Never Not Creative

In our final episode of Season 2 and 2019, Andy and Sarah catch-up with the formidable "Monty" AKA Sarah Montague, Creative Director at ooh! Media. With her career as a Solid Gold dancer over before it even began, Monty got into the world of advertising. 23 years later and it's still all about the words, the pictures, the gold nugget of a human insight, where you're connecting with your audience a...

We caught lettering artist and typographer, Craig Black as he was whizzing around Australia for his national AGDA tour. But better than that, we also invited his wife Alison to bring her expertise as a mental health nurse to our conversation about mental health and the life of a creative. Craig has shared a lot about his personal story, "and while he's the happiest he's ever been" he's inevitably...

Sarah and Andy catch up with Shruti Rai about designing for the edge cases and how to embrace audiences and use cases that we might not be comfortable with. Diversity becomes a major theme of our conversation and inevitably, the benefits that a more diverse team can bring to the perspective and solutions for a project. Shruti is an experience designer that counts R/GA on her resumé among many othe...

This episode, Andy is in Tasmania for Foundry Live. Foundry Live is a conference  by Foundry Creative School in Tasmania. Every few months they invite industry leaders to speak to their students and local businesses. At the end of September, Andy attended alongside Todd Henderson, Director of architecture firm, Cumulus; Chi Ryan, Experience Strategy Director at pwc and Marcel Jacobs, Design L...

Professor David Alais is a psychologist and neuroscientist at The University of Sydney. Sarah and Andy caught up with David to understand better how the creative mind works, and how we can do a better job of looking after it. David's research focuses on how we perceive the world through our senses, how we interpret and create our reality, and how we deal with ambiguity and imagine solutions. This...

This episode is packed full of advice on running a business as a creative – get your notebooks out! Andy and Sarah caught up with Emily Cohen, creative business consultant and author of Brutally Honest. We discussed the challenges facing creative businesses, changing models, how to deal with clients, and how to get serious about business. Emily shared why it's good to be transparent with your empl...

Andy and Sarah caught up with Chris Doyle who last year started an initiative called This Is Not University. TINU is a mentoring program that Chris started to help bridge the gap between education and career as he realised that he didn’t have the time / money to be able to commit to hiring interns. Almost a year in and Chris joins us with Wilson Leung, the first participant in the program and now...

Our industry is nothing without the people who make it. So, what do we do to make sure they're thriving? How are we helping them grow? In this episode, Andy and Sarah catch up with Manon Pietra, People and Culture Director at PHD Media . We discuss how to talk about and develop job satisfaction, the minimum standards of a mentally healthy workplace that you should expect from your employer and wha...

Australian Design Radio and Never Not Creative hosts Matt Leach and Andy Wright found themselves in Brisbane together at The Design Conference. Therefore, it was a no-brainer to combine mics and interview the founders of Ustwo, Sinx and Mills about the ups and downs of running a business and what it's like to do all of that as best mates. You can follow Ustwo and Mills at @ustwo or @millsustwo - t...

After a month of high quality events in the creative industry, Sarah and Andy unpack how important it is to get out to find inspiration, community and spend some time on your own self-development. Sarah attended Rare by Google , Semi-Permanent and The Design Conference (TDC), while Andy was also a co-host of TDC. We discuss the great job these events are doing, why it's important to take the time...

This episode was sparked by a tweet. On the 2nd April, Andy tweeted, "Sometimes it feels like we really don't want to create a better industry. When you look at what we do to the people trying to start out or get ahead it's simply baffling..." It was followed by a series of examples and stories that people had shared through the Never Not Creative community. Quite a few of you chipped in with thou...

Big questions in this episode. Is the lack of diversity in the creative industry holding us back? Can we be more creative as a result? What's it like to be a person of colour in our industry? Jane and G work in a Sydney creative agency. Both people of colour from London, they're certainly a minority in the Australian creative industry. What has their experience been so far? How can we help more pe...

Maggie Tang (ex Frost, Houston Group and current Head of Brand at Ableton), and Christian Hewitt ex R/GA, part of InVision's Design Leadership Forum and current Head of Design at Streamtime) join Andy and Sarah to discuss what it's like to make the decision to go in-house as a creative. Will you compromise your creativity? Do you get bored working on one brand? Are the hours and your mental health...

This episode Andy and Sarah discuss a recent Never Not Creative event –  The Future Of Internships. Should they or shouldn't they be paid? How do we make sure that internships aren't just accessible to those who can afford them? What stories exist around unpaid internships? What's the law? Why is our industry breaking it? What's the role of education in improving this situation? Included on t...

We catch up with Katy Cowan, the founder of Creative Boom. The online magazine for the creative industry that supports and provides resources for anyone working (or thinking of) in the creative industry. Katy shares stories of freedom, growing a side project, and finding the balance of doing what you love AND helping others. Is growing business the goal, or should we focus on growing ourselves and...

In this episode we get frank about the experiences of women in the creative industry. Mirella Marie is the founder of Womentor. An international mentor network for female graphic designers. Mirella talks to us about the inspiration for Womentor and how it has evolved into a global program. We also find the link between design and crime as Mirella shares her passion for criminology and the part she...

It's the second half of our review show. Sarah and Andy discuss internships with the highlights from our chats with Adam Thorn (journalist at Mumbrella) and Dean Jacobson (a creative from Melbourne). We get into parental leave, re-capping on our chat with Kate Pollard (Co-founder, Circle In) and finish off by re-opening the discussions with AGDA from the end of the year. As always, please share yo...

To kick off season 2, we review the best of season 1. Andy and co-host Sarah, go back to the start to discuss vulnerability and struggle with some of the highlights from Andy's chat with Josie Young and Tina Victoria Afshar. We also talk egos and feelings with Kit Palaskas and re-cap on the magical 5hr working day with Charl Laubscher from Love and Money.  Part 2 is up next week. If you'd lik...

In the second part of our chat with Nic Eldridge, CEO of AGDA, we focus on the future. What are the challenges facing AGDA as we enter 2019? How will AGDA remain relevant? Nic also adds some clarity on who AGDA is, who it's for and what it isn't! This is our last episode of the year. Please rate or review us, share with your friends etc etc. That would be a nice little Xmas gift and take no time a...

As we move into the final weeks of the year, we have special guest, Nic Eldridge. Nic's the CEO of AGDA (the Australian Graphic Design Association) and a major voice in the design industry. In this first part of 2, we talk about the recent AGDA awards, the role of a jury, how to pick one, and how work wins awards. If you like the podcast, please give us a rating on your podcast platform of choice...

In this episode, we talk to Kate Pollard. Kate, is the co-founder of Circle In, a startup focused on creating a community to improve working conditions for working mums. It’s a big issue and one that can help with other challenges around gender, fairness and equality in our industry. You can find out more about Circle In at https://www.circlein.com.au. They’ve got great resources, articles and mor...

This week we launched the results of the Mentally Healthy 2018 research – one of the largest studies into the mental health of the creative, media and marketing industries. If you didn't get the chance to watch the live stream or attend the event at Twitter then don't worry. This episode is all about the results. Visit nevernotcreative.org for a link to the slides if you'd like to follow along as...

Part 2 of our chat with Jules Ehrhardt, former co-owner of Ustwo and founder of Fktry, a creative capital studio. Jules talks about future models, bringing all of yourself to work and how we need to take responsibility for change. Follow him on Medium and Twitter @ezyjules

Jules Ehrhardt is obsessed. Obsessed about the future of our industry and changing the terms of business for the creative class. How do we stop creativity being seen as a commodity? Can we make equity for expertise a reality? What does a new creative economy look like? Jules is a former Co-Owner of Ustwo, the author of The State Of The Digital Nation (look it up on Medium) and founder of Pledge Pa...

This episode, Andy's on his own. So this is the perfect opportunity to let you know what's been going on and what's coming up in Never Not Creative land. From some early insight into the results of the Mentally Healthy survey to who you can look forward to hearing from in the next episode. Plus, news on upcoming events in Sydney and Melbourne. Thanks for listening, please like, review or share on...