Interview: Andrew Dobbie
Andrew Dobbie, Founder of Made Brave, on his lighting perversion, Scotland’s top talent and avoiding safe places.
Illustration: Asa Roger for Made Brave
Managing Director, Entrepreuneur*, Board Member, Public Speaker and tech influencer. None of these terms quite sum up Andrew. A better description might be a lover of MMA, burritos and photography with a passion for good business and design.
Read time: 10 mins
Since establishing the business in 2012 Andrew has overseen the rapid growth of Made Brave from a one-man-band to a studio of 24 staff and counting! NotFrom_ met Andrew in Made Brave’s third studio just off Glasgow Green in the city’s East End.
NotFrom_ London
Stewart Ainslie_
Where do you stand on London?
Andrew Dobbie_
We’ve fairly recently opened our presence in London so this interview is well timed!
We’ve a few customers down that way and London creates a lot of new opportunities for us too. Glasgow is great fun but the challenge of being a team of over twenty is covering that scale of business overheads. If we continue to expand it means looking for bigger projects. Whilst that doesn’t mean relocating to London it does mean extending your reach somewhat.
The one thing that ‘pains’ me about London is that often talented people disappear off down there. Potential customers from Scotland too, believing that London agencies are doing something magically different from what’s going on here. That can be frustrating at times.
What’s mad is that there are great people and business up here but I suppose we’re not great at shouting about that. Throughout history Scotland is credited with some of the finest inventors in the world! Perhaps because it rains here and we’re all stuck inside...
Whilst I don’t currently have any huge inclination to have a big presence there you never know. When I started Made Brave, it was just me and all I wanted to do was create great stuff. Now… [Andrew tails off, throws us a winning smile, shrugs and gestures around the studio].
Baby Brave
Stew_
The Made Brave story starts with you, a £1,000 bank balance and a brand new family family member. Can we touch on those early days?
Andrew_
It still feels like the early days Stew! I guess at the beginning I wasn’t thinking about building a business, I just wanted to increase my income for my family.
At first I think I was a bit naive. I didn’t know who was out there really. I had no idea who might support me or offer business advice. I firmly believed that if I treated everybody well, whether I was offering or asking for help, I couldn’t fail as entrepreneur*. Which is odd because reportedly I now am one and I can’t even spell the word. I still stand by that sentiment though, be kind and do good work.
*entrepreneur
Stew_
Who specifically have helped out along the way?
Andrew_
Power of Youth was where I discovered this community of similar people; on similar journeys. It was there that I realised the value of a network who are going through the same challenges as you. Peer to peer learning is great, you have the opportunity to lift each other up. By tackling similar challenges at similar times you can pool your learning.
Scottish Enterprise have also been incredible, I’m a big advocate of them so should also sing their praises.
Then there’s my family and home—it’s a cliche but for good reason. When you’ve got a young family you need to be able to offer financial support and you also really need to spend time together. Thankfully Pam, my incredible wife, was there for me providing a real anchor at home whilst encouraging me to build what became this business. That’s been really important, as is having friends and colleagues who trust you and who you trust implicitly. It takes the edge off setting up in business, something that can otherwise be a very lonely task.
Tech Toys
Stew_
You’ve always got your paws on the best swag, tell us a bit more about how and why?
Andrew_
First of all, if money were no object I’d be buying all this swag for myself. Before I started a family all of my fun money went on cameras and gadgets. I still like to be the first person to buy the first release whenever something new comes out. Nowadays I think if you’re creating the type of work that we do you have to be an expert in the potential applications, particularly in tech. Our customers rely on us to introduce them to these new innovations. If only there was a way to get our hands on all of it for free!
Getting to play with the gadgets makes my heart tick and it’s great fun in the studio but that extends to our core gear too. It’s important to have your staff using the best kit available. In our case that’s setting every employee up with a 27” iMac and a second screen so they have the best possible advantage when creating great work. It would be crazy to hire the best people and put them on outdated or substandard equipment.
Home from home
Stew_
Your studio looks like a nightclub-meets-teenagers bedroom. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Andrew_
Well this borderline obsession with ‘cool stuff’ started as reflection of what’s going on in my head, which can be a bit of a carnival. When you add it all up you are at work longer than you’re at home with your family. So whilst the studio doesn’t have to look like this (and it would certainly be cheaper if it didn’t) I believe an environment that inspires me and (hopefully) my guys is just as important as the tools of the trade. You’ve got to spend time in a place that you can live and thrive in and that attracts the best talent. It makes our lives enjoyable, which is pretty important for human beings.
Because I’m a designer with a photography background and Glasgow is an inspiring city it makes sense that the studio should be part of that. Designers take inspiration from everywhere and that makes it so important to me to get our studio just right. I want the best out of my guys so they need the best studio I can give them.
A lot of the stuff; and gadgets; and bits is me on a Friday night with a glass of wine and an iPad… “I’m a bit of a lighting pervert”. So the real expense has been lighting, the sun makes you happy.
In Glasgow we don’t always get a lot of natural light. We’ve compensated with daylight bulbs, neon backlit ‘stuff’ and LEDs placed around the building. This gives us control over the colour and mood of any part of the studio. It makes me happy and I hope both our clients and the staff enjoy it too!
Teal in the face
Stew_
What project, person or place to you most admire? Or perhaps you’ve got a dream client or project you can tell me about?
Andrew_
That’s a bit tricky. I don’t want to sound like an arsehole but there isn’t any one person, company or project that I admire in that way. That did sound a bit up myself there didn’t it—can we do the thing where we pretend you'll edit that out?
What I mean is everything inspires me equally.
Take this interview format as an example. You’ve inspired me today because this is one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever had and the format is great! That doesn’t mean I’m teal with envy but I would have gladly developed your card came questions myself. That applies to lots of things, perhaps everything.
I’ve never been the type to follow one designer or design company above all others. That’s not because I think I’m better than anyone but I’ve always followed my own gut instinct. I think if you focus on other designers the end product is at risk of being a poor man’s copy of that thing.
All design is referential. If you’ve always got your eyes open then you see inspiration everywhere. Those observations help to ensure that the work you produce is both interesting to you and relevant to other people. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Stew_
I wish you’d said derivative there Andrew!
Andrew_
If being derivative is all about being inspired then I suppose we are! We’re big believers that anyone can be creative. It doesn’t matter what your job title is.
If someone understands the goal and has gets our design process then their input matters. That person’s creative idea is as valid as the design director or a designer.
Although there are lots of successful companies and successful brands out there I’m equally inspired by everyone!
The buzz
Stew_
You’ve obviously found success and Made Brave looks like a great place to work. Assuming every day isn’t a dream environment; what are your biggest problems, hurdles or challenges when you’re under extreme pressure?
Andrew_
I mean, these grey hairs… I’ve got one for every employee at Made Brave, and I had none when I started out! It’s a business so it obviously relies on a certain amount of money coming in each month. It relies on people performing and it relies on having the right people. It is actually all about the people. People can be unpredictable but it’s really important that on the rare occasion that something does go wrong the rest of us rally. Agency life is full of challenges you’ve just got to work through them. It would be easy if it weren’t for staff and customers but of course it relies on both…
Like any business you don’t let that show with your marketing and we take our own marketing very seriously. That takes a huge amount of time and effort to do, you’ll see every post that goes out has been retouched to perfection and it’s constant work. Made Brave is it’s own client so we allocate ourselves both staff time and a real budget.
If people look at a picture of me holding a baby Richard Branson or they get their backs up because we said ‘jobby’ on Twitter then they’re probably not for us!
When it comes to employees we tend to find ourselves working with people who get it [Made Brave humour] too. When it comes to employment, the majority of successful candidates have applied to us using our own tone of voice. There’s always a really high standard of weird and wonderful stuff. We’ve had tins of beans and they’ve redesigned the packaging to put their CV on it, boxes of Nutella, balloons, jigsaw’s with our faces on them. Someone turned up at the door dressed as a mad hatter, that was great, then there was the Irn Bru bottle.
When it comes to job hunting that’s the best thing you can do, I suppose it’s being successful on your first brief.
Coming back to pressure, I’m no expert. With every employee that joins us I’m managing the largest company I’ve ever run before! There are challenges every day, if it was easy everyone would do it. What’s worked so far (I hope) is treating everyone well and with respect and supporting them when their personal lives or external factors take priority over their work.
Lightsabers and Deloreans
Stew_
The studio looks like you’re prepping for a flat party and the environment in the studio feels like a playground. Does that directly influence your work?
Andrew_
I think a lot of people come to us because they say they’re after something different. By itself that’s nothing unique but I think that we’ve been lucky to have worked with clients who truly want to push things. I hope they call on us is because we’re perceived as being Brave. When I chat to the team you’ll often hear it said that we’re avoiding doing safe. You can do safe all day long… We could give our clients the safe option but we’ll always drive for the brave option.
I suppose what’s helped is our clients have seen our rapid growth and we’ve tried to be pretty transparent about how we’ve built our brand. That created a bit more faith, sharing some (though not all) of your ‘secrets’.
That’s actually how Made Social came about. A few years ago based off some well received social media stuff of our own. Now I’m a photographer, so when I was first asked I was totally taken aback, of course we said yes though! Sometimes you don’t know what your business is going to become, it can grow into something you never imagined. I wouldn't have been able to tell you at the start that a few years down the line we would be managing social for big brands.
Stew_
How do you see Design, Digital and Social evolving and where will Made Brave be?
Andrew_
This stuff changes all the time but the one thing that always remains in the middle is brand. You notice little trends within every industry, I’m always interested in how designers sell themselves. For a long time it was all about Digital, which is just an output. Now the focus is swinging back to brand, or creative. Whatever term we use in 2032 it’s just a name for building relationships or affinity between a customer and a brand. What we do is brand and what we use to come up with the stuff we sell is creativity.
In terms of current technical innovations I wouldn’t want to guess. There’s so much going on out there, and some of it like the VR headsets, have already crept into the studio too. Who knows what’s around the corner! I suppose the answer is that technology is changing all of us every day and what developments make a real mark on the industry remain to be seen but it’ll all have an effect. For us to stay ahead we’ll play with all the gear and see what sticks but those important client meetings will always be brand focussed.
Do the People Make Glasgow?
Stew_
What’s your favourite aspect of working in Glasgow?
A. Well whoever came up with ‘that’ line [People Make Glasgow] did a great job—I wish it was us!
I think every city could use that sentiment but particularly in Glasgow the people really do make it. There’s quite a lot of honesty in Glasgow you know, people really tell it like it is. I quite like that and I hope we are like that. We try not to butter things up or talk in jargon and I think that’s representative of us and the city of Glasgow too. You might not always like that but I find it charming.
I’ve spent more than half of my life here and Glasgow’s always been good to me. You can really see this part of the city is coming up too and it’s great feeling like we’re a small part of that!
Interview: Steve Simpson
15 min read
Steve is a world class hand lettering and packaging designer living in Dublin.
On London
Stewart Ainslie_
Usually my first question is how do you feel about London. You’ve moved around a lot. Can you tell me a bit about where you’ve worked and where you love to work?
Steve Simpson_
Oh Stew I don’t know where to start. My whole career started in the UK and although I’m not from London I did work there for a time.
Before I arrived in Ireland (in 1990) I did court London a little bit. I had been working in Manchester’s Cosgrove Hall. Danger Mouse and Thames Television had lost their TV franchise and we were all being let go.
I actually went down to London looking for new work, but back then it was as an animator and as a story board artist. So I did think about London for a short while I guess. My plan was to find work in London and bring it back to Manchester. There was a time that London was the focal point for so many things. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case these days.
Dublin has been great to me. Even if you are starting out in the industry you can be very easily drowned out in a place like London. It can be really hard to get anywhere near the top. I think being in a smaller place has its advantages. Dublin is really good because, even these days it’s what, a little over a million people?
But it’s a capital city and people love it. What’s so amazing about that is you get to be a small fish and grow in a medium size pond.
What’s the population of London, closing in on 10 million?
For me being in a smaller populated capital city is amazing. So if you fight to get to the top then you can do it, which I think is so much harder to do in a place like London.
Murphy’s Law
Stew_
Turning illustration in to a full time career is no mean feat. What was your biggest challenge along the way?
Steve_
The biggest struggle for me was not really knowing what an illustrator was. I did train as technical illustrator. But I didn’t finish the course and never really got to experience illustration. The start of my career was pre digital. In 1983 technical illustration was probably the main area of commercial illustration.
Back then the technical illustrator would be the person who got paid most and received the most work. Everything that was advertised — everything that was created — was by a technical illustrator. They were the crossover between design and illustration. Whether you were designing a car, a lightbulb or a tin of beans, it had to go through a technical illustrator. Printing and photography just wasn’t up to it at that time.
As digital came along all that hand drawn technical stuff was thrown out of the window. CAD came in which led to Photoshop and everything that designers take for granted today.
After working in comics and animation I came back to illustration much later. I didn’t know any illustrators, everyone I knew were animators or comic artists! Established illustrators were using watercolours, markers, paint, etching or… whatever it was. They weren’t using digital. This turned out to be very lucky for me.
Digital was a scary new thing and nobody wanted to take a chance on that.
Nobody really knew what the future was. Graduates coming out of college weren’t experienced in professional drawing for clients. At that stage I’d been doing that for ten years. I entered illustration with digital knowledge that I’d built up myself and ten years of understanding how to compose a drawing to a brief.
What I was creating was like little screenshots of my animation career. These brightly coloured photoshopped cartoons. It was the perfect time as my stuff stood out from traditional illustration.
Remember, I still didn’t know what traditional illustration was. In comparison I think digital work looked so vivid.
Within six months I was working for loads of agencies and design studios full time! I’ll tell you now Stew, it was really bizarre… I still hadn’t met another illustrator.
Stew_
Was your main benefit having a unique style?
Steve_
You could say that but it’s not totally true. I just drew what my clients wanted. I had so many different styles it was ridiculous. But it wasn’t until I met other illustrators that I realised that I was the exception.
I was making a good living but to gain recognition as a ‘real’ illustrator I had to focus on one style. That was where my problems really began!
It was a two part challenge:
One, picking which style to ‘own’. And two, removing all the other stuff from my website. No matter which style I picked I was in trouble. The problem was that I would have very few portfolio pieces in one style. It felt like I was right back to square one.
In exchange for an own-able style I sacrificed the breadth and volume of work I’d done. What was left would make me look less like I was an agency and more like an individual. Even saying that now it sounds mad.
Around the turn of the millennium I started researching illustration. I started understanding illustrations, started looking at the history of illustration. I guess that was the real beginning of my illustration career.
Good craic
Stew_
Who inspires you now? Can you name an artist, illustration movement, or company which you admire?
Steve_
I like Big Fish, they’re a really cool crowd of designers.
This is a bit of a tangent but let me tell you about an epiphany I had. This was maybe 5 years after I figured out what illustration was. My epiphany was the difference between illustration and design.
I’d always struggled with combining my illustration and my graphic design. I kind of fell into graphic design without any training at all. Another struggle was how you fit an illustration into a graphic design piece. They almost always look at odds, and my illustration and design didn’t match up. This was often down to typography.
I had this little moment where, rather than spending two hours trying to find the right font, I tried hand lettering to match my illustrations. Suddenly it was problem solved for me. It’s going to perfectly match every time!
I ask myself a small series of questions when I work on lettering. Questions like ‘is it serif or sans serif’, ‘is it bold’, ‘is it fun’, whatever. So when I draw it to match the rest of the piece it doesnt look forced, or at odds. That led on to my realisation that ‘pure’ graphic design is just another aesthetic style.
Good design doesn’t have to be that graphic. It can be more illustrative. So my design is very illustrative — which works for me. I stopped thinking about my work in terms of ‘graphic design’. The way I looked at it was, if I’m going to produce a label I’m going create an illustration that is printed and wrapped around a bottle. There’s no graphic design as far as I can see in it whatsoever.
I still practise this way of thinking and hand draw, letter and digitise everything I do myself.
Even the barcodes.
Pick up a piece of design right now. Whether you’re looking at an advert or a menu or a flyer or a label more than one designer has worked on that. You could argue that it might be one designer that’s put together a print file or collaborated with a developer on a website.
Look again though. Usually another designer has created the logo. Another designer might have illustrated icons. A whole team might have worked on each typeface. They might use more than one typeface. Even if a design only uses two different typefaces that’s a minimum of two type designers. Now we’re already up to 5–50 people. Then there is the barcode. The barcode has been designed by someone else too.
By the time you’re in the mix that’s at least seven designers putting together something as seemingly simple as a bottle label. To me that usually looks disjointed. It doesn’t feel like it is one single piece. So what I try to do is approach it from this point of view that I want the whole thing to feel cohesive.
Back to Big Fish. They do that very well joining all those dots together. But I don’t think it’s a new thing; I think it’s a very old thing . If you go back to the 1850s or 60s, the whole history of design began with printmaking. Those printmakers are the people who became designers who were themselves illustrators.
All the way through to the 1920s it was one person who was doing the whole job, we didn’t have these complex titles. The term ‘graphic designer’ was only invented in the 1920s. The term ‘illustrator’ was even later than that. There was no need to call somebody an illustrator because there was only one person involved!
So the whole thing has been segmented and broken up. If you go back to the 50s and 60s you’ve got people like David Klein and Jim Flora. These people were making work that was full of illustration, hand drawn lettering and beautiful palettes. That work was completely cohesive. So that’s what I’m going back to. I’m trying to go back to this period where everything worked together. Everything was done by a single person.
Stew_
Is this where you tell me about ‘Adodeism’ Steve?
Steve_
I don’t want to spend too much time talking about Adobeism. I will say that I believe the side effect of Adobe is that they’ve broken us all down into technicians. Which takes away all the fun.
I love Photoshop. I really love Photoshop. I couldn’t do my job without Photoshop but what Adobe are doing now — it’s not for me.
Design software encourages an odd working practise. One where you sit at your desk and from one corner of your screen you pick your fonts. Adobe want to supply all the fonts, all the stock imagery and your colour palettes. Now they can even supply lay-outs! It’s almost, ‘press F1 for a business card, F2 for a label, F3 for a website’… everything’s already laid out there for you.
When I was training you had to go to a Grant enlarger and blow things up and trace them yourself. You cut things out and stuck things down by hand. There was a lot of opportunity for change to occur within the design process. Now everything is so finite. There used to be an infinite number of things you can create with time and imagination. The Adobe model of design has reduced that.
Fast forward 10 years from now, and I think we would look at this period of time as one influenced by a software company. You’d be able to recognise what’s being created as being heavily influenced by Adobe. It’s very odd.
We will reach a point where more people break free of that process. I’d like to see a real movement towards hand drawn stuff, more crafted stuff. I don’t know if that’s answered the question but that’s my beef…
How big is your head?
Stew_
Designers, artists and illustrators are often known for having ‘big personalities’. How big is your head Steve?
Steve_
Without a tape measure to hand Stew? Size 10½ hat.
The roundabout
Stew_
How do you keep your work fresh whilst keeping that all important continuity in your folio?
Steve_
There is always a risk that after a time your own work becomes self referential. The real trick is acknowledging that. Then constantly questioning yourself and your work.
The deeper we get into this automated design process the more punk everything else becomes.
Sticking to the DIY theme is where I find new creative ideas. That work can still be digital — it doesn’t have to be all hand crafted. Just because you’re starting a project by hand doesn’t mean it’s going to be well crafted. Conversely something can be beautifully crafted and put together on a computer. The key is taking time and thinking about all the available options. That can be difficult in front of a computer.
I think there is always a bit of my humour in my work. It’s very hard for me to be completely serious about what I’m doing. I guess I’m lucky that my clients often want the sort of work that brings people joy.
Draw or tell
Stew_
What gives you most job satisfaction?
Steve_
Oh easy Stew, I like teaching. I don’t want to be a full time educator, but I actually love it…
Maybe I’m just lucky. My whole career has been about being at the right place at the right time. I run workshops and so going into colleges I’ll do projects.
Teaching people analogue thinking and analogue production is so important to me. Encouraging people to think in a different way is really valuable. Using a pencil, sketchbook workings — getting them to start with thumbnail sketches! Playing out entire ideas on pen and paper is key.
The other thing I always say which is so important to new designers is:
I encourage failure in my workshops. It’s about experimenting, trying things you wouldn’t normally attempt, getting things wrong — all this is vital in the creation process. If you go through the process without experimenting then you are at exactly the same place you were at the start. I have taught you nothing.
If I can get you to a point where you feel like you are so miserable and shit that you almost start crying, then you are going through a process of learning something new!
Stew_
…I’m going to use that as a quote…
Steve_
Experiencing and overcoming that feeling of crapness is amazing though Stew. These are small steps that our entire careers are based on and I don’t think there’s such thing as ‘enough’ critical discussion. I mean that amongst all designers and their peers but particularly in education.
Stew_
When it comes to self promotion (and apologies for the job titles) have we almost come full circle. From commercial artist back to artist?
Steve_
It’s a very new world and it’s a very strange place. There are more and more people able to show their work to the general public and the general public are interested. That comes into the whole art thing. Eight years ago I remember being in Pasadena and thinking that it’s amazing being allowed to show our work in galleries. Which is really weird. It’s easy to get illustration into galleries now. Back then, only eight years ago, it was completely alien.
Illustration has come so far in this short period of time. I guess that has a lot to do with social media. People are talking about illustration and illustrators. They’re sharing it online and galleries are aware of that. The public is more open to what art is. I think we’re just more accepted than ever!
Arrested Development
Stew_
We’ve talked about your career challenges. What about the next generation of superstar illustrators?
Steve_
Over the past eight years or so we’ve been moving past the super stars of illustration. Right now there are still super stars of design and illustration sure — but they are kind of yesteryear. If you were to go back ten years there might have been 20 ‘superstar’ illustrators in the world. I think they would be championed by the few magazines which had a large readership.
Now, we have so many outlets and so many people uploading and following creative work. Pre Instagram we were approaching a real hole as far as illustration went. It was a real recession within illustration. Print was dying, we weren’t finding new outlets for illustration . I know photographers had a similar struggle. Now with Instagram my mother is able to take photographs that look like a professional has taken them!
Stew_
Were stock images and illustration a large part of the problem?
Steve_
For a time stock was a massive problem. It was really killing illustration. Fees were dropping and commissions were drying up. We were being told by the likes of the New York Times and Wired that illustrators needed to adapt to the way the industry was changing . We were going to have to animate editorial illustration as still imagery wasn’t enough for digital content. A few of us, myself included, thought they were mad. This sounded like more work and more work doesn’t always mean more money!
It was a really hard time for illustration. It was an interesting theme at ICON in 2016. The suggestion was that we don’t know the extent of illustration now.
Animation is illustration, design is illustration, books are illustration, entertainment is illustration.
People stand up in public and draw and that’s illustration. We just don’t know where the world of illustration starts or finishes. The way it seems to me is that, in the same way that somebody might have a favourite football team, band, tv show they have their favourite designers and their favourite illustrators. It’s another thing to talk about in the pub.It’s entered the world of the general public.
So I think there aren’t these 10 superstars of illustration any more, there are more like 200, 300, a thousand. They are all over the world, they’re not just in New York or London, they are everywhere and everybody has access to them, everybody can know what they are up to. We get asked to put our signatures on products and packaging.
As someone who primarily works in packaging design this is the first time in our history where we’ve been known for what we do. The only illustrators anybody knew about 10 years ago were editorial illustrators. Typically they got to sign their work. Plus children’s book illustrators as they got their name on the front cover.
It does help if you can animate an illustration in some way. But it doesn’t have to be what we traditionally think of as animation. It doesn’t have to be hand gestures and winks or characters jumping up and down. Something simple like flashing lights or colour changes can be just as impactful. Subtle animation which gives a piece movement or grounds it in the digital world are great. We’re not exclusively dealing with flat pieces of paper any more. When illustrators take commissions it’s absolutely worth keeping that in mind.
Just like my pen and paper fetish. The school of ‘anything’s possible’ is the professional illustrator’s biggest selling point. These things we create are not just a single images. We can bring them to life and see illustrations interacting across different media. That is incredibly exciting. We can provide more value to our clients than ever before.
Stew_
If you were starting out fresh tomorrow what do you think you missed out on that designers have access to today?
Steve_
I think that social media is hugely important. Today’s rising talent have to find and develop a hook. You’ve got to find a way of people noticing you because there is so much competition now.
It’s a tough industry to break in to, always has been I guess. Recently I’ve seen a lot of people describing themselves as studios even though they’re yet to graduate. I can understand why they are doing it though. Why wouldn’t you want to appear more professional than you are at that stage?
That’s putting more pressure on students and new graduates than ever before. Finding something that entertains people works well. Mr Bingo is great example of pushing illustration into a whole new universe.
Mixing in a bit of entertainment with whatever it is you are doing it’s certainly going to get you a lot more attention. I know for a fact that clients who come to me will check out my social media weight. How I conduct myself online, how I talk about clients, how I promote the clients I have worked for — that is all so important today.
Client’s have gotten wise. The advantage for an illustrator with huge online following can’t be underestimated. Clients know the more followers a designer or illustrator has, the bigger their own social media impressions will be. I’m still not sure how comfortable I am about that but, at the moment it seems to make everyone happy.
Pot of Gold
Stew_
What’s your unicorn or white whale? Any particular ambitions for your immediate future?
Steve_
Tough one pal! I feel very commercial, so I kind of want to make time for more personal work. I think that’s really what I want to get back to, creating for passion’s sake.
Lately I feel I’ve turned into more of a graphic designer than I ever expected to be. I’m in danger of being less of an illustrator because of it. Although I would say those roles are the same I don’t think that the rest of the illustration world necessarily agrees. I do feel that illustration is a lot closer to art than where I am at the moment. So I think I’d like to try to find my own voice a bit more.
Stew_
Does that mean going full circle Steve? Would you practise various styles again for example? Or work with entirely different mediums?
Steve_
I think it’s art. I think it’s doing stuff for the hell of it, just because I want to do it. With illustration there are so many things to keep in mind no matter what the brief does or doesn’t prescribe.
A commercial brief tends to come with target markets. Your work has to feel a certain way and it has to appeal to ‘these’ people. It’s got to fit within a set format and use specific colours. There are so many rules.
On reflection I’m actually pretty good at that. I’ll be honest, I really enjoy that! Working within guidelines feels like for me it’s this jigsaw. The puzzle of making things fit, which I’ve always enjoyed doing, working things out is design.
But with my personal work I’d like to be a bit more random, I’d love to surprise myself a bit more often. Not knowing where something is going can be a real pleasure. Slapping paint on bits of wood and actually figuring out what it is later is great. But I don’t know how possible that is, or how well paying.
Interview: Chris Davey
Chris Davey, Creative Director at Whitespace, discusses big ideas, collaboration and innovation.
The timing for this interview could not have been better. Whitespace is a booming agency with a list of awards and nominations longer than this writer’s arm. In June 2015 they were on the verge of moving to their new premises — a perfect opportunity for a peak behind the scenes!
Chris leads a team at Whitespace. He delivers award winning projects for clients including: Skyscanner, Oxfam, Innes & Gunn and Visit Scotland. When he’s not in the studio Chris can be found throwing himself off mountains attached to a bicycle.
Last updated July 2020.
12 min read
Stewart Ainslie_
I often meet people who have a little chip about London. I wondered if you agreed there was bad blood?
Chris Davey_
Totally on board with the ideal that location is becoming less important. I wouldn’t personally agree with having any bad blood with London though. We’ve got London clients and they value us massively because it’s based on relationships not geography. Perhaps recently those barriers have broken down as you can work with anyone in the world. Personally I’ve further aspirations than London.
There’s a great scene here, it’s relatively small but we’re certainly on a par with everywhere else around the world.
I was part of a course called TRC Media Cross Creative which took me to San Fransisco. We had an amazing time meeting some incredible tech and design companies out there.
I think there’s this attitude (particularly in Scotland) that we’re just alright, that we’re not really playing a global stage [Chris laughs at this point]. You know, we see all the amazing work from around the world and we imagine that everyone is doing it better than we are.
Meeting companies in San Francisco was eye opening. I saw some of their great work and I thought “Yeah we’re doing the same as you guys”!
I actually came back thinking, “we’re just as good as everyone else” and we should be singing the praises of Scotland and the work that comes from here.
People want to work in Scotland. We’ve got a real draw here and there’s so much going on, so I think the image of London being where all the best and greatest work is happening just isn’t true. I’ve met a lot of people that are leaving London and setting up agencies, which is great.
When I graduated it was the done thing that you went to London to get a job. It still is in a way, but London is not the centre of the Universe, even though it sometimes thinks it is!
Stew_
I suppose in London they’re going through the same challenges and have similar issues as the rest of us. Perhaps they’re more comfortable communicating their success?
Chris_
There’s inherent jealousy amongst all designers, you know the feeling. It’s when you see a piece of work that’s so good that you want to be sick. It makes you want to push harder and create those ideas that are going to make others rage with jealousy!
Anyone can have an idea regardless of who they are. The trick is recognising a good idea and then exploring it. We [at Whitespace] have started developing our own projects. We are building services and products that might benefit us. Ideally some of them will benefit our clients! Learning from that ‘startup mentality’ is interesting.
I mentioned everyone can have great ideas. If a junior approaches us with an idea we’ll certainly investigate it. If it’s interesting we’ll pursue it further. Ultimately, if it can turn profit and if it pushes us we’ll absolutely go for it!
Stew_
Is that startup mentality something which is structured? By that I mean, is it a part of daily or weekly time sheets or is it a bit more casual?
Chris_
Back in 2015 it was much more casual Stew. Obviously our clients will always come first. We have a few ongoing projects which have some promise. We’re also looking at using our new event space as a more collaborative creative venue.
Stew_
You’re not long in to the new Whitespace studio. Previously you guys weren’t all under one roof. How important is that to the company culture?
Chris_
Massively important. The new building is pretty big and really is built with collaborative work space in mind (it won BCO best office fit out). Prior to 2016 there were 80 of us in a space designed for 50. It’s was vital that we moved into a new space. The obvious benefit is being able to chat with one another regardless of team or job description. The new building is an amazing venue for clients and visitors too. Students, potential new hires, prospects and members of the public!
Wouldn’t it be great if we could build a real venue in the heart of Scotland? We’re hoping that the new event space and bar will be a huge step towards that.
It’s going to be an amazing place to work. I live about 20 miles south of Edinburgh so I’m going to have the best of both worlds (for me). Great studio to work in and awesome rolling hills to get out on my bike in and clear my head!
Where does it all start?
Stew_
Can you talk me through a bit about your creative process? How do you approach a brief?
Chris_
We start with ideas. A client will come to us with a problem or challenge. It is our duty to interrogate and question what that problem or challenge is. They might approach us with a clear idea of what they want. By the end of a project we might end up with something totally different! It’s not what clients always expect but it is so much more effective in achieving their goals.
There are so many ways to communicate and get a message out to an audience nowadays. Hence Whitespace call ourselves a media neutral organisation. We look for the idea first and then select the best route to drive that message home to the right audience. So, it’s not about making something for: online, social, experiential, VR, AR, mobile or video.
The idea and goals will inform the execution—you’ve got to start there. With a few tweaks a good idea should work no matter where it’s published.
Of course, all this influences our career choices too. It’s less and less common for us to hire a ‘digital’ or a ‘print’ designer. Kids today are like, “what even is that?”. They are multi talented. Its sad in a way when I see graduates advertising themselves as ‘a Brand, Web, Print, Ideas, Motion or Graphic Designer’. You see that a lot! To me I think it’s all blended into one now, so they should really just say they are Designers or Creatives.
Collaboration
Stew_
To what extent do you collaborate with freelancers or third parties? Where are they typically based?
Chris_
We try to work as much as possible with other companies and freelancers in the UK, usually within Scotland. If we have a project that we think would suit a particular freelancer and they’re not local that’s fine. But our preference is to work with people nearer to home.
Whitespace employ a photographer and illustrator too, both of whom are brilliant. So we have the capability to cover most projects that come our way internally. We really enjoy having that talent under the same roof as our design, digital and other teams.
Some projects really benefit from collaboration. Like when we worked with Joanna Basford. It was part of a two day live tweet project to design the Edinburgh Festival Fringe program cover. She was drawing people’s tweets as they came in which was great. So when we can do cool stuff with those types of people — brilliant!
Regardless of distance we will always strive to get some all important face-to-face time. We have a client in Bristol and we will happily fly down to see them. We do all the usual conference calls, Skype and emails etc and the new studio is totally geared up to support that. At Whitespace our account managers handle day-to-day contact. Creatives would get involved for presentations, briefing pitches etc.
The previous studio space.
Digital Darwinism
Stew_
Technology moves on so fast. A not-so-ancient example would be responsive web design, which must have caused some issues in a large agency. How do you keep up?
Chris_
It’s interesting, we’ve had a lot of these conversations regularly and we have only recently changed our internal processes.
We started building responsive websites almost eight years ago now. The first one would have been highlandspring.co.uk, and we had a very innocent approach then. We’d design up the desktop site, and then a few mobile versions and then hand that over to the developers to build. A fair bit of trial and error but it worked well at the time.
In the last few years we’ve stopped thinking of a web project as multiple different sites for different devices. You know; mobile, desktop, tablet… and other devices. In reality it is just one site! We don’t talk about desktop, tablet, mobile anymore. Designers need to move away from that. A lot of designers design for Apple products! It’s what they use themselves, but in reality there are thousands of devices out there. Laptops, phones, touch surfaces, consoles, VR, tablets etc. It’s a challenge, that’s for sure!
At Whitespace we make sure that everyone is involved right through the project from start to finish. So designers, developers, producers all sit down and work together on a project. It’s a super collaborative way to work and we’re really starting to see the benefits.
Regardless of how a user views a site they expect the same experience and access to all the same information from whatever device they have. The difficulty of course is it can take longer to develop. You need more people in on the process thinking about it at every stage of the journey. That doesn’t come without cost and time implications — which can be difficult to explain to some clients.
In terms of technical redundancy you’ve got a great example in Flash. Back when browsers announced they were no longer supporting Flash we’d already been exploring developing all of our online advertising in HTML5. It’s still difficult recognising when a certain technology is dead and gone. It can be difficult for us and it can be a headache for our clients. You need to keep on top of that and give your staff, client and suppliers time to adapt.
I’m really excited about VR which is still to fully reveal it’s potential. When you consider how far that’s evolved over the last six months… just imagine where it will be in five years! I can already picture someone sitting at home watching the Monaco Grand Prix. They’re on their couch but they’re also in the cab of the lead car, able to switch seats or camera angles, live. It’s great knowing we could be pushing the cutting edge of that.
[Whitespace did push the cutting edge of VR for Visit Scotland. On May 25th they won another award, this one for app design.]
Stew_
The second part of the question I suppose is the client reaction. How do your customers feel about building something which risks becoming redundant so quickly?
Chris_
Of course there is that potential. It might not be long after you make something that it needs updating. There’s really no such thing as future proofing. We try our hardest to make sure that what we deliver will last as far into the future as it can. Some of our clients really understand this and are equally excited about embracing any changes that happen along the way.
We think there’s always room for improvement. It’s not a bad thing that nothing is ever totally finished. Our projects are like living creatures and should constantly be evolving. They must change as tech does and (as always) with changing customer expectations and requirements.
It’s nothing personal
Stew_
What’s your favourite project so far?
Chris_
Tough question, someone asked me that just yesterday and I struggled then. Tell you what I really like. I like seeing other folk buzzing when they’re presenting their work, that is amazing. Particularly when they’ve nailed it and you can see an infectiousness spread throughout a room!
I don’t actually design any more, or rather I’ve taken my hands off the tools. I’m exceptionally proud of being part of the team here though. We’ve done incredibly well at some of the design awards recently and being part of that is really, really great.
There are so many small moments though, if not every day at least every week. The ups and downs of creativity are always satisfying but you really need to have the right type of pressure on a studio to get the best results. I’ve actually written an article on the creative boiling point and when you get that right and there’s a buzz in the studio that’s magic.
The new studio.
I didn’t really answer your question there! But I would say my favourite project is usually the last one we did.
[Chris notices a note on my question titles]
Are you about to ask me if I’ve ever lost it?
Lost it?
Chris_
I guess it depends what you mean by ‘lost it’? From a mental point of view, yes, I ‘lost it’ once. Some projects can be exceptionally challenging. I remember walking out of the studio to calm myself down. No one noticed! I am a very calm person but this was just pressure beyond pressure. I think everyone has that at some point and it makes your recognise your absolute limits. Mine are pretty high luckily!
In one of my early jobs, long before Whitespace, I was working with a great bunch of folk but it just wasn’t working out. I did feel for a while like, ‘what am I doing?’. I left after 10 months and was jobless wondering what to do. It takes a while to find the right agency and a great team and I’m glad to say I’ve found that now.
When I ask myself why I get up in the morning, it’s not to make money. It’s to come in and work together and do awesome stuff with amazing people.
[The question would not have been “have you ever lost it”]
Edinburgh
Stew_
Finally, what’s the best thing about work or life in Edinburgh?
Chris_
I could say it’s people, culture, beauty, amazing choice of burger bars, history etc etc… But everyone says that.
For me I really think there is this massive sense of optimism and great desire to do great work in Edinburgh which has manifested over the last few years. There are great agencies and the start-up scene is in overdrive. Codebase opened it doors a few years ago now and it is now Europe’s largest and fastest growing tech incubator. The creative scene has had a kick up the arse with the emergence of new technology and social media. It’s a really exciting moment in our industry and Edinburgh is in a great position to take the bull by the horns and show the world what it is capable of!
Someone said to me that ‘Scotland is in the arse end of nowhere’. I say ‘so what?’. In this modern era you can be anywhere in the world and produce amazing work with amazing people, it doesn’t matter where you are. Boundaries are breaking and walls are falling. So get to it!