Despite our ‘studio next door’ vibes, O Street has been operating as a global agency since our inception 15 years ago. Over the years this has included work with Google, Spotify, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Bacardi to name a few. We’ve run in-person brand workshops in Kenya, Italy, Denver and even Glasgow (sounds like an Abba song!).

During Covid, remote working seemed the new norm, particularly with a business like ours that was already accustomed to it. However, in the last few months, we’ve rediscovered the importance of face-to-face connections with our clients. This prompted our very own Tessa Simpson and David Freer to make a trip to the US earlier this month. It’s an expense and effort to undertake business travel of this scale, yet it’s something we greatly value, and here are a few reasons why:

Meeting over marketing

Agency marketing budgets can easily get used up on lead generation, design awards and conferences. These work for many people, but we’ve found spending our allocated budgets on building tangible relationships with existing clients/peers or being introduced to real people so much more valuable for building our business. We see the return on investment straight away.

Facetime

No matter how fast your broadband speed is, some things can’t be replicated with video chats. Since our trip, we now know what the view looks like from our client’s office window; the choice of sandwiches in TIFIN’s local deli and even the high score on the pinball machine that sits in the reception at Paralel. These are the things that make us human, and despite the professional nature of our service, in the end, we do work with humans and we appreciate the ability to understand them on that level too.

Seeing a brand exist in real life

Over in the US, it was a delight to see our logo creations on hoodies, fluorescent signs, etched office doors and meeting room murals. Talking to our clients, it was even more enlightening to see them embody the values and personalities we had helped craft at their inception. Standing inside the offices of the businesses we work with is a reminder of the impact and value of the work we do.

Understanding a place

We spent time in New York and have clients all over the US. But, our spiritual home seems to be in Colorado. As with our UK base in Glasgow, Denver is a place that balances both the cosmopolitan culture of a big city and the lifestyle of its proximity to the great outdoors. Again, like Glasgow, people living here seem to appreciate the balance of work/life alongside tech/nature. As well as our kind of folk, it also attracts brands like Crocs and VFC whose values align with our own.

Same same, but different

The UK and the US may have many similarities, but it’s understanding the unique qualities of each that allows us to communicate a brand in an authentic voice. Experiencing the positivity of every shopkeeper who wishes you a ‘wonderful day’ in the US explains the bright bold unashamed tone of voice required to engage with US audiences. In the same way that the bad weather and slightly grumpier shopkeepers in the UK explains the importance of humour in the design work we have here.

Between the lines feedback

It’s all well and good getting direct feedback from clients via email or video. However, it’s the between-the-lines information you get from those more casual conversations that often holds the real value. When discussing our work with the team at Google, we realised that what gets them the most excited are our creative side projects, like our Roadliners documentary film or the Label O’ Love book. It’s also reassuring to know that people are reading our newsletters and social media posts! If you want in, sign up here.

Emerging trends

One of the biggest value-adds that we bring to our American clients is a European design sensibility. At the same time, cross-pollinating our work from both sides of the world gives us a new perspective on what we create. Plus we’re getting eyes on emerging trends (design or otherwise) from America that often make their way over to us in the UK. Speaking of, anyone for Disc Golf? If you haven’t heard of that, check out the Glasgow contingency.

Small world, big impact

Our nine-strong designer team is about the size that any creative team would be in a larger organisation, but we often view ourselves as small. However, when we step out into the wider world, we realise the big impact we have with the work we do. These reminders include the billboards we pass on the street and the banknotes we designed in people’s wallets. On the other side of the world, this includes bottles we designed lined up in a bar and logos emblazoned on the walls of a skyscraper in downtown Denver.

From sunny Colorado straight back to torrential rain and flooding in Scotland, we landed with a bit of a bump, but still feeling super inspired and motivated with new projects on the horizon.
That feeling might be a leftover from the lasting effects of American positivity… not the only souvenir we brought back from our trip!

O Street is officially 15 years old this year. In business (or cat) years that’s a wise old age, a sure sign that we are doing something right.

Over that time, we’ve helped lots of brands grow and we’ve provided a creatively inspirational place for lots of people to work. One approach we are particularly fond of—and might be the secret to our success so far—is our ability to do things differently and tackle things in our own way.

So, if you have a minute (or 10 cat minutes) we’d love to indulge ourselves and hopefully entertain you with 15 ways we have zigged when others have zagged:

1. Looking beyond the computer to generate our graphics

From carpenters building us billboard posters to hand drawn whisky labels, we’ve often pushed against the conventional method of generating graphics on a computer. My favourite was our very first big job, drawing the Edinburgh International Film Festival logo in light, using long exposure photography.

2. Keeping things simple

Sometimes the best solution is the simplest. Suggesting changing the names of the Dean Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to ONE and TWO was a bold move that met a lot of board-level resistance. However, with Edinburgh taxi drivers adopting it within days and Visit Scotland adding an extra star rating due to its less confusing visitor experience, it was a creative decision that still makes us proud.

3. Taking the space no one else wants

For the Scottish Show in 2007, we were asked which gallery we would like to display our work in. Most of the best spaces had already been nabbed, so we chose the toilets. Our experimentation with Otl Aicher-style people icons was a roaring success, staying on display at the Lighthouse Gallery for years after the other exhibitions had been taken down because, surprise surprise, no one else ever wanted to exhibit in the loos!

4. Making mix tapes

Music has always been an important thing for our team. You could say we only formed a design studio because all our efforts to form a successful indie band failed. So it’s no surprise that we have used music over the years to help win new work: including a mix tape-styled portfolio we used to impress Last.fm, a client we have worked with for the last 10 years as well as winning work with Spotify, the Brit Awards and our latest 7” cover for DJ Bessa to raise money for Refuweegee—more on that soon.

5. Looking at things ‘indirectly’

We have often looked to indirect competitors for inspiration in our work. Back when we started O Street, we were asked to design Celtic Football Club’s website. Looking beyond the direct reference of other football teams’ sites, we took inspiration from US baseball teams and suggested to Celtic that they put video highlights on their homepage. It seems like an obvious solution now, but at the time, no other football team in the world was doing that, so it helped Celtic stand out and make extra sponsorship revenue.

6. Keeping shop

We made a conscious decision to move our studio from a third floor office space to a street level shop unit. A less corporate move at the time, but one that reflects the affinity we have with our local community. In the early days, a mother ran into our shop with her daughter who was having a medical crisis. Once the minor emergency was resolved and mother and daughter left smiling, we remarked how strange it was that they had chosen our design studio as opposed to the doctor’s surgery across the road. There must be something in making your place of work appear so welcoming!?

7. Getting fully immersed

As a designer-led team, we love to work as closely as possible with our clients, understanding their business and providing creative work that really aligns with their ethos. We believe that an organisation’s ‘brand’ is best understood and communicated by the people that live and breathe it every day. A great example of this was the two days Tessa and Neil spent on the farm at Fyne Ales Brewery before our rebrand, it’s harder work than it sounds.

8. Working with our clients, not just for them

As a branding studio working with amazing clients, it’s no surprise that we often fall hook, line and sinker in love with what they do. That belief, that authentic understanding of what they are trying to do positions us in a great place to help others engage with our clients’ work. In 2011, The National Theatre of Scotland planned an ambitious 24-hour stream of live theatre productions. So of course, we wrote (in collaboration with Graeme Virtue) and performed a short play from the studio starring our own thespian wannabe David Freer (has he already told you the one about him being an extra in Trainspotting… yawn!)

9. Collaborate, collaborate collaborate

Let’s be honest, there are loads of creative agencies out there and many see that as a threat to their own business success. Very early on, we came to the realisation that these other studios are actually the key to our continued success. We learn from (and become better) working and sharing best practices with other creatives just like us. It’s too long to list in full but to high-five a few of our besties: Plus, Creative Concern, Spey, Stuco, Nile, Jenni Lennox Timorous Beasties, Shesaid and BYND.

10. Using a typographer, who didn’t even know they were a typographer

Any design company doing their own rebrand is gonna be a hard task. Even riskier when we hired a typographer to draw our logo who didn’t even know they were a typographer, you can read about that here, but in brief, we hired Roadliner Tam to draw our logo and brand font as part of our new identity. The resulting short documentary is still touring with the British Council as an exemplar of authentic British craftsmanship.

11. Asking other design studios to critique our work

Taking criticism and external input can be difficult at any time, but asking rival local studios to do so at key parts of the biggest project we had ever worked on felt crazy. That’s exactly what we did as part of our redesign of Scotland’s banknotes for RBS. I should really blame Jeni Lennox & Nile for suggesting it, but in the end, it turned out to be a stroke of genius. It helped us create something bigger than we would have devised on our own, and deserving of the national impact it had.

12. Incubating our own tech startup

Running one business is tough, running a second alongside it is even harder. We were crazy to try and take on the likes of Instagram and Samsung with our voice-activated camera app Vapp in 2011. However, improving our creative entrepreneurship skills and experiencing how many of our clients must feel has been an invaluable lesson. Although the app ultimately failed (despite a copycat product in the US getting $10million investment for a similar product) we loved the journey and even won Glasgow Startup of the year in 2012 for it.

13. Championing remote working for over 10 years

We have had certain employees working remotely for years. When Covid brought an industry-wide lockdown, the new working practice was a smooth transition for our team. Of course being remote has its issues, and we still champion the camaraderie we have fostered in our Glasgow HQ. However, having senior team members working throughout the world has helped expand our new business pipelines and overall vision.

14. Having an international outlook

We love being Scottish, even those of us who aren’t Scottish. But it’s our global outlook and international profile that has helped us endure these first 15 years. Our global mix of clients has helped us remain busy during two major financial market crashes in the UK. Moreover, we’re proud to say that as well as learning from other cultures, we’ve left our Scottish fingerprints on work from Kenya to Italy, Sydney to Denver.

15. Building a company for the future

We’re cheating with this last one, but as a promise to ourselves and our team, we are actively looking at ways to improve and strengthen our business for the future. We don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, or how we will do it, but no doubt we will tackle the issue slightly differently than everyone else!

We’ve gone away fishing again! I’ll admit, we’re a bit late in sharing our reportage of the trip this year, but there’s a reason for this, and thankfully it’s not because of a man overboard, or raw-fish-related ailments.

As per tradition, we’ve made an arthouse-adjacent short film to document the trip, but this time we took the time to reflect on why we started O Street in the first place (15 years ago this month!), what makes us who we are and why we do what we do. Give it a watch!

If you’ve been anywhere near Glasgow, you’ll have seen that it’s almost time for Glasgow Film Festival— posters and banners can be seen all over the city! The film festival takes place at the beloved GFT and other venues from the 1st-12th of March. As always, it’s an incredible selection; we’ve narrowed down a few of our favourites below.

Anna – The Civil Dead

I’ve been looking forward to seeing The Civil Dead for a while now. I love understated mumblecore films that gently amble along focusing on seemingly mundane relationships with not a whole lot of action. The Civil Dead sounds like it’s gonna fit the bill perfectly as GFF says, it humorously ponders the importance of friendship over self-destructive loneliness—cute!

George – Driving Mum

An Icelandic comedy seems super intriguing – I love cinema as an insight into a culture different to your own, and comedy is especially good for this, as what other people find funny can be really revealing, unique but also universal. I love how Driving Mum undercuts the usually free and fun road trip genre with something as serious as death, and obligation to fulfil promises, it seems like the perfect setup for some deadpan laffs!

David – So I Married an Axe Murderer

I hold my hands up, it’s a pretty bad movie. It’s also probably not dated that well either. Mike Myers may have Scottish ancestry, but even through the lens of nostalgia, his Scottish accent is terrible. However, I still love it. It reminds me of a time before memes and YouTube. A time when your pals would be quoting the same bit from a movie because you had all put in the hard graft sitting through the full 1.5 hours, finding the same bits funny. We worked harder for our laughs back then, maybe because we all had ‘…huge noggins, like a virtual planetoid’. (also, honourable mention, but the soundtrack is still freakin’ awesome)

Tessa – God’s Creatures

Generally speaking, I’m a sucker for Paul Mescal, I mean, a rural thriller. With visceral gothic overtones emanating from the trailer alone, I’m intrigued. A dark story of sexual assault with all the complications of community, motherhood and blind loyalty thrown into the mix. I’m fully prepared to leave the cinema emotionally traumatised and haunted.

Bea – Riceboy Sleeps

A film that delves into human behaviour will always catch my attention. Whilst interpreting the beautiful struggle between a mother and son, this coming-of-age story touches on imperative topics of bullying, race and identity. I’m ready to be by Kim Dong-Hyun’s side as he chooses his Western Name and bleaches his hair in an attempt to feel comfortable in his own skin.

Susan – One Fine Morning

I cannot resist this kind of quiet, touching drama. Léa Seydoux portrays Sandra, a grown daughter dealing with difficult and deeply emotional decisions as her father’s health declines while juggling other ‘life stuff’. Complicated relationships, love and loss with Paris as the backdrop—I’m really looking forward to this one, tissues ready!

Neil – Cassius X: Becoming Ali

If it has anything to do with Muhammad Ali, I confess I’ll watch it. This documentary written by Stuart Cosgrove looks at the early part of Ali’s career where the insanely gifted teenager looked to define and redefine himself, both as a boxer and an individual, against a backdrop of racial tension, the black power movement and wider cultural and sporting expectations. This was to be a mesmerising period of transformation. Much like the grace, guile and sparkle of the great man himself.

Enjoy!

P.S. Stay tuned for a little update on our Glasgow Film Festival project post, including the work for this year’s festival, coming soon.

After an inspiring and engaging day at INTL, a creative conference held in Glasgow attended by people from all over the world, one slide, in particular, got us talking the next day; Swiss type design agency Dinamo’s bullet-pointed manifesto.

Often when you think of manifestos it’s of statements like ‘allow yourself to fail’, or ‘be your own hero’, both of which are directed at the individual. We thought it was interesting that Dinamo didn’t follow this expected path of self-help and instead focussed on how your actions can help a larger group of people.

‘Give full access to everybody you work with’

‘Document and share knowledge’

‘Watch out for gatekeepers (often former heroes)’

It’s interesting to think of a world where everything could be open sourced; imagine how much we could all benefit from learning and innovating with the knowledge of others. We’re definitely not going to get anywhere by guarding and keeping everything locked up.

HAWRAF is a design studio that did just that when, in 2019, their studio came to an end. To mark the occasion they shared everything that they had learnt along the way by creating a public Google Drive Folder filled with tools, assets and information; simply so that we could all learn from each other.

Not all manifestos are so pure of heart, sometimes they can be a quick and easy way for big companies to seem like they have a soul. Say, for example, a Scottish multi-million beer corporation that sells their beer in supermarkets globally with a ‘punk’ manifesto – “If you can evoke emotion, you can drive behaviour”. However, the truly great ones do make an impact and stick with you; see Nike’s and Patagonia’s in the image below.

What about manifestos for design agencies? Manifestos have the power to set your agency or company on a certain path; it’s making a stand, putting a flag in the ground as to what you set out to do and how you work.

Famously, British graphic designer, photographer, and writer Ken Garland released an iconic manifesto in 1960, that called for a shift in focus from using design as a tool for further growth of global consumer/commercial expansion/consumption and instead petitioned to use design for education and the betterment of society. Something that still feels as relevant today as it did in 1960s society.

Those of us longer in the tooth might remember how Manchester based design studio Music launched their company with a simple to do list on a webpage. Stating their brand intentions pretty clearly from the get go and inspiring a version of a Creative Review cover in the same style.

Anthony Burrill’s iconic ethos ‘Work Hard & Be Nice to People’ was expanded to a pocket size manifesto, with the inspiration to empower others through his creative insights on self-development and lessons he’s learned through trial and error. All beautifully presented as letterpress posters and unique spreads.

When O Street first started we had a simple ethos that came from our process: think, dream, do. Since then we’ve consciously and unconsciously built on this approach but we’ve never had something as concrete as a manifesto…

If we did, maybe it would look a bit like this:

– Do good work, with good people
– Use your hands to make things
– Something about side projects
– Don’t stand still (change is good)
– Go fishing

And knowing us, it would probably change next year (see point 4).

Manifestos can be powerful, they can also be bullshit. They can be a guiding compass to start you on the right path, they can be a way to tell the world what you do, or they can simply be a way of distilling what you already know you do in a five bullet point list. Maybe simply, like most things, a manifesto is what you make of it.

Here’s a list of some of our favourites:

Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll

Ken Garland

Dieter Rams

Riot Grrrl

Need a different way to be social? Meet Happy Hour Hike.

What do you do, that you could do outside instead? That’s a question we’ve asked ourselves more and more since the pandemic, when there were times we’d put folding chairs in the back garden for a pint because the pub was shut. Exercise, reading, Zoom calls, playing with your little ones—the possibilities for things you could move outdoors are endless.

One place asking that question led us to was happy hour, that magic couple of hours in the afternoon that excuse a glass of something tasty and chat with good company. So, we paired up with our friends It’s Good Outside to facilitate a little gathering and urban hike in Denver Colorado.

With the Denver weather doing its thing (it’s always sunny, sorry UK readers), we enjoyed a couple hours combining some of our favorite things: beer, sun, movement, and good chat with people we otherwise wouldn’t have met. No agenda, no pitch, no name tags. Just beer and sun.

We also selected a couple attendees at random and treated them to some It’s Good Outside gear, so they could wear their outdoors apparel next time they hit the trail.

It’s a well known fact that being outdoors makes you feel happier, and even better if you are with friends. Getting outdoors is also a boon for your creativity; the list of legendary artists and writers who prioritized walks is long. Even though we poke fun at him for how much sunblock he applies, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the tech savants who popularized outdoor walking meetings. When you’re moving—and especially when you’re getting fresh air—the ideas flow. Tell your boss.

So you may consider a happy hour hike of your own, whether it’s with a close friend or a gaggle of strangers. If you’re planning it in Glasgow or Denver, be sure to give us a shout so we can join. We might BYO a seltzer, though. Although our love for beer is well known, anti-hangover is in these days.

Cheers!