Look what happens when we collaborate
Designers are great at living in our heads.
We’re good at mulling over problems … in the car, in the shower and walking the dog.
It means, when it’s time to get down to work, we’re often halfway to solving the problem.
Is that a good thing?
You only know what you know.
The problem with mulling it over in your head is we become comfortable.
Comfortable with our knowledge and our tools. We know what we know, and we think we know what works, that makes it’s so easy/fast/accessible to grab a tool or tactic from our repertoire to solve a problem.
Far harder to stop and think of other ways (or people) who may have an alternative view or different perspective.
But when you do, great things can happen.
A bit of background…
Greg and I founded Mackay Branson design in the mid 80’s.
What separated us from other studios was Greg managed the business while I managed the design team and clients. Doesn’t mean Greg is not creative or that I don’t understand business. Quite the opposite. It was a divide and conquer business plan and it was a personal survival strategy. (For those who don’t know we’re life partners as well as business partners.)
What started as a survival strategy ended up our differentiator.
There weren’t too many mid-sized studios with a designated business partner and that became our superpower. It meant we could adapt and change our business model to survive two recessions and a global financial crisis.
That experience – having skin in the game – is the foundation of the knowledge we share as the Design Business Council.
Collaborating
Earlier this year we started to document our knowledge and experience.
Packaging what we do has always been a challenge.
We’ve been approached a few times for acquisition or merger, but it’s never felt right. And it’s always been difficult to codify our knowledge and experience.
Earlier this year we started on a benchmarking product – something tangible to encapsulate our experience, on-going research and data gained from working with creatives for the past decade. In a nutshell we wanted to develop a product we wished we had when we were running a studio.
Part benchmarking, part mentoring.
The same problem from a different perspective
Andy Wright had been grappling with a similar problem from a different perspective and background.
Andy is currently CEO of Streamtime. Previously he managed and grew international creative businesses like Interbrand, Landor and R-GA in Australia. And like us, he’s had skin in the game, co-founding ‘For the people’ with two mates – the studio who designed the Streamtime interface and led to his current position.
Outside of ‘work’ Andy created Never Not Creative, a non profit community advocating for the well-being of creatives (I’m proud to sit on that board). And he’s co-chair of Mentally Healthy while currently studying at Curtin Uni for accreditation in SMART work design.
So our lives intersect in many ways.
Andy was exploring ways to add value to Streamtime customers — so we put our heads together.
And here’s where it gets interesting … three people with different backgrounds and different perspectives of our creative industry all working to solve the same challenge.
Developing a product
Online via zoom, in phone calls and with just a couple of face-to-face meetings, Greg, Andy and I have developed a product encapsulating the best of our combined knowledge about data, trends and benchmarks in the creative industry. The information we’ve honed working with creatives is verified by Streamtime.
Its evidence based, both qualitative and quantitative.
What makes this product really special is Andy’s knowledge around work design, mental health and wellbeing. That lens makes the canvas more robust, more sustainable and more human. It’s a holistic tool, different from anything else on the market.
We’re currently on V10 (and counting) of our beta product and it’s at a stage we’ve been getting out of the building to share what we have. We all know a great idea isn’t a product until the market embraces it.
In November we shared the Happier, Healthier Creative Business Canvas for the first time as part of the AADC talks. This week we shared the canvas with a significant group of Melbourne studios who generously joined us for breakfast to share our news. The feedback at both events has been great.
The moral
The moral of this long, slow curve of a story is that it would have been very easy for Greg and I to launch our benchmarking product before year’s end.
You don’t know what you don’t know but pretty sure that would have been a shame, because this collaboration with Andy and Streamtime has improved the original idea and taken it far beyond what we first envisaged. And we’ve enjoyed the collaboration – the process is at a stage where it’s really hard to know what is who’s idea. It’s a mash of all our thoughts.
Our mindset has been stretched and challenged, and now instead of a good product we’ve got a great product.
Collaboration does that, especially when working with someone with a different perspective and solving a slightly different need.
Want to discuss any of the above? Email Carol.
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Want more?
Some interesting info about running a creative business:
About Carol
After 30+ years running a design studio, I accumulated a pretty special network of fellow designers. One thing most have in common: a need for more information about the ‘business’ side of design. Most are impatient with any task competing for time spent doing what they love – designing so they wanted more info about how to work more efficiently and effectively.
Not me. I love that intersection between design and business. I built a career working with Ombudsman schemes, the Emergency Services sector and the Courts. My special power has always been an ability to use design to translate the difficult to understand or the unpalatable message.
I now use exactly the same skills with creative business owners. I translate the indigestible into bite-sized chunks of information. I share insights, introduce tools and embed processes to help others build confidence business decision-making skills. More confidence makes it easier to grasp opportunities. More confidence makes it easier to recognise a good client from the bad.
Outside DBC I have mentored with Womentor, AGDA and most recently with The Aunties.
And I’m a proud board member of Never Not Creative. Ask me about internships 
Always happy to chat, I can be contacted here.
Our second site is designbusinessschool.com.au – Australia’s only business school for designers