designcommunity Archives

February 3, 2023 — No Comments

Into 2023…

…the year of change

My last post inspired me to talk more about my goals and plans for &Something going into 2023. In truth, it's easier to give advice than to follow it – and that's something I'll try to focus on much more this year.

You see, for a while now, I've felt like I've hit a plateau in my design business. While I recognise that I've worked on some amazing projects over the past few years, I also need to step up and allow the business to move forward somehow. I've outgrown the current model, but I've been trying to figure out the next logical evolution for a long time.

I've got myself stuck in a cycle of taking jobs that I feel comfortable with, the kind that I like and know. It's a dangerous place where my mind is telling me, "It pays the bills; you need this." It's where I feel safe, but it doesn't always excite me.

It wasn't until I spoke to a designer friend about my thoughts that I realised that this feeling of stagnation ran so deep. I started questioning myself, and then I sat down with him and asked him what he thought I should do about it. That meeting was a game-changer. A giant neon lightbulb flashed on, and I felt optimistic for the first time in ages. And now, I have a plan.

The story so far

I live and work in a fairly small, well-established market town on the English-Welsh border. I've mentioned in several of my posts before that it can be challenging to have a creative agency in a place like this because it's not a city, it's not near London, and there are very few, if any, large corporate businesses here.

Despite the issues, though, I like the sense of community here. And I enjoy the opportunity to work so closely with the businesses that thrive here. Many of the businesses I've worked with over the years have become friends, and I've been able to get involved in all sorts of things that I wouldn't necessarily have done anywhere else.

For a small town, it is diverse. There are a lot of little boutique businesses, as well as the better-known high-street brands, and so I've been lucky that I've got to work with some interesting people.

But the downside is that it's difficult to break out of this community. No one gets to hear much about a small studio like mine in places like Birmingham, Manchester, or London. That's where the bigger places are, and there are much bigger fish in their pools.

So my bread-and-butter tends to come from the businesses around my location, and they are predominately looking for branding projects such as logo design and websites. And while I enjoy getting involved in those, it's hard to find stuff that stretches my wings.

Getting good advice

Those already following me might remember that I changed my business name last year. Looking back, that was another sign that I was craving something more. I'd already started to recognise that I needed to evolve, and this was the one thing I could control – by rebranding.

I also knew that I couldn't make any serious changes on my own. I've always tried to maintain relationships with other designers, but asking for help? That's a whole different ballgame, isn't it? Though I knew that's exactly what I'd have to do if I wanted to make changes. I needed help deciding how to use my marketing knowledge to promote my own business growth. So I took a deep breath, and I reached out to someone I knew and trusted – more so, who I admired – and had already achieved some of the growth I wanted for my own business.

He was good enough to listen to my woes and willing to advise me on how he'd approached things from the start. He talked me through the obstacles and how to push through them. The most important advice was to be patient. Marketing, the way he'd described it, is a long game. Things aren't going to happen today or next week. Probably not even next month. But you have to remain consistent, and, in time, you will get results.

Patience and consistency. That's the hard part, isn't it?

Moving forward

There's a lot of noise online about knowing your audience and niching and all that stuff. Yes, I recognise that marketing has changed – it's no longer about the hard sell (which is great because I dread that) and more about being where your ideal client is and giving consistent value. It's all about building community and sharing. I know all that – but how do you do it?

My first task is to find the right platform. My focus will be LinkedIn because I already have a following, and I realise that the type of people I want to connect with are there, too.

The next challenge is to make more effort to interact…

This part I've always found hard – posting valuable content. I'll put more effort into sharing my work, views, and vision about the things I'm interested in. For example, I'd love to be involved in larger projects – not just on paper or screen but actual places, environments and exhibitions, etc., and more or the enjoyably challenging jobs that came in last year.

I already have experience on a smaller scale that I can talk about. Perhaps I haven't pushed those projects enough? How much is too much?

This is a reminder to myself – but I hope you can find value in it too. Now I have this roadmap to follow; I'm hoping that I can maintain it:

Keep things simple by using one central platform.
Connect with the right people.
Be useful with my content – post stuff that lets people learn about what I do and who I am.
Build community – make an effort to talk to people, like and share.

What about you? Can you add anything to this? I'd love to hear about your experiences (and pick up more tips).

Published by admin in Design Community, Other things

Tags: designcommunity, re-energise, relaunch

July 22, 2022 — No Comments

Collaboration and Community

If you’ve been reading my content for some time, you might have read my previous posts about Collaboration and Community, my thoughts on the benefits of having a design community and my efforts to put together a local design hub. These subjects have come to mind again recently for several reasons.

Firstly, I don’t know about you, but this summer feels like the first one in a long time where people – both creators and businesses – have begun to emerge from the fog of lockdown and are thinking more positively about moving forward. I think we’re all pretty exhausted by the isolation that covid brought and are beginning to seek out new connections. To me, the idea of fresh collaborations and community events feels pretty exciting.

And on that note, I and some others who I completed my recent MA with have come together to exhibit at the London Design Festival, which is taking place in September. Our group, in itself, has become a ‘hub’ where we have spent time bringing ideas and experiences together. They are one of the reasons why I have come to recognise the importance and huge benefits that having like-minded people around you can have.

I’ve always maintained that outside of cities, the opportunities to attend design events are very few and far between. In my area of Shrewsbury, there are many creative businesses – not just designers, but photographers, writers, filmmakers, and so on – but very little in the way of community. If you walk around my town, you can find several design agencies, but none of us knows much about the other. We never seek each other out, which is a real shame. Rather than see how we can collaborate or help each other out, we tend to close our doors for fear of ‘the competition’ getting in and finding out our secrets.

Perhaps that’s what sets big agencies in big cities like London or Manchester apart – they don’t think of each other as competition, in that sense. Instead, they are willing to not only come together to celebrate great design but invite other people in to celebrate with them, too.

It’s prominent on the web page for the London Design Festival: “(London Design Festival serves) to create an annual event that would promote the city’s creativity, drawing in the country’s greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to deliver an unmissable celebration of design.”

I think these events shouldn’t just be left to the cities; there is no reason why small towns can’t create their own, smaller-scale hubs and events all around the country. Why shouldn’t designers in smaller communities celebrate their talent and dedication?

An idea that I’ve begun to resurrect, The Shrewsbury Design Festival, is a project I had been working on before covid stopped us all in our tracks. It started as a way to bring together creativity in and around Shrewsbury so that we can be found more easily within the community, form collaborations, share ideas, and bring local networks into the spotlight.

I don’t want this to sound too much like a promotional piece – it would be nice if what I’m doing here might inspire other design agencies to consider creating their own hubs and communities. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have small pockets of designers who felt comfortable collaborating on work projects, meeting with each other to share ideas and experiences, building each other up and offering support? Imagine that…

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, yes! I’d love for that to be how designers work. Or perhaps you live close to my own hub here in Shrewsbury and want to get involved in my project. Whether for inspiration or to join in, you can sign up at sydf.uk or follow our socials: Twitter or Instagram.

Published by admin in Design Community, Other things

Tags: collaborate, designcommunity, hub, meet up

January 7, 2020 — No Comments

The Benefits of a Design Community

I wanted to talk about a subject that I touched upon in a couple of earlier articles, where I write about why I went back into education to complete my design MA, and then about being a designer working within a smaller community. I’ve been thinking a lot about my own working location, a small-ish market and college town, and how perhaps larger places have a much closer design community.

Shrewsbury, where I live and work is quite a unique, and in some respects, vibrant town. It comes with a lot of history, and is also a great hub for businesses.

What surprised me, though, is when I began to look around at my own industry, there really isn’t much of a community at all. It’s not for lack of designers or design agencies in the town – if you know where to look, there are some very successful designers here. But they seem to be quite isolated; hidden away from view. Seemingly keeping to ourselves, not through lack of interest, but more because we don’t go out of our way to know about each other. There is simply no interaction between us.

The discovery led me to look around, at other places, and how they have come together to collaborate and communicate, creating a ‘hub’ for their design communities. I looked at some of the most successful ones – the Graphic Design Festival Scotland, and closer by the Birmingham Design Festival. These designers seem to not only willingly collaborate, but celebrate doing so. They come together for events such as these – perhaps because, rather than see each other as competition, they see the value in working together on occasion, in pulling together to learn from one another, and creating their own ‘hub’ in their own communities.

The positives of design communities

There are many positives that can come from being part of a close design community – and creating local festivals and exhibitions to celebrate and collaborate. Of course, it does have the obvious benefit of showing off our work in order to give publicity to our individual studios – but I think it does much more than that.

Being so isolated, in many ways, can be such a negative. For starters, by working in such close quarters, you lose that sense of the world around you – you become self-absorbed in your own work. And yes, you might argue that we are all part of the ‘online’ community, but is that really the same thing? Is there really any substitute to getting to know what’s going on in the immediate community, what’s happening in your own industry, in your own town?

The opportunity to bounce ideas with each other, to learn for each other’s experiences, to come together to work on bigger projects, can only help us to thrive as designers.

Being part of such events as the ones mentioned above can be such a positive experience, a moral booster, and give us a sense of where we are going, as an industry collective. There’s such a lot we could learn from each other.

Can we create our own communities?

This is where I am right now. This is the big question I’m asking – how can I facilitate putting together something in my own community which can bring together other designers?

I’m looking at other local events – there are regular, and successful events for other creatives in my town. There are exhibitions for local artists, both traditional and modern, festivals for writers and comic book artists, amongst others. So there is scope – and some really great venues in which to host such things.

I’d be interested to learn how other places do it – perhaps you have even been where I am, and have seen the opportunity in your own town or city. If you have, maybe you could give me the benefit of your experience. Tell me how you did it, what obstacles stood in your way. Were you successful?

Shrewsbury, I think, would be the perfect place to host a festival for graphic designers – and I’m hoping that in the future, I can facilitate that. I can see a huge benefit in raising the industry profile in the town and surroundings.

Published by admin in Other things

Tags: design festival, designcommunity, graphic design, shrewsbury