Show Notes
Welcome to the first-ever episode of Sticky Notes. The podcast for graphic designers, logo designers, and brand designers who are figuring out how to build a freelance design studio.In this episode, we’re tackling one of the biggest questions in the design industry: To niche or not to niche? Should you specialise in one style, one industry, one type of client? Or should you stay broad, flexible, and take on a bit of everything?This is something Jack has been wrestling with, so we break it down properly:– The pressure to niche as a designer– Whether niching actually helps you get clients– The risk of boxing yourself in– My experience niching (and not niching) as a brand designer– How to figure out what you actually want to be known for
More from Sticky Notes with CJ Cawley and Jack Chitty
This week, we’re asking each other the awkward questions others might not usually answer, from money and self-worth to creative process, client mistakes and whether either of us could actually be replaced on Sticky Notes.
Do you actually need a degree to become a good designer? Or can you teach yourself everything you need to know?
This week, we’re doing something a little different. No big topic or case study. Just an honest conversation about why running a creative business feels really hard sometimes. We’ve both had a few turbulent weeks recently, so we wanted to go properly behind the curtain and talk about the stuff that doesn’t normally make it onto Instagram: unpaid invoices, difficult client conversations, financial pressure, changing expectations around AI, slower leads and the constant pressure of having to go out and earn every single pound again next month.
This week, we’re going behind the scenes of one of CJ’s favourite brand identity projects to date: the complete rebrand of Mike Lane.
This week, we’re doing something a little different and playing a game of Would You Rather: graphic design edition. Some of the questions are stupid. Some get surprisingly deep. And a few reveal far more about how we think as designers than either of us probably expected.