Above: Sav and Nell at the Sheffield Grand Prix 2025, fundraising for PACT. (Sav came last).

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00:00
Okay, before ethics, values, morals and all that, we probably need to talk about where we came from if we’re trying to get across who we are.

00:23
So we met during our studies in Sheffield. Yeah, became friends through uni and ended doing our final project collaboratively after placement. Do you want to talk about placement?

00:52
Briefly, sure - so my background is spatial, conceptual, 3D design. Maybe quite ‘techy’ up until now? Exploring the relationship between physical and digital. That led me to go to Shanghai for my placement year, then I ended up in Tokyo for a while doing some videography and music projects.

01:14
And mine is construction, primarily. I have qualifications and experience in that, and then commercial design in an architect practice.
You call yourself a joiner. Yes.

01:20
And that's because of your..

01:23
That's my love… And my qualification as a bench joiner.

Above: Nell cutting timber for the new shelving system in the studio

01:50
And now that we've got the studio I’m also getting a lot more hands-on and grounded.  Exploring that relationship between physical and digital making.

02:04
Yeah, we are exploring that process.

02:19
We've been in the studio since May 2026. SKiNT Studio is a physical space now. Yeah! We've already had the opportunity to use the studio on a project and to make some concepts a concrete reality. It's really supercharged us.

02:53
It feels like it’s legitimised the business. From being based in our front room, crammed in the corner to having a dedicated workspace with tools, people, culture. Yep, we’re definitely in the cultural centre. Of my favourite city, at least. Yeah, absolutely. We went from 0 to 100 in that sense, because this location was the dream.

Above: A typical ‘computer day’ at the studio.

03:18
It’s also arrived at our inevitable direction shift, away from commercial stuff in particular towards wholesome, meaningful, third sector stuff. From Padel to PACT. I think that the grounding of doing a lot more physical making in the studio also marked that chapter change.

03:56
Yeah. And that change is for the better, I think. It doesn’t mean we will never do a commercial project again, but that real, tactile, tangible, community, small scale, local aspect is something we’re dialling in on.

04:46
And can even be seen in our sport centre project.


Above: Cross Padel; our first-ever commercial project. Sav takes pictures of everything.

05:26
I guess I’ve always been the conscious consumer and I can’t just stop that now I’m a full-time designer. If anything it’s more important than ever.

05:43
Ethical practices are a lot easier when you are small scale and local. Because you can go down to your local CNC wood shop guys and have a chat with them and see what’s happening, what they're doing with your product. You're not just mass-producing things without any awareness of how it's being done.

06:09
And then we're both very much keen second-handers.

06:20
Very much. I think half of my most my possessions are sourced from charity shops or Facebook marketplace.



Above: Sav and Nell on their graduation day. Nell made her own dress, and everything else we wore was sourced from charity shops.

06:31
Oh, like I was going through my jumpers the other day and was like umm.. There's one. There's one thing on my clothes rail that wasn't second hand. How that influences our design methodologies and practices is actually really interesting.

06:40
I guess that's the thing, we’ve been students, we’ve been skint, doing projects with 0 budget and no tools, and that breeds a certain approach. Now we’re finding when you combine that with a actual budget, it basically means we get more for our money, and still come out with a premium output.

06:57
Yes, the main result is that we've become better problem solvers. We can be smarter with money, we can be more ethical, more small-scale and grounded in the stuff that we’re buying.


Above: Sav and his train station signs

07:31
Which also means that we don't give in to trends. We’re slower than that. Neither of us do in our personal styles either and I'm not gonna say we're trying to avoid trends with SKiNT, or be anti-style, but rather be aware of them so we can place our designs properly in the current climate. There’s nothing worse than having an outdated design because you’ve fallen for a trend - maybe other than falling for it without realising it.

07:54
It's very hard to avoid cliches and it's impossible to be fully original in a design. Going secondhand and using chairs from 40 years ago, sourcing moquettes inspired from your favourite era of train models or whatever it is. Like, there's so much to draw from that there’s no way you need to be exclusively current day.

08:21
That balance that we have between the old and the new.

08:43
Mine and yours personalities are like that, always have been. We covered such a wide range of styles and influences on so many different things. Old and new, digital and physical, conceptual to technical. On all of those aspects we both stand on either end of the spectrum and move along that line, helping each other out.

09:15
We’re definitely on some form of spectrum, mate. Yeah.