Kav Chats with LBB
1. Tell us about your current role and design specialism(s)?
I’m currently a Designer at Mr. President, we’re an independent Creative Agency, working on advertising and brand design projects. The joy I find from working somewhere a bit smaller is that you often get to wear different hats.
2. What drew you to design in the first place and how has your design career evolved?
Oddly enough, what drew me to design was number plates, Xbox, and growing up in a house full of art.
I was obsessed with car number plates from a young age, how mixing numbers and letters could spell out hidden words (more on that later). And as for Xbox… at 11 years old, I started making logos and YouTube backgrounds for my friends’ Call of Duty clans. I didn’t realise it then, but those were the first few dominoes that would eventually lead me to where I am today.
My career has evolved from that kid in his bedroom, meeting people online from all over the world and teaching himself Photoshop and Cinema 4D, to a designer in a creative agency, crafting adverts and brand identities. It still feels a bit surreal some days, and I love that.
3. What aspects of design do you get really nerdy about personally?
Type. The Process. And Type.
My love of type started early. Back to that numberplate obsession: it turns out, it's so ANPR and speed cameras can read them instantly, even at high speeds or long distances. That technical functionality really stuck with me and got me thinking about how that same clarity translates to human reading.
Years later, I wrote my dissertation on it: An Exploration of What Makes Type Legible. Spoiler: there isn’t one definitive answer. But I closed it with a quote from Zuzana Licko’s 1990 interview with Emigre: “You read best what you read most.”
I’m also in love with the process. As creatives, we’re so lucky, it consumes you in the best possible way. You become acutely aware of the world around you: menus, street signs, architecture, everything turns into a reference or an idea waiting to be used. There’s something magical about a scribble on a napkin when you're miles away from your desk, or a half-baked thought stored in your Notes app at 2am. And then there’s the hoarding of packaging, magazines, and train tickets from trips abroad… they all become part of the work in the end.
4. There are so many new design tools out - what tools do you like to use and why? (whether digital platforms or old fashioned pen and paper!)
Before I get into the shiny new stuff (yes, including AI). I’ll die on this hill: pen and paper are elite.
Even if no one else ever sees the scribbles, I find them invaluable. My sketchbook helps me untangle ideas before I jump on the computer. The details are undeniably important, but it’s far too easy to get lost in them and lose sight of the bigger idea.
In the last couple of years, I’ve been diving into motion design, exploring how it can bring creative concepts to life and help sell an idea. Whether it’s presenting to your CD or pitching to a client, motion adds emotion. Chester Zoo by How&How and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano by Landor are perfect examples of the feeling motion can give you. It makes things feel real, and that can be the difference between a maybe and a yes.
As for AI, yeah, it’s moving at a mind-boggling pace. Will it take over the world? Hopefully not. But I’ve taken a positive approach (as I tend to do with most things) and have been using it since day one. Whether it's for speeding up ideation or testing out concepts, I think the key is staying curious and hands-on.
5. What are the most persistent misconceptions about your particular design specialism that you see across the advertising and marketing landscape?
One of the most persistent misconceptions in advertising is that designers are just makers, that our role begins and ends with execution.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Bringing designers in earlier in the process doesn’t just elevate the craft, it strengthens the idea itself. We bring a visual understanding of communication, sure, but also offer conceptual and art directional thinking when given the space to do so.
Designers come from all kinds of backgrounds, and that variety of experience adds value. Whether someone took a traditional route or a more unconventional one, the different perspectives we bring help shape ideas, not just decorate them.
6. Which design projects throughout your career have been the most satisfying to work on and why?
There are 3 projects that spring to mind. The first, which happens to be one of my very first projects as a Junior Designer, allowed me to experience what design is capable of beyond looking nice and increasing the sales of a product. Whilst at ACNE, we created ‘The Playbooks’ for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. We developed a series of 6 illustrated books in 4 languages to help enable The Games to go ahead safely with COVID-19 in mind. The outcome? Zero cases of COVID-19 reported throughout The 2020 Olympic Games.
The second, ‘Uniquely Thornton’s,’ a campaign I worked on at Mr. President in 2024. It proved to be a great opportunity for me to push for real-life craft with a hand-drawn chocolate headline rather than going down the CGI route. Because of this, it was a perfect chance to collaborate with the talented typography artist, Alison Carmichael. It was a project that I had so much input in throughout and experienced the process from inception to completion, and seeing it out in the real world from London to Leeds was the icing on the cake.
And lastly, ‘Bouquet United,’ a proactive idea from Mr. President. ‘Bouquet United’ creates bouquets for men in their favourite team colours. Why? Because when we think of a gift for Father’s Day, we settle for just a card, unlike Mother’s Day, where we’re compelled to reach for a beautiful bunch of flowers. So we set out to encourage people to consider buying flowers on Father’s Day. I loved working on this project as we collaborated with local florists, and it was a unique and fun challenge to tackle.
7. Who are your design heroes and why?
As soon as I saw this section, it felt like an opportunity to say thank you to my design heroes, who are all people I’ve been very lucky enough to work with and for over the last five years.
Andy Lester at Childish Design, my first ever job, a 12-week freelance/internship stint. Childish was a small design agency formed in 2020 to give students graduating throughout COVID-19 an opportunity to learn on the job, and Andy gave me so many invaluable lessons throughout that period. Reminding me continually that we often lose our childish playfulness as we grow older, and we should bring it back and find it within ourselves, as it often helps us find creative solutions to briefs. He has inspired me to always make time for people who need my help, whether that be someone in the office or someone messaging and asking to chat about the industry on LinkedIn or Instagram.
James Ranson, the man, the myth, the CD. James was a Creative Director of mine at ACNE London. Although not a designer, in the two years we worked together, I learnt so much about storytelling, an incredibly important skill as a creative. He made it so evident to me that bringing your whole self to work and your ideas is what makes you special. I’m yet to meet someone who writes and reads a manifesto like him.
Luke Ridgway, the boss that I know if I called him at 11pm with a design problem, he’d have been there to help me solve it a million times over. Over the two years we worked together, he taught me that you can always make more time and that my job was to fight as hard as I could for the best possible creative solution and worry about everything else afterward.
Andy Sandoz. Where do I begin? I was a junior designer, and I vividly remember a Zoom call we had one night where another designer and I were designing a deck for a pitch. Andy asked me to skew a white word on a dark navy background by a couple of degrees so that it feels like a planet floating in space. This is where it all clicked for me - design is far more than how it looks, it’s how it feels. Following by finishing the call by telling us about De La Soul. Highly recommend.
8. Thinking of people at the beginning of their career, what advice would you give them for navigating this constantly changing field?
Take your time, please don’t rush.
Never stop learning.
Meet lots of different people.
Take inspiration from everything around you.
Don’t be afraid to be bad at something, you’re allowed to get things wrong.
Fall in love with the process.
Think big.
9. What’s going on at the moment in design that’s getting you particularly excited?
I’m seeing and feeling a shift of increased interest in branding work. In a time where everything and anything can be created by anyone due to the increase in readily available software and AI, brand messaging needs to be stronger than ever before. I think we’ll see more creative and advertising agencies moving into this space and adding this to their roster, which is incredibly exciting, as we’ll start to see completely new and interesting takes on what brands can be.