A Couple of Questions for Two Arms

We discovered Two Arms from their amazing posters for Ra Ra Riot, one of our favorite bands. Through this interview, we’ve come to find out that they’re also hilarious and just plain old good people.  At the end of their interview, they added: “we’re beside ourselves whenever we get a mention on a blog, a shoutout from a friend or a nice email. It truly helps when we get support from colleagues and fans. It definitely adds fuel
to the fire to keep rocking out with great design and cool posters. We can’t thank people enough for checking out our website or following up with what we’re trying to do. It’s the biggest compliment we can get.” Seriously, don’t you want to send them cookies??

Karen Goheen and Mike Tabie design and print all their texture-y goodness out of Brooklyn, but they’re both “OG Floridians”. Their contribution to the 50 and 50 State Mottos Project is one of our faves so far.

How did you meet and and how long have you been together?

(karen) We met in Orlando in 2008 across a silkscreen vacuum table. At the time, I came in to help work the squeegee at Mike’s old job at Lure Design. We realized we had a handful of mutual friends and spent the rest of the summer silkscreening, eating sushi and bbq-ing with our friends every weekend. We were great friends before anything else and we’ve been involved since then.

(mike) Star-crossed lovers, with ink stained clothes. It was love at first first flood, at least that’s how I saw it.

Chicken or egg: did you become romantically involved first and then start working together, or was it the other way around?

(karen) After Mike flew to New York permanently, we became serious. We spent the first few months exploring the city and working at various design firms, sharing our experiences around the office, critiquing our personal experiences and expressing our goals of working for ourselves.

(mike) Karen and I always talked about how we would make a good team, even back in Orlando we contemplated “what if”. Karen was really the instigator and catalyst for the start of Two Arms. She really inspired me to take the first step. After a particularly frustrating day working for the corporate machine I came home and started the paperwork to incorporate. Since then we have been continuously growing and evolving.

If you had to start all over and work together in some other occupation, what would you choose?

Honestly, we’ve discussed this every day this past week and our final answer is that we were born to be Mythbusters. Cameras on a TV Network or without, we aren’t picky, but we’d kill at that job. Can Pigs Fly? No. Myth Busted.

In what ways do your individual talents lend themselves to your collaborative projects?

(karen) We constantly push and pull our creative strengths. Mike is the go-to guy for intricate typography, lettering and handcrafted illustrations. He’s also a creative workhorse/genius. when he gets going on a concept, he can flush out 5-10 finished pieces within the hour.

(mike) We have completely different rhythms that work really well together. I tend to go head first into things, and I usually end up pushing through my first concept. Karen is really good about re-searching first. More often then not she forces me to re-work things sometimes 3 or 4 times. I go kicking and screaming, but in the end I am always very happy we put in the extra rounds of work.

What is your favorite piece of work that you’ve done together? (Children are not applicable answers, if you have any.)

(karen) I think the last one we just finished up, the cover for Time Out New York. It was definitely a test of our abilities, we had to concept and execute a cover piece within a few hours of the magazine’s critique. It was a lot of sketching, talking, passing off files and collaborating on ideas and style. Normally when we collaborate, it’s over a matter of a few days or a week, but we only had a few hours to present a few concepts. It was an accelerated view of how well we can work together when the pressure is on.

(Mike) Definitely one of my favorites, and a great example of how we work. Every time we passed the file back and forth it got more and more character and detail. It was a really long night but one of the most productive and fulfilling projects.

Any advice for couples who work together in a creative field?

Be completely honest with your partner and yourself. It’s great to work with the person you are closest to because your goals tend to line up and the motivation to attain them is 200x what it normally is. Sometimes the quarrels can be a bit more intense then that of your average design partnership, but when there are big wins they are that much better, because you are sharing them with the person you trust and love the most. There are bad days too but keep going because the good days will outride them 1000 times fold. And take time to take a break.

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Throughout February, we’re interviewing creative couples on Perfect Laughter. Read the other interviews in the Couple of Questions series.

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2 Comments on “A Couple of Questions for Two Arms”

• Tweets that mention Perfect Laughter - A Couple of Questions for Two Arms -- Topsy.com
  

  [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Two Arms Inc., Perfect Laughter. Perfect Laughter said: Next up on A Couple of Questions…the awesometastic Brooklyn duo @TwoArms. http://bit.ly/hdXwaE [...]

  02-09-11 » 11:46 PM »

• Dawn
  

  “Star-crossed lovers, with ink stained clothes. It was love at first first flood…” — Excellent quote by Mike! I really enjoy the Couple of Questions blogs, guys! Keep up the great work.

  02-12-11 » 4:05 PM »

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