Jack: The reason we use this and not like Zoom or something is because it captures it high resolution, but it's capturing it to your computer and then it uploads it all as it goes along or also like after the recording, it will say to you like, just keep your browser window open and it will just finish uploading. So it means that if you feel like you look low res or if I look low res, don't worry about it because it will just be doing that to ⁓ avoid us having...
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, problem. Cut the data speed, yeah, yeah. I get it, yeah, yeah. That's fine.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like the actual the actual capture will be higher, which is different to like Zoom or Google Meets or something, ⁓ So yeah, like I'm definitely going to talk to you about things like ⁓ One May, I'm going to ask you about stuff like that as well. I'm going to talk to you about like location like Liverpool as well. going to probably I want to deaf. What I've been asking people a lot is ⁓ background like because I know that you studied
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jack: and Carmel College and like Salford and stuff so I'll probably touch on things like that. If there's stuff I ask you that you're like don't want to go there just say because we'll just cut it out like I mean I don't know I don't know for example like I don't know if you want to talk about being an intern at Vogue like I don't know like okay yeah
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've told that story a lot of times, so it's, I don't mind, I don't mind. mean, ask away and I'll answer whatever, but I'm flexible, just whatever you want, yeah? Ask what you want and I'll do my best to answer them. And if something doesn't come out well, I'd appreciate it being cut, but apart from that, it's all good.
Jack: Okay. Alright, whoa whoa whoa I always have a little trick as well as if you've done a really sweet answer, I'll probably come back to asking you basically the same question again, just to make sure you've almost got it twice, because sometimes it's like, yeah, but those are all the tricks of the trade, which we are learning as we go along. right. Yeah, so I think you are the fourth person so far that I've
Lee Weaver: Yeah. How many have you done so far? Have you many so far or?
Jack: done in this way. We've got a whole bunch of others coming up as well. So I was speaking to people from How and How, Katie Cadwell from Lucky Dip Studio. Who else? I've forgotten already who I've spoken to. You're the first person, fourth person so far. And I think in total, I think we're hoping to speak to about 20 to 30 different people. And then like,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. ⁓ is this just content for online? Is this being like social and stuff? that the plan?
Jack: Well, what first plan is basically like the unabridged version of this. want to give to our students or our graduates to be like, look, this is like real talk about the industry. And then me and Yas are going to sort of like talk about how it can go more public. And then what we'll do is we'll put together like a bit of like ⁓ a presentation on that to then share back to the people we've spoken to say, this is how we see it. Let us know if you're happy with all this and people can kind of. opt in or opt out if they'd rather not it go, you know, live or whatever. And we'll give everyone like, this is the, this is the pod. This is like the episode, if it is an episode or these are the clips we might want to use. And you can kind of say, yes, no, because we respect that, like, we'll probably talk about real shit, but then sometimes like, there's places that you want that to be heard, which probably is like students are studying. Sometimes you're like, I don't want to, I don't want potential clients to see that because you know, whatever. ⁓
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: But I also think that a good client likes to see that people have got something to say and they've got a personality.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I haven't got too many skeletons to hide anyway, so hopefully there'll be nothing. Nothing that I feel needs to be hidden or buried away, so.
Jack: I said something on one of these already that I was like, ⁓ I can't go out because I accidentally gendered and then name checked someone that was a really like, yeah, just not a creative director. Let's put it that way. ⁓ Anyway, right, so let's do it. I'll switch into professional mode.
Lee Weaver: Hahaha Yeah, yeah, fair play.
Jack: So welcome to Open Studio. I'm Jack Trotman and today with me is Lee Weaver. Hi Lee. Hey, so co-founder of One May, brand design studio based in Liverpool. ⁓ Creating what you describe as, I love this, unfair advantages for ambitious brands. ⁓ I think that's a really ⁓ interesting statement. Do you find your clients a sort of...
Lee Weaver: Hi, how you doing Jack?
Jack: drawn to you just based on that alone.
Lee Weaver: ⁓ Maybe not so much, but I hope that they're left feeling that way. So I think it's something that we try to kind of instill in our clients is that's what we're trying to do. And, you know, we'll touch on it a little bit later on, but I think everything we do is to try and create a competitive edge for our clients. So we think just felt like that's summed up really well in terms of our approach.
Jack: Yeah, I think it's really important this in this day and age to have something to say and like stand behind the statement. you know, I think probably the right people come to you and it helps you kind of like filter that a little bit. I know you've been in the industry for over 15 years. Your CV is awesome. Starting out as an intern at Vogue, which is either the best or one of the most intimidating places to begin, right? You know?
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: I guess it's like getting in at the deep end. So you know built your way up through different senior roles and yeah then you went on your own in 2022. Yeah so Lee it's great yeah exactly I bet it does but it's great to have you here. Just before we started recording we were talking about you know if you think about 2022 there'll be students finishing university now that may have even started you know not so long after that.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, that's right, Yeah. Feels like yesterday.
Jack: So even though, yeah, like you said, it probably feels like yesterday, but a lot has happened in the industry since then. So four years in, how's it going? Honestly, how's one May?
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Really well, been, like I say, it feels like yesterday. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind, but I think when I look back at kind of what we've achieved and how things have changed since we started, it's better than we could have imagined, I suppose. It started out between me and the co-founder, Martin, who we actually met about 15 years ago, working for another studio. Kind of just really had a connection in the way that we work and the way that we think about design. And we kind of always said that we would do something together. yeah, jumped off in 2022. We've been joined by a couple of team members since then. So yeah. building a team and building a client base doing more interesting work. So, you we started out quite locally. Now we're working with clients all over the world from kind of small startups, consumer brands, right through to kind of huge global organizations. So yeah, it's been a bit of a ride, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Are you finding yourself getting stuck in on the tools still Lee or what's your sort of role at the moment?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, that's very much the intention is to stay that way. we've kind of, from the outset, we had a conversation between me and Martin about how we kind of wanted this to grow long-term. And I think we decided that we wanted to stay small off that we could always be involved in the work because we kind of didn't start this to be managers essentially. So, you know, we're both passionate creators. We've got a bit of a different approach. I'm a little bit more strategic in the way I work than Martin is. He's more purely design. But yeah, the intention is always to kind of stay hands-on and that is how we work.
Jack: So that strategic approach that you just mentioned, is that something that you've always felt like you've had ⁓ from the beginning of your career?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it's quite interesting. So when I was in college, was kind of two subjects that I excelled at. One of them was business studies and one was design. And up until almost the last moment, I was never quite sure which route I was going to go down. So the kind of tutors in both courses were both pushing me to go either to business school or study design. And it was really just down to a decision of what kind of lit me up the most in the end. I thought, well, I'm good at both, but this is the one where I find I'm most passionate about and really enjoy. So I kind of always had that kind of...
Jack: ⁓ yeah.
Lee Weaver: commercial sense. But I think it's probably more as me kind of career went on and I started doing a lot more pitch work and got involved in strategy. That's when it started to kind of become more fundamental to the work that I actually produced myself. ⁓ So yeah, I think it's just a mixture of both of something a natural kind of instinct and also kind of the kind of work I've been involved in.
Jack: So like going back to Lee when he's just sort of, graduated at, was it Carmel College, right? And what led you to apply for Salford to do graphic design? What was, at that point in time, what were your other options?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓ Well, obviously other universities or other kind of institutions, but I think the reason why I ended up at Salford was at the time there was a pilot scheme at at Carmel College whereby you could skip the foundation year if you had a solid idea what what creative discipline you wanted to do. Obviously, I understand the foundation is really good if you're kind of not quite sure which route you want to go, but I was quite clear that it was kind of communications where I wanted to be. So it gave me the opportunity to skip that year.
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: essentially and just start straight into year one of the degree. it felt like a bit of a shortcut at the time and I could kind of, you know, speed up the process towards becoming a paid graphic designer. So that was the reason at the time it was a good decision because I had a really good relationship with the tutors at Carmel. They were the ones who delivered the first year of the course. it kind of, yeah, it just felt like a natural place to be. And it was kind of continuing me college studies rather than starting somewhere new. So yeah, was just the right decision at the right time for me.
Jack: Yeah. And I think like, you know, based on, based on that, and based on you coming from the business and design perspective, there's been some things coming out recently online around kind of questioning design education for, for what it stands for, I suppose. And I saw a, a really interesting article from it's nice that recently that was basically questioning like, is design education, ⁓ has it lost its way? Like what, why are people studying design? ⁓ And there was, it's the kind of like article that sort of, you're either this or you're that, like you can't, you gotta choose your side. So a lot of people in the, you know, a lot of the comment section creeps, I like to call them, ⁓ saying, know, no, doing education shouldn't be about entering the job market. It should be about other things. It should be about exploring and theory and things like that. Do you have a perspective on that? Why do you think people should study design? Is that still a thing they should be studying? Do you have anything you'd recommend to anyone that's looking to ⁓ either get a career or to get something different? Where's your perspective on that?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it's an interesting question. think obviously there's more than one way in. think even just in my business, Martin, my co-founder, he didn't study design. He was kind of self-taught. you know, there are definitely more than one way to go about it. But I think, and it's been a long time since I studied as well, so I can only really speak about my own experience. But I think I didn't ever expect to be kind of taught creativity. think what University gave me was a platform and the space to kind of learn and experiment.
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: and to get feedback that did help shake processes and things. But I find it really valuable just to have the kind of platform to work and to grow into some of these skills. I don't think it did come out industry ready. I I took on, as you mentioned before, I did the internship at Vogue when I left and things like that to kind of strengthen my kind of employability. But I did find it ⁓ really useful. And I think without that, I don't think I'd be doing it today. So for me, I do think it's still a valid approach and something that is. should be kind of celebrated.
Jack: Yeah, I think my view on it is that it's easy to say that education shouldn't be about entering the market, but I think that comment comes from a place of privilege because I think that if you've got a family that can sort of prop you up or if you've got like, I mean, I left home when I was 17 and I was like, art foundation course, I wanted to be an illustrator, teacher was like, do you want a job? I was like, yes. They were like, do your graphic design? I was like, cool. And then obviously university was in my mind free because of, you know, uh, getting student loan and stuff. So it just felt like a no brainer, right? But the intention was always to get a job. left university without any of skills to get a job. And I feel like I blagged my way into my first job just because just before the interview, I'd be like, what does CMYK stand for again? And that was one of the questions and I was like, nailed it. Couldn't actually use InDesign. Um, didn't know how to set up grids. So that was interesting. Uh,
Lee Weaver: think, you you just reminded me of quite a funny story. when I mentioned before I got the internship at Vogue magazine. So I think the story goes that the tutor that I had at the time, Pete Frost, who's probably one of the main influences in me getting into design and sticking with it in them early stages, because there was a few times that I wasn't sure if I'd made the right choice and I was considering going into the job market and things like that. And he kind of really kind of kept me focused. He is somehow related to Lisa Eldridge, you the makeup artist.
Jack: Yeah, how did that happen? Yeah, yeah. No, but that's that. ⁓ okay.
Lee Weaver: She's quite a famous makeup artist, but she's married to Robin Derrick, who at the time was the creative director of Vogue and also Giorgio Armani. And so it was through a connection that he had that they would offer these placements out to kind of Northern students, which I think probably wasn't the norm. I think a lot of the London colleges were sending students there. And so I applied and I don't think at the time I hadn't kind of grown up too much at this stage and I wasn't probably the model students. And actually he's kind of...
Jack: Right, yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, me neither, Don't worry about it.
Lee Weaver: He's confessed it to me since then, because I've stayed in contact and I'm actually still going to visit the college when I get a chance to speak to their students. And he told me that at the time when I applied for it, he thought I had no chance and that wouldn't be the one. And so I'd done some research before the interview about the kind of opportunity and the company and, you know, tried to get a little bit below the surface of it so that I looked kind of knowledgeable, but not as much as I probably should have. And when I was outside the room waiting for my interview, somebody left their notes behind. And just before the interview, I kind of went through them. And so when I was chosen, like one out of like 30 students who had applied, we were really impressed with the depth of knowledge you had and how much research you'd done. And it was only because I'd kind of just before done a skin read of something that somebody else had done, which is probably a little bit bad. But yeah, that's kind of how that came about.
Jack: Well, you say that though, but that person who made those notes didn't get the role. So it was probably more than that. It was you as well. yeah, it's almost like you could have said, yeah, who does this notebook belong to? We need to be a creative partnership.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓ Well, at the time, ⁓ it's not the first time I was admitted, but it's not something I offered up freely all the time. So I kind of didn't want to be caught out. So I never mentioned it. But yeah, that's how that happened.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, but so much of getting your first job is absolutely through circumstance. I get like we talked about that sort of like privilege thing as well. And second design job I had, because my dad was a head teacher, second design job I had, I went to the interview and halfway through the interview, the managing director was like, oh, hang on. Is your dad a teacher? was like, yeah. Oh, he taught my brother. I was like.
Lee Weaver: 100%.
Jack: ⁓ cool. And I don't know whether that had like sway in it, but I feel like maybe it just made you stand out a bit. Like, that's a memorable thing. Yeah. And I didn't tell my dad about that until after I'd got the job and he was like, ⁓ you should have said, like, I could have told you all about like that kid and stuff. was like, yeah, but I didn't want that to be, I didn't want to sway it. ⁓ Yeah. But yeah, you know, like think, I think with, with
Lee Weaver: Yeah, something to remember you by. Yeah. You
Jack: with your journey and like where you ended up and where you are now. You you talked about strategy and you talked about, there's always going to be moments along the way that are kind of unexpected moments that get you to the next place and those sorts of things. But through all of this, there's probably something in you that makes you feel confident in your creativity. Like because any business that pays for an agency is paying for you because of because the fact that you can do something that they can't. And often that comes through a different way of seeing things. ⁓ Sometimes it's just time. Sometimes it's just like, we wish we could do this, but we can't. So we have to pay someone else to do this. But just on that theme of creativity, what do you think makes somebody creative? And are we right in saying that
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: all designers have to be sort of creative.
Lee Weaver: Well, I suppose it's quite difficult to pin down a very specific definition of creative, isn't it? Because people do take kind of different approaches to it and work in different ways. it's like in my business, like me and Martin, we're obviously both creative directors, but we have a very different approach. So kind of Martin's, the way Martin works is a lot more kind of intuitive and kind of taste-led than the way I work. ⁓ I'm a lot more kind of analytical and kind of logical in my approach. I think ultimately it's being able to kind of pull references, know, have a wide kind of vocabulary of references you can pull on and kind of answer briefs in interesting ways and kind of just see things that other people don't say. I think that's often what our kind of clients come to us for is, you know, they have a challenge or they have an audience they need to reach and they don't quite know how to do it. I think our job then is to be able to kind of kind of do that for them. I think that's kind of, at the work that one may do most is kind of helping clients. reach their audience in compelling ways. And I think that's how I would probably define our creativity. It's not necessarily about visuals or the kind of, you know, just the output. It's about the way we think about things and the way we can see a challenge differently than they do.
Jack: See, that's something that I think can put, when people don't see it that way and they see it a different way, that can put people off even pursuing a career in design because I have so many people that come to me and say, I can't draw or I was crap at art or ⁓ I'm more of a scientist or whatever. But it is really interesting.
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: Especially with what we do at Chillington, The whole model is that you can come and study design with any background. You don't have to apply with a portfolio. We just want you to come literally as who you are, and that's what's going to make you an interesting designer at the end of it. ⁓ But I guess, do you have any advice for somebody that is
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: questioning it as a potential future for themselves. Like what do you think they need to really consider about themselves? Like what advice would you give them if they were kind of umming and ah-ing at this point in time?
Lee Weaver: Well, I think to your point there, the first bit of advice I'd say would be to Drop this misconception that there needs to be the obvious things or the cliche things like drawing or kind of visual skills, because there's a lot more ways to be creative. Obviously, come up with ideas is creative, messaging is creative. So there's lots of different routes in. I think for me, it'd be about finding your passion within the field and looking at the wide range of roles that there is and not to be put off by what you think is creative, but also to... It's difficult to teach someone this early on the stage because I think it's something you learn with experience. But I know that certainly early on in my career, you see some of the work that's being done and you know what's good or you might know what's good and what isn't, but you've just got no idea how to get there. But I think just recognizing that it's a process ⁓ and just being willing to stick with it and learn and grow as you go and not trying to jump too far or kind of focus on the gap between you and the designers you admire. I think that's something I can often put people off is when you, you know. You just don't see how you're ever going to be as good as the way that you see and stuff. ⁓
Jack: Yeah, it sounds like your perspective on it has obviously changed throughout your career. mean, even thinking about when you started One May as to maybe how you see it now, you've obviously seen it for a different size. How do you ⁓ think you work best then ⁓ as a studio? Do you enjoy working under tight deadlines and pressure? How do you prefer it or does it change? What is that?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah, it depends. mean, we're well versed in tight deadlines. We do get them a lot. ⁓ We work a lot of FMCG brands, so often we jump into kind of like deadlines that retailers force to get new products on shelves. so we do deal with it quite a lot. Obviously prefer not to work with tight deadline. I think the more breathing space you have to think and really kind of break the problem down and experiment. I think that's really important. ⁓ I think the best way we work is when we've got a clear brief. but also an element of creative freedom so we can ⁓ really push things and do things that are little bit different. And thankfully, most of our clients give us that. I think that's why they work with us. A lot of our work comes through pictures as well. So I know it's a hot topic and a lot of studios don't like to be involved, but we actually really do. And I've been a...
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, how do you typically learn that there's a pitch on the table?
Lee Weaver: Well, we're on most of the pitches that we enter, they're not public forums, they're kind of curated lists of studios that they go to. So they're kind of repeat clients that we've worked with before. I think one of reasons that we like working on them is that we are quite a small team and often we kind of be much bigger agencies. So not only is that kind of validating and it feels good to be able to kind of, you know, be the David and Goliath scenario, but it's also gives us kind of opportunity to work on brands and projects that we probably wouldn't if it was just in the open market.
Jack: Hmm.
Lee Weaver: But think that really lightens up when we've got to hit clear, because obviously where the pitch comes with quite a detailed spec and it gives us a chance to really kind of think about the project and deliver something that is really well thought through.
Jack: Yeah. Is a pitch ⁓ typically ⁓ a one time thing? Do you have different stages of different presentations that you typically have to do to get that job?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it varies by client. Some of our clients is one pitch. You deliver the pitch. Obviously, it's quite a huge pitch. It's often like a multi-phase campaign or it can be a pitch for a piece of work that will last for over a year. So it's a really big piece of work. But sometimes that is just we deliver that once and you win the contract. And then obviously it stages then within that as you deliver the work. Other clients give us a pitch and it's in a shortlist process. So then you have to repitch in person potentially. That's something that we often do.
Jack: similar story to your like waiting for an interview and seeing the note story. just, you just made me think of a pitch that we won. This is like one of, this is probably back in like 2014 or 15. And then it was like really large, like residential property developer. Cause at that time there was a lot of like work in that kind of thing. Cause obviously a lot of people were building. houses and stuff. And we were waiting in a waiting room, it's like me and a creative director and design director. And I was just like a designer at the time. And we were sat opposite the other studio that were pitching. They were like a really big studio in Leeds. And we were like a relatively small, you know, decent sized studio. And we watched their faces coming out of the pitch looking a bit dejected. I was like, Oh, they haven't caught, they like, haven't maybe nailed that. And Also, I could see like the work that they, because they had like got boards and yeah, this is back in the day where you'd like spray mount shit on boards and like, and I could see the work that they'd done. And I just remember thinking really clearly, like I saw what it was and there was like this big like illustrative element and it was like illustrations and stuff. And I was like, shit, we've actually got some illustrations like that in our, in our pitch. And I just turned to like the creative director and I was like, let's not show those last ones. He was like, what do mean? was like, trust me.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓
Jack: And yeah, and lo and behold in the pitch, the feedback they gave us was like, we loved the fact that you led with like images and people and like real stories and stuff, because we wanted to like show the actual like feeling we didn't want the kind of weird kind of conceptual illustrative approach. We were like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, of course. Even though I think the brief that they'd given us had kind of us and the other studio to an illustrative approach. I'm pretty sure it even said in there like, you know, we...
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah. Hahaha Down the wrong path, yeah.
Jack: We're looking for like world building something that isn't, you know, whatever. ⁓ yeah. So yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Those, I think it just goes back to that whole thing of when you're a designer and when you're, trying to understand what really makes ⁓ a good designer or a designer who's got lots of potential, it's looking, seeing, and then reacting to what you're looking and seeing, isn't it? It's just not, not being passive and just really thinking about what that means.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: I got, I got a couple more things I want to touch on just because I think there's interesting things that, know, anyone that's new to design or anyone that's thinking about design just could really learn from you. And I would just say on inspiration, I'm kind of interested because, ⁓ it can be hard sometimes to know where to start. And you talked about short deadlines and like trying to come up with an idea with like not much time in your process. Then if you're starting a brief,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: What is the beginning of your process and how do you show the potential visual direction? What kinds of references are you pulling? Where does that start?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, well, it's again, really interesting, as I mentioned before about the kind of difference in the way that I work to the co-founder. I am, I'm very kind of, I'm kind of very word led. So I kind of, I have to write the problem down and think about the kind of word, not like in a word map way, almost just like think about the kind of like map out the promises in words. And that's kind of how I think and quite logical with that. And it's quite structured and, and almost, almost like one page strategy led where I think about these are the kind of things this idea needs to solve. That then kind of just intuitively shapes the kind of visual direction for me. I kind of just through experience know what kind of visual styles are going to work with the kind of work that we need to produce. Whereas Martin McCall, he's a lot more visual and a lot more kind of instinctive. He will jump. It's obviously backed by understanding the kind of work we're doing. It's not random, but I think he just has an idea of the approach we need to take or. you know, the audience was speaking to him and finds things that are relevant. You whether it was speaking to a young audience, for example, they think he just looks for kind of work that is speaking to them already just to give, just to kind of embed himself in that world. And I think things start to emerge when you do that. think, and a lot of it's pattern recognition. You start to see the things that work and it's not about kind of taking that as it is and verbatim or copying anything, but it's just like understanding the kind of colors that are working, the style of typography, the kind of the compositions, whether they're quite restrained or expressive, depending on obviously the audience. And I think. I think there's different ways of doing it and it touches on what I said before about, know, if you're not naturally a visual visual person, maybe you're someone who thinks in words that I think there's still a space in the creative process for people who think like that. So, yeah.
Jack: Definitely. you ⁓ guys, when you're working on a packaging project, you... printing things off physically and sort of visualizing them on a shelf, ⁓ is there that level of kind of, is there enough time to even do stuff like that? how are you,
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. We don't necessarily print them, especially because we're remote. So obviously we're all working in different locations. individuals might print things off if they want to. But I think we do visualize things. have safe examples going on the shelf. We'll put them on the shelf. We'll mock it up and make sure we know it's going to work. Yeah, there's usually enough time for that. sometimes we do get like just this morning. In fact, obviously I'm not working on it because I'm to you. But got a briefing this morning for an advert that needs to go out this afternoon.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: But they're not these, these kinds of jobs that we get, they don't tend to be things that need like lots of versions or, know, it's, it's something we've done before, be updates or something or so the more creative jobs where we are kind of developing new packaging, we will usually have time to kind of mock them up and kind of imagine them in context. And, but I know the thing that we've been packaging specifically, because you mentioned that a lot of our clients kind of, you know, they'll take, we'll do several concepts and they take them to consumer testing and things. So.
Jack: So.
Lee Weaver: The brands that we work with are quite diligent in making sure that the work works and things. And we appreciate that because obviously that's our aim is to produce work that does what it's intended to do.
Jack: Yeah, well, you don't want to end up like one of those internet memes like the nappy. There's that big one, the nappy's one. It's like a kid's face is on the edge of it. It looks like they're distorted and screaming.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Well, it's the Tropicana story as well, isn't it? But remember, just you really see that one about the brand value in Tropicana when he took the orange off the carton. So, yeah.
Jack: If you're looking at a new designer's portfolio and they're applying for either a job with you or maybe they're looking for a freelance gig with you something, what advice do you have to them for their portfolio and how they show a project or show their work? What do you really want to see?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I really like to see the process because I think more than ever today, I think the amount of mock-ups that are available, it's really easy to make work that looks good. ⁓ And it doesn't prove a lot because you can put average work on a good mock-up and it can look commercially ready. ⁓ So actually I'd much prefer to see the process and the thinking, even if the work doesn't necessarily look as good as it could do, or there may be things that we would change obviously. ⁓ But I'm much more interested to see how they reach that work and how they thought about it and why they think it works and just...
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: understand how they approach the project more so than just the final piece, I think that's really important.
Jack: Can I show you really quickly just an example of one of us? I just wanted to show you process-wise. can share my screen in a second. But how we teach our course is we have three different modules. And the last one is basically them building their portfolio. So they're revisiting their projects and stuff like that. And all of our working files and the way we give feedback, it's all on Figma.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: So the good thing about that is you can literally like track the feedback journey. And the thing that I think a lot of our students reflect on afterwards is like, ⁓ my God, I didn't even realise I could make so much in such a short amount of time. And that's because everything is there. Like we encourage students to just like chuck it all on there because we can talk about it and there's stuff like that they may be.
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: haven't even realized is potentially good stuff that they may be like overlook. As a result of that, it means that some of these Figma files can take a of little bit of time to open. But I just wanted to show you because I think it would be interesting to know if what they're doing is like similar to how you guys are working or if that's something that you've got.
Lee Weaver: Ha ha ha ha ha The way you just described it feels like how, so when we start a pitch, for example, that is what we do. We kind of don't throw anything away as we're going. We keep an artboard with kind of everything on. Because as you say, even now, 15 years in and with the experience that we've got, like sometimes you go away from something for the day and you come back and you realise there was something else that you were working on that was probably, you know, had greater potential. So yeah, definitely kind of mimes up to the way that we do things.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, think I'm gonna come on I wish this would open because I'm conscious of time so I know that you need to get off but I just wanted to show you just like one example because I just remember like one student in particular that I just finished, he just just graduated every single one of her files it's just like it's like starts here it's like and then there's like and then it goes in and then it goes out again and I think that's what that's for me seeing a
Lee Weaver: Yeah.
Jack: I would rather see somebody's working file than somebody's portfolio. And I know that that's actually very difficult because everyone asks for portfolios. But maybe I'll share this one with you after the call if it's not working because I just thought it'd be interesting for you to see. yeah, I think it's probably because we're on this call that's why it's not loading up.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
Jack: This this bit won't be included in the podcast, by the way.
Lee Weaver: Now, just on description alone, I think that is exactly how we work. I think it's useful to keep all that. But definitely from a junior designer or someone new to the market, I that's much more vital to see how they think than the final piece. know, it's like I say, especially like when I was coming through, these mock-ups weren't available. it was a little bit different. But now I think it's so easy to, you know, just put something average on a mock-up and make it look like it's good.
Jack: But also, new designers get excited by mockups. The fact that they can put something on a mockup, they go, oh, wow, that's amazing. even just when you zoom out of this, you're going, right, iteration, variation. You're not just a one-hit wonder. You can just literally see the thought process behind how you're testing all this stuff out and just trying to get a sense of visual language and things like that. And also,
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It's very similar to how the designers in my team, it's very similar to how they present their initial ideas to me and Martin when the Shared and Early Stages works, pretty much identical to this.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. That's good to know because I think the whole point of this is just for us to get them working in a way that we know is going to help them show their value. the other thing with all this is that none of it's in secret, so every single student can see each other's files. And I think, yeah.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's important as well. Yeah, I that's very important because I think that culture of kind of being open to sharing early work is vital when you get, there's nothing worse than when a designer kind of sits on top of something and doesn't share and then you get so far down a path and it's not quite right. And then it feels harder to change it because they're so invested in what they've done. think that culture of kind of sharing early and being open and not worrying about what people say back and not taking it to heart is really kind of vital to.
Jack: Exactly. I think there's a lot of creative directors out there that are too afraid to show their early ideas. I think there's a lot of people who are like quite far on in their career that still haven't broken that barrier. And I think a lot of it just comes from relationships, like knowing that person. ⁓ I think the sooner you can overshare and let your guard down, the sooner you can give and receive feedback in a way that's not felt as like attack exactly. And also like that moment that, ⁓ that moment that a
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah. An attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: new designer comes to you and says, it doesn't just say, what do you think? They say, here's what I've done. I'm actually looking for some feedback on the type pairing or something. And you're like, great, cool. You know, that's, I will then, right? You know.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. I also think it's up to that point because I've experienced this myself in my career. I think it's important when a designer does that, that you give them feedback on the thing that they've asked because I've found it in the past in my experience when, you know, maybe five things that you're thinking about art direction, color palettes, typography, and you're aware that the color palette's not quite right yet, but you focus on one thing and you ask for feedback on that and you start getting picked apart on the colors when it's not what you were. going for and I think that can make people reluctant then to go back and say. So I think as well as the younger designers or newer designers being open to share and I think creative directors need to focus on what they've been asked as well as just rather than, I think that's important. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. So the advice goes both ways. So I'm now kind of using the term new designer than I am junior designer. And you the reason I'm doing that, I mean, it's just semantics, whatever, but ⁓ it's just because, ⁓ well, just junior just makes you think that you're like, you have to be young or you have to be. And it also, and I just feel like, what does that even mean? And, you know, can't you just start as a designer?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jack: That's what you are. ⁓ Who knows, that might change soon. They always say that the next five years, all the roles that are here now won't exist and there'll be new ones, so we don't know, right? But I guess last question I want to leave you with then is how are you both seeing one May in five years' time? Where do you want to get to?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was true.
Jack: consistency? it growth? Like where? What is it?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I think we have spoke about it and there's no concrete answer to it because I think one of the most exciting things is just and seeing how it grows, know, and letting it happen. just, I think from a personal point of view, I think in five years, I just want to be as passionate about the work I'm doing as I am today. And I think one of the keys to that will be to make sure that we stay controlled and small enough that we can stay close to the work because that is the intention. And I think something that could happen if we weren't careful is that we grow too quickly because there are opportunities for us to do. to do more if we wanted to. And I think that's where we'd risk growing the team too quickly and then end up being managers rather than designers, which isn't the intention. And I think just, I think we've already started, like I've actually changed the message on the website in the last couple of weeks to reflect what we're doing today. And I think we've got quite an even split between, we do a lot of packaging and brands for like consumer brands. And we do a lot of public sector campaign work, which is a lot more interesting than it may sound. And I think.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Lee Weaver: We've really just found, it's obviously not a niche, they're both quite big areas of work, but we've found that that's what we're really passionate about. So I think for the next five years, it'll just be being really intentional about trying to get more of that kind of work and growing our influence in them sectors.
Jack: Well, mean, public sector campaign work and even just like entering that world where sometimes there's an expectation for that work to be because it's really valuable work. But sometimes there might be an expectation for that work not to be the highest paying all those things. it good work deserves, you know, could pay. Right. Is that a really basic way of saying that? And it's just like. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, Well, yeah, it's yeah, it's we find it's been it's been profitable. It's not. Yeah, it's been really profitable. But I think it's it's got a nice social impact behind it. You lot of the especially for me being from Liverpool, a lot of the work that we do, not all in Liverpool, but a lot of it is. And so being able to kind of do work across education and transport that, you know, really helps the communities that I live in is, you know, it's a great source of passion. I've got a young daughter and it's nice to be, you know, when we go out and there's.
Jack: Tell me. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: like adverts in bus stops that she's seen on the screen and hearing it, she says, oh, you did that. It's nice. And also then having the other side of things with the packaging, it's nice to see that in store. it's just really, I think we've really found the kind of the area of work that we're all passionate about in different measures. think I'm more, I'm more kind of campaign focused because it involves a lot of strategy. Whereas Martin's background is heavily packaging based. So think while we do all work on all the briefs, I think that that's kind of how it's ended up that way. I think, just kind of
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: Not being, I think over the next five years, just not being pressured to kind of conform to what other people might see as how to grow an agency or where we need to be. think there's four of us full time now. We have, work with copyrighted animators quite a lot. So I think probably we'd see it as a team of six. Having got ambitions to go to 50 or anything like that. It's, you know, we're kind of, yeah. So I think, just, just more of the same really and to grow in the way that we have done. ⁓
Jack: Yeah. ⁓ How old is your daughter? Just out of interest. Yeah. So when did she get what you do? How old was she?
Lee Weaver: She's eight, she's eight. Well, I don't know. I think she's very creative herself. So I think she's interested in kind of image making and things like that. So I think she knows that I make designs. I don't think she understands the full scope of it. But she's, yeah, she's a daddy's girl. So she often sits in here when I'm working. So she just sees things that I've done. And say, it's quite prominent locally. So, but yeah, she's taking an interest. Hopefully one day she can join the business. obviously I don't know if that will happen.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I think, so I've got two lads, and my four year old Henry, he like, it made my day when he started doing this, he was going, could we do some designing? But yeah, but I made the mistake of showing him like image prompting. And so now, idea of...
Lee Weaver: I've got the same thing. I mean, I can share it after this call. So she did something last week and it was completely self-initiated. didn't even know. I don't know where she's seen Chachibita, but she was using it on my phone and she, it's crazy, isn't it? She drew some posters of like one was like a nature one about saving trees and had herself took a photo on my phone and scanned it in and asked it to like make it a proper poster.
Jack: Yeah, They'll be talking about it in school, I'm sure. Yeah. So cool.
Lee Weaver: So it's just the workflow that an eight year old is doing intuitively now compared to like, I think I started dial up internet at eight, eight, you know, couldn't. So it's just, yeah, it's crazy.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think when my parents got like a 40 quid bill, because I'd left the internet on all night, they were like, what are you doing? ⁓ But yeah, my kid's designing toys on it. And then I was like, shit, we should get a 3D printer. It could happen. Because he was like, yeah, yeah.
Lee Weaver: ⁓ well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exciting, isn't it? It's not just the fear of how it's going to impact the field, but it's exciting as well when you think about how these young people are going to be using it and where it'll be when.
Jack: Yeah, because they're using it to make stuff that's interesting. also, just my hot take on, I mean, I've got a lot of hot takes on AI, but one thing I feel about image prompting is ⁓ just be conscious of what's going on in the background while you're doing it, because we all know that every prompt is environmentally, yeah. don't try, this is just how I see it, is like, don't.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, environmentally damaging. Yeah.
Jack: ever want to try and perfect something in that way. If it's just about getting a quick thing out of your head, get it out of your head, but accept that it's just going to look a bit weird until like the technology progresses. And even so it's always probably going to look a bit kind of whatever, but I just see it as an opportunity to collage. rather than go into like really old references and then cutting them out and sticking them together, just doing that to create those references and then piecing them together in Photoshop or whatever.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: That's how I'd rather do it. Because I feel like I have gone down that rabbit hole of spending like hours trying to make like the perfect thing and then rinsing all your credits and being like, oh, do I need to pay more? And then I thought about it and I was like, yeah, what the hell is that even doing on the other end? Like.
Lee Weaver: It's, you know, it's really interesting. We did, we did the Brandon last year for an event, the Liverpool LCRC AI summit, and it brought together like kind of Google, IBM, all massive companies, hospitals. And it was, was kind of the theme of the event was like using AI for good. And some of the speakers at the event were talking about how they developed software that could like predict a heart attack five years before it happened. it seems crazy to me that the conversation on AI is dominated on image making when it's like there's so many more things they could be using it.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: to do and we're talking about creating social posts and turning people into animals and you know it's just seems strange.
Jack: Yeah, but also like, it's probably a good thing that like AI just makes all these social posts because then people will be like, ⁓ yeah, social media is just a bit weird, isn't it? Maybe we shouldn't go on it anymore. That'll be good for society. So yeah, I say just let it burn. ⁓ We connected on LinkedIn, right? But... ⁓
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yep. Yep.
Jack: LinkedIn for me is just full of AI hot takes, like literally just people using AI to write to make them look clever. And then people responding in the comment section with AI responses. And you're like, when is the human, like, just if you've got something to say, just say it and like, don't worry about looking like I can see you've used AI to write it. So like, how do you want me to respond? And people complaining that people have been writing cover letters for jobs using AI. And I'm like,
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.
Jack: But I've read your your job posting and that was written by AI. So what do want?
Lee Weaver: And that was an eye as well, yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? I think it's mad how already the kind of just the human voice has been, it stands out now doesn't it? You spot when something's being written authentically. It's so easy to see it. But it's just a shame that you have to weed through so much to find it.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, I always, I know, but I think in visuals, I think a lot of designers do, but I also think in words as well, but like my recent, I'm just thinking about lamenting the M dash. like, because we can't use it anymore. I've just been thinking about kind of like, you know, that feeling when you're a kid and like you drop your ice cream on the floor and it's like the worst thing that can happen or like when you let go of a balloon or.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: when your sparkler runs out and then I was like ⁓ yeah like a sparkler kind of looks like an ⁓ dash or like I could get like a big like big really elongated black balloon and then like take a picture of that going into the sky or like a ⁓ flake falling off your ice cream I was like that looks like an ⁓ dash so then this was literally like today in the shower and I was like yeah that would be fun ⁓
Lee Weaver: Ironically, that's where, you know, I have this conversation with Martin every morning when I have a catch-up call with Martin that I've always had an idea that I had in the shower. I don't know if that's, be a common thing. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, that's what, yeah. mean, my shower's kind of broken at the moment, so it's either really hot or really cold. So like, there's not really that much time to think, but like, when you kind of go like, whoa, sometimes maybe there's that sort of like stress that's put on you that then makes it, yeah, exactly. Switch into like idea mode. Well, Lee, honestly, it's been really, really great chatting and just getting your insight into some really important things for, well, you know, obviously we,
Lee Weaver: Successive at that line.
Jack: we were talking a bit about important things for new designers or people studying design, but we also talked about things for people who were into their career, who are responsible for feedback and responsible for nurturing talent and just thinking about what their point of view is and where they stand. And that's really interesting that's come out of this chat. And I think there's a lot that we can all be sharing with each other and just being a bit more, a bit more human. if we think about AI,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: again, know, AI is never gonna, it's never gonna have the due diligence that a human might have. It's never really gonna have that sense of care because unfortunately for it, it can't experience the stuff that we've experienced throughout our life. It's never gonna know what it feels like to drop an ice cream on the floor, is it? ⁓ So yeah, we're at this like maybe big scary point in our life where we're all focusing on the wrong thing, but we absolutely should be focusing on the positives and...
Lee Weaver: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jack: where it could take us and just talking to each other a bit more sometimes is also important and not letting it talk for us.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, well, it was definitely nicer to chat on here than it would be to sit and chat GVT for the day. yeah, I appreciate the appreciate you offering me.
Jack: Yeah, and I'll take this transcript and use ChatGPT to form it into a blog post, shall I? Hot take. All right, Lee. Well, enjoy the rest of your day. Hope the ad goes well that you're creating, and good to chat, and we'll speak soon. Bye, as well.
Lee Weaver: Ha ha Thank you very much. Likewise, speak soon, see you soon. Bye bye, bye bye.
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, problem. Cut the data speed, yeah, yeah. I get it, yeah, yeah. That's fine.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like the actual the actual capture will be higher, which is different to like Zoom or Google Meets or something, ⁓ So yeah, like I'm definitely going to talk to you about things like ⁓ One May, I'm going to ask you about stuff like that as well. I'm going to talk to you about like location like Liverpool as well. going to probably I want to deaf. What I've been asking people a lot is ⁓ background like because I know that you studied
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jack: and Carmel College and like Salford and stuff so I'll probably touch on things like that. If there's stuff I ask you that you're like don't want to go there just say because we'll just cut it out like I mean I don't know I don't know for example like I don't know if you want to talk about being an intern at Vogue like I don't know like okay yeah
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've told that story a lot of times, so it's, I don't mind, I don't mind. mean, ask away and I'll answer whatever, but I'm flexible, just whatever you want, yeah? Ask what you want and I'll do my best to answer them. And if something doesn't come out well, I'd appreciate it being cut, but apart from that, it's all good.
Jack: Okay. Alright, whoa whoa whoa I always have a little trick as well as if you've done a really sweet answer, I'll probably come back to asking you basically the same question again, just to make sure you've almost got it twice, because sometimes it's like, yeah, but those are all the tricks of the trade, which we are learning as we go along. right. Yeah, so I think you are the fourth person so far that I've
Lee Weaver: Yeah. How many have you done so far? Have you many so far or?
Jack: done in this way. We've got a whole bunch of others coming up as well. So I was speaking to people from How and How, Katie Cadwell from Lucky Dip Studio. Who else? I've forgotten already who I've spoken to. You're the first person, fourth person so far. And I think in total, I think we're hoping to speak to about 20 to 30 different people. And then like,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. ⁓ is this just content for online? Is this being like social and stuff? that the plan?
Jack: Well, what first plan is basically like the unabridged version of this. want to give to our students or our graduates to be like, look, this is like real talk about the industry. And then me and Yas are going to sort of like talk about how it can go more public. And then what we'll do is we'll put together like a bit of like ⁓ a presentation on that to then share back to the people we've spoken to say, this is how we see it. Let us know if you're happy with all this and people can kind of. opt in or opt out if they'd rather not it go, you know, live or whatever. And we'll give everyone like, this is the, this is the pod. This is like the episode, if it is an episode or these are the clips we might want to use. And you can kind of say, yes, no, because we respect that, like, we'll probably talk about real shit, but then sometimes like, there's places that you want that to be heard, which probably is like students are studying. Sometimes you're like, I don't want to, I don't want potential clients to see that because you know, whatever. ⁓
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: But I also think that a good client likes to see that people have got something to say and they've got a personality.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I haven't got too many skeletons to hide anyway, so hopefully there'll be nothing. Nothing that I feel needs to be hidden or buried away, so.
Jack: I said something on one of these already that I was like, ⁓ I can't go out because I accidentally gendered and then name checked someone that was a really like, yeah, just not a creative director. Let's put it that way. ⁓ Anyway, right, so let's do it. I'll switch into professional mode.
Lee Weaver: Hahaha Yeah, yeah, fair play.
Jack: So welcome to Open Studio. I'm Jack Trotman and today with me is Lee Weaver. Hi Lee. Hey, so co-founder of One May, brand design studio based in Liverpool. ⁓ Creating what you describe as, I love this, unfair advantages for ambitious brands. ⁓ I think that's a really ⁓ interesting statement. Do you find your clients a sort of...
Lee Weaver: Hi, how you doing Jack?
Jack: drawn to you just based on that alone.
Lee Weaver: ⁓ Maybe not so much, but I hope that they're left feeling that way. So I think it's something that we try to kind of instill in our clients is that's what we're trying to do. And, you know, we'll touch on it a little bit later on, but I think everything we do is to try and create a competitive edge for our clients. So we think just felt like that's summed up really well in terms of our approach.
Jack: Yeah, I think it's really important this in this day and age to have something to say and like stand behind the statement. you know, I think probably the right people come to you and it helps you kind of like filter that a little bit. I know you've been in the industry for over 15 years. Your CV is awesome. Starting out as an intern at Vogue, which is either the best or one of the most intimidating places to begin, right? You know?
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: I guess it's like getting in at the deep end. So you know built your way up through different senior roles and yeah then you went on your own in 2022. Yeah so Lee it's great yeah exactly I bet it does but it's great to have you here. Just before we started recording we were talking about you know if you think about 2022 there'll be students finishing university now that may have even started you know not so long after that.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, that's right, Yeah. Feels like yesterday.
Jack: So even though, yeah, like you said, it probably feels like yesterday, but a lot has happened in the industry since then. So four years in, how's it going? Honestly, how's one May?
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Really well, been, like I say, it feels like yesterday. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind, but I think when I look back at kind of what we've achieved and how things have changed since we started, it's better than we could have imagined, I suppose. It started out between me and the co-founder, Martin, who we actually met about 15 years ago, working for another studio. Kind of just really had a connection in the way that we work and the way that we think about design. And we kind of always said that we would do something together. yeah, jumped off in 2022. We've been joined by a couple of team members since then. So yeah. building a team and building a client base doing more interesting work. So, you we started out quite locally. Now we're working with clients all over the world from kind of small startups, consumer brands, right through to kind of huge global organizations. So yeah, it's been a bit of a ride, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Are you finding yourself getting stuck in on the tools still Lee or what's your sort of role at the moment?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, that's very much the intention is to stay that way. we've kind of, from the outset, we had a conversation between me and Martin about how we kind of wanted this to grow long-term. And I think we decided that we wanted to stay small off that we could always be involved in the work because we kind of didn't start this to be managers essentially. So, you know, we're both passionate creators. We've got a bit of a different approach. I'm a little bit more strategic in the way I work than Martin is. He's more purely design. But yeah, the intention is always to kind of stay hands-on and that is how we work.
Jack: So that strategic approach that you just mentioned, is that something that you've always felt like you've had ⁓ from the beginning of your career?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it's quite interesting. So when I was in college, was kind of two subjects that I excelled at. One of them was business studies and one was design. And up until almost the last moment, I was never quite sure which route I was going to go down. So the kind of tutors in both courses were both pushing me to go either to business school or study design. And it was really just down to a decision of what kind of lit me up the most in the end. I thought, well, I'm good at both, but this is the one where I find I'm most passionate about and really enjoy. So I kind of always had that kind of...
Jack: ⁓ yeah.
Lee Weaver: commercial sense. But I think it's probably more as me kind of career went on and I started doing a lot more pitch work and got involved in strategy. That's when it started to kind of become more fundamental to the work that I actually produced myself. ⁓ So yeah, I think it's just a mixture of both of something a natural kind of instinct and also kind of the kind of work I've been involved in.
Jack: So like going back to Lee when he's just sort of, graduated at, was it Carmel College, right? And what led you to apply for Salford to do graphic design? What was, at that point in time, what were your other options?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓ Well, obviously other universities or other kind of institutions, but I think the reason why I ended up at Salford was at the time there was a pilot scheme at at Carmel College whereby you could skip the foundation year if you had a solid idea what what creative discipline you wanted to do. Obviously, I understand the foundation is really good if you're kind of not quite sure which route you want to go, but I was quite clear that it was kind of communications where I wanted to be. So it gave me the opportunity to skip that year.
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: essentially and just start straight into year one of the degree. it felt like a bit of a shortcut at the time and I could kind of, you know, speed up the process towards becoming a paid graphic designer. So that was the reason at the time it was a good decision because I had a really good relationship with the tutors at Carmel. They were the ones who delivered the first year of the course. it kind of, yeah, it just felt like a natural place to be. And it was kind of continuing me college studies rather than starting somewhere new. So yeah, was just the right decision at the right time for me.
Jack: Yeah. And I think like, you know, based on, based on that, and based on you coming from the business and design perspective, there's been some things coming out recently online around kind of questioning design education for, for what it stands for, I suppose. And I saw a, a really interesting article from it's nice that recently that was basically questioning like, is design education, ⁓ has it lost its way? Like what, why are people studying design? ⁓ And there was, it's the kind of like article that sort of, you're either this or you're that, like you can't, you gotta choose your side. So a lot of people in the, you know, a lot of the comment section creeps, I like to call them, ⁓ saying, know, no, doing education shouldn't be about entering the job market. It should be about other things. It should be about exploring and theory and things like that. Do you have a perspective on that? Why do you think people should study design? Is that still a thing they should be studying? Do you have anything you'd recommend to anyone that's looking to ⁓ either get a career or to get something different? Where's your perspective on that?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it's an interesting question. think obviously there's more than one way in. think even just in my business, Martin, my co-founder, he didn't study design. He was kind of self-taught. you know, there are definitely more than one way to go about it. But I think, and it's been a long time since I studied as well, so I can only really speak about my own experience. But I think I didn't ever expect to be kind of taught creativity. think what University gave me was a platform and the space to kind of learn and experiment.
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: and to get feedback that did help shake processes and things. But I find it really valuable just to have the kind of platform to work and to grow into some of these skills. I don't think it did come out industry ready. I I took on, as you mentioned before, I did the internship at Vogue when I left and things like that to kind of strengthen my kind of employability. But I did find it ⁓ really useful. And I think without that, I don't think I'd be doing it today. So for me, I do think it's still a valid approach and something that is. should be kind of celebrated.
Jack: Yeah, I think my view on it is that it's easy to say that education shouldn't be about entering the market, but I think that comment comes from a place of privilege because I think that if you've got a family that can sort of prop you up or if you've got like, I mean, I left home when I was 17 and I was like, art foundation course, I wanted to be an illustrator, teacher was like, do you want a job? I was like, yes. They were like, do your graphic design? I was like, cool. And then obviously university was in my mind free because of, you know, uh, getting student loan and stuff. So it just felt like a no brainer, right? But the intention was always to get a job. left university without any of skills to get a job. And I feel like I blagged my way into my first job just because just before the interview, I'd be like, what does CMYK stand for again? And that was one of the questions and I was like, nailed it. Couldn't actually use InDesign. Um, didn't know how to set up grids. So that was interesting. Uh,
Lee Weaver: think, you you just reminded me of quite a funny story. when I mentioned before I got the internship at Vogue magazine. So I think the story goes that the tutor that I had at the time, Pete Frost, who's probably one of the main influences in me getting into design and sticking with it in them early stages, because there was a few times that I wasn't sure if I'd made the right choice and I was considering going into the job market and things like that. And he kind of really kind of kept me focused. He is somehow related to Lisa Eldridge, you the makeup artist.
Jack: Yeah, how did that happen? Yeah, yeah. No, but that's that. ⁓ okay.
Lee Weaver: She's quite a famous makeup artist, but she's married to Robin Derrick, who at the time was the creative director of Vogue and also Giorgio Armani. And so it was through a connection that he had that they would offer these placements out to kind of Northern students, which I think probably wasn't the norm. I think a lot of the London colleges were sending students there. And so I applied and I don't think at the time I hadn't kind of grown up too much at this stage and I wasn't probably the model students. And actually he's kind of...
Jack: Right, yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, me neither, Don't worry about it.
Lee Weaver: He's confessed it to me since then, because I've stayed in contact and I'm actually still going to visit the college when I get a chance to speak to their students. And he told me that at the time when I applied for it, he thought I had no chance and that wouldn't be the one. And so I'd done some research before the interview about the kind of opportunity and the company and, you know, tried to get a little bit below the surface of it so that I looked kind of knowledgeable, but not as much as I probably should have. And when I was outside the room waiting for my interview, somebody left their notes behind. And just before the interview, I kind of went through them. And so when I was chosen, like one out of like 30 students who had applied, we were really impressed with the depth of knowledge you had and how much research you'd done. And it was only because I'd kind of just before done a skin read of something that somebody else had done, which is probably a little bit bad. But yeah, that's kind of how that came about.
Jack: Well, you say that though, but that person who made those notes didn't get the role. So it was probably more than that. It was you as well. yeah, it's almost like you could have said, yeah, who does this notebook belong to? We need to be a creative partnership.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓ Well, at the time, ⁓ it's not the first time I was admitted, but it's not something I offered up freely all the time. So I kind of didn't want to be caught out. So I never mentioned it. But yeah, that's how that happened.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, but so much of getting your first job is absolutely through circumstance. I get like we talked about that sort of like privilege thing as well. And second design job I had, because my dad was a head teacher, second design job I had, I went to the interview and halfway through the interview, the managing director was like, oh, hang on. Is your dad a teacher? was like, yeah. Oh, he taught my brother. I was like.
Lee Weaver: 100%.
Jack: ⁓ cool. And I don't know whether that had like sway in it, but I feel like maybe it just made you stand out a bit. Like, that's a memorable thing. Yeah. And I didn't tell my dad about that until after I'd got the job and he was like, ⁓ you should have said, like, I could have told you all about like that kid and stuff. was like, yeah, but I didn't want that to be, I didn't want to sway it. ⁓ Yeah. But yeah, you know, like think, I think with, with
Lee Weaver: Yeah, something to remember you by. Yeah. You
Jack: with your journey and like where you ended up and where you are now. You you talked about strategy and you talked about, there's always going to be moments along the way that are kind of unexpected moments that get you to the next place and those sorts of things. But through all of this, there's probably something in you that makes you feel confident in your creativity. Like because any business that pays for an agency is paying for you because of because the fact that you can do something that they can't. And often that comes through a different way of seeing things. ⁓ Sometimes it's just time. Sometimes it's just like, we wish we could do this, but we can't. So we have to pay someone else to do this. But just on that theme of creativity, what do you think makes somebody creative? And are we right in saying that
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: all designers have to be sort of creative.
Lee Weaver: Well, I suppose it's quite difficult to pin down a very specific definition of creative, isn't it? Because people do take kind of different approaches to it and work in different ways. it's like in my business, like me and Martin, we're obviously both creative directors, but we have a very different approach. So kind of Martin's, the way Martin works is a lot more kind of intuitive and kind of taste-led than the way I work. ⁓ I'm a lot more kind of analytical and kind of logical in my approach. I think ultimately it's being able to kind of pull references, know, have a wide kind of vocabulary of references you can pull on and kind of answer briefs in interesting ways and kind of just see things that other people don't say. I think that's often what our kind of clients come to us for is, you know, they have a challenge or they have an audience they need to reach and they don't quite know how to do it. I think our job then is to be able to kind of kind of do that for them. I think that's kind of, at the work that one may do most is kind of helping clients. reach their audience in compelling ways. And I think that's how I would probably define our creativity. It's not necessarily about visuals or the kind of, you know, just the output. It's about the way we think about things and the way we can see a challenge differently than they do.
Jack: See, that's something that I think can put, when people don't see it that way and they see it a different way, that can put people off even pursuing a career in design because I have so many people that come to me and say, I can't draw or I was crap at art or ⁓ I'm more of a scientist or whatever. But it is really interesting.
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: Especially with what we do at Chillington, The whole model is that you can come and study design with any background. You don't have to apply with a portfolio. We just want you to come literally as who you are, and that's what's going to make you an interesting designer at the end of it. ⁓ But I guess, do you have any advice for somebody that is
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: questioning it as a potential future for themselves. Like what do you think they need to really consider about themselves? Like what advice would you give them if they were kind of umming and ah-ing at this point in time?
Lee Weaver: Well, I think to your point there, the first bit of advice I'd say would be to Drop this misconception that there needs to be the obvious things or the cliche things like drawing or kind of visual skills, because there's a lot more ways to be creative. Obviously, come up with ideas is creative, messaging is creative. So there's lots of different routes in. I think for me, it'd be about finding your passion within the field and looking at the wide range of roles that there is and not to be put off by what you think is creative, but also to... It's difficult to teach someone this early on the stage because I think it's something you learn with experience. But I know that certainly early on in my career, you see some of the work that's being done and you know what's good or you might know what's good and what isn't, but you've just got no idea how to get there. But I think just recognizing that it's a process ⁓ and just being willing to stick with it and learn and grow as you go and not trying to jump too far or kind of focus on the gap between you and the designers you admire. I think that's something I can often put people off is when you, you know. You just don't see how you're ever going to be as good as the way that you see and stuff. ⁓
Jack: Yeah, it sounds like your perspective on it has obviously changed throughout your career. mean, even thinking about when you started One May as to maybe how you see it now, you've obviously seen it for a different size. How do you ⁓ think you work best then ⁓ as a studio? Do you enjoy working under tight deadlines and pressure? How do you prefer it or does it change? What is that?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah, it depends. mean, we're well versed in tight deadlines. We do get them a lot. ⁓ We work a lot of FMCG brands, so often we jump into kind of like deadlines that retailers force to get new products on shelves. so we do deal with it quite a lot. Obviously prefer not to work with tight deadline. I think the more breathing space you have to think and really kind of break the problem down and experiment. I think that's really important. ⁓ I think the best way we work is when we've got a clear brief. but also an element of creative freedom so we can ⁓ really push things and do things that are little bit different. And thankfully, most of our clients give us that. I think that's why they work with us. A lot of our work comes through pictures as well. So I know it's a hot topic and a lot of studios don't like to be involved, but we actually really do. And I've been a...
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, how do you typically learn that there's a pitch on the table?
Lee Weaver: Well, we're on most of the pitches that we enter, they're not public forums, they're kind of curated lists of studios that they go to. So they're kind of repeat clients that we've worked with before. I think one of reasons that we like working on them is that we are quite a small team and often we kind of be much bigger agencies. So not only is that kind of validating and it feels good to be able to kind of, you know, be the David and Goliath scenario, but it's also gives us kind of opportunity to work on brands and projects that we probably wouldn't if it was just in the open market.
Jack: Hmm.
Lee Weaver: But think that really lightens up when we've got to hit clear, because obviously where the pitch comes with quite a detailed spec and it gives us a chance to really kind of think about the project and deliver something that is really well thought through.
Jack: Yeah. Is a pitch ⁓ typically ⁓ a one time thing? Do you have different stages of different presentations that you typically have to do to get that job?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, it varies by client. Some of our clients is one pitch. You deliver the pitch. Obviously, it's quite a huge pitch. It's often like a multi-phase campaign or it can be a pitch for a piece of work that will last for over a year. So it's a really big piece of work. But sometimes that is just we deliver that once and you win the contract. And then obviously it stages then within that as you deliver the work. Other clients give us a pitch and it's in a shortlist process. So then you have to repitch in person potentially. That's something that we often do.
Jack: similar story to your like waiting for an interview and seeing the note story. just, you just made me think of a pitch that we won. This is like one of, this is probably back in like 2014 or 15. And then it was like really large, like residential property developer. Cause at that time there was a lot of like work in that kind of thing. Cause obviously a lot of people were building. houses and stuff. And we were waiting in a waiting room, it's like me and a creative director and design director. And I was just like a designer at the time. And we were sat opposite the other studio that were pitching. They were like a really big studio in Leeds. And we were like a relatively small, you know, decent sized studio. And we watched their faces coming out of the pitch looking a bit dejected. I was like, Oh, they haven't caught, they like, haven't maybe nailed that. And Also, I could see like the work that they, because they had like got boards and yeah, this is back in the day where you'd like spray mount shit on boards and like, and I could see the work that they'd done. And I just remember thinking really clearly, like I saw what it was and there was like this big like illustrative element and it was like illustrations and stuff. And I was like, shit, we've actually got some illustrations like that in our, in our pitch. And I just turned to like the creative director and I was like, let's not show those last ones. He was like, what do mean? was like, trust me.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. ⁓
Jack: And yeah, and lo and behold in the pitch, the feedback they gave us was like, we loved the fact that you led with like images and people and like real stories and stuff, because we wanted to like show the actual like feeling we didn't want the kind of weird kind of conceptual illustrative approach. We were like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, of course. Even though I think the brief that they'd given us had kind of us and the other studio to an illustrative approach. I'm pretty sure it even said in there like, you know, we...
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah. Hahaha Down the wrong path, yeah.
Jack: We're looking for like world building something that isn't, you know, whatever. ⁓ yeah. So yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Those, I think it just goes back to that whole thing of when you're a designer and when you're, trying to understand what really makes ⁓ a good designer or a designer who's got lots of potential, it's looking, seeing, and then reacting to what you're looking and seeing, isn't it? It's just not, not being passive and just really thinking about what that means.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: I got, I got a couple more things I want to touch on just because I think there's interesting things that, know, anyone that's new to design or anyone that's thinking about design just could really learn from you. And I would just say on inspiration, I'm kind of interested because, ⁓ it can be hard sometimes to know where to start. And you talked about short deadlines and like trying to come up with an idea with like not much time in your process. Then if you're starting a brief,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: What is the beginning of your process and how do you show the potential visual direction? What kinds of references are you pulling? Where does that start?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, well, it's again, really interesting, as I mentioned before about the kind of difference in the way that I work to the co-founder. I am, I'm very kind of, I'm kind of very word led. So I kind of, I have to write the problem down and think about the kind of word, not like in a word map way, almost just like think about the kind of like map out the promises in words. And that's kind of how I think and quite logical with that. And it's quite structured and, and almost, almost like one page strategy led where I think about these are the kind of things this idea needs to solve. That then kind of just intuitively shapes the kind of visual direction for me. I kind of just through experience know what kind of visual styles are going to work with the kind of work that we need to produce. Whereas Martin McCall, he's a lot more visual and a lot more kind of instinctive. He will jump. It's obviously backed by understanding the kind of work we're doing. It's not random, but I think he just has an idea of the approach we need to take or. you know, the audience was speaking to him and finds things that are relevant. You whether it was speaking to a young audience, for example, they think he just looks for kind of work that is speaking to them already just to give, just to kind of embed himself in that world. And I think things start to emerge when you do that. think, and a lot of it's pattern recognition. You start to see the things that work and it's not about kind of taking that as it is and verbatim or copying anything, but it's just like understanding the kind of colors that are working, the style of typography, the kind of the compositions, whether they're quite restrained or expressive, depending on obviously the audience. And I think. I think there's different ways of doing it and it touches on what I said before about, know, if you're not naturally a visual visual person, maybe you're someone who thinks in words that I think there's still a space in the creative process for people who think like that. So, yeah.
Jack: Definitely. you ⁓ guys, when you're working on a packaging project, you... printing things off physically and sort of visualizing them on a shelf, ⁓ is there that level of kind of, is there enough time to even do stuff like that? how are you,
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. We don't necessarily print them, especially because we're remote. So obviously we're all working in different locations. individuals might print things off if they want to. But I think we do visualize things. have safe examples going on the shelf. We'll put them on the shelf. We'll mock it up and make sure we know it's going to work. Yeah, there's usually enough time for that. sometimes we do get like just this morning. In fact, obviously I'm not working on it because I'm to you. But got a briefing this morning for an advert that needs to go out this afternoon.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: But they're not these, these kinds of jobs that we get, they don't tend to be things that need like lots of versions or, know, it's, it's something we've done before, be updates or something or so the more creative jobs where we are kind of developing new packaging, we will usually have time to kind of mock them up and kind of imagine them in context. And, but I know the thing that we've been packaging specifically, because you mentioned that a lot of our clients kind of, you know, they'll take, we'll do several concepts and they take them to consumer testing and things. So.
Jack: So.
Lee Weaver: The brands that we work with are quite diligent in making sure that the work works and things. And we appreciate that because obviously that's our aim is to produce work that does what it's intended to do.
Jack: Yeah, well, you don't want to end up like one of those internet memes like the nappy. There's that big one, the nappy's one. It's like a kid's face is on the edge of it. It looks like they're distorted and screaming.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Well, it's the Tropicana story as well, isn't it? But remember, just you really see that one about the brand value in Tropicana when he took the orange off the carton. So, yeah.
Jack: If you're looking at a new designer's portfolio and they're applying for either a job with you or maybe they're looking for a freelance gig with you something, what advice do you have to them for their portfolio and how they show a project or show their work? What do you really want to see?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I really like to see the process because I think more than ever today, I think the amount of mock-ups that are available, it's really easy to make work that looks good. ⁓ And it doesn't prove a lot because you can put average work on a good mock-up and it can look commercially ready. ⁓ So actually I'd much prefer to see the process and the thinking, even if the work doesn't necessarily look as good as it could do, or there may be things that we would change obviously. ⁓ But I'm much more interested to see how they reach that work and how they thought about it and why they think it works and just...
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: understand how they approach the project more so than just the final piece, I think that's really important.
Jack: Can I show you really quickly just an example of one of us? I just wanted to show you process-wise. can share my screen in a second. But how we teach our course is we have three different modules. And the last one is basically them building their portfolio. So they're revisiting their projects and stuff like that. And all of our working files and the way we give feedback, it's all on Figma.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: So the good thing about that is you can literally like track the feedback journey. And the thing that I think a lot of our students reflect on afterwards is like, ⁓ my God, I didn't even realise I could make so much in such a short amount of time. And that's because everything is there. Like we encourage students to just like chuck it all on there because we can talk about it and there's stuff like that they may be.
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm.
Jack: haven't even realized is potentially good stuff that they may be like overlook. As a result of that, it means that some of these Figma files can take a of little bit of time to open. But I just wanted to show you because I think it would be interesting to know if what they're doing is like similar to how you guys are working or if that's something that you've got.
Lee Weaver: Ha ha ha ha ha The way you just described it feels like how, so when we start a pitch, for example, that is what we do. We kind of don't throw anything away as we're going. We keep an artboard with kind of everything on. Because as you say, even now, 15 years in and with the experience that we've got, like sometimes you go away from something for the day and you come back and you realise there was something else that you were working on that was probably, you know, had greater potential. So yeah, definitely kind of mimes up to the way that we do things.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, think I'm gonna come on I wish this would open because I'm conscious of time so I know that you need to get off but I just wanted to show you just like one example because I just remember like one student in particular that I just finished, he just just graduated every single one of her files it's just like it's like starts here it's like and then there's like and then it goes in and then it goes out again and I think that's what that's for me seeing a
Lee Weaver: Yeah.
Jack: I would rather see somebody's working file than somebody's portfolio. And I know that that's actually very difficult because everyone asks for portfolios. But maybe I'll share this one with you after the call if it's not working because I just thought it'd be interesting for you to see. yeah, I think it's probably because we're on this call that's why it's not loading up.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
Jack: This this bit won't be included in the podcast, by the way.
Lee Weaver: Now, just on description alone, I think that is exactly how we work. I think it's useful to keep all that. But definitely from a junior designer or someone new to the market, I that's much more vital to see how they think than the final piece. know, it's like I say, especially like when I was coming through, these mock-ups weren't available. it was a little bit different. But now I think it's so easy to, you know, just put something average on a mock-up and make it look like it's good.
Jack: But also, new designers get excited by mockups. The fact that they can put something on a mockup, they go, oh, wow, that's amazing. even just when you zoom out of this, you're going, right, iteration, variation. You're not just a one-hit wonder. You can just literally see the thought process behind how you're testing all this stuff out and just trying to get a sense of visual language and things like that. And also,
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It's very similar to how the designers in my team, it's very similar to how they present their initial ideas to me and Martin when the Shared and Early Stages works, pretty much identical to this.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. That's good to know because I think the whole point of this is just for us to get them working in a way that we know is going to help them show their value. the other thing with all this is that none of it's in secret, so every single student can see each other's files. And I think, yeah.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's important as well. Yeah, I that's very important because I think that culture of kind of being open to sharing early work is vital when you get, there's nothing worse than when a designer kind of sits on top of something and doesn't share and then you get so far down a path and it's not quite right. And then it feels harder to change it because they're so invested in what they've done. think that culture of kind of sharing early and being open and not worrying about what people say back and not taking it to heart is really kind of vital to.
Jack: Exactly. I think there's a lot of creative directors out there that are too afraid to show their early ideas. I think there's a lot of people who are like quite far on in their career that still haven't broken that barrier. And I think a lot of it just comes from relationships, like knowing that person. ⁓ I think the sooner you can overshare and let your guard down, the sooner you can give and receive feedback in a way that's not felt as like attack exactly. And also like that moment that, ⁓ that moment that a
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Yeah. An attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: new designer comes to you and says, it doesn't just say, what do you think? They say, here's what I've done. I'm actually looking for some feedback on the type pairing or something. And you're like, great, cool. You know, that's, I will then, right? You know.
Lee Weaver: Yeah. I also think it's up to that point because I've experienced this myself in my career. I think it's important when a designer does that, that you give them feedback on the thing that they've asked because I've found it in the past in my experience when, you know, maybe five things that you're thinking about art direction, color palettes, typography, and you're aware that the color palette's not quite right yet, but you focus on one thing and you ask for feedback on that and you start getting picked apart on the colors when it's not what you were. going for and I think that can make people reluctant then to go back and say. So I think as well as the younger designers or newer designers being open to share and I think creative directors need to focus on what they've been asked as well as just rather than, I think that's important. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. So the advice goes both ways. So I'm now kind of using the term new designer than I am junior designer. And you the reason I'm doing that, I mean, it's just semantics, whatever, but ⁓ it's just because, ⁓ well, just junior just makes you think that you're like, you have to be young or you have to be. And it also, and I just feel like, what does that even mean? And, you know, can't you just start as a designer?
Lee Weaver: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jack: That's what you are. ⁓ Who knows, that might change soon. They always say that the next five years, all the roles that are here now won't exist and there'll be new ones, so we don't know, right? But I guess last question I want to leave you with then is how are you both seeing one May in five years' time? Where do you want to get to?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was true.
Jack: consistency? it growth? Like where? What is it?
Lee Weaver: Yeah, I think we have spoke about it and there's no concrete answer to it because I think one of the most exciting things is just and seeing how it grows, know, and letting it happen. just, I think from a personal point of view, I think in five years, I just want to be as passionate about the work I'm doing as I am today. And I think one of the keys to that will be to make sure that we stay controlled and small enough that we can stay close to the work because that is the intention. And I think something that could happen if we weren't careful is that we grow too quickly because there are opportunities for us to do. to do more if we wanted to. And I think that's where we'd risk growing the team too quickly and then end up being managers rather than designers, which isn't the intention. And I think just, I think we've already started, like I've actually changed the message on the website in the last couple of weeks to reflect what we're doing today. And I think we've got quite an even split between, we do a lot of packaging and brands for like consumer brands. And we do a lot of public sector campaign work, which is a lot more interesting than it may sound. And I think.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Lee Weaver: We've really just found, it's obviously not a niche, they're both quite big areas of work, but we've found that that's what we're really passionate about. So I think for the next five years, it'll just be being really intentional about trying to get more of that kind of work and growing our influence in them sectors.
Jack: Well, mean, public sector campaign work and even just like entering that world where sometimes there's an expectation for that work to be because it's really valuable work. But sometimes there might be an expectation for that work not to be the highest paying all those things. it good work deserves, you know, could pay. Right. Is that a really basic way of saying that? And it's just like. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, Well, yeah, it's yeah, it's we find it's been it's been profitable. It's not. Yeah, it's been really profitable. But I think it's it's got a nice social impact behind it. You lot of the especially for me being from Liverpool, a lot of the work that we do, not all in Liverpool, but a lot of it is. And so being able to kind of do work across education and transport that, you know, really helps the communities that I live in is, you know, it's a great source of passion. I've got a young daughter and it's nice to be, you know, when we go out and there's.
Jack: Tell me. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: like adverts in bus stops that she's seen on the screen and hearing it, she says, oh, you did that. It's nice. And also then having the other side of things with the packaging, it's nice to see that in store. it's just really, I think we've really found the kind of the area of work that we're all passionate about in different measures. think I'm more, I'm more kind of campaign focused because it involves a lot of strategy. Whereas Martin's background is heavily packaging based. So think while we do all work on all the briefs, I think that that's kind of how it's ended up that way. I think, just kind of
Jack: Yeah.
Lee Weaver: Not being, I think over the next five years, just not being pressured to kind of conform to what other people might see as how to grow an agency or where we need to be. think there's four of us full time now. We have, work with copyrighted animators quite a lot. So I think probably we'd see it as a team of six. Having got ambitions to go to 50 or anything like that. It's, you know, we're kind of, yeah. So I think, just, just more of the same really and to grow in the way that we have done. ⁓
Jack: Yeah. ⁓ How old is your daughter? Just out of interest. Yeah. So when did she get what you do? How old was she?
Lee Weaver: She's eight, she's eight. Well, I don't know. I think she's very creative herself. So I think she's interested in kind of image making and things like that. So I think she knows that I make designs. I don't think she understands the full scope of it. But she's, yeah, she's a daddy's girl. So she often sits in here when I'm working. So she just sees things that I've done. And say, it's quite prominent locally. So, but yeah, she's taking an interest. Hopefully one day she can join the business. obviously I don't know if that will happen.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I think, so I've got two lads, and my four year old Henry, he like, it made my day when he started doing this, he was going, could we do some designing? But yeah, but I made the mistake of showing him like image prompting. And so now, idea of...
Lee Weaver: I've got the same thing. I mean, I can share it after this call. So she did something last week and it was completely self-initiated. didn't even know. I don't know where she's seen Chachibita, but she was using it on my phone and she, it's crazy, isn't it? She drew some posters of like one was like a nature one about saving trees and had herself took a photo on my phone and scanned it in and asked it to like make it a proper poster.
Jack: Yeah, They'll be talking about it in school, I'm sure. Yeah. So cool.
Lee Weaver: So it's just the workflow that an eight year old is doing intuitively now compared to like, I think I started dial up internet at eight, eight, you know, couldn't. So it's just, yeah, it's crazy.
Jack: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think when my parents got like a 40 quid bill, because I'd left the internet on all night, they were like, what are you doing? ⁓ But yeah, my kid's designing toys on it. And then I was like, shit, we should get a 3D printer. It could happen. Because he was like, yeah, yeah.
Lee Weaver: ⁓ well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exciting, isn't it? It's not just the fear of how it's going to impact the field, but it's exciting as well when you think about how these young people are going to be using it and where it'll be when.
Jack: Yeah, because they're using it to make stuff that's interesting. also, just my hot take on, I mean, I've got a lot of hot takes on AI, but one thing I feel about image prompting is ⁓ just be conscious of what's going on in the background while you're doing it, because we all know that every prompt is environmentally, yeah. don't try, this is just how I see it, is like, don't.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, environmentally damaging. Yeah.
Jack: ever want to try and perfect something in that way. If it's just about getting a quick thing out of your head, get it out of your head, but accept that it's just going to look a bit weird until like the technology progresses. And even so it's always probably going to look a bit kind of whatever, but I just see it as an opportunity to collage. rather than go into like really old references and then cutting them out and sticking them together, just doing that to create those references and then piecing them together in Photoshop or whatever.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: That's how I'd rather do it. Because I feel like I have gone down that rabbit hole of spending like hours trying to make like the perfect thing and then rinsing all your credits and being like, oh, do I need to pay more? And then I thought about it and I was like, yeah, what the hell is that even doing on the other end? Like.
Lee Weaver: It's, you know, it's really interesting. We did, we did the Brandon last year for an event, the Liverpool LCRC AI summit, and it brought together like kind of Google, IBM, all massive companies, hospitals. And it was, was kind of the theme of the event was like using AI for good. And some of the speakers at the event were talking about how they developed software that could like predict a heart attack five years before it happened. it seems crazy to me that the conversation on AI is dominated on image making when it's like there's so many more things they could be using it.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Weaver: to do and we're talking about creating social posts and turning people into animals and you know it's just seems strange.
Jack: Yeah, but also like, it's probably a good thing that like AI just makes all these social posts because then people will be like, ⁓ yeah, social media is just a bit weird, isn't it? Maybe we shouldn't go on it anymore. That'll be good for society. So yeah, I say just let it burn. ⁓ We connected on LinkedIn, right? But... ⁓
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yep. Yep.
Jack: LinkedIn for me is just full of AI hot takes, like literally just people using AI to write to make them look clever. And then people responding in the comment section with AI responses. And you're like, when is the human, like, just if you've got something to say, just say it and like, don't worry about looking like I can see you've used AI to write it. So like, how do you want me to respond? And people complaining that people have been writing cover letters for jobs using AI. And I'm like,
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.
Jack: But I've read your your job posting and that was written by AI. So what do want?
Lee Weaver: And that was an eye as well, yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? I think it's mad how already the kind of just the human voice has been, it stands out now doesn't it? You spot when something's being written authentically. It's so easy to see it. But it's just a shame that you have to weed through so much to find it.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, I always, I know, but I think in visuals, I think a lot of designers do, but I also think in words as well, but like my recent, I'm just thinking about lamenting the M dash. like, because we can't use it anymore. I've just been thinking about kind of like, you know, that feeling when you're a kid and like you drop your ice cream on the floor and it's like the worst thing that can happen or like when you let go of a balloon or.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: when your sparkler runs out and then I was like ⁓ yeah like a sparkler kind of looks like an ⁓ dash or like I could get like a big like big really elongated black balloon and then like take a picture of that going into the sky or like a ⁓ flake falling off your ice cream I was like that looks like an ⁓ dash so then this was literally like today in the shower and I was like yeah that would be fun ⁓
Lee Weaver: Ironically, that's where, you know, I have this conversation with Martin every morning when I have a catch-up call with Martin that I've always had an idea that I had in the shower. I don't know if that's, be a common thing. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, that's what, yeah. mean, my shower's kind of broken at the moment, so it's either really hot or really cold. So like, there's not really that much time to think, but like, when you kind of go like, whoa, sometimes maybe there's that sort of like stress that's put on you that then makes it, yeah, exactly. Switch into like idea mode. Well, Lee, honestly, it's been really, really great chatting and just getting your insight into some really important things for, well, you know, obviously we,
Lee Weaver: Successive at that line.
Jack: we were talking a bit about important things for new designers or people studying design, but we also talked about things for people who were into their career, who are responsible for feedback and responsible for nurturing talent and just thinking about what their point of view is and where they stand. And that's really interesting that's come out of this chat. And I think there's a lot that we can all be sharing with each other and just being a bit more, a bit more human. if we think about AI,
Lee Weaver: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: again, know, AI is never gonna, it's never gonna have the due diligence that a human might have. It's never really gonna have that sense of care because unfortunately for it, it can't experience the stuff that we've experienced throughout our life. It's never gonna know what it feels like to drop an ice cream on the floor, is it? ⁓ So yeah, we're at this like maybe big scary point in our life where we're all focusing on the wrong thing, but we absolutely should be focusing on the positives and...
Lee Weaver: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jack: where it could take us and just talking to each other a bit more sometimes is also important and not letting it talk for us.
Lee Weaver: Yeah, well, it was definitely nicer to chat on here than it would be to sit and chat GVT for the day. yeah, I appreciate the appreciate you offering me.
Jack: Yeah, and I'll take this transcript and use ChatGPT to form it into a blog post, shall I? Hot take. All right, Lee. Well, enjoy the rest of your day. Hope the ad goes well that you're creating, and good to chat, and we'll speak soon. Bye, as well.
Lee Weaver: Ha ha Thank you very much. Likewise, speak soon, see you soon. Bye bye, bye bye.
