Chloe Templeman - ECD at Pearlfisher

0:08Claire:Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around and how they got to where they are today. So this week, I'm joined by Chloe Templeman, Executive Creative Director of the design studio Pearl Fisher. She's won D &AD Pencils, Pent Awards, New York Festivals, Fab Awards, DBA Design Effectiveness. She's judged D &AD's Brand Impact, Creative Review Awards.

0:47Claire:She's the co-president of the Pent Awards and a mentor at D &AD Shift, New Blood, Curling the Gap and Creative Equals. She's worked on brands such as Fortnum & Mason, Smirnoff, Lipton Ice Tea, Tanqueray 10, Palmolive, Typhu Tea, Wild Deodorant, Lucozade, Nivea and Heineken and many more. Clary, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much. It's very weird to kind of hear you say all that. I think the whole podcast is obviously about my kind of journey from this wee place in Fife to here right now. So I think you've kind of made me reflect a lot in the last couple of weeks while we've been pepping for this.

1:24if you told that wee lass that amazing intro that you had just read out I don't think she would quite believe it so thank you.

1:30Claire:Thank you so much thank you for being on the podcast your story is fantastic but let's start at the very beginning of when like when you were a child when did you think that you could do something like this as a career or when did you realise it was something you wanted to go into? I don't think I ever really thought that I could do this as a career I don't think I ever really thought that far ahead yeah I am from a tiny wee place called Leaving in Fife and there's not a lot of graphic designers there's no need for graphic designers and I suppose I always was really creative I was always one of those kids who for Christmas always got you know pencils or art or clay and I was always kind of drawing and sketching and me and my sister back in the 80s it was almost like we were like content creators except just for us to you know we had cassette tapes that we would record adverts for and we would do little stories for so we were always dancing singing music art and I suppose I just got a real thing in my head about I wanted to do something that I loved and people would always say oh what's she going to be when she's older and I would always say I want to do something I loved yeah I didn't really know what that was and then when I got a little bit older I used to say I really wanted to go to art college and I don't really know where that came from I think because I was quite good at art and then as you get a little bit older do you have a teacher that was told you about art college or was it I think my dad's side of the family was quite creative, but obviously didn't do it as jobs.

2:53You know, my granddad was quite crafty and he was a carpenter. My gran who I'd never met was a painter. But like just in their spare time, it wasn't like a job. Yeah. And I think because, because I'm a middle child and I'm a classic middle child as well. So I've got like a little brother and a big sister. And I was very much kind of, I just feel like I had this upbringing that everything had to be sort of fair and everything was I mean it was a beautiful childhood it was amazing but I had this kind of ingrained in me that I had to do something that I loved and everything had to be fair and I feel like from a very early age I kind of knew my own mind like I decided to be vegetarian when I was four four really from nowhere I learned where meat came from and I just decided at four that I was never going to eat meat again that's amazing yeah so I think I was quite a strong-willed child yeah and I always liked my art teachers I think it was always like a thing creativity was around us but it was definitely never encouraged as a career like I didn't really even know what I was going to do after art college I didn't know that there was such thing as a designer I didn't even know when I was at art college I didn't even know that there was a thing such as a designer it was it was actually just I just wanted to be creative and I think with the whole middle child thing my sister kind of followed in the sort of traditional female footsteps of being a teacher and my mum worked for the council my gran worked for the council and my brother left school at the same time as me he's two years younger but we both left at the same time and he followed the footsteps of my dad and my granddad and his dad that was more like trade so they were so concerned I think with what Michael was doing I was just like I'm just gonna go to art college and and it was almost like the classic middle child that just almost kind of slips through the net and just gets to do what she wants but it wasn't an easy journey I know that we spoke about it the night but I and I do speak about this a lot I've kind of I've done a few talks in the past and it wasn't an A to B it wasn't I wanted to go to art college and applied and I got in I was so disillusioned by everything I feel like there was again this was Fife probably about the year 2000 and you know you just I did higher art which I think is A level art here yeah and I kind of got a bit of a portfolio together and just assumed that you know you just do that and then you apply I wanted to go to Dundee you wanted to go to Duncan and Jordans because it was the best and I applied and I didn't get in and I thought oh well this is what I'm going to do though this is what I have to do so I love that you still thought that I think most people would give up at that point oh I never give up yeah it was one of those things that I just knew that I had to do it but I wasn't quite sure and there was no real guidance somehow I ended up at Graham Street which was in Dundee me and my sister wanted to move through to Dundee so I left home at 18 and moved through to Dundee and I did like a it's like a almost like a foundation course here it's slightly different up in scotland but yeah and i absolutely loved it and it was basically to try and get a portfolio together to then get into dundee yeah and i loved it and i was i i felt like this was the place and the people and i was so confident that i was going to get in you've properly stripped to yourself yeah and it was so great to just try everything i wasn't quite sure what i was going to do the end yeah and then i applied i think there was 30 people in the course and two of us didn't get in i was one of them oh my god and so So even then, I just thought, I don't know if it was just, I didn't really know what else to do, but I just thought I have to do this.

6:08And I feel like I am good at this. Maybe I just need to specialize. And again, this is when I look back and obviously, like I say, you've been kind of reflecting, but this is about 2002 at the time. And so I went to the course leader and said, oh, I didn't get in. What am I going to do? And they were like, oh, well, you know, you dress quite jazzy. I was even worse back then than I am now. And they were like, oh, well, you know, girls tend to do fashion and boys do graphics so why don't you do fashion that's crazy in itself there isn't it I know so there was part of me that I didn't really know what graphics was and so I thought okay and I was a bit bruised because obviously I hadn't got in so then I just thought okay I'll just do fashion so I went to the end of year show to kind of see what fashion the end of year fashion show was like and I stumbled upon cd covers book covers posters typography and again like I mean I was probably about 18 19 at the time and I remember just saying what is that like I didn't even know like nobody'd ever really told me and someone said oh that's graphic design and then the girls do fashion boys do graphic was in my head so I thought but I want to do that and I I am going to do that no matter what anybody says so then I went to the head again and said I want to do graphics I don't want to do fashion and she was just like to her credit she was like okay cool and then I transferred over I did graphics um and I absolutely loved it like learning Photoshop I think Quark at the time obviously that's dead now but learning all the programs um I was I just kind of threw myself into it and I ended up doing so still in Dundee I ended up doing two years graphic design and then when I say like my my career was so wiggly it was almost like I didn't I almost just kind of went the not A to B but I kind of went like this I love that about it you're obviously very determined and you knew what you wanted to do and you've done it you've got there yeah and I think when I spoiler alert I did get in eventually but I kind of I jumped a year and then I went straight into the graphics course and there was only three places three spots for people and I think the great thing about uni in Scotland is it's free and I didn't even realize that university wasn't free for everybody until I moved down to London so if it wasn't for the fact that university was free like there is no way that my parents would have been like yeah just go there just do that like I think it was because they kind of saw the passion in me and they saw the drive in me and they knew that this kid knows what she wants to do we just we don't know what the end goal is but she just needs to get into art college into uni yeah and so when I did I was the biggest swole ever like there was three of us who'd got like jumped a year and we'd kind of done graphic courses and it was two guys Lee, Andy and me and we always kind of formed a little bit of a trio and like I was there late night at the point as well there was like mac labs so you had to share macs and we would be there all the time kind of sharing macs and and just like working really hard i ended up being class rep because i didn't think it was fair that we had to pay for photocopies there were five pence each and then again back that back in that day you didn't really google anything you went to the library you got books you scanned it in or you photocopied it which was quicker yeah so i remember just being a really active kind of member of university and like making sure that we had that the photocopying rights and uh and just really threw myself in yeah and to uni because I'd spent so long being told I wasn't good enough that when I was actually in it I was almost a bit like I'm going to prove to everybody yeah I deserve my place here and I feel like then I just started to almost take it to the extreme where I had to prove all the time you know doing extra placements like really kind

9:46Claire:of put myself out there tell me about some of the placements Jan because I think that's again it's something that really stands people apart that you've done all this stuff and you went down to London and did yeah I think again so I was in Dundee and so I did a placement in Dundee and then I won so you were supposed to like interview and kind of win them so and then I won two in Edinburgh and these were like unpaid so it was two weeks unpaid I ended up staying at my parents house and then it was like 10 pound return on the train so I did a couple in Dundee in Edinburgh and actually the massive turning point in my life and the biggest thing that ever happened to me was a Scotsman and a Welshman and it's not the start of a crappy joke they worked in this amazing well the brand union as it turns out they worked in this company down in London and they looked about the they looked about the people that they'd hired John Mathers was the CEO and Glenn Tuttle was the head of creative and they looked about at the studio and just saw and again this must have been what 2005, 2006 and being proud Scottish and proud Welsh they were like this is full of English men and where is all the diversity and they were again really passionate about where they came from so John Mathers came up to our university and interviewed lots of people and I ended up winning a placement to come down to London but the best thing about it was it wasn't just the placement that you won because obviously I couldn't I couldn't afford to even get the train down to London or to stay there for two weeks yeah so what they did is they came to us with a bit of a bursary scheme so it was to diversify the industry to try and get more people from the outskirts of not just London down into London to give people that access into the industry so I think it was like a 500 pounds I won and then it was 150 pounds a week I got paid and I got the most awful student accommodation in King's Cross and again back in 2005 King's Cross was not a nice place to be yeah I remember that and I just remember because I didn't like I was so happy to just have won this placement and the fact that and I know that's why my Instagram is some lassie Chloe like this just some lassie from the middle of nowhere yeah it's in London and also like she's getting paid to be here it just blew my like completely blew my mind yeah opened your horizon yeah and I only had two weeks it was a two-week placement and because I didn't really have a lot of money I back then and as now if you work late you got pizza or you got like free food so I looked like the keenest placement ever like I was it was free breakfast as well so I'd be in early getting breakfast I would be working late they were on pitches I would be like can I help you with anything yeah it was like a beer fridge so I used to go to the beer fridge and hand out beer to people and and can I help you with anything and people would be like I really thank you so much so I kind of like made a really good big impression really quickly and I think another thing that the the guys did with this bursary scheme was they set a competition so there was a few people like the Welsh people Scottish people a few people came down and they set a competition for Design Week which was a magazine at the time still is now it came back yeah absolutely and it was celebrating its 20 years and they set a brief to everybody and I remember I obviously I entered a few ideas and I remember them phoning me up and saying are these your ideas was a team effort and I was like no no they're my ideas so you needed to get basically a some sort of branding for their 20th anniversary yeah it was like what would you do to celebrate yeah and so I'd done a couple of ideas and they basically phoned me and said are these are these a group and I said no they're just me and they said oh you've come first and third and Linda Ralph Knight who was the editor of Design Week at the time she had picked two of my ideas so again the the sort of the little failure who'd failed to get into uni twice is now winning first and third and these like sort of you know the competition so I sort of slowly realized that doing things like that entering competitions making yourself I say nobody was going to find me in Fife but obviously John Mathers did but I feel like it was almost like once I had that tiny little way in yeah I had to make sure that everything I did was I had to win everything I had to make sure that I didn't just get forgotten because I was going to go back to Fife off the city to finish university.

13:57So then even things like we entered ISTD, which is an international society type of typographic designers. And I remember the night before I handed it in and I didn't want to hand it in. And I looked around and everybody had done like beautiful typography. It was like William Shakespeare and it was these beautiful quotes and everybody had done these amazing like high cast typographic.

14:19Claire:Did you see everyone else's entry as the night before? yeah because obviously we're all at uni we're all we were all packing it up and we were all oh my god i'd seen everybody's throughout but not the finish but there was just that moment and i looked at mine and my brief that i'd chosen to do was it was a magic project for kids so mine's was like big bold type i had like a poster that you could sew in half and which is again it was i thought was at the time i thought was really fun and i remember thinking the night before just having a massive panic going I cannot put this in this is a joke this is international society of typographic designers and I am giving them this and my tutor obviously forced me to put it in and I'll never forget as well as these people that have kind of touched your career or kind of made it I don't know little kind of shine light on on what what happened but I remember my uni head department came in and said Chloe I need to have a word and I was like oh fuck what's coming up What have you done?

15:13What have I done? And he took me in the room. He said, oh, I've got Jack on the phone. They want to speak to you. And I said, what about? Who's Jack? What about? And they said, oh, it's about your ISTD. And I was just thinking, oh, no, I'm really embarrassed. I don't really want to talk to anyone. And then I picked up the phone. And there was the broadest Glaswegian lass on the end of the phone going, is that Chloe? And I was going, I said, aye. She went, did you do the magic? I was like, yeah, that was me. and she went

15:42Claire:I fucking loved it it was the best thing ever and it turned out to be Jack Rennick who you do the best Jack Rennick well I mean just swear a lot and then you're fine and she was like swearing down the phone at me going I looked at all these other entries and they were so boring and it was a the brief was make magic fun make it for kids she was like I looked at so many boring entries I saw yours and I was like I absolutely loved it and so she was just so good and it was just that moment of going oh like I am actually quite good and then she said to me do you want to come down she worked at the partners at the time do you want to come down and get placement at the partners and so when I was down doing the bursary anyway I was down I had my train ticket I just kind of extended it and ended up yeah a week at the partners and um it was one of those things that after so long trying to kind of make it in to kind of almost get this I don't know they kind of proved to myself like I didn't even want to enter that project in and I think the sort of the validation that that gave me and it was so nice to phone me up as well who phones who phones someone up just how amazing it is and to offer them something it was like so it's those two little things that kind of got me from from Dundee at the time down into to just give me a chance and it wasn't until I ended up I think it was February so I graduated in like the May and I remember in February I got a big packet to my mum's dad's house and my mum was like you got a letter and I was like so I went home and opened it up and it was a contract for the brand union and it was an offer for a junior designer and again they didn't email they just sent me like a proper thing to sign um so this was again back in the day and I remember I'll never forget this as well because like my mum she was kind of supportive of the whole oh yeah she's just gonna go to art college like middle child she's the re1 go to art college we don't quite know what she's gonna do at the end of the career opportunity there's an industry behind it and also my granddad at the time which was her dad again he proper fifer was just like what she's not going to art college what's she gonna do and then I didn't really have an answer because I was like I don't know what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna go to art college and I'll figure it out and it was so fun it was like I'll never forget it I came down and I said to my mum oh I've just been just been offered a job in London and in my in my head I was thinking I don't know what to do do I take it do I not that's massive that's really scary like leaves leave Scotland London go to London like nah and I never forget she turned around and said to me oh my god I'm gonna miss you and I was like well I'm not gonna take it and she went of course you're gonna take it Chloe that's so good and it was that it was the matter of fact that she said it I just went oh okay okay then of course I'm gonna take it and so before I'd even graduated from uni I I had a job at one of I mean that was the brand union which is obviously I didn't even know really who WPV were at the time but I'd ended up landing this amazing job down in London as a junior and so good and also what was great about it is when I did start I knew the CEO and I knew the head of creative and they were they almost kind of looked after me a little bit yeah and it was one of the things that was the perfect first job to have and it was like I worked my absolute arse off and I just felt like I had something to prove to everybody like I'd won this job now I need to keep this job so I ended up staying for about three years and then then what happened after that when was after Brand Union I think I'd got to a point where and again I felt like I owed them so much because obviously they'd given me this money they'd given me this opportunity they'd given me this chance into the industry yeah and I actually I didn't really go looking for another job I actually got a the way that weird way that it happened was someone else who was my friend at Brand Union had interviewed for a job at Design Bridge and my boyfriend at the time had also interviewed for design bridge and then i got an email from the creative director of design bridge saying i've been interviewing some people and your name keeps coming up everybody keeps saying i need to interview you i need to i need to inform you so would you want to come and i remember just thinking well no because to my friend or my boyfriend and my i'm a friend have applied for this job i just don't think it's very fair and i awkward yeah i actually got some i actually got some really good advice and my one of my other friends said Chloe always go for the interview yeah even if you don't want the job you might not even get the job just go in for the interview like you don't really know a lot of people in London like you're not from here go to the interview meet new people and just see what happens such good advice and as it happened I ended up getting the job which was a slightly awkward conversation when um when I had to come home but I yeah when I kind of left that first job I felt a massive like you say like I owed them quite a lot for kind of bringing me down here yeah but then I also felt like I owed them to just keep going and and just to not stop what was great about Designbridge at the time was that's exactly what I got to do and I joined as a middleweight and worked my way up got put on a great team tell me about that progression of how because you were there for 12 years yeah just just about 12 years that's 12 years how did it progress how did you sort of work your eye out i think the amazing thing about being in a bigger agency like design bridge to be fair compared to brand new unit time was actually quite small but the great thing about it there was lots of creative directors so i was a middleweight and i just worked with everybody and again i had an amazing creative director who is claire who we both know and she was so good at making sure that i was put on the right jobs at the right time she went away for her second maternity leave i didn't know her on her first she put me on Diageo and was like I'm not going to be here so I'm going to put you on Diageo and at the time there wasn't a lot of girls on Diageo account it was quite male heavy so she put me on with Graham Shearsby and she was like he'll look after you and then just being able to work on amazing accounts like Diageo then you kind of then you get promoted to like a senior and then I got to work on more accounts and then I worked on Unilever and then I I had a really great it's almost like cutting your teeth which I always think is a weird thing to say but like I really cut my teeth on FMCG and then drinks and then they made like a brand world team and then I was on the brand world team oh wow what an experience so then I was like like subjected to like just learning learning then I was such a sponge yeah that I just wanted to I just wanted to work with everybody I wanted to learn everything and I didn't really want to pigeonhole myself like I wasn't like obviously it's packaging but then the brand world working with Diageo was amazing um I got to in my time at DesignBridge I got to work at Amsterdam I went to Singapore um I got to do a lot of work with New York when I worked with Spernoff I got to do loads of limited editions and I kind of like carved a bit of a I don't know if it was a reputation but like I kind of carved a bit of a like the limited edition or like I would do the like I would always push it I would be the one that wasn't just the brand refresh I'd get the one that was really pushing it or be the the innovation one or the limited edition one or obviously the fun one the fun ones or again the Fortnum's projects which I ended up working on for 10 years when I found Fortnum's it was almost like I worked on it for so long and and it was the first project that we'd actually been able to I don't know I got like a little bit of PR outside outside just the bubble of design to grow your own reputation a little bit yeah and I think the reason that happened so this is probably about 2015 and I remember we went to I think it was D &D or something and it was that was back when they had like proper meals and you sat down it was all very official and fancy and I remember we were mostly a female team and we were I mean we're like you know late 20s early 30s yeah like everybody else notably was older and male and in sort of you know black clothes and then all these award dues that we went to and it was you know it was fab it was pent awards it was dndd it was everything we were just like as excitable like sort of young fresh group of like really good friends who had worked on all this work we're so proud of it so when we went to get the awards you know red here had high heels on so i was like six foot one and we just stood out and then we were on the dance floor the whole night and in a sort of a room where everybody was taking it a little bit serious we were just so happy to be there yeah and then i think once you'd done a few awards like that people and again I think by that point I had well I had red hair so it was almost this you know credit to Design Bridge at the time for not just sending the most senior people yeah they sent the people that did the work that's really good to create your own kind of brand yeah so we were just there we were having so much fun and we'd won these awards and then the next year when again we were lucky then I worked on Spinoff and I watched a few other projects that then meant that I was on the award scene for a few years it just meant that people then recognised me.

24:28Yeah. Because obviously in a room full of people who didn't necessarily look like you, I kind of stood out. Yeah. And also I was just so happy to be there. So I think being put in the right situations, given the right opportunities, being put on the right projects, always being championed, like thrown in the deep end, supported, but also like really lifted up and felt like my voice was like worthy. Yeah. And absolutely. I feel like that it was something that, again, the amazing people that had around me and they were like the best of the best men and women but there was a lot of sort of female talent there that just showed me that as you can can't you could progress and I think the saying of you've got to be good enough and old enough so I climbed quite quickly and I'll I'll never forget there was like a space of five minutes in my life where I the sort of the the big dream one day was to own my own house in London and to be a creative director yes and it all happened within the space of about five minutes um I love that I was in a review for something and I I had this house I was maybe gonna buy and I remember I I got a phone call so I left the review quickly and they said oh you've got the house congratulations it's all exchanged and then I came back and I didn't say anything but I was a bit like and then I remember Claire coming down the stairs mid-review saying have you got two minutes and I was like yeah so then I walked upstairs still hadn't told anyone and walked into this room and her and Graham were sat and had this massive smile they were like what are you smiling about you don't even know what we're going to tell you why are you so happy and I said I'm just like on my own without any help from anyone I've just bought my first flat in London and that is a massive goal I love the feel of that that little girl in Fife and then like nay way she would have believed any of this yeah then they just turned around and went oh so here's another bit of good news we're going to promote you to create director and I just burst out crying I think I just I was a bit like god five five minutes ago my life was completely different and now I've just like smashed to my goals and I don't really know what to do from here I was almost a bit like and now what like I feel like I've done that and I've done this and by that point I was doing a lot of mentoring I was doing a lot of awards as well as judging so like how many of those you do yeah and I feel like because of the way that I came into the industry like it's almost like I want to pay it forward but like times a thousand and I don't think I'll ever be done paying forward the sort of the kindness and the bursary and the mentality back then yeah for someone to open the door and help me come in I've never forgotten I still like I will talk about it and you know and till the day I retire and pass then but I think by that point I was creative director I'd had my own house I was doing lots of mentoring stuff I was doing a bit of judging and being on the sort of the judging scene and it almost kind of felt like

27:16Claire:I like and now what when's that when's the right time to leave a job yeah and I'd got to a point I think with Design Bridge where I'd not necessarily done everything because I feel like I could have stayed there for another 20 years yeah I think by that point I was I was approaching 40 and I just thought to myself I don't know if this happens to everybody but I just got to that point where I was re-looking at everything and going do I want to stay here for the next 20 years because I probably could yeah and it's great and it would be great and it would like I would be challenged but I would know it I would know and by that point I kind of made a name for myself and I suppose the thought of that just scared the shit out of me and I think I thought to myself I've never been someone to just to settle like yeah that sort of lesslessness to like to not give up on going to uni yeah absolutely down to London when I was really scared to leave my first job when I didn't really yeah like when I still felt this huge sort of um I don't know gratitude but something in your head that's not quite yeah I just thought to myself I need to be and like I love this about myself but it's also really annoying because outside your comfort zone yes where growth happens but it's also really uncomfortable so I feel like I wanted to be scared I wanted to be uncomfortable and I wanted to I suppose I wanted to find who I was without the amazing world of Designbridge that we had kind of created yeah and at the time I wasn't even looking I think the same way as the London job kind of just happened and then Designbridge kind of just happened and kind of came to me I'd got approached by Big Fish and for me to leave Design Bridge it would have had to be like an offer that I couldn't refuse yeah and this was basically a succession plan and do you want to come take over in time we'll sort of you you get the keys and you know I think the line was something like we've asked all the recruiters who would be perfect for this role and they all said you so I'm only asking you and I think there's It was a part of me that just thought, because it kind of came to me, I thought, well, this is just what I do.

29:16I just, things just seemed to like, if I just follow the path that's there, then it'll be fine. And so I left Design Bridge and went to Big Fish. And I think the biggest thing about Big Fish is I was outside my comfort zone. It was very uncomfortable, but I learned so much. So how many people, Big Fish, so obviously Design Bridge, huge. and then Big Fish was tiny and I feel like when I was a creative director at Design Bridge I was basically had like a Big Fish in a team like I had I had my own team we had our own targets I had four design directors a couple of seniors a couple of midwaves yeah it was almost like that and I was like well I could do that I could run a team and then this is basically just like that yeah and I think the like I grew in so much like I grew so many ways but I also shrunk in so many ways I think the way that they did things I learned new ways to present we would like go down to Sainsbury's and present to the client in Sainsbury's and just make the packs up and put it on the shelf would you yeah it was like it was like going back to art school again they didn't have a film department so we'd have to make the films ourselves and I was again as ACD I was actually in the room I was in the executive room which I'd never been in before yeah so I got to learn loads about the business side of it as well so like there was so many amazing things about it and I got to employ lots of new people and I like I did lots of changes and stuff and I remember we had a really great day and we presented some stuff and it went amazingly well and the founder of Big Fish turned around to me and said um oh you've made me fall back in love with it this is great and I remember thinking hold on a minute no no no no no no you're not supposed to fall back in love with it you're like that's not the plan remember the plan was this and then I think I had about eight months of slowly, slowly being sort of squashed in my role and sort of the takeover and then sort of like the toy wanted to be played with again.

31:12And I think I lost myself in it a little bit. And at the time, I'm so lucky that I had employed people like who knew me and so my friends or people that had worked with me before. And they had the most amazing advice to just go, you need to leave here because you were not the person that joined. you're losing you're losing yourself you're losing your confidence who is this and and I had this thing in me where I think because I'd already left two places before then I wasn't scared to leave but I just wasn't really sure what was next yeah um and it's good that you've got that circle around you there with friends and people you work with I'm so lucky I feel like I've got amazing and some of them are here today I've got amazing supporters around me and again I support back yeah and I feel like that just honesty and refreshing take on someone's life to just go no no no like I remember Alice who I now work with at Pepperfisher and I remember she came to Big Fish and worked with me and I remember her just going she was like this isn't right you need to remember who the fuck you are you're Chloe Templeman and I remember just being like this is so not like Alice to say anything like that and then I was like I am like and why am I feeling that I don't like why am I feeling so shrunken in myself so I actually left without having a job which again was a I was a brave thing to do but I feel like if I had stayed I would have just I would have just became a completely different person and that's what I wanted so I had this little glimmer of my friends kind of taking me out and getting me out of that kind of world and actually it ended up absolutely fine and it's always funny I always used to say um you know all the deals used to happened on the golf course back in the day in the 80s and actually I got my job at Perfisher on the dance floor as as always an award ceremony I am on the dance floor we are dancing yeah we are having the best time and um it was yeah it was pen awards it was the first time I'd been uh co-president so we were just absolutely buzzing having a great night and nobody really knew that I'd sort of had this I'm also rubbish at lying so I think they anybody asked me how it was I just go yeah yeah it's great get the vibe and I can't lie so they almost would just be like that's not you usually I am in my necklace says hell's yeah and fuck no it's like everything is hell's yeah and it's full of energy yeah or it's fuck no and I I got speaking to DJ on the dance floor and he'd said oh we need someone like you at Perfisher would you be up for chatting and I obviously was still dancing away and went, yeah, yeah, let's chat.

33:49Let's chat when, you know, in a few weeks. And that's, again, how I ended up being at Pearl Fisher. So again, I also do think that, you know, everything happens for a reason. Definitely.

34:00Claire:So glad you found Pearl Fisher seems like really the perfect opportunity. You've got the structure and the support, but exciting opportunities. And I think it was, I did take three months off. Like I needed three months to just kind of fall back in love with design again and just remember who I was. And I took three months off, did a bit of traveling, did a bit of DIY and just did nothing as well. I think doing nothing was really good for me because I've always been like, you know, 100 miles an hour. I got a job straight out of uni. So I didn't really take a break and I'd been nonstop for years.

34:31So I took three months off. And I think what was great about joining Perfisher, and I think it's something that, again, I've only been there for a year and eight months. I think when you come in at a more senior level, it's really hard. it's not an easy it's not an easy role to to kind of step in yeah you've not worked your way up you don't know everyone and that yeah yeah and I think the um I think the key is I'd kind of done it at Big Fish before so I knew what to do and what not to do I'd also been at an agency for 11 years so I knew what it was like when good people joined and how could they kind of do it in a way that took everybody on the journey don't just talk about when I was whatever I got to a point where I kind of learned how to come into an agency but you still need to kind of stop for a little bit observe do a lot of observation yeah and I think it was less about and I do think this is the danger of coming in at quite a senior level everybody thinks you're there to kind of reset like almost like a max you got to turn it off and turn it back on again and it doesn't need to be that it could just be you know you build on what's there you stand on the shoulder of giants yeah it's just just re-energize or rebuild what was already there rather than it becoming a thing where we

35:44Claire:need to take everything away and start again yeah um so i do think as we you know i am still there and i do think my job is to to kind of regalvanize the team i think when i started the team some of the team are here was maybe a little bit more separated i think they were coming out of this post kind of lockdown no one really kind of got to a point where they brought everybody together and after me saying I'm going to not do anything for the first month I think I was there for about two weeks and I said we need to put a seating plan in I need the designers all together I don't even know who's who we need to just re-energize it we need to build a design team I don't know where everybody is we need to get all together and obviously we've moved from West to East London which is great which is a big move as well for Pell Fisher who's always been West so we've got a new studio and everything you know it's challenging I think the industry as a whole is a challenging time but I think being able to use all that experience and I always kind of I think when I was I'd always saw my career as as more like quite a visual person so I always kind of saw it as almost collecting infinity stones or collecting things as you go you know I left DesignBridge to go to somewhere that did startups I wanted to work with founders I wanted to build brands not just do I'd done the famous brands I wanted to do the smaller brands and then with Perfisher it was the perfect mix of both we we do sort of challenger but we also do big iconic brands yeah that's nice and it kind of gave me a real it was almost like with all the knowledge that I had there's a sort of great opportunity to kind of build on that as well that's amazing it's a it's such a good story I love it so can I ask you a final question of what would be your top tips for juniors coming into the industry today other than exceptional design skills which is supposed to be a given how do they stand out I would say I mean it's really hard because I feel like I just tried to make myself seen.

37:32I entered competitions. I tried to do things that would put me in a place to be seen. But I would say rather than giving advice to the juniors, I'd really love to give advice to the people who are already in the industry. We hold the keys to the kingdom. I think being able to just give up your time, all the mentoring things that I do, I want to give back. I want to make sure that if I can give anybody any advice, like speak to these people, give your time up give an hour like an hour a month give an hour every quarter to the next generation portfolio reviews even just a conversation to just kind of open those doors I think like I say it shouldn't be this closed door policy where the juniors it's the juniors job to fight their way in it's like it's for me I've just never thought about it like that and I think maybe that's because of the way that I was almost plucked out of nowhere and kind of brought down and again I think a lot of these and again the Penn Awards pipeline which me and John launched a couple of weeks ago it is just all about that so I think the biggest thing that I could give advice wise would be to anybody listening who's already in the industry make sure that we kind of change it's up to us to change if there's something you don't like about it I didn't like the fact that there wasn't a lot of Scottish people there wasn't enough women there's not enough women in leadership so I work with people amazing sort of mentors and sort of charities that can help change that so whatever it is that anybody's unhappy about our industry I would say find there's there's so many juniors so many middleweight talents even senior talents yeah out there I think it's up to us who are already in the industry to make sure that we find a way to to kind of let people in rather than putting the onus on the young ones because it's really hard Chloe thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you thank you so much

39:20Claire:Cheers.