done in a day is the hardest part, it's a never ending list of things to do, and you're always trying to think ahead to what you'll be working on next. Being a very small label and still in it's infancy, there are lots of business related things that we've had to try and learn on our own - which is hard when you've come from design degrees!
Q. What has been your greatest career achievement so far?
A. Every project that gets finished is a great achievement! We've been so lucky to have some wonderful opportunities arise that have led to some really fun projects. Being so early on in our careers and still building our label, it's probably too soon to say what's been our greatest achievement. We find every sale of our products very humbling and encouraging - nothing feels better than having someone like your stuff enough to buy it!
Q. Who/What inspires you?
A. Travel and nature are probably our greatest inspirations. Our souvenir scarves started as a personal project for me, to document some of our favourite cities that we've visited together. I also draw a lot of animals and flora.
Q. Describe a typical day at work...
A. Every day is different at McKean Studio! We both work jobs (that we love!) so the work for our label usually fits in around that. Some days I'll be sewing scarves for 12 hours (so glamorous!) or working on a new illustration, sending orders at the post office, writing blog posts, or making any of the other bits and pieces! My favourite days are design days, when I get to work on new pieces for McKean Studio. This usually starts with a lot of 'pinning', picking colour palettes and sketching out ideas.
Q. Where do you see yourself & McKean studio in 5 years?
A. 5 years is a long time! And so hard to forecast when you're just starting out. We'd love to work more on our label and build the production to include more products. We're hoping to move overseas for a stint in the next couple of years, so are slowly working towards that! Whatever happens, McKean Studio will be coming too and you'll hopefully be able to see some more of us over the next 5 years!
