Creative Lives

On the podcast this week, we meet Charlie Drinkwater, art director at Island Records’ London office. While having an in-house design team isn’t necessarily the norm for music labels, this is something that Charlie feels is changing, with full-time design roles on the up. As more and more musical artists choose to go independent, Charlie says that many labels are feeling the pressure to offer more. He looks back at his route into industry – talking us through the scope of his work before sharing his advice on making yourself known to commissioners as a freelance creative.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

Since year eight at secondary school, Leyya Sattar knew she wanted to work in the creative industry. Her role model? American TV show Ugly Betty’s Wilhelmina Slater; “Seeing a woman of colour in such a position of power made me feel like [...] I wanted to be a creative director.”

But after completing her graphic design BA and working her way into a great job, Leyya became frustrated with a distinct lack of real-life role models, and felt that discussions around diversity didn’t always account for the breadth of underrepresented voices. In this week’s podcast, we find out how Leyya went about promoting the change she wanted to see, how her career has taken shape and the learnings she’s gathered along the way.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

You might not know it, but you’ve probably already seen some of Samir Hussein’s work. Having photographed everyone from A-list celebrities to the Royal family, Samir’s pictures have been used on front pages of national newspapers, inside the pages of magazines, TV stills and even an Australian postage stamp.

On the podcast this week, we find out how he came to specialise in this area of photography, the reality of attending high-profile events and some of his stand-out experiences.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Marianne Hanoun and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

This week on the podcast, we meet Emma Gannon, whose varied work has seen her become a bestselling author and reach millions of people with her blockbuster podcast CTRL ALT DELETE.

Having grown a reputation and following as a blogger – in what might be referred to as the ‘blogging heyday’ of 2009 – Emma has been able to establish a career on her own terms, and is an impassioned advocate for flexible, varied and self-sufficient working. This approach is something she’s come to refer to as the multi-hyphenate method – the title of her second book, which was released earlier this year.

Emma tells us how she manages her productivity and shares tips for anyone wanting to adopt a multifaceted approach to their work.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

On the podcast this week, we sat down with the V&A’s curator of digital design, Natalie Kane. Working in the V&A’s Design, Architecture and Digital department, as a curator, it’s Natalie’s job to think about how the museum collects, cares for and displays digital objects.

Originally an English Literature graduate from Portsmouth University, Natalie recounts her ‘very wonky’ career trajectory – from landing various volunteering roles and learning to code, to taking up her position at the V&A last year.

Explaining what it means to collect ‘boundless’ digital objects, Natalie talks about what it means to have ‘curator hands’; telling alternative stories with objects; and how working on co-founded curatorial project, Haunted Machines, ties into her curatorial practice.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Marianne Hanoun and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

This week we meet Jules Young, who works at the intersection of the food and creative industries. As an agent and office manager for agency HERS, she has become specialised in a particularly niche field: food styling. We hear about the evolution of the craft, along with her own, non-traditional route to this line of work, and the wide-ranging projects she matches the right talent with.

With the rise of food start-ups, the continual cycle of new restaurants, pop-ups, dining trends and ongoing product marketing, food photography is booming, with food photographers and stylists finding their work more in demand than ever before. One company feeling this spike in activity is HERS, the agency where Jules has worked for the past 4.5 years, which represents prop and food stylists.

Before overseeing the day to day running of the HERS office and representing stylists, Jules had an unlikely route into the industry. As a young mum, she tells us how her working journey began in non-creative admin positions, and slowly progressed to something that really captured her imagination. She shares her favourite part of the job, her thoughts on getting into a similar role and her tips to anyone considering going into food styling.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, Google, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

This week, we sat down with American photographer Cait Oppermann to talk about sports, self-promotion and why she is ‘obsessed’ with her own productivity.

A graduate of Pratt Institute’s photography course in Brooklyn, New York, Cait’s work has taken her all over the world. Working across editorial and commercial work, these days she counts the likes of Nike, Wired and TIME magazine as clients.

Cait’s photographs, rich with colour and intrigue, showcase a range of subjects, including sports stars, athletes and strange subcultures. And in the past, Cait has photographed everything from the world’s most expensive cars and the Westminster Dog Show to Nike’s attempt to break the two-hour marathon record in Kenya and later, Milan.

On top of this, Cait also avidly pursues a healthy roster of personal work. In fact, it was a personal project documenting the US Women’s National football team in 2015 that helped land her more sports-related commercial projects.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Marianne Hanoun and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand partners – they include ustwo, G . F Smith, The Paul Smith Foundation and Google.

In this week’s podcast we go behind the camera and into the world of broadcasting, to find out what it’s like to work in big TV studios. Throughout his time as a freelancer, multi-camera director Jan Genesis has worked with companies including Channel 4, Sky, BBC and ITV. His work can range from directing studio-based programmes such as news, chat or games shows, to on-location shoots for sports coverage and reality TV – recently completing the latest season of Love Island.

Jan reflects on the ways that industry has changed in the years since he was just starting out, both in terms of access into entry-level work and emerging roles. Plus, he considers the ways new talent can contact and stand out to employers, and shares why building resilience in the face of rejection will be your most powerful asset for a career in TV and broadcasting: “In my experience you have to be thick-skinned. You’ve got to ask yourself: What’s the worst that can happen? [...] If you’re always worried about annoying someone, your probably not going to get too far.”

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand patrons – they include ustwo, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

On the podcast this week, we meet Joana Filipe, an exhibition and interior designer, who also works as a creative producer for ELCAF, London’s biggest annual festival for comics and illustration. Not simply a designer for traditional art spaces, Joana’s clients have included Thames and Hudson, Greenpeace and Converse – as well as the London-based Now Gallery, Fashion Space Gallery and selected universities. We hear how she went from studying sculpture in her hometown to moving to London and assisting at the V&A, before establishing her own practice.

Joana begins by describing the role and responsibilities of an exhibition designer, before telling us what her work looks like day to day, running her own business from a shared studio in east London. She also describes her work with ELCAF – a three-day annual event to celebrate with comic artists and illustrators, which she has helped organise, produce and develop since 2013. Originally founded by independent publisher Nobrow in 2012, it now hosts over 170 participating artists each year. With exhibitor stands, talks, screenings and workshops to consider, Joana will manage overall spatial design to optimise visitor experience.

Having grown up in Lisbon and studied sculpture there, Joana describes her route into exhibition design – from a hands-on education in physical materials, to co-founding a company specialised in art fabrication. After three years of running the business with her brother, she decided to make a change, moving to London to study at Central Saint Martins, and then taking up work at the V&A.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand patrons – they include ustwo, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.

Oscar Hudson is a London-based director whose work spans music videos, documentaries, short films and commercials. In the last year alone he’s received over 15 notable awards – earning the title of UKVMAS’s Best Director, Creative Circle’s Silver award and Rotterdam International Film Festival’s audience award, to name a few. With a distinct style and approach that often champions unusual and trippy techniques, he fills us in on his process and an unlikely route into filmmaking.

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This episode of Creative Lives was brought to you by Lecture in Progress. It was presented by Indi Davies and the editor was Ivor Manly.

Lecture in Progress is made possible with the support of a number of brand patrons – they include ustwo, GF Smith and The Paul Smith Foundation.