How to get courage to quit your day job and do what you love: an interview with The Returning of the Boomerang

The Returning of the Boomerang started out as a way to blow off steam; it was a passion project for you guys to have fun with. Was there a specific “Aha!” moment that inspired you to turn your boomerang illustrations into actual boomerangs?

The first breath of the project, mainly the idea that the “return/returning” could be done in a funny way, began four years ago; it started from Velimir’s illustrations of some situations, which he drew because he wanted to spend some quality time outside of commercial design jobs and do some work for himself. We got a bunch of fun presents that related to the whole idea as it grew, and we eventually got a few boomerangs, too. It was fun to practice throwing them. In hindsight, the moment we lost our fave boomerang had probably decided the future course for our work. We wanted to present the stories we drew as small painted objects in the form of a boomerang; the composition issues, art, and reduction of content were quite challenging. The experience we had with losing one, made us make a new boomerang that worked, which was a new challenge in and of itself. The core idea of the stories that center around returning to somewhere actually played nicely with an object that was a physical manifestation of going somewhere and coming back.

A little backstory: how did you two meet?

We met a long time ago, during our studies. As far as the project’s concerned, we’d single out the moment we started living together as an important one. That’s when all our senses and skills in the field started working together and gave a pretty interesting result.

Tell us a story about how luck played a role in each of your lives.

“We threw it, and then it came back.” The lucky part was that it brought back a bunch of opportunities and exciting challenges with it.

What is the biggest risk you’ve taken so far?

You could say that our biggest risk was denouncing the security of having a classic job. Our project was setup as a self-sustaining platform for creative and free ways to work with different content that are related to an object, which, at the end of the process, turns out to be a product that’s correlated with art. So, the risk came up the moment when we wanted to switch spending time on all the different work we did, with spending time on working on our idea. Of course, money’s always involved, but with a little courage we decided to go on this adventure, where we gave certain elements different positions on our list of priorities. We wanted to channel our spent time, which could be called work, into something that – to us at least – was meaningful and had purposeful, by doing something that intrigues us and opens up new windows of opportunity.

I love the short stories that each boomerang comes with. People seem to like them, too. Which ones are your favourites, and why?

All stories are general, universal, and are about the same problem. We say problem, because even though the stories have short content on the theme of returning, they also ask questions about the theme, and so they also offer a space, a training ground for thinking about the presented problem. That’s why they’re all different, and work differently in their own content in spite of a clearly defined universal theme.
We’d single out Robinson as an example of our joint fave story. The novel has exceptional content that’s reflected through its title, which is especially interesting to us: “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un‐inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Orinoco; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pirates. Written by Himself”.

The content of the novel is universally known, and it’s the main part of school literature, which means that kids get to enjoy the entire adventure. The adventure is Robinson’s two-way movement that led by the idea of leaving and returning. Our boomerang has the night view, a pleasant view of the starry sky and a calm sea. That’s the one Robinson is constantly looking at, and the question arises in the calmness of the wind, and how the opportunity to go back home opened up. The boomerang as a medium that carries the story is the movement, and the view is the focus point, it reflect Robinson’s current position. The core is the relationship between the content, in this case the direct narrative, and the form from which it is supposed to communicate.

Speaking of boomerangs, what do you guys keep coming back to?

We’re inspired by a great many deal of things. From most recognizable and the simplest phenomenons, to abstract content from literature, visual art, aesthetics of the decades and different cultures, which we shape into concrete references though talking and thinking about them. To us, the most important are the talks during which we put fragments of stories and impressions of visual content into different positions and relations, and further consider the impressions that they make.

Were you surprised that your boomerangs resonated with so many people? They look amazing, by the way!

Thanks! Yes, we were very surprised. We revealed them to the general public in June, after four years of working on the visual element and the idea. It’s a long period during which we went over the themes and the content, and showing the final product that immediately spurred a reaction was a surprise in and of itself. It turns out that the boomerangs were pretty simply communicated, which we’re pretty glad with.

Lastly, why did you guys pick our Goodz theme? Was it the beauty or the brains? What part does it play in your grand marketing scheme?

After searching and seeing the demos where Goodz was used, we got the impression that its visuals and layout was unobtrusive, and that it does a pretty good job of communicating the content that you put in it. That’s why we didn’t see it as a theme but as a flexible platform for content. It’s exactly what we needed, because we wanted to organize our website as a good base that clearly and pithily present our content in segment, but that’s also good with potential new content that will come with the project’s further development.