Girl Gang the Podcast
Girl Gang the Podcast highlights women building brands and creating their own career paths. Hosted by Amy Will — author of Launching and Building a Brand For Dummies and a serial entrepreneur — the show features founders behind brands like OSEA and the Savannah Bananas, executives and directors at companies like Burberry, British Vogue, NET-A-PORTER, and BuzzFeed, and creators like Sivan Ayla. Each episode breaks down the work behind what they’ve built — from early ideas to the decisions and turning points along the way.
Girl Gang the Podcast
Inside the Role of Art Director at Burberry with Ruby Wight
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On this week’s episode of Girl Gang the Podcast, we travel to London to interview Ruby Wight, Digital Art Director at Burberry.
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Hi, this is amy, your host of girl gang, the podcast and founder of Girl Gang, the label.com. I'm so excited for you to tune into this very special episode. We traveled to London to interview some amazing women and creative industries. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2Hi, I'm ruby white. I am senior integrated design it in the digital department of burberry here in London. And you're listening to girl gang, the podcast I worked in magazine. The creative director had studied in the same article as me in Scotland and he gave me this opportunity to in the art department, so that was quite exciting. It was in the center of London. Was there a moment that you knew you wanted to be doing this? I think probably it started. I always loved art. I used to like when I was really little, I would mimic like manet paintings and I think that I didn't have no idea that something like art school existed where you could study for higher education. I was just so taken by this world where I felt like people could just be themselves completely. NFL, yes. That's something that I wouldn't be involved in. Can you take us from that first job that you had through your career path which took you to Los Angeles and back to here. Can you briefly touch on some of the other companies and experiences you've had in this industry? My first real professional role, whereas in a branding agency in Los Angeles and that was an amazing experience I think mainly in a cultural way. I mean moving across the world. I was 23 years old. Um, I've never actually been to the states before. Oh my gosh. No Way. I just went for it when you got the gist. Yeah. I mean this opportunity came up, so one of my tutors at art school in Glasgow came over to me a couple of weeks before graduation. I was really stressed out with my final projects and they said, we have a proposition for you. I have a friend in la and he's looking for a graduate and we think you might be really suited to this role. So we had a kind of series of interviews back and forth over skype and my friends would say, repeat, just speak slowly, they might not understand your Scottish accent. So that went quite well and I had this opportunity in front of me and so everybody told me to take it and I would have never imagined going into California, but I'm so glad I did. I met some amazing people. They're just experiencing a totally different way of life. I think the way that you know, in this beautiful to me completely like tropical city I had not imagined and a completely different set of references I think. I think you can't help but be affected by your surroundings. I think it's the shock of the new that really has the most kind of lasting impression on you. When I landed back in London, that was probably the longest kind of freelance stage that I had. Do you have a preference on the add value or just like, here's our idea, completely run with it. Um, I think at the beginning of my career I, I was quite open minded and although I had a sense of what I liked, I could see the value in learning and I think sometimes you do need to try different things to find out what you love. I think on the one hand, I love it. I've worked at small design studios and as well as branding agencies and I think one of the common features is kind of really defining what a company or individual as about and helping them express that now I work within a brand and it's kind of unpicking the storytelling within that, within that narrative and how it can be expressed in different platforms and also how it evolves every time. I think I've always been interested in arts in fashion because to me fashion is where art and commerce come together in this really exciting way. Is there
Speaker 1something specific you go to for inspiration, like travel? Is there a favorite area of town you go to, books you read, or is it just life in general? You look
Speaker 2for inspiration? I think inspiration is everywhere, which is I think being in the creative industries like that is one of the greatest gifts is being able to see inspirational around you specifically. I think it's the shock of thing you that really has a lasting impact on you. So yes, traveling is an amazing thing. I mean so lucky to be in London where you can hop on a flight and then an hour somewhere completely different. Recently I spend quite a lot of time in Scandinavia and Denmark and Copenhagen and Sweden, which have that amazing kind of attitude to life. They really take these little details about living really seriously and I think that's really inspiring. I also love cities like Milan last year I went to the salon which is their furniture fair, but it doesn't make me sound like I'm really obsessed with now. Um, but there's also so much other amazing stuff that happens in that city. They have amazing art gallery's amazing kind of food culture. And even just little things like the subway has this beautiful kind of color Palette in this kind of Memphis, a graphic forms and shapes all around it. So there is, I love the kind of expressive way this Italians lived their lives and they're so unapologetic about it. But then cities like Amsterdam, I'm completely different and have this like amazing graphic accent that highlights all of their kind of a municipal systems, mostly lucky in this city. I have an amazing network of friends and colleagues and people that I've worked with in the past that constantly inspire me in terms of what they're doing and achieving
Speaker 1Scandinavian style is my favorite. We went to Copenhagen and Amsterdam last year for a couple of weeks and I took so many pictures even just of storefronts, signs like the typography they used and the different color palettes and restaurants. I was just like, oh my gosh, I feel so overstimulated by everything I love. Once you can kind of pinpoint different styles and you're inspired by something, it's fun to see that integrated into other brands too. Like there's some USA brand that now I see like, okay, you definitely pulled Scandinavian inspiration and I just think it's really fun to watch things come to life. We're talking with you, a person that's behind that. Can you talk a little bit about how that feels to be in
Speaker 2charge of the storytelling and maybe what your creative processes like the pen to paper process? Yeah. I think that there's, the creative journey is one of many peaks and trucks. He do lots and lots of research, lots of immersion into the, into the world that you're working in to make sure you feel like you've fully explored the challenge. There's also the other part of the creative process which is about your team and maybe no people having a chance to use that kind of best assets and abilities to strengthen each other. So that's something that I feel quite passionately about too. Is there anyone in your peer group that you personally look up to? Yes, definitely. Um, I have lots of inspiring friends. Someone who is, I mean of note and it continues to achieve amazing things is, um, I have a friend Tayga who runs a women's network in London, uh, called women who, who is also very interested like yourself in a kind of female entrepreneurship and creativity. And she runs, she's written, she's, um, when she was in the Forbes 30, under 30, and I do find it amazing her sense of ability to sustain herself and keep going and she's had ambition is sort of endless and I think that's amazing and the kind of consistency of quality that she manages to keep in everything she does I think is really wonderful. Is there a difference in the hustle you feel in the states compared to London? The creative hustle? That's a really interesting question. I feel like they're kind of, creativity is exposed on the surface a lot more. Group kind of self identity here is very much to do with what you do as a living and how you spend your time. Whereas I felt that in when I lived in La, people had probably a more balanced life in some ways they would go to work, do their jobs to a great, um, a great job of that. But at the weekends would enjoy, like go for hikes and I'm in the hills and um, we go out to the ocean or to the desert. And in that sense, I guess a little bit more threesixty about the world, whereas here, I think it can be your job and your industry are just under life, had one in the same thing. So it can be. I think people can just get completely consumed by it here. Um, so in that sense, in terms of a hustle, I would, I would say I, for me the biggest hustle is here, but I don't know whether that's a good thing or not in terms of your health, probably less, but it's exciting. It's an exciting pace of life. It was always something happening around the corner. And in that sense it's always really stimulating. That's what I definitely feel more stimulated here. And we were talking about this earlier as well. Just the individuality here I think is so inspiring for anyone in a creative industry or design. I can definitely see how there isn't really a difference between your personal and professional life. It's always, yeah, it's just your life. Which I definitely
Speaker 1think there's a lot of pros to that and it's really exciting, especially when you're in more of the beginning stages of your year, your career, you know, you're not like 30 years in wanting that balanced life
Speaker 2when you're in it and want that excitement and that spark. It seems like this has a lot more of that while you're young, you have to ride the wave and just enjoy all the kind of all the amazing things that can come out with that. As long as you just have your moments of tranquility to kind of regain a sense of perspective. Do you have any advice for people that want to get into the design industry or just a creative industry in general? Yeah, definitely find role models that you can identify with an idea ideally know personally they can come from anywhere. I mean I just think that having a sense of tangibility to how they paved the path of their career. Who gave you some kind of solid trackers where yours can go? I think be openminded explore different options, but try to maintain a sense of yourself and what you're getting out of it and what makes you happy. I think also keeping a sense of what your own personal social network is. I know that our school though I studied in Scotland, the friends that I met there are still the kind of center of my social and creative world now. I think having that really strong core of people and following them in their careers lens, a kind of stability to the kind of ever changing connections and dimensions of your professional network. Um, and if you're lucky two for them to crossover, you can spot opportunities not just for yourself but for other people. And that makes a kind of web so rich is when it's given in both directions and unless something I loved running, but it's also a kind of visible network. I think in our kind of digital age, people can live in an isolated way in the company of other people. And so making time to look each other in the eye and really fulfill a conversation with your coworkers. It's so easy to have these kind of side view conversations where you're trying to do two things at once that she's spending quality time with, with your coworker or a client is, is really important and actually there are things that you remember.
Speaker 1I know it's crazy nowadays. I feel like we're so used to doing five things at once all the time, so we never have the opportunity to really be present with other people are working personal life or professional life. It's hard to just like be here and have the satisfaction of that. So maybe we could dive a little deeper into what, what it's like to design a logo or you like that process. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think I say always
Speaker 2intricacies and nuances to each different project. But the common in say an identity project is a really fun one. I think you need to really understand not only what the company is about but also what their ambition is and their aspiration. I think actually the most interesting outcomes are from, um, having a sense of the spirit of the kind of principles and the values of the company as opposed to necessarily what it actually is that they do. There's a lot of, sometimes you can do that through shared references, like in a very kind of simple way, sharing common imagery, typographic reference favored competitors and why the thing they're doing well with that and then also being, I think getting people to be really honest about how they see their, their business or their company at that current moment and where they wanted to say be in five years time is actually quite a test of your ability to relate to that person or team. So there's that stage of it which is the immersion stage and then yeah, distilling that into something tangible that you can deliver pattern to them is often, I think a process of probably trial and error. I think sometimes it's amazing and you just have a really great idea quite quickly, but I think often even if that is the case, you need to feel like you've explored every other option before you can satisfactorily come back to that first great idea and be happy that that was the best thing that you could have come up with. I think that designers are often perfectionists and they will, I think often want to exhaust every possibility before they can be satisfied. But then from there it's often, there's often quite a journey from that point. I think the logo or the mark, whatever that is, is often just the beginning, just the gates to what comes next. Um, depending on what the business is, there's, I think more and more people can understand the value of great imagery. So finding photographers that can create that. Being really smart about resources, especially if they're a startup companies who don't necessarily have huge budget. It's like how you can make that work. A lot of creativity goes into not just the kind of nitty gritty of like type faces and visual systems, but also how to make a budget spread over what you needed to.
Speaker 1I also love seeing a brand, seeing how their logo evolves over the years and what in culture or within the company has inspired that evolution of even simply rounding the edges or making the colors less saturated. All of that is so fascinating to me
Speaker 2today. Yeah, there's a whole world out there of kind of subtlety in. Yeah. Tito so visually intelligent these days to really expect a lot from the brands that they kind of align themselves to and expect them to reflect their values as well. So I think that yeah, if it keeps, keeps courageous on their toes. I think in terms of creating a kind
Speaker 1of any sort of originality in such a kind of saturated visual and creative world, I think constantly trying to innovate and create new ways of of expression is a definitely a, a real challenge, but that's I think what's exciting is to find new forms of expression and new ways of doing things. Even if the way that you find them is actually from preferences in the past and retaining the confidence that by kind of seeking that clarity of what a company or individually as a bank can come, those really unique outcomes and possibilities. It's a beautiful time for design and storytelling I think, and just even though it is keeping all the creatives on their toes, like you said, people are just still getting to that level of individuality and it's really cool to watch. I can't imagine how much work goes behind the scenes to get to that point of being like, okay, this is how we're different. This is how we're standing out. People are showing up for the challenge. So it's really cool to watch.
Speaker 2Yeah. It's pretty sure there's a lot of people sharing out. Yeah. Yeah. The competition is fierce I think. But um, I think underlying that and well I think what ties together both relationships with clients and also in terms of how you build a career. I think the relationships are the really important part of that and a lot of, in terms of behind the scenes, a lot of that is relationship building if you're in a big agency, is that any business person or the account handler during that day to day relationships, it allows the creative to flourish or if you're in a small business, the kind of founders and um, even like any role, even the studio manager is there, everyone kind of working together to create a kind of solid backbone for the doers, whoever they kind of creatives are on the front line to do their thing, whether it's getting the work in or making sure that the lights are on so that you can come to work and do the crazy hours that we do. Sometimes it's all part of a bigger process and I think that's what we're kind of lucky to be involved with. An appreciating the kind of like human toil that is involved in that is, is an important thing too.
Speaker 1Thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave a review. It helps us out so much. Enjoy 10 percent off of everything. A girl gang, the label.com with code girl gang. I hope to have you tune in next week. Until then, make sure to support your local girl gang.
