Torture to trust: Chloe Templeman, Executive Creative Director at Pearlfisher, on the Design Next podcast

Chloe Templeman cares deeply about what she does. And how she does it. And who with. And why.

It’s a rare but wonderful thing, to find somebody who genuinely has had creativity running through their veins for literally as long as they can remember.

From early days at Design Bridge, where she spent 12 years absorbing everything she possibly could from the creatives around her, to her current role as Executive Creative Director at Pearlfisher, she’s built a way of working defined by relentless standards and undeniable energy.

One way of working that shaped Chloe’s approach to creative excellence has a name that raises eyebrows… Design Bridge Co-Founder Graham Shearsby used to call it torture.

Once a project reached a critical point, at each creative milestone, he would sit down with the team and push.

“You’d really kind of take it from great to excellent. Take an extra couple of hours, put it through that process to make it even better.”

Having a genuine craftsman sit next to you at the early stages of your career – literally pointing at things, questioning your work, and holding you to their standard – is probably exactly what’s been missing from the industry holistically for 5-6 years now. “It was training that you don’t get everywhere.” It’s a discipline Chloe’s carried with her, adapted, and passed on.

Some of our favourite Pearlfisher projects

One of the ‘bad habits’ Chloe’s made a point of not repeating is something she saw in other leaders early on: taking the file, making changes, and not telling anyone. That moment when you go to present work and find it had been altered without conversation is gut-wrenching in terms of presentation confidence, but also in personal development.

The better solution is to take your team away from their desks and print the work out. Then she sits with them and asks, ‘how can we make this better?’

“It gives not only ownership to them, but it also hopefully teaches them along the way.” This patience is as essential as the project progress.

The most important trait of a genuinely successful creative is becoming clearer with every episode in this season: curiosity. An inherant drive to look outside the obvious places for inspiration, and the generosity to share what you find rather than gatekeep it. But most of all, care.

“Just give a shit about what you’re doing.” There are a lot of design skills you can teach, but you can’t teach someone to love making something brilliant.

“That real passion and love for creativity and design – I think it is just in you, or it’s not.”

Chloe has been Co-President of the Pentawards Jury for several years now, and the story of how she got there is very her… At a Pentawards event in Barcelona, she found herself talking to a Adam Ryan (who she didn’t know was leading the Pentawards) and she gave him a piece of her mind: the jury was twelve men, there was no female representation, and that wasn’t acceptable.

Later, he came back and asked her to co-president the jury and help change it from the inside.

Last year, for the first time, the jury reached gender parity: 51% female, 49% male.

Mic drop.