Made for Business in LA: Today at Apple and It’s Nice That’s panel series begins!

Today at Apple is teaming up with us at It's Nice That for Made for Business, a panel series that asks what’s required to build a business from your own practice in the creative industry today. Hosted in Apple Stores as part of the same programme where Apple hosts ongoing photography, design and coding sessions, each panel assembles a roster of remarkable creative talent who’ve all walked varied paths in getting to where they are now. 

Some of its panellists are prospering solo entrepreneurs (or solopreneurs), who, as a one-person army, have forged a sustainable, successful business and a big client list to boot. Others are solo-to-studio founders, who, whilst starting solo, have since grown blossoming teams and entire studios around that original vision. Regardless of their individual setups, the panel conversations are set to be as compelling as they are practical, detailing the nitty-gritty of pricing, positioning, and workflow, as well as their greater creative vision. 

First up, in Los Angeles on October 7, designer James Junk, creative director Ramisha Sattar and Mouthwash Studio’s Abraham Campillo takes the floor at The Grove Apple Store, LA. Spots are limited! Sign up below.

Made for Business takes place in Los Angeles on October 7, welcoming three creatives who share very different ideas of what building a business out of your own practice can actually look like. Multi-hyphenates. Entrepreneurs. Founders. Whatever the moniker, they have built businesses on curiosity and, in some cases, thriving studios made up of a handful of friends. For Abraham Campillo, partner and creative director at Mouthwash Studio, the multidisciplinary practice grew from a few friends working out of a coffee shop. Soon, as its client list broadened, so too did the walls of the studio – with the founder’s first office on Skid Row – along with the scope the studio could offer. Early-stage startups changed into global brands, and Mouthwash Studio’s uber-polished, systematically exciting body of work began to add up. In the panel, Abraham will walk through how the studio’s founders turned a shared curiosity and obsession with craft into a full creative practice, from first concept to cultivated brand world.

Ramisha Sattar joins the panel, examining how her unique combination of traditional, analogue techniques and her entanglement with digital culture can thrive in the mainstream. The Pakistani-American creative director and designer will detail how she got established as an artist before expanding her practice into content creation, combining a prowess for building digital tools and establishing communities to forge entirely new visual worlds. Ramisha’s integration into the Apple ecosystem also plays a big part in her practice, with each product – MacBook Pro, iMac, iPhone, iPad – becoming key players in her creative process. On stage, she’ll show how documenting this process along the way has become as important as the work itself.

James Junk, the LA-based designer, art director and educator, will share the spotlight – and round off the trio – discussing how he’s built a career by refusing to be pigeonholed. As a champion of building a career that suits you, James is blessed with an innate inability to stay in one lane. Looking at the bigger picture, he moves fluidly between branding, type design, art direction, creative education and more, mirroring the micro-level of his equally plastic creative process – taking scraps of sketches, screenshots and random iPhone snaps and amalgamating them into its own unique, singular thing. James’ll chat through how an idea travels from something small, like an iPad sketch, to a fully-realised visual system, as well as giving practical insight into maintaining a career like his, dealing with visibility, pricing and setting professional boundaries.

Made for Business is about proof, not theory, hearing real insight from creatives that have made the jump and stuck the proverbial landing. It’s a rare chance to sit down with entrepreneurs who’ve turned their own practice into a real, sustainable business, and hear exactly how they made work work for them.