To all our members and industry friends, season’s greetings from us all at the DBA and wishing you and your team a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2025.

• We were challenged to get out more, uphold the inherent curiosity of designers, stay focused, filter out the noise and have meaningful dialogue with others. Maximise connection.
• Inspiring the future generation was raised more than once – there’s a wealth of opportunity for designers to pay forward to the younger generation. Work with your nearest school, mentor a student, engage with parents and children at every opportunity to inspire them to a career in design and lobby government to rebuild creative education pipelines. A more diverse industry starts with increasing awareness of design careers – what will you do in 2025 to make this happen?
• Design collaboration – think about the way you apply design to how you work with your clients.
• Step up more and take action – we can be loud advocates for design’s ability to shape culture, drive change and inspire. Check out Design Declares.
• What are we going to destroy to create? Stop asking for permission, take action. 
• AI was a hot topic – but human interaction and connection remains essential and sets designers apart. If designers are going to maintain their relevance in the future, we need to take advantage of AI. Guide your clients through technological transitions and use your curiosity to discover future emergent behaviours.
• Stop selling time – we need to be rewarded by selling value and outcomes. 
• Foster peripheral learning – design leaders need to create a workplace people want to come to to connect, to learn, to be inspired.
• Pull together and create the loudest and most united front on copycat design – see what ACID are doing to support. 
• Re-open the possibilities of what design can achieve in 2025, design is not the answer but the question.

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the inspiring hour – I hope you find these notes helpful. Join our next meeting on Monday 13 January, 4-5pm GMT, look out for an email with the details in a few weeks.

We’ve captured the conversation highlights from all the Members’ Forums which have taken place which can be found here. 

Twenty/Twenty pairs rising industry leaders with some of the most respected and esteemed figures in design. Taylor participated five years ago, and he’s clear on the long-term impact: “100%, it’s helped to shape my thinking about how we can continuously look to improve the business at every juncture.”

Brandon today is a very different proposition “to what we were a year ago, let alone five years ago,” says Taylor. “We are fast approaching 50 people across our London and Manchester studios, working with multinational brands across the globe and producing the best work of our lives. Plus, we’ve managed to have a lot of fun and games along the way.”  

Taylor signed up to Twenty/Twenty in 2019 seeking new thoughts, ideas and provocation from the mentoring programme. “We often live in our own bubbles and as leaders in a design business it’s bloody hard to make decisions without the context of others who’ve lived and breathed similar challenges. The Twenty/Twenty programme delivered that for hardly any investment at all,” he says, “I couldn’t recommend it more highly.” 

It’s a decade since Andy Sexton, Executive Creative Director at 2LK took part as a mentee – an experience which was “genuinely pivotal” he says. “It was a time of fast change for me personally and professionally – and to be able to take outside inputs along the way was powerful, I learned a lot – far more than I expected.”

At the time, Sexton had been on the 2LK Board for a few years and held a minor shareholding, but things were changing in the business, and he was anticipating becoming co-owner. “At 31 years old I had spent most of my career in one agency and I really felt that I needed some external guidance and inspiration, some input and support that came from a different context.”

With a significant milestone approaching, it was a less usual route into Twenty/Twenty for Point 6’s Managing Director, Sally Forsyth Spark. “I applied to be a mentee having previously been a mentor,” she reflects. “My 60^th birthday was coming up in a few years’ time, and I wanted to explore complementary or even different career paths in a safe space, and with someone who could help me realise what I wouldn’t be able to see for myself,” she says, citing David C. Baker’s mantra “you can’t read the label from inside the jar” as the inspiration to join 2022’s cohort as a mentee.

For Forsyth Spark, the match making between her and her mentor was spot on: “My mentor also had experience in psychological testing which was a useful underpinning for understanding some of my motivations (and realising some of them were not very true to my real self).” Reflecting on the personal impact of the mentoring, “I’m definitely more comfortable with uncertainty and change, both in the present and the long term,” says Forsyth Spark. It’s also meant she doesn’t need to feel that she had to have her entire future planned out, “I can shape-shift around a rough goal and be fine if that moves. For a growing business this has been invaluable,” especially now, with the trajectory the agency is on, “We’re in a period of rapid growth, driven by recommendations from our existing clients. It’s the most exciting time I can remember at Point 6,” she says.

To his knowledge, Sexton was the first person at 2LK to take part in any form of ‘official’ mentoring. Paired with Darren Bowles, he’s still in touch with his mentor 10 years later and they’ve had the chance to collaborate along the way too. “For me, the access and exposure I got to another creative business through the programme was as impactful as the relationship I built over the year. I came away from the experience with a whole network of new contacts and learning, many of whom I am still in good contact with today.”

Since his participation in the programme, 2LK have embraced mentoring agency-wide, with lots more of the team taking part in DBA Twenty/Twenty both as mentees and mentors (including Sexton who’s had the chance to “pay-it-back four times over the last decade” as a mentor), while they’ve also supported other programmes like Elevate and BIMA too.

“We’re a different business in lots of ways,” says Sexton of the agency today compared to ten years ago, citing how 2LK has a tighter positioning, an increased commercial confidence, a better sense of what a great (and terrible) client looks like, stronger finances and a much greater sense of its purpose within the wider creative industry.

“My (and our) involvement in the DBA has been a big part of lots of this growth and clarity,” says Sexton, “The future for 2LK is full of optimism, we’ve just wrapped up our first year as an Employee-Owned business which has been an incredible journey, being able to transition the company in this way is something I’ll be forever proud of.”

Since 2011, the DBA’s Twenty/Twenty Mentoring programme has transformed the careers of nearly 600 design leaders and the impacts are long-lasting. For Taylor, “it made me realise that there were a lot of people who’d lived and learned through similar challenges I was facing,” he reflects, with the programme providing “empathy to help navigate challenges” and a clarity of direction that “I was missing” he says, “Sometimes you need a running mate to bounce ideas off. They delivered just that.” 

International work is on the up, but how do you build your profile overseas?

With a sluggish UK economy, many agencies are exploring opportunities overseas. Of the businesses responding to this year’s DBA Annual Survey, 16% earn 75% or more of their income internationally. In fact, the share of income generated overseas has increased from 20% to 34% across the last ten years.

“UK design agencies are well aware that there is far greater opportunity and less competition overseas than there is at home. The UK’s design sector is respected and sought after, but individual agencies need to build a profile if they want to win work in these markets,” says Claire Blyth, DBA Expert and founder of PR agency, Red Setter.

“The agencies we work with who do this see huge benefits when they grow their reputation and client base overseas,” says Blyth, who recommends:

• Identifying what overseas clients will find interesting about your agency.
• Showcasing your work and expertise in the publications that overseas clients read such as Fast Company, Forbes and Entrepreneur in the US
• Speaking at conferences in your target countries; it not only helps build your profile but also to make direct connections at the events.

“Opportunity is out there but you need to tell the right people about your work, so they’ll come to you,” adds Blyth.

'The Big Stay' and why it pays to hold onto staff

During the last three years, respondents to the DBA Annual Survey had voiced concerns relating to people and talent, especially during the 2021/22 ‘talent war’, which many agencies found themselves in. But this year’s Report shows staff turnover has decreased on average across all agencies from 17% to 15%. 

“We have seen a shift towards the ‘Big Stay’ in 2024, whereby employees are prioritising stability over the unknown,” says JourneyHR’s co-founder and DBA Expert, Aliya Vigor-Robertson, who cites the combination of “the uncertainty experienced in recent years” and “the work that agencies have put into retaining and engaging their talent”, as key factors behind this.  

However, with only two-thirds of agencies planning to give payrises in the next twelve months, what should businesses be mindful of? “The true cost of losing talent has many implications, not all of which are financial, though this aspect cannot be overlooked” says Vigor-Robertson. “We know replacing talent costs, on average, £25K per employee,” she reports, highlighting that this includes recruitment fees and lost productivity and that for senior hires, “this figure can be significantly higher”. 

Vigor-Robertson is clear that beyond the financial impact, losing talent can also negatively impact the culture and productivity of an agency and that in order to truly engage and retain teams, agencies must look beyond pay.

“Successful agencies have taken a holistic approach to this, recognising that employee needs are individual and there is no one size fits all approach,” says Vigor-Robertson, who recommends understanding the needs of your people through engagement surveys, which can “help to create tailored retention and engagement strategies, focusing on transparency, recognition, progression, and work-life balance – all of which are essential, in addition to competitive pay, to drive retention.”

“With employee departures, comes knowledge gaps and a sense of decreased morale within the remaining team members. Particularly when working with clients, there is an additional pressure of maintaining the relationships that often take a significant amount of time to establish,” adds Vigor-Robertson, but by “actively listening and actioning employee feedback, agencies can reduce their turnover and strengthen their culture.”

Hybrid working - how's it working out for you?

Although return-to-office mandates continue to make waves in the news, hybrid working remains a large part of business practice in the design industry, with 80% of agencies responding that they have a hybrid working policy in place. But how can you tell if this is working well at your agency?

DBA Expert, Joanna Anthony of The Client Service Person, suggests examining the impact of hybrid working on culture, people development and workloads at your business by asking these questions:

• Are people working harmoniously or do some people feel like they are bearing the impact of other people not being available?
• Are people getting access to the same learning and development or do they feel excluded from opportunities and feel a lack of progress?
• Are people able to disseminate workloads and delegate work effectively, or do they feel like they are carrying the load?
• Are the numbers booming or suffering? If billable utilisation, productivity and client satisfaction is up, projects are delivered on time and overspends are down then the policy is working.

Anthony recommends these three tactics for hybrid working success:

• Have a clear and published policy which sets out what the mandatory in-office days are, and seek to have “all-in company days” at least one day per week in order to build ‘teaminess’, and define what the mandatory working hours are ie. do people have to be in-office or at-desk between set hours.
• Be clear that hybrid working doesn’t mean flexi-working, which has its own contractual agreement. For flexi-working to be successful, people should make it very clear in their diaries and “out of office” auto-responses when they are working and when they aren’t. 
• Upskill people on briefing and delegation skills. These need to be outcomes-focused with an agreed schedule of check-ins and final deadline. Without this, the problem of trust and micro-managing behaviour rear their head and relationships can easily break down. 

And the main thing to avoid? It’s “filling people’s diaries with endless, back-to-back meetings and simply using all day to talk, says Anthony, people need time “to produce actual work”.

The most crucial barometer of business health?

While profit and revenue metrics are important business measures, the Report highlights how, “ultimately cashflow is the most crucial barometer of health.” Even profitable businesses need careful cashflow management.

 “At its simplest, most ‘people businesses’ including agencies, have to pay their people at the end of each month for the work they did, and often have to wait until a month later to get paid by their clients,” says DBA Expert Peter Carter of Backstop Consulting, “so there’s always a disjoint, and usually in an unfavourable direction, between the happy P&L and the sad cashflow forecast or bank balance.”

Carter adds that “conversely there’s also a tendency, if businesses judge their performance by their bank balance, that upcoming VAT / PAYE / corporation tax payments are a shock and feel like a loss when they happen, so looking at the big three (P&L, balance sheet and the cash flow) together is essential.”

Carter’s topline tips for successfully managing cashflow include: 

• invoice as early as your contract allows, when you hit milestones – don’t wait for the end of the month, start that payment-terms clock ticking now
• don’t be embarrassed about credit control; getting paid on time is part of your contractual relationship, and if your client respects their work then they need to respect the need to pay for it on time
• don’t get into paying all your suppliers earlier when your bank balance is high, it’s not required and sets a precedent. They’ll expect it when times get hard too, when you can’t do it
• when cash flow forecasting, don’t get tied up with whether the phone bill is £143 or £144, keep it approximate and make sure you hit the big stuff; you’re looking for major peaks and troughs in the future, not trying to predict your bank balance to within £1.

To B or not to B

There has been an increase in agencies holding the ‘B-Corp‘ certification, while others forms of accreditation – such as signing up to the ‘UN sustainability goals‘ and ‘1% for the Planet‘ – have also seen a significant uplift amongst DBA members over the last year.

It won’t be long before all companies are required to report on their impact on the environment and the active contribution they are making to reduce their carbon footprint. Ahead of potential legislation coming into play, agencies should think about how they might deal with future requirements on things such as UK energy use and carbon emissions, which large companies already have to report on. Certification future-proofs an agency, keeping it in sync with evolving industry and regulatory standards. But there are other reasons to consider accreditation too.

“Design agencies tend to attract a more liberal demographic workforce than most industries,” says DBA Expert, Future Shift’s founder Will Powell. “This, combined with the fact 75% of the workforce will be millennials in 2025, mean communicating that your agency is placing sustainability at its core, will help to align your business with the morals of new recruits, ensuring you can attract and retain the very best talent.”

Powell adds, that for design agencies, “sustainability certification reflects a commitment to creating with purpose and reducing environmental impact”, something he cites will be vital as clients and consumers seek partners who prioritise the planet. 

“Sustainability certification can be the deal clincher for a design agency,” reflects Powell. “With certifications like B Corp, you bring a trusted, third-party framework to clients who increasingly view sustainability as non-negotiable. For design agencies, where the footprint may seem minimal, certification provides a roadmap to boost responsible sourcing, reduce waste, and adopt forward-thinking practices, aligning with clients’ values and differentiating your agency in proposals,” he adds.

When it comes to choosing the right certification for your business, Powell recommends selecting a certification that can effectively quantify and communicate sustainability, like ‘B Corp’ or ‘The Butterfly Mark‘, which provide rigorous standards applicable even to low-footprint industries. “Choose one that supports continuous improvement, ensuring you’re not only meeting but actively advancing sustainable design,” he says.

DBA Experts are accredited expert consultants who have sustained and relevant experience in supporting the design industry. Browse the Register of Experts and get in touch >

Your team, headcount and pay rises:

• With 92% of DBA members regularly making use of freelancers – the importance of matching your resource to work in the door is always a fine balance for agencies. 
• If future income is uncertain, be decisive; freelancers are an expensive but flexible resource.
• But if your staff costs (including freelancers) to fee income ratio is below 60%, it might be time to make a permanent hire. If you don’t have clear visibility on future workload, you need to carefully consider if now is the time to make the leap of faith, or continue with your freelance resource. 
• While some on the call were cheered with pay rises not being quite as high as in previous years, remember the additional NI you have to pay following the Budget last week. We’ve got an NI calculator tool that can work out how much that will cost you.
• If you’re ready to hire an external Finance Director – get someone adaptable, that understands design, client and employee contracts and can support your account management team on charge-out rates. 

Overseas income and working internationally:

• We’ve seen a steady increase in income from international clients over the years, with close to 50% of member income coming from overseas and this is a key trend we’ve explored in a previous Members’ Forum and in this Design Week article.
• Lots of exciting innovations are happening in different markets – it’s an opportunity to learn something new and bring that knowledge back to your home market. 
• One key piece of advice shared that could save you thousands was to check your bank’s fixed contract terms to buy currency in advance and always know what you’re going to receive. 
• Watch out for RFP scams, especially if performance bonds are being requested, and be aware payments can be withheld if taxes aren’t paid on time or the proper paperwork has not been completed. 

Client servicing and new business development 

• With more businesses looking to grow their income in 2025 without the supporting headcount – we delved into how you can do more with less – and client servicing was highlighted as a way to achieve this.
• Tapping into your existing clients is often an overlooked, cost-effective way of getting more business through the door, how can your client services team upskill to sell more?
• Talk about outcomes in context if you want to recover more client servicing staff costs, and explain the value for money of good project managers and account handlers. 
• If your relationship with your client is strong and there’s a clear value proposition, they’ll do anything to keep working with you – including fighting your corner with procurement.  
• Add a ‘fees to be reviewed annually’ on any fixed fee contracts.

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the hour – I hope you find these notes helpful. Join our next meeting on Tuesday 3 December, 4-5pm GMT, look out for an email with the details in a few weeks.

We’ve captured the conversation highlights from all the Members’ Forums which have taken place and they can all be found here.

How can design help navigate the biggest shifts our world faces?

No ordinary industry event, The Design Effect was a unique and inspiring afternoon and evening of talks, panel debates, effectiveness case studies and dinner discussions in the spectacular surroundings of The British Museum.

Senior leaders from companies like Carlsberg, NatWest, Pearlfisher, Bayer, Danone, Osborne Pike, 2LK, Volvo, Nestlé, ELSE, Reckitt, Wolff Olins and more, fired up their passion for what design can achieve and left ready to change tomorrow.

The Design Effect was opened by the DBA’s Chief Executive Deborah Dawton and featured a keynote speech in the British Museum’s Great Court by Sir Geoff Mulgan, author of ‘Another World is Possible’. 

Take a peek into the day, see who won DBA Design Effectiveness Awards and read Deborah Dawton’s speech below. 

DBA Chief Executive's speech transcript

“Welcome to The Design Effect. My name is Deborah Dawton and I’m the Chief Executive of the Design Business Association, and it’s my privilege to welcome you here today. 

When Adam (Fennelow) and I are talking to business leaders about joining the DBA, one of the propositions that we put to them is that they should join the DBA if they want to be the architects of their own future, of the future of the design industry. 

Adam we’ve got this wrong! 

It’s not nearly a big enough goal, given the capability of impact and influence this sector of ours could be having. Surely our goal should be much much more ambitious. Being the architects of THE future is what we should have a concern for, because if we’re not, who is? 

I’d like to read you a bit of a story in a magazine I get – it’s the October edition of The Simple Things magazine, and it’s about the legacy of the textile industry. Picture sheep in fields and in the distance a prosperous town boasting great housing of the time, and a spectacular church or two, and a guildhall. 

The article starts, “Woven into the British Isles is the story of our textiles. And traces of this history are found everywhere, from sheep that graze our hills to the mills that skim our skylines. These threads take us from farms to weavers to merchants, and from towns and villages to all over the world. They’ve shaped grand civic buildings and humble domestic dwellings; we’ve used natural resources to power production and brute force to build railways and canals for transportation. There are specific local histories – such as Dundee’s jute, Welsh tapestry blankets, and the ganseys of the Shetland Isles and coastal communities. Then there are the specialist trades, such as lace, silk, dyeing and finishing.”  

Take wool. “In medieval times, wool was one of the most important contributors to the English economy. The likes of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, in Northleach, in the Cotswolds, rebuilt with wool money in the 15^th century, is just one of the many gilded reminders of the spectacular wealth generated by wool. Families who grew rich rearing sheep, trading fleeces or weaving wool, made generous contributions to the church, often creating places of worship completely out of scale with modest village congregations. Their building also supported hundreds of crafts people, from stonemasons to stained glass makers.” 

The article goes on to say that you can see wool’s influence in the sheep you’ll spot such as Herdwick and Welsh Mountain, whose coarse wool makes it more suitable for use in carpets, or the softer fleeces of lowland sheep, such as Ryland and Suffolk, and the longwool breeds, like Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale, that find use in knitting yarns. And it also goes on to tell you how surviving packhorse routes show the journeys undertaken to take the wool from sheep to weaver to merchant, such as Norfolk’s Weavers’ Way, winding between Great Yarmouth and Cromer. And you’ll be familiar with the fact that these yarns were woven into very different textiles often influenced by place – look at the colours of tweed and tell me those aren’t the colours of Scotland, and those colours were most often created by dyes made from plants and berries found in those places.

Reading this got me thinking. What will the legacy of the design industry be?

If I was reading this article about all of us 50 years from now, what would it say? Let’s bring that forward. What would it say in 2035? 10 years from now. What do we want it to say, because that article would be talking about us. 

The textile industry built towns, better living conditions, churches , guild halls, markets to sell goods, and so on. And I know I’m giving you the version of their history that is rose-tinted, but it’s to make the point. 

What do we want our legacy to be?

Do we think and exist beyond the immediate design challenge? 

Is there a thread of altruism that runs through this industry, a generosity of spirit? There is in all of you – you’ve given your time today to come together around a common purpose. We’re here today because we want to weave a closer association across the design industry.  

But, I also want to challenge you to exercise your imagination to its full potential, in order for you to be able to put yourself far ahead of what your designing today. 

My suspicion is that we’ve all had our heads down focusing on what we’re designing now, and I think we need this event today to encourage us to change our perspective. This isn’t about look up and look out. I need you living in the “out” bit. Out there looking back. 

Having that perspective on the future is now critical – it has to be a part of who you are. We cannot continue to design despite it, the future that is.  

Design will save the world has been the matra coming out of our sector for the last 25 years. You know, pants outside your trousers stuff. 

In the same way that a piece of fabric won’t clothe someone, but it allows you to make the garments that will clothe people, design allows companies to make products and services that can have an impact. 

The Design Effectiveness Awards, and this event today, The Design Effect give us the case studies that are historical evidence – there was a brief, there was a design, it went to market, it was in market for 3 years and this was the impact. 

My call to you today is that you take confidence in knowing that that will happen. But… design is just one component of that reality. 

Designers need to exist beyond their designs – you need to imagine five years after the launch. It’s where you need to be. You shouldn’t have to be told to look up and look out, you should already be in the future. Yes we operate in the creation of something today but our responsibility is to sit in that forward state and consider the implications of what we’re designing. 

In order for us to have a better sense of what the future is, we need to be better woven together. We need to be congregating, discussing, debating, showing and telling. Challenging each other. 

And where has the concept work gone everybody? It was concept work that got SeymourPowell on our TVs 25 years ago. It was house of the future that attracted 250,000 through it at the Ideal Home Show years ago. What are our concepts around sustainability? Around equality. Around diversity. Where can we be seen taking responsibility for the future? With no flag in the sand, what are we aiming for?

I’d love us be presenting our concepts of the future the next time we meet, interwoven with the case studies of our proven successes. And I’m talking about the opposite of nudge here! Nudge ignores our ability to create. But the power to draw people into our future lies with us – to draw alongside, because when we’ve suggested what the future looks like, it’s less risky for those that need to step into it, the businesses we work with. There can be no more design in isolation. We must draw together if we’re going weave the right narrative of the future, a future we’ve designed. 

And just maybe, our legacy will be a good one.”