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- Rachel Clancy
Rachel Clancy
Rachel Clancy always had a very clear idea that she wanted to work in the creative sector.
After witnessing the impact that the 2008 closure of DELL’s manufacturing plant in Limerick had on her family, she was made very aware that if she wanted a creative career, she needed to pursue something that would have a job at the end of her studies. Thankfully, Rachel loved Graphic Design, a perfect fit, she enjoyed the diversity of projects, the structure, her classmates and the support of the tutors. Since graduation in 2014 Rachel’s career has taken her to the US, back to Ireland and now to London. In 2017 Rachel was awarded a Sky Women In Technology Scholarship to develop Get Closer, a game concept, into a mobile application called A Hero’s Guide To Gardening that aims to help kids develop their emotional literacy.
Can you tell us how your career in design began?
I lived in Limerick my whole life, I could see the dome of LSAD’s Gallery from our back garden, so when I graduated I took the J1 graduate visa and moved to Boston. The first thing I did was to get in contact with a recruiter who set me up with a few in person interviews but nothing came of it. Every time I got knocked back was scary, I felt like maybe I wasn’t good enough yet. I didn’t know anyone in the City, so I started going to creative industry events (talks, panels, meetups). At an event I went to, one of the panelists worked at an agency I had just sent a job application to. It was one of those automated application forms, and I had yet to receive a call back from any job I applied for in that way – so I asked her at the end of the night if she wouldn’t mind looking at my portfolio site and possibly referring me to the hiring manager. Thanks to her, I had my first in person interview, and then a second team interview where I had to meet three different Creative Director’s who I’d potentially be working with. After an anxious two week wait, I finally got the offer to become a junior art director at Hill Holiday Boston.
Art Direction
On reflection, the role was tough – at least for the first 6/7 months. Art Direction is very different from Graphic Design, and I hadn’t really come across it as a discipline while I was studying. Art Directors are mainly found in Advertising Agencies, and they are responsible for the visual world of a project. A project can be a film, animation, print, digital, experiential, etc. The really exciting part is that you get to learn about directing so many different mediums and work with dedicated animators, photographers, illustrators, and film directors to bring your ideas to life. I did not understand this at all at first. As a Designer, my job was to produce the thing that was going to be the final product – as an Art Director, I was supposed to work with a Designer (or whatever other discipline was involved) to make the thing. I did not know how to direct. I remember being on a shoot and a cameraman was asking me about which angles I wanted to cover off in a shot we were filming, and I kept saying ‘yes’ to everything he suggested. His eventual response was “If you keep saying yes to everything – I’m going to stop asking you”.
I felt constantly out of my depth, but I threaded water long enough to survive, and while I was there my portfolio picked up an Art Director’s Club award and I was sent to New York for a week for a creative bootcamp as part of the prize. Hill Holiday even tried to secure a work visa for me at the end of the 14 months, but even with a sponsor it’s still a lottery system, and I had to move home in December 2015.
One thing I copped onto in Boston was that for a personal project to gain an audience, you need to think of a ‘sticky’ idea – something that has potential for virality. So it’s a good idea to pick a subject that’s topical or funny or risque, and it’s also good to do something you can build into a series or set or collection.
A return to Ireland, Dick Pics and Dublin
I was heartbroken to leave Boston at a time when I was finally finding my feet, but it gave me a chance to experience something different again. I moved back to Limerick and spent a few months job hunting and also got started with what is now a fairly well worn concept in the illustration world – I decided to ‘Art Direct’ (by which I meant illustrate, but it’s a snappier title). What did I decide to illustrate? 100 dick pics of course. One thing I copped onto in Boston was that for a personal project to gain an audience, you need to think of a ‘sticky’ idea – something that has potential for virality. So it’s a good idea to pick a subject that’s topical or funny or risque, and it’s also good to do something you can build into a series or set or collection. So I spent that winter illustrating dick pics that I found on Tumblr, or unsolicited pics that people would send me, or unsolicited pics that were sent to other people and then forwarded to me. I thought I was doing a fairly decent job of keeping this project under wraps but apparently my parents were finding these drawings all over the house and they never said anything to me.
I got back into design and had a wonderful stint at the Design Factory in Dublin (where I met fellow graduate Deirdre Breen). Thankfully, I really enjoyed being a designer again and working with and learning from the directors Conor Clarke and Stephen Kavanagh. Design Factory is an institution of Irish Design, and the team are real crafts people, I really enjoyed getting into the finer details again. My favourite of their clients was Gino’s Gelatos, I spent several very enjoyable days drawing various options for cows for some instore decals.
London & The Kennedys
At this point I felt the need to travel again, and I started looking at London. I was really keen to get back into Art Direction, but it was a real struggle to find opportunities for a solo creative at a junior level (advertising creatives tend to be hired in pairs of an Art Director and Copywriter).
In desperation I mailed a Creative Director I worked with in Boston and asked for advice. He recommended a placement program with an agency called Wieden + Kennedy, called ‘The Kennedys’. I completed an online application with questionnaire questions like: You can add one new body part, what do you add and why? and Describe your sex life in a movie title (for that one I chose Me, Earl, and the dying girl, because both make me cry). I wanted to make an impression, so I took the online application, printed it out on the back of a poster of 64 of my choicest dick pic illustrations, and posted it to the executive creative director Tony Davidson (I looked on LinkedIn and saw he had done a photography book on things that look like boobs in aid of breast cancer so I thought he’d appreciate the subject matter). Tony really did appreciate the dick pics and the agency flew me out to London for a group interview, which involved more lateral thinking challenges, like using our mobiles to present a personal biography in 3 minutes.
I was accepted and spent that first year working in a team of six other creatives from a wide range of backgrounds, and at the end of the program, I was offered a place as a Junior Creative. WK LDN was pretty much my home base from 2016 to 2024 (minus a year I took to study a Master’s in Independent Games & Playable Experience Design at Goldsmiths College). Some of my favourite projects from that time were films for Maynards & Honda, a really lovely project for Quickbooks where we paired small businesses with animators to create mini adverts for them, making a pair of ‘Pubjamas’ to celebrate the transition to normality post-covid with Camden, and then a LOT of work for Malibu, including an epic 90 second spot directed by music video legend Dave Meyers.
Code Liberation, Back to Education & Get Closer
A colleague at WK got me interested in learning about programming. He was with us on work placement as part of his BA in Computational Arts, and seeing his work in physical computing, generative artwork, machine learning etc really impressed me. We spent a few evenings on the roof of the office with him trying to teach me the basics – and it felt like going from being proficient in Photoshop to being bumped back to MS Paint. He introduced me to a series of workshops being run by an organisation called Code Liberation. Their mission is to get more women/female-identifying/non-binary people into programming, and I started making games. The first project I did with Code Lib was exhibited at the V&A as part of the Parallel Worlds gaming festival.
In 2018 I took a year out to study for a Master’s in Independent Games & Playable Experience, it was an interesting little detour! For my thesis, I worked with a small team to create an app called ‘A Hero’s Guide to Gardening’, a playable comic book designed to help ‘tweens’ develop their emotional literacy. I pitched it to Sky as part of their Women in Tech Scholarship program and ended up getting the funding to develop the game and distribute it through the App Store!
I think the background in game design has been a huge asset since joining LEGO – we’re always looking for new ways to reach kids as the media they consume evolves, and as we do more and more partnerships with content creators, it feels a bit like game design where you are setting up a playground or an experience for them to move through, as opposed to giving an actor a script to perform.
Where do you find inspiration?
Living in London, it’s almost overwhelming how much fuel for inspiration is right on your doorstep. It never gets old that I can just mooch around the Tate Britain or the Barbican in my free time. I try to visit the indie game festival Now Play, which is held at Somerset House every year, and the RA summer show is just a dizzying experience, jam-packed with creativity from artists of all experience levels.
As well as all this lovely cerebral art, it’s genuinely as important in Advertising (which is all about having a finger on what’s happening in culture and mass communication) to keep up with whatever fresh hell is happening on TikTok or reality tv. I can’t fault old reliable Pinterest, but there was an excellent article from AIGA a few years ago talking about how we’re all pulling from the same pool of reference images, so while it’s still a go-to tool for research, I use with caution!
I think the caliber of talent that comes from LSAD is so high that graduates should feel so proud of themselves, and to be their own biggest cheerleaders. Sometimes the deciding factor between you and someone else is how confidently you come across.
Some Advice for students?
Someday, you too will get old, and you will have to tell the next generation of creatives and designers to put down whatever monstrosity AI has evolved into. And they will think you are old and out of touch. But you will still be right.
Another thing I wish I learned sooner, identify the difference between the ideating phase, the planning phase, and the executing phase of an idea. You know you’re getting this wrong when you are starting a piece of work in Photoshop (I beg of you not in Midjourney), instead of with pencil on paper. You want to do your exploration and make decisions about the idea and the composition in the fastest and freest way possible. By the time you’re ready to move onto the making stage, you’ve had the biggest expanse of time to refine the concept.
Collaborating with others is a non-negotiable as a creative. Whether you are hired as a solo or as a team, you’ll have to work with other creatives, producers, designers, production partners like photographers, directors, animators, illustrators – endless people you’ll need to learn how to give and take from. When you come to these partnerships with an open hand, and not a fist closed tightly around your vision, you can make stuff far beyond what you could imagine alone!
And for a graduate wanting to work in advertising/design?
You’re at the point where most of your book will be school projects, and recruiters will be seeing a lot of the same from your fellow applicants, and when I’ve done book crits or portfolio feedback, the projects that stand out to me are the ones that went live in some sense. Make a TikTok account and see what it takes to get a decent chunk of views. Get your t-shirt designs made for real and organise a fashion shoot with your most editorial-looking friends. Get into a beef with a local supermarket on X (A guy I know did this in his internship portfolio, and we nabbed him for a placement).
The longer you do this job, the harder it gets to stay on top of culture, so show off what’s going on in your corner of the internet/social media. The landscape changes daily, and we need junior talent to help us navigate as it mutates and evolves.
Look up creatives who work at the place you’re interested in, and reach out to them on LinkedIn for a book crit. They might not have a job offer for you then and there, but they’ll have good intel for you on how to tailor your portfolio, and if all goes well, they might remember you when a role becomes available.
Finding your first job really is a numbers game, so don’t feel down on yourself if it takes a lot of knocking on doors to get a response. Be kind to yourself, keep making work that you feel excited to talk about while you’re on the hunt, and good luck out there!
Look up creatives who work at the place you’re interested in, and reach out to them on LinkedIn for a book crit. They might not have a job offer for you then and there, but they’ll have good intel for you on how to tailor your portfolio, and if all goes well, they might remember you when a role becomes available.
