DTAN studio is setting the printed page into motion with an unpredictability that “digital tools just can’t replicate”

DTAN (Don’t try anything new), is “a dream that started way back in high school”, co-founder Julia Schimautz tells It’s Nice That. It’s the place where the designer and printmaker first crossed paths with DTAN’s co-founder, Bianca Brandner, during their graphic design course. Even the earliest years of the pair’s creative careers were spent imagining what a studio of their own would look like one day. “Life took us on different paths, both geographically and creatively from there”, Julia shares. Slowly but surely, over the years Julia’s 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.

Although the Berlin-based studio’s 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 – processes Julia turns to as a toolkit for creating “a certain texture and unpredictability to our work that digital tools just can’t replicate”. The studio certainly isn’t afraid to take the long route to realise ideas with a personality you don’t normally see on screens. “Take our animation for Lucy Kruger’s Stereoscope as an example”, says Julia, “we spent hours hand-cutting each frame. We could have done it digitally in minutes, but the feeling wouldn’t have been the same.”

The team’s collaborations with musicians like Kruger is some of their favourite creative work to get into, their latest venture being an incredible music video for Pulp’s latest single Tina. With the challenge to build visual worlds that capture the sound of each artist, the studio looks to “create moments where you can see what you hear and hear what you see”. 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 created a marriage of Riso’s hazy halftones with knitting patterns and woven textures, letting print layers echo the brands unique reversible pieces. They’ve also had the recent joy of seeing their designs on Ski’s.

Wherever their frame by frames take them – into music, fashion, or something entirely unexpected – “we love exploring how our approach can adapt and evolve” shares Julia. “We’re 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. “It’s all about finding that one idea that feels right and bringing it to life in a way that surprises even us.”