Failure is when design stops being fun: Kiln Co-founders Nathan Smith and Charlie Hocking on the Design Next podcast

Nathan Smith and Charlie Hocking founded Kiln just NINE MONTHS after meeting each other for the first time. And so, on our season that journeys through failures and fortunes, it’s quite fair to chalk down the existence of Kiln as a risk.

They were renting desks in the same artist studio in Cornwall (both having moved back during Covid) and both were flirting with the idea of starting a studio.

Five years on, with work for BAFTA, ITV and Channel 4 behind them, Charlie is clear about what that that stroke of luck was worth. “I honestly think it was just the biggest stroke of luck ever.”

Kiln built some early conversation around their studio not being in London. The founders inadvertently became a beacon of ‘what’s creatively achievable outside of the capital’.

The wider creative community responded warmly, as the studio became part of a broader conversation about where creativity sits in the UK, and Nathan recognises how much that helped: “We got so much support, maybe more than we really deserved.”

The move back to London was a big idea that came from their own team. Local designers joining a local business wanted the same experience of other cities that Nathan and Charlie had both benefitted from. Telling a junior designer to ‘stay put’ when their own careers were built on movement felt hypocritical, and bringing people down for a week at a time was expensive and increasingly a slog. So, they are making the move back to London – and they’re seriously excited about this new wave for Kiln.

Charlie talks about the Cornwall ‘bubble’ Kiln developed without watching, or being watched by, everyone else, and it’s something they want to protect. “I want to hang on to that little bubble. I want to protect what we’re building at Kiln.”

Nathan’s career failure is basically a feeling of FOMO that we’ve probably all experienced at some point. Throughout his freelance years there were opportunities on the table to work abroad. He put them on the back burner, then Covid arrived and the chance passed. He is grateful for the birth of Kiln, but the sense of ‘what could have been’ remains.

Charlie left university in 2010 with a broad portfolio (spanning film, 3D, record sleeves and editorial), and then forced himself into graphic design because it seemed like the right commercial choice. He spent years fiercely comparing himself to specialists. The turning point? He opened Cinema 4D and found he could build the worlds he had in his head. Now, they are proud to nurture a team of generalists, and see that as a real strength.

A failure we’ve definitely all been through if you’ve worked at an agency: a long pitch process, twenty agencies, and a loss. More specifically, but still possibly something a lot of us have experienced (!): a pitch lost to JKR.

SEVEN people at Kiln, against the behemoth that is JKR.

The Kiln team felt proud to be in the final three… albeit slightly confused about why they were there at all. Their work is nothing like JKRs.

That pitch kickstarted the repositioning work that landed brand behaviour as their core proposition. It’s something they can truly own, and is undoubtedly driving their growth.

There is no headcount target and no revenue goal. What Charlie and Nathan have is a studio built to keep the work excellent and the team supported, and a shared conviction that the job should be enjoyable. “Coming to work should be such a joy. And it is a laugh. Design is fun.”

Fortune favours the brave, the saying goes. On the evidence of this episode, it favours the naive too.