Open Studio

Shillington

Open Studio is a series of honest, guest-led conversations about what it's really like to work in design — across studios of every size, from solo freelancers to global agencies. Each episode sits down with a different designer to talk craft, career, and the moments that shaped them. No polish, no performance — just design people talking to design people.

الحلقات

  1. قبل ٦ أيام

    The Perfect Creative Doesn't Exist with Rose O'Mahony

    Rose O'Mahony has stopped asking whether her work is "good." After twelve years in branding, she measures it by something steadier — whether she's proud of it, and whether she can stand behind it in the room. A senior branding and packaging designer at Springetts in London, Rose has spent over a decade shaping brands people actually feel something for — Weetabix and Dulux among them. This episode traces her path from a Chelsea foundation (and a creative dad who warned her off the industry) through internships across web, editorial and illustration, to twelve years at one studio that kept meeting her where she was. We get into the project that made it click — a ten-country charity rebrand she led five years into her career — and what it taught her about leading under pressure. Rose talks candidly about feedback: how to take the hard notes when you speak to clients directly with no account handler to soften the blow, and why staying flexible matters more than staying precious about your work. She makes the case for mess — sketchbooks, ink drawings, garden-centre field trips — as real work rather than a warm-up. And she's honest about the parts the industry tends not to say out loud: flexibility for mothers, who's still missing from the top, and why staying curious away from the screen keeps the whole thing alive. If you're early in your career, or quietly wondering whether you've taken the "right" route, this one's for you. You don't need a straight line, a finished-looking portfolio, or a fixed definition of "good" to be on the right path — you need curiosity, the willingness to learn the bits you don't love, and enough conviction to stand behind what you make. Find Rose: LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/rose-omahony Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roseom_creative/

    The Perfect Creative Doesn't Exist with Rose O'Mahony
  2. قبل ٦ أيام

    What AI Can't Generate is Taste with Studio AntiGravity's Jordan Yates & Rachel Cook

    AI can generate a logo in seconds. What it can't generate is taste — and for Jordan Yates and Rachel Cook, that's exactly why bold, considered design matters more now than it ever has. Jordan is the founder and creative director of Studio AntiGravity; Rachel is its studio director. Married, Manchester-based, and four or five months into running the studio in its current form, they trace the honest, slightly messy work of turning one person's seven-year freelance practice into a proper studio — pulling every process "out of Jordan's head" and building something that can stand on its own. Along the way they get into scaling slowly and deliberately rather than growing too fast too soon; why networking and simply reaching out has shaped both their careers far more than any cold pitch ever could; how staying curious — and getting made redundant early on — kept Jordan learning; and where AI actually belongs in a studio's process: a tool that speeds up the middle of the work, never the idea, the craft, or the human judgement at the end of it. If you're a student or early in your design career, this one's a reassurance. You don't need a perfectly mapped-out path, a straight line into your dream studio, or every answer figured out to be heading somewhere good. Curiosity, the right people around you, and a willingness to show up count for more. In this episode: getting everything out of the founder's head · scaling a studio without losing altitude · why reaching out beats the cold pitch · staying curious after an early redundancy · AI, taste, and the "stink" of slop · and the cardboard cut-out of his own head that got Jordan more contacts than placements. Find Studio AntiGravity: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio.antigravity/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/studio-antigravity/ Find Jordan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-yates-a8881b6a/ Find Rachel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-cook-009618133/

    What AI Can't Generate is Taste with Studio AntiGravity's Jordan Yates & Rachel Cook

حول

Open Studio is a series of honest, guest-led conversations about what it's really like to work in design — across studios of every size, from solo freelancers to global agencies. Each episode sits down with a different designer to talk craft, career, and the moments that shaped them. No polish, no performance — just design people talking to design people.