Design studio DR.ME talks us through creating a new image every day for a year

Manchester-based design studio DR.ME certainly likes a challenge. Although it’s only composed of two designers, Mark Edwards (Eddy) and Ryan Doyle, it took on the challenge of creating a new collage-based piece each day for an entire year, juggling this self-initiated behemoth with work for clients including Tri Angle Records.

The idea came about when the pair stayed in an Airbnb apartment owned by collage artist Paolo Giardi. “His work filled the walls from floor to ceiling and got us really thinking about creating an extensive series of new work,” Eddy says. “We had been talking for a while about wanting to do a big studio project separate from our commercial work and for the pure joy of creativity.”

They then set themselves the task of creating a new collage each day that was no bigger than 230mm x 150mm (the right size for a small envelope) to keep postage costs down. Each piece went on sale through Instragram and Twitter at 1pm for £10. Any unsold pieces are going into an exhibition.

“It’s been a really great project for a few different reasons: firstly it’s been a great challenge creatively, making something even when you’re not in the mood to pushes you as a creative, especially at quarter to one when you’ve not made anything and you know it needs to get done!” says Eddy. “It’s also been really exciting seeing each one sell every day, to places around the world and seeing pictures online of the collages framed up in people’s homes. But also quite gutting when you make one and think it’s the best one yet and it doesn’t sell.

“I think just over halfway was the toughest, as you can become a little jaded with the idea of making a collage every day, but now the end is in sight I feel we are making some of the best ones yet. It’s been a rollercoaster ride but will be quite liberating when it finishes. We will probably take a little break from cutting and pasting for a while.”

Ryan and Eddy have picked their favourite images from the project and told us a little about each of them below.

This piece came together by accident as I’d cut the hole out of the hula hoop and had laid it down on top of another piece I’d been working on and the floor boards pretty much matched up with the strips, a nice bit of serendipity.

I love the juxtaposition in this piece of the surfer riding the big wave in front of the quite formal crowd.

This was quite an experimental piece that came through playing with angles and numbers in a strange way.

I liked the idea of these girls just hanging out with their surfboards in front of a cathedral. 

The addition of giant sunbathing women would definitely be a plus point for the Tour de France.

This was the second one I made and was probably the one I spent most time planning in my head before actually making it, after this one I began working a lot looser and spontaneously which was a more fun approach.

This was one reflected my mood at that moment in time.

This was inspired by Eddy’s strip collages and is the only one I have seen in person framed on a wall at a friend’s apartment in the south of France which was a great feeling.

This one made me think about what a collage could be, it didn’t have to be images cut out of a magazine – it could be more than that as long as I was placing elements together, it was a collage to me, and I love the textures created by the tape then painting over the tape sticking something on that painting over that, sticking an eagle down, not liking the look of the eagle so painting that out. Learning through play.

I like this one because Steve who we share a studio with bought it, it was cool that one of my good friends liked something I made enough to buy it.