Wednesday 12 Apr 2006
The UK’s creative industry is notoriously London-centric. But creativity isn’t the sole preserve of a select clique in the capital, and many design agencies are thinking big outside the big smoke.
For many designers, joining the creative community in London is the ultimate aim. London is the centre for much of the UK’s commerce, and the creative industry is no exception. But a London-centric creative industry doesn’t mean design can’t thrive outside the capital.
However, starting a creative business is a tough job wherever you’re based, but it can be even harder if your company is isolated from the creative and industrial centre. And, the London creative scene can be elitist and condescending towards design companies outside the capital’s clique.
The London bias is about more than just snobbish attitudes – it’s about the way the industry is structured. London is the capital, and home to many of the sought-after blue-chip clients. It’s where national and international media is concentrated, where policy decisions are made, and where foreign companies look first when setting up shop in the UK.
Being at the centre of a fast-moving city is an advantage – you spend less time travelling, and you can get work through socializing with people whose job it is to commission.
London has its downsides too. The packed transport, overpriced office and living spaces, and worked-up atmosphere can take their toll, and make your life less fun than it ought to be. The insular nature of the creative industry in London can be a turn-off, and many creatives are reluctant to immerse themselves in what can be a self-absorbed scene.
Despite London’s tremendous size, not everyone thinks that the best jobs are only available to urbanites in the South East. But if you’re going to shun the Hoxton or Soho sets, you need to plan your strategy.
Net benefit
“Now is a fantastic time to be a designer – anywhere,” says Christopher Murphy, subject director of interactive multimedia design at Belfast’s University of Ulster. For Murphy, the industry has been democratized by two relatively recent developments – vastly reduced start-up costs, and the Internet.
“The Internet is honestly the most important opportunity to break geographical borders,” he says. “It’s eroding distance. It has put things that would have often only existed in large design companies at the hands of smaller one, two, and three person companies.”
Despite this, people in the regions often have to work extra hard to make sure they aren’t marginalized. No-Brake is a Cardiffbased digital-media outfit. Founded in 2002 by Owain Elidir, Rob Giles and Paul Nicholas, it has quickly garnered a reputation for delivering high-quality visuals.
No-Brake aims to produce work for clients both inside and outside Wales. “One of our first jobs on the Web site side was for the Professional Golfing Association. On the TV side, it was a promo for BBC Wales,” says Elidir.
“The way it works is this: your name gets around, and you don’t turn work down.” For No-Brake, lack of access to London-based commissioning agents isn’t the only problem. The company is flooded with work, which hampers its ability to spread its net: “We’ve been constantly busy, but we would like to get more work from outside.”
For up-and-coming motion graphics studios, the digital television explosion offered plenty of new opportunities, even if they do differ from conventional TV: “A lot of the new digital channels have obviously noticed that if you treat graphics properly you can make piss-cheap TV look good,” says Elidir.
As with any business, it’s important for creatives to investigate the opportunities for work in the local area. It’s vital to assess the strengths and limitations of your locale and act accordingly.
“When we set up the studio, we made a decision to prove that you don’t have to be in London – there’s an element of risk in that,” says Richard Scott, managing director of Axis Animation in Glasgow. “Animation is niche, so we have to look to London, the US, and Europe. We do something like 10-15 per cent of our work for Scottish companies. There’s no way we could survive on the Scottish market alone,” he says.
This is a problem if your company is starved of work due to clients perceptions of companies outside London. “I feel that potential London clients are unwilling to step outside the city,” says Nicola Scurlock, creative director at PS Creative, an award-winning animation and motion-graphics studio in Worcestershire. “They feel they can get everything they need on their own doorstep.”
When it comes to London companies handing out work to London-based creatives, what could seem like a sinister conspiracy is in fact entirely prosaic. Even though technology is breaking down geographical barriers, people prefer to deal with agencies they can meet and get to know.
Living outside of London may mean you can’t socialize in the right Hoxton bar, but networking remains essential.
Who you know
“A face-to-face meeting is important. I don’t think there’s any doubt that people in this industry like to know the personalities they’re dealing with,” says Axis Animation’s Scott. “We make a visit to London every three or four weeks.”
Nicola Scurlock explains that while PS Creative hit the phones and work the publicity machine full-tilt, trips to the capital remain paramount: “You simply have to network down there because the opportunities elsewhere are quite limited.”
This may be set to change. Ben Casey, creative director of The Chase, an award-winning design house based in Manchester, has recently been appointed to the head of D&AD NorthWest, a new forum for designers in the region. According to Casey, even D&AD’s hallowed awards are broadening out beyond London.
“The awards are now called the Global Awards and are, arguably, the top awards in the design world,” he says. “There’s been an emergence of creative groups regionally who compete with the best from anywhere.”
To emphasize this, D&AD is holding this year’s public exhibition of the award-winning work in Manchester.
Ilovedust, a graphic-design house based in Southsea, Hampshire just over 85 miles from London, points to another alternative to focusing on the work on offer in the capital: spreading the net farther afield.
“I don’t think we need to be in London,” says Mark Graham, one of the company’s founders. “With the amount of work we do for US clients, London is no advantage.”
Ilovedust recently designed the cover for the California-based high-tech bible, Wired magazine. The company got the job – and other work for American clients including Hasbro and American Airways – by using an agent in the US, Bernstein and Andriulli.
According to Richard Scott, Axis Animation is also looking into the option of hiring American representation: “Using reps is standard practice in the US. [In the UK] People tend to look at them as sales people, rather than as someone who can help grow the business.”
One area of business that is close to home wherever you live is public sector work. The government as a whole spends a staggering £189 million every year on advertising, making it the second-largest advertiser in the UK.
However, for many designers, public sector work is a mainstay, but a dull one. But according to Rory Jeffers at White Noise in Belfast, public sector work can deliver some interesting briefs. “We do work for the Organised Crime Taskforce about terrorism, paramilitary crime and drug smuggling. They like quite edgy stuff, and they want to get the message across quite strongly.”
Jeffers says that, with sensitivity and diplomacy, public sector work can provide stimulating creative challenges. In the end, the key to a rewarding, creative working life success outside London’s clique is consistently producing high-quality output.
“If you’re doing good work,” says Ben Casey, “the nature of the business is that people will notice.” For Casey, regional designers do not occupy a second tier of the industry, and smaller clients don’t make for poorer work.
“There’s obviously more work in London,” he says. “Go around the outskirts of London to places like Slough and they’re littered with the headquarters of major companies, but at the same time there is also proportionally more competition.
“Blue-chip companies may be more financially rewarding but you could argue that smaller clients offer more creative opportunity. They’re less likely to research the life out of work,” he says.
Indeed, there are clearly major constraints placed on designers working with successful, well-established brands. Designing for clients such as Coca-Cola or Nintendo is likely to be incredibly lucrative, but let’s face it: you’re not going to be redesigning the logo. One consideration when dealing with small and medium enterprises is that many fail to perceive any value in design.
When a company starts up the founders make sure they retain an accountant and a solicitor – few get a design and branding strategy started.
Last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer commissioned a report by Design Council chairman George Cox, to examine the industry’s attitude to design.
Cox noted that small businesses suffer from: “a limited understanding of where and how greater creativity could be used to business advantage [and] a lack of confidence that the investment ... will give a return.”
Cox suggested developing a programme to engage businesses demonstrating the practical benefits of creativity and the creation of a network of high-profile design innovation centres around the country.
Anyone implementing these measures will have something of an uphill struggle on their hands. As writer James Heartfield points out in his pamphlet The Creativity Gap: “Most companies have a very low opinion of design: two thirds think it made no contribution at all to their turnover or their profitability.”
Countering this perception is not an easy task. “As an industry we’ve been very insular,” says D&AD’s Ben Casey. “The design industry has to start selling design or else the country as a whole will suffer.”
Nevertheless, Casey’s prognosis for regional creatives is bright: “There’s at least as good a chance for success for young designers setting-up outside of London, if not more,” says Casey.
Ultimately, creatives don’t have to work in London. It pays to keep an eye on what’s happening in the capital, but creatives can have the best of both worlds by paying attention to clients locally, nationally, and internationally.
You may have to sell your work that bit harder, but effective networking and quality work will make their mark whether you’re in Shoreditch or Shropshire.
Case study: Axis Animation
For Axis Animation, getting the company’s name known is key to operating outside the capital. One of Axis’ recent jobs was an advertisement for the video game, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.
The job came through an advertising agency. “Someone recommended the client speak to us,” says Richard Scott, managing director at Axis Animation.
The agency’s producer then dealt personally with a director working at Axis and the company liked what it was hearing.
“The Web completely changed how we work,” says Scott. “If we were relying on couriering VHS tapes we wouldn’t have grown the way we have.” Axis is not planning on resting on its laurels.
“I still feel we’re a little bit out of the loop,” says Scott. “We could do a better job integrating into the industry, which means London. We would like to get the creative talent out of the studio and more well known.” www.axisanimation.com
Case study: No-Brake
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The key lesson demonstrated by No-Brake is that good work begets more work. When Welsh psychedelic hipsters the Super Furry Animals found themselves in a tight spot they turned to No-Brake to help them out with the video for their single Lazer Beam.
No-Brake had worked with the Super Furrys before on DVD releases. This time, though, the work came at short notice. “They’d commissioned someone else to do the video but it didn’t turn out the way they wanted it,” says No-Brake’s Owain Elidir.
“It got to the stage where the single was coming out in a week-and-a-half and there was no video. Dyl Goch, who does the band’s live visuals, came to us.”
With a shoot of the band already done, No-Brake and Goch were left to decide what to do with the footage: “This was to be composited into the video ‘somehow’,” he says.
“We built a cityscape out of all of this visual feedback. Over the course of a week we rendered it, composited it, animated it and edited it,” he says. “It was pushing After Effects quite hard.”
Nevertheless, the video was completed in a week-long marathon session, and looks for all the world like the result of months of detailed planning. www.no-brake.com
Case study: PS Creative
“Drayton Manor put us on the map for character animation,” says Nicola Scurlock, creative director of PS Creative. Indeed, the company’s advertisement for the theme park, represented by McCann-Erickson, was nominated for several awards including the British Animation Award.
“It was a 30-second commercial, put out to a Birmingham production company called SPH. We heard about it through a contact and put a pitch together, going so far as having an almost finished animated character,” she says.
PS Creative had deviated from SPH’s original idea, but the humorous knight character was so compelling that the script was actually changed to fit around it.
“The job took 17 or 18 weeks in total. They approached us in November,” says Scurlock, “By December we were working on it and by the end of January we’d delivered it.” www.pscreative.co.uk
Jason Walsh
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