Our thoughts and how we work.
Our first series; Terrazzo Silk Scarf
Our ideas.
Our products here are designed and illustrated by us with ideas coming from different places. The first series ‘Terrazzo’, was inspired by my home tiles, and ‘Rust and Stardust’, was inspired when I went on a trip to a small island of South Korea.
When we do our designs, we try to illustrate a series differently so that it will not just be one design in different colour variations. Usually that is what a brand will do, because it saves time, yet we can still give a variation. But we try to do things a little differently here if possible. For example as seen below, our ‘Ocean’ series feature 4 different sea animals altogether, instead of just one animal in 4 different colours. And each of the animal itself, are illustrated with different ‘poses’ in the design.
I thought it would be good to showcase what we can do by having a small variety, at the same time, we do not want to come across as another cookie-cutter retail brand but also a brand that focuses on art and design.
A lot of times, there will be countless of design drafts that did not “pass the test” and will be sitting in the folder as archive. Sometimes we try to revisit the designs again later to see if there will be any fresh ideas. We don’t have intense discussions about our ideas, we just bounce ideas off each other, other times it just pop into our head randomly when we browse or travel.
Why Scarfs?
As graphic designers, we are very familiar with papers. The very first product we did were notebooks. However, we decided that we do not want to do a stationary brand. So after some research, we decided on scarfs because it was a different but good canvas for us to work on. We thought it would be nice to see people wear our designs on them.
Our first product was notebooks
We brought the design into linen wraps
Our designs were never mass-produced. Of course mass-producing will be lower cost on our end, but we think that it is important to have them exclusive to people who really want to own it. We try to avoid re-printing our designs when it sold out. And if we ever do, which we did for the corgi wraps (as seen above) due to popular demand, we only reprinted in small quantity.
I think scarf is still a pretty niche community, but we are happy when there are people coming up to us and share good words, it motivates us a lot. We hope that you will love the piece that you have even in years to come.
Moving on.
We began working on the idea of MBM in the mid of 2017, and we have officially crossed our one year mark recently. We think about how we can move on with our brand, other products that we should consider exploring, and the design styles that we want to do.
We struggled with our identity for awhile, we didn’t know if we are a lifestyle brand, fashion brand, accessory brand etc. But I guess being designers as our roots, we really just want to be a brand that create thoughtful prints, be it scarfs, or whatever the form it may take.
If you noticed, we tried various illustration styles so far with our works, we are still exploring and just enjoying the process for now, at the same time we hope you will enjoy them too.
This year has been quiet but trust me, we are working on things! As we are only two-man team, there is only so much we can do to the best of our extent, in terms of ideation, and well, financial. Hard truth, but we have to learn to embrace it. So that is why we always thank each and everyone of you who supported us, because your small support, builds and fuels our dream.
We still juggle our day jobs with this brand we built from scratch. As with many small businesses, it is a struggle, but we are trying our best. Most importantly, I hope that the love and effort we spent to do our designs and illustrations, are reflected in the products that we produced.