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Poppy ThaxterMeet SOUP: A studio fuelled by a hearty dose of collaboration, brought to life by the love of soup
In the northern hemisphere, it’s getting into the colder months, which means it can only be soup season! And who could be more fitting to interview at this time of the year than the London-based design studio SOUP? With their diverse backgrounds and shared passion for art, SOUP – made up of the design talents and longtime collaborators Nina Jua Klein and Simon Wilson – brings a unique perspective to their projects. We chat with the pair to learn more about their backgrounds and overlapping journeys, their mission for the studio, and of course, their thoughts on soup.
PT Hi Nina and Simon! How are you both?
NJK Busy.
PT To get the ball rolling, can you tell us a bit about yourselves?
NJK I was born in Nairobi, Kenya. My middle name Jua is a Kiswahili word meaning sun. I was born at midday when the sun was blazing, which led my parents to choose that name. After my childhood in Kenya, I spent my early teens in Singapore. Given my upbringing (and name) it’s hardly surprising that I love hot weather and often find myself wondering how I ended up remaining in rainy England for so long. The Klein part in my name gives away my German origin, the other half of my family heritage is Jewish.
SW Like Nina, I also spent my early childhood in Africa (specifically Mozambique) which is a funny coincidence. I moved back to the UK before my teens and have been here ever since. I sort of fell into the design world, but I feel quite lucky that I get to do something I love every day. In terms of work, I’m definitely a ‘yes’ man – say yes and then worry about figuring out how to do it later. But so far this has worked in my favour!
PT When did you first start working together?
NJK We first met on top of a scaffolding tower. Simon was working with my friends Isabel + Helen, when we collaborated on the design of the London College of Communication Degree and Postgraduate Shows. I quickly realised that Simon has many skills beyond fixing hundreds of A3 sheets to metal clips, so I tried to get him involved in as many projects as I could after that.
It’s great to have someone around day-to-day to run ideas past.
PT Why was now the time to officially launch a studio together?
NJK We recently realised that we had started to work together on most of our projects and so it felt like a very natural progression to make our collaboration more official.
SW It came about quite naturally – I proposed the idea to Nina and I was a little surprised that she seemed so keen. By joining our skills and combined interests we felt that we could offer a lot as a pair. Also, it’s great to have someone around day-to-day to run ideas past – it’s often the smallest things that can drive you crazy if you don’t chat them through!
PT What’s the story behind the name SOUP?
NJK We’ve been waiting for this question, it’s usually the first thing people ask! One day when we were sitting around making plans for the new studio, Simon was telling me about mediaeval broths which would be kept going for years, apparently the longest recorded one was started in Japan in 1945 and is still going. Anyone who took some of the broth from the cauldron would top it up with new ingredients, so the flavours inevitably shifted and developed over time. A fitting metaphor for a studio, we thought. Only that Simon couldn’t remember what it was called and told me it was an ‘Eternal Soup’, instead of its real name – a ‘Perpetual Stew’. We joked that we should call our studio Eternal Soup and then somehow it stuck, but day-to-day we just go by Soup. Funnily enough, just when we thought we had chosen the most stupid name out there a few other Soups (that also have nothing to do with food) have popped up around London recently!
SW The impossible challenge of coming up with a studio name…. We spent several weeks going over tens if not hundreds of possibilities, but nothing felt quite right. We wanted something short, memorable and not too serious. We were both adamant that we didn’t want a connection with either of our names allowing us the freedom to evolve.
PT You have worked closely with galleries and art institutions through both your individual practices and the projects you’ve collaborated on. Is your interest in art something you’ll carry with you to SOUP?
NJK Yes, definitely. We continue to work with a lot of the clients we have established relationships with during the pre-SOUP years. I was part of the Tate Design Studio before going solo, and during that time met a lot of great people who have since also gone on to work with other art institutions and galleries. I always say that my Tate years were a bit like a finishing school for working within the London cultural world.
SW Definitely. The opportunity to work within galleries and design institutions is an area that is really exciting to us, as it often consists of projects that combine our love for printed, spatial and digital outputs, and provides us with an opportunity to realise our vision of bringing together these disciplines into a thoughtful and coherent outcome.
A collaborative approach is at the heart of our work.
PT Could you tell us about the collaborative synergy between the two of you? What are you both hoping to bring to SOUP, in terms of your individual interests and skills?
NJK We get just as excited about using scratch-off ink and aluminium extrusion as we do about using sound data to make ping pong balls dance over air streams (coming soon to a gallery near you). Our work together tends to sit somewhere at this intersection between the physical and the digital. Often our digital designs will translate to analogue physical pieces and vice versa. With SOUP, we want to keep using digital technology in surprising ways within spatial contexts, whilst also enriching digital experiences with physicality and emotion.
SW I think our synergy, fundamentally, comes from trust and respect in one another’s opinion. While many of our design interests overlap, we have our own specialisms. This puts us in a position of being able to offer a diverse range of creative outputs, as well as being able to work across the breadth of a project simultaneously.
I taught myself to code at university, which led to me making portfolio sites for myself, and pretty much everyone else I know. One of the first freelance projects I took on was a website that Nina had designed – little did she know, I didn’t have much of an idea of what I was doing – but it turned out well and was the start of our long collaboration.
Nina’s interest in more physical and experimental processes and outcomes also often stray into the digital space, and that’s where we overlap. A collaborative approach is at the heart of our work. Despite our multidisciplinary skills, we accept the boundaries of our own expertise and know when to bring specialists on board to enrich and elevate a project. We have a wide-ranging network of collaborators to call upon and more recently, the SOUP team has also grown by a very talented new member, Latifa Powell.
PT What kind of clients do you aspire to work with?
NJK Nice ones with big budgets! Jokes aside, we have built many ongoing relationships and friendships with clients over the years, and the projects with the best outcomes are always the ones with a really good synergy between everyone involved, regardless of budget. It is really important to us that our clients share the same values and trust our expertise, as we ultimately prefer to think of our working relationship as a collaboration.
PT Likewise, when clients approach you, what do they look for with you, which they can’t get anywhere else?
NJK Between us and our wider network of collaborators, we have a very wide skillset to draw upon and clients come to us knowing that we will take on a project from start to finish. Instead of leaving clients with a shiny set of brand guidelines that they might struggle to implement, we like to be involved in everything – from the concept down to the smallest details. We work hard and we care a lot, sometimes too much. Finding ways to make the ‘impossible’ happen is a (sometimes torturous) specialism of ours.
SW One example would be creating a visual identity, which might include printed and animated elements as well as a website. We have the skillset to not only design but also produce all outcomes. We are in a position to design and develop websites iteratively whereby the development informs the design and vice versa, which is quite unusual for a small studio.
PT As a new studio, what do you hope will be the first thing clients and your contemporaries notice about you?
NJK Hopefully – strange name, great work.
PT What have been your favourite projects to collaborate on so far?
NJK We are really excited about a project we are currently working on with the V&A Dundee. It is the first exhibition in a major institution where we have been hired to design the entire exhibition, including the 3D elements that traditionally don’t fall into the remit of the ‘graphic designer’. After years of terrorising architects with our ideas we get to live all of our 3D fantasies. We are also designing the marketing campaign, which is unusual. A lot of institutions will commission different studios for the exhibition design and marketing. It’s a bit of a dream come true.
SW A particular favourite of mine has been the identity and website for Co Projects, which is an ongoing initiative within the studio, originally started by Nina and informed by her love for material research and making. After Nina was selected to design and make a product as part of Atelier100, there was a need to formalise the project with an identity that included packaging, social media animations and a website. This was a really exciting opportunity to shape an identity in response to a product that was also designed by us.
We work hard and we care a lot.
PT What are your favourite pieces of work you’ve seen (by other people) lately?
NJK Our friends Isabel + Helen’s incredible wearable kinetic fan structures called Power Suits, recently shown at the V&A. Fun fact, Simon featured as a model in their show! On another note, after years of being a deeply invested Haribo consumer, it also only recently dawned on me how perfect their logo is and always has been.
PT What are the next steps for SOUP?
NJK Break the record of the longest running perpetual stew.
SW We also like the idea of getting a studio tortoise, named Eternal.
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