20 years of William Joseph

William Joseph is 20 years old this year. It’s very much crept up on me, as milestone birthdays tend to.

I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable congratulating or reflecting inwardly on what we’ve achieved (I think our yearly impact reports do that very well). What’s more valuable, I feel, are all the wonderful people along the way who may or may not know how much they’ve contributed to shaping what we do and how we do it. So a few thank-yous are in order.

Starting out

Before Stéph and I founded WJ, we worked at Imagination. When we left, Simon Bruxner-Randall and Chris Shepherd-Barron couldn’t have been more gracious and supportive. Simon, for simply telling us that our creativity and business acumen meant “we’d be OK” – three simple words that were important for us to hear. Chris, for not dobbing me in when he found an initial WJ proposal I’d accidentally printed out in the office a few months before resigning. Also, Lucy Greeves and Erica Gessart, two of the funniest and smartest people I’ve ever worked with, who drummed home that you can’t have great design without great content… and what EBITDA is.

When we first started out, we couldn’t afford a studio, so the ever-generous Denise Sharpe and Alex Sibley of Outsourced Events offered us free desk space until we got on our feet. They also gave us our first job – branding an event in Budapest! – providing that all-important initial income-stream (and a steady supply of Curly Wurlys).

One of our first regular clients was Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. Helen Dexter showed incredible trust in commissioning a new agency and building a truly collaborative, long-term partnership. In those early years, we gravitated towards people with similar values and challenges, such as Jo Walton at Ashden, who also created an environment of trust and shared purpose.

Both of these early clients helped forge our belief that designing for organisations working for positive change was what we enjoyed, what we were good at, and defined how we operated as a business. They sowed the seed that resulted in us becoming one of the first B Corps in the UK.

A place of our own

Much as sharing with the Outsourced Events team was fun, we knew that we couldn’t outstay our welcome, and much like teenagers, we decided we needed to take the plunge and get our own place. That place was Little Portland Street in London’s Noho, which we shared with Wilder Films thanks to Richard Batty and Paul Gowers.

In those first few years, we worked hard and started to build a reputation for what I hope was high-quality design, delivered in an approachable and collaborative way. We were a diva-free zone.

At this point, we were still very much a design-for-print duo, increasingly working for charities, as well as universities and art galleries. By the time we were coveting a brand new gadget called an ‘iPhone’, we knew a shift to digital was on the cards.

We were now being asked to design (and build) websites, alongside branding and communications materials, for a growing number of clients. Thank you to Be, Rachel, Gill and Charlie at Futureheads for trusting us to take on digital as well as traditional branding and comms.

It was also around this point that we started to grow our headcount. Dan Cullinan and Ed Risbey joined, and two designers became four. We, as well as them, took a leap of faith.

We’d also been working with a young imp who had popped up while we were working with various charity clients. The more we worked with him, the more we liked him. It was inevitable, he wanted to ‘make stuff’, and we wanted to pivot to digital. James Gadsby Peet joined, and we quickly evolved into a group of designers, product managers, content and UX specialists, and developers.

We’d got through the hard adolescent years, and we were now grown-ups in an exciting new world. Today we are a remote-first, 17-strong agency specialising in accessible products and services that reduce inequality. Quite the journey. A massive thanks to you all, Alice Richmond, Benjamin Strachan, Ellie McCarthy, Ewan Main, Jonny Kates, Lori Hosseinbucus, Lucy Pickering, Mani Bae, Nicola O’Connor, Pri Burfield Mills, Rania Nur, and Yasmin Georgiou.

Guiding voices

As any business owner will tell you, it can be lonely at times. Having an outside voice to gently guide, advise, calm and generally nudge you in the right direction is invaluable.

Nick Russell is solely responsible for teaching this once-designer how a creative business should be run, as well as being a thoroughly decent human being.

Otto Stevens took that initial advice to the next level, helping us take risks when we needed to, and hold back when we shouldn’t.

Amanda McKenna helped us believe we had something special. She showed us the strengths that James, Steph and I had, and how we could apply them.

Peter Gandy has been a constant brother-in-arms, always offering a different perspective and an ear.

And Nikki Gatenby helps us focus on purpose and profit, generally kicking us up the arse, but having an uncanny knack of never making it feel like that.

Our greatest supporters

Now we come to the two most important people in this story. When Steph and I first started talking about setting up an agency, we’d both just had our first children (yes, William and Joseph – see what we did there?).

As any Grand Designs fan knows, diving into a huge life change, quitting your job without knowing where your income will come from, while also looking after a newborn, is, on paper, a completely bat-shit-crazy idea.

But our incredibly patient wives, Liz Hammond and Emma Harrison, were steadfast in their support. They could see that taking control of our work lives, and for all of us to continue with our careers equally, would help us build a home life where we could all care for our kids and put family first. As a result, it unwittingly set the business’s culture for the next 20 years.

Frankly, there’s no way we’d have made it past year one without their unwavering support and love (pushed to its limit by both of us, I can assure you!). Although there’s a chance we were all so sleep-deprived that we had no idea what was going on.

From colleagues to co-founders

Lastly, there’s my work husband, Stéph. I first met him in 2000 when I interviewed him for a job. He was late, which made me very, very grumpy. He eventually bounded in, out of breath, apologetic and humble. He didn’t have a shred of the aloofness I’d seen in many of the other talented designers I’d met in the previous few days, and I instantly knew I’d found someone I’d click with.

We worked together for five years before, after numerous visits to the Newman Arms, we decided to go it alone. I can never thank him enough for having that faith in me.

25 years later, nothing has changed – except he’s never late. He’s one of the most thoughtful, kind and talented humans I know. Those who know Stéph well, will also know that he has been off work since November 2023 to have treatment for cancer. A big, shitty stick, that hit him, his family and us totally out of the blue, and hard.

All of this has brought home one simple truth: you spend a huge percentage of your life working, so do it for, and alongside, people you like, and who charge your battery rather than drain it. Use your time wisely.

So thank you all for your energy!