Expert to Know: Jonny Aldrich
What's the backstory behind starting or joining your agency?
Myself, Rich and Matt co founded Deuce Studio, a brand and packaging design agency, over 10 years ago in 2016. The three of us were all working in the industry for very large branding agencies and, in the evenings, I was moonlighting as a freelance designer, working on my own clients as well. After a while I realised I could no longer do both, a day job and an evening job, and thought I had to concentrate on one of them. I decided doing my own thing interested me the most, but I didn't want to go it alone. Being a social creature and knowing the best design comes from collaboration, I started asking Matt and Rich to work with me on a couple of projects, floating the idea of starting an agency together. I was the glue that held us together. Rich I grew up with and Matt I knew from university, and I thought we would all bring something different to Deuce Studio.
What was your first entrepreneurial moment?
While studying at college and university we were encouraged to have a portfolio and keep it up to date as much as possible. I decided to use the popular Behance website for my portfolio and ended up getting featured on their home page a few times, which amazingly turned into enquiries. I managed to get some of my first real clients, working on a variety of different projects from branding for film festivals to packaging for chocolate bars. It was not only an exciting time but also really rewarding to see my work out in the wild. I think this first step made me realise running my own design agency could actually be possible.
How do you define success today?
That's interesting. Success for me is a lot of things, from working on interesting briefs to winning projects with established brands and having a good work life balance. Of course it's important for the agency to be financially stable, but it's also about making sure we all work the right amount of hours without burning out. It can be easy to just churn out work, but to do your best work you need to take regular breaks and be inspired by things outside of work as well.
One of our biggest wins was working with Budweiser, a global beer brand. It doesn't get much bigger than that. We created a limited edition can design and brand campaign to support the launch. It felt like the culmination of everything we had been working towards, showing that even global brands could get amazing results from a small agency like ourselves. We may be small, but we deliver big ideas that have a big impact.
What are the most energizing moments in your work?
We mostly create brand identity and packaging design systems for a variety of clients, from start ups and challenger brands to globally recognised businesses. A lot of our work is based on a strategy created in collaboration with the client to answer a specific challenge, whether that's repositioning a brand or helping it stand out in a crowded market to ultimately grow market share.
The clients we enjoy working with most are the brave ones, the ones willing to take risks and create brands that are unexpected and really connect with their audience on another level. This is the type of work that really excites us and gives us the freedom to find the best possible solution to their challenge.
How does your agency differentiate itself from competitors?
Our biggest asset is our team and the way we work with our clients. Right from the beginning we decided to keep Deuce Studio purposely small so we could deliver a more personal and direct service. It means our clients work directly with the designers and strategists on their project, without account managers muddying communication.
Amazingly, it's worked. Our clients regularly comment on our way of working and really appreciate our nimble and agile approach to every brief. More importantly, it gets results, helping clients grow, become the number one brand in their category or gain new stockists. It's something we're really proud of at Deuce Studio.
What marketing or industry trends do you think are overhyped?
AI is the biggest topic right now. Will it or won't it replace designers? Personally, I don't think it will replace creativity. Just look at the AI service providers themselves. They're not using their own AI platforms to create their branding, they're using real people and real design agencies with proven track records.
AI might take some of the market, probably the lower end, where very small businesses don't really value design, such as an independent late night takeaway or a one person bookkeeping business. But consumer brands that only have a second to convert someone on shelf, or even AI companies themselves, still need to invest in branding and marketing to stay top of mind and communicate the right message to the right people.
AI has a bit of a bad reputation at the moment. It's great at copying, but not so great at creating something truly unique, something inspired by real life and human experiences, because it isn't human. That said, it can absolutely help us become more productive. It's an incredible research tool, gathering information much faster than a person can, and it can help us build tools that allow us to deliver design assets faster and more efficiently for clients. Hopefully it's not all doom and gloom, and I'm pretty certain designers aren't all going to be replaced.
What do you predict for the industry in the next 5-10 years?
With the rise of AI automating certain types of design work, and more clients tightening budgets in response to it, I think we might have a couple of bumpy years ahead. At the same time, I think we'll see even more small design agencies being founded, and more large brands recognising the value that smaller agencies can offer compared with the biggest networks.
Of course there's room for both, but we can't ignore the fact that some of the world's largest agencies are going through major restructuring and redundancies, and AI is almost certainly playing a part in that.
I'm hopeful though. I think there will still be enough projects, enough clients and enough opportunities for talented designers to make a living and contribute to the industry. If not, we may eventually see stricter limits placed on how AI is used. The big Silicon Valley companies probably won't want to hear that, but it's not impossible.
What keeps you passionate about this industry?
At Deuce Studio we'll always be passionate about the work. Designing brilliant things for like minded clients is the dream, and we're already lucky enough to be doing that. Hopefully we can continue doing it for the next 10 years and beyond.
There will always be new goals to achieve, clients to win and industry recognition to earn. As long as we keep pushing ourselves to create better work, hopefully we can achieve all of that and more.
