Paul Grogan, creative and managing director for Think!, born and bred Mancunian and agency founder, believes that aspiring designers can learn so much more from the people around them than from any textbook. “Make yourself stand out from the crowd,” he says. “Use your skills to create something unique and personal, contact as many people as possible, and never give up.” He encourages novice designers to embrace the experience of more seasoned professionals and learn from mistakes. “Always be honest,” he says. “Owning up to mistakes earns respect.”

Grogran knew he wanted to be a graphic designer around fifteen years old and truly discovered his love of design when he started to learn the trade, particularly typography. “The most important aspect of a design is typography,” Grogan says. “It has to be completely right, or the purpose of communicating the information fails.”

Grogan believes in complete transparency, even brutal honesty, when it comes to communicating with clients, then backing it all up with great work. “Once you get that right, trust comes easily, but never let them down,” he says. His role as creative director comes with a heavy project load, sometimes exceeding twenty projects on a weekly basis. “The trick is task management,” he says. “You need to realize that there is only so much you can do and learn to say ‘no’ if the client is asking for something unreasonable.”

He also emphasizes that the client is not always right. “All of our clients understand that I am very candid with them, and this is one of the reasons most of them choose to work with our agency. You have to be honest. They approached the experts.” He’s had to fire clients once or twice with a simple ‘I don’t think this is working, and we should go our separate ways’ call.