Building an Independent Creative Studio

Ian Paget: I'd like to go back to the beginning. Here today you got your own agency, you got a team and everything and you are super successful. But I read that so you studied graphic design and you accidentally, somehow, got an interview at Saatchi and Saatchi, which is a super famous agency. But I understand it didn't go particularly well, but you were lucky enough to get an invitation back about six months later to try again. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I know people straight out of university that seems like a massive opportunity. You say that it didn't go well, but you still got invited back in. Can you share a little bit about what happened at that time?

Chris Doyle: Yeah, it was like I think a lot of this stuff is luck and association sometimes and just where you happen to be and all that stuff. I think this is a great example of that is I, in my year at university, a girl had a contact there and she had worked on the group show for the university. In a way, she had samples of everybody's work in this project within her folio. So she was going around and showing interviews and one of those was at Saatchi in Sydney. She, without meaning to, revealed a whole bunch of other students' work to the people that ran the studio at the same time as showing her own. Which is really just luck on my part.

Yeah, I was called up as a potential candidate for this role in their small design studio, which was within the bigger ad agency. Really, I just had a very ordinary portfolio in finishing university. Very, very devoid of ideas and very style based. I couldn't really talk about the work with any great clarity or certainty. Those guys were really put off by that, basically. They were like, "Okay, so tell us why you did this? Where did this project come from?" I found that stuff really hard and it was because really I hadn't really put the time or the effort into a lot of the thinking behind the projects. It was a lot of them were much closer to art than they were design. It was very self-expressive and self-directed work.

Really they were coming at it from a very communications and idea led approach. They were a design studio, one English creative director, one Irish. Had both been through lots of different communications agencies and they were embedded within an ad agency, which was very famous for ideas. I was coming in really as not a great candidate for them, and it just really didn't go very well. But then I gave them a business card at the end of the interview, and it had like a little joke on it. It's terrible now to think about it, but it read like a personals ad. Like a romantic ad. I used to place ads in the paper like when you were looking for love. This is before obviously online dating apps and all that stuff.

It was a really simple idea that this crappy business card that I'd given them, which they laughed about and that was it and I didn't get the job. Then they hired a girl who then six months later that didn't work out and they said, "Do you want to come back up and reinterview?" At that time I had taken a job and really not achieved much in that six months. Six months in your first job is not a huge amount of time. You don't get through, your folio isn't bursting with great projects six months into your first year. I went back up and they said, "We really liked that business card and we want to see if you've got more. If you have more ideas like that," and I really didn't.

But I think by then, they then were like, "Okay, well, we'll take a chance on you and know that or hope that we can mould your thinking and train you into coming up with more ideas based design." Look, I think it was a great example of personalities clicking as well. I got on with them really, really well. There was a great cultural fit, and I took the job and very, very quickly realised that I had no idea what I was doing. Which I know is a very common a graduate feeling to experience. I think, in some ways, it's fine to feel that because you should enter the workforce going, "Oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing." Because it's a completely different world to the world of university.

Yeah, I was lucky enough to stay there for, I think, probably four or five years. I got on really well with those guys. They were incredibly generous teachers and mentors and very unselfish with their knowledge. There was no competitiveness, it was really... and I really lucked out in that sense. Their job as far as they were concerned was to teach me how to do what they knew how to do, and it was a very, almost, very traditional apprentice based situation. I realised later on that that's really not how all studios operate and it's not, and a lot of most designers are not fortunate enough to have that experience and I was really lucky. Yeah, that was my second job. It was a weird way to get it, but I'm very thankful that I did.

Ian Paget: Yeah, but I think it's an interesting story for anyone that's graduating because there is the general assumption that your portfolio is what wins you the job. But, in your case, there must have been something to it for them to to have bought you in...

Chris Doyle: Oh, yeah.

Ian Paget: It sounds like it was very much your personality and the fact that you clicked and they saw a lot of potential.

Chris Doyle: I think they saw potential, yeah.

Ian Paget: I like that you gave them something, and that obviously stuck with them and-

Chris Doyle: It did, yeah, it really did. That's why they called back six months later because one of them said, "I've still got this business card. Why don't we call this guy back and see if he's kind of where he's at and how he's feeling?" That's literally how they tracked me down again, which is amazing. But, yeah, look, there was evidence of aesthetics and craft and all that kind stuff in the folio. But it just wasn't... Look, I should say as well it's not that the folio was terrible, it wasn't great, but it also just wasn't right for them. I think that it might have been right for them. I got a job in Canberra, the city I was born in, with the same folio and those guys were really excited about it.

But once I got into that job and got an idea of how they worked and the way they approached design, I fell in love with it and thought, "Okay, well, this is actually what I want to do. This is actually much more exciting than just stylistic aesthetic design." Which I don't even think I'm very good at.

Ian Paget: Yeah, well, I wouldn't mind going a little bit into some of the lessons that you learned there. Because you went in saying that you didn't really know what you were doing. I've watched videos where you still say that now. But you said in one video I watched that they became incredible mentors and really generous with their knowledge. Can you share some of the lessons that you learned whilst there that you felt could be beneficial to the audience?

Chris Doyle: Yeah, definitely. I think there were probably three and there... I guess before I talk about those, I think the big thing they maybe do was read design books, which I had really not done when I was at university and I didn't think I needed to. At that stage, again, things like blogs and really in depth design websites that we all have access to now just didn't exist. They really were very, very few and far between. So to look at work and learn about work that had come before you, you had to look at books. They had an incredible library of, predominantly British, but a little bit of American as well design. They had come from a very British school of thinking, which is very ideas based.

Yeah, they said, "You need to read these books." I remember my boss giving me four or five books at one point, putting them on my desk and these were books by like Michael Johnson and Michael Bierut and Bob Gill, and all these like giants of design. Some of which were semi-retired, some of which were very active and still working, and he said, "You need to read all these books." I did and it was life changing that stuff because it really was just so eye opening. For something that you couldn't find anywhere on the internet, you found it in those books. Then I guess the three big things that I always come back to with those guys that they taught me about was, one, was the importance of ideas in design.

I've been on a big journey with that because when I was with them, it became it was the relentless pursuit of the idea. Whether that was just a visual trick or whether it was a verbal idea or a strategic idea or a graphic moment of play that was clever. I think that we became really obsessed with that, and that became the key thing. I've strayed a little bit from that recently, which I can talk about later. But that was the first one was the importance of ideas and being able to come up with a unique way of saying something or showing something. The second one was to really forget about my own aesthetic ambitions for work. I still think this is something that I would say most designers suffer from, and I still suffer from it as well.

But it's this idea that we are creating the work for ourselves, and we get really frustrated when a client doesn't like a tight face we've chosen or a colour or something like that. It's not to say that designers should be walked over by clients, and I think we have. Obviously, you do develop skills and opinions and ways of doing things that that's what people pay us to do. But I do think that we often, so much of us as an industry, get defeated and disappointed when the thing that we really like doesn't get up. Often it's because really we are like weird hybrid artists, and that we are doing a creative process that we really want to be satisfied by the outcome as well.

I think one of the thing I talk to the guys at my studio about a lot is we're here to solve a problem for somebody else and it's got to be appropriate and it's got to look great. It's got to be clever, and it's got to do all the things. Really, if we come out of it really satisfied as well, then that's a bonus. But you can't start there, and I think that was something that they really said to me. The phrase that I always come back to is that design is about other people. The back half of that is often that art is about you, design is about other people. I think it's something that a lot of designers get confused about. They think they're working for themselves and the client better like it.

I really think that we're in a service industry and we're there to help other people communicate. We're not there to hijack their communications brief and make it something that we hope gets a lot of likes and gets revered by the design industry. So to flip that around and be really selfless about why we do what we do, and I think it's really hard. Because, as I said, we're creative, right? You want to like what you do, you want to be proud of it. But, yeah, I think that we are ultimately there to do it for other people and it's something that I always have to remind myself of as well. The other big thing is writing. They really introduced me to it. I've always enjoyed writing, like creative writing and playing with words.

I think when I was at university, I had no real... I don't know why I just didn't connect writing, or certainly humor in writing to back to design. They really, really saw that I enjoyed that and pushed me to do it and really encouraged me to do it. It became something that I think I was good at and I had a natural ability for, and something I really enjoyed. In lots of ways I think for a long time I thought I was, actually, I was more confident writing a headline than I was designing a poster? I think that, that is something that's comes through I think in our studio work as well is a lot of copywriting and a lot of word play. I think they always said the best designers are also interested in writing or good writers, and I think that's designers get scared of that because they think they then have to become writers.

But they don't, you just there's got to be an interesting language in words. I think if you have an interest in those things, then it can make the work better. I think as simple as that. Yeah, they were the big key things, and to be honest, they stay with me through to today. I still feel very strongly about those lessons and I try and pass them on as much as I can.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I can really see that, especially, everything to do with language. I've watched several videos of yours for research for this. I read a number of things and language constantly came up multiple times over and over again, and you can really see it in your work. I think that's one of the reason why some of the ideas that you're working with are so interesting because you are not just looking at it as an aesthetic exercise. You are looking at it as a language, and free to exercise all combined together.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, it's very rare now we do work that isn't both verbal and visual in the industry. Look, occasionally, you do record covers or you do theatre posters or we do, do types of work that is not verbally led. But the things that are commercial like the big... anything to do with brand or campaign role that it almost always has a verbal component to it. It's not always us, we work with writers as well. I should be very clear about that. We do outsource to a couple of really great copywriters on projects, but we do a lot of naming ourselves in-house and we do a lot of headlining and copywriting.

Look, I think the power of that, to me, and it's something I'm sure you've heard me ramble on about in talks as well, is that language is accessible to everybody. And design and colours and type and aesthetics aren't as accessible to everybody. I think that to me is a really, I've always found that to be a really interesting point. Because you can present a headline that really, really sums up or nails a thought and everybody in the room can enjoy that. Often it doesn't always go that way with design, you can present this very crafted, beautiful logo or poster or something, and people in the room go, "Yeah, I get it. It's nice." It's more akin to judging art than it is communication, and I think that I've always found with copy that's often where you get the most response in a room full of people is you verbalise what they're aiming for.

I'm sure you've had that everybody has that with clients where you manage to write a really great rationale before you even show them the work, and you see them nodding and going... it's almost this wave of relief on a client's face where they go, "Okay, good. Yeah, you definitely that's exactly what we're trying to do." That's the power of language, it's this access point that everybody has and it's something that we need to be. We need to do more of in design.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think one really good example of how you've done that is an example that you gave in one of your presentations. I can't remember her first name, but her surname is Cantwell. I don't want you to repeat the story. Yeah, I won't ask you to tell that story again because you've told that so many times in your talks. I'm going to link to that, but that's a fantastic example of how you've used language. I think that's another really interesting example of how you actually got a client just by coming up with an idea. I think that's a great example,.

Chris Doyle: Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, cool. Look, that was a, really, that was a fun job, and it was just me, cold calling this poor woman who wasn't expecting me to, and probably, didn't want me to. It turned into a really fun one, and something that was essentially all verbal.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and it's a really great project. I wouldn't mind going into a couple of things that you mentioned then.

Chris Doyle: Sure.

Ian Paget: So you spoke about reading books, are there any book names that you can drop here for people to go and read?

Chris Doyle: Yeah, a designer actually emailed me the other day who just set up a new business and was asking me a bunch of questions. He said, "To save time, can you just tell me three great design books to read that either changed how you run a business or how you think about design?" Which I thought was a really interesting question. I think, for me, the book that influenced me in terms of visual design, and I think it's such a... I think logos and very small contained bits of graphic design. It's a really important book still is A Smile in the Mind, which is very old. I don't know if you know the book, that it's very classic. They've had two additions of that book now, one from the.

I want to say the early '80s, possibly even the late '70s, very old, very traditional, predominantly British, some American, some European design to it. But it is very much the visual wit and trickery and like almost visual puns. It's a lot of the ideas are very tired now. But that really just opened my eyes to the power of a really, really simple idea, especially, in logos and brand design. Then the other one I really, really loved when I was younger and I want to reread was a book that Adrian Shaughnessy wrote called How to be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul. Which was beautiful because it was about they're working as a designer, but also so it was almost about the business of design as much as it was about the practice of design. It didn't tell you how to design or give you any tips on that, but it spoke really, really broadly about running studios or being a freelancer and invoicing.

Again, it's probably pretty out of date now but it was pretty amazing, those two books. The other ones are studio culture. Studio culture is a unit editions book that's just been rebooted is probably that's the wrong word. But an edition of that came out probably 10 or 12 years ago, and they've just done a new issue and it's basically the same but it's just been updated. Where they essentially go out to studios all around the world, get some photos of their spaces and their studios and their offices. And then ask them a whole bunch of questions about how they run their design studios, and whether they're large or small and what drives those decisions? And how they bill and how they get clients? How they self-promote? What's the importance of social, importance of social media?

I really love the new edition of it because it really, when the first one came out, there was no social media. There was no Instagram, there was no Twitter, and there wasn't all these mediums with which we all communicate and talk to each other now. They're both editions, both the old one and the new one are really, really lovely. I actually just found the other day a book that I haven't seen in ages, which is called How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, which is a series of interviews. I want to say by Debbie Millman, and I hope I've got that right. It's a really misleading title because How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is almost like incredible self-help book. But it's really not, it's just interviews with amazing designers and really beautiful personal interviews in print with with really, really incredible graphic designers. Yeah, the top of my head, that's probably a good place to start.

Ian Paget: Definitely, and I'll link to all of those in the show notes so that people can find them. I think that book is by Debbie Millman. I think it's based on interviews from her podcast.

Chris Doyle: Oh, of course. Okay, yes, that makes sense. Yeah, it's got a great cover and it's [inaudible 00:20:10] type. It's just a really lovely... Obviously, we've got so much amazing podcast and video content available to us now. I remember thinking it was quite nice to read one of those interviews as well in a book. You don't see as much of that anymore, but it's quite old now. It's before we had incredible content like this to go off.

Ian Paget: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I think it's also worth going into what you said about ideas. I'll be interested in your take on this because I know that you don't necessarily follow a process. ut have you got any tips or advice that you can share for coming up with interesting ideas?

Chris Doyle: I think, yeah, look, I say we don't follow a process. Part of that is just a sound, mysterious and edgy. But there is some truth to it in that... I'm aware of how like earnest it always sounds to nice to get up and do talks and say, "I don't know what I'm doing." What I mean by that is part of that is meant to sound reassuring in that I don't think we have a set process for how we figure things out. But also I think depending on... Unless you have the same brief over and over again, there's an argument that your process should be different. I think the things that remain constant for us are learning as much as we can about something, and I think that should be true of all all design.

I think all the best designers and thinkers have said that. That before you start, you really need to learn as much as you can and absorb as much as you can about whatever it is you're doing. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is I always start a notebook, and I know it sounds really traditional and old school. The new thing is that everyone you should be drawing on an iPad Pro and that's the way to iterate thoughts. I still go straight to the mole skin. I, really, I have to be able to draw a logo. I can't start a logo on screen, and I think that's true of most designers these days. Whether they start with an iPad. But I can't migrate to the iPad now. I don't know what it is, they're incredible now.

I caught up with a friend the other night and she's just bought an iPad Pro and she was showing me just all the incredible functionality of being able to draw on that screen with the really good pencil. I don't know, because I don't consider myself to be a really, I don't know, I don't consider myself to be a great craftsman when it comes to logos. There's always a simplicity to that kind of work that we do. Yeah, I really need to be able to sketch it. Even with writing, I always need to be able to write a headline down before I type it. There's something I find very, and it might just be some weird superstitious habit, but I can never go straight to a computer and write a headline down.

I think the closest I've got now is in my notes app on my phone. I've been drawing logos with my fingers on the notes app with the pen thing on the phone, and they're awful. But it's just so I don't forget them. Like I had one the other night and I was at home on the couch and I never bring my notebook home and I keep it all at work, so there's like some separation. I started doing these terrible logo sketches on my notes phone. Like it's so laborious. I do that, and then I'll often screen grab the note because I'll forget that I did it. Like at the next day I'll be... But then if I'm looking at my photos, which I'm often doing on the phone, I'm like, "Oh, that's right, I sketched that terrible basketball thing or something the other night."

Then you can go, "Okay, it's, yeah, I know what that is now." That's as close as I get, but my things are really trying to learn as much as you can about it and starting with a pencil and paper is always my thing. I can't use pen, I have to use pencil and they're all just personal things. But, to me, ideas and starting, really it's all about connection. That's not a unique approach. I think most designers employ that approach, which is it's about connecting the dots of things. That could be that a certain letter looks like something or a certain word could turn into something or a certain mark can actually double up as something else. So you can find a symbol that's connected to a brand strategically and then embedded in some language or something like that.

I think it comes in all shapes and sizes. But that you need to know what those dots are before you can connect them. I think that's, yeah, so you need to have all the dots filed away and then you can start to get at the red string and make observations. I think there's an amazing quote by Dean Paul in the new edition of A Smile in the Mind, which he says that you need to catalog everything that you learn somewhere in your head. Which sounds really full on, but the analogy he gave was that if you learn something or observe something, you need to file it away, and then you never know when you'll be able to go into that cabinet and thumb through and go, "That's right, I actually realised that I saw this or I learned this about this item or this idea." You find a way to use it later on.

I think that it's about letting the brain or making sure the brain is always open to, just a little bit, to ideas and observations. I think that I suffer from thinking about work. I don't suffer from it, that's way too dramatic. I am prone to thinking about work more than I should. I think it's a very fine line between making sure you switch off and you don't think about work, but allowing just... Man, I keep a small light on in the back of my head where there's still a little bit of activity going on. I don't do it because I feel pressure. I don't work for anyone, I run my own business, so it's not like I'm... I don't feel pressured to turn up the next day with ideas or it doesn't keep me awake at night. But I just have this thing ticking over.

The more mundane the task I'm doing, whether it be exercise or in the shower or anything like that, the more free my brain is, the more I let the things creep in. It's because I'm excited to come up with an idea. That's really all it is. I think it's, yeah, it's not pressure. Look, it works against me because I find it hard to unwind and back away from it. But I think that's where ideas often pop up and you've got to, I think, unfortunately, you got to leave a little shoe in the door so they can get in, basically.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think most graphic designers I've met suffer. It is not really suffering, but they have the same issues because we are solving problems and it's hard not to let it go. In those situations where you are driving, having a shower, or doing something totally unrelated, that's when... I don't know if your brain is in a different state or something, but that's where-

Chris Doyle: I don't know.

Ian Paget: ... most interesting ideas come from.

Chris Doyle: Man, I really, and I said to someone a couple of years ago, I realised that when I was going to the gym... I'm not going to the gym now because of COVID. But when we could go to the gym, I would do a lot of elliptical like cross training like the skiing machine. Man, it was like I did so much work thinking there. Because it was so monotonous and boring and I would just let these things chug around in my head, and occasionally, make notes on my phone or something like that. But I found that was like a really fruitful period for me to be able to think about it at the gym. Not while you're doing weights or anything, but when you're on a spin bike or on like a cardio machine, I found that to be a really great thinking time.

Yeah, I don't know what it is. I wonder it's weird. It's like a weird thing, isn't it? That your brain's like meant to be at its most relaxed or free and then that's where you start like having ideas. I think you're right. To me, suffering is it is an interesting kind. To me, I talk about this manageable level of anxiousness, I think, and manageable being the keyword. Is you don't want, no one wants this to ruin their sleep or ruin their lives or anything like that. It is just graphic design, we're not heart surgeons. But I do, to me, it's proof that I enjoy the job still. That's why it still creeps into my brain. It means that I'm excited about what I'm doing. I think it's just that I've got kids and I need to make sure that I do, oh my God, compartmentalise is the word that stuff sometimes.

Because, yeah, it's I can't fit it all in all the time. But I just, man, I just think most of the time, and yeah, you say you talk to most design, it's because they actually enjoy what they're doing and they want to solve the problem. God, it's actually a really lucky position to be in, isn't it, for a career?

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely. Because I know there's a lot of people out there that have uninteresting mundane jobs and we are really lucky to be in this position where we like to think about our work outside of work.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, which meant that, and you're right, the majority of people don't. This is I think what designers forget, is we all love to complain about clients, and oh this and this. I mean, man, you got to think the majority of people, if you told them on Sunday night they didn't have to go in the next day, they would not go in. I think I'm like, no, I want to go to work. I enjoy it. I, really, I'm still excited by it. I think we forget that a lot of the time because, you're right, everyone gets bogged down in their own version of whatever the crappy thing that's going on in their career or their lives is with work.

But, yeah, I think we forget most people wouldn't go to work if they didn't have to. This is just the weird, gross, big system that we're all in. It is important to remember that, I think we're very lucky to be in creative fields. Absolutely.

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. I know I could keep going back to that stuff, but I'm conscious of time. I want to dive into some of the other topics that I wrote down.

Chris Doyle: No worries, man. That's fine.

Ian Paget: So you now have your own agency, Christopher Doyle & Co. I noticed that you didn't start that until you worked at a number of different agencies for quite a long period of time. What was the reason why you ultimately made your mind up, "I'm going to start my own thing."

Chris Doyle: It's a really good question, and it's a really simple answer. There were two things. The first was I was at an agency, I was at Interbrand at the time, a big branding agency that have offices everywhere, which everyone is probably familiar with. I was in the Sydney office of Interbrand, and at the time, it was a very top heavy office I would say. I was a design director and I had two creative directors above me. I had a CEO who was very involved in the work as well. He was very smart, had very strong opinions on the work as well. Then there were other design directors as well. A couple of things were happening is, one, I felt like it was really top heavy and I never seemed to get anything up. I did the work, I never really seemed to be able to do the work that they wanted me to do.

I felt like I wasn't really getting anything out of it. Although, I really enjoyed a lot of the people and the creative directors above me I'm still friends with, and I had a lot of close friends I've kept from that agency. But I felt like I wasn't really doing anything. My folio or my personal growth wasn't going anywhere. Then the second thing was I was just getting older. Like I was looking at those jobs and going, "Well, the next step is I either work my way into those roles be it here or another agency, or you start your own thing." I think that we it's a weird industry because you're meant to climb up and up and up and then end up in some senior role by a certain age.

Like so many industries, I think the older you get the less attractive you are in the creative industry. Which is terrible. I think that's such a flawed... but you have there's this awful idea in advertising and design and everything that it's all got to be young and it's... I had been schooled that way and I felt like I was running out of time to make my own version of it. But really I could have just, yeah, I could have kept going and I could have stayed in that role or I could've gotten older, of course and there's nothing wrong with that. But, yeah, it was a bit of like a career, like clock ticking with me. Which, as I said at the time, I was really worried about, but actually it's just now I look at it and just think it's ridiculous.

At that job, as I said, I felt I couldn't really go anywhere and I just thought, "Well, now's probably the time." I had two kids by that stage and I really, professionally, wanted to structure my life around work as opposed to structure work around... oh, sorry, yeah, structure work around my life as opposed to structure my life around work. I wanted to come and go as I pleased, I wanted to do less hours, and I wanted to basically be in charge of my work life. Which is really terrifying to do that with two kids and a mortgage, and at that age. I did it so badly. Like I had no clients, I didn't save up any money. I remember I was earning what I thought was really good money at Interbrand and when I left I'm like, "Why am I not prepared for this?" It's not like I decided and did it a week later.

Like I gave it month and month, and I just didn't prepare for it and I don't know why. Amazingly, I took one of the clients that was there. Obviously, very amicably, like I spoke to the CEO and the MD and said, "Look, this small theater client wants to come with me." They said, "Yeah, that's fine." Then about a week before I left, I had a client, which I'll get, this is like a bit of a tangent but it's an interesting story I think about relationships. I had a client who this woman rang me who was the marketing manager at an orchestra in Sydney, quite a big Australian orchestra. She rang me out of the blue or email, I can't remember, and basically said, "Look, I'm..." And introduced herself and said, "Would you like to think about doing this work for the orchestra?"

Which was to do photo shoots and brochures and all this really lovely work for this incredible orchestra. Now she'd been given my number from the woman who had just left the role that she had moved into. Her successor had moved on and said, "You should call Chris. I worked with him at an old agency and really liked him, so you should call." So, basically, her outgoing boss had worked with me at an agency previous and referred me that way. Which I think is the first, that's the first amazing thing where I think all of relationships are all connected, and the impressions that we make on people are, you know, it's a small world. I think it's a really important thing designers need to remember, is that it's all connected this stuff.

I thought it was incredible that I've gotten this, and I said, yes, of course, and I said, "Look, I'm actually resigning and setting up on my own. Do you..." I remember saying to her, "Are you calling because I work at Interbrand or are you calling because you want me to do it?" I remember her saying, "I don't," she said, "I don't care. I'm just calling you because my boss who's just resigned has told me to call you." I went and met this woman whose name was Rosie, and she gave me this big piece of work. Man, that was the kind of foundation client of the business, that and this theatre. It was amazing because that is what got it going. The incredible thing with that, I did like a year, I think, or two years with her at the orchestra.

Then one Christmas she emailed me with this big personal email that said, "Dear Chris." And it was this thing that basically said, "Look, I'm so sorry that I'm moving on," and all this stuff." But it was a really weird email because it was like it was written to someone else. Then I realised that she'd written to a different Chris in her organisation. But she was telling him that she was resigning and I was finding out because she, actually sent it to me by mistake. So, I rang her and I said, "I'm pretty sure you meant to send that to me." Because she's like, "Oh my God." She said, "Oh, actually, it wasn't meant for someone else." I was really disappointed, I was like, "Oh, man." Because I was only like two years into this incredible relationship. But then she took a job at Spotify and then like a year and a half later started to feed me Spotify work and then-

Ian Paget: Oh, awesome.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, and it's just one of these really lovely like cyclical things where she'd been referred to me by a boss. She then left that, went to Spotify. We stopped working with that orchestra eventually, and then she, very slowly over the last four years, started feeding us Spotify work. In the last two or three years, an enormous amount of Spotify work, which really has become our biggest client. It really was all because we had a relationship that was like seven years previous. That was why I left, which is a long and boring story. But, as I said, the main thing was I was afraid that I was getting too old for the industry, which I think is such a sad thought now when I think about it.

Because it's, yeah, I don't know, it bothers me that that's something that I was so down about out at the time. But, yeah, and so there was that and hitting the ceiling in the place I was in, and really just wanting some freedom. Man, someone said to me the other day, "Oh, would you ever go back and work in an agency?" I just don't think I could. Not that I don't think agencies have great culture and you can do great work and all that stuff, but I am so used to just driving my life now. I don't mean just the creative direction, I mean the freedom to be with my family or to take time off or to structure a flexible work life. That's stuff to me just you can't put a price on it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I can agree. I went full time myself around a year ago now and-

Chris Doyle: Oh, man, that's awesome. Congratulations.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's nice how, I've got a little one as well, so it's just nice that you can just stop and do stuff and live your life. But fit working around the rest of it, which has a really nice feel to it.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, and you can't do that when you work for someone else. It just doesn't. Again, we've just, globally, just we've got... and certainly in our industry, it's just rife. We have set up this system where it's just all in. You're meant to work all hours, you're meant to work weekends. It's this understanding that if it doesn't get done today, well it's okay, we'll just stay back and do it tonight. It's one of these things that's just so widespread. It's like the free pitching thing, I don't know what it's like over there. But everyone loves to argue about free pitching here and doing spec work in Australia. But it's one of those things, it's like, "Well, you are always going to have a large amount of designers or a large number of designers, I should say, doing it."

It doesn't matter how many people disagree with it. Unless we all stop it, it's going to keep going. I think it's the same as the work late culture. I think it's much better than it used to be, and I don't know what it's like in the UK, but it's still a big thing here. It's still, and certainly in agencies, there's this understanding that you work at night and it just baffles me. I think if you're consistently having a team work at night, then something's wrong with the way the business is being run. There's no other answer.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well, I don't know how it is at all agencies, but at the place where I used to work, if we needed to get something done by a certain time, I used to stay late and that was voluntary most of the time. I didn't even get paid overtime. I don't know why I was bad enough to do that. But, yeah, it's a tough industry.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, it is, and I think it is. It's just the assumption is there. The way we structured at work is we do time and lose. There's overtime, right? I think that's just the thing in our industry is it happens from time to time. You need to stay back till 7:00 or occasionally you need to come in on a Sunday to work on something. I think there is some of that that's just part and parcel of what we do. But I think I've been really conscious of if the guys stay back two or three nights in a row or they come in and do a full Sunday, then we basically log that time and it just gets added onto annual leave, and they take it back in lieu.

I think it can get a bit messy and difficult to manage. But I'm like, well, that's the only sustainable way to do it. Because, you're right, you're not getting paid for that time. It's funny when you talk to people outside design, I don't know if you've had these conversations and people go, "Well, why are you not getting paid overtime?" You have to go, "Oh, yeah, that's just not really how it works in our industry." It's like you talk to a lawyer or someone who gets paid by the hour, it's like, any industry really, it's we somehow have just got this thing where it's like you work until you fall asleep and it's fine. It's ridiculous.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well, I got used to doing it because they always finished officially at like half 5:00, but sometimes I'll be in the zone or really into what I'm doing and I'm like, "I just want to keep working on this."

Chris Doyle: Look, I think that's another thing which I find. I find that it's a really delicate thing when you talk about, especially, with the young designers. Because, man, I personally, and I really want to say it's just me, it is really just me. I don't think it speaks for everyone, but I'm very much from that school as well. That if I get to 6:00 or 5:00 or whatever, and you are really in a zone, I'm quite happy to stay there for an hour and do it. Sometimes, man, it's I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy going in on a Sunday sometimes if it's something I'm really excited about. It is that really delicate balance, isn't it? Where you want people to be a little bit hungry and go, "Actually, shit, let's get some food and actually stay back and do this because we're on a roll or this is really working."

I think where it becomes messy is where people feel obliged all the time to do that. I think younger designers who don't have as stronger voices in a culture or don't know how to navigate that stuff with their CDs, yeah, it's a really slippery slope where you're six months or a year in and it's just understood that you work late. I think that's different. I think that becomes a problem. But I do, again, it's that manageable level of a little bit of overtime, I think, it'd be a really healthy thing if you're really excited about the job.

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. I know where I used to work, they had that problem, especially, with a lot of the account managers. The account managers would consistently work late, and then there would be the expectation that they would do that. You could see that, that person could take on more than they did, which is obviously unhealthy. I feel that's fairly toxic. But if you work at a place like that, just don't stay and then it's not expected of you.

Chris Doyle: Exactly, exactly. Once you do it, once the precedent's there, it just it's on, right? Like I remember at Instagram when I left, there was this phase at the end where it's like people would literally just muck around till like 11:00 or 12:00 in the morning. Like you'd come in, you'd catch up, you'd go get a coffee, you'd go, "Okay, cool, what are we going to do today?" And then we do that. It's not a criticism of the guys that were there because it just turned into this thing of like, "Well, work really started at lunchtime." Then by 5:00 or 6:00 at night, you're like, "Oh, well, we better stay back and do this till 9:00." It's like, well, yeah, but we all pissed about until Midday, you know what I mean?

There was a little bit of that, that I saw, which I just always thought was really odd because it became so normal that you would stay back. That the mornings, and then also you were so exhausted, that the mornings were almost like these really slow starts where you'd catch up with everyone and you're like, "Oh, God, we were here till 11:00." Then you are forever on the back foot with that stuff. Because it's like being hung over every day. You can't kickstart that energy levels because you were there doing it late, and it just keeps going and going.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think that's a cultural thing within the business, though, and it's interesting hearing it from you having worked for a number of agencies and also having your own thing. With your agency, have you intentionally like created a culture or do you feel that's just fairly organic based on what people do?

Chris Doyle: Look, I think both, to be honest. I think there's... I did an Adobe talk recently that was part of Adobe MAX that was on creating culture. It is a really interesting question around how much of it can be created? How much is the responsibility of the management and the leaders? How much of it is, as you say, just the organic behaviour or a combination of people? And also what can you actually implement intentionally that drives some of that stuff? I think the answer is, to your question, is both. I think there is some very intentional actions I've taken and rules I've set up at work that I think define our culture.

I also think that our culture has been defined by the people in it. I think that's the very definition of culture, isn't it? It is emerges from a group of people and an attitude and tastes and behaviours. So I think, in some ways, it's out of my control and in some ways it's importantly very much in my control. I think in that sense, I have a lot of responsibility as a sole owner and person running a business. That you have to make it really, really clear what's expected of people. When things are unfair or inappropriate or there's a whole range of things that I make really, really clear when people join the team.

That, to me, is very much intentionally shaping some of the culture. Then, yes, you have multiple personalities that come into a room who then impact the culture in lots of ways as well, and I love that stuff. I think I've always been incredibly careful with hiring, so it's interesting that if you are really, really careful with hiring and making sure that you really want the right people in the room that are aligned in the same ways as you, you don't want clones of people, obviously, but you want... For us, it's there's some political and ethical alignment that needs to be part of a hire. I think that's true of all industries and businesses. I think that you're going to be in a room with each other for eight hours every day.

There's certain things that you just won't be tolerated in terms of views and things like that. I think that you have to... yeah, it's a really tricky one when you hire, but hiring people who think are the right culture fit, yeah, it's all very grey. But then once it actually start, once they start to actually get into the team and work, it generally does work because you've gone through those. You've realised, "Okay, we think this person's going to really gel with us, or we have the same ideas about design and the way design works." Then more broadly, okay, socially, you feel aligned and you are looking for people to be in a relationship with really. Like it's a professional one, but it's still very much a relationship and you have to be debating and talking about ideas and really having...

I always think about client behaviour, and certain clients who are problematic or clients that come in and go, "Okay, we want you to work on this brand." And us all instinctively going, "Okay, well, that's not a company that we want to work for, or that's not an organisation that we believe is doing good for the world. It's, really, it's tricky that stuff because it's making sure everybody's on the same page, but that there's also an individuality, right? Because you want people to bring their own personalities and experiences and ideas to the table as well. I think you can shape it, and I think it's important to shape it because I think people look to me and they should rightly so look to me to go, "What do we do in this situation?" Or a client said this to me and I'm offended, and then it's my...

I've had those exact conversations where I go, "Okay, well, that's inappropriate or that's unacceptable." So I then have a conversation with whoever said X. I think that, to me, is very much culture. That's me saying, "Okay, we don't operate like that and we don't tolerate certain things." I think that if I was one of the employees, I would imagine that, that is something I would walk away and think, "Okay, well, that's a great thing about the culture. Or that's something that..." Look, it works in reverse as well. We have catch ups with the team and they go, "Okay, well, this sort of thing's happening in the studio and it feels really wrong. Does everyone think it is happening? Or do you think it's happening?"

I would say yes, and then we work towards changing it. It's very democratic and collaborative in that sense. But I think it is, a lot of it, is my responsibility, but it's also something that everyone else has to contribute to and does whether or not they even know they are?

Ian Paget: Yeah, fantastic. Well, we got a few minutes left, so I'm going to throw one final question at you.

Chris Doyle: Sure.

Ian Paget: It's to do with the use of humour. I noticed going through your website, it's funny, you read the text that there's a lot of humour to it. I noticed with a lot of what you do, although you're talking about fairly serious topics, you tend to always add a little bit of a humour into it and I'm sure that's all part of your personality. But it's interesting to see that brought into your agency too in a very, very intentional way. Has that impacted the type of clients and people that you attract at all?

Chris Doyle: Yeah, I think it has. I think it is a really intentional thing, and I think it was probably born out of me starting on my own. Like when I started out, I was obviously by myself so I think a lot of my personality was fed into the website and the way we talked and some of the work. I think everybody in the studio, we have all very quite similar senses of humour and appreciation for humour and design. I think it's definitely attracted types of designers to the studio, absolutely. It's something that designers talk about that resonates with them. I think in terms of clients, yeah, I think it has as well. Look, the website is an incredible icebreaker, I would say, and I think that's probably why we haven't changed the writing on the website for many, many years.

Because it's always a talking point for clients, and I think it was funny when I first set up the website, I had a what we do and what we don't section, and it's really never changed. It's just been redesigned over and over again. I can never really bring myself to get rid of it because clients find it so... It's such an ice breaker, and I think that, and again, it comes all the way back to what we were talking about at the beginning around languages. That it just becomes something that warms up the experience, and we're very careful not to make everything... we don't try and make it all funny. It's not like every bit of text or every job is an opportunity for humour because I think you have to be really delicate with that how much that stuff gets used.

But, yeah, I think it's, look, it's certainly something in Australia I think like the designers and clients seem to... we seem to be known for the more I talk to people about. Look, yeah, I think a lot of that is me. I think a lot of that has come from how I started it. But, as I said, I'm very aware that a lot of the designers that have worked in the company. I've hired people, as I said, it's like relation, humour is such a connector for us as a race, as humans. That idea of being able to laugh with someone or share a similar idea of something that's funny, I think is so powerful. I think that, yeah, that's happened with a lot of the design we've hired and with a lot of clients we've hired.

But then having said that, I think you have things like we do work for theatre companies. We do a lot of work for a theatre company in Australia called Bell Shakespeare. There's very little humour to it. There's humour within, obviously, within the works of Shakespeare. There's a lot of comedy, but in terms of the design work, it's very rarely funny. It's much more thoughtful and it's... I would like to think that it's not something that we try and execute all the time with what we do. But I do know that we do lean on it quite a lot because it seems to be something that we feel comfortable doing, and we've had with clients with it as well.

Look, I think, as I said, it comes back to the language thing. I think it can be a really, I just think, it can be a really powerful way to connect with people and break the ice. I don't know, maybe that website will change at some point. There's a lot of studios, a couple in the UK actually, especially, who've taken that copy and run with it exactly the same on their websites. Which has always bothered me, but you just have to roll with it and just accept that. But so maybe it's time we change it. But, man, writing that stuff on websites, I don't know how you found it, but it's so hard to do differently.

Like writing a paragraph about the work or intros, you know, an intro thing is so hard. I think part of the reason I've never changed it is I just can't be bothered to do it again. Because it's just every single design website sounds the same. Like all the copies are the same, and I've managed to land on a couple of things that are interesting so I'm just hanging onto them for as long as I can because I can't think of anything better to be honest, that's the problem.

Ian Paget: One thing I really noticed is I think when you've used that language, even though you are an organisation of obviously more than one person, you've got a whole team, it feels very personable and small and relatable. It feels very friendly and approachable, and I actually think it's quite a nice way of approaching it. So I encourage people to go and check that out.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, cool. Thank you.

Ian Paget: I think that there's so much that people can learn from you. On your website. You've got a whole list of videos and talks and stuff from yourself and from your team. All fantastic stuff, so I'll make sure to link to that.

Chris Doyle: That's awesome, thank you.

Ian Paget: But Chris it's been brilliant.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, man, pleasure.

Ian Paget: We've gone through a lot of topics in this, so thank you so much for coming on. It's been a lot of fun and it's been good to get a chance to speak to you one on one.

Chris Doyle: Yeah, thank you very much, man. I really appreciate it.