It is not every day that you get to sit in a local cafe and shake hands with a couple who have an international design portfolio, especially when they are hardly in their twenties
Hailing from the Czech Republic, and living in the Bay since April, Ziza and Tom already count amongst their clients a top TV chef in their own country and a small chain of spice based condiment manufacturers, for whom they have designed a set of packaging that is in chain stores in some of the big cities.
How does that sound for starters?
Ziza and Tom’s arrival in this country began by establishing an office address in trendy Old Gloucester Street, London WC1. Their decision to come here was based on the fact that ‘they just love England’.
Looking out from their rented home in the Promenade, with all the traditional charms of the Bay to enjoy, and the beach, and the buckets and spades hanging outside Pevensey Gifts, it must feel like they have arrived. Not sure how well ‘Wish You Were Here’ translates into Czech, but when they write home, there must be lots to tell the folks about places they have seen and what they have been doing.
In their professional lives, the couple brand companies. For fun, they play music on the local live circuit.
You may have come across ‘Moonbeans’ in the Smuggler’s in Pevensey, at a Jam session on a Thursday night. That’s Ziza singing and Tom on the double bass. If you really want a treat, stay for the encore and listen to them do ‘Let it Be’.
Ziza takes up the story, ‘we came to England and looked at where to be, we decided on Hastings, but we couldn’t find anywhere and at the end of the day we were desperate, so we looked in Friday-Ad, found this place in Pevensey Bay and moved in that night, the landlord is really lovely’.
It doesn’t sound like much forethought went into the decision making, but maybe that is the point. As John Lennon put it ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’.
I started by asking Ziza about their business;
‘No plan really, we just want to look at possibilities’.
What a gift to the Bay, particularly if they choose to work with some local businesses to develop their portfolio.
One of the interesting questions that will emerge is their approach to design. Will it translate into an English market?
At its best, design is an international language, so time will tell.
The couple work together across both print and web. The focus is on the development of brand identity, elements like logos and the visual projection of a company name and corporate image.
It is interesting that they work as a couple. Ziza handles the print side of the business and communications with clients. Tom handles the web side of the business and making the ideas work creatively and technically.
Of course they are not the first couple to work together in the design world, drawing on their strengths and developing a synergy with the results.
Charles and Ray Eames in the States in the ninety forties and fifties worked in this way with furniture design. In this country we have a long procession of couples who have married their skills and gone on to fame, including Charles Rennie Macintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald, and of course in the world of furniture and fabric design, Robin and Lucienne Day.
There is some way to go though, before we will know if Ziza and Tom are headed down the same path.
For now, they seem happy to create things for clients and soak up the atmosphere in this little corner of Sussex they now call home.
It is not surprising to hear that with them, from the Czech Republic, has come a client base that they continue to service. The fact that their skills are still in demand in their own country, suggests that their work has developed a reputation that is of some standing.
Over tea and coffee, the couple showed some of the brand literature that they have helped to create.
Clients include major charities, coffee companies, financial strategists and work in the small creative industries like developing the profiles in print and online of people like musicians and photographers.
The results are mature and intelligent. Print projects have a flow and freedom of movement with style, colour, iconography, type and layout. These values transfer well into their work with the web.
The range of projects was impressive.
Out came point of sales promotions, business literature, branding, indents, logos and posters for special events.
The output could have serviced the needs of a new small design company and their first trade fair in London. The work was not fashion-led, it had a kind of timeless distinction about it.
If a watch manufacturer from Switzerland does not pick up on their skills, giving the dynamic duo the opportunity to re-brand their range across Europe, and whisk Ziza and Tom off to work for them, then the Bay could benefit from having them here.
If they decide to pitch up and stay for good, who knows how it could benefit the business community.
Interestingly, there is a point of comparison. An international design company, called Fuga, responsible for work with the branding of GlaxoSmithKline, Ford, the Science Museum. Orange and M&S, relocated from Brighton to St. Leonards ten years ago. With them came a cluster of other small companies doing similar things and some grants to support a small new business centre.
This is how Fuga describe their working environment;
‘We’re situated on the seafront in St. Leonards, with our offices just 100 metres or so from the beach … staring out to sea to watch the fishing boats trawl by is the perfect canvas for inspiration’.
The view from the Promenade in the Bay, bears something of a striking similarity does it not?
It looks like Ziza and Tom may have formed a bond with the Bay, so who knows what will happen.
Of course, it is easy to dream in a place like Pevensey Bay, particularly when you are walking on the beach amongst the old groynes looking out to sea.
It is a place for reverie, but it is also a place where creativity and commercial success can go hand in hand. Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan were here. It was where some of the Goon Shows were written.
Tom in particular displayed the kind of wit in his responses that made me think that Ying tong ying tong, Ying tong ying tong, ying tong iddle I po, probably does translate into Czech somehow and still get a laugh.
Of course, Ziza and Tom wouldn’t be the first people to arrive here from Continental Europe to wax lyrical about the place either.
Pevensey Bay has been home in the last two hundred years to the creative arts and crafts of the highest order. Painters, designers, architects, poets and writers have all come here to visit and some to settle. A number have gone on to become household names.
As we left the cafe, I felt slightly in awe of their talent and began to wonder if their arrival here could be the start of some kind of small cluster of interest in the Bay as a commercial nexus for the digital arts nationally.
It is a ridiculous thought of course, until someone points out that the St. Ives School of Art started by a similarly random route. In 1928, the artist Ben Nicholson arrived, and pitched up to stay. The rest is history.
The best design does not shout, it speaks.
The way in which the couple quietly interjected their thoughts, about an approach to life and work, made me think that I had been in the company of two people who are about to make a name for themselves.
Perhaps within a year they will be gone to London, Brighton, Budapest, Prague or Zagreb. Who knows, perhaps least of all either Ziza or Tom. Maybe that is the way it is meant to be, but if the couple do stay in the Bay and make it their home, there really does seem to be a possibility that the business community could benefit in a small way.
If it is only a private shindig in the Ocean View Bakery and a couple of corporate wallahs from GlaxoSmithKline coming down to see the couple, splashing out £50 for tea and cakes whilst they talk to them about their work, then the Bay will benefit.
Tom with a firm handshake, left me to wonder. His striking blue eyes sparked with a thoughtfulness that crossed language and cultural boundaries.
‘We do love this place’, he said ‘we meet such interesting people’ and then after a short pause, ‘they make us so welcome’.
It is impossible to say what will happen next with the talented couple, and whether or not we will be hearing much more about them and their place in the small creative business community of Pevensey Bay.
Tom in his thoughtfulness put it best., and of course Ziza knows the words and can sing in clear harmony.
Speaking words of wisdom, Let it Be.
To find out more about the design work of Ziza Stupkova and Tom Siroky, you can contact them here,
Simon Montgomery
editor, Bay Life
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