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If this is your reaction to the challenging new economic circumstances facing small design agencies, then what you need is a healthy Designer Breakfast (and Brunch). Our new programme is all about helping designers to earn more not less in a slowing economy.
Our events for the year ahead include not just Breakfasts, but practical Brunches aimed at helping you to adapt, innovate and win through despite the recessionary tide. We'll focus on getting closer to business, the value of design thinking, how to learn from and work with each other, working smart and new pricing models.
If you're new to the site, welcome to this much-needed hub for entrepreneurial designers who want to get together to network, share advice and prepare for our monthly business breakfasts. It’s a site for small agencies with big ideas, run by designers, for designers. Click here to enter the highly regarded forums where you'll find intelligent comment from fellow designers
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October 20: Breakfast: Niche v Generalist
Some designers carve successful niches, others prefer to keep their offer broad. Is there a best way? And is it the way through recession ? Meet practitioners from both sides of the divide for an in-the-round discussion.
December 4: Brunch. Leadership and motivating creative teams. With Gavin Andrews and Tamara Gal-On, directors of business trainers and coaching specialists Edge Thinking. A practical and pro-active workshop where you will learn the principles of employee productivity and performance.Click here to register.
We are co-creating our events and have launched the Designer Breakfasts wiki, an online discussion area where anybody can edit or add to the list of discussion topics, questions, policies and reading material and suggest speakers for future events. The invite key is croissant.
It was all about the survival of the fittest at our latest Brunch with business author and motivational speaker Kevin Duncan who suggested it will be better to forget about creative perfection for the next few months as clients are focusing on the bottom line like never before. But it was not gloomy. Kevin, pictured below, does not do gloomy. If you’re proactive and apply some rigor to your new business efforts, he argued that you can ‘nip into the gaps’ that less nimble large agencies leave open.Go here for more details.
The impressive Designer Breakfasts speaker list features the best designers in the business. Previous speakers have included Charlie Hoult, Michael Wolff, Theodora Manzaris (creative director for the Athens Olympics), former Pentagram partner John McConnell and Adrian Shaughnessy, art director and design commentator. Check out our previous events.
- Flexible agency
Is this the end for bricks and mortar agencies? - Kitbag
Here's a nice little gizmo for your MacBook... - At the moment most designers are engaged as suppliers... they respond to the client's brief.
I don't think we get real innovation using this structure - The creativity process
Are you a dreamer, a critic or a realist?
“Designer Breakfasts manages to be extremely useful as well as extremely accessible - I always come away feeling optimistic and with new ideas to make my business more effective."
"Joe Ferry, Virgin's head of design, was clear and accessible and he tailored his Breakfast specifically at small businesses."
"The events are deliberately small-scale which means you can contribute easily during the session and continue the conversation afterwards."
"I realised other designers share the same experiences and that I'm not on my own."
"I came to Designer Breakfasts because it had more to offer than just networking."