Sneak Peak 👀 Not Ready? Do It Anyway with Kathryn O'Callaghan Mills

0:00One of the biggest lessons I've learned is to never forget how to listen to a client and really understand them because you're designing for them. I think in the era that we're in at the moment, it's so dangerous to fall into the bigger is better and wow and challenge, challenge, challenge. when if you don't understand the client and the brief and you haven't listened from the first moment you've met them none of that matters and I mean I learned I learned lesson it was it was a while ago but it was a really big pitch in the industry it was all the top players and at the time I was with a business that was what I would consider probably tier two we went for it like you know did our best had fun with it um but really understood the client to use your term got under their skin but did that awful saying awful saying that i use all the time but it was it was brilliant experience and but what i produced i didn't love it was you know it was one of the designs that I would go, yeah, it's all right.

1:14But it was because they were a very humble business and their ethos was all about staying true to their roots and their originality and being humble. That was literally their word. So we focused on the detail and just trying to create the wow through little vignettes as you walk around and the flow and just connections within the space so we were really really lucky that we run it as a business it was a huge deal for that business because it was quite small and so when I had the opportunity the client showed me some of the other pictures which is always like oh it's so so great so good to be nosy he showed me one of them in particular just blew me away it was an animation and back then animations were ten a penny because they were so expensive to make and it was oh genuinely it was phenomenal like the the structure the design the coloring all the features and i felt embarrassed and i remember saying to the client i was just like well that's well that's amazing are you are you sure you want this like do you want that like let's let's workshop this out he said to me he said yeah it is amazing and we can respect how how much went into that and how interesting and creative that is.

2:31However, that's not us. And they didn't listen. And I think from that moment on, it was just one of those, wow, okay, I must always, always listen. And you do see it now with new generations coming into the workplace, that they want to try different things all the time, which is amazing. Innovation is amazing and to be embraced. But if you're designing for yourself, you're never going to win. You'll always be the concept designer rather than the design and build designer.