Let’s dive into his remarkable journey with the company (including some throwback pictures of course!)
How did your journey start?
The love of design started for me in my early years. I was fascinated by the engineering drawings being worked on by my late father, which led to my desire to create my own posters for display in my bedroom centred around either football or music. That passion was highlighted and encouraged throughout my education especially in my latter school years, during fifth and six-form studies. The pivotal point in deciding ‘where and what next’ was during my foundation studies year at Bradford College, where I realised my future and career was in graphic design.
From Bradford College I progressed to Newcastle College, where a work placement took me to Edinburgh and Tayburn. Following graduation, I returned to Edinburgh for paid placements and freelance opportunities with McIllroy Coates and EH6 Design. It was whilst working at Mclllroy Coates, and working under Senior Designer (Emma Quinn), that my connection with Forepoint was formed. Whilst working on a project for Clydesdale Bank, Emma had commissioned illustrator Martin Chatterton. Martin was also a director at ‘The Point’ (later becoming Forepoint). At the time, ‘The Point’ had a need for a new designer which Emma recommended me for. An interview ensued, followed by an on-the-spot job offer – and I’ve never looked back!
Whilst my initial plan was to stay at The Point for two to three years to gain more experience, that soon changed with the opportunity to work on some exciting client projects. Further responsibility and opportunities soon followed. As a result, working life became blurred with work-life often merging into social-life for the early part of The Point years. Much fun was had by all, with many late nights of working and partying. The rest as they say, is history.
What does your role entail?
As Managing Partner and a Director of the business – my primary role is the overall strategic and commercial operations of the business. My responsibilities are wide ranging, encompassing everything from setting and monitoring financial targets, to supporting new business pitches and overseeing key client accounts. I’m involved in financial forecasting, key monthly reporting, tracking utilisation and recovery rates, managing monthly cash flow, and reviewing management accounts. These are all crucial elements in ensuring our business continuity.
I work closely with the Forepoint team to identify and develop talent, encouraging them to deliver the best possible client and cultural experience, while also producing exceptional project work. This is further enhanced with the key strengths and capabilities of my fellow director and creative partner, Keith Noble, as well as the rest of our team, across all client touch points.
As part of the executive team, I strive to drive value to the business and the marketplace, whilst developing a robust and trusted culture and team within – one that encourages a growth mindset, builds on core strengths, and supports one another to build better working and client relationships.
My career journey from Junior Designer, to Designer, to Senior Designer, to Design Director, to Director and Managing Partner has meant that creativity has been a key part of my development, knowledge and experience. This core grounding and understanding enables strategic and creative thinking to be at the core of all decision making, recommendation and expectations when engaging with all key clients and the Forepoint team.
What’s your favourite part of the job?
There are two particularly rewarding aspects of my role. The first is seeing the result of hard work and collaborative working within the team – as well as working directly with our clients in a truly collaborative way. The second rewarding aspect is seeing members of the team flourish, developing into more confident and capable individuals. We’ve all chosen a career in an industry where there are no defined rule books, no specific training manuals and we are all expected to continuously create and produce new and innovative creative outputs on a regular basis. It’s truly inspiring to see our team achieve this – consistently creating excellent and inspirational work.
When I’m working directly on projects, I thrive on identifying the opportunity to change things up, to do things differently or to initiate transformational thinking and the introduction of new opportunities to the business. A key part of my role is recognising the true value and/or capabilities in staff, client projects and further developing those opportunities. These elements are all crucial in driving a business forward and staying relevant in an increasingly saturated marketplace.
As a conductor and orchestrator of the business, playing to my executing and strategic strengths – is where I flourish and I’m at my happiest.
How would you describe working at Forepoint?
Working at Forepoint has been a great opportunity, fulfilled through hard work, dedication and significant sacrifice. It’s also been a journey through frustration, stress, anxiety, requiring resilience to navigate through the difficult times. With massive amounts of enjoyment, especially as a designer and senior designer, as I was driven to achieve great things off my own back. In the latter years of my career, the weight of running a business and the responsibility to others has been considerable – particularly the balance of getting things right and the impact of not doing so. That weight has been difficult at times, but through hard work and dedication, we’ve started to transform the business, which has helped mitigate against what could have been some potentially difficult scenarios.
Looking back from where we started 32 years ago, it’s clear we’ve come a long way, yet on reflection, we’re only now just coming of age. With our refocussed market proposition and service offerings we are realising some amazing opportunities that will help take Forepoint to the next level of our transformation. If you dare to believe, it’s amazing what you can achieve with hard work and a great team.
What are your best achievements?
There have been many significant achievements whilst at Forepoint: helping to navigate the business through multiple recessions; the pandemic; the investment, design and build of our Preston office; the introduction of many initiatives; policies and processes – to reference only a few.
I’m a true believer in the need to work with integrity whether people are watching you or not. So, a lot of the day to day, goes on unrecognised and under the radar.
As a creative, most of us don’t like to self-praise or celebrate. However, as a Senior Designer I was fortunate to have had a significant amount of my work for BAE Systems, Submarines, DeVere Group and the Nuclear industry being recognised by CiB, CIPR and IoIC as either a class winner, an award of excellence or as a category finalist, over that period of my career. Receiving this level of independent and industry recognition has been a key achievement for me.
For some, it might come as a shock, that I used to be a bloody good creative and designer! Just because I have my head in either spreadsheets, strategy sessions or financial planning these days, some either have forgotten or are just unaware.
What do you get up to outside of work?
Being a key partner of a business often means that a significant amount of work gets done outside of the standard working week. This means that the hours remaining to fit in ‘life’ admin and stuff becomes more limited. What isn’t often seen is these additional hours and what it enables for the business and its continuity. However, this precious and limited time I have, tends to focus around: rest; football; music; and a good boxset binge. Mental note, I really should make more time for walking and reading.
My life outside of Forepoint can really be split into two significant periods of time: DJ’ing then dad taxi…
The early days focussed heavily on my love of music and DJ’ing, under the moniker of Steve Jalapeno – and the creation of the well-respected club night experience of ‘Jellybean’. Additionally, I was Creative Director for other nights such as ‘Edit presents’. During this time, it was a privilege to meet and book some stella national and international DJs, vocalists and musicians along the way.
For the last 12 plus years, and as an extension to my parental commitment to my beloved children – has been the added responsibility and time invested in being a football dad taxi! Conducting multiple trips per week, watching and supporting my son’s football journey – from early football development to grass roots, through to academy football, from a local Cat-3 Championship club to a Cat-1 Premier League club. This sees me regularly travelling up and down the country to watch home and away games. A journey and an opportunity to which we are all extremely thankful for. Good luck for the 2024/25 season LFG.
Here’s to all the dedicated parents that sacrifice so much time and often money, to enable their children to experience such great opportunities to excel in something that they love!
And finally…
Reaching thirty years is a significant milestone and demonstrates a significant amount of investment – especially when you recount the emotional roller-coaster over the years – and the resilience required to go again and again. Working through the real highs and lows of agency lives – and navigating through those tricky conversations and/or meeting moments – also having the privilege of experiencing many joyful and side-splitting moments with many of our valued clients and team members over the years.
I hope to see Forepoint flourish again over the coming year – and see the leaders of the future continuing to shine, both within the business and client side too.
To quote Big Chris, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, “It’s been emotional!”
Oh, and if you’d like to check out some of my mixes – have a listen…