Designer’s Spotlight – Backbone – Kiana Banana and her talented team

We are excited to continue our Designer’s Spotlight feature by bringing you a chat we had with Kiana Banana, the innovative mind behind BACKBONE and MADPEA in ™Second Life. Kiana brought along some of her team members, Axl Nova and Camille Nimble to help share how they continue to bring us the goods.

Question: Tell us about your brand and what made you want to start creating in SL?

KB: BackBone was originally started in 2016 by myself and Axl (Nova.) We were looking for furniture and decor for our house and decided to start designing them ourselves. To this day all our releases are items we would love to have or have ourselves in real life. We love to create things we enjoy and hope that others will do too.

Question: Tell everyone about your team.  (yourself, store manager, blogger manager, social media expert, etc).

KB: The BackBone team consists of myself (Kiana), I handle marketing & PR, manage the store, group, social media, come up with ideas and concepts together with Axl & Camille and animate our items.

Axl is the mastermind behind BackBone, he is an extremely talented designer and always on top of latest trends. Axl also creates our ads and graphics.

Camille Nimble is our latest addition, insanely creative character artist we stole from a gaming company for BackBone in January. Both Axl and Camille have a passion for character design and that’s one of the reasons you see a lot of characters introduced to BackBone in the last few months (FunnyBones, animal pillows, sculptures etc).

Jules Nova is our CSR handling any issues, communicating with our group and doing our giveaways. Jules also helps to test our products before they go live.

Deannasaurusrex Dragovar is our Blogger Manager who in addition manages our Flickr and helps with groups and social media.

Question:  The creative process is different for everyone, where do you get most of the inspiration for your creations?

Axl: “My inspiration comes from real-life trends, videos/movies, or just by iterating ideas. I love creating items I wish existed in real life, or take typical design and give them a unique spin/interpretation. In my creative process, I love to immerse myself in characters likely to use such items, think how they would interact with them, and try to infuse stories in the placement of every single detail.”

Camille: “For me I like to just get in there and play in the mud make something quick and sloppy with no real commitment till I like something I like I then show it to some friends to help hone its appeal”

Question:  What was your very first release? 

KB: At first we were going for industrial style and created a set of items for Lost & Found event. This was back in 2016 and we were so proud of our first release!

Question:  Out of all of your releases, which one is your greatest achievement and why?

KB: The Streamer’s Set was the first big collaboration between Axl and Camille and it contained several pieces and designs. It also was the first set to contain a FunnyBone collectable character doll.

Question:   Outside of SL, what are your hobbies and interests?

KB: We all play all kinds of games. We’re all total nerds and gamers. (LTD: we can relate!)

Question:  What do you wish other SL residents knew about creating products?

KB: It’s all possible! It’s a long learning curve to learn mesh but it’s doable for anyone. You should definitely invest in decent equipment and take the time to watch a lot of tutorials to get started with.

(You can watch Backbone as they sculpt their creations HERE!)

Question:  Can you give us some insight into what is to come for your brand? 

We are currently working on a new main store and will be opening it very soon! Be prepared for some surprises! Also the second season of FunnyBones is on its way!

Question:   Do you have anything else you wish to add that we didn’t ask?

KB: If you enjoy the BackBone products, we definitely recommend joining the BackBone VIP group. It’s a one time fee of 500L that you get back instantly as we offer 25% discount in store items. There are also weekly giveaways and monthly exclusive group gifts.

Make sure you follow BACKBONE on all of their social media platforms. Stay up to date with all of their new releases, sales, blogger calls and more with their social media and on all the Love to Decorate platforms as well.

BACKBONE – FACEBOOK | FLICKR | MARKETPLACE | INWORLD