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As a small team they enjoy the privilege of choosing their clients thoughtfully and ensuring a high level of execution no matter the scale of the project. What we especially like about Mildred & Duck's style is their very minimal design approach that removes clutter and finds the essence of each brand identity and visual language. Without further ado, here is the exclusive interview with Daniel and Sigiriya:

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Mildred & Duck is a design studio run by us, Daniel Smith and Sigiriya Brown. After meeting at university, we continued to work on jobs together after graduation and eventually established the studio in 2010. The name Mildred & Duck comes from some names we used to call each other back then, we can barely even remember why now/u2026 but as the studio was just the two of us it seemed like a fitting name. Now our studio has grown and we work across a variety of sectors with a range of clients, from startups to established organisations, and feel lucky to spend our time doing what we do.

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1. Our favourite vegetable is eggplant. We love the colour too (so much so we/u2019re thinking of getting some aubergine coloured business cards for ourselves soon)!/u00a0 2. We do a crossword once a week. We/u2019re really terrible at crosswords, but are hoping that with some practice we might be able to finish one without cheating some day!/u00a0 3. Lots of the props and textured backgrounds in our folio photos came from the rubbish. In the building where our studio is, there/u2019s a communal rubbish area that we have a look through every now and then, and often find some really interesting things!

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We wouldn/u2019t describe ourselves as minimalists, at all, but in general we definitely shy away from clutter and unnecessary things. We/u2019ve never really sought to develop a specific style, but this probably comes through in our work, unintentionally, as we are always trying to distill things down to essential elements. /u00a0We are both really interested in architecture and interior design, along with product and object design, and /u00a0we take a lot of inspiration from things like colours and textures used in these industries.

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The best clients are those who really trust us, which is something we take seriously and treat as a privilege. Those client relationships generally make for the best outcomes. As for ideal future projects, we/u2019d like to continue to work for clients across different industries; a wine label would be interesting, we/u2019d love to work with a jeweller, and hospitality jobs are always creatively rewarding/u2026 we/u2019re really up for most things.

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We love lamps! Although maybe that/u2019s not so unusual, maybe it/u2019s more unusual that we have so many of them.

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We don/u2019t really make a distinction between /u201clove jobs/u201d and /u201cmoney jobs/u201d and we try to make every project we work on as enjoyable and creatively stimulating as a side project would be. This allows us to bring all of our enthusiasm to the jobs Mildred & Duck produce.

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We/u2019re lucky to be in a position to be able to be selective about what projects we work on, and one key thing we have learnt whilst running the studio is to choose to work with clients that have similar values and build on the relationship from there.

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We/u2019d probably have to go with Charles and Ray Eames. Mostly because we love the idea of waking up in Eames House (Case Study House No. 8) and spending the day there surrounded by all of their designs!

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We recently got a little fan from Muji. We love Muji, and like everything else they make it is simple and uncomplicated (and pretty good looking too!).

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We would commission artist Kay Rosen to create a piece for the site. With so much advertising around already, we/u2019d like to give people a little break from this visual noise and a chance to engage differently with the environment.

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Don/u2019t be afraid to make your folio a bit more unique, it should reflect your aesthetic and personality. Be open-minded, take risks. And use spellcheck.

Thank you /u00a0for your time and answering all of our questions. If you enjoyed this interview, please let us know via Twitter. You will find Mildred & Duck online at www.mildredandduck.com ; they are also active on Instagram.