Dare to take the slow road into the industry - Eliza Williams (Creative Review)

0:09One thing I'd say just to follow on from the thing around the kind of attacking of logos and things like that is I have noticed that brands are increasingly, they don't want people to write about stuff now. We've had quite a few times where a major brand has done a rebrand and you'll hear about it from the studio and then you'll say, well, we'd like to write about it and the client's refusing. And I think some of that is a direct response to these sorts of storms that have blown up, that they just don't want the hassle of being attacked. We've seen some of it become political and all kinds of things.

0:43I think that's a real shame because the problem is then the industry, even amongst itself is not documenting the good stuff that's happening.

0:57Welcome to Daring Forever, a podcast about being human, why for wonder, capable of courage, perpetually becoming. It's about the waves that look us under and the strange stubborn grace with which we surface. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm an author, creative and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom I call forever daring humans, those in pursuit of an extraordinary life. Every week I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order out in October.

1:44Today I'm speaking with Eliza Williams, editor of Creative Review, one of the world's most prestigious magazines, bringing the creative community together since 1980. This is a genuinely introspective conversation about Eliza's career. She started out selling popcorn in the cinema, then working in a bookshop before finding her way into writing and journalism, often without connection, without a plan and by her own mission, often terrified. We go behind a polished output to the messy middle, why the future of creative publishing matters, the exclusivity of the art world that she left behind and what it actually takes to build confidence in public.

2:22This is a great look at staying curious, staying honest and daring to keep asking the questions.

2:31Eliza, welcome to Daring Forever. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you for having me. It's exciting to do a podcast again because I I used to do them for Creative Review quite a lot and I haven't for a couple of years, so it's fun. It's fun to have you here because what you do and where you do it and who with is kind of the epicenter of the creative industry because everyone gravitates towards you, trying to tell you what they do, how they do it, why they do it, and you go, okay, let's have a look. For those who may not have heard of Eliza Williams, how would you introduce yourself? Who are you?

3:01What do you do? The simplest way is to say I'm the editor of Creative Review magazine, which has been around since 1980. I have been there a long time in various different roles as a writer and then different editors along the way. But now I'm the overall editor, the overlord, as I like to put it. The overlord sounds great. Before we talk about the state of the industry, talk about your work and how you do it, I really wanted to know what is the making of an editor? How did you get to become one? I actually was always interested in doing writing, journalism. It was a completely alien world to me really growing up.

3:39My dad was in science, my mum was a nurse. If anything, this more obvious world that I could have gone into would have been more of a science world. The school I went to, a local comprehensive school, there weren't opportunities. I hear this a lot now when I talk to creators in design and advertising that you don't learn about these careers much at school and even now, but certainly when I was at school, that was the case. But I was always interested in it and we did a local school magazine which I got involved in because it was fun. I went to university and I did English and art history and I came out of university and just tried to find my way into doing anything in the creative industries but with a leaning towards writing.

4:23So this was in the mid-1990s and the industry of job opportunities then were not great. I was just applying for everything I could see in what was Guardian G2 section, for anyone who remembers that time, obviously all pre-internet, and really got nowhere, to be honest. It was extremely difficult. I had no connections. And you begin to realise as you get older and you speak to people, journalism, but also the creative industries that we write about at Creative Review are quite rooted in connection. And if you don't have that just by luck or chance you have to hustle your way through quite a lot I didn't do anything to do with creativity for the first few years out of university I worked in a bookshop and in a cinema for the picture house cinema chain obviously I didn't feel like I was going anywhere but this was a time when you could actually live in London and work on a cinema wage and rent a place so it was a slightly different environment to now but yeah I didn't really go anywhere I was originally from near Oxford and I moved back there to try and work out what I know if to do and it was through that move that I got a job at a very small publishing company.

5:31When you mentioned about your cinema job this is where my brain's taking me because I'm thinking people watching what was it like to work in a cinema and observe people? This was in the Clapham Picture House which is a small art house cinema. I was selling popcorn and doing the box office it was nothing that glamorous but the people who are working there were great and really good fun and had these kind of bigger aspirations. Didn't feel like I was wasting time, really. But also, cinemas are great. You get to watch movies all the time. The time you describe it, this is mid-90s, it was almost the golden age of cinema.

6:05So many good movies came out, and at that time, they seemed to be coming out every month. When you think about some of the classics we've had now, there must have been quite something to live through it. I've been going to the cinema a lot recently, and I feel like everyone's down on movies a lot these days. but actually there's loads of great films coming out. And I felt then the ones that I really remember are things like Seven and Trainspotting and Romeo and Juliet as an usher. You obviously could go and see movies all the time in the daytime and stuff when you weren't working but you'd end up seeing the beginning and end of films or loads which is slightly weird.

6:37I know the end of Trainspotting for example really clearly because I had to get everybody out to the cinema. But yeah, it was good times. I remember that actually at the cinema with Trainspotting this was actually a different branch of the pitch house to be really specific but they had Danny Boyle the director of Trainspotting plus John Hodgill I think it was and also the producer whose name I can't summon up they all worked with Danny Boyle after this for a long time and they came to do a talk and I have this copy of a Favour and Favour used to do film scripts and I have this copy of the Trainspotting film script that's signed by them and this is before Danny Boyle really, he was famous, he'd done Shallow Grave but He wasn't quite the Danny Boyle we know now.

7:19They were all super nice and very excited because I think train spotting was just a great experience. So thinking about what you just said about knowing the end of train spotting really well, it's almost, did you ever apply to thinking that I'm almost analysing the frame by frame because you were getting to understand the creativity that was presented to you? With hindsight, I would say that. Well, the end of train spotting, it's got the track Born Slippy by Underworld, which has recently come back into fashion because everyone's mad about the 90s still but it's a very distinctive music scene and in some ways it was the combination of music and visuals for that that I think makes that stick in my mind so much.

7:59You mentioned that your dad was in science your mum was a nurse and you could have been one of the two was there anything about a science that applied to you that you thought were you ever tempted? Not really I did science at school and Obviously, I was around it, but the science, my dad was an immunologist. So the world that he worked in, it was high-end science. I can remember as a child hearing various phrases and types of science phrasing that would be used and which stuck in my mind. But it was a totally other level. The only thing I would say, actually, particularly with my dad, because he was also into art as well as science.

8:35He died when I was 18. I was pretty young, but the feeling I had from him was that the type of science he did was very much a similar process to creativity, but obviously with deep scientific knowledge. But you kind of had to imagine the solutions to things because they were working on things that weren't known. So there was this sense where you were having to theorize and try out ideas and then test them and see if they work. he had a lab I would go into his lab in his lab there would be rats and things which I didn't understand at the time what that implied but obviously now you see that slightly differently they were very well looked after I would hasten to add he was working on experimental science and there were some parallels of that and the fact that he was interested in art as well which isn't always the case in the science world that I come across since but he always had this kind of passion for art as well there was this sense in which those things weren't entirely separate as they sometimes can be perceived to be yeah I guess no one really dreams about becoming immunologists well I don't know since Covid maybe right because the funny thing for me is that my dad died in 1992 so obviously a long time ago for this but there's so much talk about immunology and some of the things that he was actually involved in have come up in the Covid era particularly maybe that sparked a whole passion for it that wasn't there you mentioned that you were at the younger age you were interested in writing and i want to find out where did that passion or that interest came from what were you reading what was surrounding you because as you said before the cinema you find yourself in a bookshop as well and i just kind of want to know where do the words come into your life yeah bookshop another great job to do when you're young because if you're into books it's a very pleasant environment well I guess I read a lot myself not always very highbrow stuff but I always like reading when I was a real child there were authors like Roald Dahl he has a complicated image nowadays but in terms of wordsmith and this magic of words and conjuring up imaginative worlds he was the master of doing that all that phrasing very much stuck with me and then I think another thing would have been through music as a family we listened to quite a lot of Bob Dylan when I was a words from him really stuck with me.

10:57I wouldn't say that any of this was massively conscious. It wasn't like I sat down. Sometimes when I talk to, say, illustrators or artists, in particular, they will be like, I was constantly drawing and I was constantly doing stuff. I wouldn't say that was something that I was doing. It was just something I liked and enjoyed and was interested in. We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co. The first creative speciality coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond.

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12:08sounds like just the life inputs really life inputs they just happen right it's just you don't overanalyze them obviously there was also i believe in your life people like david burn and Bjor just it was just influencing that just happened and I think at that time that you described in it was just magical the mid-90s with everything happening not just in the cinema but everything musically it was a really productive creative time although I was in my 20s life in your 20s is pretty good generally on the whole obviously it depends on circumstance but I think when you get older you tend to look back at that time you forget the angsty difficult parts It just seems like you have a lot of energy and a lot of time, which is less so as you get older and get more responsible and stuff.

12:51But the fact is, I do think the 90s were quite a special time. And in London, again, I got very into art. And at that time, there was so much great stuff going on that it felt really exciting. There was obviously all this Brit art, Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst and a really wide group of people. But they were doing experimental things that felt very different. It felt very exciting. because London at that time was certainly not what it's like now. There was a lot of spaces that were empty, a lot of warehouses that were empty in the east of London. Galleries would put on big experimental exhibitions at that time.

13:30They were really exciting and interesting. So I first started doing more writing around art, really. The little publishing company I joined was actually run by someone called Will Gompert. He ended up being quite famous as the BBC Arts editor, but at that time he was doing publishing in magazines. That was a massive stroke of luck for me because he was really encouraging and enthusiastic and all the energy you see from Will in TV and stuff like that is very much who he is. And he really gave me a go at a time when I didn't have a lot of stuff on my CV. So that was a massive piece of luck. And we got on very well, we do get on very well.

14:09And he supported me a lot. he set up a magazine that long ago went bust but I worked doing looking for artists to feature in that and going to lots of exhibitions and it was a great period for that when you now mentioned that you've gone and worked with Will and started reviewing art what did that feel like the reason why I ask this because artists have a lot of opinions about their work obviously they spend a lot of time projecting their expression into the work they get someone like yourself or somebody else going and volunteering their opinions and observing the work did it ever feel like that you needed to justify your place or did it feel like that you're doing something which is exciting that you didn't have that let's be honest imposter syndrome was invented in mid 90s you just did stuff what did you feel like that's transition from going into writing this stuff about people who potentially sometimes were quite established and potentially could bite back if they didn't like when you were writing?

15:07I was terrified. There's lots of different things that were difficult. There's a lot of social anxiety about going up because you could go to openings and they were pretty free and open, but it was a small world and it was a relatively closed world, the art world. And this wasn't really the artists actually, it's more just the gallery world. And I would say it was more open then than it is now, because I think it's even more the realm of wealthy now, which feels like a bit of a shame. London wasn't as sprawling as it is now and you could be anyone and rock up to something and it would be okay but I wasn't like somebody that was massively comfortable doing that so it always took a bit of a deep breath to do it and then in terms of the writing I didn't really get a lot of people hating on me but I think if you write for the nationals or you're in a very high profile art magazine and you're that established name then there's a lot more pressure on you I think but the magazine we were doing wasn't really that big it was growing I wrote for a bunch of other magazines I wrote for Flash Art which is a Italian based art magazine but published in English a bunch of blogs there were a lot of blogs at that time and a lot of the time you were just writing for free which I feel is a whole other topic really but at that time that was really the only option to get your name in print in the nicest possible way I wouldn't say there was massive amounts of editorial standards going on with that.

16:33Some magazines did. I did write for bigger magazines that would be more critical about what you wrote and push back sometimes. But I think a lot of the time it was just getting stuff published. And to a certain extent, there's still an element of that in all magazines that people just want to see their stuff being written about. And I think the thing with the blogs and things at that time is it was reaching different audiences. There's obviously moments where I look back on things in cringe horrendously, which I would say there's probably everybody's youth career experiences. It's part of everyone's journey, isn't it?

17:05Having stuff that you look back and go, I can't believe I did that. Well, when I did that, I thought I was the superhero. But I really liked your honesty when you said you were terrified and your social anxiety when you were going to these rooms and talk to people because that generally is almost everyone's arc. No one has that confidence of a serial killer. Actually, some people I think maybe do. How long did it take you to actually overcome this, to feel confident in what you do? A long time, really. It depends. I joined Creative Review. I shifted away from art and more out of circumstance, what kind of work was available.

17:40And I ended up going more towards the advertising and design world, which I really loved, actually, because the difficulty I had with the art world is it did really feel like an exclusive environment. And I never felt entirely myself there. The artists were great, and I really enjoyed interviewing artists. but the structures around the art world I found a little out of place even though it meant sort of leaving behind writing so much about art which I did love I really enjoyed going into the more commercial creative sector because I feel it was much more welcoming and interesting and friendly actually compared to the art world so that happened you're asking me about Colton it just happened over time there's certain things in terms of writing I think that happened quicker I used to absolutely hate public speaking and I used to find it totally terrifying and I really actively avoided doing it for quite a lot of my early career even though I'm quite an extrovert person but it just interrelated me immensely and I can't remember exactly what shifted with that but it was essentially just being forced to do it and then realizing that actually it's not massively different to just speaking to people it's just speaking to a lot of people at once But if you go into it thinking of it like that, that you're not actually having to perform, you're just doing what you do.

19:01And by that point, I'd interviewed lots of people. I think the key thing was learning how to ask people questions and have natural conversations. And that way you got much more from people in interview terms. I love that. I think the ability to ask questions, I think it's when you're a people person, you don't have to prepare questions. you just find out you start opening the doors in a conversation and see where it goes and i love this clip there's a clip of alan de baton speaking to someone and he says there are people in life who make you feel really interesting and there are people in life who make you feel really boring because the people who you open up to you trust them because you feel that they've already worked on themselves they've got their depth they found out who they are what they want how they express themselves then you get people who are not that they're just at more surface level i think when you observe the society and when you're trying to find out more about yourself then it's easier to connect with people it's actually much nicer because you accepted yourself who you are what people might be thinking about you doesn't matter and actually you just enjoy the journey because i think the best conversations ever are they just ask all the questions you can think of and my kids sometimes would hate it because i would ask uber drivers about their lives they're like why are you doing this i'm like because they feel seen they feel they feel heard i think that's the general curiosity.

20:18I think everyone you talk to is interesting and you find there's interesting so everyone you talk to will have something interesting to tell you and unexpected but also in terms of the industry and the work and stuff like that that a lot of the time the things I love are getting to go behind the scenes whether that be literally sometimes but also just hearing about how things are made and the stories behind how things are done and when things go wrong because they always do and it's all that stuff which I find really interesting and in some ways the polished end thing is the less interesting part really it's the whole getting there that's that's good.

20:55Have you put a podcast degree in the first place and what gave you the idea to interview more than one guest at the same time because sometimes that could be called logistical nightmare? We did a podcast that created a review called Creativity Sucks which was supposed to be about challenges and problems. I really love radio and the reason I love radio and then podcasts is that there is a kind of intimacy with audio. I know now a lot of people watch podcasts on video. I still tend to listen to them when I'm doing other things or walking around. And it does feel like you're joining a private conversation, which I really like.

21:29Obviously, when the podcasting boom began to happen, it was exciting. And I'd done a little bit of radio, again, going back to, I did a little bit of stuff with Will Gompertz again when he was at the BBC, quite briefly, but it was super fun. We also did a creative review podcast initially, which was just interviewing people. And this was before COVID, so I would actually go and sit with them with a recorder and it was all done almost, it feels a bit analogue now. When COVID happened, we all discovered the joys of video recording and everything like that and remote recording, which opened up the landscape for doing interviews with lots of different types of people in different places.

22:08And so we set up this Creativity Sucks idea, which was the concept. And as you say, I do sometimes wonder if that was an insane idea at the beginning. Like panel talks at events, right, where you get three people and me to talk about a topic. I think we're doing this on Riverside. We use the different platform members, very similar, where you just had all the people live together. And we just had a conversation which was led by me. The hardest thought about it was all the administrative logistics. It's not the most interesting topic, but administrative logistics is a bane of everybody's life. So that was the bit that made it tough.

22:43I think we did three seasons, maybe. I can't remember how many episodes there were. 25 or something. It was fun, but it was, as you say, I think it was more challenging than maybe this format. what's really interesting what you said about radio that you love radio and when i remember listening to your creativity sucks podcast it reminds me of the bottom line podcast or the bottom line radio show where there were three guests and it felt really natural to actually share this because what i find the most amazing about asking people questions you just never know where you're going to go next and having three people in the room must have been quite revealing because they potentially thought about stuff they haven't thought about for quite a while is there any particular moment you remember from those seasons that stuck with you as in wow that's standout moment?

23:24Always for me is when people share more personal stories and in some ways the three people format sometimes it really worked for that other times there just wasn't enough time for people to get really stuck into it but there were a few topics that we did we did one about politics actually which was really interesting because we had three people who were from different generation and also different positions politically talking about communications in politics. That was really interesting. And that was inevitably slightly personal. That was a topic that could have got quite heated, but actually didn't, but was fascinating because some of the people participating essentially didn't really have a strong view about what they were promoting.

24:07This is at a time of Brexit was happening, I think. And one of the people on the panel had gone on to work, I think afterwards, with Boris Johnson on his campaign stuff. I don't know if you remember, he did a bunch of things quite wild at the time, social media posts and things that all had this quiet night almost like a early internet they weren't polished in the way you think of with something like the conservative party and they really stood out and i think were really successful so the guy who'd done that work talked about those but other things we did topics that were about salaries and about equal opportunities in the industry and things like that and people would share stories that were quite personal there's always that kind personal side appeals to me.

24:47That podcast wasn't really about the work so much as about how you get to make the work and who gets to do it and how. So it led to itself more personal stories. When you look back, I think it was a perfect addition to what you used to do with the magazine because you want to know the stories behind the scenes. You want to have the pub chat recorded as a podcast because that's ultimately, I think, where we grow and where we learn from one another because you mentioned the world of art being very gatekept which is obviously when you think about it it's such a shame because the art should be for everyone but it's ring fenced by the few even though it should be for the many and when you talk about the world of creativity and design which is more welcoming and more open and then still when you talked about the job hunting and it still felt 20 years ago no one would tell you how much they charge no one would tell you what their secrets are no one would tell you how to get clients because everyone was protected because it goes to biologically to our scarcity mindset that we worry about the reason why people get angry driving cars because it's the lack of resources, it's the shared resources.

25:46I feel we live in such a different time now where we talk more openly about mental health. We talk about how we can get clients, how we can share because ultimately that's helping everyone. And we realize when you look right and when you do the right stuff, there's plenty of work for everyone. You can invent it, you can create it, you can find it and you can have it. That I think gives us in a situation where there's more openness, right? I think younger generations are really feeling like it's hard to get into the industry now and it's really hard to get to do the work. And some of that I think is around the question of AI.

26:21I know there's a huge amount of conversation about entry level jobs and AI and I think that is very real. I was at Northern Design Festival a few weeks ago and there was a conversation from somebody younger who was asking advice for how to get into the industry. and it was clear that people really feel it's very challenging still. I agree. I think there are many more ways now, but I think maybe it doesn't feel that way. It still feels quite a closed community to some extent, which is a shame. You mentioned something interesting about the entry-level jobs and doing the work and getting into industry because when you think about music, no one's going to employ you until you really know how to play or how you write a song, hypothetically employ you, because you have to really work on your expression, on your craft, on your understanding.

27:06almost like get yourself in a really good position that you are listenable or someone wants to pay attention and i think with some of the software manufacturers or call them vendors or whatever they might be the focus is obviously on the shareholders price on the bottom line obviously they have to hammer the newsworthy stuff in my opinion about the fact that they're moving in line with everybody else even though according to mit 95 of the implementation of ai and the enterprise was just catastrophically bad it didn't work but we seem to be peddling the newsworthy stuff in my opinion that gets everyone interested in the company's projection and their future vision but when you think about the work itself have we really moved the needle so far that we have enummed or maybe confused the up-and-coming generation with the fact that creativity might be actually easy because we all come from a generation where creativity isn't easy We know it is meant to be hard, not impossible, but the struggle in the process is something that gives you ultimately the reward.

28:05But now click of a button and you can have something. Is that giving us the gap of learning? I feel slightly wary because I think genuinely it is quite hard to get into companies now. I was saying at the beginning about moving to London in my early 20s and being able to live in Catherine, which seems ludicrous now. But I was doing that on a cinema way. and that would be utterly impossible, I would imagine. There's loads of real economic issues, but having said that, it is easier than ever to make stuff. Making stuff is quite hard and learning how to make stuff, you do need that kind of period of time.

28:44There are a few people, and we do a Grad Watch thing, which is where we profile new graduates, and we also generally profile quite a lot of new talent at Creative Review. and I'm constantly astounded by people's there are some examples that people who are really just better do it straight they're self-taught they've done it they've really worked it out there are exceptions to this but I think for a lot of people you do need to spend a bit of time learning how to do the work especially working with clients that's a massive part that I don't think is taught at university you might be taught how to do design or to do advertising or other kinds of creative stuff but actually that process of coming up against a client where you have to persuade them to like your ideas and understand your ideas you have to take that rejection which will often come from that it might not be anything to do with your creativity it's probably just isn't the right thing for that person at that time there's a huge amount of stuff to go to learn when you're younger that if you're part of a company you can learn that more easily and I think it's those jobs that are maybe harder to get if you're a really driven individual and you can do it you can be successful by yourself but I think a lot of people need that period and also just a bit of a gestation period I was 25 even maybe 26 before I got my first proper job and that was very junior and I think there's sometimes an expectation that if you've not done something really incredible by the time you're that age then you're washed up which I thought I slightly had that at times but I don't think it's really strong now that people are expecting to come straight out of college or whatever it is and be successful from the start and be a creative director by later on.

30:32The expectation is that things happen fast, which often they do, but I don't know how good a thing that is. It's really interesting what you said is there's an expectation because you mentioned not that long ago in this conversation that when you started interviewing people, you were terrified and you social anxiety and that's still the same thing that happens to 20-year-olds because they have an exercise and muscle of confidence they're building confidence and now it must be quite disorientating because if you go all of your peers online obviously you can see their numbers you can see what their opportunities were like who they got contacted by who they're working with and i think it might feel like being left behind is so much more visible and felt and present in their lives than ever was in ours because it felt a lot more innocent as you said you can be on a cinema our set or cinema wage we're living in clackham and it's the same you and your mates could get placed in notting hill or next to nothing which obviously that would never happen now anymore i think there's a change because what i really want to do now is to focus on what you do with the magazine and obviously as i said you're in the epicenter of the creative industry when everyone wants to talk to you about everything all the time and you have to go oh right where do we pick and choose but in the spirit of the show which is based on my new book correde and forever How do you see the industry now after, let's say, you've been in the industry for 20 years?