Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 52 (Anna). 49 (Chris).
Occupation: Creative directors and co-founders of Run for the Hills. Chris heads up the graphics team and Anna heads up the interiors team.
Instagram: @runforthehillslondon
Hometown: London.
Studio location: London, specifically Queen’s Park, North West.
Describe what you make: Among other things, we design restaurants and bars. Our branding and graphics teams give them creative identities, websites, signage, and lots of in-venue artistry. Our interiors team designs and styles the space, crafting lots of bespoke joinery, furniture, and lighting, making sure the brand and the interiors are as complimentary as possible and fuse into an immersive piece of storytelling.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: A lovely boutique cinema, cafe, and bar called Tivoli. We designed the first location, creating the brand identity and concepting the interiors of the F&B areas and the screening rooms. The clients wanted it to be a hospitality venue in its own right, beyond just a picture house. We came up with the campaign strapline “Cinema Reclassified.” Our branding and interiors work for the amazing Kricket, a collection of modern Indian restaurants combining British ingredients with the flavors and aromas of India.
Describe the problem your work solves: Badly designed, tasteless, forgotten, or overlooked spaces where the brand and the interiors are disconnected and talking at cross purposes, which don’t work for customers or the teams who work there.
Describe the project you are working on now: We’re rebranding a stylish member’s club in Hammersmith called Kindred. Our work has been quite global recently! We’ve just finished designing not one but two hotels in the Swiss Alps. We’re working on an Italian concept in Bahrain, and projects in Vienna and Sofia.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: A super-fly cocktail bar called Heartbreaker. The venue is newly launched in a pretty English seaside town being dubbed the new Brighton. We developed a playful, sexy brand and interiors for it.
We also recently finished a new project in Guildford in Surrey for Coppa Club. It’s a huge three-floor, all-day venue with a cafe/bar/work-club on the ground floor, glamorous brasserie on the first floor, and dance-the-night-away on the top-floor cocktail bar. We hand-painted a 30-meter mural that wraps its way up the stairwell, taking inspiration from the interior color palette. Starting on the ground floor, color deepens, mixing in layers of lively rich blue accents before your arrival to the ambient cocktail lounge.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Coffee, twiglets, our studio Spotify playlist and studio pooch, Olive.
What you do when you’re not working: Checking out the latest restaurant openings in London, visiting galleries and exhibitions, traveling, and trying to commandeer our two kiddies and aging diabetic cat.
Sources of creative envy: Malika Favre, the inspirational Kelly Wearstler, Wes Anderson, countless other designers, makers, musicians, and scientists.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Procrastination and…
Concrete or marble? Both.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or forget? Forget (Chris). Remember (Anna).
Aliens or ghosts? Aliens (Chris). Ghosts (Anna).
Dark or light? Dark (Chris). Light (Anna).
