What is Studio Oh! No!?
Studio Oh! No! is the name I put around everything I make: live visuals, design, printmaking, creative technology, workshops, plus whatever doesn't fit neatly into those boxes. One studio.
I'm not trying to build a conventional agency. I want it to be a place people can rely on - which means balancing the commercial work that keeps it running with the work that pushes toward what I actually want the studio to become: a real name in the live event world.
Partly a play on my name, partly a mantra for the chaos that turns up somewhere in the middle of making anything worth making.
A place to make things
The space is part workshop, part studio, part testing ground: somewhere to work with materials as much as with a screen, where technology and traditional making sit side by side rather than in separate rooms.
Some days it's quiet and focussed, other days collaborative, with other hands pulled into the space. Either way, it's built for actually doing the work, not just talking about it.
Work, art, and everything in between
Live visuals for a festival one week, a hand-painted sign the next, a workshop, an experiment that doesn't have a name yet - design, printmaking, live visuals and creative technology, cross-pollinating into new ways of working.
Commissioned or self-initiated, it counts the same: made properly, by someone you can rely on.
Who this is for
Studio Oh! No! works with whoever needs visuals, design or technical delivery from someone who actually understands the brief - not just fulfils it. An organisation or business, festival or first-time client, the standard doesn't change.
It also works with other artists and collaborators on projects that don't sit neatly in one discipline, and with anyone who's got an idea and isn't sure yet who'd take it seriously.
A few plain ways in: get in touch to book a design session and we sit down with it together, commission the studio to bring your event's visual concept to life, or bring a group along for a workshop. Not sure which fits? Just ask.
How the work gets made
Practical before polished. Ideas get tested by making them, not just presented - sketching, prototyping, test runs, rough versions before anything's called final.
It's deliberately multidisciplinary. A project might start as a design problem and end up as interactive technology, or start as a print and end up as a live visual set. Working across live visuals, design, print and technology isn't decoration - it's how the right answer actually gets found, whichever direction the problem needs.
No house style, no template answer. Every project gets built for what it actually needs, not squeezed into whatever's easiest to repeat.
Based in Shetland
Studio Oh! No! is based in Shetland - and that's not incidental. Being based here shapes the pace, the space and the kind of work that gets made: room to think, close to a landscape and light that's hard to find anywhere else, and a strong local tradition of making things by hand.
Being remote doesn't mean being disconnected. The studio works with festivals, venues and organisations across Shetland and beyond, and technology means the reach of the work isn't limited by geography - even if the studio itself very much is, in the best way.
If you're in Shetland, or thinking about bringing a project here, that's exactly the kind of conversation this studio exists for.
The person behind it
Studio Oh! No! is run by Jono Sandilands a graphic adventurer working where design, printmaking and screen-based technology collide, based in Shetland.
The studio exists because a scattering of separate skills - live visuals, design, printmaking, creative technology, workshops - kept turning out to be one practice wearing different hats. Studio Oh! No! is what happens when that practice gets a proper home, rather than staying split across separate labels.
Read more about Jono — or better yet, get in touch about what you're working on.
Have a project or idea in mind?
Whether it's a festival commission, a collaboration, a workshop, or something that doesn't have a name yet - get in touch and we'll figure out where it goes.