The essence of AKIN

What happens when six AKIN members work together on a project? Creative alchemy, that’s what… the very ethos of AKIN.

It seemed like the very best reason to start a company together. In 2018, fellow AKIN member, Sian Lewisand I worked on a (very!) frustrating project for seven months and despite harbouring the occasional murderous thought about our client, we still did not want to kill each other.

Having both been lone-wolf freelancers for more than 10 years, it was a surprise - and a relief- for both of us to discover we could operate as a team.

I had been working as a graphic designer and creative director for clients around the South East, in London and in Holland. Sian is a former Fleet Street journalist and glossy magazine features editor, who had moved into providing content for corporate clients.

As we made lists of ideas for our new joint business, the design and marketing agency Oak Creatives we realised we had the most valuable start-up tool on our doorstep.

No, not a money tree – AKIN!

Within weeks of forming Oak Creatives, we had commissioned four other AKIN members to work on client projects with us.

We turned to Jane Mote and Josh Kershaw from beechtobeach to create a stunning client video and social media content from the British Super Bikes series at Brands Hatch.

“Our recent collaborations with Oak Creatives have been perfect examples of the joy of being part of AKIN,” says Jane. “Through AKIN we get to meet and work with creative dynamos like Saskia Snel. There’s an inherent level of trust and mutual respect that comes from having spent time together and shared creative ideas at the AKIN meetings which makes our working relationship so much easier.”

Photographer Jonathan Wilson came with us on a road trip to the Midlands to capture our clients’ R&D team and manufacturing base. The results are stunning.

Then the baton passed to web designer and SEO go-to-guy Karl Salter. A few weeks later we had a shiny new site ready to present to the board.

“Having recently moved to Arundel from Brighton, I missed the creative community I had on my doorstep there,” says Karl. “I knew it existed in Arundel but I didn’t know ‘who was who.’

“When I was invited to join AKIN’s first meeting I hoped I would find kindred spirits – and indeed I did.”

“I have now worked on a few joint projects with other members, and the recent website collaboration with Saskia and Sian from Oak Creatives has been a huge success which would not have happened without AKIN. The best thing is that I now feel privileged to call AKIN members my friends.”

Being able to call on other commercial creatives like Karl that I have had a chance to get to know through AKIN has been invaluable. We get to work with people whose work we know - and we know we like them. Which is sometimes the most important thing of all.