Emma Barratt, Global ECD at Wolff Olins - Live at the Northern Design Festival

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. This week, we're recording live with an audience from the 2026 Northern Design Festival. I'm here with Emma Barrett, Global Executive Creative Director of Wolf Owens. She speaks regularly on global stages and heads up juries at places like D &AD, The One Show and the LIAs.

0:46Claire:She leads bold future-facing work for some of the world's most influential companies, including Decathlon, Uber, Benefit, Hyundai, Supercell, Google, Blank Street. Emma, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your journey, basically. But when did you realise design was a thing you could base a career around? At what age? Well, first of all, I just want to say hi. I'm from the North, so it's amazing to be back here. It really, really does mean a lot to be back up North. So the question, where did I...

1:24Claire:Yeah, when did you realise... So you're from the North to begin with. Where did you grow up? What's the... I grew up in Salford, so in Broughton. And then I moved to a little, an absolute dump. Sorry if there's anyone from there. And then a lot of my family still lived there. I say Manchester, but it's really Salford. Were you particularly into sort of art at school and did it go from there? I was really good. Like most, I think, designers, most creative. So I was really good at drawing. I feel like, well, like cocky. So I was really good. No, but I was really good at drawing at school. and I used to spend like lots of time in fantasy world so I loved cartoon I loved making up stuff I didn't know what a designer was I'd never heard of the word graphic design I actually thought a graphic designer was uh like a comic book artist I used to think that when I was yeah because you got like graphic novels and graphic comics and things like that I thought graphic novels were like rude stuff yeah but uh but I I'd never met a design I didn't know I just didn't know it was a thing i didn't realize you could make money out of like creativity like most of the people i knew like i think you know definitely in the like the 80s and 90s were like up north like manual jobs like factory or half mine lot didn't even work so yeah i didn't realize you can make a make a career out of it and it was my the best mate actually she went to um she decided she was going to go to uni and i was like oh i should probably do something and i i'd managed to get my hands on like a prospectus and I saw this thing like graphic design I said oh that sounds like it's creative I'll do that and I literally didn't know what I was getting in for so have you done A-level art yeah so I done I done A-level art I done GCSE then I did A-level art I actually went to take that on my exam and nearly failed did you got into a lot of trouble um but then I I had no intention of going to uni it just wasn't a thing like I've said previously like I don't have anyone in my family who went to college never mind uni so it was just not something that was encouraged in my household or amongst like friends and family and so I just got a job in like an office doing like stationary supplies and I just remember thinking this is awful and sorry to anyone who kind of does that but I felt creative it just I found it so tedious and I thought you know I'm going to join the army I'm going to like do something i just the creativity design was just not on the way down it was my best friend then it was like well i'm gonna do this and i remember thinking i'm gonna do it but how am i gonna do it so then i carried on working for another year to save the money because my mom was like there's no bloody way i'm paying for that um so yes i went to uni probably later than most people my age because i needed to save up the money in order in order to go yeah okay god that's quite a big step for the so you're the first one in your family to go to university and oh yeah and I'm like yeah and I got I love my family but like yeah it's just I don't know if emphasis was put on education or kind of it was just getting out there and working yeah so yeah it's a big deal my mom's always telling me how proud she is oh that's really lovely so where did you go what was the next step what did you how did you get in what to uni yeah um Well, I had my, what do you call it, like sixth form college, like headmaster kind of put in a special note for me and I actually got unconditional offers.

4:46No, conditional. What's the one more year? Conditional offers at Manchester and London, but I couldn't afford to live in London. There's no way I was going to afford to be able to do that. Didn't turn up for me an interview at Manchester because I did what most kids do and went out with my mates. So then I had another offer in Southampton, so I ended up going to Southampton. I was to be there. And then I did an animation course afterwards. at um St Martin's later on in my career when I got a job in London I then did um that alongside

5:13Claire:so tell me about Southampton how was it was it fun place to go to university no absolutely not I didn't say that no but I got in and I was gonna take it I weren't gonna grumble and I met my husband there so something good came out of it yeah definitely so you then moved to London so yeah so my husband uh shout out to communion studio he's a designer and he was a year ahead of me so he he moved to London got a job and I just piggybacked off the back of him and so most of the time as I graduated I moved to London um so he'd set up communion at that point no so he's been around the block he he was like started in music design was at like Burberry moving brands where I was for a while we never worked together but we crossed and then set up communion um when he just got a bit kind of i don't tired of not being in control of the the clients or the work he wants to do or spotted kind of a market that he wanted to come tackle which is kind of luxury branding um that has impacted his goods for the world so yeah yeah so free loaded off him the first year sounds a good way to get to london so what was your first job in london how did you get in what's the so i so this was before like emails and like linkedin And I walked around London for days, handing out my CV, just turning up in like studios.

6:38I found out where all like the bigger studios were. And I just turned up. I just knocked on and I just gave my CV. And most of the time I was told to go away. Then there was occasionally they would just be mused by this person turning up. And a couple of times they were nice and they responded. And I just did that for a while. And then alongside kind of doing that, I was still doing design stuff. on the side and I had done a book with some of her graduates and the uni had funded it and I one of the pieces I'd done had scribbled over this woman's face I'd done like a an article of this woman's face it just happened to be the wife of Angus Highland at Pentagram and did you know that no I had no idea and he saw it called me in so I did want to have an interview and again he gave me an internship um off the back of that I think he was bemused and a little bit kind of shocked and intrigued by this piece because I remember at the time he was like why

7:32Claire:did you do that that's my wife good to go neither way yeah and I think I think um I think it just caught his eye that I'd done something a bit different and it was just pure luck wow interesting that's so tell me about pentagram how long what how long was the internship for how long were you there for I think it was I don't know maybe six months I well I kind of left because it wasn't my thing can you tell us why i think i think i know because i i never wanted to be a designer because i didn't really know what it was i always wanted i was always like intrigued by like making things move bringing things alive i didn't even know what kind of animation was or character design was at the time but i just knew that i liked making stuff come alive and when i was at pentagram and it's amazing and i learned kind of loads but i just thought this isn't for me i still I like this itch, which is why I went off and studied motion kind of afterwards.

8:24And in that itch, I worked at a games company. I worked at Satchi and Satchi. I did advertising. I did digital design. I did toy design. I was just trying to scratch this kind of itch. And then at the time as well, branding was like seen as a slightly dirty corporate word. I remember being at Moving Brands and getting bollocked because I'd said, oh, I don't want to do branding. It's not for me. and it's like you're at moving brands that's literally what we do and i think what were you

8:52Claire:looking for like initially you said you didn't want to be a designer were you just you wanted to work in the industry but just didn't know what i think i was just curious yeah i didn't at that stage of my career i didn't want to be so defined in what i was doing and like you know as part of angus's team it was great a lot of it was editorial kind of books and a lot of it was identities and i wanted to do i wanted to do character design I wanted to do illustration I wanted to make things move I wanted to do everything that I hadn't had the chance to scratch or explore yet yeah and it's great because I think all of those different things that I did kind of made me go full circle at Wolf Ollins because I remember I'd applied to Wolf Ollins like years before as well and I didn't even get a response really and I think it was then kind of going off and exploring and having all of these tools in my armor to be able to lean back on kind of worked in my favor and I would encourage that of anyone actually like get out there and try all these different things because you don't realize that they all can add up to something special that they just make you stand out and make you a bit unique and it becomes a slightly different reference point to others because at the time because I had an animation background and I'd done websites and I'd done digital at the time when I and I've been to moving brands and I'd learned that oh god brands can move you can see brands as living kind of entities I then kind of stood out to other potential brand designers or I hate even the term brand that's gross but other designers because I had all of these different experiences that I could play on so do that if you get the opportunity and it might not feel like it connects to what you're doing take the opportunity because it will add up to something later on it's really interesting the motion side of it as well because i mean at the time when you went into it everyone wasn't talking about motion it wasn't like the thing that brands are about they're much more static yeah they didn't move then it was it's like i when i joined wolf part of me joining was building up the motion team but um you know wolf had done some of that but we didn't really have the capabilities in-house at the time but yeah brands then were just kind of like static badges potentially that you just see and stuff and even even kind of like brands evoking like feelings and desires in people it just wasn't a thing yeah kind of back then and I think that you know brands have kind of got smart and they've started to kind of you know use all of these codes in order to be able to spark those feelings and people emotion at the time was just one of those things do you think you spotted like the early signs of that then of the sort of connections with people I think I I learned pretty quickly that when things come alive they can make you feel a certain way and by that I mean when you apply sound and movement and texture and emotion and storytelling to something that is static it can make you feel something that I hadn't really seen before in brand or kind of in graphics before so yeah I think maybe subconsciously I was scratching an x that I that I could see might have been able to be used further down the line when you went to moving brands was that the first sort of part of your career where you thought okay this is exciting this is it yeah I remember we'd have these boards and it was you'd have to think about a brand as like a literally living thing what would it taste like what it smell like what would it look like what do you feel like what would his personality be and I had never thought about brands or companies or design in that way and it opened my eyes I mean it was tough but it opened my eyes completely to how yeah how brands could show up in the world how design could touch it could behave in all of these different ways yeah it blew my mind what sort of things were you working on I worked god I'm not even sure it's a brand anymore I worked oh she worked in the Royal Marsden that was that was incredible because not only was I getting to touch all of these different touch points like signage uniforms like printed material but I was also getting to design for something that really really mad you know something that you know cancer affects everyone and that felt like it felt like the work I was doing was having an impact I got to work on like Yahoo I got to work on on Mindshare which again they were just training me and like brand is so much more than just static stuff yeah definitely yeah that's got that's a while back so I'm struggling to remember what I worked on so where did you go to after that what was next did I go Sachi after that this isn't like a memory test I honestly like I I kind of I went to Rufus Leonard actually for a while and I think I went to Sachi and Sachi for a bit as well and I went to a couple of smaller in independence but because I'd learned now okay movement motion I wanted to try digital was kind of apps for taking off and being a thing so then I was like right I kind of want to I want to go and learn my apps um as well so when I worked to a couple of small digital companies learn how to build websites learn how to build apps learn how to apply brand into those spaces and then when I was at Rufus Leonard I was head of motion there so again I was getting to home my motion skills and but much more like tailored to brands like creating brand films that wasn't really a thing back then as well telling like kind of brand stories and then from there I uh went to Wolf Hollins been there for a decade you've been there for a decade so can we talk about that like what's what appealed to you about Wolf Hollins what's the I mean obviously they're amazing I mean it's like the daddies are design aren't they I always thought I'd end my career there because I always thought it was untouchable it was yeah it's one it's one of the big names I thought oh when I when I'm older when I grow up I'm gonna I'm gonna work like work at Wolf Hollins and um I I was just approach would I be interested in a design director job there and I remember at the time I was already a CD or had emotion I was like how dare you offer me a design director I'm like a CD and really what it was there was just a different league to what I'd worked in though you know working on huge global brands getting under the skin um you know working with CEO CMO at a level at a pace I just hadn't worked um before so you know kind of coming down kind of learning the ropes before I went back up was was wise because I probably would have failed.

15:08Claire:Did you take a pay cut to do that? Or is it just, it was the same amount? No, it was just more of a pride. Yeah, fair enough. Having been so senior, other companies kind of coming in. You know what? They were right. I had so much to learn that I didn't know. And they, you know, they kind of taught me all that. It's quite a nice career swing, isn't it? Sort of kind of go down to know that you're going to go way back up. I mean, it hurt my pride. I'm not going to lie. But yeah, I mean, And we still do that now. A lot of people, when they do apply to Waffle Lands, I think the levels that we have, the titles that you have, are maybe not the same elsewhere, but just because of the scale of the work that we do.

15:50We talk about transformation. Really, Waffle Lands, we work with CEOs, we work with the C-suite. I call that out because in order to transform a brand, in order to have massive impact, all these kind of nice brands that you see there that isn't possible unless we're working with the decision makers which is the c-suite and you've got to have certain skills in order to work at

16:14Claire:that level could you talk us through that because i i don't think when we first met i understood the depth that will fall in kind of goes into so i still see the brand as brand identity and the visual side of things but i know you're explaining i know you explained to me about uber and the work you did with that and how it hadn't turned to profit to a certain point and you've really helped with that side of it so it's not a case of just uber now looks like this obviously that's what branding is anyway but can you tell us maybe with decathlon or uber about the change you've made yeah so like i kind of i always refer to it like a sweetie like a lot of other companies will do the wrapper on a sweetie where we'll actually do the sweet that's inside as well as the wrapper And really what that means is like just getting to the heart of what the brand is, why they're different.

17:03You know, in Uber's case, it wasn't just that we did a really nice identity. At the time, Uber was failing as a company because it had a really toxic culture, had a really toxic CEO. They were positioning themselves just as another kind of taxi company. And really what they had to offer was something completely different to everyone else. They had this model that allowed a driver to be their own boss. and it allowed people in locations in the world where it would have been almost unheard of to be able to have your own business, to be in charge of your own kind of destiny. Suddenly given that opportunity alongside a platform that was changing how we thought about mobility.

17:45It's not just about you getting a car, it was about Uber can connect you to your opportunities. You're going to that job interview, you're going to that first date, you're going on that holiday. So it was really about kind of getting to the heart of what Uber stood for and therefore giving them like a proposition, giving them a purpose and a way that you could communicate that externally, which is the branding, but also then looking at how, what kind of culture that you need in order to nurture a brand like that. And it's the same with Decathlon as well. Decathlon, up until we did the work, they were just a cheap retailer.

18:21Well, actually in fact, they're the world's third biggest sports company they just didn't know how to tell their story they didn't know how at the time it was they talked a lot about accessibility and they just saw accessibility as cheap prices but accessibility means an invitation for anybody to play sport so it really is a case of what wolves do we help you tell your brand story in a way that only you can tell it and that manifests itself as a brand identity but it also manifests itself as a culture internally that is able to nurture what it is that kind of makes you special and do that at scale and do that in a way that defines a category like uber defined the mobility kind of platform there's lots of other brands that kind of copy that now yeah but at the time they were the first in in order to do that and and wolf hollins love to take the approach of walking in a room and being a bit provocative or being a bit controversial we like to shake things up we don't like to be kind of like everyone else and that's what we mean when we talk about kind of transformational work we want to do work that is iconic that isn't going to be redone in 10 years time that is going to stand the test of time and yeah and define how brands think about themselves as much as how people talk about those brands yeah interesting so for uber

19:40Claire:it's massively changed their business direction and made them a lot of money yeah exactly and i think uber um after the work that we had done with them took a bit of time but they started to turn a profit people don't realize that up until then uber didn't make kind of any money and they became when they still are uh the world's number one mobility platform yeah it's crazy isn't it so yeah i think it's a really interesting story so what else have you worked on on wolf olin's what sort of thing what else can you tell us about wolf olin's to give me a essence of what it's like to be there um what in terms of projects or just what it's like to yeah what's the culture to like what's it like to um it's we we have a the attitude of is like we're a sports team we're a high performing sports team in that um everybody kind of earns the place like nobody wants to be the sub on the bench so um we you know we care about each other everyone respects each other but i hate the attitude of family like i hear a lot of other businesses talk about a family and I don't believe that and I encourage Wolf Hollins not to believe that because you don't get to choose your family, you accept who your family is for who they are even when they screw up.

20:50And it's not that like I'm sounding harsh but, you know, the attitude is you have to earn your place on a sports team. You have to be a high-performing, top-of-the-league kind of sports team and that's the attitude that we have at Wolf Hollins. You earn your place here by doing great work, by pushing boundaries, by trying to offer something different. And that's not to say that we're an uncaring culture. We're just a high-performing culture. And I think that's what allows us to kind of work at the pace in which we do as well. And we deliberately try and find talent that kind of wants to work in a place like that.

21:26And we deliberately try and find clients who want to work with a team like that who's going to challenge them. If a client just wants a company that's going to give them what they want, they're probably not going to enjoy working with both volumes because we're going to say no

21:40Claire:to a lot does that mean you say no to lots of yeah there are certain there are certain sectors that we just won't work with um doesn't align with us like culturally um and if there's anything that we question whether we should be working with them we'll often ask the teams um how they feel about it um but yeah we're definitely not afraid to turn down work and say no and we have done in the past definitely it's a good yeah good idea someone once told me that the people you say yes to today become the company for that you will be tomorrow so you have to be really careful who you say yes to exactly exactly and also just kind of want to look back and look up I've got a little girl now and I want to look back and be like if I said yes to that company what's she going to think in like you know 10-15 years have I made the right decision working with somebody yeah with a company like that yeah definitely good advice can we talk about your dyslexia and how you found that throughout your career just because I think there's lots of other people in that situation it might really help them yeah yeah I'll be honest I talk about it now and I talk about it now quite confidently but I hid it for the first 15 years did you yeah because I mean I think it's different now, but like growing up, I, so I wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia until quite late on.

22:59I was labeled, I got learning difficulties. Really? Disrupted. I was put in remedial classes. That was actually a thing. And I, I had tests done on my hearing and I had to go to speech therapy because they, you know, in the bluntest way, they thought there was something wrong with me wow um I would hear stuff that wouldn't come out I would struggle to articulate myself I would would struggle to concentrate I would be a bit disruptive I would talk and so back then like in the in the 90s that was that just wasn't really understood and I remember one of my teachers at school was like oh I think you might have dyslexia and then I was tested and And yeah, it turns out that I had.

23:41How old were you then? Maybe 13 or 14. And then at university, I was told I had it. Then I just ignored it. And then at university, I started to fail the writing parts of the course. And then I was diagnosed again at uni. And then things were put in place. But I still hid it throughout my entire career. Up until a few years ago, I didn't tell anyone. And it was getting to the point that the more I spoke, the more I had to write, the more I had to do presentations. conversations it was becoming I don't say blocker because I think it is a superpower as well yeah but it was becoming something that I was just struggling with getting briefs getting material to read I couldn't read at the pace um I was making mistakes my emails were just awful and so I really lent on my husband he would do a lot of my he's like my ghostwriter he would do a lot of my writing um he would spend hours with me practicing or or trying to help me articulate and then just got to the point where I was just I'm just gonna be honest so it wasn't the dyslexia that's a blocker

24:41Claire:it's you not being able to tell people or feeling like yeah because I felt like at the time when I was growing up it was seen as you were stupid uh that just gets stuck in your head yeah yeah and I thought I was going to get judged because I was going to be seen as not good enough that that suddenly I was a fraud um if people realized that I had dyslexia and you know it's it's it's quite a our industry is competitive I'm a female from a working class background I didn't need another thing that works against me so I just hid it yeah and then like you know no i diversity became more of a topic that people talked about openly so I just thought oh fuck it I'm gonna tell people and if they don't like it they don't like it and actually I had loads of lovely responses once I did open up yeah definitely I'm sure everyone must have just thought that's amazing that you're being open and I think so yeah I had quite a lot of clients reach out as well and if anything i just felt relieved i didn't realize how exhausting it was just trying to have to hide it and i like i would spend hours staying up at night just trying to visualize the words so i could remember what i was going to say and and now i just don't care if i make a mistake so yeah you can just get the right help exactly be brilliant at the bits you're brilliant yeah and i'm quite like and i'll just call people out if like like one of my pet hates is when people like you're just oh it's dyslexic when they're not dyslexic when they just I don't know they use the label as a way to just call themselves stupid and I can't stand it they just do some loads of typos or something it's all dyslexic it's like it's so much more than that it is it's how we input and output information as much as how we kind of write and speak and and talk yeah yeah interesting can we talk about the design industry generally sort of like do you feel part of it at will fallins and like what challenges do you think there are in the industry?

26:33Claire:I've got to watch what I say here. We've been bearing in mind we've only got another 15 minutes. I think the industry, yes, so to your first part of the question, do I feel part of it? Absolutely, like, you know, I get to feel part because of all the judging and all the things that we're included in. But I do think our industry, in the time that I've been in it, I think it's quite clicky. And I think we have, like, in crowds, and if you're either in it or you're not, and there's a lot of patting each other on the back and yes it's got so much better it used to be really male dominated I used to despise it for that there was no like female cds it was a boys club it was kind of like everyone to go out play football to the pub it's not like that so much anymore but I do think we have this tendency to shit on each other or to shit in each other's work a little bit of it like and you know we've all been part of that LinkedIn and I think social media makes that like a lot easier to do so and I've been guilty of it as well and I've kind of made a conscious effort over the last kind of 12 months to like kind of step back and appreciate that what we do is a luxury we get paid to be creative and you know and anyone who's putting anything out there we should you know I'm not saying that we should applaud bad work but we should encourage people who are willing to kind of you know put themselves out there and design stuff you shouldn't just be so shitty and shouldn't be dissing each of all the time we should be encouraging definitely i think i do think i think it's shifted i mean even since like the whole covid period i think it's shifted a lot sort of work practices and the male female split and all that kind of stuff side of it that's definitely definitely shifted and i think like being able to work from home or work remote is is it's definitely played a part in that like because obviously females tend to be the ones having to take the they not all the time but like take some of the burden at home so I think that has helped as well yeah and I also think with this kind of like shitting on each of his work it's so easy to look at something from the outside and not really understand what's gone on behind it what are the challenges of the brief what are the clients needs what are you trying to achieve and I often think when you're trying to do something new as well I'll use like Jaguar Land Rover as an example I'm not saying I love that word but you know applaud them for trying to do something new whether they landed it who knows is we don't know the product's not out there at the moment but that got shat on it's ridiculous isn't it it's that thing because obviously i work in pr and the pr side of design and it's that i remember when the cabris did a rebrand and ridiculous publications like the daily mail running a story saying to change it from that aspect to that aspect they charged a million pounds or something like that to chat it's like you get gigs like that for a million pounds exactly it's ridiculous it's like a full in-depth three brands and it just the press talk about it that happened with wolf mainstream press when we did yeah they're awful they don't know they don't know what they're talking about but they don't realize the impact that they have yeah it's like when when wolf did the the olympics the team had death threats wow death threats because people like the daily mail kind of like stir this hate.

29:46Basically it's just that, isn't it?

29:47Claire:And that's, yeah, it's awful. Yeah, and they didn't really, even now look at it, every single designer's like, I love 2012, I love what you did. Everyone remembers the feeling of those Olympics and the brand and the identity plays a part in that. But at the time it was, yeah, those creatives had to stay in hotels. They needed security. Did they? Yeah, because of the hate that was stirred. God, isn't it interesting the, even though it's negative like the emotion that can be stirred through that kind of thing though yeah yeah and I guess because it's so personal because especially because it's been a home olympics as well and again like that is an example of it we weren't following the tropes of normal olympics previous to that we taught the rule book and did something completely different yeah and people don't like change and they don't like change especially when they don't kind of understand what the change is for or why the change is happening yeah absolutely yeah it's very powerful example could I ask you about I mean if you could go back to yourself when you were when you sort of you know you're starting out in your career what do you wish you'd have known what sort of ideas do you wish you could have told yourself to help you along the way I'm not sure it's ideas but I wish I had had a mentor I remember being so desperate feeling like lost early in my career like going back to that like I just there was just no females and like I just felt isolated and maybe the the struggles I was going through there just wasn't anyone like me yeah there's loads of like angry angry middle-aged men but and I don't even know mental was a thing no but I remember not having anyone to look up to I remember like like my friends around me like they'd look up to these like mythical like like creative figures and I just didn't I just couldn't connect with any of them and I just wish there was a I wished at the time that I knew a female cd yeah that would that I can ask questions like how did you get there like what struggles did you go through like have you ever been labeled emotional or aggressive yeah or defensive because those were labels I weren't hearing other people getting but I was getting them so you were labeled oh like all the time really all the time and I think it's because I'm naturally quite a I'm a challenger and I think which is why you're in the position you are like I hope so it's a good thing so I'm naturally curious and I'll challenge and maybe I could come out based on all of me but I'm quite direct and I'm like I would challenge and ask questions and I would get these labels and I'd be like there's better ways of doing it or before and I would just relentless and potential wouldn't stop and yeah those low labels kind of stuck and you know most of them came from men and i'm not like yeah i'm not a man hater at all um but i i just remember at the time so confused why no one else was getting those labels so you could quite clearly see that everybody else well everyone else but the guys around you would be able to challenge and weren't labeled yeah they were just working in a different way like they you know they're going down the pub they were going to play football together you know chats were happening there that maybe i wasn't part of and i could see that you know they maybe could push boundaries in ways that i wasn't able to because i was getting these these labels and i you know i i wish i'd had someone to say to stick with it it's okay and that's probably why now i'm so like like conscious of being that for other people doesn't matter whether you're like girl boy like i just want to make sure that if there's people that maybe don't see themselves in the industry that they do find somebody that yeah maybe shared some experiences yeah and that's really good advice i mean there are lots of sort of mentor networks even aren't there today that you could go to and just actively seek seek one out yeah dnad do the dnad shifts and lia which you just called out they do a mentor program and you know what to be honest let me give you reach out to someone that you kind of admire and tell a bit of your your story if it resonates they'll they'll reach out back i've had quite a few people do that to me yeah yeah and i think if you if you just got to find that kind of shared shared dna well tell a bit of your sob story that'll work yeah very good advice is there any other tips you wish you'd have known or is there anything that we should have sort of you'd like to pass on to young people getting into the industry today i suppose that's a good question what would will follins look for in an intern or a junior what makes them stand out above the crowd maybe not just on the design skills point of view what is it that gets your attention first of all don't get obsessed with ai that's don't get obsessed that's but do you get that do you get lots of people coming along and i just think in general the industry is obsessed with it yeah just like it's it's don't get don't it's here it's a tool like photoshop was like like websites were like kind of back in the day it's a tool and it's it's it's kind of here to stay but it's just a tool and the tools aren't as good as it's kind of what you input to it and what you output from it.

35:02If I had to give advice to anyone, it'd be like, do something that scares people, do something that is different, find a way to stand out. And what I mean by that is I see a lot of work that looks similar. I think I see a lot of people are trying to recreate what's been done or kind of have something that looks so polished. And I would just, yeah, I would just try and be brave, try and do something completely different to whatever people are doing and find a way for that to get noticed don't send emails don't send linkedin just you know do a collaboration with your friends do a kickstarter do something that helps get your work out there so that other

35:40Claire:people notice it so not emails or linkedin that's i just think god i don't think it lost they get lost they get so many of them but just do do something that gets attention find a way like i i did a collaboration with a chippy because i wanted some of my work did you like back in the day it's like you put some more work in your wall but find a find a way to cut through find your own style and and yeah just do something that the best designers that kind of stick in my mind are the ones where I've gone oh my god I wish I'd done that or that's so that scares the hell out of me that they thought about that and I didn't I didn't think to do that my god like that that is it's incredible and I would also like say like it's a it's a hard industry to break into that like it's it's competitive it's fast loads of people are trying to get into it and you're going to need grit and determination and like just don't underestimate how how having that determination just to keep going and not giving up it will carry you through whenever do kind of like eventually give up a thing I just had enough of this just yeah use that grit and determination yeah that sounds good good advice Emma thank you so much this is fantastic it's been really interesting I loved it thank you