Graduating in a downturn: Advice from creatives who survived the 2008 crash

Jonny Naismith

After graduating in 2008 with a degree in Communication Design, Jonny interned for a couple of months in London before landing his first junior design role at Moving Brands in 2009. He’s spent the last 11 years working his way up the ladder, going onto become design team manager when the studio opened its New York branch in 2014, and is currently creative director of the global creative company, still based in New York.

Given the current state of the economy, lots of creative graduates feel like they will have to take any job they can get. What advice do you have for graduates who feel as if they are “selling out” by taking a more corporate job because they can’t find work in the industry of their choice?

You don’t know what you don’t know.

I think there’s still long-standing assumptions across the industry about the merits and downfalls of types of environments to work in: in-house, agency, huge enterprise, boutique business, strategy-driven, experience-led, the list goes on. The truth is that the first few years of working in a commercial context shape a huge amount of your experience and expectations from that point on. Paths change, motivations evolve, people respond, and opportunities open that you may have never even considered before.

I think it’s wise to weigh up what you can get from a role rather than what you might be missing out on. There’s value to be derived from all sorts of businesses and organisations with creative functions and the skills you might learn about the relationships, politics, scale and interactions in, for example, a global enterprise would be invaluable to take into a partner creative agency further down the line.

So my advice would be: Lean in with an open mind, frame what value you can derive, and build some muscle memory for a skillset that might set you apart in the future.

Understand where your line is

It really is a privileged position to actually turn down a job if it’s deemed to not be of a suitable creative standard. So on one hand, well played you. However, not everyone has the luxury, so I think it’s important to understand where you do draw the line. There’s a big difference between ‘I just can’t believe in this’ and ‘This isn’t what I expected’. So a valuable task could be to try to understand what part of the creative process does motivate you, to help evaluate any given role and judge it objectively.

Scratch the itch

Personally, I’ve found that making space for my own creative output outside of my place of work can be a sustaining mechanism. You may find a job that treads the delicate alignment of commercial delivery and your own creative interest. There are of course blurry boundaries and you should value your own exploration that will go on to inform your work and those around you. However, I believe at least understanding the edges can both put some boundaries on what is ‘work’ and what you create for your own expression and interest.

Find fellow travellers

Don’t go at it alone. It’s likely you’ve arrived here after a challenging and often unique period of time spent with people. Study, critiques, creative exploration, portfolio building, graduation, job applications, moving… Build the network beyond where you’re employed. Bring those you know along with you and share the highs and lows. Celebrate and commiserate together. For me, it was art school. Hold on to the great relationships and walk it together.

Find great people in whatever role you are in. The creative industries are small and repeating. You never know where those paths connect further down the line. People move around and when they find great people, they want to work with them again. Build the connections now that might set you up for the job you don’t know you’ll have in five years’ time.

Explore the new normal

We live in a new world. This year is unique and we won’t be going back to normal. Companies are adapting to a new environment of work and the places in which we do it. What might that mean for you? Boundaries are changing and the need to only be in the same city is becoming less apparent. What might it mean to apply for a job in Portland when you’re based in Manchester? Maybe there’s an opportunity that didn’t exist before.

What advice would you give to graduates who will experience periods of unemployment? How can they look after their mental health?

Job hunting is draining and getting rejected, or not getting replies, will knock down your confidence. So make time to work on personal projects and to do things that make you feel good – whether it’s drawing, exercising, baking, whatever.

I also recommend you try to teach yourself new skills. For three months in 2011, I spent one hour every day doing coding tutorials. It was a great skill to add to my CV, but also seeing how quickly I improved really boosted my confidence after hitting a low. By the end of those three months, I had redesigned my online portfolio from scratch, which felt like an incredible achievement!

Having a strong support network is probably the most important thing to help you through periods of unemployment and uncertainty, so I’d recommend joining design groups, where you will be able to connect with people at all levels of the industry. The truth is that a lot of places – especially agencies – recruit through their network, so it’s very important to grow yours, especially at a time like this. Even if it doesn’t lead to a job, you might be able to find yourself a mentor to make new friends.

Community groups you can join include Rye Here Rye Now and Creative Mornings, and I also love Fail Better talks and Nicer Tuesdays. The Other Box is amazing for creatives from underrepresented minorities, and She Says and Kerning the Gap (a mentoring scheme) for women. There’s also Ladies Wine & Design London, the group I run with Helen, Gloria, and Angira. We organise free monthly events for women and non-binary creatives and are currently planning virtual portfolio-review sessions with some amazing senior women and creative directors. Our community is very active on Facebook, where members share job ads, interesting events, and give each other tips and advice. We also just activated the mentoring feature, which we’re really excited about. We've also just activated the mentoring feature. It's early days but we're hoping the group of mentors will grow organically and that we can support more and more members this way.

Most importantly, be kind to yourself. Finding your first role always takes time, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic and a big part of the industry is struggling. No one really knows how things are going to evolve in the next few months, but they will get better, and the industry will need you when they do.

I wish you good luck.

Victoria Kochowski

After graduating with a degree with a Communication Design back in 2008, Victoria found it “SO SO SO SO tough” to enter the industry. Since then, the freelance designer has worked for the likes of Wieden + Kennedy, Droga5, Anyways Creative and McCann.

What advice would you give to grads who can’t seem to find a way into the creative industry?

Get your work seen. One thing that current grads will benefit from compared to 2008 is the power of the internet, and the ability you have to share your creative work directly with other people. Get your work on Instagram, create a portfolio site, get on LinkedIn, take part in digital talks, create WhatsApp groups with fellow grads – I am currently part of a delightful freelance group and we give each other advice of all sorts.

Try to meet as many people as you can (I realise this might not be that easy to initiate given the current climate, however). Find companies or creatives you admire and reach out for portfolio reviews and advice sessions via video chat. Get absolutely all the practice in presenting your work and asking for feedback. There are a lot of people offering this, as we all have more time on our hands at the moment. Most people have been in your shoes and will give you their time to help, especially during these difficult times. Also be mindful that the industry is hurting right now, so some people just might not have the capacity to do so.

Set yourself self-initiated briefs. More than ever the world needs your creative thinking. It provides the perfect platform for your creativity to be experienced. Create a brief for yourself – it doesn’t even need to be that complicated. Set yourself a challenge every day and stick to it for a month. Learn a new program or take some tutorials to explore a new way of creating. Find something that pisses you off and try to change it. Or use your powers for good and find a positive way to make an impact on your community. It all keeps your creative brain churning and thinking, but the main thing is to get out of your comfort zone, create create create, and share what you make.

Do NOT work for free – unless it’s for a genuinely worthwhile cause (i.e. a charitable/community organisation or collaborative project). Not everyone can work for free and as a creative industry we really need to make sure everyone has a fair chance at starting out. Also, you are worth it; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Do. NOT. Give. Up. It might take time, but you will get there.

Will Hudson

In his final year of studying graphic design at the University of Brighton in 2007, Will started It’s Nice That as a student project. Now, he oversees the creative output across all sides of The Hudson Bec Group, a creative organisation founded with Alex Bec which includes It's Nice That, Anyways, Lecture in Progress and If You Could Jobs.

You managed to establish a business in the midst of a recession. What advice can you offer graduates on how best to ride out this storm? How can they use this situation to their advantage?

Trying to write anything from the experience of graduating in the last recession to offer support and advice to this year’s graduating students is tough. There is no playbook for graduating during a global pandemic. Instead what I offer is some insight into how we started out and some of the opportunities that might repeat themselves over the next year or two.

I graduated (along with Alex Bec, the co-founder of the HudsonBec Group) in 2007 from the University of Brighton, the year before the last financial crash. I was lucky to get a job offer relatively quickly while my peers did a mix of entering full-time work, interning, freelancing, travelling and taking some time off to work out what they wanted to do next.

I worked in a design studio and learnt a huge amount in a short period of time but in the spring of 2008 I decided to leave to focus on It’s Nice That alongside some freelance to make ends meet. Shortly after the crash struck – and had I not voluntarily left my full-time position, the chances are I would have been made redundant alongside countless others across the industry.

At the start, the biggest focus for us was proving we had a service that had value. Could we pitch work, win work, deliver work and get paid for it? This was very much week to week and project to project.

We started like everyone else – we sent introductions in anticipation that the big job was only an email away. More often than not we would get polite replies and be told we’d be considered in the future (a thinly veiled excuse I am probably guilty of using today). We then learnt that if we could get in front of potential clients it started a relationship that would more likely lead to a job. We also worked out the network we could build through introductions from people we’d already met (like tutors and visiting lecturers) opened doors far quicker than cold calling creatives.

I believe we won work at the start because we were more affordable than the other options, and we were almost certainly available to start straight away. We said yes to opportunities even when we weren’t exactly sure how we’d do it, it wasn’t necessarily the work we wanted to be doing, or work we had experience in doing, but it paid the bills and allowed us to work some stuff out together. 

We kept our costs low, initially renting two desks from the illustration collective Peepshow in their East London studio. Alex had been freelancing with them for a few months so this came up in conversation when we decided to try and do our own thing. We didn’t take much of a salary – we aimed to pay ourselves £1,000 each per month and keep anything else in the business account to build a bit of a buffer. Some of the best advice we got early on was from Paul Smith who told us to only spend what we had in the jar (basically: spend wisely, save money and don’t borrow). Three years at university was good practice at being resourceful!

When I look back I have no doubt there was some uncertainty and apprehension. But we tried to focus on the opportunity and make the most of the situation as it presented itself to us. We’ve actually had far more challenging conversations recently, as we now have the responsibility of employing 42 people across four businesses (not to mention kids at home and mortgages to pay). We didn’t know all the answers then and we certainly don’t pretend to know them all now. One thing we’ve definitely learnt, though, is that a network is key, not just when you start out but right through your career. We still rely on people we’ve met along the way and often ask for their advice and feedback.

As I said at the start, this is going to be a strange time for this year’s graduates. You won’t have the same opportunities to go and meet creatives in their studios or potential clients in person. There will still be entry-level jobs but more of you might need to hustle and be self-starters to make money on your own terms to begin with.

When I left my job in 2008, the financial crisis meant there wasn’t a thriving job market and I certainly wasn’t inundated with job offers. Who knows – It’s Nice That as you know it today could look very different (or not exist at all) had we graduated into a “better” situation.