~ Creative report content - Alphabet ~

Hi Izzie,

Filled in the answers for you below. Hope they’re of some help :) 

Would you say it's possible for young designers to go it along after graduation? Or is experiance necessary?

Most definitely. Experience isn’t necessary, you can get experience yourself freelancing. But the kind of experience you have would be very specific to quite an isolated experience as a freelancer, or as a start-up. Everything you do, you simply won’t know any different. Which can be both a good and a bad thing, as you can also second guess yourself sometimes and not just follow your gut when you have too many opinions in your head. With that being said, on paper it can only help and I think we at Alphabet all benefitted from skillets we kind of developed individually, and when we came together it all gelled nicely.

More importantly than that, it’s good to just meet people, and get known. It’s more important who knows of you, more so of who you know of. And when I freelanced I got so much work just from meeting people at internships, and things stemming from there, which in turn helped with the momentum to set Alphabet up.

So definitely, I’d recommend it. Even just to see what you don’t want to be like, and in turn just spur you on more.

What advice would you give to a fresh graduate you if you could go back now?

I would say really just experiment and focus on ideas, and concepts more so than making books about X, which it is really easy to do in uni. When we look at portfolios now, we focus on ideas more than anything and how bold and creative the designers seem from their portfolio. Definitely better to go wild and be reeled back in, instead of the other way round for sure. It’s a time I miss a lot from the perspective that you can just explore and literally do what you want, so I wish I realised I had that much creative freedom at the time. No budgets, no client opinions, nothing really!

After seeing my portfolio - what advice would you give me in terms of moving forward?

I like how diverse your work is, you’re not afraid to tackle different mediums and contexts which is good! You’ve definitely got a distinct style towards your design which isn’t bad either, and keep taking risks, keep trying to be bold. Maybe look at artists such as Hattie Stewart, Kate Moross and people like that. Kate Moross is a good example of a designer who has an illustrative base but it’s very graphic too, everything is rolled out and has a real world context. I think just focus on quality over quantity. When I was in uni, I used to photograph my work so much thinking I needed all these shots, but really you only need 4-5 shots and they all need to say something different. So focus on the narrative of your brief. For example I used to photograph a spread from different angles but each different angle isn’t saying anything different. Seen a spread once, that’s it, its almost a tick on the list in the mind of the viewer and they just want to keep scrolling and be impressed with more deliverables.

Also roll out work more, I wish I did more of that in uni, it just hadn’t clicked with me at that point. For example I did an exhibition project, but I didn’t once think about a website, or an app, or signage, or billboards, things like that. I just made posters because I liked doing posters! Think of the big picture. And once things are applied across the board, suddenly it all feels very real and that always impresses, and will probably motivate you to do more :)

How are Manchester and Leeds for creativity? Where do you prefer?

I think Leeds is a rapidly growing creative city, and a great community to be a part of. It’s probably a lot more close-knit than Manchester, with Duke St Studios in particular forming a creative hub that feeds a lot of Leeds. In Manchester it’s a bit different and the studios tend to be bigger, and around for longer, less graduate start-ups, and it’s a all bit more scattered. There’s no cool co-working place like Duke. But that’s not to say Manchester is any worse than Leeds. Just different. As a graduate, I’d probably say a co-working space like Duke, or similar anywhere you end up is definitely recommended as it just helps you get on your feet and meet people. I’m glad we’ve dipped our toes in both cities.

How do you kick back and relax when deadlines are looming and workload is high?

I think your routines change a little after uni, Alphabet is really important to us obviously, and we work long hours sometimes, but it’s also our job too and sometimes it’s important to think of it like that. Being creative is our passion and Alphabet, or whatever your job is, is the funnel for it. So I think as time has gone by we have become attached to the mindset that there’s no reason why we can’t do what we need to do in the day and leave by 6:30. Now and then we have a late one, but on the whole we separate work and life well. It’s so important to have a balance. It’s not “bad”, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for not obsessing over design all day. It’s good to have other interests, everything feeds everything.

Would you say research is more or less important to creating work after university?

It’s just as important, if not more. As now you have a client who you have to please and do the correct solution for too. So it’s very important you know whats out there and have a lot of logic and reasoning  to your design. I think if you research things well enough, the solution kind of decides itself, what kind of font, what kind of colour it needs to be, why it needs to be these things etc. Someone once said Design is Thinking Made Visual, and that’s pretty much spot on.

Whats your personal favourite brief Alphabet has done so far?

I like all of our briefs for different reasons I’d say! Extrajet was a big turning point for us, as it was the first big brief we released really and I think it put us on the map a little bit and showed people what we were about. It was also good for us, as I think it proved to us that we can do it, and get noticed with a big corporate brief. And not just be yet another hip studio, doing hip work, which we really didn't want to be. 

Another favourite of ours is Present!, which was an exhibition in Shoreditch to raise money to build a house for street kids in India. We did this in collaboration with non-profit organisation We Are Equals. It was amazing to see the community come together and it was amazing to just do #designforgood as out campaign for it was. It never felt like work and it was great to see design literally improving peoples life and that’s why we do it at the end of the day. It will stay with me forever.

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Abbas Mushtaq

Co–Founder & Designer

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