Storytime, from The Land of Me, is now available on the iPad 2 - for free! Here is a little interview by Tom Krcha. And here is the link to the iPad app

.NET magazine’s Tom May asked us a few questions about Apps, working with agencies, awards and what sort of people work at less rain. Here is a full transcript of the interview, as well as as page one and two of the article.

Q: Can you tell us a little about the history of Less Rain?

Vassilios Alexiou: I met Lars Eberle in 1996, while we were both students in the Design for Interactive Media MA, at Middlesex University. We worked on the Cyderspace project together (www.lessrain.com/apple), won the 1997 Student D&AD award and then we set up Less Rain. We had seen how far we could take our “designer / programmer” synergy, and we decided to build on that. Then in 1999 we met Carsten Schneider and Thomas Meyer and we took it to the next level, grew the company, opened an office in Berlin and later on one in Tokyo. Nowadays my focus is with the London office, which has built a tremendous team, probably the most versatile Less Rain ever had. The best is ahead of us.

Q: In what ways do the London and Berlin offices work together?

Owen Wallis: We work as independent studios but we often collaborate on projects for common clients, like Red Bull.

Q: You spend a few days per month working on personal projects. What benefits have you seen from this?

Owen Wallis: The personal projects are often geared towards looking into upcoming technologies. It’s good for our team members to keep highly skilled, and often they will produce interesting tech demos that we can take along to client meetings. These can in turn lead to new directions for our work.

Q: What led you to develop Facebook apps and how do you find working in this space?

Owen Wallis: It seemed to be a natural progression for advertising agencies to move the microsite which contained sharing features to Facebook where social sharing is really easily integrated. However the Graph API lets you tap into a lot of the cool Facebook features on external websites so we are seeing a move back to creating immersive fullscreen experiences outside of Facebook.

Q: Do you prefer working with other agencies or having an exclusive relationship with clients?

Owen Wallis: We love working with startup companies to create products. Doing this gives us a wonderful shared sense of ownership. Of course working with agencies at the start of a job to share ideas on the creative and technological output of the project is always great fun too. Ultimately, we prefer working on exciting projects that push us forward, no matter how big or small our involvement is.

Q: What tools and technologies do you tend to prefer?

Vassilios Alexiou: We see ourselves as technology agnostic, however a lot of what we do often comes in the form of Flash and Adobe Air. We have brought this experience into building cross platform apps, which is very exciting. Creatively, we are moving more and more into digital storytelling, working with traditional media like books and film and pushing them to the digital age via interactive and social interfaces.

Q: What’s been your proudest moment?

Vassilios Alexiou: There have been a few – winning a BAFTA, releasing ‘The Land of Me’ and making Site of the Month in FWA with Being Henry.

Q: Your sites win a lot of awards: how has that happened ?

Owen Wallis: We are picky with the jobs that we take on, and we don’t take on too many at once. We have three or four projects on at a time, each lasting around two or three months in production. We like to put our all into the work we produce, we often find ourselves getting emotionally involved in the work. We aim to have a good amount of time at the end of projects to give our work that extra bit of polish at the end.

Q: What sort of people work at Less Rain ?



Vassilios Alexiou: We like hiring people that have a need to push themselves creatively. Not by long hours but by being inquisitive, thinking laterally, always improving and learning new stuff. Everyone at Less Rain is focused, hardworking and most importantly supportive to each others needs; there is always someone to save you when you are in trouble. And definitely not rock stars, people that are in it only for the fame or money.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

Vassilios Alexiou: We are working on an interactive film, a multinational Facebook campaign, a couple of social games and an iOS children’s app.

Q: Do you have any plans to expand into other cities/countries?

Vassilios Alexiou: Not really, London is the most creative place in the planet.

Q: What’s the most bizarre request you’ve ever had from a client?

Vassilios Alexiou: There was one famous Japanese car manufacturer that asked us to build a game called ‘I make you come’. And another Japanese client that asked us to visit their offices to apologise for the project not running well in one of their low spec computers. And a Greek client that after a 6 month branding exercise drew the logo he wanted on the back on a napkin. All fun and games.