Design Talk , The Pop Up Agency - Abraham

During The professionals talk week we had the Pop up agency visit and they came and gave us an inspirational talk. Abraham the Founder was taking us through how they came about, ‘We had just started studying at Hyper Island in Stockholm and the energy was electric. There is no better way to describe it then calling It a ‘honeymoon’. Two weeks into the program we had the urge to work globally, shorter projects, no roles, a dynamic work environment and so on’ he continued to explain,’ As we began the brief, we brought with us a camera team of three people to document our process as well as we live-streamed the very first 48h Pop-Up session to our client. Halfway through, we realised that we had not thought things through and had too many distractions.’.

Abraham also mentioned in his talk how money was tight and difficult as they were travelling on their student loans so were living off minimal and would get most of their work from word and mouth. From there journey, they found they didn’t understand money and the business side of things when it came to their business so recruited a money advertiser, and quickly things changed, they went from charging a client £5,000 to suddenly £50,000 as he was told from the banker ‘The price you charge also gives the customer a view of the level of professionalism of the quality your work is’. Abraham outlined that you should have confidents in your work and charge clients appropriately for standard of your work and process, he also mentioned that you should also consider charging clients depending on how you wanted to live your lifestyle, in all Abraham said he has around £10,000 spare a month.

During Abrahams talk he mentioned two main things which were the most important, 1. How important it was to have a process down to work in order to run a successful business, 2. Prototyping and experimenting with agency concept, to get the perfect outcome.

Abraham set out a study task between different tables and working with around 6 people. We started by writing down on a piece of paper how we felt about the future mine was,’ Nervous’ we then put that to the side, and we were asked to get another piece of paper and come up with a completely new idea for a design project which could be anything.

My Idea being a print enthusiast, was to create a forum in which traditional print enthusiasts could upload there work and discuss and get feedback from their work from professionals. Once the idea was written down, Abraham then asked us to give are piece of paper to the person sat next to us and they had to adapt are idea and give the project more concept, we had to keep passing it on till everyone in are group would have written something down to contribute. When the concept was returned, ideas to expand the project such as, an app, an exhibition etc. were written to be considered. During swapping with others, there was a couple idea’s which I noticed such as a music forum, a forum in which let new graduates and designers get in contact with professionals.

I found this experiment inspirational as it let you see what one idea could be expanded into and how if you have a process it can be enjoyable working as a group. PROCESS IS IMPORTANT!

From looking at the expantion of the originally ideas which were given from our group, we then had to work together as a group to discuss which ideas would be more suitable and more relevant to today’s industry and issues. We then sat in a group and created a chart of what would be the most successful and relevant, in terms of, audience, benefit, and cost effectiveness. This resulted in an idea being choosen by a Member Stephen, who came up with the idea to have a forum in which other designers could upload there and work and get feedback and immediate links to the industry, due to it being difficult to get feedback from agency when you’re trying to get your work out there, as it would take time for them to respond, or they just wouldn’t respond.

Once are final Idea being choosen, one member of each group then had to announce the idea. From listening to other groups read out their ideas, one thing was realised. Every final idea that was choosen led to being a forum in which young designers or graduates had some kind of access to the design industry and professional’s, so learning from this it was clearly made clear the problem, most young professionals were having with enetering the design industry, which actually gave a bit of comfort I think for people including myself, as it wasn’t just myself who’s finding it difficult.

Abraham then asked us to finish the experiment, by us writing on a new piece of paper and writing down how we felt at the end of the task and day, the word I wrote down was ‘refreshed ‘, I felt refreshed due to the process we went through in order to get a final outcome and going from small ideas, then working in a group to share ideas and making the small idea become something bigger and more in concept with the world today. We then had to share are word with all of the groups words such as, Happy, accomplished, Ambitious were said, which were completely different to are original word written down at the start of the experiment.

Abraham’s talk was truly inspirational, as it outlines how important it was to have a process in order to have a successful work flow, ideas and group satisfaction. It’s also outline to be more confident in my work in terms of charging clients, and not to only consider the quality of your concepts, but also the lifestyle that you want to live and that nothings to ambitious.

During the course of these past 3 years, I’ve felt coming into third year I have lost track of my personal process which I discovered in college, this experiment has given me the confidents to rediscover the process I used in order to create outcomes to the best standard possible, research, experimentations, development, outcome, using the sketch book method.