Canva makes pro-design tool Affinity “free, forever”

Canva is making its pro-design tool Affinity “free forever” in a bid to upend the design software market.

The company announced today it is relaunching the tool with “substantial changes” that make Affinity “truly a competitive product against the incumbents in this space.”

And by making it free for everyone, Canva is clearly parking its tanks on Adobe’s lawn.

“When Canva launched, it was consciously trying to change the world, in terms of how non-experts could design,” Canva’s Duncan Clark, head of EMEA, explains. “We see this as changing the world for how experts, and potential experts, can design.”

Nottinghamshire-based Serif released its first app, Affinity Designer, in 2014, before adding Photo and Publisher tools. They refreshed the whole suite in 2022. Canva bought the company last year, in a deal reported to be worth $380million.

Affinity currently has five million downloads, but has added 1.5 million of those in the 18 months since it was acquired.

Adobe currently has more than 30 million paying users for its creative apps, but Clark believes the new Affinity is well-placed to take on its rivals.

The new app brings all of Affinity’s tools into “one powerful product with one universal file type,” which means users will no longer need to switch between different applications for different types of design.

“That was a fragmented experience,” Clark says. “With Affinity Studio, if you move between Vector and Pixel, the tools change, but you’re still in the same canvas.

“This is a breakthrough in how professional design tools are structured, and an architectural change that we deeply believe in. It feels very weird that it was ever separate.”

There is also a focus on performance and immediacy, to create what Clark calls an experience that “feels like an extension of your brain.”

The new Affinity website

Affinity is also rolling out a new identity, created by the in-house Canva and Affinity teams, in collaboration with Barcelona-based Twist Studio. The visual and verbal rebrand is designed to reflect Affinity’s move from challenger brand to part of the design establishment.

Many designers are wary of Canva, feeling that its mission – “to empower the world to design” – undermines the value of professional design work, and even takes jobs away from the industry.

But Clark says the two are not mutually exclusive.

“There’s always a fear, when a new technology brings capability to more people, that it might undermine the experts,” he says. “We don’t believe that’s true.”

“The role of the professional designer is more important than ever.”

He draws a parallel with computing, where democratisation of home computers made more people tech-savvy, and so, Clark says, changed and enhanced the role of computer experts.

“The role of the professional designer is more important than ever – as the taste maker, the craft expert, the person who can provide the visual layer on top of what everyone else is doing,” Clark says.

“But also we think there’s an amazing opportunity for those professional designers to become the enablers of the rest of the organisation – to create something beautiful, and help everyone use it in the right way.”

He says the new Affinity has been built to address professional designers’ frustrations with existing tools, “which we heard are overpriced and insufficiently innovative.”

And Clark says that by making the tool free, it opens up professional design careers to people who might have previously been priced out of it.

“There’s no catch, no stripped-back version and no gotchas,” Affinity CEO Ash Hewson says. “The same precise, high-performance tools that professionals rely on every day are now open to all, because creative freedom shouldn’t come with a cost.”

Adobe doubles down on AI

Canva’s move comes in the same week as Adobe announced a raft of AI innovations at its Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles.

The new AI capabilities are designed to help creators, “work faster and take on more opportunities by expanding creative possibilities and removing time-consuming tasks and creative barriers.”

The announcements included a beefed-up version of its Adobe Firefly generative AI tools, with a particular focus on video. They are rolling out generative soundtracks and voiceovers, as well as improving Premiere Pro with an AI Object mask, and enhancing Photoshop’s Generative Fill.

Adobe is also giving users more choice to work with other companies’ generative models, like Google, OpenAI and Runway.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Adobe announced Project Moonlight, a cross-app AI agent designed to act as a creative partner and project manager, overseeing and connecting other AI assistants.

And not to be left out, Figma has also been making moves. It announced today it has acquired generative AI platform Weavy. As Figma Weave, it will, “build out image, video, animation, motion design, and VFX media generation and editing capability on the Figma platform.”

Figma also rolled out new releases at its Schema event this week.

“Quality and taste matter more than ever now that the boundaries between product, design, and engineering are blurring, and more people – and AI tools –contribute to the product development process,” Figma’s VP of product, Paige Costello wrote.

“Design systems have long been the key to driving consistency between design and production at scale. Now they have the potential to be not just a shared language for product builders, but also the translation AI needs to understand design and code. In this way, design systems are evolving from static standards into living systems that product teams can build on.”

The new innovations include extended collections, a more efficient way of managing multi-brand design systems, check designs, which smoothes the handover to developers, and make kits, which allow users to import asset libraries from Figma into Figma Make.

Together, the changes are designed to make it easier for teams to “scale their design systems across new paradigms,” Costello says.

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Same, but different – how design studios approach recurring briefs

Design thrives on the thrill of the new. So what happens when a studio is asked to work on a brief again, and again, and again?

These “returning briefs” ask creatives to revisit the same event, festival, or framework, year after year – tasked with delivering something recognisably on-brand, and yet entirely new.

But how do you sustain creativity when the parameters stay mostly consistent? Where’s the line between evolution and repetition? And what does long-term collaboration reveal about the creative process itself?

Few studios know that tension better than From Form, who have designed the campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night for five years in a row.

What began as a single commission has evolved into a creative partnership, and a kind of annual ritual. Each year, the Rotterdam-based studio is asked to reinvent the look and spirit of a night that celebrates the city’s museums, without repeating itself or breaking what already works.

When they crafted the 2021 campaign, the studio introduced the idea of a flipbook as a vessel for storytelling. This concept evolved through the years and culminated in the 2023 campaign titled DIT DAT, DAAR (This, That, There).

From Form’s 2023 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night, titled DIT DAT, DAAR (This, That, There)

The flipbook – filled with images of the city’s museums and their objects, and plastered with 500 custom stickers – became the star of the show. But last year, the team chose to retire it, and wipe the slate clean.

“That felt truly refreshing,” says Ashley Govers, co-founder and creative director.

Under the surface of each chapter, the studio has built a visual lexicon that endures.

“We believe we’ve crafted a Museum Night universe over the years – a language that speaks in colour, imagination, and rhythmic movement,” says co-founder and creative director Jurjen Versteeg.

The Collector’s Edition, From Form’s 2025 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night

Texture was key to this vocabulary, as was the analogue warmth From Form has become known for, both threads now re-emerging in the 2025 campaign, The Collector’s Edition.

To mark Museum Night’s 25th anniversary, the team returned to the idea at the heart of every museum – collecting.

The campaign celebrates that notion by treating Museum Night itself as “a collection of collections,” since the event brings together dozens of museums, each with its own archives, objects, and stories, into a single, citywide experience.

To flesh out the visual world, From Form looked to the 1990s, the decade the event began, and an era synonymous with collector culture.

They wanted the theme of collecting to feel approachable rather than academic. “When you think of a museum as a carefully preserved collection, it can feel quite overwhelming,” Versteeg explains. “But we wanted to make collecting more accessible than that.”

So instead of focusing on institutions and archives, the campaign draws from the simple joy of 1990s collector culture – Flippos, Tamagotchis, Happy Meal toys, football cards – the everyday treasures that anyone could covet and trade.

The Collector’s Edition marks a continuation of a collaboration that keeps finding new ways to resonate.

Each year’s work strengthens the client’s trust, and with that trust comes greater pressure from within the studio to deliver something unexpected.

Yet that repetition has its upside – familiarity with the brief has evolved into creative fluency, giving the team the confidence to keep pushing ideas further each year.

“Working on something that returns each year means building a long-term relationship, not only with the client, but with the project itself,” says Versteeg.

The Collector’s Edition, From Form’s 2025 campaign for Amsterdam Museum Night

“You get to know its character, its rhythm, and what feels right for it. That familiarity brings confidence, but also the challenge of keeping things fresh and surprising yourself. With a one-off project, you define, create, and let go; a recurring one feels more like a conversation that evolves over time.

“Each edition adds a new layer, pushing you to see it from new angles every year.”

With this familiarity comes a shared language, and with trust, the space to take creative risks without second-guessing every move.

“Instead of presenting multiple options, we deliver a single vision each year,” says Rabbithole’s creative director, Tim Dee, describing the studio’s approach to its ongoing work for the Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI).

Rabbithole’s identity for LIFI 2025

Since the partnership began in 2021, the Leeds-based team has been crafting identities that unpack both the complexity and the vibrancy of LIFI – which unites thinkers, writers, creatives, and experts across science, technology, politics, and culture – while striking the right chord every year.

As the relationship has matured, so too has the narrative core of each edition, evolving in step with the festival itself.

“Five years ago, the themes leaned more scientific and highbrow, which we realised risked feeling too academic and less welcoming to the diverse audience the festival wanted to reach,” says Dee. “Since then, the art direction has steadily become more accessible and fun, creating a much broader appeal.”

Rabbithole’s 2024 identity for LIFI centred on abstract metallic faces

It’s true. In 2024, Rabbithole created a suite of metallic faces that mirrored the audience’s expressions seen in the festival’s footage – an idea that immediately landed with clarity and impact.

Building on that success, the 2025 edition introduces a gang of “squidgems” – cherubic, balloon-like characters.

“Although our client trusts and accepts our reasoning for changing the identity each year, there can still be a natural reluctance to move on from something that has worked so well,” says strategy director Mark Martin.

Rabbithole’s identity for LIFI 2025

“This year’s campaign, therefore, became more of an evolution than a complete departure. We chose to build on what made the 2024 faces so impactful, while still introducing something new. The squidgems strike that balance – both a continuation of what audiences especially connected with last year, and a fresh direction.”

Giving the squidgems ears, legs, and a fuller anatomical form opened up playful new possibilities. They can now take on collective behaviours that bring them to life, whether that’s gathering in herds, or lining up for a conga.

While every edition must feel fresh, a recurring brief isn’t a licence for unfettered experimentation.

Rabbithole’s identity for LIFI 2025

To keep each chapter connected to the one before and after it, certain anchors stay fixed, giving everything else room to evolve.

Across LIFI’s identities, a few pillars remain the same – the logo, the typeface, the bright pink hero hue, as well as the 3D artistry of Joseph Töreki, who returns as a collaborator each year.

This gives the work its stylistic continuity, while the thematic art direction brings constant motion.

Continuity, then, becomes less of a limitation and more of a language – one that lets studios retain tone, rhythm and philosophy, while freely changing the visual vocabulary.

But sustaining a language year after year demands systems and rituals, and not just inspiration. Creativity, at scale, depends on the steady architecture of process.

STUDIO HERRSTRÖM’s rebrand for Spotify’s Front Left

STUDIO HERRSTRÖM has been putting this philosophy into practice through its long-running collaboration with Spotify, developing more than 30 playlist brands to date.

The project subtly reframes what a returning brief can be – not the evolution of one identity over time, but the repeated challenge of building new ones within the same creative structure, across vastly different cultural contexts.

Though every commission begins from the same premise – design a brand for a playlist – the studio treats each as a cultural problem to solve. Guided by its THE ECHO design framework, the studio immerses itself in the world of each playlist, uncovering local references, histories, and visual codes, before ever putting pencil to paper.

“Because the foundation changes each time – different audience, region, genre, local visual codes – each playlist earns its own visual logic,” says founder and creative director Eric Herrström.

As distinctive as they are, each playlist must still operate within Spotify’s global design ecosystem, a structure that connects them through shared principles of clarity, hierarchy, and recognisability.

STUDIO HERRSTRÖM’s identity for Aquarela Brasileira

This underlying order binds the work together, even as the studio stretches its expressive potential.

“Our freedom lives in texture, custom lock-ups, application, cultural motifs, local visual references, and colour combinations,” says Herrström.

“We’ve pushed in areas like custom graphic systems, hand-drawn illustrations, or 3D graphics, and culturally tied patterns, while always still respecting the Spotify framework.”

When working on the identity for the Top México playlist – a collection of the country’s biggest tracks – this act of cultural mining led the team to an image of a sarape de Saltillo, a traditional textile known for its bright colours and layered lines.

A symbol of national pride, cultural heritage, and craftsmanship, the textile not only served as a conceptual goldmine, but its weave also lent itself to graphic interpretation.

STUDIO HERRSTRÖM’s identity for Top México

“Everything clicked when we realised we could use the line thicknesses to reflect the vast diversity of artists and music that’s featured on the playlist,” says Herrström. The colour-blocked lines, which move and shift in motion, became the structural backbone of the visual system.

As Herrström explains, it’s this process of narrative discovery that keeps the work from repeating itself.

Grounded in cultural insight, the team avoids slipping into stylistic reflex, and with each success, that clarity feeds confidence.

“It gives us permission to push further,” says Herrström. “Because we’ve proven we can do meaningful and culturally attuned work, we also dare to present directions that we may not have considered earlier.

“In that sense, our long-term partnership has made the work much better.”

Behind the work’s consistency and success is a clear conviction that inspiration alone can’t sustain creativity over time; process is what keeps it alive.

“You can’t rely on moodboards,” says Herrström. “You need a rigorous structure, team discipline, and relentless curiosity about context. By systematising how we approach each project and always starting fresh, we preserve creative vitality even under repetition.”

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“Change takes time” – Inside the Humanise campaign against boring buildings

In October 2023, Thomas Heatherwick announced his Humanise campaign, to rid the world of boring soulless buildings. It’s fair to say it launched with a fanfare, as well as a book, a three-part Radio 4 documentary, and a drive to sign supporters up to the cause.

It was one of those rare moments when design enters the mainstream media chat, sparking conversations and generating a wide range of media coverage. This ranged from the very positive, to the very not – “‘Dangerously misguided’: the glaring problem with Thomas Heatherwick’s architectural dreamworld,” ran a headline in The Guardian.

At its heart was a problem hiding in plain sight – a “quiet global catastrophe” where dull building design, or “an epidemic of characterlessness” was making people “sick, unhappy and isolated.”

Add in the startling fact that the construction industry produces five times as many carbon emissions as aviation, and the moment was ripe for change. And design was the answer, or at least a big part of the answer, to create buildings that “delight and unite” society.

Two years on, and Abigail Scott Paul is reflecting on what it takes to transform a big idea into practical action.

Hired in April 2024, she has an interesting CV that includes head of press at RIBA, and ten years at the anti-poverty charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

“I see my job as, how do we turn the provocation in the book into a strategic campaign for change?” she says.

If the launch was about drawing attention to the issue, which it clearly did very successfully, Scott Paul has spent the past 18 months trying to turn that spark of interest into “a public conversation.”

“I think we have to be realistic,” she says. “It’s going to take time to make this an issue that is going to cut through. And it’s tough, there are a lot of issues in the world. But we have started to build momentum.”

Abigail Scott Paul

The first, and perhaps most critical, task Scott Paul faces is to “position this as an issue of importance, to make it salient.” This has taken two main forms.

Firstly, to make this a discussion about public health, as opposed to “a style debate.”

The campaign commissioned polling from Think Insights which found that 76% of people in the UK think buildings have an impact on their mental health.

Heatherwick Studio has also supported the research of two neuroscientists, Colin Ellard and Cleo Valentine, who have shown how architectural styles, especially those whose forms and shapes are from those found in the natural world, raise people’s stress levels.

The hope is that by talking in public health terms, the Humanise campaign can focus more minds on the issue – which might otherwise feel whimsical in the perma-crisis age we live in – and so drive more interest, and more funding.

Edinburgh Castle re-imagined as part of the UnLandmarks campaign

Scott Paul also wants to create relevance by feeding into very topical discussions to which their anti-bland message can contribute.

“Housing is an issue of public debate in this country, and that’s somewhere we can add value, and a point of view,” she explains.

So ahead of the New Towns Taskforce delivering its report to the UK Government last month, Humanise commissioned its own study of 1,000 people living in England’s post-war new towns, to find out how they felt about their surroundings.

“The previous generations of new towns have left many residents uninspired, disconnected and disheartened by their everyday environments,” Scott Paul wrote in the survey foreword. “Many describe them as ‘boring,’ ‘ugly,’ and ‘run-down’… people want more than just ‘units’: they want homes and places they can feel proud of.”

“The research showed a real gap between the type of buildings people have been served, and what they want for the future,” she says.

“We were able to use that insight to put forward a point of view that we can do better. And we were trying to amplify the public’s voice in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

A linguist by training, Scott Paul and her team have also been thinking about, “how we tell a better story” to engage as many people as possible.

In April last year, they worked with Uncommon Creative Studio on unLandmarks, a series of images which reimagined iconic British buildings like the Tower of London, The Royal Liver Building, and Edinburgh Castle as bland, modern equivalents, “stripped of their soul using AI.”

This summer, they worked with Sheffield-based Peter & Paul and sand artist collective Sand In Your Eye to create Bland Castles, a series of dull and soulless sand castles built in Morecambe Bay. It was a smart idea, executed brilliantly, with an immediacy the media loved.

The Humanise campaign’s Bland Castles in Morecambe Bay. Photo by James Speakman/PA Media Assignments.

“Social campaigns can sometimes be a bit worthy,” Scott Paul says. “I think humour and playfulness make a huge difference to whether somebody sits up and notices something.”

“As a design studio ourselves, you can imagine the bar is quite high, so we have to come up with something special.”

Another part of Scott Paul’s strategy has been to build partnerships with developers, academic institutions, and funders like the US-based Allen Institute, “an independent research institute aimed at unlocking the mysteries of biology.”

“We can’t drive the type of change that we want to drive on our own,” she explains.

That means working not only with those who can support and strengthen the thinking behind the campaign, but also those groups whose decisions will ultimately dictate if change happens, like developers, social housing experts, and town planners.

It also has the added benefit of moving it away from being seen as “Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanise.”

“We don’t want to position this as just Thomas’ campaign,” Scott Paul explains. “We need more voices, and voices that may be heard in a different way to a designer’s voice.”

Heatherwick Studio’s Humanise Wall for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. photo by Yongjoon Choi.

The architect’s involvement as the fulcrum of the movement has obvious advantages, but also some drawbacks.

“The platform that Thomas has is going to help us,” Scott Paul says. “But the campaign won’t survive if it’s just Thomas Heatherwick.”

And some of the criticism of the campaign – like The Guardian article mentioned above – has centred on a sort of whataboutery, accusing Heatherwick of not practising what he preaches.

“A sense of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ pervades the whole book, its author seemingly unaware of what his own studio is producing,” the journalist Oliver Wainwright wrote.

Scott Paul makes a comparison with Jamie Oliver’s healthy eating crusade, and thinks the brickbats come with the territory. “I remember Jamie Oliver used to get attacked for the amount of sugar he puts in his recipes when he talked about a sugar tax,” she says. “But I know that design can make a huge difference to people’s lives.”

And she points out, the campaign has evolved from the ideas outlined in Heatherwick’s book. But the campaign has attracted criticism too.

Writing in Dezeen, Owen Hopkins accused Humanise of being “utterly without politics,” a charge Scott Paul refutes, insisting they have “a proper theory of change” and a robust strategy for pursuing it with different stakeholders.

“It’s easy to throw stones from the side,” Scott Paul says. “But the studio is putting its money where its mouth is, and investing in the campaign. They didn’t need to – they could have had a much easier ride.”

The main thing Scott Paul wants people to understand is that making big, systematic change doesn’t happen overnight.

She says the campaign is resonating – the book has been published in the US, China, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan and Colombia. The team has given talks in 17 countries, and last month, Heatherwick unveiled a 90-metre long Humanise Wall as part of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

“People get this is an issue, but patience is required,” she says. “We always said it’s a 10-year campaign,” she says. “We’re in year two, so there’s a long way to go. Change takes time.”

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“Three years of X: The power (and peril) of radical brand reinvention”

I’m sure you’ve heard the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes? A fable of a ruler so convinced of his own genius, he strutted naked through the streets while the crowd looked on, incredulously. Silly, right?

Or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a man who played the perfect tune, until he changed key and lost the crowd. Would never happen.

How about Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, convinced altitude meant admiration? Or King Midas, who learned the hard way that some things are best left untouched.

These old stories all share one simple truth – ego makes a terrible compass.

Once upon a timeline

Three years ago, like the Emperor in his invisible robes, Elon Musk marched into Twitter convinced he could reinvent it by sheer force of personality. Declaring the dawn of X, he believed he was unveiling something visionary.

But while he was busy conducting his own coronation, the crowd stopped clapping and buggered off to TikTok.

The shift was simple – Twitter had a community; X now had a CEO.

Musk’s vision was a big one: to turn the world’s biggest community into an “everything app.” In doing so, the brand shed all the familiar brand signifiers – Tweet, ReTweet, the bird icon) and pushed forward new forms of behaviour.

The users were expected to learn a new language overnight. Their resistance is the real story.

The exodus wasn’t immediate, or very clean – even though the little blue bird may be long gone, the name still sings on. Twitter became part of the common language, alongside Google, Uber and Hoover.

But according to a 2024 survey, around 70% of UK adults still call it Twitter, and nearly nine in ten brands haven’t switched either.

“A surprise without the delight can be a real mis-step.”

What Emperor Musk failed to realise is that you can change direction any time you like, but don’t expect people to follow unless they feel part of the journey.

Twitter was a highly populated, global town square. To crash that mid-party with a new name, new rules, and a new tone of voice was like replacing Cinderella’s iconic glass slipper with a Croc.

Because brands don’t really belong to the people who run them, they belong to the people who use them.

How many CEO’s and leaders can you name from the countless companies, apps and products you use, drink and eat every day? Thought so.

Ask Sonic the Hedgehog, whose army of fans flat-out refused his new aesthetic, despite being 90% into the making of the first feature film.
They collectively managed to get Paramount to rework the design to get what they wanted.

But it’s much more than design; reinvention is about transforming what the brand means and how it feels. It’s a brand and culture transformation.

If that shift’s too sudden, self-centred, or too far from what people already believe, you’re not reinventing, you’re rupturing what you have.

Reinvention should be an evolution, not just an explosion – small, smart pivots beat a rocket-fuelled rebrand every time. And it’s not just a makeover.

As creatives, we are always trying to push the boundaries, taking a step, a leap, or a jump into a new creative vision, but only as long as the journey is progressing in the correct direction. A surprise without the delight can be a real mis-step.

Morals of the story

But what, from this tale, can we learn for brand transformation?

Simply put, heritage isn’t a burden. What came before keeps you grounded. Lose it completely, and you’re flying blind hoping people jump after you.

Change needs purpose. LEGO, continues to evolve impressively – still building, just in new worlds and cultures, across digital, STEM, sustainability and education. But never forgetting the bright, curious, playful nature that their audience warmly feels part of.

Your audiences are your compass. Change should mirror how people act, not how you wish they did. X changed its name faster than its users changed their vocab.

And meaning beats makeover. You can paint the shopfront, but if the story inside doesn’t change, people will leave unsatisfied.

If you’re planning a bold rebrand, ask, “What will people feel tomorrow that they don’t feel today?” Because if the answer is “confused,” you may have a problem.

Happy ever after?

So, with the platform still in decline since the 2022 takeover, and new platforms luring fresh generations elsewhere, what’s next for X/Twitter (because yes, we’re still calling it both)?

If there’s a moral here, it’s that reinvention without reflection rarely ends well. The greatest brands don’t demand belief – they earn it.

Call yourself whatever you like, but if no-one’s listening, the name doesn’t matter. And no-one wants to be the emperor at the end of the parade, wondering why the crowd has moved on.

Karl Gilbert, is creative director at BBD Perfect Storm.

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Thonik’s new identity for Schiphol Airport turns down the noise

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is a world in motion. Every month, around six million people pass through its halls, served by 94 airlines connecting the Netherlands to the world.

Following a sharp rise in post-pandemic traffic, Schiphol turned its attention to improving the experience of every passenger moving through the airport. The overarching goal was to bring calm and coherence back to one of Europe’s busiest crossroads.

As part of a wider investment programme – modernising infrastructure, improving staff facilities, and making the airport more sustainable – Schiphol also set out to redefine its identity. The ambition was as much cultural as operational.

The team wanted to lift service quality, restore pride, and move back into Europe’s top three busiest airports – it currently sits fourth, behind London Heathrow, Istanbul Airport and Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Central to that vision was the new identity, crafted by Amsterdam-based design studio Thonik.

Thonik’s new identity for Schiphol Airport

“We saw the brand as a compass – a way to bring back quality, ease and clarity to the travel experience,” says Sander Hengeveld, head of brand at Schiphol. “Schiphol was full of visual noise, and the existing identity simply wasn’t distinctive enough.”

Beyond recognition and clarity, the identity needed an emotional centre, something that could connect the airport’s many audiences under a single idea.

Schiphol wanted the brand to express care, belonging, and pride, not just operational efficiency. That search led the team to a simple brand idea – “a home for world travellers.”

While the brand needed to carry this emotional through-line, it also had to honour Schiphol’s storied history.

To imagine the airport’s future, Thonik looked back to its past, specifically 1967, when a landmark new terminal building opened at Schiphol.

The identity was crafted by Thonik, while the advertising campaign was led by Ace Amsterdam

At the time, the architects, interior designers, and graphic designers worked together to create a space centred on the traveller.

When the team studied their work, a singular lesson emerged – good design can make complex systems feel effortless. Thonik’s challenge was to capture that sense of ease in a visual system – distinctive enough to stand out, but quiet enough to bring calm.

“If you want to be distinctive, the instinct is to be loud and bold,” says Thomas Widdershoven, Thonik co-founder and creative director. “But airports are already full of loud voices – airlines, shops, advertisements. We felt that if we spoke more quietly, the overall tone might soften, and people would actually hear us more clearly.

“It’s an unorthodox approach in such a competitive space, but that quietness became our strength.”

In response to the visual clutter so often synonymous with airports, Thonik crafted a pared-back identity. At its heart sits ‘AMS’ – Schiphol’s IATA code – held within a circle and paired with the Schiphol wordmark.

Thonik’s wordmark for Schiphol Airport

“We wanted AMS to feel like the icon – a symbol of place and movement – but Schiphol needed to remain the name people connected with. That balance was crucial,” says Nikki Gonnissen, Thonik’s co-founder and director.

The two work together to express both global reach and national pride.

The circle that holds ‘AMS’ is deliberately oversized – expansive rather than enclosed – ensuring it doesn’t read as a literal wayfinding dot or tight badge.

A subtle forward slant on the ‘A’ introduces a sense of motion and gives the overall mark a visual rhythm.

The circle from the logo extends into the wider brand world, evolving into ripples or a single guiding line, and at times expanding into a soft pulse of concentric rings.

The circle from the logo transitions to ripples

These are the only graphic gestures Thonik allows in the identity, reinforcing the brand’s quiet confidence.

Used sparingly, the concentric circles become some of the identity’s most expressive moments. At the arrival gates, they appear as a gentle embrace – a visual metaphor for reunion and return.

“At the arrival gates, we chose not to use the logo at all,” says Widdershoven. “You only see the circles and the tagline – it carries the language of the identity without repeating the brand. There are enough logos in the world. For us, it was about bringing warmth to a moment of emotion, not pushing the identity to sell itself again.”

Despite its restraint, the identity leaves room for expression. “There are moments when you can turn the volume up – when the surroundings are quieter, the brand can speak a little louder,” says Hengeveld.

The circular graphic at the arrival gate

“But its role is always to support, not overwhelm. Less is more was one of our core principles.”

As the team began integrating the logo with Schiphol’s wayfinding system, they realised they needed a typeface that could work seamlessly across every touchpoint – and it didn’t yet exist.

Frutiger, the typeface previously used for wayfinding, was admired for its clarity and legibility, with open terminals and generous counters. But it also felt cold, too functional to carry the warmth of Schiphol’s new promise – a home for world travellers.

To bridge that gap, Thonik partnered with type foundry Bold Monday to create Royal Schiphol Group Variable, a custom sans serif that could speak fluently across both commercial and informational contexts.

Interestingly, the typeface’s variability wasn’t planned and was rather a product of the process. When the typeface was handed over to Ace Amsterdam – the team behind Schiphol’s campaigns and the tagline ‘Today is the day’ – they condensed the tracking to create a warmer, more emotive tone for advertising.

RSG Variable works across wayfinding and advertising

That discovery revealed the typeface’s true flexibility – a wider version for clarity in wayfinding, and a denser one for lifestyle-led comms. What began as a small “rule break” soon became a new design principle.

“The Dutch are very good at breaking rules,” laughs Gonnissen. “Rules are there to break, and then we cook them up again.”

The designers hope that over time, the identity will help shift perceptions of the airport – that Schiphol isn’t just a gateway, but a place that feels good to be in.

“A few years from now, we want people to associate Schiphol with well-being, a place that’s clear, calm, and feels like home,” says Widdershoven.

“Yes, we want to be back in Europe’s top three airports, but more importantly, we want to get there by making travel feel human again.”

The identity and Ace Amsterdam’s campaign seen outside the airport
The circle from the logo turns into guiding lines in wayfinding and informational text
The new identity and campaign as seen at the airport

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We need to talk about the GOV.UK redesign (again)

International Men’s Day is on November 19.

I know this because for many years on International Women’s Day, the comedian Richard Herring would reply to every snarky tweet wondering – erroneously – why men weren’t given their own day as well. They are – it’s on November 19.

Herring’s annual task became a form of painstaking performance art – could his reasonable fact-checking hold back the tide of spluttering online rage?

I’ve seen something similar play out on my social feeds in the past few weeks.

Time and again, I come across incredulous posts thundering that the UK government spent half a million pounds to move the dot in the GOV UK logo. £500 grand! In this economy!

And time and again, incredibly patient designers wade in to explain that no, this isn’t what happened. I have huge respect for their forbearance. But the tide keeps on coming.

No time for nuance

This story begins in June, when the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which oversees the Government Digital Service (GDS) published new brand guidelines for GOV.UK.

To coincide with the launch of the new app, the GDS worked with M+C Saatchi to refresh the brand, as part of a £532,000 project to modernise GOV.UK and broaden its appeal.

Part of this work involved, yes, moving the dot from the baseline into the middle of the GOV UK name, to underline the fact that it’s more than a website. The design teams also changed up the colour palette, from the previous black and white to a more welcoming blue and teal.

Never one for nuance, the press had a field day.

“Absolutely dotty!” The Daily Mail spluttered. “Government blows over half a million on ‘vanity’ makeover for website which involved moving a full stop.” For The Telegraph, it provided, “The depressing proof that our political class is obsessed with style over substance.”

This reaction was fairly predictable. At a time when public finances are under real pressure, here was a story that fitted neatly into the Venn diagram overlap of wasteful politicians on one side, and post-Jaguar logo lunacy on the other.

But it’s also, of course, nonsense. As Tom May memorably put it in an article on Creative Bloq, “It’s the journalistic equivalent of describing brain surgery as ‘doctor pokes head with stick’.”

And yet, it feels like the case for context and nuance has fallen on deaf ears. There seems to be a constant drip-drip-drop of social media posts decrying the rebrand.

A perfect storm

Most frustratingly, some of these come from people who appear to be professional designers. They must know this wasn’t about moving a dot, and perpetuating this narrative threatens to damage the industry. Anything for the #numbers, eh?

In response, designer Ben Mottershead is one of those who had waded into the debate online. The toxicity, he believes, comes from a combination of misunderstanding, and political point scoring.

“Public confidence in government spending is at an all-time low, while online, being first has overtaken being right,” he says. “That mix creates a perfect storm of reactionary noise, quick opinions, few facts, and even less understanding of what good design actually costs or delivers.

“As an industry, we have to challenge that. When creative investment is questioned, our job isn’t just to defend the work; it’s to demand better discourse around it. Too many ‘hot takes’ ignore basic due diligence in the chase for clicks.”

He is not alone in pointing out that 500k is a tiny percentage of the UK Government’s annual budget.

“It’s 0.0004% – the equivalent of pocket change for a multi-year redesign that improves accessibility, usability, and efficiency across millions of general public interactions. If a corporation carried out a similar piece of work, it’d be lorded over and congratulated.”

GOV UK is not only a design success story – it’s a cornerstone of government services in this country, and envied the world over.

According to YouGov it’s one of the most-recognised digital services in the UK. Since it launched in October 2021, it’s had 14.8 billion visits, and 38.6 billion pageviews. Polling shows that 80% of users are satisfied with their most recent experience – a pretty high mark given the breadth and scale of its services.

“If there’s a failure here, it’s not in the design, it’s in the communication,” Mottershead says. “The government clearly didn’t tell the story of the work, leaving designers once again to fight the corner for an industry that continues to prove its worth but rarely gets the credit.”

Filling the explanation void

This failure to explain the work is frustrating. Designer Matt Eason submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to DSIT, asking to see audience and user research, initial concepts, in-progress designs, and, “any documents, reports or presentations showing the progress of the rebrand, including the GOV.UK logo and wider design language.”

It was rejected, as was his subsequent appeal. Initially he was told it would compromise the “safe space” that ministers and officials need to discuss new ideas. Now, he has been told it would be too expensive to provide the information he wants.

“I think they missed an opportunity at launch to release the thinking and research behind the rebrand,” Eason says.

“As well as being useful across government, where the findings could have been applied to other services, it would have given them some degree of control over the narrative. The information void they left was then inevitably filled by people pushing various viewpoints, based on not much evidence, or in some cases just making stuff up.”

The honourable exception in all this is Kim Grey, a developer on the GOV.UK Design System team who blogs as beeps. They wrote an excellent post explaining the changes, including a clear steer on the strategic problems the new designs are intended to solve:

“To expand the GOV.UK brand to provide flexibility across multiple platforms, such as apps, video, and social media.”

“To tackle the perception among younger generations that GOV.UK looks unfriendly and intimidating, without devaluing the existing trust in the service.”

On the cost, they pointed out the project, “was the full-time salaried efforts of dozens of design, development, and delivery specialists for more than a year. By that metric, it’s actually quite cheap.”

And on the logo, “It might not be obvious from a single side-by-side graphic, but a lot of time went into interrogating what we had and experimenting with what could be added… Just because the destination of that journey was a logo that intentionally looks quite similar to the existing one doesn’t mean that the money was wasted, or that creating something radically different would have been better value for money.”

A fighting chance

It’s a brilliant post. But it begs the question, why didn’t the GDS come out with such a clear and articulate explanation? And why have they frustrated Matt Eason’s attempts to help them reclaim the narrative?

Because there’s something bigger in play here for designers.

At a time when the whole industry is under pressure to explain that design is more than a logo – it’s a strategic tool to solve problems and drive growth – this story is pushing the exact opposite idea into the mainstream.

Sarah Robb, creator of the Brand Strategy Academy and co-author of Rebrand Right, thinks the government made several compounding errors here.

“They could have helped themselves by proactively sharing the problems with the previous identity system that were preventing taxpayers from accessing what they needed,” she says.

“You have to actively dig to discover that the previous identity felt intimidating and unfriendly to younger generations. Joe Public isn’t going to do that digging.”

And we – the media included – need to get better at contextualising design work, Robb argues.

“People fixate on the logo, the front door, and question why £500,000 was spent changing its colour. But they miss the extensive work that has rebuilt the foundations, walls and entire structure of the house.”

Her advice for any organisation about to launch design work is to give proper context, and avoid before-and-after logo graphics.

“Give yourself a fighting chance by explaining why the change was needed – rather than just showing a tiny part of the solution,” Robb says.

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“As AI becomes AGI, design has a critical role to play”

For decades, the creative industries have answered the call. We’ve designed for sustainability, for accessibility, for inclusivity, for social change.

Now, a new challenge is on the horizon.

AI is already transforming our working lives, but what’s coming next won’t just be about enhancing productivity – and it’s not just our jobs that are at risk.
If we don’t mobilise now, the consequences will impact all of humanity.

There’s a real possibility that transformative, human‑level AI, sometimes referred to as AGI or ‘“superintelligence” could arrive within three to ten years, as consistently predicted by tech leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark  Zuckerberg and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.

If this happens, billions could lose their jobs and we could see a wave of mass unemployment across all skill levels, causing economic shock across the globe.

The economic disruption isn’t theoretical, it’s already happening. Economist Anton Korinek, who researches AI’s impact on labour markets, warns, “If cognitive labor becomes fully automatable, the wages of workers could fall to near-zero, rendering large swathes of the population economically obsolete.”

While ChatGPT might help you write an email or conduct a research project, AGI could run entire businesses and make major policy decisions. This isn’t about boosting productivity, it’s about replacing human labour.

If this sounds far-fetched, think about this as a pre-pandemic moment. What felt like a remote possibility became an urgent reality overnight. Planning ahead isn’t overreacting, it’s essential to our future.

It isn’t a done deal, but the stakes are high.

Beyond the paycheck: the ripple effects

Imagine billions of people no longer needed and jobs cut – not just logistics and admin, but software engineers, solicitors, creatives, strategists, financial advisors, doctors. What then?

We could face a complete loss of bargaining power and of dignity, rising mental health challenges, growing populism and a breakdown in trust in democratic institutions.

This is about more than income: it’s about agency, belonging and purpose. And that’s not just an economic problem, it’s a societal one.

Why designers and strategists have a role to play

We may not write legislation, but the work we do shapes culture, influences society, and helps people imagine their future.

Consider the way the design sector spoke up on climate – prioritising sustainable materials, advocating circular design, pushing for B Corps and educating audiences.

We helped educate and inform, changing narratives and shifting mindsets. And policy change followed.

It’s time to do the same for the jobless future. Your toolkit is your advantage:

You work with C‑Suite leaders and Saas clients.
You embed sustainable futures in strategy work.
You translate complex issues into accessible narratives.

Let’s call on our professional bodies: the DBA, Design Council, federations, unions – and demand they take a seat at the policy table.
We need to influence how we plan for these transitions, how we build social safety nets, universal basic income pilots, and worker‑centric innovation.

Pro‑preparedness, not anti-tech

Yes, many of us already use AI tools for better research or strategy. And yes, AI brings real benefits if responsibly applied. My own consultancy work has seen deeper insights thanks to AI tools, and there’s nothing wrong with embracing that.

But this isn’t about increased efficiency for businesses. It’s about humanity’s future.

We’ve gone way beyond conversations about what this may mean for creative freelancers. The impact is much wider than that.

Even if we only look at our industry, recent graduates are struggling to find a foothold and even seasoned veterans are feeling the pinch. Economic disruption isn’t coming – it’s already begun. And if human-level AI arrives, almost every sector will be impacted.

Grab the wheel

We’re not all in the driver’s seat, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grab the wheel. The future is not set in stone – we can still steer, if we act now.

Actions you can take today:

Stay informed – follow organisations like Windfall Trust and thought leaders like Brian Merchant.
Demand action – send a letter to your MP or local policy teams; ask professional bodies to raise the issue.
Raise the right questions – If you’re shaping brand purpose, future strategy or comms, consider how AI’s impact could affect your clients and the people they serve.
Amplify the message – share articles and voices from people working on this issue with your network.

Let’s design the next chapter

We’ve designed for sustainability. We’ve designed for social change. Now, we design for dignity.

Let’s not allow the future to be written for us. Let’s design it together.

Sue Bush is a brand design consultant and runs The Co-Foundry.

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How is Among Equals using AI?

Among Equals is a London-based creative studio which works on strategy, branding, campaigns for clients like Candy Kittens, Netflix and Vinterior. Here, founder Emily Jeffrey-Barrett explains how they use AI,  and how she feels about it.

You can see all the articles in this series here.

Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?

I’m neither – I’m curious. Cautiously curious. We’re already surrounded by AI – it’s been shaping what we see, buy, read and scroll for ages now. But we haven’t seen its teeth yet.

Right now, the conversation about AI is incessant and deafening. You know that scene in Interstellar when they finally land on what looks like a mountainous planet? It’s full of possibilities.

Until they realise those aren’t mountains. They’re waves. Huge, horrifying waves, about to smash right into them. That’s what the AI discourse feels like. You can’t go on LinkedIn these days without bumping into dramatic takes:

“WE NO LONGER NEED AGENCIES – OR EMPLOYEES!”
“I MADE A FEATURE FILM IN THREE MINUTES USING ONLY TWO FINGERS!”
“I ASKED AI TO WRITE AN AD AND IT WON CANNES, D&AD AND MY EX BACK.”

The internet loves extremes. But with every innovation, the truth will lie somewhere in the middle.

AI undoubtedly makes climbing bigger mountains possible. For small teams or limited budgets, you can now produce more, to a higher quality, than was ever previously possible.

It’s a valuable thinking partner, a powerful way to bring ideas to life. But relying on AI as you would a human is a dangerous game. Outsourcing your brain to an app is like plating up Deliveroo every night and pretending you cooked.

It might be easier, quicker, maybe even more delicious in the moment. But eventually you’ll end up sluggish, poorer, and your knife skills will have gone to shit.

We’re barely scratching the surface of what AI can do at the moment. The interesting question to me isn’t what AI can do, but what we’ll choose to do with it.

According to Harvard Business Review, the top use of ChatGPT is therapy/companionship, which is kind of poetic. “Find purpose” is number three on the list.

We could be using this massive technological leap to right historic wrongs, act on global issues. Instead, we’re using it to soothe our own existential crises. We’re changing our world, not the world.

Ultimately, AI is a tool – it’s neither good nor bad, it’s neutral. In the right hands, a stick can be a toy; in the wrong hands, it’s a weapon. The same is true of AI. It’s enormously powerful, but how will humanity use it?

Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?

Nothing formal. But there’s an unwritten rule – AI is a thinking partner, not a creative.

We use it to challenge our thinking, not to do the thinking. I’d never expect anyone to hand me a list of ChatGPT-written lines. We use AI, we work it, we direct it. It’s not a substitution for imagination, judgement or decision-making.

We got into this industry to create, not produce. And the more people treat AI like a creative, the more boring the work will get – to experience, but also to do.

Who wants to come to work to ask a computer to come up with ideas, so they have time to make a deck? No thanks.

When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?

I didn’t have one single lightbulb moment. I’d been waiting for it for years, it always felt inevitable.

But around 2022, one of our creatives presented concept work and I asked where she’d found the mock-ups and imagery, because they looked amazing and were perfectly curated for the concept. She said, “I made them.”

That was the shift. Suddenly, we could realise our visions faster and more accurately, without relying on external specialists. It unlocked creative freedom.

Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?

No formal training, no – right now, we’re 100 percent self-taught.

We experiment constantly, share what we learn, and run regular internal sessions – think “Lunch & Learns” but with fewer sandwiches, and more curiosity.

We’ve considered formal courses, but everything’s moving so fast that by the time a curriculum’s written, it’s outdated. We’d rather get stuck in, play around, and figure it out ourselves.

We do invest heavily in training – everyone in the organisation has their own budget. But that focuses on what AI can’t do – presenting, decision-making, persuading people to buy your vision. The human stuff.

Our bet is that, if AI’s levelling the technical playing field, people skills are what will set us apart.

How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?

Mainly as a way to go faster, clearer and sharper. We use it for quick research, to generate visuals for pitches, to sense-check tone and messaging.

I also use it to interrogate my own thinking – I’m constantly asking it to poke holes in my logic or play statements/points of view/decisions back to me. A bit like a coach.

But the gap between the hype and the reality is still big.

It’s brilliant at asking questions, good at generating quantity, but it can’t judge quality. For us, AI is an eager, positive, always-on thinking buddy.

By the time something ends up on a billboard, brand, box, tiny button at the bottom of a website, it’s gone through so many layers of human thinking – strategy, creativity, experience, confidence, persuasion – that even when AI plays a part, it’s only ever in a supporting role.

Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?

Not really, and I think that’s healthy. It’s just expected that we use it now.

What still matters most is clarity of thought. The brief still rules. “Shit in, shit out” has never been truer.

What is exciting is that it levels the playing field. As a small agency, we can now bring million-pound ideas to life visually, by ourselves. That’s liberating. The creative barriers – time, budget, manpower – have shrunk.

Beyond that, clients don’t come to us for “stuff” – they come for ideas that make people care.

And I still passionately believe that, while AI can supercharge your capacity and speed up your progress, it can’t do your work for you. Work, ultimately, is imagination plus decision-making. And AI can’t do either well. It can imitate feeling, but it can’t mean it. It can’t dream.

And crucially, it can’t make decisions. It has no guts, no instinct. It doesn’t have to stand up in front of a board and justify itself.

What we do takes courage. I don’t mean “brave ideas” – I’m talking about having the conviction to believe in one idea, sell it in, fight for it. Clients care more about having someone on their side. And AI isn’t that. At least, not yet.

Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?

Yes. everywhere. HR is the biggest one – writing policies, checking employment law, and understanding best practice for things like feedback and progression planning.

We use it in finance too. It knows our targets and ambitions, flags opportunities and challenges in cash flow, and helps us model different operational scenarios. Legal language, contracts, it tightens those up as well.

It’s definitely saved us time, but more importantly, it’s saved us money. We can have quick five-minute chats with lawyers or accountants just to sanity-check something, rather than paying for full consultations. It’s never let us down. Just don’t ask it to do complex financial analysis – or, if you do, check the maths.

We also use it to analyse patterns in client briefs, which is equal parts useful and horrifying. This year, lots of people still want to be “the Oatly of category X” but most REALLY want to be “the Liquid Death of category X.”

The most requested phrases of the year? “Ownable colour,” “Create a cult,” and “Hyper-disruptive.” Client Briefs 2025 wrapped – coming soon.

Beyond the best-known tools, what’s one AI tool you’d recommend to other design studios?

We’re pretty experimental by nature and we’ll try anything once. So we mix it up. For deeper research, we use Claude – it’s more thoughtful and better at handling long, complex inputs.

For creative research, like campaign or brand reference hunting, we use Prvctice. For image generation, we use anything and everything going – from Nano Banana to Endless Tools to Visual Electric. Anything that can help us visualise rapidly and test out our ideas.

For generating interactive tools, apps, forms etc, Figma Make. For rapid insights and playback, Notebook is great. And in our pitches, AI is everywhere – visualising video flows, building moodboards, tightening story arcs.

There are so many that we use every day. But I can’t recommend one – it depends entirely on what you need it for. It’s like asking which website I’d recommend – for what?

AI is a means to an end. If you want to test an app idea quickly and don’t know how to code, Figma Make. If you want to get decent imagery without the pain of refining through 100 different prompts, Visual Electric. If you want lawyer-level insight, Claude.

If you want to feel really, really good about yourself and be told you have “excellent ideas!” 15 times a minute, stick with good old ChatGPT.

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Design business’ confidence “lowest since COVID”

One in five design businesses are anxiously cutting costs, or even struggling to stay afloat, according to a new report.

But amid the doom and gloom, there are some reasons to be optimistic.

The Design Business Association (DBA) has just released its 2025 In Focus Report, based on its annual survey of its members.

The results mirror what many in the industry have been sharing anecdotally – that it’s a tough time to be running a design business right now.

The survey, produced in association with accountancy firm Moore Kingston Smith, asked design leaders how their company is performing.

The responses on business performance from the DBA’s In Focus report

Just 12.4% said “business is great and growing” which is just below the percentage (12.5%) who gave that answer in 2020 – that first, turbulent year of the pandemic.

It’s down slightly from 2024 (13.6%) but way down from 2022, when 25.7% – or one in four – said that business was booming.

At the other end of the optimism scale, 3.3% of respondents said they faced a critical situation, and were struggling to stay in business.

This was up from 2.7% last year, and higher than the 2.8% who felt this pressure in 2020. In some years of the DBA survey, like 2018 and 2022, nobody relayed this level of worry.

The percentage of leaders who said they were “concerned” about their commercial performance, and are “actively tightening their belts” was also up significantly, from 13.6% in 2024, to 19.8% this year.

Together, that puts 23.1% of respondents in the least confident categories.

“Some agencies have thrived in 2025, but for many across the sector it has been a tough year,” Deborah Dawton, the CEO of the DBA says. “There is no doubt that it’s a testing time, with confidence for the coming year the lowest it’s been since the pandemic.

“Making the right decisions, at the right time, about our businesses can be challenging in this landscape. Instinct matters, but what separates bold moves from blind risks is clarity and confidence. And that comes from using data to drive your business decisions.”

Many UK design leaders have described a perfect storm this year. Rising costs, and an increase in employer national insurance contributions, have had an impact, while a sluggish economy means many client budgets are down.

Add in the impact of AI, which has both taken work away from designers, and, many believe, lessened the value that those who buy design put on it.

In January, the World Economic Forum warned that graphic design was one of the jobs most at-risk from AI, based on a survey of 1,000 employers in 55 countries.

Green shoots in overseas income

The DBA report did include some findings that bring better news for design businesses.

The average income from overseas clients is up, at 36.5%. This is a slight rise from 2024 (33.5%) but the more significant story is longer-term.

In 2016 it was 20.3%, so it has risen 80% in the past ten years, with DBA members now making, on average, more than one third of their revenue from non-UK clients.

“This is testament to the high regard UK design is held in around the world,” Dawton says. “With the home market remaining stubbornly challenging, there’s opportunity for members to look beyond the UK for growth.”

Earlier this year, DBA membership director Adam Fennelow told us that the UK market was becoming harder to navigate.

“The domestic design sector is highly competitive, with many agencies vying for the same projects, often leading clients to prioritise cost over quality,” he said. “By seeking clients abroad, agencies are finding new markets that value effective, high-quality design.”

Another interesting finding suggested that the gap between London agencies and the rest of the UK is narrowing.

Historically, design businesses based in London could charge a premium, compared to those in the rest of the country (in the same way salaries often include a London weighting).

In some pre-Covid years, this premium was as high as 30%. But this year, the premium is down from 22% in 2024, to 18% for larger agencies of 20 staff or more.

And for smaller agencies, that premium has tumbled from 21% to just 11%.

“The adoption of remote working during the pandemic has changed the way many agencies and clients interact,” Fennelow explains. “There are now less in-person meetings, leading to many clients viewing agency location as far less important than before.

“Clients in general seem to have become more open to different agency structures too, meaning smaller businesses with a network of associates or freelancers now have a better opportunity of winning work at a higher price.”

As part of that picture, Dawton says they have seen, “a particular surge in growth for larger agencies located outside of London.”

A need for new skills

Minnie Moll, CEO of the Design Council, echoes this emphasis on the regional success story.

“It does feel tough at the moment, but the fact is that design continues to drive £97 billion value across the UK, with growing clusters outside London, showing real strength,” she says.

Moll believes one of the things designers should be doing to help build resilience is upskilling to meet new demand for eco-friendly design work.

“The demand for designing for environmental impact is rising fast, yet only 43% of designers feel equipped to meet it,” she says. “So businesses that will thrive are those investing in green design skills so they can respond to the growing demand for green design projects and embed design at the heart of strategy for a net zero future.”

DBA members can access the full report which goes into granular detail about industry fees, salaries, utilisation, income, recovery rates and other key operational factors.

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design/leader: Studio Blackburn’s Paul Blackburn

Paul Blackburn is founder and creative lead of Studio Blackburn. The London-based brand agency has worked for the likes of Toyota, Sky and Brompton Bikes.

Design

What would your monograph be called?

The man who knew enough. I met a filmmaker on holiday a few years ago, and after chatting for a couple of days about life and the universe she subsequently contacted me to suggest making a film about me called that.

I think it was meant to be complimentary, but it’s just nicely ambiguous enough for me not to be entirely sure. I still like it though, so make of it what you will.

What recent design work made you a bit jealous?

None. I really try not to be jealous of any other work anymore; I just focus on our work at Studio Blackburn.

That said, I do often find myself jealous of the work my own team produces. They’ve got an abundance of talent at their fingertips which constantly surpasses what I’m able to imagine.

What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from?

I don’t know how unusual this is, but for me it’s definitely “in the sauna.” If I’m able to do a gym session followed by a long sauna – preferably three, seven-minute sessions with a cold shower in between – I find that it completely clears all the detritus in my brain ,and allows me to focus on one creative problem at a time.

I always solve something in the sauna.

Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked.

The British BS 1363 three pin plug. It’s so much better than any other plug in the world. I have to thank an old colleague, Peter Knapp, for pointing this out to me.

What object in your studio best sums up your taste?

David Mellor’s Minimal cutlery. I really love David Mellor, and this cutlery in particular. It’s so chunky that you never forget it’s in your hands. It’s basic, almost primeval.

I’ve always been fascinated by how little you can take away from a volume before you get to something recognisable.

David Mellor’s Minimal cutlery

Leadership

What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful?

Ha! Well, I was heckled by Zaha Hadid as I presented the new brand identity to her entire company, Zaha Hadid Architects, so beat that for brutal feedback.

As I began the first slide, in front of a full auditorium, she came in, sat in the front row and scowled at me. I could hear her muttering throughout, and at one point she interrupted to tell me how much she hated what we’d done. As I wrapped up, she told me that I’d be hearing from her lawyers the following week.

It’s actually become something of a superpower. I’ve been brutally heckled by Zaha Hadid and lived to tell the story – no client meeting could ever be that bad.

Later, a friend of hers confided that she was always harshest with those she respected. I never did hear from the lawyers, and the identity is still in full use today.

What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need?

A skill that I’ve worked on over the years is to trust the designers who work here. This often involves acknowledging that what they’ve created, or what they’re proposing, is way better than I could have done myself.

It’s a wonderful thing to see, and of course it’s exactly what we require in order for the company to remain healthy.

Self-deprecation and humour have enabled me to get over myself and not take offence when someone much younger and less-experienced tells me to trust them.

What keeps you up at night?

The company running out of money is my main worry. We try and do the most creative commercial work, the “best graphic design in the world” as I put it, and we try to pay our staff accordingly. We don’t expect them to take “boutique agency” rates.

What trait is non-negotiable in new hires?

Resourcefulness and signs of maturity.

Both of those traits manifest differently from person to person. But if we get a sense that someone is showing signs of both, we know we’re onto someone who – at some point in the future – we’re going to have to work hard to keep. Which is the challenge we want.

Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…”

…would commission us directly instead of asking us to free pitch. Commission, brief, strap in and enjoy the ride.

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