The Biggest Mistake keeping Designers Underpaid | James Wood

And Bournemouth, you know, you're a mile from the sea.

So, you know, most people might associate kind of industrial design, product design studios with London, the hustle and bustle there.

But there you are down in Bournemouth.

You know, why Bournemouth? If that's not too obvious a question.

There's like layers to being in Bournemouth.

I think...

Some are more like lifestyle orientated, but to be really honest, it was more like it wasn't really a choice.

Like I did work in London for years, freelanced in London for years.

But for me, like house prices were just getting out of reach and what you earn in our field, even as a freelancer on trying to push your day rate up, like what you can save, what you can get for a deposit.

um we like we also with my partner at the time we're looking to have a child and we had to go through ivf and you don't get a free cycle in the nhs in london so we're looking at potentially like 10 grand a turn there so being able to move or live somewhere where you do get that sort of support on the nhs you can afford uh potentially a house or at least save up for a deposit have a lifestyle so i think that there's secondary benefits from moving here that Now it's worked out.

In hindsight, you can be like, oh, that's a great choice.

Right now, I'd plan to go for a swim after this podcast in the sea, which is a great thing to be able to do.

But the actual reality of coming here is I grew up near here and I couldn't afford London, essentially.

And I did know it was also from growing up here.

As a kid, it is a great place to grow up as well.

Yeah.

There's a relatively decent design scene there as well, isn't there, on the south coast? It's picking up, yeah.

I

mean, I studied here and left because there are essentially no jobs here at all.

Now I think there's three, I'd say there's three of us that are agencies now.

There's us, there's IFA and PAW, and then Element Design, who were based at the Arch, you know, I think they've just moved out.

So, yeah, none of us, there was no no agency or small agency industrial design product designers uh 10 years ago 15 years yeah um and there's you've got companies like gosney who've now yeah building quite a strong internal design team of our neighbors actually behind us uh and a few others yeah so it's it's definitely picking up which is great to see considering there are a lot of people that graduate out of bournemouth doing products as well but all obviously move on so

yeah you'd expect there to be a stronger you know startup scene given the proximity to the university and the the cost of living compared to to london but i'm just you know as many young people do they get drawn to the capital

yeah i think it's like optionality when you're like i hopped around jobs quite a lot early in my career because i just wanted to gain as much experience work out if i preferred being in-house or in a consultancy or test test all the environments i think still have that problem here that you can't come it's very difficult to test all those environments in smaller towns where you've got less yeah fewer options to to do that so from a from a recent graduate up until like 30 i understand why london's so appealing but it's part of the problem we have in the creative industry that it's we're too london centric as a yeah as a profession and it's not it's not good overall i'd say for the the nation collectively yeah

No, and it touches on a topic you've already mentioned that is on the agenda for later on.