None of Those
The story of how Agency of None began, a mix of excitement and fear. This is how we learned to turn that into something real.
📸 Studio QN
It’s a sunny October afternoon. The sun shines through the window and spills onto the table. There’s an open notebook with some sketches and a few scribbled notes.
There’s also that feeling.
Excitement. Anticipation. A peek into the future at what this thing could become.
But then the other voice.
What if it doesn’t work?
Is it too risky?
Have you really thought this through?
A few months before that moment, things weren’t easy. Freelance work came in waves. Sometimes great, sometimes quiet. It was fine, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to do work with more meaning. To build something, not just make things.
So when Lyall and I started talking about creating a studio, it felt like a step in the right direction but a step into the unknown.
Would it be any different?
Would it just be harder?
Still, something about it made sense.
We wanted to create a studio that stripped away all the noise.
None of the ego.
None of the hierarchy.
None of the traditional agency model that got in the way.
Agency of None.
That was the name.
Scribbled in a notebook in the October sunshine.
It was the start.
We’d noticed somewhere along the way, design had started to take itself too seriously. The fun had gone missing and we needed to bring it back. To build a studio where fun isn’t a side note but the starting point — where it guides how we design and how we genuinely engage audiences.
We knew that we wanted to build a studio that made design more accessible, celebrating the everyday, breaking down barriers and putting tools into peoples hands to show them the possibilities.
At the beginning, there was plenty of doubt.
We knew what we wanted to build, but not what it would become.
The excitement of possibility drove us forward.
That feeling has never really gone away.
It keeps us motivated and it’s where we grow from.
Because that same mix of excitement and uncertainty is what people bring when they first get in touch — an idea full of potential, a bit of fear, and a lot of hope. We know it because we’ve lived it and we can help people move through that same space between fear and fun.
Since those early days we’ve built brands for first-time founders and multinationals alike, produced design festivals, created podcasts, launched products and created space to allow people to play and explore their own path through design.
And although the studio has grown to four of us and changed, beneath it all, the feeling is still there from that first day — the mix of nerves and anticipation that comes with starting something new.
From an idea, a spark, a vision — we love creating the tools to bring it to life.We turn anxiety into excitement, complexity into clarity and seriousness into fun.We love doing it every day.
Welcome to our No News Letter — A collection of stories, reflections and ideas about what happens when you put fun back at the heart of what you do.
As much as this is the story of how Agency of None began, this is also the start of something new, sharing our insights and ideas in this way. We’ve got a lot to say but we’re not quite sure where it will take us. So join us on the journey and if that feeling we’ve talked about sounds familiar, please get in touch.