Dynamic Duos: Yakkazoo’s thrifty, travel-loving foodies
This week on Dynamic Duos, Yakkazoo's creative director, Jules Vince, and senior designer, Hanh Nguyen, go over their undying love for food, their "shared old-school, thrifty mentality", and first impressions that may or may not have been chaotic.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two colleagues with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Jules Vince:
Hanh joined the Yakkazoo team just over a year ago. She was the first person I was responsible for hiring in my new role of creative director.
From day one, Hanh struck me as a quirky and creative person, with a great sense of humour. I recall her commenting that her interests were jogging and croissants (in fact her passion for croissants extends so far that she has a tattoo of a croissant). I have since discovered that Hanh’s food passion extends to all food. Food and cooking is an interest we share, regularly discussing our lunch and dinner.
In our day to day, we represent a nice balance of order and chaos – yin and yang I guess you could say. Hanh is a very considered and structured person. I’m much more ad hoc. We do a great job of balancing out each-other’s personalities. I encourage her to step out of her comfort zone, take on new challenges and push herself. One of Hanh’s biggest strengths is her diverse skillset, she just needs the confidence in herself and the time to execute. I’ve noticed her grow in confidence throughout our time together and I’m excited to see what she can become as she continues to grow as a creative and lead others. On the flip side, she always asks the right questions and challenges my thinking.
Another thing we bond over is travel. We both love getting out in nature. Hanh has started camping over the past year or so, I’ve been camping with my kids for some years now. You never quite know what a camping trip will throw at you, so I always look forward to the debrief in our weekly creative team catchup. No matter how bad the trip was, we always manage to have a laugh about it.
Hanh Nguyen:
We’ve known each other for over a year now. Our initial meeting during my interview left a lasting impression on me – Jules’s kind and considerate demeanour, coupled with his calming aura, which clicked with me instantly. Thankfully, this positive first impression has remained unchanged. I can’t say the same about his first impression of me, as I think over time, I might have brought some chaos and cracked too many jokes at every possible moment.
Our daily collaboration is a blend of individual creativity and collective refinement. I focus on my creative tasks, generating as many ideas as possible within the given timeframe. Then we sit down to discuss my thought process and review the work. My work often involves video editing and animation, areas where I have considerable technical expertise. During our discussions, we address any issues or opportunities to leverage our creative capabilities.
We share a mutual dedication to producing the best possible work that we’re proud of, never settling for mediocre attitudes or efforts.
Our work friendship can be likened to smooth bike gears (Jules is an avid cyclist so I’m sure he’ll chuckle at this). And when a curve ball appears, we easily shift gears (pardon the pun) and work together effectively and seamlessly.
Jules’s presence is particularly reassuring during stressful times. There have been times I got overwhelmed, but he was there to assure me to take a breather, grab a coffee, offering his support to sort it out.
Jules is nice, calm, collected, endearing, and a true designer at heart. In times of conflict, the studio knows we can rely on Jules to steer the ship and guide us through. He’s protective of the team and always lends a listening ear to any problems that arise.
Despite being from different ends of the millennial generation, we vibe well together. Perhaps because of our shared old-school, thrifty mentality. We both appreciate a good op shop score, the bangers from Khruangbin or The Beach Boys, or camping trips.
Jules on Hanh:
Most memorable moment with Hanh: Hanh has Vietnamese heritage and brought a brilliant range of the weird and wonderful delicacies for all to share at our culture lunch. It opened my eyes up to the sheer number of applications rice can be used in and a world of flavours that I had never experienced including the century egg. For context, I brought chocolate brownies.
Best word to describe her: Bright – Hanh has an amazingly sharp wit.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour she has: Hanh’s a very curious person. Her book of colloquialisms is really endearing. As a non-Australian native, I love to hear the expressions that she comes across in her day to day. A couple of standouts being “wrap your laughing gear around that”, “he’s a dag”, or the one we try to avoid “lunch al desko”.
Hanh on Jules:
Most memorable moment with Jules: Probably the time when we worked on a TimTam creative and Jules said he didn’t know what a TimTam slam was – what a shocker! The next week I brought in a pack for everyone to experience their first slams. It went down a treat.
Best word to describe him: Iconic.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour he has: He loves Jumpy’s chips and can single-handedly keep that company afloat.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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