MinaLima

As MinaLima grew as a business in their early days, Mina says that there was always an inkling that the duo would want to branch out of the Wizarding World franchise, and that setting up their own studio in 2009 enabled them to experiment and take on other kinds of work, taking on just one assistant initially. "Sometimes when you're putting a business first it means you don't have any money, or you can't afford to go on holiday, or take time off. There's all these other things that you have to give up, but I think we were unusually aligned in our motivation to get things done. says Mina on the importance of their dedication to working in partnership. "[Setting up the studio] has often taken us away from film, which was really nice because then it enabled us to think outside of our own box - I don't think we would have ever had published books, for instance - we'd never set out to be book designers." Their first venture outside of Harry Potter was their solo project, Collective Nouns - a collection of prints and merchandise featuring original artwork. The pair started to delve into retail and printing, as well as selling licensed prints and merchandise featuring their works from the Wizarding World franchise. This later enabled the duo to move into book design, publishing interactive illustrated editions of classic stories in their Illustrated Classics collection of books, prints and merchandise with HarperCollins.