Founding a Design Festival

Ian Paget: So you've obviously come onto the Logo Geek podcast and typically, conversations are around logo design, but something that I find important is to attend events and conferences for numerous reasons. And I thought it'd be fun to get you guys on to talk about all of the events that you've been working on, and hopefully that might inspire some other designers out there to do something similar to what you have.

So I think it's probably worth starting off by asking you to briefly introduce yourselves. So, Luke, do you want to go first?

Luke Tonge: Sure. Thank you for having us, firstly, Ian.

Ian Paget: No worries.

Luke Tonge: So my name's Luke Tonge. I'm a graphic designer first and foremost, and I do spend most of my time working on branding, a brand identity project. So that's the bread and butter. And then I also wear a couple of other hats. I do design events with my good friend, Dan, who's also on here today. And I do bits of lecturing and mentoring through various universities.

So I split my time roughly 50/50 I guess now. Probably 50% of my time is actually spent designing things and then 50% of my time is spent on design community in one way or another. And I think we'll probably talk more about community in a bit. Yeah, so that's me.

Ian Paget:

Yeah, absolutely. And Dan, do you want to do a quick intro as well?

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah, so I'm Dan. I'm also based in Birmingham or near enough to Birmingham to call it Birmingham. I am more of a digital designer than Luke. I work for an agency called Substract where I'm actually brand communication design lead, but that's a new role for me. Typically, over the past few years I've been designing and building websites for arts and cultural organizations. And then in my spare time, doing all the extracurricular stuff with community and with BDF. You can possibly hear my children screaming in the background as well because that's life at the moment in a working from home world.

Ian Paget:

Yeah, it's fine. Don't worry about that at all. Cool. Okay. So you're both graphic designers and as I mentioned, I'm keen to talk about the events. How I know you both primarily is from the Birmingham Design Festival, which I think is one of the best events in the UK for anything to do with graphic design and branding.

Daniel Alcorn:

That's very kind of you to say.

Ian Paget:

I think it's worth talking through how you guys started out, because obviously that's a huge event, really big event. And I can't imagine that you could just start that from the get-go. So did you guys work on any smaller events prior to doing that huge citywide event?

Luke Tonge:

Sure. Dan, do you want to tell the story?

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah, absolutely. So I moved to Birmingham around 2012 and I started working at Aston Villa Football Club as a graphic designer. And as you might imagine, there's not a great deal of design focus in that role. We had a small design team, but I was certainly feeling the itch to get out into the community of Birmingham and find out what's going on. And via that, I ended up writing for creative blogs and attending a lot of creative events.

Daniel Alcorn:

One of those events was called Badego, and that was set up by a few designers living and working in Birmingham. It was a meetup up that ran every Thursday from a Mexican restaurant called Bodega. And that's how I met most of the people that live and work in Birmingham. Pretty much every one of my friends has been via Badego in some form, including Luke. And through that time, got to know the host really well. I eventually ended up taking over Badego, and we started to put on some bigger events than just the fortnightly meetup that were small talks. In fact, it was called Small Talk. Luke spoke at the first one as well.

Daniel Alcorn:

We started putting on small exhibitions, screenings and things like that. So it was getting used to that world where we were organizing things and putting things on for the creative community. And we could feel Birmingham having a revival of sorts. When I first moved here, the design community felt quite smaller. It wasn't particularly connected. It felt like that across the board in terms of arts and culture. We were seeing lots of small events pop up and start though, and gradually gaining lots of attendees and lots of interest, things like Flatpack Film Festival was growing exponentially, as was Birmingham Weekender, which is a live arts festival that happens biannually.

Daniel Alcorn:

So there felt like there was really something happening in Birmingham. Luke, I don't know if you want to briefly talk about what you were doing up to that point as well before we ... together.

Luke Tonge:

Yeah, good call. So I married into the Midlands around 2009, and I'd come from a smaller place that didn't have a big design community. So I was really excited to meet other designers and get stuck into life in the city. I'd been part of Form 55, which was a relatively well known design website at the time. So I spent a lot of time already talking about other people's work and celebrating the design community. I was very active in some of those circles. So I'd met a lot of my design heroes already or was befriending them. So my connections were growing. And I was also really fortunate to work on some quite high profile projects at the time. So I designed The Recorder, which was a magazine for Monotype and a few other independent publications.

Luke Tonge:

So similar to Dan, I was getting itchy feet to be more part of the design community and play a role, in not giving back, but just being part of it and surrounding myself with like-minded people. And I had attended Badego a couple of times, and I'd been invited to speak as Dan mentioned at Small Talk. And then a few other opportunities had started to come our way. We were approached by someone that was interested in setting up Glug in Birmingham. That in fact, someone else then did and we'll talk more about that.

Luke Tonge:

So it was just a case of finding my free eat in a new city, being established. I was in my thirties, I was progressing in my career, but I was really interested in the design life that happened outside of the studio walls, and the fact that design to me was much more a vocation than a profession, and I was really interested in meeting other that felt the same way or that were really passionate about design. So I started being asked to speak at a few events because of my work with the magazines, mostly. And I guess that put me and Dan on each other's radar a little bit.

Ian Paget:

Nice.

Luke Tonge:

So Dan can probably pick up the story from there.

Ian Paget:

Yeah, no worries. I just want to quickly jump in. I think with these events, if you live in a city, I think it's really awesome because there's quite a lot of different events. Glug is actually one of them that I used to go to when it was in Redding. And like you said, we can talk a little bit more about that shortly. But I totally understand that itch, that need to go out there and start going to these different events. But what I do like about you two in particular is that you seem to almost take the bull by the horns and start creating your own events and start creating different things.

Ian Paget:

I mentioned prior to the call that I've just recently moved to a new area. I'm looking for what's out there. And I don't see that many things see it. So I'm actually thinking of maybe starting something on my own, see if I can get one or two people join and see what happens. But that's something that I really admire about both of you. Anyway, I'll let you guys carry on with the story.

Daniel Alcorn:

Thank you for that. It's something we're very conscious of. We grew through the community, not just us, lots of people over a very long time. Like I said, when I moved to the city in 2012, that community didn't feel like it existed, or it didn't necessarily feel like it was connected in any way. There was maybe a little bit of rivalry with the studios and people... there didn't just feel like a nice collected atmosphere, but certainly that it feels like now, and a lot of people have, have contributed to changing that over the past 10 years.

Daniel Alcorn:

Around 2017, it felt like things were really starting to come together from the city's point of view. It felt like the events that did exist were growing rapidly. There was a much bigger appetite across the board, across the arts for people getting together and doing stuff. We went to every single Glug that was happening in the city and we watched that grow from 50 people attending the first one to 300, spilling out the doors and struggling to fit people into the venue.

Daniel Alcorn:

And whilst that was happening, we were doing our own events. And it just felt like it got to a point, and it was at one of the Glugs where people were spilling out the doors where I felt like the city was ready for more. And I'd always been quite envious of other cities that had design festivals or a central focal point for a design event. It felt like that had put cities and towns on the map that you wouldn't necessarily associate with design, but they had these big focal points that the whole industry paid attention to.

Daniel Alcorn:

So thinking Design Manchester, who were a massive inspiration for what we did. The Cheltenham Design Festival, various things happening in Bristol and in the Northeast and in Glasgow. I've always felt that would've really benefited the city, but certainly when I moved here in the initial years that I was here, the city wasn't ready for that. You couldn't have just popped up a festival and had 10,000 people attend it, or even 300. It would've been a bit of a damp squib. And I wasn't ready to do it at that point. I'd done a couple of events at university, organized them, but I needed to build myself up to the point where I felt comfortable taking on something bigger.

Daniel Alcorn:

And I think in 2017, as we were watching all this happen, I felt ready. It felt like the city was ready. I presume that someone would've done this by now. So Canvas Conference, which is ran by the agency, 383 Project, which is a great product design conference, I thought that they would've done something, but I think they were very happy doing what they did.

Daniel Alcorn:

So I thought, well, I think the time is ready. I actually bought the domain name on my birthday randomly in 2017. I was just like, "I think we're going to do Birmingham Design Festival. I'm going to buy the domain name so it's there," because that's the first thing you have to do as a designer. You buy the domain name. That's why we have 30 vacant domain names in each of our GoDaddy accounts. But every time I set something like this up I'm very deadly serious about seeing it through.

Daniel Alcorn:

I had a team of people with Badego that helped with everything, and some of those came on board with the design festival team, but I really felt like it needed somebody who was incredibly well connected in the design community to help run it, someone who'd already ran events, and also somebody I liked because that's incredibly important as well and I've always really liked Luke and massively respected him. So the first thing I did was message him and say, "I've bought the domain name." No, I didn't say that. I said, "I'm feeling confident that we could do something bigger. I'm interested in putting on a design festival. What do you think?"

Daniel Alcorn:

We met for coffee and we talked about the idea of it and it went from there. We both felt confident that the city was ready and that we could pull a team together to do what we wanted to do, and that we could get the speakers that we wanted. So that was in 2017, that was probably maybe March, April, 2017. In October, we registered the company but by that point, a lot of things were well underway. And then in 2018, we put on the first festival.

Ian Paget:

Just prior to talking too much more about the Birmingham Festival, I'd like to find a way to make this interview relatable to people that might want to start their own event. I know that you guys have already mentioned Glug, have already mentioned a couple of other things that you've been involved in, and obviously that's given you a fantastic foundation to then go out and go, "Okay, I want to create a citywide event," which is a huge thing to go from that to that, even. So say if somebody decided, okay, I want to do a small design event or a small get together, how have you guys gone about organizing one of those smaller events?

Luke Tonge:

Good question. I can talk a bit from my experience and then I'm sure Dan will as well.

Ian Paget:

Sure.

Luke Tonge:

I was invited to guest curate one of the Glug events and that was a big thing for me because I'm quite an introvert. I don't love being on stage, but I felt like I'd got the connections to be able to do that. We didn't just take over or start big things. We started much smaller. Badego was a much smaller affair, and for me starting, I guess that Glug was the first opportunity that I'd had to play a part in something else.

Luke Tonge:

I'm not as technologically savvy as Dan. When Dan talks about buying domain names, I'm still asking him how I do that. There's lots of things that are not within my skill set that would've prevented me from doing any of this on my own. So I think that partnership and teamwork is so important and finding a team of people. Even if you're doing something small, doing anything on your own is much harder than having a couple of people around you to help you plan stuff.

Luke Tonge:

I think to people on the outside, it can seem that we're either very together and have got it all sorted or very experienced, and I guess we are now at a point where we have some of that experience, but it all started from much smaller beginnings. I was starting to curate smaller talks within my workplace, which is one thing that you can do sometimes. If you work in an agency, for instance, you can just ask if you can bring speakers in and you can put on smaller events on lunch times or after work. If it's something that you're passionate about, I think you'll find a way of doing that and you don't need to... We see people quite frequently announce that they're going to launch something huge without any practice. And that to me is such folly that you really need to find your feet and to figure out what you're capable of and what the environment around you look like.

Luke Tonge:

You're are a great example of that Stratford-upon-Avon. I don't know how many people are there. I don't know how many agencies are within the area. I don't know how many freelancers. So part of what I would be doing would be making connections, putting the word out that you're interested in doing something, keep it really casual, do it really let low key, small, low cost, and start to build community because that's the whole point of doing these events, right, isn't it? It's not to get famous or make loads of money, that isn't an events game plan, really.

Ian Paget:

My thoughts was to use something like meetup.com, put an event that's out there, maybe contact some local agencies and say, "Let's go for a drink," and keep it really low key and then see where it goes.

Luke Tonge:

Yeah. See where it goes.

Ian Paget:

See if I can get more people to come and go from there.

Daniel Alcorn:

And that's exactly how, I don't want to say got Badego off the ground. So Badego ran for two years before I took it over, but in between me taking it over, the original hosts stopped hosting, and it really dropped off a cliff. I think there was probably about six or seven months where there wasn't really much happening. Either people weren't attending or there wasn't anything to attend. So a bit of my job when I took the reins was to drum up the interest again and meetup.com is exactly what I did. You go where people are, and at the time, meetup.com was a place where people lived.

Daniel Alcorn:

I don't know if I'd recommend that route to people now, given that Meetup has had a lot of changes and it's incredibly expensive. I don't know that if the audience that you get from there is as useful as one that you can drum up via direct connections with agencies, but it's certainly a route. And there's loads of different things you can put together. So meetup.com is one route that you can add to contacting the agencies and meeting people in person and drumming up that interest.

Daniel Alcorn:

But it is exactly as Luke said, it's that starting small and working out your environment. And environments are very, very different depending on the city or town that you're in. I don't know this for definite, but let's pretend that Stratford doesn't have a regular design event. Then the first thing to do is to create a broad strokes creative event, which is what Badego was, and just see who is in the community.

Daniel Alcorn:

The likelihood is when you start these things from that base of nothing, you're probably going to have three to six months of feeling like it's a real slog and that nobody's aware of it and nobody's attending, or the people that are attending aren't necessarily the people that you'd hope that you'd be engaging with, because that's one thing that happens with Meetup is that you will get a handful of designers, but you'll also get people who just like going to stuff on Meetup. And they will turn up and you'll be like, "Oh, so what area of design do you work in?" And they'll be like, "Oh, I don't. I work in some completely irrelevant field, but I just saw that this was on and it was new. So I wanted to meet people."

Daniel Alcorn:

When that happens, it's really nice to meet new people, but it's not necessarily the reason that you created this community. You're trying to serve people that are your contemporaries in a sense. So you'll have a few months of that where it feels like it's almost pointless or you're not getting anywhere. And then the more events you put on and the more engagement that you have with it, the more it'll grow and word of mouth will happen. A lot of people fail at that first hurdle because they put on too, it wasn't an immediate success. And so they give up. And it just takes that little bit of resilience just to get through it.

Daniel Alcorn:

But then there's also it's situations where if you're in a bigger city or you're somewhere that already has these creative communities, if you just try to put one on that someone else is already doing, that's completely unhelpful. It splits your audiences potentially. And that's the best scenario or split your audiences. The worst scenario is that they'll get annoyed that someone else has set something up that does exactly what they did. You'll get annoyed because no one's attending your thing because everybody goes to that one. And you'll just get annoyed and then give up, and your energy could have been better spent elsewhere.

Daniel Alcorn:

And equally, if there is lots of stuff going on, you need to just find that niche of what's not happening. So let's say you're somewhere where there four creative meetups/ events. One of them is illustration based, one's marketing based, one's design based, maybe one's craft based. It would be very difficult for you to slip in there with something else that ticks similar boxes. But you could maybe do a PHP meetup, a very, very focused meetup that you know that there's an audience out there because dozens of people attend these different events. So some of those people are going to be PHP developers, and you could then create a community that's very niche around that.

Daniel Alcorn:

You wouldn't be able to do that somewhere where you don't know what the communities like, and it might be very sparse because you are already hitting a very, very small niche. But if it's somewhere where there's lots happening already, niches tend to be a bit easier to create. So it's really gauging that environment and knowing what you feel like you could potentially put on and be successful.

Ian Paget:

I think that's really solid device actually, because I think anyone, no matter where you live, can start something. So if there isn't already something out up there and you want to start getting to know and network other designers, you can be the one that takes the bull by the horns and actually starts that thing.

Luke Tonge:

Absolutely.

Ian Paget:

That's why I thought this conversation would be worth having.

Luke Tonge:

I would just add to what Dan said, and I echo that completely. There's real opportunity with all of the design events that happen across the UK, to just go and learn from them. We welcome volunteers to come and help us with BDF every year. If you're interested in setting up your own thing, but you're not sure how to do that, how to scale it, if you are and meet other people and learn from what other people do, go and talk to them. Talk to people that already organized them and ask how they did it. That's what we did. We spoke to people that ran lots of events of all sizes and just asked for their advice. And people were so generous with us, that that's why Dan and I now like to talk to other people that are looking to set their thing up because we just see the value in sharing that knowledge. So that's what I would do.

Daniel Alcorn:

And you can tell when people haven't done it. You can tell when someone just sets an event up out of the blue and they've not spoken to anybody because there's just pitfalls that you can very, very easily fall into around if you're doing talks, around speaker lineups and diversity, around ticketing and how you book people in for the events, around venues and what type of venues work for different types of things. And as we mentioned before, around the existing community and what is already happening.

Daniel Alcorn:

You can tell when people have just gone, "I want to do a thing because I want eyes on me and I want to have created something and say that I've created something," and people who want to do that, but also want to do it in a useful way that benefits everybody.

Ian Paget:

Okay. So we've spoken about smaller events, but obviously, you guys have gone from working on smaller events, Glug being one of them, to suddenly creating this, what I see as huge, something that's city based. But I think when you create a city event, it's basically national. Creating a Birmingham Design Festival, that is as significant, I think as the London Design Festival and all of the other ones across the whole of the UK. It probably gets the attention international. So this is big.

Ian Paget:

For your first event, you had an incredible lineup. You had loads of things happening. It was across several days, there were talks, there were workshops. It was pretty much full on. It seemed like a festival that had been well established, and it's incredible to think that it started off with you two guys working together. The biggest memory for me is being able to have a workshop with Aaron James Draplin. How flipping cool is that?

Luke Tonge:

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about that as well.

Ian Paget:

Okay. So let's talk about this. So you briefly described earlier on in the conversation about how everything led up to this. Can you continue the story as to how you went from those small events to starting a huge citywide event?

Luke Tonge:

Yeah. I'll big Dan up actually for a bit here because it was Dan's vision, really and ambition to do something that was citywide. And we had a lot of team meetings where we thrashed around a lot of ideas about how the festival could look and how it could run. And it was really Dan that was very keen to go big or go home, as they say, and to make it as broad and encompassing and celebratory of the city as possible.

Luke Tonge:

And if you'd asked me what I wanted to do, that is not what I would've opted for. It was daunting, really. And just the logistics of like we had 100 speakers, we had 30 venues. Just the numbers were staggering, really for a first time thing. So it could have fallen flat on its arse very easily.

Luke Tonge:

And it's really testament to Dan's technical and organizational brain that it didn't because you need a lot of different skill sets within a team to pull something of that scale and ambition off, and I think collectively, not just Dan and I, but the whole team, we were really fortunate to find that kind of mixture of energy and enthusiasm and connections and hard work.

Luke Tonge:

There was a lot of not panicking, but like the swan, the paddling underwater, there was a year of furious planning to pull that off. And we were just really fortunate that a lot of people that we'd already got connections with, I knew Draplin a little bit. We knew Anthony Burrill and other people like that. So we pulled in every favor that we could, and that fortunately, most of those people said yes, they saw something in our ambition and our approach that they were happy to take a risk on. And that was a huge step of faith, the fact that it all came off meant that we had the confidence to do it again.

Ian Paget:

So you've basically sat down in a room together, decided that you've got this big vision. It sounds like Dan's the person that's really had that vision and been driving that. You've got the connections and so on, but how do you actually go about doing something like this? It's huge. Do you need to contact the council or anything like that? Can you talk more about the actual physical planning of it beyond just deciding, okay, let's do this event?

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah, I can field this one. I'll just start by saying Luke's been very kind there. It's very, very much a collaborative thing. And we've touched on this before, but it's very much a partnership. We have such a great complimentary skill set that we cover every base that we need to put this event on. And between Luke and myself and the rest of the team, that is why it works. And I think if you take one of us out, it doesn't work in any way, shape or form as well as it could have done.

Daniel Alcorn:

I think both of our backgrounds have really helped in terms of the logistical nightmare that it could have been became much easier because we'd put the prep in over several years. It's not just things that we were doing in the creative community in our spare time. My role at Aston Villa, I did a lot of work with partnerships and getting sponsorships for the team, not to say that I worked in partnerships. That's a very different thing, but I was seeing what they were doing and I was designing documents that were based around getting shirt sponsors and things like that.

Daniel Alcorn:

And equally, a lot of the people that I worked with at Villa ended up working in quite important roles in various places in the city as well, which it sounds very nepotistic, is that a word, nepotistic? Full of nepotism, that that's the case. It's not what you know, it's who you know. But I built up those connections with people in the city. Luke did very, very similar in terms of building up connections with people who could potentially speak. So we felt like we had a lot of tools there already.

Daniel Alcorn:

The way we always thought about the festival was that it wasn't us putting on one giant thing. It was a lot of the little things we were doing coming together. And that made it feel less daunting. It's not us trying to put on 100 events, it's us trying to organize a dozen people who are already doing these kind of things into doing something bigger. And I guess the big thing was just finding people to collaborate with.

Daniel Alcorn:

Probably the most important thing was sponsorships and venues. We had sponsorships from people that we knew already, but also people we had spoken to and gave the vision of the festival. So people like Bloc Hotels who give us free rooms for the festival to house all our speakers, that's immensely important because the fact that we get free board for our speakers for the entire festival means that there's an enormous reduction in the cost of the festival. It means the speakers can stay however long they need to, and it means we don't have to worry about that. That's sorted. And it allows us then to make the events free, which they are, most of the events are free to attend.

Daniel Alcorn:

And that comes from the festival, from the hotel sponsorship. It also comes from having venues that are willing to give their space for free. And again, those came from connections that we had, connections that we made along the way, connections that Luke had with the university who give us an incredible amount of free space. So all of those things have happened because of the work that we've done for five to 10 years. And that just made everyth a lot easier.

Daniel Alcorn:

We typically have between 20 and 30 venues. We have three main venues that house all the talks during the day. So once those three venues are sorted, that is the majority of the program done in terms of finding a place for people to speak. We then have satellite venues off of those where we house workshops and things like that. And they come around on the basis of need. If somebody says, "I want to put on a workshop for 30 people," we can usually find a space that's willing to give us room for that many people with a projector or with a screen, and we can facilitate that. It's incredibly helpful that the uni is full of those spaces. So it's really just a gradual process and a lot of work of just connecting dots and finding the appropriate spaces and people to fill those needs.

Luke Tonge:

And writing a lot of emails. I think that's one thing that people don't necessarily see. They presume that you just walk into a space and you ask for a venue and you get it. As much as we do do a lot of that, and we do ask, we rely on the kindness of strangers with this stuff a lot, we also spend hundreds of hours writing emails and proposals and documents. We've gone for Arts Council funding year after year, and never got it. We've spoken to the council and not got very far with those kind of things. Doors haven't just opened to us where we hoped they would. We've had to find alternative roots to the success that we've had.

Luke Tonge:

So it's a big beast and it takes a year to plan. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, but it's always worth it. And that's the payoff is when you see people having a great time at these events that you're partly responsible for. There's an enormous sense of satisfaction and wellbeing. And we get to meet our heroes and make friends with people in industry that we never would've met otherwise, and to do that with a group of friends.

Luke Tonge:

It's worth saying as well, that we didn't know everyone on the team when we started. We pulled in people we knew, but we also invited people that we wanted to know. And as a result of that, we've built a really strong team of people that we really like each other. We had a meeting last night and it's just a joy to spend time with people when you've got that common purpose. So everyone has to sign on board for a bit of hard work, but it's always worth it.

Luke Tonge:

And it's probably worth saying as well that sometimes people will look at who we partner with and say, we've had the accusation thrown, "Oh, why didn't you use someone local for that?" Particularly with one of our partners who are also Merchandise, who are based in Leeds. People don't always see the depth of relationship and the level of trust and understanding that it takes to jump on board as a partner for an event that's not happened yet. I've known also Merchandise for 15 years since they started. They started in Birmingham and then they moved away. But you find partners who will work with you and who understand the vision and will jump on board.

Luke Tonge:

Of course, the optimum would be that everyone was local to you and funding just magically appeared, but it doesn't. You have to go where people are, that are willing to get on board. So you write a lot of emails and get very few answers back that you want, but that's part of the slog. That's the boring, behind the scenes bit. And Dan putting countless hours in on building the website and making the ticketing system work well, and all of that stuff. It's not glamorous, and it's not particularly fun either, but it is part of what goes into these big events that require that much planning.

Daniel Alcorn:

I think we're in a unique situation, and I think this is probably true of most design events, that we are able to produce a lot of the stuff ourselves that typically another arts organization would have to pay for. So my day job is working with arts and cultural organizations, museums, theaters, galleries, festivals. If they want a new website, they pay tens of thousands for that new website. But we have the ability in house to create that for free. Just it takes my own time.

Daniel Alcorn:

And equally with the branding how much would it cost a festival to rebrand themselves every year? But Luke and the team do that branding every single year and it's always refreshed and different. And again, it doesn't cost us anything. Like I said, this is the same for all design events. Designers are a good profession because you can become a bit of a Jack of all trades, and you have lots of tools at your disposal that just others don't or others need to pay for, or others need a team of 30 people to achieve.

Ian Paget:

I really love it. It sounds like you guys have just needed to put in time and there's been a lot of generosity. There's been a lot of people that have wanting to get involved. And because of that, you've now got this big event that's, ignoring COVID, has been annually pretty much, which I think is incredible.

Ian Paget:

Something I just wanted to quickly ask about. So funding of an event like this is big. I know you've had a lot of people that have been very generous in terms of space, and I'm sure people like some speakers have probably been giving their time, but you guys, at the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that you are independent, you're working as freelancers. You've got a day job of your own. Are you making any income from this or are you purely doing it because absolutely love doing it?

Luke Tonge:

Good question, and something that we're happy to talk about, and we do get asked about. Neither Dan or myself have taken any money out of the business since it started. So although we're not a charity, we're not currently in it for the profit. Our hope is at some point that the festival will make enough money that we could take some kind of a salary for our time, because we give literally thousands of hours to it.

Luke Tonge:

But our financial model is such that everything is so low cost and so accessible, that the money that comes in is the money that goes out. So it balances well, but it just isn't a money making venture. It could be, but we would have to charge a lot more for the tickets and we don't want to do that. So it's always a juggle with that side of things. I'm sure Dan can expand on that a bit more.

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah. It's probably worth saying for those who don't know, the festival is almost entirely free to attend. So we have 15 talks per day that are free to attend in various places around the city. We then have a plethora of other things, workshops, exhibitions, screenings, some of which you can attend for free. Some of the workshops, the host charges a fee, but they keep that money. And then we have evening events, which cost between 15 and 25 pounds, which are in bigger venues, and that's the focal point of each of the days.

Daniel Alcorn:

But like Luke said, that is enough to break even. It's enough to give us a small cushion of money to go into the following year with, which thank God we had, because if we didn't, COVID, would've killed us. But we've always been very, very careful to just have a little cushion there just to make sure if we ever needed to pay for something big, a speaker, for example, if a speaker needed flights that were over 1,000 pounds, that money's in there to do in January as opposed to having to wait till April or may when ticket sales start coming in.

Daniel Alcorn:

So that's the way the finances work at the moment. We do just enough to get by, but then we've taken on projects throughout the year that can give us a little bit of a top up of money. Glug was one of them. Glug essentially pays for our system because after the first year we decided that we needed to invest in a proper ticketing system because tickets in year one were an absolute nightmare. And that was an investment well made and Glug essentially paid for that. But it's a conscious state of being careful with money.

Daniel Alcorn:

That's not to say there aren't any benefits. We often have invites to other conferences and festivals, and we do a ticket exchange with a few of those where we can each attend the other ones for free. We've had occasionally nice gifts from sponsors and stuff like that. And then the biggest reward is getting to meet your design heroes and hang out with them. There's been loads of opportunities that have been afforded us over the past few years. A lot of them are coming this year, most of which we can't talk about. But it's mainly cool things to be involved in and cool things to do, which obviously would never have happened had we not done this.

Ian Paget:

Yeah. I think it's similar with my podcast. This type of thing where you are generally public and creating something for other people, doors open that wouldn't have opened in any other way. And I can imagine that's even more significant by creating an event like this. But I do want to say, I think the Birmingham Design Festival, I only went to the first one, I couldn't go to the other one that you guys put on, but I do think it's the best design event in the UK, purely because it has a strong focus on branding, graphic design and so on, which I don't feel like London Design Festival has. That's much broader. And because of that, I just felt it was a much better quality event.

Ian Paget:

It seemed more relevant to the people that are working in the graphic design space. I just think it's a fantastic event and I hope it continues to grow. And in terms of that business that you're creating, I hope with time, even though the events continue to be free, that it creates an asset that's of significant value to you so that even though you're putting in all this free work now, long term you'll reap the benefits in some way.

Luke Tonge:

Thank you.

Daniel Alcorn:

That's very kind of you to-

Luke Tonge:

That's the hope, Ian. Obviously we don't want to be doing this forever and not making money, but money isn't the driver, so there's always a tension there of get getting the balance. I'm very proud of it and what the team's built. And I think because of how big it is and also how accessible it is, I do think it's quite unique in that space that it sits.... There are great events like Design Manchester, which tend to be one focused day of a conference and then some of the satellite bits. We love that.

Luke Tonge:

And then there's on the bigger, broader end there's the London Design Festival, which is this huge sprawling, very commercial thing. But you couldn't just go there for a day and experience loads of things in the same time.

Luke Tonge:

And we fit somewhere between the two. So I think that offer is quite unique that you could come for three days to Birmingham, pay 70 quid, and have three full days of talks with some of the best designers from around the world. I don't see anyone else offering that. So I am really proud of that and I think there is tremendous value in that. We're starting to see that a little bit through some of our partnerships and sponsorships that people have stuck with us for years. People are prepared to maybe increase what they'll offer us and those kinds of things.

Luke Tonge:

So like Dan said, there are plenty of rewards, and the hard work in itself is a reward. There's a joy in the work. There's a joy in the opportunities that it gives us.

Luke Tonge:

I'm working on a magazine at the minute for the Birmingham Design Community. The only way that I'm able to do that is because of the work that we've done and the opportunity we've got within the community. So there is lots of other kind of rewards. They're just not always financial and you can't always pay the bills with them.

Ian Paget:

Yeah. I understand that. I totally love what you guys are doing, and I can imagine that people listening will be. So at the moment, we're speaking directly to graphic designers, logo designers, branding people through this podcast. So I think it's worth talking about how people can contribute or how they can help or how they can potentially speak. Can you talk through how people can basically get involved with what you're doing?

Luke Tonge:

I'll let Dan answer that one.

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah, absolutely. I think just touch on something you said a minute ago, Ian. It's interesting that you think it's great that we're very focused around branding and traditional graphic design. That is actually only a third of the festival, but because of the way the festival is structured, you can have that view of the festival because you can... We talked about having three main venues and this year it's four, but we split the festival into districts. So there's a graphic district, which has everything that you just talked about. There's a digital district and there's a product district. And this year there'll be an illustration one as well. That allows us to put five talks on per day in each district, very much focused on those subjects. Exactly as you've described, you've been able to go there for three days and its been filled with design.

Ian Paget:

Yeah, and it's been jampacked and that's all I've seen and it's been fantastic. And everybody that's going there is like minded. It's the best design event that I've been in to in terms of networking and making friends and stuff like that. I went there on my own, came away with a huge group of people where we just all went to the same talks because it was all relevant to our specific career and so on. So fantastic.

Daniel Alcorn:

Yeah. So my hope is that people who are a user interface designer would have the exact same experience, but in a totally separate section of the city and the same with product design. That was the unique selling point that we've always had, and one that I really, really love and that we continue to put a lot of work into making sure the festival achieves.

Daniel Alcorn:

In terms of how you can be a part of it, we open a call for entries every January, and that runs until March. So it's open at the moment. So if you visit the website and click on take part, there's links there for how you can take part. One of them is volunteering, and the other is the call for entries. There's details through there on what it's like to speak at the festival, what you can expect in terms of accommodation and things like that, and also what we're looking for.

Daniel Alcorn:

And then I mentioned that the fact that the festival's split into different districts. It's fully detailed of what you can expect to find in those districts as well. So hopefully it's a really good guide on what we expect and what we need to hear from people to be able to speak. And then there's a form at the bottom of that page that you can fill in. And you essentially tell us what you want to do, whether it's a talk or a workshop or something else, a bit about yourself. And it's really important for that to be quite detailed because it's almost like a blind audition for us. We don't know the people submitting. So we need to find out as much as possible. And then a bit about your idea for your talk.

Daniel Alcorn:

This year's festival is based around the theme of freedom, and we hope that most of the talks will touch on freedom or someone will build a talk around the idea of freedom and what that means to them. But really, we just want to hear unique ideas. Somebody standing up and talking through their portfolio is maybe less interesting to us than somebody who presents a problem that they've solved or a challenge that they're having and how they've worked through that, or a unique event to them. Those are the kind of things we like to hear about in the coal for entries, unless your portfolio is absolutely incredible and you've worked on some amazing, really interesting projects. A lot of the stuff we get through is bread and butter things that people want to talk about. And we really need... There's so few speaker slots in the grand scheme of things, we need to hear something special to make sure it makes it into the program.

Ian Paget:

So based on that, I think there's probably going to be some people listening that might be interested in speaking. I will be releasing this podcast fairly soon after this recording. So I think it's a good opportunity for some people that's out there. So can we maybe talk about some tips and advice for actually presenting? Because it sounds like you're looking for something specific. Maybe you can give some advice to somebody that's listening that thinks, "Okay, I want to do that now."

Luke Tonge:

Sure. I'll jump in just with a couple of bits. One thing I would say is if you're not sure whether you want to speak at an event, the best way of really helping figure that out for yourself is to attend the event. So we will often have people asking if they can come and speak, who've never been to BDF and especially given the pandemic, that's not surprising. So I'm not saying that to put people off, but I do think it's really great to have a feel for and an understanding of the event that you're offering to go and speak at.

Luke Tonge:

So one thing I would say to people is just come and enjoy the festival and participate in other ways, volunteer, just be an attendee, see what it's like from the audience point of view. And by all means, register your interest to speak. We do get a lot of people that want to speak and we can only pick a few of them. So it is very competitive. Don't take it to heart if you're not picked.

Luke Tonge:

And in terms of the talking bit itself, I was a very reluctant speaker for many years and I still am in a lot of ways. The only way that I've found the courage and the confidence to do it is to start small and to do it as often as I can. So I went through a period of years where I just spoke thing in Birmingham, if someone asked me if I wanted to go and speak, I would just say yes, and I would get over the nerves and work up the courage. And I'm sure I wasn't very good, but I think I've got better the more I've done it. And I've got maybe 1% less nervous every time I've done it as well.

Luke Tonge:

So make those links with local universities or high schools, or other groups in the cities or towns where you live, and get some practice. Practice delivering your talk and your work to people, and you will hone and improve your delivery. That's the best advice that I can give to people about how to get to a stage where you're ready to deliver a talk, because the reality is a lot of our venues, they're 100 to 250, 300 people, even the daytime talks. And that is quite a daunting stage to walk onto and know you've got to entertain and inspire people. Some of them are a bit smaller than that, but it still requires a level of confidence.

Luke Tonge:

So I think practice is the best way. And really, I think Dan touched on it there, but have a real point to what you want to say, have a strong theme. Obviously our theme is freedom. How does your story or your work or your experience fit within that? And is there a clear link to the brief? Is your work of a good enough standard that you would be happy to stand up there and talk about it and have people look at it? Would you go to your talk if you were an audience member?

Daniel Alcorn:

Just to jump in there, I would say that I would not go to my own talk and that's why I never ever really talk about my graphic design work, because I don't think it's interesting, but I will happily go and talk about the festival because it's something unique to me and I know it inside out, whereas user interface design, I don't feel like I'm contributing anything new. I think I'm good. I like my design work. I think I'm a good designer. If I stood and talked about my work in front of a room of people, I don't think anyone would find it interesting. So it's finding that thing that's true to you that feels very unique to you, that you have confidence in.

Ian Paget:

I just want to add as well, in terms of what you said, Luke, about speaking at as many of events as possible, I'm the type of person that would be even too terrified to do that type of thing. Not so much now, but I'm thinking of myself a few years back.

Ian Paget:

So what I've done is podcasting, which has helped a lot. And if anyone goes back to my first episodes and then listens up to now, you'll be able to hear that I'm a much more confident speaker now, much better at interviewing and so on. And it's not something I've done in a while, but in an area where I used to live, I looked for speaking classes. So Toastmasters is a popular one. But basically there are events created specifically to help people grow in confidence.

Ian Paget:

So that one that I used to go to, they would encourage you to gradually work up. So there were people that would come on board that were incredibly terrified just to stand up in front of the group of people. And then there's obviously some people that are more experienced. And they would have this whole workshop where you build up through these levels and they would encourage you. Something that I really liked with what they did, you could do a prepared speech, which is what you would expect from that type of thing.

Ian Paget:

Something that they did that was really nice, was they did topics and with a topic, they would basically have a deck of cards, you'd pick one. It would have a word or something on that card. And then you to stand up and speak for as long as you feel like about this topic, and then you come and sit down. That was a really nice way of just getting used to standing up in front of people, starting to feel more confident. And you continue to build up. You get used to speaking to people in that group.

Ian Paget:

And then there are challenges. So usually, with these type of things, there would be lots of smaller groups in different areas. So the one where I went to was just in a small town, but the local region would all come together and you'd have a big event, which is obviously scary, but is to emulate something like speaking at Birmingham Design Festival. So that type of thing can take you from being a scared, terrified person to becoming that 1% more confident each time you speak, and then hopefully get to a point where you feel comfortable to speak in front of a huge group of people.

Ian Paget:

I also think it's worth flagging that every single person that I've known that have been speakers, they are scared. They have Butterflies. It's daunting for everybody, but you can work up towards that type of thing. I'm somebody that's suffered from social anxiety. Now I'm hosting a podcast. And one day maybe I'll take the bull by the horns and do a talk on my own one day, but we'll see. One thing at a time.

Luke Tonge:

That's absolutely amazing, Ian, and that's the story of lots of people who are now the people that you see on stage. I think we sometimes think people are just born confident or some people just have a different... they're built different. But the reality is a lot of designers are introverted or are socially anxious or are struggling with their mental health or any of these things. And all they've done is figured out a strategy of how to get themselves to a place where they feel they can have a go. And that journey that you talked about of getting better at public speaking is one that most people that are good at public speaking have gone on, and it's one that anyone can go on. Anyone can improve that side of things.

Luke Tonge:

There's nothing better than standing up and feeling confident in what you've got to say and how you're going to say it. And it is terrifying for most people. Even some of our highest profile speakers are still really nervous before they speak. We see that first hand. So you don't have to be a confident superhero to get up and have a go.

Ian Paget:

I think it's programmed into our brains to feel uncomfortable in those situations. So it's very normal.

Luke Tonge:

It's a defense mechanism, definitely you're exposed and everyone's looking at you, it's terrifying.

Daniel Alcorn:

But I will say it's much easier to speak confidently when it's a subject that you're really comfortable with and that you know really well. I give a similar bit of advice for people who are writing dissertations as well. Don't try and be clever. Don't try and top tackle this incredibly broad subject because you think you want to go into that room and wow people, and then come away thinking you're a genius. The first talk I did, I tried to do that. It was just a Pecha Kucha talk. And I tried to make it really insightful. I could just see, it felt really flat and it wasn't me at all.

Daniel Alcorn:

And then the next talk I did, I just did it on children's books. And there is nothing insightful there. I just talked through children's books that I really like, because I really love children's picture books. And it was really well received and everybody enjoyed it. And I enjoyed it. And I didn't feel nervous.

Daniel Alcorn:

You get to a point about maybe three or four minutes in where you wonder whether it's going well or not. And sometimes you can tell. And if it's not, it makes it hard to get through that rest of the talk. So if you start confidently about something you know really well, it's easier to get into the rhythm of confidence then, and not feel like you've got 200 eyes staring at you, wondering what the hell you're talking about.

Ian Paget:

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I hope this conversation between us has inspired people to maybe think about starting an event on their own if they're in a town where there isn't anything happening, or attending one of your events, or going to Birmingham Design Festival, which I highly recommend. And if you are, let me know, because I should be there too, and hopefully also in inspire people to maybe get up, start speaking and sign up to do a talk at your event.

Ian Paget:

But this has been absolutely fantastic. It's been really good to speak with you guys. It's been a while since we've last spoke. So thank you so much from me and from everybody listening.

Luke Tonge:

Thank you for having us.

Daniel Alcorn:

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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