PDP Interview - Steve Little, Design Manager, PokerStars.

Where and what did you study? - Somerset College of Arts and Technology in Taunton, affiliated to Plymouth University. I did a two year HND in graphic design, with a one year BA topup in packaging design.

Why did you go freelance, and what are the pros and cons of freelance work?  - The main advantage was the higher rates of pay, including overtime payments. The general consensus in the design and marketing industry is that there's twenty other people ready to bite your hand off for your job, therefore you should be willing to work every hour God sends, but we're only going to pay you a basic salary. Unless you're a freelancer, where you'd get paid by the hour. You also get a broad spectrum of experience if you move from one place to another and you get different varieties of work for your portfolio. Whereas in my current job it's all for one client, it's all the same. That's what you call client - side. The main disadvantages are, if you take days off, or go on holiday, you don't get paid. If you don't have a family to support, though, it's probably going to be a lot better because of the amount of money you can make.

How did you get back into permanent employment? - I did three years contracting, or freelancing, I wasn't really looking for permanent work, but then this company I'd freelanced for (PokerStars) came up with a good offer. It meant that I'd be able to afford for Michelle (his wife) not to go back to work. And this company have a lot of perks, they have a pension scheme, and a bonus scheme, which is pretty rare. So I'd be able to go on holiday and still get paid, spend more time with the family. And be working in London. It's not glamourous work, necessarily, but they're a good employer, and the business seems to be recession proof.

 So when were you working for Honda? - That was in an agency called Collective London, in 2005 and 2010. In 2005 a bunch of guys who worked for AKQA, one of the biggest digital marketing agencies in London, decided to split off and set up their own company. They pitched for Honda UK's redesign and won so they had to expand very fast. It was very exciting, new company, a bit disorganised, no one knew quite what they were doing. Honda's a great client to work for.

So what is your role? - I'm a design manager. I've got a team of seven or eight designers, depending in if we've got any freelancers or not, and basically I'm in charge of online graphics, which is all the promotions they run on the websites. There's a digital animation guy who deals with the TV stings that you see before and after programmes. There's a print department as well, and there's live events, who deal with all the liveries and brandings at the live events, poker tours and the like. There's a web department as well. But the bit I'm in charge of is promotions, which is trying to get the players to deposit a certain amount of money.

How do you approach a brief? - We get a studio briefing and have to come up with the first concept and then run it by the main stakeholders, all the different internal departments within the company, then get it signed off by our creative director. We don't really get much time to do creative concepts, unfortunately, there's only a few briefs where we get time to think it through properly, rather than just get it done because it needs to be done. Time is a pretty key factor in what we do, which I think is pretty much the same through out a lot of marketing and communications agencies these days. They think that because everything's digital that everything's instant. The fact of the matter is that if you want a good idea you have to spend he time thinking about it. But yeah, it all comes down to time at the end of the day.

Any advice for aspiring designers? - I wouldn't specialise too much. It's good to have a good knowledge of print and how print works, how a website's put together, current technologies. software skills are always useful, but you don't have to know every bit of software inside out to be a good designer. Keep up your craft skills up, your drawing skills. Things like life drawing. Yeah, so, probably don't specialise too much is probably the best bit of advice.

How would you describe your style? - Less is more. People tend to think that the more stuff in there, the better. Certainly the clients think that, they think you have to have every single piece of information in there. For instance if you do an email marketing campaign it has to be a really simple message, not pages and pages of text, cos no - one's going to read it. I think less is more is the biggest thing.

If you were starting again, what would you do differently? - I've always enjoyed motion graphics, but I never really got into it because I trained as a traditional designer, before the internet. I'd try that route if I started again.

How important is typography to you? - It's 60 or 70 per cent of what I do, or what my department does. Because there's so much information we have to try and get in, but there's only a certain number of pixels on the screen to fit them into.

Lastly, how much of your work comes out of a snap decision, and you subsequently have to invent a scientific basis for it, and make it not magic? - Ah, post-rationalising. Probably not that often, not in the type of work I'm doing at the moment. But in the past, maybe 20 - 30 percent of the time. I've come up with a good idea, I've only spent half an hour, two hours thinking about it, why am I going to go round the houses for another day to come up with other ideas when I think this one's a good idea. After a while you'll have a set number of rationales you can use time and time again, you can use that one for that one and this one for this one.

Thanks very much, Steve.