Sam Bompass, Co-Founder of Bompass & Parr, on Creative Risks, Inspiration and the Business of Wonder

22:05Ekaterina:We've got a huge, huge library here. It's really extensive. I try and get everyone to use it. If you look at stuff online, you end up looking at the same stuff as everyone else. Books are handy.

22:16Sam Bompass:I love this encouragement for the team to go to museums and actually, in general, go outside into London and into the city. And museums is just a good occasion to travel somewhere and to see something because you'll see so many things on the way to the museum, as many things you'll see in the museum and the exhibition, but also just the creativity that London attracts. I 100 % agree with you. it's something so special. So how do then you...

22:42Ekaterina:I mean, I was in the National, I was going to the National Gallery today for a meeting. And on my way there, I bumped into the guy who scares the pigeons and he had like two hawks on his arms and had a conversation with him. And I got to meet these incredible birds of prey. And then in the background, there's one cheeky, bold pigeon who is provoking them, swaggering back and forth and back and forth. And it meant I went into this meeting with the gallery, just like ebullient with like the wonder that there is to discover, you know, just there and hoping to embody the pigeon's energy.

23:19Sam Bompass:That's what I really admire about you, Sam, that you have this joyful attitude and curiosity to life that feels like just never ending. You see wonder in everything around you. And it is such an important skill that I feel like as creatives, we sometimes lose by making it our job to be creative. And how do you keep it alive, just this general sense of wonder? Because two people can go to the same museum and one will come out absolutely inspired and mind blown by everything they've seen. And another person will be like, it was okay. So how do you practice this sense of wonder?

23:54Ekaterina:I mean, I think one of the things that's really important and we're interviewing for a number of different roles at the moment. And one of the things I'm always most interested in is what people are genuinely excited about. And it's the number of people that come through the door that you ask that and they find it difficult to answer. And it sort of doesn't really matter what people say. They could be into a bell ringing or bowling or dancing as an obscure sort of dance. It's just as long as people are interested in anything and have the capacity to be interested in anything very deeply. That's exciting and And that brings a new energy to the studio soup and new possibilities.

24:35Ekaterina:So I try to do that in my own practice all the time. And sort of getting into trouble, setting yourself with deadlines. I'm working at Shakespeare Museum in a couple of years. And I really wanted to be the only museum which, you know, like Shakespeare had a single piercing. And that was quite weird because there's only about 50 years at the time when men had piercings. and I've subsequently learned that in Britain having pierce like at the moment about 83 % of people have a piercing but that only really started with the Queen Elizabeth I wedding before that you'd have clip-on earrings because she wanted to and it was seen as like real bad taste if you had a pierced ear but she wanted to wear some of the massive royal jewelry that there was no way you could have this royal jewelry as a clip-on The only way it'd stay on because the diamonds are so bloody big was if you had a piercing.

25:30Ekaterina:So she pierced her ears and because she pierced her ears, it became okay too. But because I wanted to give everyone an ear piercing, this future museum that doesn't exist yet, qualified for that, to give ear piercings only a couple of weeks ago. And that's been completely fascinating. Also that in terms of business development, I have clients come to the studio and And I talk about their budget proposals next year while putting a sterilized needle through their ear. It's very intimate. You get a lot of truth. You're very close up. It's a new business strategy that I hadn't quite imagined. Very experimental.

26:09Ekaterina:Of course, it's quite far down your normal business funnel of creating possibilities.

26:14Sam Bompass:Well, first of all, so many great references and stories. and I always feel like you can pull them out of your hat, like no matter what the conversation is about, you know the history, you know the art, you know everything that is happening. How did you learn all of these kind of side things, and especially history? I feel like you draw a lot of inspiration from historical events and facts. Where does this come from, and do you still learn history, or where do you go for this historical inspiration as well?

26:45Ekaterina:um well i you know as i said we've got this very extensive library and um after researching lots of different competing shelf marking systems we've had to go for the dewey decimal system um which is so problematic but like just so much easier to use than a lot of other shelf marking systems you get into it but what what where this is going is the books within it um uh will there'll be a shelf mark for death there'll be one for dueling there'll be a lot of course, absolutely loads of cocktails and food and drink. Uh, and, and I like where those different knowledges intermingle. Um, you know, I see it as like, you know, sort of almost like a physical cybernetic network where if I know sort of what's in all the books a little bit, um, then I can activate those knowledges, um, as you know, I look at them, which is really helpful.

27:37Ekaterina:Um, obviously read, I read, read a lot and it's good practice. Um, you know, cause it means that you can then do within your head what you might need a computer to otherwise do and history is a very good place for inspiration not least because you're if you're doing something that's done 400 years ago um and reconstructing it so i could be an example like 1694 brish admiral edward russell flooded fountain in alicante to have a um party fill it was done with this like brandy based um punch. It was very, very intoxicating. They had like tiny buoys in little boats, little coracles. They were the midshipmen.

28:16Ekaterina:They'd ladle out this huge, vast punch bowl to all the sailors for a party that lasted for six days. And I heard about this. It's like, we've got to reconstruct this. They'd have to change the little buoys every 15 minutes because otherwise they'd be intoxicated by the fumes that fall in. And so we then worked out how to do this for Courvoisie and Flooded Building in London with cognac that you could boat across before drinking. But because we had to do that within regular health and safety limits, we had to treat it as a food-safe production facility. And what that meant was that everyone had to scrub up before they went in.

28:58Ekaterina:They had to wear beards, nudes, hairnets, aprons, the right shoe covers. and suddenly because we're having to create this spectacle within the confines of contemporary health and safety it created a whole ritual around it that led to this experience it's quite deep rich the reason that's important is like if you're looking for inspiration from history a couple things happen you have to do it differently because because regulations technologies resources and materials are very very different so it takes it to a different place the second thing is the people that did it the first time 400 years ago aren't going to worry about you plagiarizing them.

29:39Ekaterina:They're dead. The third thing is the things that dilated the eyes, dilated the pupils, but delighted people 400 years ago. We're not that different. We think we are. We really aren't. The things that we get excited about are pretty similar. And if something's remarkable enough to be talked about for 400 years, is probably remarkable enough to stage now, as long as it's not hurting anyone. This is all the lies.

30:08Sam Bompass:Wow, that's a great framework to think about finding ideas. First of all, it's limitless. History goes as far as we can read in one lifetime. And definitely there are so many sources that we can all find inspiration from. So how do you translate all these ideas? I heard you have a very systematic approach that includes, involves a spreadsheet with ideas. So can you tell more, how do you go from all these wild and wonderful ideas you and your team has to actually something that the clients might need or want to actually execute?

30:42Ekaterina:Well, I tend to think about it as like any client brief we've already been working on for many years before the brief comes in. So we have like deep wells of ideas we're generating all the time. we do a lot of internal imagining of whatever we'd like to do and then we try and make it reality we call it it's rather cringe in terms of what we call it it's called the creative jamboree it's like the boy scouts or something like having a powwow but you know it means that there are there are there are files and files and files of ideas for days that that we can tap into um and the idea is to try and make it reality it's no no no good to anyone if it just stays in a spreadsheet who cares um but it does mean that that when we get briefs in um we've already started thinking about them and and you know sometimes it's terrifying how to had a there's a there's a um project up in um uh the gulf called food sphere it's a food entertainment center it's huge and and we were asked to design this it's basically a museum all about food in three days time at first the the team were like staring at empty screens going like how can we design a whole museum in three days.

31:49Ekaterina:I was like, no, trust yourself. You're working on this forever. You're an expert. Write out what you want. Let's draw on what we all know how to deliver. And then sure enough, at the end of three days, there's a total museum and it's now been built a year later. So it's, it's, you've already been working on the thing and you can trust that. And I guess the second bit is, um, because we now work with, as a creative studio with many big brands or museums or cultural centers or governments, um, they need to trust to know where they are in the process. So we tend to use the, uh, RIBA phases, the, the, the six main RIBA phases, uh, that architects would use to design a building.

32:28Ekaterina:Um, but you know, I think, I think when you speak to lots of different, and I've seen on this, this call, you've got lots of people from strategists to 3d artists, you know, design directors, trend hunters, you've got lots of people from different disciplines. And I think a lot of the phases that you go through are pretty universal in terms of research, expanding out, interrogating the question, refining it down, expanding out the details, coming it down, double diamond approach to creativity. to.

32:57Sam Bompass:Oh, this is so brilliant. And I love that you kind of touched on many interesting themes when you're answering this question, which is one about like this collaborative approach to ideas where everyone kind of comes together to put ideas forward, but also your personal encouragement of people not being scared of approaching something new that seems like too ambiguous and too big. And I feel like that is a very common problem for creatives of like this first step to start, because when there is a big unknown, it feels like almost impossible to achieve it. And as soon as you start putting at least something, I mean, writers use kind of free writing as a technique of like just writing anything that comes to their mind to get over this block.

33:39Sam Bompass:And I suppose you can use sketching or anything else as a visual creative to get over the block. So what are other things that you kind of do in the studio to start this process when maybe people are unsure or scared or the process is not gelling yet to some sort of flow, what would you do?

33:57Ekaterina:Well, I think one of the things I find personally debilitating is the spew of social media because people are doing such amazing work everywhere. How do you get up to that very high level? So far more helpful than that is actually making, we have workshops here, so we do a lot of physical making and doing and that in itself releases a bunch of endorphins. It also invokes the Ikea effect. So if you make something, you believe it to be much better than it might actually be because you're like, I made this thing. So at least give you that confidence. You only need to be confident about it for a little bit to get out there.

34:37Ekaterina:So if you can be comfortable about that. I look on a personal level. I try and get up in the morning. I try and write a concept about something. I try and do some drawing. um, try and read and see some things before I start work. Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I was gonna say very lucky. I don't have kids. Like, yeah, but a lot of, a lot of like, you know, as, as you've grown up, the studio's age, many more people, um, you know, have families which are their own sources of inspiration as well. So I have to, I, you know, I don't get good ideas from six year olds. So I need to, I need to generate them myself.

35:11Sam Bompass:I love it. So you get all these wonderful pots of ideas within the studio. Where do you put them? Do you use any tools? I don't know, interactive boards, mirror boards, figmas of the world to put it? Is it the physical wall that people put the ideas? Where do you pull it all together? And then what do you do with them next? Because another thing about the ideas is how do you judge if the idea is good? So what constitutes a good idea? How do you create a selection of these ideas after everyone kind of changes?

35:41Ekaterina:in with with their thoughts well it depends what the output is and what the brief is um you know ideas are stored in word files and excel cool sometimes people want to come and film the studio they're like it's gonna be so crazy what we'll see you're like i spend most of my time in meetings and writing stuff and on phone calls that's like it's kind of the reality and then then of course there are chefs there are makers as well which is a lot more exciting but like meetings can be like exciting tools like you know one of the best like dance shows i see saw over the last few years was like crystal pikes um assembly hall and like in it it's it's like people dance in agm and there's they dance the minutes and there's the there's the note taker there's the secretary there's the the treasurer and you know really what happens between the people that space the third the third brain emerges and it's magnificent what we can create together through the process of an AGM, which can be quite dry.

36:47Ekaterina:But yeah, I think you've asked a really good question about how do you judge a good idea? And for me, on a creative level, good ideas are ones that are very easy to communicate verbally. They're also very easy to communicate visually. So um uh the and we use the framework so like for me it's like doing a project like we did 2022 called lava banquet of a banquet you all understand what it is we heat up rock we turned it into lava we poured it out we cooked with it it's really hot it looks when you look into the furnace it looks like you're staring to the center of the sun it's like your face feels like it's gonna blister because it's so hot it's really like visceral um and for anyone that's attending, they're able to take great photos, they're able to like share it.

37:34Ekaterina:It's, it's, it's, you know, if someone says, Hey, I've got tickets to lava banquet tomorrow, do you want to come? You might cancel your other plans. It's pretty good. Um, and then the other, then the other way we judge things is, is, um, you know, financial. So, you know, that I'll be able to make money from it and there's no problem about making money. Um, if you're good at ideas and being good at creative ideas you can use your great ideas to make money go for it so that's that's one of our evaluation strategy then we also think about like what is the legacy um and that's more and more for us that could be like considering well um you know how how's what we're doing sustainable what's the impact of it do we need to buy everything make everything to build a massive installation bespoke what what happens afterwards um could we do it better just through hiring components off event hire companies.

38:28Ekaterina:Also, like, you know, what legacy can be. A lot of the reason we do this sort of thing is because, like, someone asks you what you're up to and you get a great story to tell. That's okay. It's good stories to tell at the pub with your colleagues and to have lived through it. It's very valuable. It's an awesome driver, hopefully.

38:48Sam Bompass:And at which point do you judge this kind of business slash operational element of an idea? Because on one hand you don't want to stop great ideas because they're very difficult to execute. On the other hand, you don't want to pitch anything to the client that actually has no way of becoming a reality or will cost so much that you won't fit it into the budget. So at which stage you discard the idea also or assessing the idea is even doable within the budget time and logistical constraints.

39:15Ekaterina:David It's got to be right from the start. If anyone's coming up with ideas that can't be delivered, then it's a waste of everyone's time, isn't it? like be good at your job like you know so so like as a foot in a formal way with ideas right at the start phase one we'll start putting in design risk assessments um so the process of that is like how do we design out all risk and part of the risk being if it's going to cost too much to do you can't do it so you've designed the wrong thing you know being an expert means yeah i think christopher nolan talked about it he's like well the way i get all these films signed off is i deliver them on time and a bit on budget.

39:54Ekaterina:And every other director goes over budget and takes too long. And so, you know, the budget's a huge that he's working with. You know, I think having, you can be freer with creativity if you're able to also be professional with it as well. And I think people's models of what creativity is have been ruined by this deplorable nonsense of the 20th century that creativity resides in individual geniuses being difficult. It's ludicrous. They're just the arseholes who aren't crediting all the other people that help them make their work. Good creativity is working with a group of people because there's no artist that's working alone.

40:44Ekaterina:Today, it's truer than ever. All great artists you see they're working with huge huge teams and model makers they might just hand over a sketch and got the people to fund it which is an art in itself but acknowledge what creativity really is

40:57Sam Bompass:and it'll get you a long way i could not agree more with you i've seen it on many other sides in agency world and in-house world where clients or even teams would work with um would decide whether they work with a creative or not based on the how easy it is to work with them not how So, I mean, creativity is part of it, but you would rather work with someone who can deliver on time and budget, is responsible, can manage their time, rather than someone who is incredibly creative, but very unpredictable and difficult to work with. Especially the bigger organization becomes, I think, that becomes the deciding factor.

41:38Ekaterina:But you have a responsibility, in the same way we talked about, we had responsibility to keeping people you're feeding not poisoned. like you've got a responsibility to your clients to like get them a job and not fired and like you know when we were earlier on in our career because you know it'd be the smallest agency pitching against something and and you know it'd be the outside and would be very young um you know i'd have i'd have clients who'd be like sam i've been up all night thinking about whether i award you this this don't get me fired please try really hard i'm like i will try so hard for you.

42:13Ekaterina:I will never stop until it's perfect. And, you know, hopefully they don't have that, they don't have the need, they don't need to say that anymore. Um, thankfully. Um, but that's, that's due in part to, um, the wider team who's, who's good and care and want to do good work.

42:31Sam Bompass:That's a good tip. And speaking of clients and how to convince them. So after you come up with all your wonderful ideas, the next big hurdle for any creative is to tell the client why these ideas is the best or which idea could be possible. So how do you find the relationship with a client when you present your ideas? Is this quite easy for them to agree to anything that you present or how do you go about making sure they don't get scared by all the wildness that you have in all your brainstorms?

43:02Ekaterina:I actually love this bit. I really enjoy pitching things. It's one of my favorite things. um and but the the main thing is is only creating ideas that you really like um don't put in ideas that you're presenting that you don't want to do um because you've got to live with it you've got to give a portion of your life over to it but i think if there's something that you're really excited about but genuinely excited about it's very easy to communicate that and you know good Good creativity is not working in antithesis with a client where you're on loggerheads. They want one thing, they want another.

43:40Ekaterina:Good creativity is working out the thing that you both want. That is like a creativity. And then you're not selling it. You're just agreeing. You're just immediately saying, hey, this is great. They say that's great. You both work on it together. You know, and it's so, and if you haven't arrived at that, maybe you need to do some more work. come up with a different idea. There are lots of ways to solve the problem. Do you usually present just one idea that you feel like will fit the best debrief that

44:12Sam Bompass:you had? Or do you usually try to be more collaborative with clients presenting in different stages and different versions?

44:19Ekaterina:So naively, we always used to just present one thing and it was very straightforward. But it's quite risky because if someone doesn't like it for whatever reason or they've seen it before or something else or something you can't anticipate, that might be the opportunity has gone to waste. It's behind you. So now we hedge our bets by presenting a few different routes, which is okay. And like that is part of the editing process as well. So that is also part of the creative process. It's trying to find something that everyone can be excited about. Because we're still doing things about, by and large, it ends up in a physical space.

45:02Ekaterina:So, you know, with the team that I'm working with, if they're presenting something, I'm like, you know, I just always ask them, would you go to this? Would you do this above anything else that's happening in London? If they can't, if they don't, they're not convinced that they would, then maybe we need to do some more work and try a bit harder.

45:21Sam Bompass:And how do you not go too wild or rather, how do you assess when you went too far? Or have you ever been with too far with an idea when it kind of goes into too mad of a state where is this border between something being generally new and interesting someone people hadn't seen before and going towards it's like completely out of this world and maybe not many people will resonate with it because it's so new and so different that it's just very difficult to understand you know i think

45:50Ekaterina:if it doesn't have an impact then maybe it's not a good idea um the i think sometimes you're right sometimes things can be quite fresh and they don't necessarily have the impact you would anticipate because they're almost invisible to people. You know, made things like, you know, in 2014, we're creating a, I'm still living in a world where projection mapping on four walls is deemed to be an immersive experience. It's really pathetic. It's so very, very boring. um you know we've had we've had the cinema for many for a century like you know cinema over several screens doesn't make it um you know anything different particularly when um you know the budgets for a fraction of what what what we have in cinema and the production values are pathetic relative to the movie industry but you know then in 2014 we're doing these the projection map flavor organs, which change your perception of taste through cross modalities.

46:52Ekaterina:So the sense of vision impacting, the vision and sound when this pipe organ is played, changing your perception of taste as you're drinking whiskey. And I think it was just, it was so wonderful and magnificent and real and based in like deep history and real musicality and then cutting edge science. we published a bunch of scientific, well, a scientific paper about it that got published. And then new technologies as well with projection mapping windows in new cultural form at the time, Ralph Rem projected on a building and that was a story in its own right. And it didn't get any cut through in the media.

47:27Ekaterina:And I think it was just too weird.

47:38Ekaterina:At the end of it, the pipe organ was being packed up in a shipping container and we were able to rescue it and find it home. And now it's in our studio and it's delightful every day. We just did a big party where we did karaoke with it and set the whole thing to scent as well. So you did scratch and sniff karaoke. It was so very, very joyful. Sometimes projects have unintended consequences, which can be good as well.

48:08Sam Bompass:And how do you, first of all, do clients always agree to your amazing ideas? Do they always see what you're trying to say? You might be passionate about the idea. You present something you genuinely believe in. Do clients always see that? And if they don't, how do you turn them around seeing what you see? And how do you convince them that this wild and wonderful thing could actually be good for their brand, for their product, for whatever they're trying to do?

48:35Ekaterina:If they don't see it, fuck them. No, really, we try really hard to find something that they resonate with.

48:56Ekaterina:money like so you're doing something that's quite good because it's expensive to employ creatives particularly now because um of ai everyone's a creative

49:10Ekaterina:but um but it means but as a consequence of it it means that with whatever's happening within that brand or organization there's something probably really really special with it and you get the opportunity to rediscover that from an outsider's perspective with different tools because As a freelancer, you're not working with that brand. Well, as a creative studio, we're not working with that brand every day, so we're not blind to it. It's exciting for us. It's fresh. It's new. We can take different codes. So say it's in the fashion world, we'll bring things from hospitality. Or say it's in the car world, we'll bring things from food and savor.

49:43Sam Bompass:That brings me very nicely to my next part of the conversation that I wanted to have with you about collaboration and multidisciplinary teams that you build, because you are very in the studio that you've created where you have these scientists, architects, people working in hospitality and food. And I mean, it's great, but as a founder, as a manager, as a leader, you have to manage all of this wonderful team of people. They're very different in the way they work, very different in the way they think, in the way they create. So what did you find And personally, through this journey of being a founder and being a creative leader, of how, on one hand, you can let people be their best selves in the studio, but on the other hand, allow everyone to work together.

50:31Ekaterina:Golly. I wouldn't say I've got it fixed in any means. You know, the greatest challenge is with lots of people come from different disciplines. They have very different practices. So what's important within a commercial kitchen and what the rhythms are of that kitchen and what the rituals and the language that you describe things is very, very different from what it'd be if you're a graphic designer or an architect or a project manager. So what we spend a lot of our time doing is trying to work out what commonalities are. I mean, there's a very international audience on this call as well. And, you know, 80 % of our work is around the world.

51:10Ekaterina:So you have similar sort of things with communication when you're working with different nationalities, not that nationalities define character, but there's certain normative ways of working that we'd be familiar with in the Gulf versus, you know, say in Germany or America. You know, sometimes it makes me very nervous. I remember two weeks before Salon de Mobile in Milan, and we'd done about six months of work with a client, BMW, and then that project had been shelved. And two weeks before Salon de Mobile, they said they wanted to deliver something, but not any of the ideas we'd worked on. So we're starting from scratch.

51:50Ekaterina:I remember being on the site, which is a very prestigious site, you know, next to some luxury, other luxury brands. and it's our British creative team and the Italian team and German team. And we were all looking at each other saying, yeah, this project can be delivered. And I was like, what we're all saying means something completely different. And, you know, I think the German team was saying this project has to be delivered. and we were saying we can probably deliver as the creative team the creative ideas and the italian team was saying we're based in milan we work with fashion people like yo are you kidding we can turn stuff around last minute like no problem and they fabricated it all beautifully but you know it was it was an amazing amazing moment of um different work practice and values coming together to to make to make something real but i was quite nervous at the time i think everyone I think everyone was.

52:54Sam Bompass:I mean, communication is such a big part of creative work and collaboration, and you're so right. Cultures or disciplines or whatever differences we have as humans make communication. It's a very difficult subject to make sure that when we say something or write something, we actually mean the same thing. And it's fascinating to find that commonality. So do you have any, I suppose, which...

53:15Ekaterina:Sorry, I would recommend if you're working in different cultures other than the one that you understand or you're used to buying the book, The Culture Map. It's so good. It's so fantastic. And it's helped me and our team immensely just understanding what values are within a meeting.

53:33Sam Bompass:I 100 % agree with this recommendation. I also found the book absolutely fascinating. It definitely, it's a window into the whole massive world that we live in. Speaking of culture, your team and studio creative culture is very unique. You throw parties and dinners and all sorts of things and markets. I don't know, you have so many great, unusual things happening every day or every week or every month in the studio. can you tell a bit more about the rituals or anything else that you do as a creative team as a studio that kind of fuels everything that you mentioned before this inspiration the collaboration and all the other things that are so important for you as a company yeah and like

54:18Ekaterina:i think it's important to have like ongoing rhythms one of the best things we do as a studio and something that starts in COVID is at 5.45 each day, someone we gather around in person or online and someone in the studio tells a story. And it's just a way of ending the day. And we normally have, it'll be sort of themed on different things. So at the moment, we're doing ones about rules people live by. So I found out that one of my colleagues likes to wash their feet every single night before they go to bed. It's not a useful piece of information, but it's an interesting insight into what they might be like as a person.

55:04Ekaterina:So the very best it allows people to be creative and express some of their values or some of the ways that they approach or apprehend the world. And it allows us to understand each other. I've worked, many people here have worked here for up to eight years. It's a long time. I've obviously worked with Harry for 19 years, almost 20 years. And it's, it's, it's, um, I'm still discovering a lot about him. I hope he is about me. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a great ritual. We also eat a lot together. We eat and drink a lot together. It sits at the heart of the studio. So every Wednesday we'll have a great big feast.

55:45Ekaterina:Um, of course this is sort of themed about Chinese New Year yesterday. Yeah, it's delightful. That's a good way to have that unstructured fun.

55:52Sam Bompass:And does everyone come in every day? I mean, I think there is a big, obviously, conversation that seems like it doesn't end about remote, hybrid, in-person. And it feels like it has new waves every year of people discussing, okay, now we figure out how to do it. So what's your approach to the whole in-person, hybrid conversation?

56:12Ekaterina:Well, I've got strong opinions, but I also give other people the benefit of the doubt. Different people are different. It's okay. I mean, you know, I think it's helpful to work at home to be individually productive. I think if you want to be community productive, it's important to work together.

56:30Sam Bompass:Yeah, I agree that I think there are so many different modes of learning and we should find the benefits in all of them. But it's interesting always to see how each company or studio approaches it. I wanted to talk, again, you're a founder, you have a co-founder, And it also feels like you have very different personalities, the two of you. Obviously, you have different backgrounds, but also you're much more public-facing and very maybe curious and, in general, outgoing in the way you approach the world. And from what I know about Harry, he seems like you're a different part of your duo and has different characteristics.

57:08Sam Bompass:So can you tell a bit more about how do you work as two co-founders? What did you find working and not working throughout the years of this constant collaboration? Because I feel like the topic of running a company is so important, but also very difficult when you have two very different minds working in the same company. So what did you figure out about you two as co-founders?

57:31Ekaterina:Well, I think we've been friends for a long time. So we have a lot of shared experiences before even starting a company. I think generally care about each other and value one another's opinion. Now that said, our approach and our personality is almost diametrically opposed, which is great because it's a good editing process. If we both agree on something, it means that we can go in on it wholeheartedly. If we don't, maybe stop and think about it. Maybe the problem sorts itself out.

58:03Ekaterina:I love the relationship with Harry. He's a fascinating, fascinating person. um you know most of the time in the studio um i'll be having clients in we'll be walking around and um harry will walk past i'll be in a a a brown overalls um heading to the workshop where he's he's working to to master every single trade he's he's like incredible plumbing at carpentry um you want to go far further into all of it because you know that he's interested in um you know how process enables good creative practice how fabrication can enable you to do things and how you then are able to come up with better ideas at the top through your personal ability and i think also that sort of approach has really paid off in the world with ai i think people have stopped making a lot of things we found like a lot of our businesses come from um other creative studios that come up with ideas now and now don't know how to fabricate them.

59:04Ekaterina:And we're able

59:05Sam Bompass:to take that problem and sort it out through this unusual combination of different expertise,

59:15Ekaterina:which is quite fun.

59:18Sam Bompass:And have you ever had big arguments throughout the 20 years? You must have had disagreements that, and how do you find a common ground when you really disagree on a particular topic or subject?

59:31Ekaterina:I mean, I would say not particularly. You know, like now we're so, we've worked together for so long that, you know, almost like, you know, I feel like we're able to anticipate what the other one would say about your opinion, which then means you're able to solve the problem with holding them in mind already, you know, which comes down to like good embodied communication and really sort of understanding someone and understanding what their values are.

59:56Sam Bompass:Yes, I wouldn't say this has been a problem.

59:58Ekaterina:Harry would probably give you a very different a different answer and that's okay that's the way we work um yeah that's the that's the light of it

1:00:08Sam Bompass:i love it and i personally think like having a co-founder is the best thing any founder can can decide or any business owner um i'm very lucky to have a co-founder as well and i do believe like especially in the creative industry it's so special to have someone to share the journey with and have all sorts of debates and conversations and collaborations. So I'm delighted to hear that you have this very special relationship through the years.

1:00:35Ekaterina:Yeah, it's great. And we still went on holiday together last month. Everyone actually thinks we're a romantic couple. And I'm like, no, no, we're not. Sometimes we'll arrive on international projects they'll be like here's your room and you're like yeah can we get two is that okay it's fine we'll we'll be in the same room together if that's what the budget allows it's okay it's not a problem but two's an option that'd be great i agree with you i think when you

1:01:05Sam Bompass:go through life together especially 20 years i feel like it's you you start to know someone as a friend as a business person as a creator uh so deeply that uh you want to share more of your time together because you feel like someone really understands you to this deepest level, which is very rare in general to find in life people like that. But I think we are very lucky as creatives and as founders to have people like that around us. Let's pick some questions from our lovely audience. I would love to know what is a totally wild collab that you would love to do sometime?

1:01:38Ekaterina:I mean, thank you very much for all the questions, by the way. They look absolutely banging um and also quite difficult as well in some ways which is good um i don't always like think about like who would like to collaborate with but also like what the concept is so um i'm obsessed with rocks i'd love to create a geopark like so a sort of giant rock sanctuary in which we'd be able to um take casts or scans of like the tops of lots of different famous mountains and put them all in one place you could go up seven summits in a day um without the ecological impact. But yes, that's a dream. If you know someone that wants to pay for it, Evie, that would be fantastic.

1:02:22Ekaterina:I would say as well, if there's someone whose work that I really admire, I'll try and think of a reason to get in touch with them. I'm very used to rejection or nothing coming back. I've written letters all my life, I think, writing to the Queen, age six, to try and be in the army. I'm glad she said that I wasn't able to be a child soldier. She employs people to write back to everyone, which she did. But yeah, so I still will get in touch with people whose work I'm particularly excited about. You know, love getting hold of John Waters' postal address and then putting together a pack for John Waters, stuffed with weird bits and bobs zines I'd made about Vomit that I thought he might like, knowing his writing.

1:03:16Ekaterina:And he said no to my request, but he did write a letter back. So that was nice.

1:03:21Sam Bompass:This is so personal and so cool, especially in the age of AI emails and text messages and everything else to have physical letters.

1:03:32Ekaterina:Oh, yeah, but come on. If someone writes you an email written by AI, you immediately put it in a bin. Like, you know, as soon as you see that, it's just like immediate delete. Like, have a care, have a, like, spend two minutes doing something if it's important to you. If it's not worth two minutes, then why would, like, why should someone else spend two minutes on your side?

1:03:51Sam Bompass:Citi is asking, how do you approach PR for your company starting out as an unknown? And how do you approach it now? Is it a big part of your operations?

1:04:01Ekaterina:So I had a background in PR. um so when we started out 20 years it was um i would say a lot easier to do pr than it is now like you just had some newspapers you had to have personal relationships with the journalists and you called them up and if you didn't know them you called the desk and asked me put through to them and you play stories that are meaningful and you had two minutes to pitch a story um and like my greatest satisfaction was um taking say a supplement and pitching all the journalists who are the authors of that supplement and getting into every single article in that supplement that was that was like that was like my like ultimate goal i only achieved it like once or twice but it's always the thing i dreamed about um now of course the media landscape is is incredibly fragmented um you know where do you spend your time is it what what channels are you gonna you gonna focus on um uh i think there are different answers for different people and it's also what do you want to spend your time bothering doing um it is a really important aspect of what we do um of course because if you don't tell people about what you're doing is is you know where you get commissioned i think it's a really important bit of like you know ideally um you're at a stage where you can turn down the vast majority of work that comes your way and define other work and in order to do that you have to have an awful lot of people um aware of what it might be that you could do for them um i think we could do much better um So there's a lot that we have to learn.

1:05:32Ekaterina:Yeah, there we go.

1:05:33Sam Bompass:Rosanna is asking, when a project isn't going as expected, what kind of dynamics do you use to get it flowing? And if I can add to this question, I would love to hear both sides. When it's not going as expected from the client's perspective, so on the client side, client isn't happy or something just worried, anxious, as well as what if it's not going as expected internally? Like how do you manage everyone's mood and aspirations and just in general to make it back on track?

1:06:00Ekaterina:So I would try and build into every project that no project will ever go as expected. And a model that I use to explain that to a team, I'll draw it now, is really basic. So I don't really see that. So this is the start of the project timeline. Everyone's got hopes and dreams. Everything's rosy and it's all real dreamy. it's guaranteed that every project will end up really shit and in the doldrums here at some point along the way. And then it's down to you having a really good team who are practicing and trust each other to try and push it up here. You might not get very far. You can sometimes get there.

1:06:40Ekaterina:If you work really hard and you're lucky, you can get up to here. But there will always be a point where it's here and don't like just live with it. It's okay. And that's also the bit, those sort of crisis moments where um you know often you get to see what people are really like um uh it means that as a leader in a team you get to really add benefit um so you get to support people and you know quite often like when we're when we're bringing new people on board and always like sit down with them said look if you're really worried about something it's okay we're putting on parties and events and doing marketing and branding and stuff putting open your museum it's it's okay have a chat about it there are people here who can help you we can work on it together we'll get through it there'll be a good way the second thing with the client is just to make them part of the process and and you know if they if you show them all the things that you're doing with care to try and resolve it and they may also have some really good ideas because they're probably in their client position because they're an expert as well.

1:07:51Ekaterina:If you do all of that and they're still fuming or they can't see it, they're probably an absolute wanker. So you may want to question whether or not you want them as a client. We're lucky that the vast majority of our clients are employed by terrific companies at vast expense. They're probably quite good at something. They've been through the process a lot. So they often have a lot to contribute and they're very professional as well.

1:08:22Sam Bompass:You know, says if clients will be a problem because it does sound like it's such an important part of everything you do, this trust between you and your client. How do you make sure that you say yes to the projects that have the good team on the other side?

1:08:38Ekaterina:Well, I think it's like you meet people in the world. Do you get a good feeling quickly? I mean, it's pretty important to trust your gut, always trust your gut. And that's the same with hiring processes, but also understanding that all of those relationships are incredibly dynamic. So the people that I've hired decades ago are now our clients. I just was working last week in Paris where I was employed by someone who's a senior strategy director who was once an intern at Bombs & Par. actually doing the job with the giant punch ball of booze. So, you know, it's trying to be aware that over a long enough time period, you'll interact with a lot of people and things will be different.

1:09:34Sam Bompass:Yeah, I feel like in the industry that we work in, which is creative and a lot to do with humans, I think understanding humans, being empathic to humans and reading humans is probably one of the most important skills, whether it is, as you said, in hiring, whether it is in working with clients. It's, yeah, it's so important. We have a few questions about recommendations. So maybe we can do a quick round of recommendations. One is about people in food and drink. So who are the contemporary figures in food and drink who inspire you and are pushing the boundaries of food and drink design?

1:10:09Ekaterina:I mean, like actually in food and drink, I'm not looking within the circle, what I, what I tend to do is I really like, um, so nothing could be worse for me than going for a multi-course tasting menu. Um, I think it's grueling and punishing for your body. Uh, what I, what I like is sort of the grand cuisine of like the 1920s. So looking at, looking at that, um, I think if you ask chefs what the best, what their favorite meal is they've had in their life, quite often it's like, well, I had a great shepherd's pie and all my family were there and it was a special occasion. We made time for each other.

1:10:45Ekaterina:Um, and it was really joyful. It's really important. So what I really like doing is taking that shepherd's pie and then putting in all the razzmatazz, a West End show around it. Um, and that makes it, that makes it. And part of that, part of the reason for that is when you get to a very, very elevated food and drink, it almost becomes an abstraction. Now that said, I think there's in like the bar world where, you know, maybe 10 years ago, cocktails got really, really convoluted. They got very complicated where people would use a shorthand for spit unicorn tears. Say there'd be some very obscure ingredients that are wafted around it in a complex, unnecessarily complex way.

1:11:29Ekaterina:To the benefit of flavor, maybe not. I think now there's some good rationalization between technical complexity and lightness of service and having that depth of knowledge but then not wearing it too heavily. I went to a new bar Cave Del V in Paris last week and it was just exceptional. They take all their seasonal fruit, they ferment it, They distill it. They put it in bottled cocktails. They don't use any ice. A concept's been around for a while, but it means that all service is very quick because they're not shaking anything. They're just pouring it. But the service is very, very casual, even though they've done this terrific amount of work beforehand.

1:12:16Ekaterina:The service is very, very light and gentle. If you ask for a drink, they give it to you. They've got fridges over the side. Like there's a sort of melee of young people there. One person goes over to the fridge, picks up a beer, opens it. Within a second, the bartender's come over and put a perfectly frosted glass next to it and walked off. And it's just like a light, noticing, very, very good service, very delicate attention to detail, but not wanky.

1:12:47Sam Bompass:I love that you mentioned attention to detail and service. I feel like it's such an undervalued part of any, I mean, hospitality is built in it, but in general of any experience, whether it's creative and design experience or food experience. We have one more question or recommendation from Jen with your extensive library. Any recommendations for books about human interaction, sensory design that you would say is golden?

1:13:12Ekaterina:I love this question so much. um i would say the the number one book that i have is um pleasures of london um and it's a

1:13:22Sam Bompass:total history of how people have spent their leisure time in london um condensed down into

1:13:28Ekaterina:200 pages and and it goes down to that bit where um you know things that's like humans of yester year still delight humans today and along the way you get a lot of details on sort of the the subsensory landscapes of different times and how you can engage with it. I think it's ours, like the spines falling off, the covers all frizzled up. It's got like thousands of notes in it. Yeah, it's very well used.

1:13:57Sam Bompass:We obviously cannot avoid questions about AI in 2026. So we have a few. How do you think AI will impact the future of physical commercial environments and brand experiences? in what ways do you think it's reshaping physical spaces and experiences well there's probably a

1:14:14Ekaterina:myriad of answers and i think they'll get some people's backs up um you know we uh have a studio policy on ai just to make it not complex which is like use ai to help you do good work continue using your brain and all the other tools you'd use it's a tool um you know i think there's something inherently about ai in within creativity that's incredibly cringe um you know when i see creative artifacts created by ai i'm very bored like i'm immediately completely bored and that's because you know the reason that you well what is art for what is creativity for and if you look at a tolstoy in sense um art is to help you experience emotion and like you know humans help and this is Tolstoy, he discounted most of his work.

1:15:05Ekaterina:He discounted a lot of Shakespeare in terms of being, is it good art? That's a useful measure of, is it actually good? Does it help you or someone else experience emotion? Tech bros going, look at what AI did and it only gets better. You're like, but it's fucking shit. It didn't make me feel anything. It just made me slightly feel a bit sad. And not in an interesting, melancholic way. just maybe go like, oh God, you're rubbish.

1:15:36Sam Bompass:I think we're just in this interesting moment in history where it's still AI a bit novel and therefore it still sparks some sort of curiosity. As soon as I feel like most of the world will get over the novelty of its existence, like with any technology, then I feel like we'll go back to all the other principles that we always valued, like creativity and ideas and empathy and humanity.

1:15:59Ekaterina:But I think, you know, we talked about history And if you look back to the sort of fin de siècle Paris, when you had like a, you know, from the 1860s to the 1890s, this huge impact of modernity and coming in. And as a consequence, you had this great feeling of ennui. And as a consequence of that, you had this huge flourishing of human ingenuity and creativity. A lot of like fabulous poetry was created. um you can see now um when you know i thought poetry two 20 years ago was like why would ever anyone ever write a poem again and of course um now seeing some like absolutely fantastic poetry being made and it feels very relevant it feels very urgent um and again um you know just in the same way that um mechanism within um image making with the camera um as a consequence of it you get impressionism like so don't just worry about ai ai will make people so bored that they'll do other interesting things boredom boredom's like a really good driver for creative practice i 100 %

1:17:10Sam Bompass:agree with you and we have one more follow-up question kind of in the world of ai of i suppose lots of people are creatives especially are anxious about um what the future looks like for creativity. So how would you keep the human aspect of creativity front and center?

1:17:26Ekaterina:Well, I think there's always, when you have new technologies, it doesn't obliterate whatever the problem is. And to use a different world, let's talk about cleaning and washing. And, you know, if you look at the, you know, there was this idea that hoovers and washing machines were going to obliterate the need for any housework um and of course what they they didn't at all people still needed to wash what what it changed was um what the output could and should be so you had to then be much cleaner your linens had to be much whiter um uh you know maybe maybe like the the rhythms of it changed a little bit um but it doesn't happen yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't worry too much.

1:18:17I would say though that, I mean, the advertising industry is pretty fucked,

1:18:22Ekaterina:isn't it?

1:18:29Ekaterina:It's not a good time to be in advertising as a consequence of AI. Then it does make you wonder like, a lot of people in advertising talk about creativity, but they're also telling you about the book they're working on.

1:18:42Sam Bompass:I feel like it's very interesting to see where we'll get with AI in a few years, as you said, like when there is a movement, there is anti-movement in the opposite direction. And we just came back from Silicon Valley with Future London Academy. And it's very interesting to see there how literally there are two direction. One is very much efficiency and how we can solve everything with AI. And exactly the same time, the massive investment goes into everything else we want to do and will do because we'll get bored because we'll have more free time. We already have too much free time with Ubers and Deliveroo's and whatever we have to optimize our life.

1:19:20Sam Bompass:And now the work will be more efficient. We'll be bored most of our day. So TikTok and Netflix are not going to solve all of our needs. So how will, is it physical experiences, theater, dinners, friends? Yeah, there is such a massive opportunity for humanity.

1:19:38Ekaterina:Well, I think the one problem with that though is that you have the massive appropriation through this of all of humanity's resources by a very small number of people who don't really have great ideas. Like, you know, they've had one big idea, which is I want you to give me all of your money. And then they do absolute fucking nonsense with it, like spend time trying to go to space. Like, stop it. It's not interesting. It doesn't delight anyone. No one's going to go to space. Space is crap. Like in space, all food tastes like cardboard because your like nose is so congested. And these are the people who then get to spend their resources on what culture is.

1:20:20Ekaterina:It's not great.

1:20:22Sam Bompass:I love that we're finishing our conversation on a rant about the future because I do believe there is no one way we should think about the future. And definitely we need to have more debates as humans, as creatives, and as creators of the future, of where do we want it to go? And we can design it for the better. And I suppose that's what gives us as founders, as entrepreneurs, as creatives, the empowerment to actually do something because at the end of the day, we can affect where it goes. So I wanted to finish on one last question that we ask everyone who comes on our podcast, which is a bit philosophical.

1:20:56Sam Bompass:If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

1:21:00Ekaterina:You know, one of the things I think about a lot is what life is like before potatoes. Whenever I'm sad, the British diet before potatoes was incredibly boring and unvaried and potatoes arrived and it became way more delicious.

1:21:18Sam Bompass:It's not a change, but it's like a hope.

1:21:21Ekaterina:how can we find something else as delicious as potatoes that we can all eat and, um, could be nitrogen fixing and can fix the soil. And it's out there because we've only discovered a fraction of things that are edible. To use an example from fruits, there are, um, 20 ,000 known fruits and that's estimated that's only a quarter of the existant fruits. And think about how many fruits you're familiar with. Like it's, it's so few of the 10, 20 ,000 known fruits, right? Um, so it means that we've got a lot more things that are delicious, that are waiting to be discovered somewhere out there on this planet.

1:22:01Ekaterina:And I hope, I hope somewhere for all of us, there's something quite as good as potatoes.

1:22:07Sam Bompass:Wow. I would have never expected this answer, but I'm so loving it. And it definitely wants me to explore more in the world of fruits, vegetables and plants and things out there in the world that we should all explore and discover for ourselves and for humanity thank you so so much sam for bringing us this experience of joy and wonder throughout this conversation i personally learned so much about the world that you live in and also the world that we all live in and thank you for being so generous with your ideas, with your thinking process, but also I feel like opening our walls to so many new things none of us ever even considered or thought about.

1:22:47Sam Bompass:And I can see so much love that's happening from the chat towards you because I feel like so many people could resonate with everything you're saying. And also with being real about running a company and being a founder and being a creative business owner that has to solve real problems for real clients. So really appreciate your honesty and time any last words anywhere people should find you connect with you follow you i want

1:23:13Ekaterina:to say thank you everyone for your time and katerina for being such a wonderful inquisitive host as well it's been and the questions have been wicked as well very difficult which is good like because it's good to be tested the friction's reality um yeah uh all usual places is find us on social media. We do loads of events. In the studio, I'm trying to make it a place where there's lots of space for interaction. So we're going to shortly open up a gallery space. Come to things. Come meet us. Let's see what collides, what happens. That's the interesting thing. That's the most important thing.

1:23:53Sam Bompass:And you're based in Barbican, the place to be in London. So I do feel like you're literally surrounded by creativity and have creativity at the heart of your studio. Thank you so much, Sam. Such a pleasure. And thanks everyone for staying until the end. As always, please share anything that you found wonderful, interesting, exciting, provocative, surprising during this conversation and brings us so much joy to know what resonated with you. So please, while your thoughts are still fresh, go on LinkedIn, Instagrams, wherever you are, TikToks of the world and tell us what did you learn from this experience because you learn once by listening and you learn twice by sharing so please share the joy of this conversation with other humans let us know uh what we um should talk about next as well thank you so much sam and thanks everyone and as always until next time bye thank you bye