One of the most common challenges in the creative industry is hiring. Clients hiring creatives. Creatives hiring creatives. Creatives hiring employees. Creatives hiring freelancers. All tough decisions … should you hire on skillset or attitude? On ability or potential? To job description or opportunity?

We can all lack motivation. Now, more than ever, designers spend many hours working remotely. This article shares how to keep yourself motivated.

To grow a design business we need more hands … that means hiring either employees or sub contractors. Both need to managed and managing other creatives is hard.

Here’s an exercise done to identify bad clients. It delivers valuable insights, especially if you repeat it a couple times a year.

In 2020 we lost a friend, a client and a great designer, Jack Rodgers. To celebrate Jack’s resilience we’re offering a 12 month mentoring scholarship to an emerging studio.

Apart from productivity increases there are two ways to accrue money: firstly by adding a margin, secondly by adding profit. They are different beasts and we would argue you need both to build a sustainable businesses.

Taking on a design intern can be a win:win scenario. It adds diversity to a stable design team. Designers get management experience, interns get studio experience.

Fundamentally, new business managers are trying to get clients to buy from their studio rather than another …. so does that mean the only skill new business managers need is persuasion?

It’s a terrible feeling, the realisation the studio you nurtured and grew no longer brings you joy … but do not despair, there are tools and resources to help diagnose the problem and fix it.

What a year. Few of us will exit the same way we entered. Many of us will have changed the way we work. Should we explain any changes to our clients?

If designers can identify the triggers that make clients look for a new design partner we can hone our new business activities.

We asked clients to rate how designers reacted to their briefs: were they proactive or reactive? The results are interesting…