We talked to Lina Schubert and Florentin Berger, founders of NO WORRIES JUST SHAPES, a Vienna-based 3D and Motion Design Studio that helps innovative brands, cultural institutions and creative agencies explore new visual realities and elevate the stories embedded in their ideas and products.
Who are Lina Schubert and Florentin Berger? Can you tell us about the process of setting up your studio NO WORRIES JUST SHAPES?
We are a Vienna based 3D design studio. Like many creatives, we've followed a classic "squiggly line career path," accumulating experience across various fields before launching our studio. After collaborating on a photography project named (noworriesjustsad) from 2017-2020 – which incidentally inspired our studio's name – we both fell into the 3D rabbit hole during the pandemic. Aside from enjoying the creative freedom of 3D work, we quickly realized how our diverse skills could be applied and complement each other in this field.
You have a range of experience from various disciplines. How does this diversity between design, music, anthropology, theater and advertising inform your creative process?
We feel that these squiggly line career paths that we have definitely enrich our design process. A core concept that connects our areas of expertise is composition. Whether it's music or visual art, both necessitate balance, contrast, asymmetry, and the ability to evoke emotions. So despite our different backgrounds, there's overlap in underlying principles and workflows. It also helps to know different workflows when collaborating across professions. And next to our artistic and academic experiences working in advertising gave us both a good basic understanding of how the industry works.
When working with brands and cultural institutions, how do you uncover their unique stories? What is the most important thing for you in such collaborations?
It's all about coming up with the right questions. In Anthropology, you always ask about why people do what they do and try to answer it taking culture, identity, and other sociological concepts into consideration. So we try to understand the 'mood' and 'culture' of our collaboration partners or clients first – and then develop the overall concept. Finding common ground between our style and the client's vision is crucial for creating something compelling together.
Which work has excited you the most so far in terms of the design process and the final product?
There are a lot of favorites so far and the list keeps growing! Next to our playtime-projects "Panopticon" and "Just Shapes 001–999" we love our ongoing collaboration with Vienna-based jewelry designer and goldsmith Elisabeth Habig for whom we've been creating a series of 3D worlds showcasing her jewelry. We share a lot of the above-mentioned common ground: Having a very similar way to view the world, seeking patterns and structures in natural forms, collecting minerals and other beautiful items found in nature and translating them into our respective workflows. We are also super happy to collaborate with Maxon and their lovely team.
Can you tell us a bit about your production process? What kind of approach do you take to strike a balance between creativity and technical skills in the design process?
Working as a duo allows us to bounce ideas quickly which is a great fuel for productivity.
We always start with conceptualizing, sketching on paper or digitally, roaming around museums and nature to find details and hidden compositions that could potentially inspire us. We love working in 3D because of the big overlap between creativity and technical skills. But crafting our detailed hyper-natural materialities and surfaces requires a lot of attention to detail and time spent in front of the computer.
“We incorporated VR sculpting into our workflow to 'do something with our hands' from time to time instead of modeling everything directly in Cinema 4D. It's very liberating to immerse yourself in this calm VR bubble, having a sense of depth while sculpting instead of doing three-dimensional work on a two-dimensional screen.”
MIA OBERLÄNDER X COMMUNALE OÖ X SCHÄXPIR
Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind your work? Who are the names you follow with curiosity in this field or in other disciplines?
Our overall curiosity-driven theme is Digital Nature. We try to translate natural growth patterns, colors, and tactile nuances into our works. We really like to play in the intersection between the digital and analog realms to create something new. Alongside nature, we draw inspiration from museums, art, vintage textbooks, and the works of talented artists. To name a few in and out of the 3D bubble: Wang and Soderström, Studio Yonk, Caroline Vang, Jamie Rosencrans (This Forest Floor), Studio Vegete, Anastasia Feinberg, Jim Linear, and Get It Studio. But we could add pages and pages of more names to that list without it ever being finished.
Are you excited for the future and what are your plans?
Absolutely! We're eager to continue learning new skills and see where advancements like real-time rendering and AI (even though we haven't had any direct contact working with it) take us. We're keen to explore more research-driven projects and continue collaborating with experts from diverse fields, each bringing their unique skills to the table. That's where the magic happens.
UST SHAPES 001–999
STUDIO ELISABETH HABIG
FLORIAN TANZER x NWJS
36 DAYS OF TYPE 2023
RADO SWITZERLAND X VIENNA DESIGN WEEK
JUST SHAPES 001–999