I’ve done a few of these over the years, and they are becoming something I start to think about writing as the winter season hits hard. I actually started writing this in early December with a view to publishing before the end of the year, but things kinda ran away with me so it’s now January.
Much like Sesame Street, this year has been brought to you by various words and numbers, but none of them have been particularly good. In truth, I’ve never really known a year like this one. It’s been vile. Quite shit actually. And I’ve been sure to canvas opinion on this…it ain’t just me who thinks this. It seems to be a prevalent opinion across multiple industries, large and small, stagnant or agile, entrepreneurial or established.
So in no particular order of importance, here are some things I’ve noticed over this past year. Some very unique to me, but most are more widely applicable.
1. The year of the ghost.
The prevailing feeling this year for me has been of being ignored. As the kids might say…I’ve been ghosted. Big time.
I’m not talking about the usual tardiness or slow responses due to day to day business stuff, fire fighting or shifting priorities, but the almost deliberate decision to ignore completely. And the feeling that this is ok.
I am fully aware that any agency attempting to chivvy up some new leads or project opportunities with existing or new clients is something that can often be met with apathy, delay or even a snort of derision, but I’ve been rather taken aback by the tendency for people with whom I’ve had decades long and multiple project positive relationships, simply not replying. At all. People that I’ve enjoyed sparring with, conversing with, helping, advising, wishing them happy birthdays, having dinner with etc. People that know they can have an honest chat with me and say there isn’t any work to be had without any undue pressure.
It feels odd. Like I’ve suddenly woken up and am speaking a strange alien language that fewer people understand or know how to engage with. I can’t figure it out, but it’s becoming ever more common than should be reasonable. I’m long enough in the tooth to know that isn’t normal behaviour, but is becoming worryingly prevalent. It kinda feels like people are becoming less trusting of one another. Almost like we are all quietly re-wiring what we think we owe one another maybe?
Some have suggested it might be a generational thing. Modern modes of communication entering the workplace as Gen Z grows up maybe? TikTok and Snap parlance, expectations and read culture permeating the professional email world. Could be, but that feels a bit of an excuse. It might be partly generational, but I’ve seen it from people old enough to know better.
2. Recruitment processes.
The last few months of this year has seen me start to dip my toe in the ‘getting a job’ waters. Aside from what is normally expected of such a process, I’ve found it more unnerving than normal as I’ve had to prepare a CV – something I haven’t had to do since I was 21. Needless to say, I had to start from scratch as I’m pretty sure someone of my age no longer needs to list their GCSE grades 😉
Notwithstanding the tensions I feel between heading back into employment land (although I am privileged to be in a position where it is neither time nor finance critical), I have noticed a few things that have surprised me.
Ageism is still a thing. I don’t know if it’s something I’m now only seeing as I’ve tipped into ‘that decade’ or whether it’s something that has changed more recently. Either way, it’s something that permeates the application process like a shadow. There’s nothing specific I can put my finger on, but it’s the first time I’ve started to notice my age as a potential barrier to anything, despite being more experienced, more knowledgable, more empathic and more aware than I’ve ever been. It could just be me and my own self awareness, but my (rather reliable) gut tells me otherwise.
Despite putting words in my application that clearly demonstrate my ability to do X, I had a ‘no reason’ rejection from an application that, after 3 polite nudges to explain why I’d not been shortlisted, they said that they had not seen any evidence of X in my application. Um? I literally said that I could do X very well, and had been doing X for more years than my adult daughters had been alive. Not entirely sure where this misunderstanding has come from, but if you’d ‘actually’ read my CV and supporting documentation you’d realise quite how capable at X I really was. But despite a (very polite) rebuttal of that assumption in an email reply to them, I was – once again – ghosted. Hey ho.
Given how important it is to find the right people and how critical certain people are to culture, effectiveness, relationships and team dynamics (to name just a few) and particularly in potentially quite senior positions, it genuinely surprises me how little some businesses give two shits about the recruitment process and how short a window some businesses open for applicants to discover them.
I could write a whole article on the modern recruitment process, but I’ll refrain. Let’s just say I’m glad that for the vast majority of my career, I’m grateful that I’ve managed to cultivate opportunities through direct relationships or of my own doing. I don’t know if this current exploration will yield anything worthy but I’ve learned a lot in the process.
3. Where’s all the money gone?
I’m lucky enough to work across multiple industries. I’m not just in healthcare, or FMCG or industrial technology, but have a healthy spread of different clients in different and differing industries, markets and geographies. Which allows me to see patterns that are broader and less constrained to specific markets. It’s certainly not exhaustive as my clients are relatively few in comparison to larger agencies with a bigger client base, but enough for me to observe behaviours.
And one thing that is true across almost all, is the tightening of financial belts. This is the year of the CFO. A cracking of metaphorical knuckles resounding across the globe as spreadsheets are scrutinised and lines are highlighted for ‘review and consideration’.
Some of this has manifested as the dreaded ‘re-org’. A way to pause budget spend and confuse the hell out of team leadership, dynamics and spend authority. Consolidation, optimisation and ‘waste’ removal activity is abundant. Design projects endlessly circling like the airspace above Heathrow, not knowing when they might be permitted to land.
Some of it is simple ‘slash and burn’. Design teams getting axed. ‘Innovation’ activity finding itself lacking robust enough KPI data to survive, despite every top level growth report stating that a lack of R&D or innovation funnel activity is a sure fire route to a slow and painful corporate death. Those that survive are faced with having to internally resource normally outsourced creative activity with a skeletal team often lacking the tools, confidence and experience to deliver.
Some of it is ‘cost cutting’. Senior ‘design’ executives are leaving their roles in droves or hunkering down and going through the motions. Design seems to have lost its vocabulary of confidence and value. Rather than leading, it is following and with subservience for fear of losing its home altogether.
I don’t know why there is such cautionary lack of spending. It could be geopolitical? Lord knows, we’ve seen some almighty rifts in intercontinental relations and investment. Lots of bending the knee. Doffing hats and aligning manifestos to the least risky despot. Tariffs deployed. Tariffs revoked. And deployed again. And revoked again. I don’t blame the CFO gang for wanting to make sure any future spend is as cautious and wise as possible, and that cash reserves are healthy, but if they keep going too much longer, there won’t be any creative infrastructure to support future ambition when things warm up again.
I would urge those in control of the finances to permit conversations around new ways of offering value. How can we find ways of working and in delivery that feel comfortable to all concerned? It smacks of a binary leadership choice rather than a more parental approach to finding a solution that works for all concerned. Rather than simply citing budgetary limitations and slamming the metaphorical door, maybe there’s an opportunity to describe what is needed and what we have to work with. Finding the acceptable middle ground in profitability, working methods and ownership. You’d be surprised how accommodating and flexible most creative folk can be.
4. Establishment demise.
This year has seen the unfortunate demise of a number of well established ‘industrial’ design agencies. Bunches of talented people experienced in crafting well intentioned, tailored, brand relevant and beautiful hardware have had to admit defeat and throw in the towel. It’s horrid to read about, whatever you think about the individuals involved, and it’s a foreboding of what is to come. The tide retreating before a tsunami. A klaxon to bring us to our senses and realise that we can’t simply carry on doing what we are doing and just complain bitterly about it being somebody else’s fault.
I reached out to a few of the owners of some of the places that had folded, offering my condolences and best wishes for whatever future they hoped for, and most were initially just relieved that they no longer had to fight relentlessly for their place in the value chain. I’ve spoken to so many founders of design agencies or independent operators who are just getting bored of the fight.
It’s also been interesting to see a change of ‘comms approach’ by many design agencies. Whilst I can’t know for sure, it feels like whatever techniques and sales methodologies have been employed in the years prior, have had to be reconsidered and rethought this year. Silence also speaks volumes.
Most will yell ‘AI’ at the screen as a form of plausible reasoning, and whilst I’ve no doubt that this has certainly been the accelerant to the inferno, it’s not the whole story. I’m sure there were folks saying that these IBM computers were just a ‘fad’ or that digital cameras were ‘just for the nerds’ but to stay still and expect things to simply go away is dangerous. Adapt or die.
5. AI as replacement.
This past year has seen the broad swathe replacement of many with AI. The years prior to this were filled with promises of such and counter arguments resistant to the onslaught (it’s been interesting to read my last 2 years reviews’ reflections on AI), but not as much direct impact per se. This year has been different. Decisions, commitments and redundancies have been made. Infrastructural changes have been implemented. We’ve now all seen and felt the integration of AI in our lives. It’s happening whether we complain bitterly about it or not. The lure of cost saving is simply too great for the bean counters and CEO’s to resist. If I’m honest I don’t blame them. The advances in AI response quality and ‘understanding’ are mind boggling.
But my overarching feeling is that this will not go as far as those in power think it will. For sure there are some quick wins and even some longer term benefits of this great replacement. But we are already seeing the rise of ‘slop’. The tendency for each end of the commercial ping pong match to use AI to short cut and time save. Using AI to ‘create’ and then AI to subsequently ‘review’ and then AI to ‘comment’, ‘analyse’ and ‘summarise’. For sure there are humans driving the AI prompts but the laziness is quite something to behold. The pursuit of ‘visible effectiveness’ is resulting in nobody actually doing any thinking, and the net result of all of that is homogeneity.
This works well for a time. People are initially impressed with speed. Then people realise the work is becoming a little predictable, or just ‘fine’, when fine just doesn’t cut it.
I’m a firm believer that AI will absolutely supercharge aspects of what we do, but it’ll take time to adapt how we do it, to understand the bits that work better with AI, and the bits that just get a bit banal and beige with it. Bloody speedy, slick as heck beige, but beige nonetheless. What is absolutely certain is that you can no longer ignore AI or choose to avoid it. It’s like electricity. For sure, you can decide to spend an extended ‘wilderness’ break without it and cook over an open fire and read books by candlelight, but eventually you need your lightbulbs, hot water boiler, smartphone and oven.
6. Pivoting.
For me, this year has been the year of the pivot. For a few reasons. Mainly due to the reasons I’ve described in this article. Ghosting, lack of client funding, AI. I’ve taken on jobs that would normally not have been in my wheelhouse. Things that I may typically have suggested others might tackle.
But this year has been different and out of circumstance comes opportunity.
I’ve moved to position myself less as a business with whom other businesses work with on a creative basis, but more as an individual who can supplement an existing in-house team in ways that add value. I fully appreciate that this sounds like I’m attempting to find different, more exotic ways to say ‘freelance’, but I’ve always maintained that I’ve never freelanced. Freelancing is different. Freelancing is more about ‘all hands on deck’, getting shit done.
I’ve luckily managed to become a ‘guy’ people call when they don’t quite know how to tackle something. Rather than be someone who gets ‘briefed’, I’m more someone who helps people works out what the problem is in the first place and then what the brief might look like. Again, I know this sounds like I’m self-aggrandising my role, but I don’t mean to.
It has been a different way of working to how I’ve normally approached things. That’s not to say that I haven’t always worked on building strong personal relationship but still always in pursuit of ‘phase based’ design delivery. This is more about slotting in to suit the timings, outputs and team dynamics of the client and can be hours, days or weeks to suit the challenge at hand. Helping to review project work, or prompting people to think differently. Stuff that would either have sat discretely in the agency design studio OR with the client, but here I’m kinda breaking the 4th wall…or at least that’s how it feels.
It smacks of a different type of usefulness, rather than simply a downgrade in service. It’s much less about delivery per se – the bedrock of agency life – but more about contextual relevance and true agility, not just the ‘agility’ writ large on agency website homepages.
7. Relationship legacy.
As the year drew to a close, and moreso because my daughters are now of an age similar to many of the people I helped, I started reflecting on the numbers of people I’ve ‘nudged’ into the design industry. Many of these were recent graduates or final year undergraduates, but many have been seasoned pros looking for some support. What has been particularly gratifying is that many who started young, green and eager, have grown into seasoned, empathic and wholesome individuals with established families, businesses of their own, and who themselves have gone on to help others. Paying it forward if you will.
I tried writing down the names of all the people I’ve met or supported over the years but my memory is flaky at best. Having said that, I reckon it’s easily in the multiple hundreds. Some have been simple coffee chats. Some have been bona fide mentorship and guidance. Some have been past employees. Many have been somewhere in between. All have been fulfilling and I’m incredibly proud of many who have demonstrated proper independence, courage and guts in subsequent careers and life trajectories they’ve followed. Some have stayed in design. Some have strayed as far from design as you could imagine. A handful have stayed in touch.
I had two particular messages that made me feel like I’d done an OK job. One from a young woman who I met when she was a student at Uni and who I eventually hired. She’s done her career stint in the design industry and has decided to have an adventure as far from design as possible and with a small family in tow. She messaged me to say “I thought about you recently. My current boss is awesome! He really reminds me of you – two daughters at University that he’d do anything for, and although he is clearly swamped he makes time for everyone.” That meant the absolute world as it struck to the core of what I do and why I do it. My kids.
Another is from a guy who I employed into a design team many years ago (that I was leading) who really struggled with self doubt, despite being a tremendously talented individual. He messaged me with “Been chatting through some stuff over the last few weeks. Been an interesting and rewarding process so far. Whole bunch of reasons behind it, but some of which has been digging into that old enemy of mine: self doubt. Just wanted to say your name popped up as one of the forces of good with that, so wanted to extend a virtual fist bump your way.” Again, he has since left the conventional design industry to try something amazing and has flourished. His message – like the first – was lush. It wasn’t about design skills or career promotion, but about personal value and confidence.
The design industry does a pretty poor job of helping people who suffer from self confidence or a lack of belief in their own abilities. We parade our ‘visual’ guns in front of young emerging talent so they show adoration and wonder how we achieved such magnificence, but we need to be helping them understand that predictable and obvious visual skills are not even a pinch of what they need to do or be capable of. I would much rather hire talent that can think, reassure, listen, build, collaborate and empathise than knock it out of the park in rendering software, surface model like a ‘ninja’ or create visual porn on a sketch pad. We’ve let the tail wag the dog for far too long and have missed out on people who could have helped our industry widen and adapt. Anyway, I’m at risk of going down a rabbit hole here…
The point of this um…point…was to say that the human values I hold dear and was sure to communicate to people about to enter this strange design world, have been validated by those that have forged forward following at least a smidgen of what was shared. It’s way more rewarding than any products that get to market.
8. Kids fleeing.
This is pretty straightforward and I’ve written a whole article on what I’ve cursorily called ‘Chapter 3’. Both my daughters are now at University and whilst they will boomerang back and forth like a gravity defying bungee cord, flailing dirty laundry, car issues and money woes around like pebbles at a beach, the vibe in the house is very different and has prompted me to think about what I might want to do next. I’ve moved away from the ‘day to day’ parenting I have found so fundamental to my career decisions, and to a life cadence that I can define for myself.
As much as it’s been something I knew was coming, and have been an instrumental part in making happen, it’s still been something I’ve struggled with. In all honesty, I’ve loved throwing myself into sorting out the house and getting rid of all the useless detritus we’ve accumulated over the years (gotta love a clear storage box), but as someone who has found fatherhood to be the single most fulfilling and rewarding aspect of my adult life, I’ve found myself a little ‘lost’ and rudderless.
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my daughters flourish and become the independent young women I have always hoped they would be, and I adore learning about their new skills, friendships, relationships, knowledge and music tastes. Maybe it’s the awareness that a threshold has been crossed and I need to move into a different ‘delivery mode’ of parenting. Either way, it’s been something I am coming to terms with and need to find a new equation for. Independence suddenly feels more lonely than liberating.
It’s one of the main reasons I’ve decided to explore potential new career opportunities. I love the freedom that independent consulting provides me, but I think I need to immerse myself in something more sociable and culturally vibrant to fill that void. I think it will do me good. I think.
9. My f***ing body.
Something entirely specific to me. The fact that the past year has seen my body decide to make my life that bit more uncomfortable and complex to do everyday, ordinary tasks. Things like getting out of bed, turning my head whilst driving, getting up off from kneeling…that sort of thing.
I understand that age brings decline, but 50 seems to have been a very specific marker for my brain to send memos to parts of my body to ensure they ache that little bit more than normal, and to make doubly sure that any efforts to rectify those aforementioned aches is time consuming, costly or ambiguous. Bits of me that I never realised could actually go wrong have made themselves known. Like my jaw. It turns out I have an ongoing battle with my TMJ (the temporomandibular joint) which causes me to inadvertently open my mouth – like you do when you are trying to clear your ears on a plane – in the middle of conversations to relieve pressure, which can be a little off-putting for others!
So the foreseeable future will no doubt be spent attempting to adjust and find ways (and bloody time) to stretch, mobilise, eat better, sleep better and moderate what I do with a mind to making my body less disagreeable. Ironically it’s not really related to fitness as I’ve been pretty good these past few years in getting fitter and stronger…it’s just age. Something I can do very little about. Hey ho.
10. Films.
A bit of a random thought for the year (and addition to this list), but I’ve been remarkably underwhelmed by the quality of the movies that have been available to watch this year. Not sure if it’s my age, or my expectations or the movies themselves, but very few have left me ‘rewarded’ or fulfilled.
Having said that, I watched a movie on New Year’s Eve that made me laugh out loud and fall in love with storytelling and character again, almost to spite the rest of the year.
11. Burping
Many of you will know my penchant for sharing or interacting on LinkedIn. In fact, I was introduced recently as ‘the guy who burps on LinkedIn’ by a guy I knew to his mates in a pub. Which felt a bit weird and a tiny bit cringey.
I have used the platform incredibly regularly for years now and it has helped me build a readership (if that’s the word…it sounds rather grandiose, but better than ‘following’ which makes me sound like someone in a full length cloak!). As an independent creative practitioner, it’s one of the only ways to stay connected to my professional network in a relevant enough way, and I’ve tried to stay consistent and regular (starting to sound like a bowel management treatment).
About 2 years ago, I started posting daily (or near enough) ‘Mind Burps’ which attempted to capture the design zeitgeist through the eyes and ears of a seasoned designer (that’s me) and in a way that didn’t sound contrived, AI-generated or patronising. It wasn’t about shovelling advice into people’s lugholes or trying to upsell my services through ‘life observations’. Just a simple, honest, often too-honest, ‘diary-esque’ set of observations connecting news or otherwise to my experience, all with a sprinkling of design ‘seasoning’. Some of it connected with greying peers, some with keen undergrads, and some to the ones in between.
But I’ve decided to kick this to the kerb in recent months. We all know that LinkedIn has a penchant for ‘tweaking the algorithm’ to better suit its needs, and it appears that everything I do seems to work in opposition to aforesaid algorithm, despite attempting to work with it and around it. My engagement has dropped from multiple thousands to multiple hundreds with similarly ‘thoughtful’ content over the course of the year and whilst I enjoy the interactions and contemplative nature of the posts, it simply doesn’t warrant the effort.
As such, I’ve gone back through and deleted all 2 years’ worth of ‘Burps’. Not in spite (although I might admit to a little dash of petulant tantruming), but as an attempt to properly archive my thoughts, rather than have them periodically resurrected, often out of context, alongside the residual ‘likes’ of months past. I have a nominal intention to publish them in another way at some point and with a view to continuing my daily writing, but time will tell. It may simply come to nothing.
It’s a real shame as LinkedIn has a bit of a monopoly on professional ‘day to day’ visibility, but it’s becoming a multi-headed, rather useless, sycophantic, anxious monster. Posts are either profusely gushy, patronisingly stupid, mind numbingly dull, brutally self-aggrandising or feel like they’ve been pulled out of the ‘Business For Dummies’ section of Waterstones. If you eliminate all those posts that have been ‘scheduled and crafted’ by AI, you are left with a very sad looking hodgepodge (very English word…apologies). Everyone I want to read content from is hidden or hard to find. Everything I find banal or predictable is force fed to me like a fatted duck.
So until things change for the better, I’ve decided to ply my efforts elsewhere. I’ll still dip my toe as it’s still useful at arm’s length but I won’t be burping again anytime soon. Possibly a blessing to some!
12. Lament.
A rather dramatic title, but hear me out.
It’s easy to bemoan the march of progress and technology. To criticise the advent of new tools and blame them for how things are transpiring. I don’t. I love the new tools I have at my disposal and the relative low cost of them given their power. I love that parts of what I do can be supercharged and I don’t have to allocate days to something that is drudgery. It still allows me to think hard and be creative and in many cases allows me to explore that creativity in ways that would have been unheard of before.
What I lament is the human interaction bit. The bit that can’t be replaced by technology but is being subsumed by so-called efficiency. By all means use the shiny new toys to do things faster and better, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I miss the bits that fit around the new stuff that we are forgetting to preserve and value.
Bear with me but it feels a bit like when we visited Rome as a family a few years ago. We did all the usual tourist haunts – all on foot as Rome wonderfully permits – and we found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain. For those that haven’t visited, it is a glorious building frontage with aforesaid fountain at its base. The narrow streets surrounding it mean that it is always crammed with tourists and to try and get a picture is almost impossible. As with any such landmark, most of the assembled throng were spending more time trying to ‘pose’ in front of the fountain for their Instagram feed than genuinely appreciate the age old spectacle in front of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good photo and also wanted to mark the visit with a snap for Instagram, but the lengths that people were going to, to eliminate all other people and focus entirely on their dress shape, pout, filters, framing, leg positions and background photo-bombers, was extraordinary.
This is how I relate to what is happening now. We are all focussing on the immediacy of the tools, the ways we are being professionally perceived, the speed and impact of what we are ‘delivering’, but not taking any time to preserve the good stuff. In the case of the Trevi fountain, it’s about taking a beat to realise where you are, what you are seeing and the history that has come before. Absorb it. In professional or real world terms, it’s about understanding that too much of this ‘immediate stuff’ erodes the stuff it can’t replace and what is good and great about bona fide, human interaction.
That’s the stuff I lament. I initially used the word ‘grieve’ but it felt too strong a word. Maybe it’s what I think I will grieve if we carry on as we are.
Apologies. Every year I try to be more succinct, but fail miserably. It’s another beast I’m afraid, and once again, props to anyone who is reading this far.
The overarching vibe for the year seems to be one of cautionary panic. A correction towards what is ‘expected’ of them rather than what feels the right thing to do. There’s definitely the smell of fear permeating many walks of commercial life and this has unfortunately translated into measures of speed and efficiency, rather than quality or genuine effectiveness (I caution the distinction between perceived efficiency and impactful effectiveness). Gone seem to be the measured balance between ‘getting shit done’ and ‘let’s take a minute here’ and is seemingly replaced with a full tilt obsession with ‘looking’ quick.
Technology seems to be amplifying the distance – both emotionally and physically – between us all. In an attempt to optimise, we are removing the subtleties of human interaction that often give us things we don’t know we need. As with design ‘craft’, time is essential to learning and understanding. Removal or compression of this time runs the risk of us becoming ever less connected to our human colleagues and with that comes a whole toy-box of losses. I often talk about the difference between value with a Big V versus value with a little v, and this feels like a good example of the little v overtaking the big V.
Personally, this past year has been quite sobering for me. Domestically, I’ve had to adapt to a new parenting ‘configuration’ and professionally I’ve had to accept that maybe I wasn’t as relevant to many of the clients I thought I had a good connection with. It has certainly made me much less complacent about my future. Having had a good year preceding this one, there is a lazy and dangerous tendency to presume trajectories are either continuous or upwards, but this year has proven otherwise. It has made me question what you could describe as my ‘relationship legacy’. The ripples I’ve made in various client’s pools. Some have simply run their course. The ripples have faded.
All of which has made me think much harder about that Chapter 3 bit. Initially it had been a direct reaction to the parenting bit, but now I’m minded to think about how the next years might better suit my professional growth and security, particularly in light of a less stable and more flaky commercial landscape. I started thinking that this year had been a ‘failure’ by past measures, but in a weird way, it’s helped me future proof my thinking a bit more than I would have.
I’m cautiously optimistic (to use accountancy phraseology) about 2026. There have been better noises coming from different sectors, but this may simply be a recalibration of my expectations in light of a horribly unpredictable and slightly bruising year.
I know I’m not alone in feeling like this.
