Dynamic Duo

By Naomi Da Costa, recruiter for creative and design jobs (including copywriting, art director and creative team roles)

Adrian Peters and Dave Wellington are one of the creative industry's most innovative teams. Starting out 12 years ago when digital jobs were still in their infancy, they've helped push the boundaries of the medium and won themselves a ton of awards in the process. I managed to steal 5 minutes of their time for a fascinating insight into what makes them tick, how they approach the creative process and why they've banned daytime drinking...

How did you break in to the industry?   
We struggled through the usual placement schemes at above the line agencies, but in the end had to find a way to pay the bills so we worked as Baristas in Starbucks. Now we critique the coffee at every agency we go to. In our spare time at Starbucks we worked on getting our portfolio together. Our big break came from Glue back in the day when digital was just starting to take shape.

Who wears the pants?
We swap pants every few weeks to keep things fresh

What was the last thing you disagreed over? 
Think it might have been whether or not the navigation bar on our own website locked to the browser or moved as you scrolled down the page. Seemed very important at the time.

What work are you most proud of? 
Were most proud of two campaigns: Dulux Colour Chemistry and our BT Broadband campaign. We both feel like there’s lot of our personality in them.

How do you kick off the creative process? 
Usually with a coffee in a nearby coffee shop and then an argument. Traditionally, it's supposed to be beer and a pub argument as our old advertising tutor told us, but a beer would just send us to sleep. Can't handle daytime drinking.

When / where are you most creative? 
Usually the start of the brief is the time when the ideas flood in, then there’s a gap where we get stuck, then a day later the ideas flow again. If the deadline is too long we can tire, so we’re better with shorter deadlines to keep us on our toes, but that doesn't mean 'a day' as some account people think.

What else do you do as a team? 
We are also comedy writers in our free time. Together we co-developed a comedy/entertainment website called mantlepies.com.

It lead to us being called in by the Beeb to work wth Armando Iannucci on two of his shows. The first was an end of year TV show called 2004 the Stupid Version, the other was Time Trumpet. After that we tried to continue in comedy and got as far as developing five new shows of our own but so far none of these made it to telly, possibly for being too ‘out there’. Currently we’re just adding new stuff to our site and trying to rebuild our online fanbase - it's not quite what it was.
 
Who are your biggest influences? 
B3ta.com has always been a source of inspiration. For anybody who doesnt know, B3ta is a community of creative people who use the site as a testing ground for their projects, experiments, animations, photoshopped pictures or any idea that pops into their head. B3ta members have been behind loads of virals since they started the site years ago and their work often found it's way onto TV programmes, news stories, into big ad campaigns. They're always the first to spot the latest viral before anyone else. On some days their messageboard seems to break news stories faster than the BBC. 
 
Any tips for overcoming creative block? 
Would like to say don't worry about it, often the idea will come when you're in the shower, or daydreaming on the train going into work. But we still find ourselves staring at a blank piece of paper and panicking. Best tip is to find a place where you feel comfortable working and gives you as much inspiration and visual stimulus as possible. We usually sit in the window at Starbucks.
 
What advice would you give to new teams trying to land a creative or design job? 
It's much easier to expose your work to a wider audience nowadays:
 
- Make sure your book is online
 
- Learn Dreamweaver and make your own website or find an easy to use content management system where you can host and manage your portfolio. Carbonmade.com or Foliosnap are good places to start.

- Use online as a testing ground for your ideas, film stuff, or animate it in flash. The tutorials are really easy.
 
- Post stuff to sites like b3ta.com. Getting your project, film or animation into the newsletter can expose it to thousands of people and a lot of them seem to work in the media industry. It helps you stand out. Our book of silly cartoons really helped in our interview for the creative team job at Glue. 
  
Thanks for talking to us, guys. Keep up the good work!

If you want to see more of these interviews in future, let us know below! If you're a creative team looking for your next challenge, drop me a line here or give me a call on 020 7845 7263.

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