Good work is never the whole job: Only Founders Matt and Dan on the Design Next podcast

Twelve years ago, Dan and Matt Tweddle went for a pint over Christmas and quite simply decided to quit their jobs.

Dan worked in market research in London, unearthing brand insights for clients. Matt was head of design at a digital agency based in Leeds, expanding projects after strategic and creative decisions had been made.

They were experts at each end of the brand identity process, and felt frustrated by missing out on the middle part; brand creation. That magic Christmas pint was the birth of Only, a studio now known for its incredible creative credentials and dreamy portfolio of brands.

The name came from two shared beliefs: a taste for simplicity, and the idea that “a small team can deliver outstanding work”. This principle, that the best projects are delivered when you get infrastructure and management out of the way, has continued, and it forms part of the podcast conversation.

For Series 4 of Design Next, we focus on Failures and Fortunes; for Only, that includes moments that nearly broke the business – and strokes of luck that built it.

Matt’s first failure came six months out of university. He co-founded an agency called Hello Kingdom with two friends and spent five months perfecting the identity – including a much-loved and very-well-crafted illustration of a horse.

At the end of it they had a good-looking brand, no clients, no pipeline and no money.

The same lesson came back harder years later… After a couple of incredible years, Only beat bigger studios to a pitch for a major cultural institution. The project won awards and led to a 12-month retainer.

Expecting to secure for a three-year renewal, the studio hired three designers to start in January. On the last day before the Christmas break, the client gave the retainer to someone else. It had been around 30% of Only’s revenue, and the team returned in the new year with a design team that had doubled and income that had almost halved.

Looking back, client experience, communication and project management had fallen short, and the relationship had shifted once the brief moved from repositioning the organisation to delivering design execution. A lesson learnt the hard way.

Dan wants the industry to think longer term. Only aims for identities that live across a whole organisation for years. “What we’re not in the business of is creating brand identities with a shelf life of three years,” he says.

Matt’s concern is the next generation. Through lectures and workshops at universities, he’s met graduates deflated by headlines claiming AI will make graphic design obsolete. Only offers multiple internships every year and put a lot of effort into nurturing junior designers.

He warns the industry is at risk of losing a generation of designers. He wants to see graphic design considered a way of thinking, impacting personal pursuits as much as boardroom conversations.