Food for Thought Talks Sessions

Get professional tips and tricks from subject-matters experts and dig into the following topics:

• Website Wins & WOWs: Maximising your website with Jonathan Kirk

The agency’s shop window is never finished. Approaches change and so do client expectations. Jonathan Kirk will look at key areas of the agency website and share the best ways to maximise your impact and message. There are learnings from the client viewpoint and from best practice agency website examples. Join Jonathan on Wednesday, August 17th at 10:30 am.

• Crank Up your Creative Career: From Mid to Senior, Designer to Manager

Taking control of your own creative career is the secret to professional fulfilment. The secret is in identifying where you want to go and setting a plan to get there.  Take the first step at this 30-minute lunchtime talk with business and executive coach Jeannette Naughton. This talk is ideal for anyone in a mid-level position and for managers, HR and L&D working with creative professionals. Join Jeannette on Wednesday, August 17th at 1 pm. 

• Ten Top Tips for Starting your Creative Business with Jeannette Naughton

Want to start your own creative or design business but not sure where or how to begin? In just 30 minutes, business and executive coach Jeannette Naughton will walk you through the key first steps you need to take to realise your dream. Practical actions you can take today to start your own business. Join Jeannette on Wednesday, August 17th at 6 pm.

• Maximise your marginal gains to unlock new business

Feel like there’s never enough time for new business and marketing activity? Do you have a great strategy but struggle with implementation? Are you worried about how a recession might impact your pipeline? Now is the time to harness the power of marginal gains thinking. Join Lucy Mann on Thursday, August 18th at 10:30 am and learn how to maximise your marginal gains to unlock new business.

• Build bridges with UX: Bridge the user vs tech gap with UX Psychology

In this session, Andrew McCrea will discuss the psychology of UX design; challenged with bridging the large gap between how technology works and how people think. Andrew will cover the principles and theories behind the design decisions we can make, backed by psychological principles. Join Andrew on Friday, August 19th at 10:30 am.

About the trainers

Jonathan Kirk is the founder of Up to the Light, a consultancy that advises creative agencies on positioning and strategy, and all aspects of business improvement and growth, challenging some of the ingrained assumptions that exist in our industry and providing effective, insight-led advice.

Jonathan’s senior roles have included Business Development Director of Fitch, the global brand design group, and New Business Director of Havas EHS (now Havas Helia), one of Europe’s largest agency networks. Jonathan is a founder member of the Design Business Association’s Experts Register and is a frequent conference speaker and trade press contributor.

Jeannette is a Master Trainer and experienced Business Coach. Jeannette works closely with a portfolio of Design Sector Clients delivering training and coaching to improve their business performance. She delivers workshops and coaching to groups of business leaders and their teams on Strategic Planning, Marketing and Sales Strategy, Communication and Team Cohesion. Jeannette delivers our highly rated Designs on Growth business and management development programme and coaches participants to achieve business success and achieve long-term results in their businesses.

Andrew is Head of Delivery at Fathom & Fathom’s senior Team member. A former UX Director at Mammoth, Digital Consultant at Tibus and Online Manager at a boutique online travel company, Activity Breaks, Andrew has been working in digital design performance and team leadership roles across agency and e-commerce environments for over 16 years. His experience has seen him lead UX and design performance projects for clients such as AIB, Queen’s University Belfast, TalkSPORT and Kingspan to name but a few.

Outside of Fathom, when not training for his next marathon Andrew likes to stay connected to the UX community. He is a mentor to a number of students studying with the UX Design Institute, since 2018 and likes to contribute to a number of UX and design events, workshops and meetups.

Lucy Mann is an agency new business and marketing strategist and mentor. Creator and host of the Small Spark Theory® podcast and a DBA accredited expert, Lucy supports quietly brilliant independent agency leaders to attract, win and grow game-changing client relationships.

The Food for Thought Talks are part of our Design Summer Sessions programme Share & Learn Sessions. Book your ticket now or browse through the rest of the programme.