The Creative Boom Podcast

This week, our guest is Michael Freimuth – the co-founder and creative director of Franklyn , a respected design studio in New York City. If you find yourself on Michael's personal website , you immediately get a sense of his character. There's a whole heap of humour and a dose of humility. He doesn't take himself too seriously but is passionate about the people and causes he gets behind. Whether...

Our next guest is Tom Geismar , the acclaimed American graphic designer famous for creating some of the world's most recognisable and enduring brands. Tom is a founding member of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv (formerly Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar and Chermayeff & Geismar), the highly respected design firm in New York, which he began with friends Ivan Chermayeff and Robert Brownj...

Our next guest is Rebecca Harrison , a brand designer and creative director at global agency Loveblood Creative . Today, Rebecca is based in The Lakes, where she grew up. It's a small village with close family and a tight-knit community. But quite typically, when someone has enjoyed a quieter life as a child, she wanted to experience a different adventure in a big city. And so she packed her bags...

Our next guest is Muiz , an art director, artist and designer from Manchester who specialises in Arabic and Latin branding, editorial and type design. Many of you will know why it's impossible to define precisely what you do. Job titles, after all, can be so limiting. It's why Muiz points out that he's a natural-born illustrator with an academic background in product design and fine art and also a...

Our next guest is the acclaimed American graphic designer, author and scholar Louise Sandhaus . A professor at the California Institute of the Arts, she is also the principal of Louise Sandhaus Design , a studio she founded in 1998. Born in Massachusetts, Louise began her career in the 1970s and has since seen new technology disrupt and change the creative industries in ways many of us can't imagi...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Arthur Foliard , a creative director originally from Paris who is currently based in New York City. Arthur has travelled the world since he accepted an internship at Landor Associates in San Francisco over a decade ago. He later moved to London and worked for Pentagram before joining Moving Brands for a couple of years, rising from junior to senior designer. I...

This week's guest is Katie Jones , a graphic designer from Manchester. We met Katie at the Manchester School of Art, where she is currently an associate lecturer. It's a role she adores, as she spends a lot of time doing something she loves while helping the next generation of designers. She enjoys it so much that in 2019, she scooped an MMU Teaching Award for 'Outstanding Feedback', the first tea...

We kick off season five of The Creative Boom Podcast with a topic that is, thankfully, getting louder in the creative industries. And that's mental health. We've invited Manchester-based graphic designer Graham Jones as our first guest to guide us through. Now, if you're one of those creatives who doesn't do any marketing or seek fame in this industry, then Graham's approach will appeal. He's stay...

What does it feel like to be immersed in a scene documenting the rise of the UK's most important musical genre since punk? Simon Wheatley is an acclaimed photographer who did just that, capturing grime culture as it happened. His subsequent book Don't Call Me Urban! The Time of Grime was released in 2010, offering a fascinating insight into that world through music portraiture, reportage and archi...

We speak to many people about how they got into graphic design. But we never expect anyone to admit that a dislike of their handwriting would set them off on this creative path. This was certainly the case for Alison Haigh . Realising computers were the answer to crafting neater typography, she fell in love with design. And today is Design Director at Accept & Proceed , a respected studio base...

It was the picture books from her childhood that inspired our next guest to become a freelance artist. The illustrated stories sparked a passion for drawing for Aysha Tengiz but were also what kept her sane growing up in Turkey, where her family had moved to be closer to her father’s. Now based in London, Aysha specialises in illustration, animation and textile design. Her work is playful, colourf...

Those of you who remember the glory days of web design, Web 2.0, Flash and ActionScript, when the FWA and Deviant Art were just getting started, and when everything felt new and exciting, almost like a Wild West of the Internet, then our next guest will make you smile. Elliot Jay Stocks is a legend in the web design world. He began working as a junior designer for EMI Music, which he admits was a...

If you've been running a design studio for quite some time and with some success, does it feel like you've been doing so for many years? Or do you feel like you're only just getting started? This was the curious question we posed to Max Ottignon , a co-founder of Ragged Edge in London. Launched nearly 15 years ago with friend Matt Bland, the pair wanted to create a branding agency for people who "...

Boma Krijgsman is a cultural champion who is currently part of the team at JDO in London. As a brand ambassador and talent manager, she helps the creative agency raise its profile to attract clients and diverse talent. A self-proclaimed 'hustle bunny', Boma began her career travelling the world, working incredibly hard and picking up skills and experience along the way. She spent two years in Viet...

What was it like to move to the UK from Delhi in the 1970s, aged just five years old? For Gush Mundae, founder of creative agency Bulletproof , he felt that, as an immigrant, he was never "invited in", so he admits it was a real hustle from the beginning. Hip-hop was just emerging in Britain, which he became obsessed with – along with all the associated culture, like graffiti art and sneakers. But...

Our guest this week is Marina Willer , an award-winning graphic designer and filmmaker and one of Pentagram's many respected partners. Before joining the global agency, she was head creative director for Wolff Olins in London. With an MA in Graphic Design from the Royal College of Art, Marina has enjoyed an incredible career so far. She's led the design of major identities, including Rolls Royce,...

Mat Voyce describes himself as a "non-award-winning" graphic and motion designer based in the UK – not only because he hasn't yet won any awards and wants to joke about it, but perhaps to prove a point that you don't need a trophy to be a success. And a success Mat has truly been. Specialising in 2D type animation, Mat has become known for his pioneering style that explores illustrative kinetic ty...

Darnell Brown is a growth strategist and educator based in North Carolina. Originally a graphic designer, he now helps businesses to harness their superpowers, hack their time and impact lives through creative courses and consulting.  It’s a career he carved out for himself after suffering the effects of burnout during his days of crafting logos and building brand identities. It was 2008, at the p...

For episode 74, our guest is Sarah Hyndman , a graphic designer and researcher and the person behind Type Tasting – a practice that's on a mission to change the way we think and talk about typography by making it fun and exciting for everyone. Sarah specialises in making typography entertaining and relevant with humour, a dash of theatre and lashings of audience participation. And she is also the...

We're kicking off season four of The Creative Boom Podcast with Constance Fleuriot – a writer, games developer and producer based in Bristol who runs her own game design company, Pretty Digital . Constance also runs Grrrl Games to support women and girls of all ages to make games. A big part of her practice is helping people to develop ideas and research plans – and she encourages people of all ag...

Venessa Scott  is a Manchester-based prolific artist and a specialist in creative education whose reputation and artistic practice have grown significantly in recent years, leading to two commissions for Blue Peter, one of which involved her designing a Blue Peter badge. Venessa is also behind one of the UK's tallest murals, celebrating the pioneering work of Sylvia Pankhurst. She's won awards, be...

Dave Smyth  is a designer and developer based in the UK. Over the last few years, Dave has become increasingly interested in privacy and surveillance capitalism. He sometimes shares his thoughts on these topics via his  blog  – from looking at our permanent digital records and how to de-Google ourselves, to read receipts, Twitter lists and cookies. With so much happening in the tech world right no...

Ananya Rao-Middleton is a London-based freelance illustrator and chronic illness activist who uses her work to express herself post-brain injury and as someone living with multiple sclerosis (MS).  Her work is vivid, vibrant and explorative. Eye-catching colours and powerful affirmations are a common feature, too, as Ananya describes herself as a feminist illustrator and someone who wants to suppo...

Tim Easley is an award-winning illustrator, designer and photographer from London who's probably best known for his bright palette and bold lines, as well as playful characters and hand-drawn lettering. Influenced by urban kitsch, nature and neon signage, he works across many mediums, including hand-drawn skateboards, canvases, plasticine sculptures, painted basketballs and digital pieces. Tim cam...

Anoosha Syed is an illustrator and character designer for animation whose clients include Google, Netflix, and Warner Brothers. Born in Pakistan, Anoosha has spent much of her life moving around the world, growing up in Switzerland, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and settling in Toronto. She studied Illustration in Switzerland and began her career in animation, starting on the preschool series 'Dot' for Spr...