Vicky Kafkaki – Graphic Design MA Falmouth University

The first one is Kate Moross. She is founder of studio Moross, which is a design studio based in Stockwell in South. 

What made impression on me is the way she started the business – she said that the first thing she did was to decide on name and create a website (of course, you need to have the skills before that)

She explained how the business is structured and how the employment works.

So, they have two departments – Design Department, which is design, art direction, branding and illustration, and Video Department, which is motion design, live show design, broadcast design, music videos, and social media content. 

I enjoy going trough the work created by the Moross studio – especially one of their projects about the Parklife festival – the typefaces and the colors that they used are so unique.

https://parklife.uk.com/

Another festival is All Points East Festival ( https://www.allpointseastfestival.com/)

I think that the festivals are big opportunities for designers – I see more and more festivals around my area.

Kate oversees the whole business and here she explains the structure of it: “the way the personnel is run, and this has been pretty consistent for the last three years, is there’s me, so I operate as the creative director. I’m assisted by a project manager, which is becoming more of a full-time role. In the past, and still regularly to this day, most of the team managed their own projects with the support of a project manager, rather than the project manager exclusively running the projects. Then we have two more designers, an illustrator, animator, three motion designers and then we have a permanent intern position and a permanent work experience position. The intern position is usually a graduate or someone who is looking for a full-time career in design or motion design. Our work experience placements are for two weeks and they are for a young person that is curious about the industry and wants to gain some experience. The main difference between those are an internship is paid, and the work experience is part of the course or part of that student’s practice within their college or university. We also have support from the part-time accounts department, who make sure we get paid, and make sure people who work for us get paid.

We try and make a little bit more money each year, but that is quite small, we don’t push ourselves super far to double our turnover or whatever. We try to sustain our profit without growth, so we don’t feel like we need to keep hiring in order to keep earning. Our aims are to enjoy our personal lives, enjoy our clients and the work we do, to reward our staff financially, support our staff and listen to the needs that they have, and incorporate them if needs be, into the studio and the studio systems. 

We give our time, money and knowledge away for free for those who need it. We review portfolios for free and we actively challenge and address any structural qualities within the design industry ” 

Kate encourages people not to work overtime and have time for personal life – this way they will be rested and more productive. She also provides lunches for her employees – this shows such a good care for the people working for her.

The conclusion is that even we have many people working for us and big clients, on order the business to be successful, we have to stay on top of it – not just relying on other people doing most of the work.

There are three ways that jobs come into the studio:

• Kate or the employees go and look for it;
• People look for them online;
• Repeat clients (80% of their clients are repeat clients)

So, is very important to have satisfied customers – because they can come back and give you more work.

What happens after the job comes in:

“The process after we have those jobs come in. We ask lots of questions about budget, schedule, brief, how long the work is going to be used for, where it’s going to be used? We try and dig as deep as possible and have a phone call, or a meeting if necessary. Then we negotiate. Sometimes we rewrite the brief, the budget or the schedule. This can take a few cycles between stage two and three, and then at that point we decide if we want to go ahead. Then we exchange paperwork and we set up our first invoice to be paid. “

USTWO studio started 15 years ago only with 2 people – Matt Miller and John Sinclair. Now  they have seven studios around the world, 250 employees across those studios and they’re from 29 different countries.

 Amazing how much they achieved in such a short time frame! This comes to tells us that hard work pays off! It is impressive how the company uses different revenue models – income comes from not only design work, but also game design and investment on other people work.

“Broadly, at the top level of ustwo, across every facet of the group, we have this one mission where we want to launch products, services and companies that make a meaningful impact on the world. We do that in three main ways, through working with clients, through launching our own ventures and through investing in companies that we think are doing really impactful, creative work.
In the last five years however we’ve been experimenting with other ways to leverage the creative talent that we have in-house to build products and services. Most famously we launched Monument Valley (https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/mv3).
Adventure, which is our newest arm of ustwo, where I work, is our investment fund. In the last five years we’ve been investing in creatively aligned companies that often are creating digital products. The founders gel well with the kind of culture that we think about when it comes to building companies aa ustwo. “

Lovers is a design collective based in London working internationally.

“We call ourselves a creative super group that helps brands. We’re called Lovers because we only work on projects we love, which we hope keeps our work special.
In the model we’ve got a small central team that provides creative direction and project management support, and then we have this huge network of freelance Lovers, which comes together on a project by project basis, depending on the skill set needed or the challenge at hand. In that network we’ve got designers, art directors, strategists, film makers, illustrators, artists, which we bring on a project by project basis.  
We’ve also designed a bespoke project tracker, which is a way to keep clients in check regarding how much resource they are using on a project versus what was quoted.” 

So, I learn that is very important to like what you do and also when the work comes in you have to crate a project tracker to stay focus, organized and finish on time.

He worked couple years in a design studio but then he become a freelancer.

“Pitching can be good, even if you don’t win, because you meet people, make connections. It doesn’t necessarily have to be bad, even if you do lose. When you find clients they usually lead to more work and the best projects. Also, to look for sectors where people need designers. I didn’t necessarily think when I got the pitch in the first place, that I really wanted to work with poets but this ended up being a really exciting place to work and somewhere with quite a lot of projects, and people appreciate working with you. “

I especially like his advice to believe that good things will come after trying and working hard, to build relationships and look for people that need our services.

https://www.theoinglis.co.uk/AE-Manifesto

Very interesting and informative discussion.

Neef Richmen share that sometimes disadvantage with working with big clients is that changing even small bits of design, you have to go through multiple layers of approval, and multiple stakeholders before you do it.

Kate Morros share her worries that if she is not well or for some other reason absent, that will affect the functions of the studio because she is the one that has to overlook everything and approve everything. She also try not to take. too much work (just enough to keep the business and the employees financially stable). “If we’re really comfortable in a month, I won’t push harder to take on projects that might use up more resources. I’ll just say no to those jobs. But we have quite a significant amount of money, for us anyway, that we have to turnover to reach our budget every month and that affects our workflow. We always have some months that we know are quiet and some months that we know are busier. 
I read a great quote recently that was, “Your business isn’t your family. A good business lets you go home to your family.” This slightly toxic idea that your business is your family, I think we definitely push back on that heavily. We are a collection of humans with mental health problems and challenges and lives and experiences and we are very open in talking about those and accommodating those things. 
I think the main reason I started a business was because I didn’t want to work alone. I’ve always felt much more comfortable with a group of people and found myself to be more creative with a group of people, let alone all the creative things those people can bring to your business. “

I think that working with other people makes you more motivated and gives you the energy to to more work.

For Lisa Arsmtrong the biggest challenge is the amount of paperwork (they have many people working on different projects from many places in the world – it is complicated). They use the project manager tool called Scoro,  She also said “I do get a bit conflicted that every night everyone does what they want. If they want to go home, they go home. If they want to stay and stick around and hang out, they do. We all get plenty of opportunities for people to do either, so I think that flexibility is really useful. But in terms of mental wellbeing as well, there’s this company called, Full Disclosure, we have invested in, that provide mental health coaches inside the workplace. We work with them quite a lot in our London studio and they’re always there on hand to deal with any issues that, privately, that any of our employees have. One thing that’s actually been really important is to have an independent third party come in and be really respectful, and help our employees take care of their mental health in a different way, that is removed from the day-to-day working, sort of people. That’s been really important from the mental health
perspective.  “

What I learned from the discussion is that you can start with certain type of buisness but afterwords, you can change direction to something that is on demand and you find that you are able to do it. For example Kate said “I started mostly in just graphics and working in visual design for the first I’d say two or three years. Then there was a more of a demand as music became more digital, as YouTube became more of a platform for music. Then we moved into motion, music videos etc. Now screens and LED are affordable, people take them on tour, and now we’ve got loads of that to do. But I think the biggest changes for our business have been in TV. We hadn’t worked in TV before, in broadcast design, and it was mostly something done by big post houses and we realised we could undercut these big expensive post houses by quite a large amount of money and do the same work with four people, that they were maybe doing with four people but pretending they were doing it with 40 people, or charging like they were doing it with 40 people.”

“Create an orientation kit that includes contact information , sample
forms , places to store project updates , and typical procedures.

Provide the client with proactive updates (as in “unprompted “).
Preferably these will occur weekly , in writing , and will emerge from
management · software.

Watch for information in the news that would interest your client and
send an occasional fax or email to demonstrate that you are thinking on
his behalf.

Be sure that the client has ready access to someone who knows the status of his projects . If that person is not available , indicate when she will be and provide a backup contact if the client can’t wait.

Conduct organized, agenda driven meetings that indicate a sensitivity to
the client ‘s busy schedule .

“Know the client’s field.

Have an opinion. Express your point of view. Don’t just take orders.

On the other hand, be collaborative. Let the client win whenever he should.

Surprise clients by doing more than you promise.