In short
Bonus “The Spark” interview with Malika Favre, focused on her coffee ritual, creative “theme tune,” dream dinner party, music/food tastes, and her views on social media vulnerability.
Guests
Malika Favre (French illustrator; private but personable on camera; says her illustrations should “carry” the story more than her persona).
Key claims
She drinks strong espresso (black, with sugar; Bialetti-style) and wants a better coffee setup; her creative style would be Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush” (intense, repetitive minimalism). She’s over the daily Instagram habit of “pouring” emotions for likes, arguing it can harm creators and even drown out their work.
Notable examples
She unfollowed an interior stylist after her divorce updates became depressing; she notes illustrators’ anxiety/depression often gets more likes than their art.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCoffee Conversations
0:45 to 2:52
Discussion about coffee preferences and routines.
“I give a list of 10 and I'll let our guests choose, but I'm just, because all of this came about very quickly, I forgot to send them over.”
Dinner Party Dreams
2:52 to 4:50
Imagining a dream dinner party and the guests invited.
“Well, actually, you know, my birthday is coming in December and we do sell a coffee machine on the bazaar and it's a mere 2000 euros.”
Cooking and Music
4:50 to 7:10
Discussion about cooking skills and music for a dinner party.
“But definitely it would be like funny, witty, extremely intelligent women.”
Social Media Trends
7:10 to 9:46
Malika shares her thoughts on trends in sharing emotions on social media.
“What's a trend you're secretly over, but everyone else seems to still love?”
Creative Connection
9:46 to 14:00
Exploration of creative expression and personal connection through social media.
Childhood Mischief and Stealing Stories
14:00 to 15:54
Malika shares humorous and cheeky stories about her childhood antics involving stealing.
“It's like we asked the question to the one guy who's never stolen anything.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:03Katy Cowan:We are back with Malika Favre for an episode of The Spark. Hello Malika. Hi Katie. Hello. I quite like having a cold. It makes me go really deep, really deep.
0:15Malika Favre:Yeah, that's true. I always have quite a deep voice.
0:17Katy Cowan:Yes, we have. This is something we share in common. Well, I feel like your answers are going to be quite inspiring because this is a little bonus episode we have every week with our week's guest. and it's just to sort of get to know you a little bit more and just sort of move away from the work. Although work sometimes gets mentioned, obviously. Okay.
0:36Malika Favre:Okay. I'm going to have to be careful about what I say, no?
0:39Katy Cowan:Well, you know, the questions are quite sort of, well... I was going to say, are they spicy?
0:45Malika Favre:Are they spicy questions? They can be. Okay. Normally I let my guests choose.
0:48Katy Cowan:I give a list of 10 and I'll let our guests choose, but I'm just, because all of this came about very quickly, I forgot to send them over. so i'm gonna be naughty okay okay go for it okay um we'll start gently we'll start gently yeah what's the smallest thing that instantly improves your work day coffee oh what else it is course it is she's french course it is and what kind of coffee how do you take it
1:18Malika Favre:strong so i drink buckets of strong espresso oh i take it black with sugar black with but you know Like I've got like the, you know, the, how do you call that? The posh. Of course you have. Yeah. How do you call that? Like the Italian one, you know, the Bialetti. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I drink espresso in the size of a giant filter cup. Can you buy it on I can't afford this, but maybe she can? No, we don't sell coffee. Oh. We should.
1:47Katy Cowan:You should.
1:47Malika Favre:Oh, we have coffee boxes. We have coffee, you know, one of these coffee tins. Beautiful. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:55Katy Cowan:I like using them for all sorts of stuff, you know, like little trinkets and sewing kits and things like that. Yeah, I love my coffee.
2:02Malika Favre:I love my coffee. We grind the coffee so we get the, you know, very good coffee.
2:06Katy Cowan:Very important. Very good. But of course you do. And I bet it looks aesthetically pleasing on the side of the kitchen, doesn't it? All the kind of like, have you got like a coffee station like all the cool kids?
2:17Malika Favre:Oh God, I wish I did. No, we're still a bit. I wish I did. No, we had some like really, really bad grinder. I can't even remember who gave it to me with an American plug. So it comes with like one of these giant adapters. So no, it's not a pretty coffee corner. One day.
2:35Katy Cowan:That's not great. One day. You've got to sort that out, Malinka. You've got a reputation to uphold. I know.
2:40Malika Favre:I know. It's after I'm saying that I'm curating every corner of my house and I've got a shitty grinder.
2:46Katy Cowan:Well, if I come round next month, I'm going to be very disappointed if it doesn't live up to my expectations.
2:52Malika Favre:Well, actually, you know, my birthday is coming in December and we do sell a coffee machine on the bazaar and it's a mere 2000 euros. Beautiful. Oh, yeah. That's. Yeah. Just throwing it out there.
3:04Katy Cowan:It must be beautiful, though. OK, if your creative style had a theme tune, what would it be?
3:11Malika Favre:Oh, wow. That's a tough one.
3:14Katy Cowan:Yeah. Nobody's chosen that question yet, which is why I thought I would ask it, put you on the spot.
3:20Malika Favre:I think it would be Mad Rush from Philip Glass. Oh, okay. Intense piece of contemporary piano. Let's go.
3:28Katy Cowan:Mad Rush. Intense, repetitive.
3:30Malika Favre:Yeah.
3:30Katy Cowan:Minimal. Type A. Minimal.
3:34Malika Favre:It's literally the same five notes for like a good four minutes. Yeah. I think that would be my style.
3:39Katy Cowan:Brilliant. Okay. Here's a nice one. I can imagine this. I can imagine you like, you know, hosting it outside on the patio, lots of candles. If you could have a host, sorry, a dinner party with two people dead or alive, not including your best mates or anyone from your family, who's coming and why?
3:58Malika Favre:Two people dead or alive?
4:01Katy Cowan:Mm-hmm.
4:03Malika Favre:Well, first, I know I would have two women, that's for sure.
4:07Katy Cowan:Female energy in the room.
4:09Malika Favre:I would have Sharon Organ and Fran Libovich.
4:14Katy Cowan:Oh, lovely. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be such a funny evening.
4:17Malika Favre:God. You can just imagine. They would be great. Oh, God. I would be laughing.
4:22Katy Cowan:Do you know, that really warms my heart, Malika, because when I ask this question to a lot of people, it goes very highbrow, very quickly. Oh, I would absolutely have to invite this historian so I could find out about the past. Or I'd have to sit down. I know. I just want to have a laugh. I know. I want Jennifer Lawrence at my dream dinner party. She'd be amazing. She'd be great fun.
4:46Malika Favre:Yeah, I mean, I could add way, you know, way more women to that party. It would be such a fun one. But definitely it would be like funny, witty, extremely intelligent women. Would have the best evening. Yeah, I'd go on holiday with them.
5:00Katy Cowan:And what would you make them? Do you cook?
5:03Malika Favre:No, I was going to say I'm not going to make anything.
5:07Katy Cowan:You're just like me.
5:08Malika Favre:I'm just like, you know, if my husband's out, I just eat cheese. I'll get Vlad to make a barbecue, which is what happens.
Read the full transcript
5:14Katy Cowan:I'll open the wine I'm very good at opening the wine oh yes me too yes always good the door and the wine that's it brilliant and what's on the what's on the playlist what kind of like mood would you put on in the background or do you not have music it's funny because like so for example
5:32Malika Favre:I don't work in music I work in silence I love music I really love music I think I would get like you know tropical like good vibes like Gaël Faye, a lot of French either French electro or tropical good vibe, bit of Rihanna doesn't hurt
5:54Katy Cowan:Yes, that's for later when you've had all the wine and you're dancing Are you a dancer? I like to dance, yeah Yes, me too, you have to take your big high heel cap boots off though
6:06Malika Favre:Yeah, no, exactly No, don't worry. I've got the low boots one. I've got the low boots one. Oh, that's all right then. We're okay.
6:12Katy Cowan:Nice little kitten heels. If you could steal one skill from another creative discipline overnight, what would it be?
6:19Malika Favre:I love it because like for a moment I was like, oh, is she asking me what I've stolen in my life?
6:25Katy Cowan:I'll ask you that next. If I could steal one skill from anyone.
6:34Malika Favre:Yeah. Or from another creative discipline. Oh, God, no, I wouldn't steal from another creative discipline. Does it have to be from a creative discipline? Well, it could be. You could have any skill in the world if you... Okay, I'd love to be... We can be open. Okay, investment banker. I'd love to be good at investment and stock options and shit.
6:52Katy Cowan:I was not expecting that. Come on, it has to be like that's... Yeah.
6:58Malika Favre:Love it. Trader.
6:59Katy Cowan:Love. Yeah, make a lot of money so you can afford all these nice things in your bazaar.
7:04Malika Favre:Exactly. Exactly. I'm like the worst investor in the world. I look at my savings on my bank account. I'm so bad at it.
7:13Katy Cowan:Oh, okay. What's a trend you're secretly over, but everyone else seems to still love?
7:18Malika Favre:okay I think that the the pouring of emotional things on Instagram and on social media you know of people kind of bearing their guts but like on a daily basis or weekly basis and kind of making because it's it's content that works and get people to react and you know get people to put like little hearts and and i think it's something that i think has gone a little bit too far yeah i would agree actually and i think people uh are enslaving themselves to being vulnerable on a daily basis and it's i think it does more harm than good in the end and it's something that yeah i'm definitely over and i really wish that people didn't feel i think it's great you know when it's genuine and sometimes things need to be shared and it's super important but I think becoming making that your daily routine can be very dangerous and I'm really I'm exhausted I don't I don't care anymore when I read it because I'm like yeah I know you said it yesterday and you said it the day before and and it makes me sad so yeah it's really sad I
8:32Katy Cowan:followed this I follow this girl on Instagram and she um she had an amazing house like an amazing house and would share like you know little videos of her wandering around the kitchen and doing little things and just absolutely she was such a great she is a great interior stylist designer and um and then sadly she went through a divorce and then she's moved to her own house and she's okay and she's she's um starting again but she every update you see it's about her divorce and how she's had to reinvent herself and i just like oh it in the end i unfollowed her because it was just so depressing.
9:07Malika Favre:Yeah, sometimes it becomes too much. And I think it's, I find it so sad when you actually see, especially when I see it, for example, with illustrators, I see it a lot with illustrators. And it's like, when you see that them sharing their anxiety and depression gets hundred times more likes than them sharing their work. And the problem is that the bridge is kind of deepening. Yeah.
9:30Katy Cowan:It's okay to show vulnerability and show your personality, but there's got to be,
9:33Malika Favre:there's still got to be a line exactly and i think it's i don't know i'm sometimes i'm just wondering if yeah if it doesn't do more um you know more harm than good for them as well and
9:46Katy Cowan:for the work yeah i'm um i'm actually showing up more on instagram i put my face to the brand more i think that's probably why you and i having more of more of chats recently right yeah but i think
9:56Malika Favre:you do it in a really fresh way and it's also it makes sense with creative boom and i think it makes sense with the stories you're telling you're not going you know and and rambling about you know personal life all the time and you know it's i think you do it in a really yeah but that's yeah but i think it's also the reason it's i think it makes sense because it's a reason why you're showing up more and it's the reason why you're doing what you're doing why you took this new approach to creative boom so it's directly linked to what you're doing it's not a you know a separate issue and i don't know do you feel the pressure to share more um i did when i first started doing
10:32Katy Cowan:it and then i kind of um i realized i was doing too much and i thought i don't need to do this i can just show up now and again and it'll be fine it was just that those early days of like really rocky wobbly feet you know trying to figure out how because it's weird isn't it talking to camera and going hi so i ended up sharing my first attempt um last year and it got it was quite amusing actually it was quite funny and i think it set the tone for everything that followed i realized i just had to be myself i didn't have to put on a persona i didn't have to put on a front i'm a bit silly and daft and and i thought well just i'll just be like that then people love it i know i can't believe it it's brilliant yeah but it's brilliant it's like the human connection
11:15Malika Favre:like seeing the face behind the you know also because you are at the end of the day you are a media so it's important to see you know who is the voice behind this project behind these articles yeah yeah for me like in a i'm an illustrator so i want the image to speak for me for me this is the the illustration i'm creating has to speak for my you know i it's not about me it's about the stories and that's you know that image has to carry and i am more personal when i do conferences and this is when I share up to a limit I love it I'm very private actually now I've got
11:53Katy Cowan:one more question for you so we had Jimmy Terrell on the podcast last week and a very fun man love him he's such good fun all the people from the northeast are the best you know he's got the best
12:04Malika Favre:accent it's just like it's just best accent such a funny I was trying to get him to like we were
12:10Katy Cowan:talking about Biker Grove of course and we were talking about the accent because um you know I I don't think it was inappropriate to because my mum's from Durham. So it was kind of in the context of the conversation. But I was telling him, I'd heard it somewhere that if you wanted to mimic the accent, you just had to say pooper scooper.
12:30Malika Favre:Really? Can you do it? Can you do it for me? Pupa scooper. Pupa scooper. Pupa, pooper scooper. Pupa scooper. I think my French accent takes over everything. I don't know what I just said.
12:44Katy Cowan:We're going to get cancelled. Right. So he's asking, if you found yourself on a desert island, what one country's food would you choose to eat forever? Italian. And why? It's just so good.
13:03Malika Favre:You can't go wrong.
13:05Katy Cowan:You just can't go wrong with Italian. It's like... No, you can't. It's solid, isn't it?
13:09Malika Favre:You just can't. It's ingredients, olive oil. It's controversial for a French lady.
13:14Katy Cowan:Exactly.
13:15Malika Favre:I'm going to lose my French passport over there.
13:20Katy Cowan:Oh, I love it. What question have you got for our next guest, Malika? Because that's what we do. We do a lovely chain reaction.
13:27Malika Favre:I'm going to take a, because we're starting to do a podcast as well on the, with I Can Afford. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, we just started George's running it and asking actually spicy, quite spicy questions. so I'm going to ask the question that I thought you were going to ask me because I think it's really funny what is the last thing you've stolen?
13:54Katy Cowan:okay we'll put that to it it's either going to be Katie or Rob and that will be that will be some good laughs well thank you for being such a great sport and if I was going to answer that question it would be a block of marzipan exactly
14:09Malika Favre:I think, I mean, it's funny because like we asked it once and literally Ryan, brilliant guy, he said, I've never stolen anything.
14:17Katy Cowan:I don't believe that.
14:19Malika Favre:I do believe him. I literally believe him. It's like we asked the question to the one guy who's never stolen anything. Never, never.
14:26Katy Cowan:What was the last thing you stole, Malika?
14:28Malika Favre:I actually don't know, but I did steal a few things in my life. But more when I was a kid, I was really naughty. I was stealing in parking lots.
14:39Katy Cowan:Wow.
14:40Malika Favre:I was opening cars. I mean, they were leaving them open, not my problem.
14:43Katy Cowan:So you were just reaching in and seeing if there's any spare change or some mints? No, I didn't care about change.
14:49Malika Favre:It's just, it was even worse because I was stealing objects. Things that had no value.
14:53Katy Cowan:Malika. I know, but I was like 11. Yeah. Grew up in a rough part of town then.
14:59Malika Favre:No, absolutely. No, I was the rough one. I think it's just like the adventure.
15:05Katy Cowan:The fear of getting caught, the thrill of it. I was doing it with two other friends.
15:10Malika Favre:I wasn't alone. It was just a little game.
15:13Katy Cowan:And you get your kicks and your thrills now from doing erotic books. Exactly.
15:17Malika Favre:No, I don't exactly. I've never liked, I've never stolen like, even like art supplies or stuff that everyone was stealing in art school. No, everyone was doing it in France. Oh, were they? I think it's more when I was a child. I was looking for like, you know, that dopamine hit. Dopamine. Yeah.
15:35Katy Cowan:and now and now we get our kicks from you know wine and uh david gandhi maybe exactly anyway thank you for being such a great sport malika especially with you not being 100 thanks katie it was super fun
15:54Katy Cowan:thanks to adobe acrobat studio for sponsoring this episode if you're curious about what it can do for your workflow head to the link in the show notes to explore.
From the publisher
t's time for the Spark – our weekly bonus episode where we step away from the work and get to know our guest a little better through a round of quick, fun questions. No prep, no warning, no idea what's coming.
This week, host Katy Cowan puts Malika Favre on the spot, and the result is exactly the sort of relaxed, slightly daft chat you'd have with a mate over a glass of wine. They cover the small things that instantly improve a working day, what Malika's creative style would sound like if it had a theme tune, and the dream dinner party she'd throw, given two guests, dead or alive. There's a trend she's quietly very over, a surprising skill she'd love to steal from another world entirely, and the one country's food she'd happily eat for the rest of her life.
And then there's the question Malika was secretly hoping she'd be asked – which leads to a rather cheeky confession about her younger years. A short, warm, and very good-natured way to round off the week. Enjoy!
