Colin Grist: Being a Creative Director

3 Aug

Col is Co-founder and Creative Director at Few and Far, a creative studio based in Leeds, UK that's using digital innovation to help charities and do-good businesses make the world a better place.

Portrait of Colin. He is a white male with a strongly defined beard and he looking off to the distance with a neutral look.

What’s the most straightforward way to explain who you are and what you do?

I'm Creative Director at Few and Far. I manage and produce all of the creative output in the studio - basically, I do the cool designy-bits!

What does a normal day look like?

I have a 'default diary' which I pretty much follow to the minute each day.

So, a day starts around 7:30am for me, I drive into our offices in Leeds, normally listening to a podcast on the drive in, or something to help me wake up. From 9am to 11am I do admin, such as catching up with my clients, connecting with new people, having conversations etc.

At 11am I read my emails for 30 minutes - it's the first time each day I will look at them (I turned off notifications for my emails last year so I didn't look at them all the time and it was a life-changer!). from 11-30am until 1pm I do 'fulfilment' which is doing any design work that needs doing. Lunch at 1pm where I'll take the dog out for a stroll (she comes to the office with me) and grab a coffee. 1:30pm until 4pm is more fulfilment, with 4pm-5pm checking emails for the last time and planning for the next day.

What's the most enjoyable part of your job?

Is just doing my job a cop-out answer? I'm genuinely lucky to love what I do, I see a lot and know of a lot of people who don't enjoy what they do so I'm really glad I'm in the position I'm in. If I was to whittle my answer down, I would say still being able to do creative work, showing it to clients and then getting that 'wow' moment from them will never get old.

What did it take to get to where you are today?

I'm self taught so it was a lot of hard work when I was younger, especially to try and get a foot in the door somewhere. I've done this for over 15 years now and have worked at the highest level as both a Developer and a Designer and I'm really proud that I was able to do that with no 'formal' training. Now running my own agency was always the dream, since I was about 16, so to now be doing it 20 years later is something I'm really proud of. I believe if I had never taken the leap at trying my own agency venture I would have regretted it for eternity.

Are they any projects in your portfolio that particularly stand out for you?

Probably two! We're really proud of the storytelling project we did for homeless charity St. George's Crypt called "Then & Now...", they asked us for a 'simple timeline' but we wanted to do so much more. The charity is over 90 years old so we knew there would be much more to their history - and there was! It was a real rush to finish, and had a really small budget, but we just wanted to make the best thing we could for such a great charity. The impact it made and the difference it made to their charity was massive too, helping them increase their online donations ten-fold.

More recently is the project I'm probably most proud of. I'm unsure if it's because it's just the most recent, but I don't think it is, I think it's the reaction we had when we first showed it to the client. We're undertaking a rebrand project for a children's cancer charity called Lennox and when we first revealed the new brand to them, there were some tears of joy from the founder of the charity, who had to stop us midway through the presentation to say how blown away they were by what they were seeing. That was a pretty amazing feeling and I don't think I've ever had a better justification for why I do what I do.

What are the main digital tools you could not do without?

I don't think I'd even be a designer if Photoshop wasn't something I had at 14; So big shout out to Creative Cloud, which I still use for branding and illustrative work. I use Sketch for web design, it's been a fantastic tool for me the last few years. Slack is pretty integral to our business, keeping in touch and having channels for projects has been great, we even use it with some of our clients to allow them to communicate easily with us.

Any advice for people wanting to do a similar role to you?

For designers, I'd just say try not to compare yourself to others out there. There's a tendency on social media to post incredible work, but nobody ever shows the work that didn't look so great, or that failed miserably. We all experience good and bad projects as designers - it's part of the job, so don't ever compare yourself to someone who looks amazing and think you can't do what they do.

For Creative Directors or people running their own business - try and enjoy it, it can become too much about management or finances, but if you still have a part of the role that is what got you into that position in the first place then you won't go wrong.

And finally, what do you enjoying doing outside of work?

I'm a qualified gym instructor and teach dance classes weekly in my local area, I really enjoy it! Doing exercise in a group like that is a really great way of working out that doesn't ever feel like a workout, so if you're not a fan of the gym, I'd recommend looking into some group-based classes near you!