The designers injecting DIY charm into Pigeons & Planes’ annual mixtape

INT: So P&P relaunched its website earlier this year after taking it down seven years ago. It’s been really nice to see it return to its roots and get this renewed energy from a longer form approach. How does it feel to be part of this burst of energy, if you could describe it as such? And would you say the mixtape design aligns with this return to this like core values, almost maybe a bit ‘2008’, the year it first launched?

JPC: It’s really exciting. Alex Gardner is one of the main people there and I saw that he and P&P followed me. I’ve been a fan of P&P for like a long time – I was really into rap music when I was younger. And like the blog era! They were one of the biggest people there. So I DM’d Alex and I was like, ‘I would love to work with you guys in any capacity’, and this was before they had plans to bring back the website. So I got in right before then, and it’s been really awesome. It’s fully back to where they started and they’re starting way more editorial and in-depth content, not just templates on Instagram.

A lot of what we did for this compilation does relate back to everything that I’ve been doing there. It’s very raw, scanned in and textural but also minimalist in ways. Honestly I have to thank Leo for the scanned-in thing. I didn’t have a scanner before I started working with Leo, and I remember for like that Lorde poster he sent me a really like hi-res scan of this thing that he made and I was like, ‘Oh, I should get a scanner! That would complete me.’ So I’ve been just using it nonstop.

INT: A lot of both of your design work is in the music space. Why is it a world that you enjoy coming back to time and time again?

LH: I started doing design around music before I even knew I wanted to be a graphic designer. I’ve always loved music, and from a young age I realised that you could approach musicians through social media; I grew up in South Carolina, which isn’t necessarily like the ‘centre’ of arts and culture. To realise that I could have access to these indie artists who I really enjoyed was a wake-up call for me, I saw that it was actually accessible to do this sort of work, and it snowballed from there. It might not be like the most lucrative type of design you could be doing compared to branding or corporate design, but I do think it has this way of linking you to changes in culture, and linking you with fans of artists. The reach, scope and breadth of the design has expansive potential – it really does lead to more things: it lands on people’s laps, and in their phones.

JPC: I think we’re both cut from that same cloth. I just started designing like six years ago, but music’s been there like the entirety of my life. When I work in the music space, that’s where my best work is created. I’ve worked in branding and editorial stuff, and I feel like when you take the music aspect of it away it’s a lot harder. I find the branding world to be quite difficult to navigate. Hopefully I get better at it in the future! The music world can be a lot more creative and a lot more fun to work with because you’re working with other artists: that bounce between the two, you can come up with great ideas. I think that design in the music industry is light years ahead of design in the branding world because of that. It’s not like the most lucrative thing, but, you know, we live off of it.

LH: I feel like music is open to interpretation – it doesn’t really have any existing visual baggage, maybe when you get it. So maybe designers who are more inventive have a lot to sink their teeth into and we can express ourselves a bit more than other genres of design. I really love that aspect.

INT: You mentioned both working on the Clairo stuff, and I think for me that’s some of the best design to come out of these past few years. The people that have been brought onto that project, the ecosystem and how it feels different but fits together is amazing.

JPC: It’s like the Avengers of design!

INT: It really is!

JPC: I got brought in a bit later, for the anniversary side of Charm. But before the anniversary, it had been out for a year, and I remember seeing that list of designers and I was like, ‘What the fuck? I need to somehow get on that list’ – and thank God I was able to do that! Without that project, Leo and I wouldn’t even be working together. That’s been the best thing that’s come out of the Clairo thing. I’ve never worked with anybody at this capacity before and it feels so fucking good to be able to work with someone else, because this job is so isolating!

LH: It’s also really cute, I feel like all the Clairo designers at some point kind of all became ‘professional friends’. It sort of became a nice school of designers in some sense, linked together through that. So shout out Jimmy Booey who’s her artistic director for digging deep and finding all these different creative folk to get involved.

JPC: Yeah. And always DM people, man! If you see someone that’s following you and they have mutuals with someone, just DM them. That’s exactly how I got that as well, I just DM’d Jimmy because he followed me and I was like ‘Please, please!’

INT: The power of the DM.

JPC: No, really!

INT: You mentioned that you’ve had more time on this than any other music project. Do you have any big learnings or takeaways from working on such a long and mammoth project?

JPC: You know, whenever I wrap a project and I’m finally done with it I’m like, ‘I wish I could have done this differently and this differently and this differently’. I criticise everything that I do as soon as I finish it! But I really don’t feel that way about this project. Maybe that’s because this is my first project with someone else, so I can appreciate it from an outside perspective? Maybe that sort of turns off that sort of ‘critic-mindedness’ a bit, because I didn’t do all of it. Looking back, I wouldn’t change anything really – it went so smoothly.

LH: I’d echo that. I’m a bit different. I feel like when I’m done with a project I just cast it out of my mind… sometimes to a fault. But I feel like also the length of this project was really important. Working on something over a long time, especially with Jean Pierre, was new for me. We both get a lot of like last-minute commissions or like week-long things that we have to slam.

JPC: The worst!

LH: It showed us the value of these more patient projects, and developing something closely together. I think it just cemented our collaborative process, in a lot of important ways that we’ve taken into like other projects since then, which is really exciting.

JPC: I mean, we both just had to pull two weekenders this last month. Both of our brains are kind of fried. At least I’m speaking for myself… but like my brain is really fried. These timelines are only getting more ruthless it seems. I think me and Leo both work really fast, but there’s something to be said about being able to just sit with a fucking project and like just think about it, instead of it being this panicked feeling. Sometimes great work comes out of those short timelines, but when you miss you don’t have time to fix it.

I think people just need to get their timelines in order, and that’s coming from me and I’m not a timely or punctual person at all! I think if we didn’t have that much time it would have been a lot louder, a lot more in your face; design wise, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, how to make something pop immediately? I enjoy the subtlety of this because we just had a lot of time to sit with it, and it doesn’t need to be the loudest thing to be the prettiest thing.

INT: So the key takeaway is: more time!

JPC: Yeah! Give us more time.