Gold Nuggets from Hannah Clinch

November 16, 2020 Kaye Symington

It’s time for another Gold Nuggets, our opportunity to meet with and talk to other small businesses who we really admire. Hannah Clinch from Tacit-Tacit is another one of those brilliant people. We met Hannah a few years ago now and have left every conversation filled with new ideas. We love Hannah’s real focus on place and heritage. She’s always looking for opportunities for her local community, and when could that be more important than now?

Tell us about yourself and Tacit-Tacit.

I am a designer and a researcher with a background in social enterprise and community development.

I trained initially as a textile designer, but after a year working in trend prediction, I realised I couldn’t reconcile my environmentalism with the goals of the fashion industry. So, I had to rethink. After a few years of working in cafes, offices and the occasional farm, I managed to get work in community development. I set up a Green Map initiative in Glasgow in 2004 - 2006, working with volunteers from the Glasgow Electron Club and Franki Finch (of Glasgow-based Finch and Fouracre) to pull together data about reuse opportunities across the city, including charity shops and community projects. The map called Dear Green Place: a Glasgow Guide to Reuse was designed, published and distributed across the city, and this project helped me to realise the potential of using design to support community-based enterprise.

I went on to coordinate various projects, engaging people with the principles of sustainable development and material reuse. Eventually, I took up a post at Glasgow Wood Recycling; a brilliant enterprise committed to social and environmental justice.

I relocated to Dunoon in 2011, with kids. This move curtailed work opportunities, and I started to focus back on design and project management. I returned to study, specifically to research the creative industries and rural economic development at GSA’s Innovation School in 2016. I set up Tacit-Tacit in 2018 as a design and research agency on a mission to nurture positive growth.

What inspired Tacit-Tacit?

Tacit-Tacit was inspired by my research into creative enterprise support in a rural context. The area I live in is classified as a fragile rural region. Through speaking to multiple people and organisations about their enterprise challenges, I recognised that the current support infrastructure wasn’t working for freelancers and home-based workers or women with care responsibilities trying to develop work opportunities against a backdrop of unstable incomes and social isolation.

I now collaborate with clients and local partners to provide design orientated support for small and social enterprises, whilst developing side hustles informed by my research.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew in your first year of starting out?

How isolating working from home can be. I think more people are probably recognising the benefits of working from home, which is both environmental and financial (to a point), but after 10 years of the home office and no accessible or flexible childcare solutions locally, I have struggled to develop a business at a rate that is investable and I know that I am not alone.

What are your top 3 tips for working in a rural community?

Make people like you: Building a reputation after taking time out for family can be challenging, particularly if you can’t get to networking events because they take place in cities or far off places. If you have care responsibilities and are, are on a low income and can’t take the time out to travel then you are literally not ‘in the room’ for connecting to people and opportunities.

This has started to change because of the COVID effect. I hope more online events that enable remote participants to continue to be offered by national networks. I set up a local network for freelancers and home-based workers which has really helped me to meet peers. It has been a successful tactic. I have met some fantastic individuals in Dunoon and wider Cowal who are working away at a diverse range of business ideas.

Accept help from people: I need to say a big thank you to Paved with Gold, Helen Voce and Jane McDevitt from Maraid design who have generously provided me with desk space in Glasgow. This type of kindness and practical support really makes a difference, as it connects you back into work networks, bringing you into contact with opportunities and training that can be lacking in more remote places. So buddying up with people in different places is something to consider too.

Know your value: Pricing is critical if you are self-employed. Design is a hard thing to price and increasingly visual design tools are accessible to clients in a way that further disrupts the market. What I offer is more than design to clients. It is strategy and support based on years of experience. I know from talking to clients that they appreciate what I do, but it is challenging when you are starting out on a new venture to get this correct and I still don’t always manage it but am trying to improve.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

This isn’t really advice, more an approach to working when you believe environmentally sustainable development is the essential goal of your work - ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism in the work’.

What’s your ambition for Tacit-Tacit?

To grow a company in Dunoon that makes design accessible and is centred around the idea of #positivegrowth.

What song motivates you and why?

I don’t tend to have music on at my desk if I am writing, but when I am designing I love a bit of Laura Cantrel. If I need a cry and a smile at the same time then John Grant’s GMF; the best funeral tune ever.

Thank you, Hannah, and exciting news just in! Tacit-Tacit is opening a new design-oriented, collaboration space in Dunoon later in the year. This will be called the POP (People of Place) shop and offer desk and workshop space to freelancers and visitors to this beautiful seaside town. The online POP shop is open now featuring the work of local illustrator Walter Newton and Tacit Tacit.

Gold Nuggets from Katie Treggiden

April 15, 2020 Kaye Symington

This week we caught up with Katie Treggiden who has written for many of your favourite design publications. Katie shares her story, from quitting her job in advertising to follow her lifelong passion and making her five-year-old self proud.

Tell us about yourself

I have wanted to be a writer since I was five years old, but it took me until my 30s to pursue my dream. I started writing a blog called confessions of a design geek, which was a place to document my growing interest in design, making and sustainability. To my absolute shock, it was nominated for mydeco’s Best Interior Design Blog in Great Britain within five weeks of launch, an award it went on to win. That gave me the confidence to make the leap into writing full time and I haven’t looked back since. I have written for all the titles I grew up reading (The Guardian, Elle Decoration, Design Milk, Crafts Magazine, Viewpoint), I have crowdfunded, launched and edited an independent magazine called Fiera and I am currently working on my fifth book. I also work with craft and design brands to help them tell their stories. I think I am finally doing my five-year-old self proud!

What’s the one thing you wish you knew in your first year as a writer?

That I would make it, that it would all be okay – that ten years on, I would be doing a Gold Nuggets interview to share my story! Most of the people in my life thought I was absolutely mad to walk away from a lucrative career in advertising to follow this ‘pipe dream’ and sometimes mine was the only voice of encouragement and belief – even that got pretty quiet at times. It would have been wonderful to know for sure that I would one day be able to make a living doing what I love.

What are your top tips for working from home?

1. Get up and get dressed just as if you were going into an office. It puts you in the right mindset for the day. Wear something comfy, sure, but something that also makes you feel confident and ready to take on the day. Paint your nails or polish your shoes – whatever gets you in the zone.

2. Get comfortable in your own company. I moved from the buzzy atmosphere of an advertising agency to a studio at the bottom of my garden and it took a lot of getting used to. Having a dog helps – I chat away to him all day!

3. Invest in a proper office chair and desk set up. Your knees and elbows should be at right angles and the top of your screen at eye-level. I did my back untold damage in my first few years of working from home by sitting on a dining chair hunched over a laptop.

What was the best bit of advice you were given and who gave it to you?

Before I set off backpacking as a teenager, my step-father told me that if I was half-excited and half-terrified, it would turn out to be one of the best things I ever did. He was absolutely right, and I have taken that as life advice ever since. Today, I rarely embark on a new adventure if it doesn’t deliver those two emotions in equal measure.

What’s your ambition as a writer?

That’s a big question! When I started out, my ambitions were to write for the Guardian and to write a book, so part of me thinks I should be happy with that and kick back and enjoy it. The other part of me (the part that is in charge!) is looking for the next half-exciting/half-terrifying adventure, which might be a TED Talk, a Sunday Times Bestseller or a column in the Guardian. Those are my big hairy audacious goals, but they are really all just ways to use writing to bring about positive social change – words that make a difference – that’s what motivates me.

What song motivates you and why?

I get easily distracted by music with lyrics so I tend to listen to jazz or electronica when I’m writing, but if I really need to get into the zone, it’s got to be classical cello. I have recently completed a part-time Masters (History of Design, University of Oxford) and it was Yoyo Ma that got me through. His rendition of Bach’s Cello Suite 1 in G Major is just perfect.

Thank you Katie! If you have questions take a look at Katie’s website as well as her Ask Me (Almost!) Anything 20 minute consultancy sessions with the money raised going to FareShare, a charity that delivers surplus food to vulnerable people.

Gold Nuggets from Maraid Design

March 9, 2020 Kaye Symington

Maraid Design works closely with arts and heritage organisations to help them build websites that are fully accessible while at the same time being really pretty. We also worked together on Glasgow Print Fair, so obviously we think they’re pretty ace. This week we’re speaking with Jane all about how to manage side projects alongside your every day business.

Tell us about yourself and Maraid Design?

Maraid Design is a web design studio run by myself and Richard Claxton, we are based in Glasgow and Leeds. We both come from a background of National Museum web teams before working together at Maraid. We like to work with like-minded organisations whose activities have a positive impact on society. We’re passionate about science, education, visual arts, not-for-profit, heritage and culture.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew in your first year?

Looking back I think innocence is bliss. If I’d realised how many skills it takes to run your own business I might not have done it. In reality, there is no rush and I’ve enjoyed slowly building my business and gaining those skills over the years. I’m still learning.

Alongside producing interesting work in your day job, you also work on brilliant side projects, how do you balance that?

In 2018 Neal Whittington (of Present & Correct fame) and I self-published our book Matchbloc. The book features Eastern Bloc matchbox labels from the 1950s to early 1980s, from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia and beyond. It features over 400 labels covering animals, food, war, sport, industry, architecture, the arts, outdoors, transport, children, household and space. It took two years to put together. A year on and I’m pleased to say the first run of a 1000 copies have sold out.

In 2019 and still quite new to Glasgow I was looking for a local side project. Kaye and I hosted the first Glasgow Print Fair. It was brilliant to see a bunch of printmakers that we love all in the same room. We’re starting to plan 2020 - corona permitting.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my side projects are involved with illustration and print. They complement our work and give me a break from digital life. It’s nice to work with other people too. They do take time but are fun as long as they are not year-round or have a completion date.

We do have one ongoing longterm project - although it doesn’t take much time from us! Over the past 5 years, we have been commissioning Maraid portraits. The illustrations started because we wanted to make our website about page more interesting, we also get to support and work with all the talented people we admire. Artists and illustrations include Drew Millward, Kristyna Baczynsk, Hannah Warren, Adam Higton, Luke Drozd and Ben Javens.

What is the best bit of advice you have been given and who gave it to you?

I can’t remember where I heard it - but we use this on every project. When someone gets in touch with work we weigh up three things; the niceness of the client, the budget and the brief. If two out of three work we are happy. If it’s one out of three then walk away. If it’s a three out of three then it’s a dream job!

We’d love to know what song motivates you while you’re working and why?

I love to listen to podcasts when I design and music when I code. One song!? For motivation, let’s go with sExpress although I might have a little dance first.

Gold Nuggets from Special Projects

January 30, 2020 Kaye Symington

Special Projects are an award-winning product design and innovation studio based in London. They work with huge organisations and small startups to help them create products, apps and services that are completely different from the things that we use today. A lot of the work they do transforming these organisations is heavily under non-disclosure agreements, but they still show us the beauty of their work. Don’t take our word for it, check out their Instagram or website to see a world that is both calming and magical.

Last year, we chatted with Clara co-founder of Special Projects, to get her Gold Nuggets about their agency.

Tell us about yourself and Special Projects.

We are a London based design and invention studio. My background is in Product Design, Adrian's is in electronic engineering and magic (yes, he is a magician!). We met studying a mad inventor course at the RCA and never separated since.