Never Not Creative

In this episode, Andy Wright and Rachel Zhang share an interview with James Martin, renowned graphic designer at Lincoln Design Co., creator of MadeByJames and member of the Canva Design Advisory Board. James shares his deeply personal and winding journey—from overcoming childhood trauma and addiction to building a successful design career and becoming a mentor for emerging creatives worldwide.

Key Topics Discussed:

- The Myth of...

What happens when an internet sensation decides to take creative control?

In this episode of the Never Not Creative podcast, Rachel and Andy sit down with Lubalin, the musician, content creator, and viral TikTok star known for his hilarious Internet Drama series.Lubalin opens up about his journey—how a fun experiment turned into a massive internet hit, the challenges of being known for one thing, and his evolution into a serious mu...

In this episode of the Never Not Creative podcast, hosts Andy Wright and Rachel Zhang are joined by Paper Moose Co-Founder, Nick Hunter to discuss how to break into the creative industry, emphasizing the importance of internships, personality, and authenticity in applications.

They explore the significance of passion projects, the concept of Ikigai, and the necessity of networking. The conversation also touches on the challenges of...

In this episode of the Never Not Creative Podcast, hosts Andy and Rachel explore the complex topic of determining your worth in the creative industry.

We discuss the challenges creatives face in measuring their value, whether as employees or freelancers. Our conversation touches on different pricing strategies, the importance of balancing passion with commercial viability, and gender dynamics in the workplace.

We also delve into stra...

Andy Wright and Rachel Zhang discuss every creatives dreaded topic – Impostor Syndrome. How to deal with those voices that keep telling us we're not good enough, we don't deserve to be in the room, or that everyone is better than us.

Luckily they source advice from previous Asking For A Friend guests, Maria Devereux (Executive Creative Director and Head of Innovation at Accenture Song), Psychologist, Dr. Aileen Alegado, and Aimee D...

Rachel and Andy are discussing the topic of how to deal with bad behaviour from colleagues, managers and even clients.

It's a topic that has been frequently asked in our Asking For A Friend events and so we've brought the learnings and discussions into our latest episode.

Our hosts discuss the excellent advice shared on questions like:

• How do I approach a manager who has been taking credit for my work?
• How...

Andy and Rachel are back with the still, rather awkward question – How is your mental health?

We delve into questions like, how should we talk about mental health at work, as a leader, as a colleague?

How do we bring up a subject that can sometimes lead to fear of judgement?

Well, fear not, the stigma relating to mental health is improving by the day and we share advice on all of these questions and more by referencing some fantas...

The Never Not Creative podcast is back after a 2 year hiatus. Joining Andy for this new season is co-host, Rachel Zhang, a digital product designer living in Sydney and with experience working across brands and agencies including Telstra, R/GA, Accenture Song and now her own design consultancy Ro&Co. This first episode of the new season focuses on Burnout. Andy and Rachel pull in some of the best advice that’s been shared by A...

Paul Balfe is no football expert. But he is a male creative who was willing to chat to us about his mental health and his experiences with anxiety. Paul is Creative Director and Founder of Pennybridge Creative, an independent design studio at home on the Gold Coast of Australia. 

Paul shares his battle with anxiety as a result of the recent Queensland flooding and the steps he took to improve his mental wellbeing. From hypnoth...

Nasya Kamrat is the Co-Founder of FACULTY, a certified, woman-owned spatial storytelling agency. After experiences working with multi-national agencies owned by the global holding companies, Nasya decided to start something new and do completely the opposite. Nasya is joined by Chief Creative Officer, Aaron Wolfe and both chat to Andy about the positives of building a company that is diverse, equitable and different to the status q...

In our latest episode, Ve Dewey interviews James Routledge, the co-founder of Sanctus. After starting Sanctus, a coaching business to help improve mental wellbeing in workplaces, James has gone on to author the Penguin Business Book, Mental Health at Work. He's always very transparent and honest in his own challenges and shares how practice was the key to opening up and helping people realise that we're all capable of talking about...

In this episode, Ve and Andy join forces to chat to recent winners of the Deutsche Bank Awards For Creative Entrepreneurs – Jameisha Prescod, founder of You Look Okay To Me, an online space for the chronic illness community and Nahum McLean, founder of African Diaspora Dance Association (ADDA), an organisation that aims to expand the curriculum and training of dance under the African Diaspora.

Jameisha and Nahum share the importanc...

It's our third and final episode of the F Word Mini-Series. David and Ve sit down for an inspirational conversation around failure at an organisational level with the award-winning transformational change leader Eva Applebaum and Global CEO of Butchershop® Global, Trevor Hubbard. Within the episode, we go in-depth discussing failure, what the opposite of failure is (clarity), key leadership attributes, and what failure for women in...

In our second episode, David and Ve sit down with Alina Mendoza Lopez, currently an intern at Dragon Rouge London, and Max Ottignon, co-founder of the London based agency Ragged Edge to discuss failure at the individual level. Within the episode Max and Alina discuss their experience of failure: Alina discussed her relationship with failure in university whilst Max elucidates early career experiences with failure as well as his cur...

Based on the “The F word”, our latest mini-series focuses on "Failure." This first episode with Never Not Creative Co-creator, Ve Dewey and David Beare, Executive Creative Director of Dragon Rouge, come together to discuss what we mean by failure. Their discussion lays the foundation for future episodes exploring what failure is and what counts as small or large failures and how we deal with them on a daily basis.

Stay tuned for mo...

The final episode of our Creativity and Football mini-series rounds out with The Hallway's ECD Simon Lee. Simon has lived experience with the ups and downs of mental health, but has also been working closely with mental health charity, Gotcha4Life for the last 3 years. The result of this work is the quite excellent Boys Do Cry campaign – a clever take on The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" from 1979. It's a powerful piece bringing together...

In the 4th episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series we head to Switzerland with renowned lettering artist Stefan Kunz.

Stefan is an internet phenomenon, entrepreneur and educator who is passionate about sharing his gift to inspire others.

But his quest for excellence and always doing how best isn’t free from the challenges of struggling to get out of bed, becoming bereft of ideas on how to excel further and everything i...

It's the 3rd episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series. Craig Elimeliah is an award-winning ECD at VMLY&R in New York. A native New-Yorker he gets his football analogies from the oval shaped ball rather than the circular one. A couple of months ago, Craig wrote a brave post on Linkedin sharing his experiences with many years of mental heath ups and downs. It's not easy to suddenly go from zero to a hundred in the tra...

Dr Zac Seidler knows a thing or two about football. Whilst he's scored many a goal from all over the pitch, his ultimate goal is to reduce the staggering rate of male suicide. In this second episode of our Creativity & Football mini series (psst, yeah the one on men's mental health in the creative industry) Andy and Zac discuss everything from mental health to masculinity and the one secret that just may give men the courage to...