WORDS Nikki Benatar
Continuing our countdown to Youth Day, our fresh talent spotlight falls on a Pretoria husband-and-wife team today. The passion, honesty and creative energy of the couple behind UsTwoDesign is reflected in the original products they design.
They met and fell in love at design college 13 years ago and today Jeanne-Louise du Plessis-Pye and Gerard Pye have a thriving design studio, UsTwoDesign, which they launched in 2009. To look at their perfect products, you’d think that was their sole focus, but it’s not. By day Gerard is a graphic designer and marketing whizz for Richter Scale, while Jeanne-Louise lectures design at the Tshwane University of Technology.
“Our product range happened with an epiphany,” recalls Jeanne-Louise. “I came back from Design Indaba bursting with inspiration. Infected by my passion, Gerard whipped up our first product, a little game, and there was no looking back.” Although their shared vision is “to create affordable, honest, simple designs, inspired by the past, using responsible materials”, Jeanne-Louise believes their different work disciplines enrich them as designers and as a couple: “We learn from each other every day and never know where our imagination will lead us.”
For their new Afrikaans range they were inspired, more than ever, by their local culture. For the Festival Voor Afrikaans festival, hosted in the Netherlands, they dug deep and found their inspiration in what makes the language so special. “We were inspired by our history, and some of the more stereotypical imagery associated with the Afrikaans culture, such as the Voortrekker Monument and the ossewa. We used these images, combined with imagery from nature, to create a series of designs inspired by one of South Africa’s fantastic languages!”
072 567 3554, ustwodesign.com
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