A giant windmill installed at annual desert music festival Coachella. A Christmas tree made of metallic propellers. Huge inflatable towers serving as backdrop for Craig Green's Moncler show. A train for half a dozen eggs to swirl and dance on a table. These and more marvels are the product of London-based creative studio Isabel + Helen, founded in 2016 by Isabel Gibson and Helen Chesner.
Focused on an analogue, hands-on approach, Gibson and Chesner started out as university friends and over the course of a decade, they built a practice rooted in problem-solving through playfulness and spectacle through ingenuity. Craft, movement and colour are at the heart of their installations, which often appear as larger-than-life, ambitious playgrounds for creativity.
During London Design Festival 2026, as the pair celebrates a decade in business, The Conran Shop stages an exhibition titled 'Motion Sickness' (12-20 September 2026), chronicling the studio's obsession with movement and offering a peek behind the scenes of their creative process. For the occasion, the designers have also created a series of objects and sculptures that will be available to buy, namely a series of 'Blimps' (kinetic optical sculptures), stools in stained birch plywood, and paintings from their Twister Series, made by a rotating canvas pressed onto 20 paintbrushes.
Here, the duo tells Wallpaper* about their journey so far, the unlikely inspirations behind their creative process, and what they want to do next.
Ten years of Isabel + Helen
Wallpaper*: How did you become creative partners?
Isabel Gibson: We met while we were studying graphic design communication at Chelsea College of Art in 2009 and became really good friends.
Helen Chesner: We were drawn to the same reference points, and humour was quite a big thing that underpinned a lot of our work.
IG: Because we shared the same sense of humour and were both naturally coming up with ideas that were really playful and exciting. That seeps into our work quite a lot because even just coming up with ideas together becomes this playful experiment. But we're also quite logical people, very interested in the way things work, in making and repurposing objects and bringing inanimate objects to life through movement. I think we've always been interested in the different feelings and emotions that movement can bring to an inanimate object. We bonded on that.
W*: What your first steps as a studio?
HC: When we first started out, we didn't have any money, and so we had quite a DIY ethos to the way that we worked, using really low-fi materials and simple kinetic special effects. We would just build everything ourselves and learn on the job and design through making.
IG: one of the first projects we did was for the V&A, the brief was really open, but it was to do with Russian art and culture. So, we picked up on the Constructivist movement and created a piece that people could really physically engage with. We made a play set of shapes that people could then interact with. From the outset, our work was just about how can we engage the audience in a really physical and tangible way, and then that's led us to more movement and motion over the years.
W*: Do you think of yourselves as designers, artists, or something else?
HC: We do fluctuate between the two quite a lot. Fundamentally, we see ourselves as designers, as we answer briefs and we work in quite a logical way. But then at the same time over these 10 years we've evolved into this artistic practice, and so now that's what we're known for.
IG: We are designers at heart, and we're usually designing something that serves a bit of a function or a purpose, even if it's a bit futile.
HC: Like, how do you make eggs dance? And then make a performance with some eggs.
IG: The function of the object is to bring a small moment of joy to someone.
W*: Can you tell me more about the eggs?
IG It's called the Scrambler, and it's a little train that can carry half a dozen eggs, and it makes them spin and dance as you move them. That was just a self initiated project, we're always developing ideas that we've had in the studio alongside more of our commercial work. As the 10 years have gone on, we get to spend more and more time on that part of our work this obsession of movement and mechanisms.
W*: What is the starting point for a project?
HC: We'll just kind of bounce ideas back and forth.
IG: But the starting point is usually some kind of transformation, whether that's a visual effect or whether that's something actually physically changing. The experimentation and the process are just as important as the outcome
HC: That's something that we really relish in and leads us it takes us down paths that are quite unexpected. And that's why it's always really important to document the process
W*: What are the pillars of your creative process?
IH: It goes like this: does it have some kind of transformation or optical effect? Does it celebrate the beautiful simplicity of the analogue and the tactile? Does it inspire some human reaction? We need to tick each of these boxes in order for a project to feel like it's got legs.
W*: What have been the encounters that have shaped your creative practice?
IG: We were both inspired by similar artists and designers, there's a few that we met while we were studying, like Daniel Eatock, his work was all about process and the joy and the experimentation within that. But also also video artists John Wood and Paul Harrison, with their dead plan performance art. They often use quite low-fi tricks in camera to create really graphic scenarios that include the human body. That encouraged us to look at human interaction within space and sculpture.
A real moment for us was when we saw Julio Le Park in 2014 at the Serpentine; we were really amazed by the simplicity and the hypnotic nature of his work, something which we take into our practice today. We love the idea that a piece of art could act as visual therapy, or put you in a meditative state.
HC: On a more personal level, We've both had children in the last few years. So that's also had a really positive impact on our work in quite a different way: [our kids'] sense of wonder and the excitement and intrigue when they're experiencing stuff for the first time. They get completely obsessed with one thing, don't they? Even just the repetition of opening and closing a door that can just become the most exciting thing.
W*: You work on a variety of scales. Do you have one that you prefer?
HC: We're constantly fluttering between the smaller scale and the large scale and I think that's what we love about it.
IG: The biggest work we did was at Coachella, which was a 60 foot windmill. And then it goes right down to the Scrambler. They both offer challenges in quite different ways. Obviously the larger scale is all about achieving an impact in a spatial, architectural way, whereas the smaller projects have to be much more specific in the detail. I think we quite enjoy the contrast of the two, and they both offer different experiences for the audience as well, and I think both are just as important.
W*: What commissions have felt like a turning point for the studio?
IG: Craig Green was a huge inspiration to us and also just an amazing collaborator as we have worked for a few seasons on the Moncler Genius Collection, and also for his individual label as well. But his work has always been a big inspiration to us, and we've been so lucky to work alongside him; he really pushes an idea and we've been able to really increase the scale of our work with him.
HC: The Moncler Genius installations meant that we could think of our work much more spatially and in a multisensory way.
W*: What are the things that inspire you and fill your life and as a result creative work?
HC: Most of the time, it's the mundane. We always say the playfulness in the everyday is something that really inspires us. It could just be some really simple mechanism you see on your daily commute, and it can then lead to a whole project.
IG: We're also quite inspired by really old school films that we'd watch as kids, where special effects are really analogue - things like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, Toys with Robin Williams, or the 80s animation film Button Moon.
HC: Labyrinth with David Bowie, or the old Beauty and the Beast, when all the candlesticks come to life and start dancing.
IG: A lot of theatre is quite inspirational to us as well, I recently saw some great mime performances where they interact with the set and it's all about telling a story through props and movement, using the body to communicate.
W*: what can we expect from your exhibition at The Conran Shop?
IG: One of our first projects was with them back in 2016. They are such a great British institution for design so it's really nice to be back there doing our exhibition. It explores this obsession with movement and motion that we've had over the past 10 years.
We're going to showcase a lot of our process and all the models and maquettes that are behind our projects over the years, they act as starting points for explorations and experiments. So you'll be able to see a lot of those low-fi tests. There'll also be a series of films that we've collected over the past 10 years of those different experiments.
HC: We'll show the behind the scenes, the inner workings of the projects, and then we're doing some limited edition artworks as well.
W*: How do you feel about this past decade, and what would you like to achieve in the next 10 years?
HC: It does feel quite lucky to make a living out of this.
IG: And that we're still working as a duo. I remember when we first started out, an accountant we went to see about setting up our partnership was like, "You do know that 100% of partnerships fail?" like what? We are happy to have made it so far, and just hope that we can carry on working together.
For the next 10 years, I think it's just about trying to remember to be in the moment and enjoy the process
HC: And also doing more things in the public realm as well, so people can really experience and interact with our work and see it at scale.
IG: And the things that we get excited by, we want to be able to share that with more people.
Motion Sickness, an exhibition by Isabel + Helen is on view 12-20 September 2026 at The Conran Shop, 16 Sloane Square, SW1W 8ER