Graphic Designer & Consultant Greg Bunbury

Episode Intro

About this episode…

Graphic designer and consultant greg bunbury

It was when Greg planted the flag of his values that things changed.

Instead of chasing jobs as ‘anyone’, he became ‘someone’ - someone people wanted to work with for what he stood for.

Now Greg’s not just a graphic designer, but a Creative Consultant, Diversity & Inclusion Consultant and public speaker. Freelancing with purpose.

Read the highlights in the next tab.

Highlights

PLANTING THE FLAG

Greg’s freelance journey changed massively when he planted the flag of his principles and values. It drew people to him…

“The more that my work went down a social angle, suddenly people started engaging me for what I thought, as opposed to what I did, even if all they wanted was what I did.
Even if somebody wanted me to design a flyer, they were contacting me because I stood for principles.
Things didn't really change until I put a flag in the ground. And that flag said: these are my values; this is what I believe; this is how I think work should be.
And if people shared those values, they would seek me out. And that's the thing that changed the game for me.”

BUILD AUTHORITY

When you become known for something, when you build authority, you gain leverage. People come to you. You go into meetings in a strong position because people want what you offer.

“The key is to build authority and the way to build authority is to build things that showcase your perspective, showcase what you think.
The problem with freelancing, especially in the creative industry, is our work is always behind the client. So you're always in service of a brief or solving a problem. And that's fine because that's the nature of the work. But in order to build authority, we have to get in front of that.
So we have to get out from behind our work. We have to get out from behind the brand guidelines. It has to be more about us.”

WHAT IF WE BECOME OUR DREAM CLIENT?

Greg came to the realisation that his own side projects could be his dream projects and if people saw him doing them…

“What happens if we remove the clients? What happens if the job that we want to really work on or the client that we really want?.. What if we become that client?
What if we become our own client? We just produce that work as though the work was out there, as though the work was funded, as though the work had a huge budget. What would that do? What would that look like? And that's how I started treating a lot of my projects.”

BUILD YOUR VOICE

Greg’s blog, designs and later his podcast, have all helped to build his voice. This has lead to interview opportunities which feed back into that place of authority.

“If you set your stall out and your values are pretty much enshrined and you are using your blog or your YouTube channel or your Instagram, and that's helping you build your voice.
If you do that enough, you'll get to a point where you have enough leverage to be able to say 'no'. And so when a job comes along and it's not right for you, you don't have to take it. And that for me has just been a total game changer.”

WHAT’S THE VALUE THAT I WANT TO BRING?

Looking to the bigger picture made a big difference for Greg…

“So often we're just chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing as freelancers.
And it's just having that space to step back and really think about what's the value that I want to bring? What's the value? What change do I want to bring? Not just for clients, not just for organizations, but for everyone. What value can I give to the world?
And I think it's when we start looking at our work through that lens, or at least for me, that's when things actually started to happen. When I just kind of gave up trying to get the job and just started thinking, do I actually want that job or do I want a job in a different space? And if I did get a job in a different space, how would I want it to be?
I'm just very privileged to be in a position now where I can do that. I can create these projects and these environments that are in alignment with my values and what I believe.”

FIGURE OUT WHAT MATTERS

Greg believes we should figure out what matters to us and what matters to our clients and let that guide us in our decisions…

“Figure out what matters. That's it. It's not about the labour. It's not about doing the thing. It's about what matters: what matters to the client, what matters to you. That's the thing that makes a difference. That's the thing that moves the needle.
And it can be what matters in terms of, from a financial point of view, something that's high value, that's very important to the client, or it might be something of value in terms of how the client works, what the client's ethics are, or the values are, or what your values are or what your beliefs are or what your ethics are.
Just figure out the thing that matters and just steer towards that”

“What value can I bring to the world?..

Now, I can create these projects and these environments that are in alignment with my values and what I believe.”
**Greg Bunbury, Graphic Designer**

Links

More from Greg Bunbury

Greg on Instagram
Greg on Twitter
Greg’s website
Black Outdoor Art Project

More from Steve Folland

Steve on Twitter

Steve on Instagram

Steve’s freelance site

Steve’s Being Freelance vlog

The Doing It For The Kids podcast

Transcript

Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and Freelance Graphic Designer and Consultant Greg Bunbury

Steve Folland:

As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?

Greg Bunbury:

Going back about 12 years, I used to work for a marketing agency as the head of creative in the studio. I started as the graphic designer. Part of my job was to build and manage a roster of freelancers. Essentially. I met freelancers every week for a year. While this was going on myself and my partner had a baby. Now we both worked full time and we desperately needed more flexibility. I had been taking a lot of time off for childcare, and eventually my boss said, 'you know, this isn't really sustainable'. There were some other factors with regards to the agency, but ultimately I took redundancy and decided to go it alone. But I did it because I had to do it. And this is really important as it pertains to the rest of my career. Because when we're in a situation where we have to freelance, where we have to look for the next cheque, where we have to look for the next payment to make rent or to pay a bill, we lack leverage, and we lose options.

Greg Bunbury:

And this becomes a very difficult space to operate in. But you know, when I started, I never actually wanted to freelance. What I actually wanted was to start an agency. So that's what I did or at least what I thought I was doing. So I was coming off a very senior agency position producing award-winning work for this lovely agency. I decided, right, I'm gonna set up my own shop. At the time a lot of my friends were working in music and they seemed to struggle to find good creative. So I stepped in and started picking up a lot of work quite quickly. And the first niche I found myself was doing basically internet banner ads for record labels. I upskilled really fast, got to know the technology really quickly. It was all built around an app called Flash, if you are old and you're listening to this podcast, you know what Flash is - if you weren't sure whether you were old and you recognize Flash, that means you're old.

Greg Bunbury:

Within a few months of this I had an office, I was hiring other freelancers. It really felt like I was on an upward trajectory. Then out of the blue Apple announced it would no longer support Flash, which meant the ads couldn't be run on Mac OS or iOS. And the program was eventually deprecated and that was like a large rug just being pulled from right under me; suddenly all my work vanished. At this point, I had the realization that I wasn't really an agency. I hadn't built anything that was bigger than myself. So I stopped calling myself an agency and positioned myself simply as a freelancer for the entertainment industry. And then it took a lot of experiences and a lot of very heavy challenges before I understood what value meant and what value meant as a freelancer. And so kind of 10 years after this point, I start making a pivot into more socially focused and community orientated work.

Steve Folland:

Crikey. Well, let's take a look at that 10 year gap in between then. So you clearly worked for massive brands at that agency - when you set up on your own, how did you overcome the dilemma of what you could show in your portfolio?

Greg Bunbury:

That's a great question. So essentially I had to start again, but this wasn't the worst thing in the world because when we show our work and we show portfolios, I've seen so many that are entirely out of context. So I would get portfolios from people who have worked for charity organisations, people who have worked for footwear brands, for luxury cars. And these things are not all equal, especially when there's very little context in terms of either the portfolio review or the interview. So you have to be very tailored. And it was probably the first point in my career where I started thinking at least a little strategically. It wasn't really to the level that I think about my work now, but at least at the time I was like, okay, I'm getting work in music. I need to build all of my work in music until eventually - and this happened pretty quickly - my portfolio was entirely all music and that helped so much for that kind of 10 year period. And I made a conscious effort and decision to never show any of the work that I did at the agency. It's only really in the last couple of years that I've used one of the case studies from my agency days on my website.

Steve Folland:

And when you do that, you state that it was with an agency - like you are clear?

Greg Bunbury:

Very much so. Transparency is so important and it's very important that we learn how to write case studies, contextualize the job contextualize where the work came from, what your role was specifically, and results are amazing if you're able to get them, I know with a lot of client work, that's not always possible.

Steve Folland:

Just to jump back into your story. You decided to focus in on yourself as a freelancer. How did you start to build that?

Greg Bunbury:

So after the bottom fell out of doing the initial internet banners, I pivoted. So I pivoted from Flash banners to HTML5 banners, because that was the technology at the time that replaced Flash. That went really well for a while, but then all my music clients started doing HTML5 banners in-house. So then I pivoted to film clients. And then when the film clients started doing HTML5 banners in-house, I pivoted to press ads and posters. And when the magazines started closing, I pivoted to album covers. And then when streaming took over, I pivoted to video and animation. And through all this time, you know, I guess the positive part is that I am upskilling, but along the way, every project, every client becomes increasingly challenging, because this is at the point when the, quote unquote 'gig economy' kind of kicks in and briefs were just getting worse.

Greg Bunbury:

Budgets were shrinking and the timelines just got shorter and shorter. I found myself working nights. I was working weekends, over servicing every single job, talking to clients for hours at a time before I understood what a consulting call was. I was taking jobs with people who didn't align with my values, enduring toxic clients, workplaces, and microaggressions. And, you know, I didn't have a choice and this is in a time before diversity and inclusion was on anyone's agenda. So basically I became exhausted and burnt out and I was really struggling mentally, physically and financially for a really long time. I just wanted to give up, but I'd been freelancing so long. It was like, you know, I wasn't even viable to get a full-time job anymore. In this period, what I'm also doing is I'm looking around or I'm looking at the work that I'm doing in a slightly different way.

Greg Bunbury:

And I'm looking at what is valuable. Like what's valuable - what matters to people. And I realised that in trying to figure out what mattered I was doing a lot of personal work - a lot of side projects because I felt fairly kind of challenged being in the industry. And I was going through a difficult time. I used this personal work as kind of part escape, but part therapy. But in doing the side work, what it actually gave me was a practice. Developing a practice is the thing that changed everything because suddenly I had a space and scope where I could work and work and work and work and work and I can get better and I can try things and I can experiment. The problem is with freelancing is because we're often going from job to job, there isn't always this space to develop our practice, whether we're a designer or whether you're an artist, whether you're a web designer, whether you're a UX designer, because you're usually following the demands of the brief or following the demands of a client. So there isn't always room to develop your own voice in your work. But in my kind of personal work in my side work, I began to develop my own voice. And in developing that voice, I actually started to use my voice because I speaking about my experience. I started speaking about some of the situations that I'd experienced: racism within the industry, difficulties within the industry. And that gave me, I guess, the beginnings of what I would call 'authority' and that authority coupled with my personal work, I was able to discover work that had meaning, or I didn't really know it had meaning at the time, I just knew that I felt different about doing that work than I did about 90% of my client work. Aand that's when that side of my career started to develop.

Steve Folland:

When you started doing those side projects, those personal projects, where were you sharing them?

Greg Bunbury:

When I first started doing the personal projects, this was just at the advent of social media. So I hadn't even really thought about social media as an outlet. What I used to do more than anything was I would just search around for opportunities. So I would do things like design competitions, and I know everybody hates design competitions. I hate them and I've spoken out against them for years and years and years. However, again, what it gave me was a practice. It gave me constrained brief or project to work towards. There were times when I did design competitions and never sent off the entries because it wasn't really about winning anything. It was just about having a brief, having a timeframe and then building skills within that. So, you know, in terms of being a professional, you have to, we have to treat it like a skill.

Greg Bunbury:

We learn how to be professional. When I go to work on a design project, I'm not looking for inspiration. I don't need a period to go off and get inspired because I'm a professional. I have all of this stuff in my head already, and I use practices to develop that.

Greg Bunbury:

So initially I was doing things like design competitions, and then social media came around, I found an outlet, but interestingly enough, I got absolutely no take up on pretty much 90% of everything I did for about five years. Around that time, I started thinking, you know so many creatives and designers around me were always kind of complaining about clients.

Greg Bunbury:

So I thought to myself, well, what happens if we remove the clients? What happens if the job that we want to really work on or the client that we really want? What if we become that client? What if we become our own client? And we just produce that work as though the work was out there as though the work was funded as though the work had a huge budget, what would that do? And what would that look like? And that's how started, uh, treating a lot of my projects. One thing that I used to do when I was just out of work or just, you know, in between jobs, I would go around and I would redesign stuff that I saw. So I'd walk down the high street and I'd look at a cafe's logo or whatever's on the front of their shop and I'd go home and redesign in it and send it to them. And do the same for the local cinema and the same for the fish monger and I would just walk around all day and just look for things to design. And I never got a single reply on anything that I sent out to them, but it didn't matter because I was getting better. I was getting better and I was getting better because I had a practice. So yeah, that was what, then things really start to turn around for me.

Steve Folland:

There's obviously this sort of drive towards or realization towards value that you keep mentioning. Was there a point where that all kind of fell into place?

Greg Bunbury:

I don't know if I had a Eureka moment, but I guess maybe five years ago or so, I saw an article on design for good or design for social. And when I saw that, I really understood the principle of value inherited in that kind of work and the work that I could potentially be doing. And suddenly I realized that in all that time, I'd been sat with clients and talking to them for hours and hours and hours. I'd never charged for it. I never understood that what I was offering was consultancy. I never understood that what I was delivering was consultancy. We were just focused on the thing that was being made. And when I saw the work of organisations like the Design Council and what AIGA were doing, I realised that, oh my gosh, there's another way of doing this.

Greg Bunbury:

There's another way of approaching this work. There's another way of creating value. And I also understood it implicitly that I probably didn't verbalize it at the time, but it was linked to my authority. And so this is when I started developing the VAL principle, - Value Authority Leverage - and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I think the last time, the last situation I was in when I came out and I was like, I knew I was on a different path... I kept going for these prospective client meetings and I do these things all the time and I absolutely hated them. And the last one I went to was for a music management company. And I go in and I do my usual stuff. I start presenting to two people and, you know, I load up my work.

Greg Bunbury:

And the first thing they say to me is, do you have any other work apart from this? I was like, okay, well, that's a great start. I'm like, well, you know, this is my portfolio. This is the thing that you saw when you got me in. So this is actually my work, but I carried on and I had that sinking feeling - and then a third person came into my presentation. The managing director of the company walks in and just starts talking over me. And I was like, oh, okay. I guess I'm not presenting anymore. And then he proceeds to have a conversation with two of the other members in the room, sits down, you know, I just go back to presenting. Then halfway through that, he pulls out his phone starts looking at his phone, has a conversation with someone else while I'm talking while I'm presenting - kind of stands up, looks me up, up and down and just walks out.

Greg Bunbury:

And after that meeting, I came out and it just completely transformed me. I came out. And the first thing I did was I said to the person I was meeting 'this isn't for me'. So, I knew I wasn't gonna get any work with them, but I knew I didn't want any work with them and I came out of that meeting and I decided that I was never gonna enter a room with that little amount of leverage ever again. And I never did. I never went into any meeting or any situation with that kind of diminished amount of authority or value behind my work.

Steve Folland:

So how did you change it so that people were inviting you into their room, almost wanting you already?

Greg Bunbury:

So the key is to build authority and the way to build authority is to build things that showcase your perspective, showcase what you think. The problem with freelancing, especially in the creative industry, is our work is always behind the client. So you're always in service of a brief or solving a problem. And that's fine because that's the nature of the work. But in order to build authority, we have to get in front of that. So we have to get out from behind our work. We have to get out behind the brand guidelines and behind the glossy sans serif typography. So it has to be more about us. So because I'd been speaking so much about representation in the industry, that kept happening. So magazines were reaching out and asking me to comment on what I thought about the creative industry as a whole and marginalization and representation in the creative industry.

Greg Bunbury:

I just started developing that. And the more of that I developed, the more that my work went down a social angle Suddenly people started engaging me for what I thought, as opposed to what I did, even if all they wanted was what I did. Even if somebody wanted me to design a flyer, they were contacting me because I stood for principles. The problem that many creative freelancers have is they are forced to go out and just basically try and sell themselves. You know, they're applying to every single opportunity. Everybody's applying to the same adverts, everybody's writing to the same companies. People are just trying to get meetings or get internships. But I found, at least in my journey, that things didn't really change until I put a flag in the ground. And that flag said, these are my values. This is what I believe. This is how I think work should be. And if people share those values, they would seek me out. And that's the thing that changed the game for me.

Steve Folland:

Love it. But creating that sense of authority through speaking and so on and being interviewed - how did you start that? How did people know to come to you?

Greg Bunbury:

So the first thing that I'd done that got any traction was the blog. The thing about a blog is that it's permissionless media. There are no gatekeepers. You are free to put out any perspective that you want, but it does a weird thing. It gives people something to hang onto and it attracts people. And one single blog post completely changed my career. I had read a Creative Review article on marginalized black designers at a time when I'd never worked with underrepresented designers in the industry. And this article blew my mind. It was focusing on a handful of African American designers. And it was amazing 'cause I'd never heard of these guys. And, you know, at this point I was in my late twenties, early thirties, and it was such an impactful article and I wrote a blog post on it.

Greg Bunbury:

And somehow my blog post got back to the person who wrote the article - a guy by the name of John Daniel. And John got in touch with me. He was a black art director. He was about 10 years older than me, much more experienced, much more senior, but he reached out to me and we became friends and that opened the door to an entirely new network that I didn't even know exists. And it just changed everything. I saw work I'd never seen before. I was connected with people, I never would've been connected with. It was like I basically entered a community that I didn't know existed.

Greg Bunbury:

So by writing the blog and by doing it in its various forms, it enabled me to have not only a point of view, but it's what I call legacy content. So it's content that exists in a space where it's not necessarily defined by my work, even if it was about design or my professional experience, but it exists in a space whereby its content that speaks for me without me having to speak for it essentially. It gave me a way to reach people in a way that my work alone just never would've done. And that's the thing that I used to get comments and articles and interviews. And that stuff then builds into your authority. And that authority gives you leverage because when you're in a position where you don't have to take the job, like if you set your stall out and your values are pretty much enshrined and you are using your blog or your YouTube channel or your Instagram, and that's helping you build your voice. If you do that enough, you'll get to a point where you have enough leverage to be able to say 'no'. And so when a job comes along and it's not right for you, you don't have to take it. And that for me has just bee a total game changer.

Steve Folland:

Was there a point when that next gamechanging job came to you? Where it was different?

Greg Bunbury:

I think it was more of an opportunity than a job at the time. I was still doing my side projects, but they had started to take a different shape. I was doing a lot more work that was focused around typography and this idea of communicating very complex ideas into very simple formats and had done a poster about Eric Garner, who was murdered by a New York city police officer in 2014 in New York. And I'd done a kind of tribute poster for that. And that was really the thing that set me on the path that I was on today. Because as I said earlier, it's really functioned like a flag in the ground. It really let me out as you know, this is what I believe and I believe it very strongly. So from that opportunity, that's when I started getting more interest in the social and community side to what I do.

Steve Folland:

So if we look at where you're at today, what are the things that you do? Whar are the income streams that you have? Because it feels quite broad.

Greg Bunbury:

It is broad, but I think it comes from a very similar place. So essentially I help brands and organizations connect with marginalized audiences. And that basically is in two forms: there's the design side of it, which can be anything from actual graphic design to creative direction; and then there's the consultancy side of it. I consult on diversity and inclusion for a few D&I organizations, but all of this work is from a similar place in terms of what's driving the work. So it's focused on process over output and it's focused on the values of how things are made. So it's all made of the principle that the way we make things is as important, if not more important than what gets made. So I have clients where I only do design or creative work for, and then I have organisations that I just consult for and interspersed in between the two is the public speaking and the workshops and the mentoring and those sessions. So it feels quite disparate, but it's all from the same ethos driving it.

Steve Folland:

Oh yeah, no, totally. Sorry, I meant 'broad' as in you have a lot of different things on but you can see that it all spreads out from that focal point. When you started being approached or approaching people to do consulting, how did you know how to price yourself? How did you get on with that challenge?

Greg Bunbury:

So I did my research in terms of what consulting sessions were, and I did a lot of studying of people who were in spaces that were more driven by a consulting approach to creativity. So, there's two ways to broadly look at creative roles. You have the labour, the nuts and bolts of putting something together. And then you have the thinking that went into it. I have been doing the nuts and bolts side of it for a very long time. And now I was interested in how do you quantify the other part? How do you quantify the thinking? And yeah, I read a lot of books. I've read a lot of stuff by Seth Godin. I looked at a lot of what designers like Chris Do and The Futur were doing over in the states.

Greg Bunbury:

And this research gave me enough input where I had a kind of reasonable expectation of how much value to expect. But certainly in terms of the consulting and the speaking work, I knew that this was a process of building authority. So I wasn't really focused on how much I could get for it at the time. I just knew that the more I did the better I get, the more I did the better I get. And that's how I've been treating a lot of that work. So it's been quite fluid. There is a set level of expectation, just the same as being a designer or being a creative director - there are industry standard rates that if you are pricing your work, you should be around that rate. If you price yourself too cheap, it feels a bit risky. And if you price yourself too expensive, again, it feels quite risky. So there's still this sense of mitigating risk going through my head when I price work. But I think I've reached a kind of a comfortable equilibrium of time, labour, value.

Steve Folland:

We touched upon the blog. You also launched a podcast?

Greg Bunbury:

I did, yes. So in this space that I was primarily interested in - the thing that I found was most powerful in terms of the work I was doing were the connections. And I really understood that from a lot of my socially focused projects. It was really about the connections. Obviously the work itself has a certain level of importance and a focal point, but the connections were the things really defined how those projects were and how they felt. And it was really the connections in the most positive client experiences. It really came from that side of it. So I wanted to develop something that kind of spoke to that, but also gave artists and designers and creatives a platform to share that with the world, because I understood that so much of this is visibility and you can't be what you can't see.

Greg Bunbury:

So it's really important to have those pathways, especially if your pathway is somewhat unconventional. So at this point in my career, everything that I was taught about being a creative or being a designer at school, university, was really geared around one pathway. And that pathway was that you graduate, you get a job at a companyl you're in-house at a company or you're at an agency. And that was basically it. But then I started thinking what if you wanted to build a career that wasn't about doing commercial graphic design work? What if you want to work with communities or community organizations or nonprofits or art space organizations or charities, what would that look like? And because we don't have as many of those models, we don't have as many of those pathways - it's a much trickier route to navigate. And I felt like with my own experience, because I hadn't really seen anybody do the kind of work that I ultimately wanted to do, I recognized the need for it.

Greg Bunbury:

And so my attempt at doing a podcast was really to pay back John, for what he did for me with his article in Creative Review all those years ago. It was to try and do the same thing. It was trying to give an aspiring designer or a creative, something visible to really zero in on. So that's what created the Genesis of the podcast. And it's been an amazing experience. I feel very privileged to have spoken to these brilliant creatives who are, you know, obviously all much better than me. Being able to meet them even, irrespective of the podcast and to call some of them friends had just been fantastic.

Steve Folland:

Other than inspiring others. Has the podcast helped you in other ways?

Greg Bunbury:

Oh, 100% - because it's helped crystalise my thinking around design and being in the industry to the point where the basis of the podcast is now informing my latest venture, which is about supporting young creators in the industry from marginalized backgrounds. So now I'm building a raft of content around that one purpose, and it's a purpose that's been really born out of those conversations. That's really been born out of those connections.

Steve Folland:

Cool. So now your content, as you put it, is aimed at helping young designers?

Greg Bunbury:

So I'm developing a platform which will specifically be looking at developing content for young marginalized creatives entering the industry. It's called Creatives Of Diverse Ethnicity or CODE. And that platform will specifically deal with that content. My content on my personal channel will still be based around my diversity and inclusion work, the Black Outdoor Art Project and all the other bits that I work on. So I think this way it gives a real focus and a real niche to that particular content because, you know, you're right in saying that what I do feels very broad, it is very broad and that in itself has been something that I've not necessarily struggled with, but I think it's quite important to create channels or create niches in the work that we do. Cause it just makes it easier for other people in terms of what they're looking for. So yeah, CODE will be its own platform. It'll be its own thing and there'll be podcasts and videos and just general content that helps people navigate their way through the industry who are perhaps from underrepresented backgrounds.

Steve Folland:

It feels like everything has really taken off for you when perhaps you stopped...

Greg Bunbury:

...I stopped trying...

Steve Folland:

...When you stopped trying to be hired and just started focusing on ctually what you cared about and saying what you saw or wanted to see the change to be.

Greg Bunbury:

A hundred percent. So often we're just chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing as freelancers. And it's just having that space to step back and really think about what's the value that I want to bring? What's the value? What change do I want to bring? Not just for clients, not just for organizations, but for everyone. What value can I give to the world? And I think it's when we start looking at our work through that lens, or at least for me, that's when things actually started to happen. When I just kind of gave up trying to get the job and just started thinking, do I actually want that job or do I want a job in a different space? And if I did get a job in a different space, how would I want it to be? And I'm just very privileged to be in a position now where I can do that. I can create these projects and these environments that are in alignment with my values and what I believe.

Steve Folland:

And the Black Outdoor Art Project. Tell us what that is...

Greg Bunbury:

So that started in the wake of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter in 2020. I'd been doing so much in, I guess, more of a social community space, just developing little self-initiated projects. And it really kind of brought people into my orbit. And one of those people was a friend of mine who runs an outdoor media agency here in London. He saw the work and was really drawn to it. So around the time of the George Floyd incident, when brands and organizations here in the UK started to react, one of the things that he proposed to me was could they run some of my artwork on their billboards as a measure of solidarity or support with the black community.

Greg Bunbury:

And initially I said, no, I wasn't comfortable with my work being used in a way that might be construed as virtue signaling. And I was just quite uncomfortable with the initial idea, but then my friend was like, look, you know, let's talk about it, let's discuss it. He's a white guy and an agency owner. And we really hashed it out. It was a moment where I felt very heard and I felt seen, and I felt like he got where I was coming from. And he understood my principle and he understood my history, this kind of shared sense, or at least a deeper sense of understanding and empathy. And so I went home and designed a new poster and that first one went up and again it just changed everything overnight. And I guess one of the things that is maybe noteworthy about it was I was never paid to do that work.

Greg Bunbury:

So when I speak to younger creatives, the topic of free work always comes up. But there's a difference between 'free' and 'incentivized'. In this case, in a project that I did, my incentive was really to make it impact on my environment. It was really to kind of have my say. It was really to put forward this idea that my culture was not monolithic, that we had a range of perspectives and viewpoints, and they weren't all the same and they didn't need to be all the same, that this was the key to building empathy. And, you know, this is essentially the values that drive what I do today. So that first billboard went up and that was huge. Absolutely massive in terms of the response that we got and people reaching out, and it was a really big deal.

Greg Bunbury:

It's a really big deal for me. And the agency were like, well, that was fantastic. Do you wanna do more? Why don't you do a whole series of them? But I didn't want the work to just be about my perspective, because that was kind of the opposite of what I was gearing towards. So I invited a lot of the designers and creatives that I met through John Daniel, John, again earlier in the story - the guy that introduced me to many of these designers in the first place. And all of this happened because I wrote a blog on an article he wrote back in 2006/2007. So because of John introducing me to all these creatives - years and years later in 2020, when it came to me to go, okay, you know what? I'm gonna put this idea, this concept out to my community, in the creative community, to people who are from similar backgrounds to mine, and I'm gonna get them to do posters.

Greg Bunbury:

And I'm gonna say, what do you wanna express? What do you wanna talk about? How do you see the world? What is your perspective? And yeah, it's been running for two years. We've put posters up in London, Bristol and Leeds. The posters have been seen by millions of people. They've been shared up and down the country, all over the world. And it's been just an absolute joy for me. But I don't want it to sound as though I'm just doing it because it's fun because we're dealing with a lot of painful and very heartfelt topics. But just in terms of the impact that it's made in the creative community and my personal community and the connections that everybody's made as a result of this work, the collaborations across nationalities and races and genders and identities and all of the connections that it's allowed us to create and the work that I've been able to go on and do in diversity and inclusion as a result has just been an absolute pleasure and an honor.

Steve Folland:

That's awesome. Now, Greg, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?

Greg Bunbury:

I guess the key thing I could tell my younger self is to figure out what matters. Just figure out what matters. That's it. It's not about the labour. It's not about doing the thing. It's about what matters, what matters to the client, what matters to you. That's the thing that makes a difference. That's the thing that moves the needle. And it can be what matters in terms of, from a financial point of view, something that's high value, that's very important to the client, or it might be something of value in terms of how the client works, what the client's ethics are, or the values are, or what your values are or what your beliefs are or what your ethics are. Just figure out the thing that matters and just steer towards that.

Steve Folland:

So good to talk to you Greg - all the best with your projects and with being freelance!

Greg Bunbury:

Thanks for having me. It's been amazing.