Jolby is a design, illustration, and art direction team made up of Josh Kenyon and Colby Nichols. Josh creates the textures and patterns, while Colby creates the characters and the layouts. Their illustrations and designs bring us back to a time when the amount of likes you had on Facebook and number of followers on Twitter didn’t matter. In short, their work puts a smile on our face. Now for our exclusive interview with Jolby. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
For those that don’t know…who and what is Jolby?
Colby: Jolby is a Design and Illustration studio in Portland, Oregon made up of Josh Kenyon and myself.
How and where did the two of you meet?
Josh: Colby and I met at the Art Institute of California – San Diego in one of his final classes. We knew we wanted to work together, but weren’t sure in what capacity. Along came the opportunity to work together on a clothing line which was our first foray into creating together and running a business. The rest is history!
What city does Jolby call home?
Colby: Portland, Oregon. Although we are both from California and have a lot of love for that state.
Can you describe Josh’s style of illustration/design.
Colby: Josh does all of our textures and patterns, so I’d say his style is meticulous, deep, and without it nothing we do would look like “us.”
Can you describe Colby’s style of illustration/design.
Josh: Colby does a lot the characters and overall layouts for our illustrations. He brings the goofy fun characters to life and drives the pieces I think. We both sit down together in the beginning of a piece and collaborate, but Colby takes those ideas and really makes them work and feel like a little world on a piece of paper.
Where do you find in inspiration for your work?
Josh: All over the place. We look to nature and our surroundings in Portland for inspiration and I think you can see a lot of that in our work. A lot of our work revolves around the forest and the ocean. Those two things are huge parts of our life and we try new interpretations of them but hope they are prevalent in our work. We are also surrounded by a ton of very talented creatives here and they push us everyday to get better at what we do.
What tools a must for any graphic designer/illustrator?
Colby: For me it’s coffee, a mac, and a sketchbook with pencil. I try not to leave home without something to sketch on.
Josh: Some good tunes, a coffee, and something to sketch on. When it comes to creating textures, with each body of work I try to come up with a new overall style that will help tell a story so we have a place to start with a color palette and overall look.
Do you prefer a tablet or pen/paper?
Colby: We both use pen and paper, but I’m going to start experimenting with tablets to see if it’ll improve our process at all.
Can you walk us through your creative process from the conception to completion of a project/design?
Josh: Each project is different, but it always starts with the two of us sitting down with pen and paper and sketching out ideas. Then, depending on what needs to be done we’ll divide the work while looking over each others shoulders and giving input. We then tag-team it until it’s finished, send to the client for edits, etc (they’re involved this whole time as well), and once it’s done, onto the next!
Your solo show entitled “Shapes & Smiles” will be opening at Subtext Gallery in San Diego on December 16th – can you tell use a little bit about the exhibit?
Colby: The show is about what has made Josh and I happy throughout our lives and highlights a lot of personal memories and moments in our lives. It’s our second solo show at Subtext and we’re excited to be showing there again. We really love those guys.
Josh: I can’t wait for people to see this body of work. It’s fun, bright, personal, but there’s a lot of room for people to interpret each piece the way they want to and put some of their own memories inside. We’ll be showing fine art prints, screen prints, paintings, plush, and home goods. We really tried to push our style and how we tell stories more then ever. The show will open along with “The Shapes & Smiles Companion” which is a mobile guide to the show that attendees can scan a QR code and be taken to a site that will tell them all of the inspirations for each piece.
What inspired the work that will be exhibited at the show?
Josh: We sat down and picked moments from our lives that we thought would be the best to represent in the show. So, in that sense, our personal experiences drove it. Another main point of inspiration for the show was music which plays a very big part in our creative process. While creating the artwork for Shapes & Smiles, we tried to surround ourselves with sounds that added to the vibe of the show and listen to bands that would really help bring it to life.
Colby: Originally, the show was just going to be home goods like tea towels, prints and other things that would just be in a house. However, as we got deeper into the memories we found a really cool opportunity to re-imagine the ideas from our past and present.
What type of work should we expect to see; screen prints, paintings, pen illustrations…
Colby: Giclee prints, screen prints, paintings on wood, screen prints on wood, big plush words, strange creatures, type, eyes, patterns, a blue fish, and Skatefoot!
Anything else about “Shapes & Smiles” or Jolby that you would like the world to know?
Josh: You can get a vibe for the show by watching the video made by our friends Matteo & Cohen. It’s a really up-beat and positive show. If people can walk away smiling then I think we’ve accomplished something pretty amazing.
We hope you enjoyed our interview with Josh and Colby of Jolby. Make sure to stop by Subtext Gallery on December 16th for “Shapes & Smiles” if you live within driving distance of San Diego. For more info about Jolby, visit jolbyandfriends.com.
