Our biggest creative challenges, hopes for the future, and getting the washing done.
Some of the reflections that floated up into the vaulted (and slightly chilly) heights of the Mount Without on Thursday February 6th 2025. Here are just a few highlights, scribbled from the front row.
Representation
We started with an acknowledgement of how the panel, while well-balanced on age and gender, was all white. It’s a regional thing. It’s an industry thing. And it’s important to keep prodding and poking it. Because it’s the right thing to do – and because our clients are doing it. For an industry that projects a fairly progressive image, our talent pipeline lags well behind. It was great to hear the steps some are taking to remove barriers, like Fiasco’s super open internship scheme: no CV, no portfolio, living costs paid, and an actual wage.
Panel: biggest challenges?
Covid. Kate retooling a whole studio to work from home. Sam went freelance the week before lockdown. Claudia graduating into a post-virus economy. Lewis leaping agency-side after building and shaping an in-house brand for over a decade in total. Joe experiencing the impact of creative block and mental health struggles in a creative field of study. In every case, the learning and the opportunities came through: new perspectives. Flexible working, remote (paid!) internship opportunities. Realising where your strengths or support networks are. The invigorating effect of the new and the different. And, later, the pull to pay it forward for people who had that challenge too.
Question from the audience: first creative challenge that made you feel legit, like you’re really doing this design thing? Responses included cutting creative feedback and an extraordinary number of cowpat pictures. Both inspiring tales of resilience. You really had to be there.
Panel: how do you keep your creativity juicy?
Long story short: the clichés are clichés because they’re true. Claudia and Joe are both here for the stepping away, the going for a walk, immersing ourselves in other people’s work and ideas, all that good stuff. Creative community, talking and listening, understanding how other people think. From Lewis, looking behind the product category to avoid same-iness (very technical term) and bring the outside in.
Sam had a great point about learning how your own creative process works. Because it’s good to refine it and work it like a muscle. And because then, once you know, you can figure out how to still be creative, even on the days when you feel like you’re not. Working with different clients, agencies and practitioners in design and other disciplines is great too, ‘cause you get to see how they make the magic happen.’ Nice. Also from Lewis: take the brief, and then put it down. Go do something else. Give it room to breathe.
Question from the audience: is there a little easter egg or signature you sneak into your designs? Answers included: fun typography, secret pixels, Spurs colours, Arsenal colours (uh-oh), panellists’ own names and dates of birth. Keep it real out there.
Panel: using AI?
Most people are dabbling. Some are using it to take the hassle out of manual, repetitive digital tasks. Everyone agrees that the depth, the real thinking, has to come from humans. Sam, Lynne and Lewis reflected on other tooling that’s come and gone through the last few decades in design: Quark! Letraset! Adobe Flash! Sam reminded us that AI is very much another tool. It’s like using Photoshop, or any other piece of software.
Question from the audience: anything you wish AI could do for you? Resizing. Cleaning the house. Timesheets. The admin holy trinity, some might say.
Lynne navigated us from how creatives build communities (inside agencies and out in the freelance world, we’re all at it), via how you build a great team (hybrid, remote or in-studio contexts make a difference) to land eventually on a moment of looking ahead.
Panel: how do you see your future in design?
The panel agreed that life just isn’t as linear as you think. You can make plans, but things can change. Sometimes, as Kate and Claudia both said, you can change, between making the plan and encountering its milestones. In Lewis’ early career, it was all about big agencies and big awards. Now, doing good work, with good people, for good people, is more than enough to ask for. Overall, going with the flow can get you further than you think, and flexibility leaves you open to more opportunities.
Kate’s words to Joe have stuck with me the loudest, from this question: the South West is a great place to not have a plan. This industry, this community, is a generous one, so don’t be afraid to ask for what you need.
And finally: best thing about being in design today?
These answers overlapped in the loveliest way. The people. The acceptance, community and support. The sense of belonging and being yourself. Getting to do creative stuff for a living. And, importantly, getting laundry done during the week.
So here ends a whistle-stop recap of Huddle: Legacy. The mood as people filed out was optimistic, with many suggestions being scrawled on seat cards. Here’s to whatever’s next from WEDF. Don’t miss it.