Yin & Yang

Yin: How did it come about?

CreativeNerds UK basically came about when my business partner Sam and I were online and we used to run a design forum which allowed people to publish their own work, show it off and share their talents. The first forum was called MuckeyDesigns which was created when I was in Year 8 and then next one was called iTouchFX which is still the name of my Flickr because I can’t change it. I’ve never mentioned that before in an interview.

Yin: Exclusive!

It’s an embarrassing name. I think the first design thing I did was in year 7/8; my friend used to like wrestling and they used to make little signatures for forums. So that’s how it started where I first started playing around with visual effects. Since then it just developed into a hobby and so on.

Yin: What was it like when CreativeNerdsUK first started off? Did you have any issues that you had to overcome?

Well when we started off it was just the two of us. Sam did all the development stuff and I did all the front end work. There wasn’t no big issues, at the time we weren’t known well as we were just doing school projects for our friends. It started picking up when we created a Myspace  layout at the end of 2008 for Tinchy Stryder.

Yin: How did that come about?

I messaged him or his management which is Takeover Entertainment on Myspace. They just got back to me and gave me the opportunity to make him a layout. That was around the time he released his single ‘Stryderman’.

Yin: Was that free work?

*cue me lip sync ‘wow’ and laughter*

Yin: Any issues with clients? Contracts messing up and clients not paying up?

There might have been one or two but we learn from our mistakes. Contracts wise, there hasn’t been a big issue at all anywhere. I think the way we do it now to protect ourselves, we take 50% up front. We know whatever happens now that we got paid for the hours we put in. So nah, hasn’t been any big issues.

Yin: You’re still in College. Tell me, how do you find time between studying and running a successful business?

*laughs* This is like a common question. If you see me on twitter, I’ll be awake till about 2-3am because I don’t know why but my creative mode starts at 11pm. Some days I just come home about 4 o’clock , just sit down at my desk and work all night. Then obviously I’d go out and enjoy myself at the weekend.

Yin: Do you feel like you’ve grown up fast because of the business?

Um, I don’t know. There’s like two sides of me; if I’m in business mode then, I would be very professional and grown up but if I’m just socialising with my friends or in school, I would just act as I normally would be.

Yin: What advice would you give to young creative ‘nerds’ looking to take their design up the next level?

A few things actually. One – don’t copy others and two – experiment as much as you can because what I’ve learnt from Photoshop was not from reading tons and tons of tutorials or listening to teachers at school because the teachers at school didn’t know how to use Photoshop. It was more or less you sitting there everyday playing around, clicking different buttons and saying ‘what does this do! what does that do‘. There are still so many things that I haven’t tried in Photoshop. So just keep experimenting that’s what I always say.

Yin: I know you must have had loads of clients in the past 2 years, who’s your favourite and one your most proud of?

SB.TV. That has got to be the biggest project we as a team has worked on. That started at the end of 2009 when Sam and I was still developing our skills and still up coming. Jamal just came to us and said ‘look this is what I do, look at my YouTube page and I need a website and logo’. I knew there was potential for it and one year down the line, he gets about 40k hits a month. He has just signed a sub-imprint record label deal with Sony and he’s going to be in The Guardian this week. Best thing about the website is we always develop it and we still manage the website.

Yin: I noticed your logo at the bottom of the site, it’s quite big. Is that prominent in all your designs?

Not all of them but we have had this friendly relationship with SB to keep our logo there. Him alone brings us a lot of work as he would mention our name in meetings with labels and what not so I get emails saying ‘Jamal mentioned you’ and so on. That site probably changes every 3 months, little bits like the background, navigation and the main feature banner which we maintain every week.

Yin: In terms of design, which design are you must proud of?

Yin: I’m sure there are many secrets for running such a successful business, would you be kind enough to share one secret with our readers?

Be cocky. Face to face I might be a shy person but I’m not scared to do a bit of research and find contact details of say a manager of a certain artist to send some emails. If you don’t keep trying to expand your portfolio or clientèle, you’re not going to get anywhere. At the moment now when people come up to me/if I go up to someone, I’ll just let them take look at my website and let the portfolio do the talking. That’s the way forward.

I totally agree with this. You have to have belief and confidence in your own work.

Yin: What does the future hold for you personally and for CreativeNerds UK?