Peter and Paul Interview with Dan and Evaluation

How did you get involved with Peter and Paul?

So my first encounter of Peter and Paul was a long time ago. When I first graduated I had a number of people I wanted to contact and I send through my then portfolio to them. At that time Peter and Paul, who are two actual men and then Lee, who is our creative director as well, ran the studio just really tightly and they didn’t get in contact with me. It was the time when they ran a tramlines campaign which, essentially, was just a really nice layout, directed shots of famous faces, and they did a really nice typographic mark for tramlines, and the tag line was ‘free for all’. So that combination of the design detail in the logo, the art direction in the shots, and the writing for the design, there was always something within me that wanted to be multidisciplinary, so that ticked a lot of boxes. So I looked more into them, and sent them my portfolio but I didn’t receive anything back or acknowledgement but I kind of knew they were a small one man band. If they were looking [to hire] then they would look at it and go ‘oh it’s alright’ and also I wasn’t probably developed enough to join such a small team at that time so I kept following their work as I kept going through jobs. 

I’ve only actually had 3 design jobs in my life which urm, there’s always been like a career progression for me to move to like smaller and smaller workforces, because I think the more that you learn the more you can do independently. But the smaller the workforce you work for the more you rely on outsourcing stuff as well as being independent yourself; in terms of managing projects and understanding what you need to do at certain points and project timelines, stuff like that. So as I developed my career I knew I was at a certain point where, well, I heard from a friend of mine called Craig Olden that they [Peter and Paul] were looking for senior designers. I was getting to a point in the company I was working for where I just wasn’t really happy anymore, and wanted a new challenge, and I kind of knew that I wanted to stay in the north.  I’m not really sure why but I just found it would be like a really good fit thought that their work was similar to the way I like to approach work, they seemed to be experimental but measured at the same time. So I sent through just a like a deck, a portfolio, and they invited me to come over and take them through it and then I got the job from there. So I was told that they were looking through a personal contact and I knew other people that I’d worked with previously had worked with them, so I knew kind of that they were alright. I did a bit of research and found out that they weren’t like nasty people or like were just interested in the money of it.

I’ve always wanted to work for a place that is interested in the craft of design, or like the ideas within design rather than just making pure profit. I mean I could probably work somewhere else and earn more money but that’s not satisfying, you’ll probably go home and really hate your life. I think to be fulfilled creatively and still get paid for it is the ideal situation, and it was a natural progression from me coming from, because I used to work in Manchester, coming from their to here, working for a smaller team, a bit more kind of responsibility but almost like a bit more freedom as well to kind of express yourself. In my old team there were people who were in charge of production so they would always advise you on what to do and you have to follow their lead, where as here there’s a whole world out there of production and ideas that you can develop; and you get the time to do that as it’s built into the project.

Eval
Interesting to hear about how Dan got involved with Peter and Paul, and how things were different within the company when he first graduated. And how he actually got involved with Peter and Paul by approaching them with his portfolio, he knew they were looking for someone through a personal connection. Interesting to hear about people approaching agencies/studios and getting jobs. Lots of the people I've heard from through uni have started their own studio, or got scouted by studios etc.
Dan's drive to work for a company that is multidisciplinary is evident in his answer and probably contributed well to his application to the agency.
It's always insightful to find out how someone got into the creative job they're in. It really opens my eyes up to the different ways of finding work in the creative field. I had begun to feel as though people only get jobs if they start a studio while at uni, or get approached by a studio. I understand this is a massive part of getting employed in the industry but it is reassuring to hear from someone who persisted and got the job they wanted.

So your job title is senior designer, what does that mean in terms of your position within the agency?

It’s always hard to pigeon hole people but I’d say a senior design has the ability to meet a client, take a project from being briefed by the client all the way to production and delivery, so there will always be involvement from other people. Within Peter and Paul especially there’s always a shared responsibility of a job, no matter who is in charge of that job, but I would say that, probably, 50% of the time everybody’s running their own jobs and then sometimes the bigger jobs get shared out between different people. So, I would sometimes be helping Lee pull together a big presentation, he would be heading that up as he’s more of a strategist than I am, I would say that I’m a typical straight down the line designer but flirt with a lot of various different things outside of that. Animation, typography, illustration, movie making, and I would that, there’s another Dan that works here who is quite similar to me as well, his core is design, and I think it’s probably the nature of when we got into design we would flirt with other things. He’s more into website design, whereas I’m more into animation, we both have our own strengths and weaknesses but we are put on the jobs that suit our roles. 

If it was a bigger job then I would probably come in a little bit later on so Lee would take the lead on some jobs in terms of strategy based jobs. There’s a job coming in at the minute which is a big strategy job that’s about 2 companies merging, how you would birth the identity from that just from being briefed on the idea of two companies coming together. He would come up with a strategy, what we would call an organising principle, so what you hang your hat on and everything gets pushed out from there. So the wonderful everyday that is an organising principle that IKEA use to springboard their ideas from. Right so the wonderful everyday, we’ve got to sell beds, how are those two things going to come together? Oh let’s have somebody I don’t know floating on a bed in the sky, I don't know. They use that, so Lee would be heading up that side of it, whereas I would come in and take those principles and apply that to everything that needs to be applied to. But in other circumstances I would just get a brief, and I would come up with creative ideas try and sell them to a client, they would buy one certain idea and I would apply that to what the job needs so it can be finished. 

There a part responsible role and then there’s a fully responsible role. That’s how we kind of see it, we’re quite unique at Peter and Paul in terms of, there’s nobody with less experience than a senior, so its always been that people run their own jobs but pull others in for their opinion. Because sometimes you can be very, like, see the wood through the trees type of scenario where you’re working on something so intensely you don’t get the time to step back when someone could just walk over and go ‘oh have you thought about this?’ it would change the direction of a job quite quickly. They can see things maybe in the intermediate design that you wouldn’t have necessarily seen, it’s collaboration essentially. 

It’s definitely a traditional senior role but the idea of a senior designer would change in every studio you go to so it’s hard to really say what your job title is because I suppose it’s only for Peter and Paul that I do those things. I think titles are mainly for clients to understand that you’ve got a certain level of skill and ability that they can rely upon, whereas in here we’re just a creative team working together and we don’t pull rank on each other too much we try to encourage each other to just create the work best we can in the time spread that we’ve got. So that’s kind of our approach.

Eval
It was interesting to hear about the dynamic in the studio, Dan explained how projects get divided amongst the team and what it is like to be working on something individually but also as a group. To hear about the title being mainly for clients is interesting, I guess people want to feel as though they're in safe hands especially if there is money involved.
Dan's answer to this question was really insightful into the industry and how things work at Peter and Paul, but isn't necessarily the most relevant thing to my practice. It is good to know the dynamic of working for a studio and have insight into what that's like as it'll better prepare me for when I leave uni but not currently.

Which aspect of the design process from discussing with a client to a final outcome do you think is most important?

The most important?

Or the one that holds the most weight?

So if a client comes to us with a brief I think the most important thing is to understand exactly what they want. But also, within that is to understand what they’re not also thinking about. They might come to us and say, ‘We’ve got a building we want to dress for an event and we want people to have an amazing time at that event.’. So, within that brief we’re going to understand that there is an event happening we need to make sure that the inside of that place looks amazing. What they haven’t said to us is, how are they going to get people there, or how are you going to entice people to come to that event? So not only do you have to interrogate a brief, you have to understand exactly the basics of what you need to deliver. But you need to understand there are other things you need to do to add to the delivery that would take answering the brief to another level. 

So, I think interrogating the brief, and obviously one of the other more important things is making sure you can communicate your ideas to that client depending on what that client is. I think we always try to understand is how the client’s behaved in the past, they might be a returning client so have we got a really good relationship, have we an open and honest relationship or is it a new client, what are they expecting kind of world do they live in how relaxed are they, how blue collar are they? A lot of those things influence how we would put together a creative presentation to them. So a client that we’ve got for a beer event would be sold to a lot different to a client that is a bank, the way to structure it and talk about the work is quite different. You definitely need to make sure they understand that you know about their market almost as much as them. You need to do your research because if you’re coming at it from somebody who hasn’t done their research, it’ll be more obvious that you don’t understand what I’m trying to sell, how are you going to communicate that to the target audience if you don’t understand the market. So it’s really important to communicate the idea that you know their audience, you know you’re confident enough that you know everything about them, and that you can draw on all that information and put it back into something that is a piece of communication and put that out to the world.

Now there’s loads of things. It’s all of them really!

But there are specific points such as, when you go in with that first draft of different design ideas how you weight that presentation is quite important because depending on how many routes you do, how many versions of the designs you do, sometimes there will be an in house favourite, so the way you construct the story [to a client] about how you’ve created this idea or proposition or piece of design is really important. You could take them through the process step by step chronologically of what you did and how you ended up where you ended up, and why that potentially going to land the right one proposal. Sometimes it’s a split decision internally when we go, I like all three of them so let’s weight them equally, let’s go this is route one this is what we did, this is route two, this is what we did and this is route three, this is what we did. Or if there’s one where it’s a clear winner we would put a bit more time into the execution of that presentation and go, ‘We did this and we thought it was really nice, but it was missing this. Then we did this, we thought it was really nice as well and it was really close but actually, we ended up on this, this is really good because of A, B, C, D, E, F.’. The way that you’ve then weighted the presentation is then the obvious favourite from our commercial opinion is the third route and we’d always weight it that way, taking them on a bit of a journey. So how you’re selling an idea is probably, maybe not as important as the idea, but it definitely helps to take the client on a journey and make them understand the decisions you’ve made. Because otherwise you could just go in, place them on the table and go right that’s it I won't write any words with it, I won’t present it, what’d you think? And we’re then putting it into the hands of the client to understand our industry and to how that conveys certain messages. When, if you take them through it, this conveys this, this conveys that, that’s good to do this, this will really excite your audience for this reason, then you’re persuading them already to buy into it. I think that’s really important. 

And then after that I think the important thing is to keep that constant communication and relationship really healthy. And be honest, we’re not mechanics at the end of the day so there isn't one decision to be made. We’re on the business side of creativity, so sometimes things aren’t as easy as we maybe think they would be to answer, or maybe we need more information. Sometimes I think there’s a bit of hesitation from a designer to hold their hands up and go ‘actually at that initial stage you didn’t tell me about so and so, so can you tell me about that’ and that might just help change an idea or build an idea or morph an idea into a much stronger area than where it is currently and make some decisions internally then send back to them. It's about keeping that communication up because otherwise you end up creating design work or ideas in silo and you end up with a house style that people could potentially view as a negative. People should come to you for, not that your responding to the actual design brief or how you think it should manifest itself visually. Because otherwise you’re essentially an illustrator.

Eval
Dan's answer to this question went into depth about the different processes. What was most interesting was the fact that Dan spoke most about the relationship with clients, and how to present ideas to clients. It was interesting to hear that his response wasn't about design.
It provided a real insight into the business side of the design industry, and working in a team in particular. This was something I hadn't even considered before as I haven't had to do this during my degree so far, we do design boards but I've never looked at them with the lens that it could be good practice for showing my ideas to clients in the future.

Would you say that Peter and Paul has a house style, or more so a house approach?

I would say we definitely don’t have a house style, I’d say there is an approach that we take in terms of how we pull together certain types of projects and what we go through in terms of internal scrutiny. I suppose it’s hard to say that we don’t have an approach. We always try to give as much creativity to the smaller projects as well as big projects, so it’s not like, even if someone small comes in it could be the best work that people could produce as much as a massive one. So I suppose we do have a rigid system that we go through, in terms of getting briefed, here’s the design solutions, let’s go through it as a group, let’s decide which are the strongest, and then home them in get them read to present, come back and refine. So I suppose it is a process, but I don’t that process ever impacts the visual outcome of the project.

Eval
Similar to when I was talking to Mick Marston about his time at Dust, similar responses in terms of identifying far more with having an approach than a style. This seems to be inevitable especially when working in a team as everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to making work as the work is going out under the name of the studio, not individual designers.

If it did that would be beneficial?

I think that’s just a different way of design, what happens then as you say okay well I do have a house style, I do have a definite way of doing things and people come to me for that. So, it would be like an illustrator or a graphic artist where people go to them specifically for the style they put out. And some agencies are like that, I tend to think that if I ever walk into work and know what a project’s going to look at the end that's sad. I like the thrill of finding a new visual direction to something, to me that’s the reason why I got into design,it’s the variation of it, there’s so much useless knowledge that I gained about certain subject matters, but it’s because it’s interesting. I would research, so like I am currently designing something for a building that is being erected in Liverpool, now I didn’t know that much about the area until I did all my research about it, the history of the area and what was on that site and what key things happened in that area. All that feeds into then how you approach the project and what you decide to not use and what you decide to use, what are the little nuggets of creative gold that you can then explore the project from? That would happen for every project, but if you knew the visual outcome you wouldn’t be doing the research to change the direction. I prefer that visual direction being unknown at the briefing stage, because I think there might be something really really apt for that that we could do that might springboard their brand to something they never even for possible. And also it’s fun if you just happened to see a documentary about a photographer and you go wow they’re amazing and you rang up and they were up for it and if you got the money then all of a sudden something that becomes a personal interest becomes a professional job. And that could happen at any project at any time and I think any type of person, you could be architect, could be a sculptor, it could be a print maker, I always think that going into something with a complete and blinkered view there might be something in the back of your head that you’ve seen 10 years ago and think that is it. Let’s contact them, or let’s work with them, or let’s work with them more, let’s take them as an influence and take it in a slightly different direction. It keeps it more interesting, and you know that not one single day is going to be the same. Unless it’s a day of amends, but it’s not very often that you’re booked in for a full day of amends because it’s hard work, but I can’t complain because then you get the other days. 

Eval
Finding the inspiration in things outside of the discipline is something that can inspire Dan and inform projects. Keeping your eyes open and experiencing things outside of what you see on the daily can improve your design practice overall. Good to keep in mind especially when approaching research, this is an area for improvement in my own practice. Need to develop a way to sustain research throughout project that isn't just secondary. 

You mentioned that Peter and Paul is quite a small team, but you still identify a creative agency, rather than the studio what we say is a difference between those two?

I would say we are a studio, but if I’m honest I don’t really know what the difference is. I find the terminology that design studios use sometimes a bit laughable, and sometimes a bit too serious, sometimes a bit ridiculous. But everybody’s just trying to find a way to say that we work together and we work collaboratively with other people to come to an end product for a project that would be a Peter and Paul project. But I think we definitely are a studio, we’d never be individuals, because I think some companies do work on a basis where you give that that individual and they run it through and that’s their job. Whereas with definitely a team here, we work together, we try to make things stronger if someone one was struggling with something everybody would help. It is a team mentality more than an individual mentality. I don’t think we ever think that our job is by a person because it goes out as by Peter and Paul, so all responsible for every job that goes out to try make it better, whether or not you booked it it all goes on that wall that you see there. The work that’s ongoing, no matter where in a company work so you could be, we’ve got like an admin assistant, like her opinion is as much as the creative directors, if she’s got something interesting to say then everybody will definitely listen. That goes for the account handlers, that goes for Peter and Paul, Lee, me and Dan, and Tom as well who is just digital that doesn’t mean to say he doesn’t have an opinion on the campaigns that we do. Because all impact on everybody’s workload and what goes out. To say that you work at Peter and Paul it would always be a thing about how we work collectively, the focus is always to make sure all the work is good all the time or our reputation goes down.

Eval
Again interesting to learn more about the labels within the industry, in particular that Dan sees Peter and Paul as a studio but they go by agency online. He focuses more on the fact that the work is being produced by Peter and Paul rather than an agency, it is evident that this is more important than the official labels.

Compared to other places you’ve worked as a studio dynamic here drastically different?

It is different and that’s purely based on size. So, when I first got a job I worked at a place called Brass and that was a massive team, so there were about a 150 people there but it was all split up into really small different groups. There was a digital team, there was a design team which I was part of, there was a design and documentation team which took things that we did or needed redoing and applied that. There was a second company who did analogue catalogue style things, there was a PR company, there was marketing just all sorts of different areas, our the design team there was probably about between 8 and 10 of us at one stage, we would work on projects that came through our little room that we had. That was a really different dynamic because I’d always be working with different people in the building who didn’t really understand design, and also the people who were at the top they really had no clue about what we were doing in that room, they just knew that they were getting paid for the work that we were doing. 

So as soon as I started to think about that, I got a lot of experience there and people I worked with were really good but I knew I didn’t want to work with people who saw the pound sign rather than the creativity. So that led to me moving to a place called Muse in Manchester that was a much smaller team but still kind of mid-size about 25. So there would be certain people with certain roles, so you wouldn’t necessarily get to do the full project yourself, there were certain roles set aside to production and they would be in charge of the production. The structure was quite similar to Peter and Paul just a lot bigger. But then it got to a point where they essentially just wanted to go after big names because they were expanding the team and that’s when I knew that I wanted to move to a smaller team, to get a bit more responsibility but still do the work that I wanted to do, and that’s where Peter and Paul came in. 

I think no matter where you go the dynamic is different because the bosses have a different way of approaching things, and that’s how they want that to filter down into the full studio and that works to a certain degree but designers are designers they’ll do what they do. I only worked in three places but I know a lot of people who have worked in a lot of different places and they always say it’s a lot different to the types of places I’ve worked in. So I would say not one place is the same to be honest, I think similar sized agencies might operate in similar ways. Obviously whoever is in charge will want to do things different to the others, so there will be slight differences there but I would say size of the biggest difference in terms of how a place is run because you’re able to get we were not doing as much in a lot bigger agency, whereas when there’s five you got to produce all the work to make sure everybody gets paid is a lot more on you to produce a quality of work expected.

Eval
Really interesting to hear about the other jobs Dan has worked in, provides a lot of insight into the field and how different organisation can function. Size being a key factor to the way a studio works is evident within Dan's answer, but what is most interesting is the relationship Dan has between this, and responsibility. Dan feels as though he has more responsibility within a smaller team than a larger one, I would've thought that the responsibility level is the same anywhere but the pressure is different. Also to hear about Dan feeling as though he has more creative freedom when he's working in a smaller team, I think this goes back to that small cog large machine analogy. I would want to feel as though I have creative freedom within my career even if the work I'm producing goes out under the name of the studio/agency I work for.

In regards to the clients you get here do you source and pitch to clients or do you get more people approaching you and asking you to do work for them?

It’s kind of a 50-50, so Peter who is of Peter and Paul, he is the one who goes out and meets up with clients, chats to clients take them through what are offerings are essentially. So that would be with connections to clients already have, so if we’ve been working with a certain client people would then go right okay so you’re in a certain sector. Who they’re like who are the other people in that sector who don’t actually conflict with that person but might be because we produce a lot of work for universities. We do a lot of work for Huddersfield so we go what’s another similar size University, as we’ve spent a few years now homing our expectations of what they want, what that markets like we could use that with another university but we don’t want to step on their toes. So we need to go somewhere further afield but we use all that expertise stop so then it’s Pete’s job to come up with an idea of do we approach them on LinkedIn,e do we send them a piece of post, so we pulled together about 10 lessons we learn about working for a university and then sent that to a lot of different organisations. It was a piece of printed material showing all the work done for different universities so Leeds arts University, Huddersfield University, Sheffield Hallam and sent that to a lot other universities saying this is what we learned from doing this work and this is the work that we’ve done. Basically, just saying this is us if you’re thinking about changing the marketing design team that you work with we are here and we’d like to chat. 

Now, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes that ends up in the hands of somebody completely random and they get in contact with us or sometimes, we worked with Sheffield girls school because the woman in charge of marketing team started following us on Instagram and then when she got to a certain point where there was a new campaign she wanted she went right I get Peter and Paul in just two talk about what they like and how expensive it’ll be I don’t know, but we’ll give some cost and if it all lines up then we’ll work for them. So there’s loads of different ways and then there will be people who move, so will work with them in a certain company and they’ll move to another company then they’ll take them with us. Or the company that they moved to might not be interested, so it comes from everywhere. There’s definitely a role within a design agency to ensure that work’s continuously coming in, because unless you have a person that’s following up leads, chasing things down, coming to the team and saying we need to produce something to get people excited because we’re getting the right people have seen the work we’ve done. Having a website, which we are currently trying to do, all of that helps like self-promotion and also just knowing the right people. A lot of the work that we’ve got is from Pete working tirelessly for years trying to pull together the contacts within Sheffield and further afield to say, look we are one of Sheffield’s best design agencies if you’re looking for someone to come to always knock on our door, if were to busy were too busy but we will have open arms and will work with you. 

Eval
Really good to hear about scouting clients and building relationships, interesting to hear at Peter and Paul there is someone dedicated to doing so.

Why stay in Sheffield? Why not move to London?

I think Peter and Paul are very invested in doing good this area, there is talk of them buying a premises in London or buying one in Sheffield, so the idea that they went no we want to stay in Sheffield it’s where we’re from we’re proud of this place why should we move to London, we got loads of London clients we have to go there all the time but there’s no reason in this day and age why we should be in London. We can get a better office, more space and have it cost a lot less in Sheffield, and then produce internationally good work that doesn’t matter where you are. It’s the approach you have and the attention to detail and how creative you are, as long as you attract the right people to stay here you got that pool of creative resource to do whatever work you want to.

Eval
When Dan mentioned about moving to London it was really fascinating to hear that there had been talk about the company moving down but the decided not to. Being able to run a successful business from a smaller city is a comfort, and the fact Peter and Paul don't feel there are any boundaries surrounding their location makes me wonder if people working in London feel as though there would be boundaries for them if they were to move somewhere smaller. (As a follow up to this I went and spoke to Studio Build in Leeds as they had moved here from London not too long ago)

For someone like me, I’ve lived in Sheffield I know the design scene is there, but I've never been sure on how to get me foot in the door really. What advice would you give to someone in my position?

First of all I think you’re doing the right thing by doing this. I think when you get to a certain point just make a list of everybody that you like, admire, want to work for, with, and then send them your stuff and then follow it up. There’s a real fine line between being really annoying or being go getting, but I think you did the right thing he sent an email now here you can see the place you can understand that all human beings. I would go to Creative  Mornings which is run by, I dunno who it’s run by actually but we’ve hosted one here. It’s essentially a monthly creative get together for a lot of the creatives in Sheffield just go and talk about the creative person, and some people chair sometimes. I think the more you can mix with freelancers that necessarily don't work for a company but always go to those types of things the more embedded you get into that creative audience of Sheffield. Go to exhibitions and just talk to people, some people can be abrasive but I think you’ll find that there people you want to stay away from anyway, they won’t welcome you or they won’t give you any time. I think the ones that even give you a little bit of their time it might just be that their time sensitive, at least you can then present yourself and say this is what I’m about and you might not be right for a lot of people but you might end up being right for a certain of people. As long as you’re in their consciousness then you’ve done everything you can do and there’s not a lot more than you can do other than turn up and work for free, but that’s and that should have happened really within this day and age. Working for free it’s just unethical for starters, I think that you get paid for everything you do might not necessarily be megabucks to start with but it’s an incentive. Your still providing a service even if you don’t contribute a lot you’re still there, you’re still contributing something, no matter what it’s your time like you could be stacking shelves, not that you want to but you be any money in that time and I think there should be no design studios that have like a ‘come here you’ll gain experience’ bullshit,  just pay me some money at least. I think you are doing the right thing by just again doing as much as you can, maybe you could volunteer art things may be or whether that’s your bag but I don’t think you should never work for free.

Eval
Good to know I'm getting on the right track. Over summer it would be good to attend these events more regularly, get talking to people and start to put myself out there into the industry more.
Keeping up the relationships and contacts I've developed through this brief will be really beneficial too, maintaining good relationships is something Dan mentioned frequently during the interview would be silly to ignore it.

Is there anything else you think would be valuable for me to know about here, about your work?

I don’t know, I’ve kind of taken you through most of the stuff. I would say the best best advice I can give you especially when you start work it’s never gonna be one project at a time. The best thing to learn is to always have a few things on the go at the same time, you’re always pulled from one thing to the other, to the other, to the other. I remember being at university and it was like we’re going to do this now it was one project you did that and that was it and I would say that and probably as it stands doing at least 10 projects at the minute. They’re all at different stages and it would all get booked in in terms of when the client wants deadlines and their not like similar jobs they’ll be completely different jobs, doing completely different things. I think that in third year of uni I would try and start to get used to that as it was a little bit of a shock for me.  I think that when you’re fresh out of university I don’t think any design studio would give you 10 briefs to do the same week that’s crazy, but as you start to work more and more in industry you kind of become more flexible in terms of ‘right I’ll just take my brain out that job and put in that.’. I also think that no matter what get briefed as soon as you can in a job because there is something in your brain subconsciously working that will if you see something it will flick to that project that’s applicable for and go ‘ah that would be alright for that’ and then you bank it. So you’re actually working when you’re not working, and also working on other things. So it to be briefed as soon as possible even though the deadline is like in six months you can be slowly thinking about that project bubbling away underneath all the other stuff you have to do.

Evaluation:
How did they answer?
Very thorough response especially in comparison to Totally Okay, but this is due the fact that this interview was conducted face to face rather than via email, making ti easier to provide a lengthy response.
Within the answers Dan fades away from the key question but always brings it back, this provides a lot more context for the answers giving a deeper understanding of the answer. The indepth answers really provided a lot of insight into the industry that I didn't originally know.

What insights, knowledge, advice did you gain?
I learnt a lot from talking to Dan, especially about the design process in terms of working for clients. He answered some of the questions in a way I didn't think a designer would. Especially his response to 'Which aspect of the design process from discussing with a client to a final outcome do you think is most important?'. He mentioned a lot about the relationship with a client and maintaining that relationship, his approach to the answer felt very much from a business perspective rather than a designer, however he explained how this process feeds back into allowing you to develop better design.
Dan also provided me with some insight on the realistic workload of a professional designer, which was comforting to hear as he recommended working on multiple projects at one time and it made me feel as though my course is preparing me well for a realistic experience in the design world. Also mentioned Creative Mornings that take place in Sheffield, something for me to research into further and potentially start attending over the summer.

Was the response good or bad?
Dan's responses to my questions were great, he answered a lot of the question I wanted to ask within other questions. Especially about how working in Sheffield in comparison to working in London. It was really interesting to find out that Peter and Paul had the opportunity to move to London but decided against it. Dan mentioned how having a good design team is more important than location at this day and age, they're still able to have clients in London as well as International clients while working in a city like Sheffield.

Do you need to find and include more information/research?
Within the report it could be interesting to maybe create an insert or addition to the publication about some of the things Dan mentioned such as Creative Mornings (if appropriate after further research). Could be good to have a follow up question he could reply to over email. Realised by interviewing professionals that the design scene in Sheffield is there, you just have to ask and find things out for yourself then you get exposed to this mass network of creatives. Would be interesting to find out if people within the industry feel as though this is true.