DTAN (Don\u2019t try anything new), is \u201ca dream that started way back in high school\u201d, co-founder Julia Schimautz tells It\u2019s Nice That. It\u2019s the place where the designer and printmaker first crossed paths with DTAN\u2019s co-founder, Bianca Brandner, during their graphic design course. Even the earliest years of the pair\u2019s creative careers were spent imagining what a studio of their own would look like one day. \u201cLife took us on different paths, both geographically and creatively from there\u201d, Julia shares. Slowly but surely, over the years Julia\u2019s collaborative experiments snowballed into something much larger and the pair reunited. Alongside Francis Broek and Gregor Schimautz they formed a team of four creatives covering a range of disciplines: design, photography, sound, and print, and DTAN was born.<\/p>\n
Although the Berlin-based studio\u2019s creative commissions span far and wide, the team has a favourite medium for bringing its designs to life: Risograph printing. Analogue techniques like screen printing and paper cutting dominate their layered, immersive and output \u2013 processes Julia turns to as a toolkit for creating \u201ca certain texture and unpredictability to our work that digital tools just can\u2019t replicate\u201d. The studio certainly isn\u2019t afraid to take the long route to realise ideas with a personality you don\u2019t normally see on screens. \u201cTake our animation for Lucy Kruger\u2019s Stereoscope<\/a> as an example\u201d, says Julia, \u201cwe spent hours hand-cutting each frame. We could have done it digitally in minutes, but the feeling wouldn\u2019t have been the same.\u201d<\/p>\n The team\u2019s collaborations with musicians like Kruger is some of their favourite creative work to get into, their latest venture being an incredible music video<\/a> for Pulp\u2019s latest single Tina. With the challenge to build visual worlds that capture the sound of each artist, the studio looks to \u201ccreate moments where you can see what you hear and hear what you see\u201d. Since opening, DTAN has also been flung into new and exciting spaces the team never expected. A recent collaboration with Amsterdam-based knitwear brand Deparel<\/a> created a marriage of Riso\u2019s hazy halftones with knitting patterns and woven textures, letting print layers echo the brands unique reversible pieces. They\u2019ve also had the recent joy of seeing their designs on Ski\u2019s.<\/a><\/p>\n Wherever their frame by frames take them \u2013 into music, fashion, or something entirely unexpected \u2013 \u201cwe love exploring how our approach can adapt and evolve\u201d shares Julia. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly experimenting with how different media interact and evolve in the digital space, finding new ways to push boundaries while staying true to the human side of making things”, she ends. \u201cIt\u2019s all about finding that one idea that feels right and bringing it to life in a way that surprises even us.\u201d<\/p>\n