Greg Quinton, the co-chief creative officer of Design Bridge & Partners

My Life In Design Podcast

In this episode, Greg Quinton, Co-Chief Creative Officer at Design Bridge & Partners, reflects on his journey through the design industry. H

Key takeaways

• Greg Quinton attributes much of his professional success to luck and a family DNA rooted in creativity.
• He emphasizes that finding one's passion is more vital than chasing financial gain to avoid long-term dissatisfaction.

Main topics

• Creative upbringing and family influence
• Finding passion vs. chasing money

Notable quotes

I genuinely think it's all about luck.

Conclusion

A masterclass in navigating a creative career through resilience, cont

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around, and how they got to where they are today. Speaker 1 (0:31) This week, I'm joined by Greg Quinton, Co-Chief Creative Officer at Design Bridge and Partners. The team has won over 2,000 awards at the highest level in design, over 300 D &AD pencils, including two black and over 20 yellow. They've also won 30 canned lions, including the Grand Prix, lots of golds. This year, Greg was jury president there. He served two terms as D &AD trustee and chair of education. He's a coach at Imperial College London. He's co-author of the updated A Smile in the Mind, which is a graphic design university course favourite that analyses the role of design, advertising and branding. He's worked on brands such as HSBC, the Connaught, London Symphony Orchestra, the National Gallery, Aston Martin. Greg, welcome to the podcast. Speaker 2 (1:15) Thank you. Love to be here. Yeah, thanks so much for Speaker 1 (1:18) joining me. Your career has been, it's amazing. You've done so much stuff. Let's start right at the beginning. At what point did you realise you could base a career around design? Speaker 2 (1:26) Design is one of those wonderful things. Speaker 1 (1:29) I've been incredibly lucky in my life Speaker 2 (1:34) and career. It's just, it's so lucky. It's ridiculous. You know, I think if I... It's Speaker 1 (1:39) always luck to a certain extent, but talent obviously as well. I Speaker 2 (1:43) think it's all luck. Genuinely, genuinely, I think it's all about luck. I mean, I've been so lucky. If I step back and think about it, you know, I think I've been incredibly lucky to have been born in London. I think that's... I genuinely think it's the best city in the world. Sorry, everybody else, but I do think that's the case. I think I've been incredibly lucky with my family and DNA of that family. You couldn't get a more right-brained family if you tried. I mean, I was trying to kind of think of what do we do, and my family is just full of architects, textile designers, film prosthetic people. fashion photographers, musicians, florists, just makers of all types. I mean, it's just mad. What Speaker 1 (2:28) do your parents do? Speaker 2 (2:29) Well, my dad, I think he's retired now. I'm never quite sure. Architects go on forever and ever and ever. They don't kind of ever stop. I would consider him like a friendly modernist. He designed our house. We lived in a building site for about 15 years. Yes, Speaker 1 (2:47) he Speaker 2 (2:47) designed your Speaker 1 (2:47) house. That's so cool. Speaker 2 (2:48) Yeah. That's what architects want to do. They want to design their own house. Or live in a Georgian house, one of the two. My mum's an interior designer. I mean, she's so much more than that, though. I mean, she's kind of a crazy person who believed in helping everybody else. She still does, but she's getting on now. Speaker 1 (3:06) Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:07) She kind of found the church that was redundant, turned that into a community centre. She's helped save one of the best modernist gardens in the UK called Gibbard Garden for everybody else to enjoy. I mean, it's stunning. I mean, you just wander around it and come across. Each vista has been designed so you get this kind of wonderful modern Speaker 1 (3:29) piece Speaker 2 (3:30) of sculpture at the Speaker 1 (3:30) end of an avenue or trees or Speaker 2 (3:32) whatever. It's wonderful. And it's great for kids as well because it's got a concrete castle with a moat. Fantastic. Speaker 1 (3:40) Oh, amazing. Whereabouts is that? I want to visit. Speaker 2 (3:41) Oh, it's just on the borders of Essex and Hertfordshire. Speaker 1 (3:45) Oh, okay. I'll check that out. As Speaker 2 (3:47) a DNA, we always kind of joked about the fact that we should really kind of make a company called Quinton Inc., spelled I-N-K. Speaker 1 (3:54) Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:54) It was always a joke, but we knew that. We were all right brained. We had no left brains in the family. We had nobody any good at maths. We had nobody any good at accountancy. We were going to fail miserably. So we just kind of thought, let's just not go there. So we've never gone there. But, you know, I think if I look back, it was an incredibly creative upbringing. You know, parents very chilled and laid back. You know, we used to go traveling around Europe. We had a convertible Triumph Herald. And it was, or both, we went and we had two. We had lots of... Amazing Hondo's initially, etc. Brothers and sisters? Speaker 1 (4:29) Yeah, I mean, initially just the elder Speaker 2 (4:32) sister and then later two further brothers. But yeah, we would be taken to galleries and ballets, you name it. Anything cultural. I got all my grounding from there. I didn't realise it, but that's what... we've got and that's what i continued with my children so yeah we just you we believe that it's really important to experience everything and you know it doesn't matter if it's rubbish you find out if it's rubbish and you make a decision whether it's rubbish or not you've got to experience it so that was kind of really important i tell Speaker 1 (5:12) my kids that even going to see something that i don't particularly enjoy i still love the experience of going to see it totally Speaker 2 (5:17) totally i mean how else do you know because you're just going to blinker and you're just going to go from this kind of myopic little world yeah Speaker 1 (5:24) you've Speaker 2 (5:24) got to kind of experience definitely Speaker 1 (5:26) yeah Speaker 2 (5:27) i mean probably one of my kind of earliest memories is uh because my mum was doing interior design stuff we would have to go and get samples from the newest shops like the new shop called laura ashley and pick up samples from there. Wow. But, you know, I remember lounging around with my sister on this huge ornate bed in Bieber. And Bieber was just an incredible place. I mean, I was like five or six years old. I still remember this sense of gold black and ostrich feathers everywhere. Wow. It Speaker 1 (6:02) was just this kind of wonderful, wonderful place. Speaker 2 (6:06) But, you know, and we still talk about it. We bought my sister the Bieber book when it came out. It's like, do you remember all this? And like, yeah, oh God, yeah. Speaker 1 (6:13) That's brilliant. But, Speaker 2 (6:15) you know, so lucky. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:17) Right? Speaker 2 (6:17) I just think they're incredibly lucky. Yeah, definitely. I spent Speaker 1 (6:21) a lot of time in Marks and Spencer's in Warrington. So that was my, not quite so it's exciting. You realise, Speaker 2 (6:28) you realise, you don't realise when you're younger what an incredible kind of opportunity I've had. and experiences but I just took it as this is what everybody does yeah Speaker 1 (6:38) you know I Speaker 2 (6:39) remember going to taking a design one of the designers to a theater thing that we got tickets for and it was the first theater proper production he'd been to he was 32 wow Speaker 1 (6:52) really Speaker 2 (6:52) and Speaker 1 (6:52) I Speaker 2 (6:52) just thought this is how can you go through life and not have any of those experiences but you realize this is the thing it's like I'm coming at it from position of privilege right I've fully aware of that but that privilege is all about being open to experience as opposed to it's not about money necessarily I don't think it's about money I think it's about if you really want to no it's true Speaker 1 (7:18) my mum really loved the theatre so we used to go to the theatre all the time so we used to just yeah go to all the musicals and all that kind of stuff and yeah she was really into it so I think that opened my eyes a lot on that kind of stuff I Speaker 2 (7:29) met my now wife when we were 19 We had three boys under five by the time we were 30. Speaker 1 (7:36) 19. And then that's amazing. Speaker 2 (7:39) I mean, you know, we've been together so long. I told you I was crap at maths. I cannot tell you how long it's been. She'll tell me. And then we had a fourth. Finally, we had a girl 10 years later. Speaker 1 (7:51) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:51) But we've been together forever. It seems forever. But she's wonderful. She's a musician. And she's put up with me for decades. So Speaker 1 (8:00) she's still a musician. That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, you know, she's patient and she wants Speaker 2 (8:05) to pass on the enthusiasm in music to kids. Can you play anything? I can do Gibbity F. So that's grade one mute piano. It's the farthest I got. Speaker 1 (8:17) It's Speaker 2 (8:18) basically left hand, middle C. middle C, left hand, right hand, middle C. That's it. Two thumbs. That's it. Speaker 1 (8:27) I've been trying to play the guitar for about 20 odd years now. So that's my one day. I had Speaker 2 (8:31) 10 lessons on the guitar and the guy said, okay, Greg, you've had 10 lessons. You've turned up for six. You've learned two chords. It's time you parted company. And I burst into tears. I was like 16. Speaker 1 (8:45) That's harsh. Speaker 2 (8:47) Yeah, but he was right. Speaker 2 (8:51) She was absolutely right. Speaker 1 (8:52) When did you hear about design, graphic design, that kind of side of things? Speaker 2 (8:57) Design would not have been a word that was a particularly new, different word for me within the family context. Because I think the family would have talked about art and design and everything else constantly. So to me, it probably wouldn't have been a new thing. What I found really strange was when you go to school and, you know, I think career... starts to kind of be discussed as a word. I mean, I hate the word career because I think career is irrelevant. I think what you have to do is find your passion. And, you know, I'd say this to anybody who will listen and I say it constantly, find your passion. It doesn't matter what it is, just find the passion. Speaker 1 (9:37) And Speaker 2 (9:38) the passion can be anything. Yeah, it can be art and design, of course, but it could also be football. It could be dance, writing, driving. Speaker 2 (9:48) Influencing, gardening, literally anything, even accountancy, you just have to find your passion. If you're super, super passionate about it, if you enjoy doing it every day, then that's wonderful. That's what you need. You need to be enjoying that. The worst thing, the thing I would please, please avoid anybody is chasing the money. Speaker 1 (10:08) Just that Speaker 2 (10:09) is the route to sadness in my mind. Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:12) I completely Speaker 2 (10:12) agree. Speaker 1 (10:13) I think, you Speaker 2 (10:13) know, I think you can, sometimes you can. It just takes time to find that passion. So sometimes you have to go back and really think about what you want to do. I mean, both of my younger brothers, they retrained effectively. What they do now isn't what they studied, for example. Yeah, okay. One does animatronics. One does music, but they didn't train in those things. So sometimes it just takes a little while to find that passion, but you've got to find that passion. Speaker 1 (10:45) Yeah, totally, yeah. And Speaker 2 (10:46) go for it. Speaker 1 (10:46) Yeah, I did my degree in biology. Oh, I see. So, yeah, I realised that wasn't for me. And Speaker 2 (10:51) you found a moment. How did you find it? God, Speaker 1 (10:55) through a friend of a friend. I was looking for a job in London and a friend of a friend I bumped into and he told me about... His girlfriend was looking for someone to do new business and account exec sort of role at an ad agency on Great Port and Street. And I went in to see her the next day. And this is my friend, Lily, that now lives over in Barcelona and we're still friends. This was 30 odd years ago. And just built it from there. And I sort of did that as a job, not expecting that much of it. And then just got to realize what brand was and what design