We’re a relatively new design agency, and as such we’re still discovering how we work and ultimately what direction we want the business to go. Naturally one of the hot topics in the studio is ‘How do we grow our business?’. Last week we attended the ‘Grow Your Own event at the Design Council. With an opening introduction of ‘Looking for ways to grow your design business?’ we made sure we got our names on the list to get advice on everything from intellectual property to international markets.

The Design Council has a simple philosophy – They place design at the heart of growth and renewal in Britain. As one of the world’s leading design institutions, they are a centre of new thinking and insight into new ways to do business. We learnt a huge amount at the event, but two main points stuck with us after the visit:

1. The Design Council are there and supportive of us, and all creative studios.
2. That managing client relationships is one of the most important aspects of running a design agency.

One of the guides we picked up was written by Creative Choices and was on the subject of Managing Client Relationships. It was such a great insight that we wanted to share the information with everyone.

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Roya Hamburger is an artist and illustrator based in Amsterdam. Her work is a mix of illustration, photography and typography which aims to cross the boundries between the worlds of commercial illustration and fine art. Since graduating from the esteemed Willem De Kooning Academy of Arts in Rotterdam, Roya has worked for a long list of international clients including Cosmopolitan, Elle, M Magazine, British Airways, Postbank, Deloitte and Martini.

Roya was kind enough to take some time out to join in with our Ten Questions series.

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When discussing ‘great’ British designers, the same handful of names tend to pop up again and again. Alan Fletcher, Peter Saville, Neville Brody… We all know these names and the canon of work they’ve produced over the years and, with good reason, we admire them.

Recently however, a less familiar face has emerged from the shadows, a designer who has been a hugely important part of the British graphic design industry for 50 years. The name John Lloyd will be one the majority of designers haven’t heard of but the body of work he has quietly been amassing over the years and can now be found in a new online archive showing the fruits of his illustrious career.

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We started the Mat Dolphin blog as a simple platform to share information – we’re constantly consuming design and we meet a great number of inspirational people involved in our industry which gives us plenty of design-related ‘stuff’ to share. However, as well as having this dialogue with our peers we always saw the blog as being a great way to converse with clients. From previous experience working in design agencies, there’s all to often a barrier between client and designer that, in our opinion, doesn’t need to be there.

With this in mind, we thought it would be a good idea to write an easy to follow ‘guide to briefing’ to make the process easier for clients and designers alike.

The design process starts and ends with the client. A person or organisation has a design requirement and approach the designer – so far, all simple enough. The next stage, the client relaying exactly what it is they want to achieve, can be a bit more complicated.

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