Hello and welcome to our new series, Nicely Said.
Nicely Said brings industry chat to life in a low pressure, no-answers-are-wrong-answers kind of way. Helping you get to know the people who make up Nice and Serious a little better – our reflections on agency life, the industry, and our role within it. It’s a conversation. And it’s nice. For me – Tiz, Senior Creative Copywriter here at Nice and Serious. And hopefully you – the reader – too.
Our first Nicely Said chat is with our newest hire and youngest employee, Georgia. After graduating in 2021, Georgia worked for multiple small design studios and as an Associate Lecturer on BA Graphic Design at Kingston School of Art. In this time, she was introduced to concepts of accessible and sustainable design in a commercial context, and worked on many briefs in the arts and charity sectors.
In today’s chat, Georgia shares her thoughts on purpose-led design and her experience as a young creative.
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T: What does ‘creative work the world needs’ mean to you?
G: I think it’s work that has a soul and a purpose. That's something that creative people bring. Making a real impact on people and how they see the world.
It's nice to have work that's actually trying to do something, instead of just saying it's doing something. Impacting individuals and communities in a positive way.
T: How do you think design can accelerate progress?
G: I think it's really important. I wrote my dissertation about this kind of thinking. And something I read a lot in that time was Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby – that was such a bible to me. It was showing these crazy ideas and how they can come alive to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues.
But yeah, to accelerate progress, design can definitely create platforms, bring people together who want to make change, and make complex issues more digestible for a wider audience.
T: What do you think agencies can do to be better spaces for young creatives who care about impact?
G: I think they can definitely hire more entry-level people. It's really hard to break in. So, I guess, they could create that pipeline for people who have the right ideas, and catch people before their work and ethics gets molded by other companies who aren't as purpose-driven.
You can be fresh from university and be like, ‘Oh, you know, I'm really interested in making all these purpose-driven briefs’. But if you go somewhere else, your ethics could get squashed a bit, because you're new, you're young and you just want to please everyone and do the best you can do.
T: Do you feel like your generation of designers is bringing something new to the creative table?
G: I think there's definitely a bigger push for more tactile approaches right now – people are getting digital fatigue. And I've also seen articles around a lot more community-focused things happening at the moment. I think my generation – we're quite aware of it and we want to make as many human connections as possible.
Gen Z are also using social media in a different way. I'm very much like, ‘I'm going to teach the algorithm what I want it to show me’. Which is something maybe my generation has learned to do a bit more than older generations. We can use social media to our advantage, to see what we want to see and find out things that we want to find out through training it.
T: What advice would you give to other generations who want to better understand your generations’ values in the workplace, or in creative industries?
G: I think we're very aware of boundaries. We've grown up being really aware of mental health and self-care and think about that in our work space a lot more. It's very rooted in how we feel about how we're spending our time and our lives, and what we're putting our energy into.
T: If you could pitch your dream client or campaign, what would it be and why?
G: I feel like I don't have a specific kind of client. It's more an idea… I would love to create a physical interactive design piece – something that would be science-based or plant-based, because I love gardening and the natural world. Something that would really engage communities in that way would be a dream campaign for me.
As a designer, I don't often see the reactions of people at the other end because it's so often digital. So I think something like that would be really invigorating.
T: What’s a piece of advice, quote, or mantra you carry with you as a creative?
G: This one is quite hard. So my first one is keep other interests going alongside the work you're making. Because sometimes that won’t always be interesting to you. So you want to keep that creativity alive by doing stuff that you are interested in, too.
And, try to make work about things that excite you. Find what’s exciting in the brief and pull that out and really own that. Because someone else will probably find the niche thing that you've pulled out exciting too, and that will open more doors into where you want to go.
T: What gives you hope about the future of creativity and design?
G: That it’s constantly evolving. With AI – the last few months it's been kind of scary and I've seen lots of things about how hopeless it is because AI is coming in to take all of our jobs. But I think we're going to use it to create amazing things.
Also, the increase in work that's being made in the sustainable sector is really hopeful. I'm feeling engaged by lots of projects that I'm seeing and interested in. I guess they're impacting me on a personal level. So I feel like that reminds me that this is an industry I want to work in, and it's an industry that can have a real-world impact.
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That’s all for today’s Nicely Said. A big thanks to Georgia for taking part. It was great to pick your brain and a privilege to share your thoughts with the world.
Keep your eyes peeled for our next chat. Coming soon to a screen near you!