How to succeed without exclusivity with Gail Hoban, Co-founder, Gas Studio

In our second interview with Gail Hoban, Co-founder of Gas Studio, she chats to Yiuwin Tsang about taking on a lecturing role after having her daughter; the wonderful effect creative subjects have on kids with learning challenges, and how instead of trying to be inclusive in our communications, we should actually be aiming not to exclude anyone...

Gail Hoban is the co-founder and creative strategist at Gas Studio, a B Corp certified design studio, that advocates design as a tool to encourage access to positive life chances. Gail and co-founder Steve Goodwin believe that design is a powerful tool to reach diverse groups. 

Gas Studio has learned that understanding your community first, helps to build positive campaigns that are believable. 

They work with organisations and charities helping them move past the usual stereotypes and reading abilities to make communications work.

Transcript

Yiuwin Tsang: 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Beautiful Business Podcast. I'm your host, Yiuwin Tsang, part of the Beautiful Business Team, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Gail Hoban. Gail is a co-founder and creative strategist at Gas Studio, a B Corp certified design studio who advocate design as a tool to encourage access to positive life chances. Gail and co-founder Steve Goodwin believe that design is a powerful tool to reach diverse groups. Gas Studio has learned that understanding your community first helps to build positive campaigns that are believable. They work with of organisations and charities, helping them to move past the usual stereotypes and reading abilities to make communications work. I hope you enjoy the interview. Let's talk about a fairer society and get your thoughts on this, please, Gail. When we first set up the call, and before we jumped on the interview, we spoke about your background taking on lecturing and moving into education as a role around looking after your kids and for me, this put a couple of things into focus. The first one was just how hard it can be for mums to go back into work, the other thing's the distribution of opportunity within education and within society doesn't always reflect the distribution of talent. Now then, getting mums back to work, sorting out this inequality, isn't fair and it's not easy to do. There's not a simple fix, but certainly with the latter and I remember when we spoke, you talked about how you had seen firsthand that, you know, there's some kids there who had all the privileges if you like to be able to do the things that they want, when they wanted to do it, how they wanted to do it, and you had other children that didn't have the same opportunity. That sparked something for you and it's inspired you to work in the spaces that you work with Gas, but tell us a little bit more about your experience of working with kids in different backgrounds and how that's shaped your values now.

Gail Hoban: 1:40

Yeah. So I started lecturing when my daughter was only one and I ended up working on a diploma, which is like the equivalent of A Levels at the time. So you see a lot of kids that maybe didn't feel A Levels were the right route for them at that point. There's a real diverse range of kids that are trying to not go into work . So you get the kids that are just filling time. But then you also get the kids that really haven't been seen by the school system, I would say. And quite often being a creative. So this is around graphic design, being a creative, it's amazing how many dyslexics, ADHD kids, bordering Asperger's, basically have not been really seen by schools and creativity was always the thing that kept them going. And you see them start to come to life because they were in an environment where they're only doing the thing that they really want to do. But quite often they might not have all the equipment. It was Hertfordshire, so it's actually quite a wealthy county, but it was also, you were picking up students from North London as well. So with very different backgrounds, very different communities that are coming from and they would meet together in this local regional college. The difference between them and them navigating that difference was really interesting. They were very supportive of each other actually. And they would end up quite a tight-knit community and they were looking out for each other, which was great to see. But it was also great to see those kids that had been overlooked until that point actually finding their thing, finding their passion, and actually being given the opportunity to progress internally within college, cuz they actually had higher education courses, which is what I ended up moving into, which would deliver like the first two years of a degree. They could stay at home. They didn't have to go away to university, but it enabled them to go through the thinking process in the first two years of a degree, but in a much more sheltered environment than within a university. And I found from a, a lecturers point of view, I was able to have a lot more contact with them, develop proper relationships with them rather than in a lecture hall when they were being delivered to maybe an hour or two a week. And then maybe there'd be a seminar group when they didn't have personal one-to-one contact, whereas within a college environment, they were supported through a project. And cuz I already had industry experience, I was quite unusual really. And I was able to bring that 12 years of industry experience back into the college life, which they found really useful. Having practical briefs and being expressed how would that work rather than in a theoretical way that it would be in school. It was much more how a design boss would actually respond to them. I was actually often responding to them, but in a nurturing way, but trying to give a bit more of the real practical life.' Come on, work faster, get through more ideas. Don't just put one idea down because a Creative Director would want to see loads of ideas.' Just trying to get them to develop their creative practice much more than in a ticky box way that would happen within a school and that sort of developed through onto the foundation degree, which was much more practical than a university course giving them their physical skills with developing ideas manually, but also the computer skills as well that supported it, thinking skills too. University is very good at developing their thinking skills, but on the foundation degrees, they combine all those elements together with lots of live briefs that come from industry. It had a really good reputation the college that I went to, cause it had been established for a long time. A lot of the ex students came back and brought in briefs with them because they maintained those relationships and it's still ongoing. I still keep in touch. We go back and we actually talk to the. Going, we, because my business partner was actually a student in my very first year of lecturing. So we go back together and we basically give back our creative experience and our industry experience and explain the wiggly careers that we've both been through to get to the point that we are now, as well as give a bit of context to the business that we are now. So hopefully that explains a little bit more.

Yiuwin Tsang: 5:54

It really does. I guess that experience, that exposure, the chance to engage with kids from a really diverse background in terms of different communities that they came from and seeing them work together and collaborate and support each other must have been really heartwarming, but just from what you were saying there, Gail, what I'm quite interested just to find out a little bit more about is this piece around inclusivity and kids with these learning challenges and with these conditions, what did that bring to you in terms of influencing your work and that whole accessibility piece, I guess, in and around design and inclusivity as well. You made that point about accessibility. People talk about font size or contrasts and stuff like that. My impression is that it means a lot more, that there's a lot more to it. Tell us a bit more your thoughts around that.

Gail Hoban: 6:39

I think there's so many different perspectives in how people pick up communication. It needs to be produced in a way that can be accessed by many different people everybody's come with their own biases and they come looking at every piece of communication with their own biases. So there needs to be an allowance that the world isn't one way, that it doesn't look one way. So it is thinking about it from the way that you communicate outwards as well. So any imagery that you use thinks about it's a complex society that's out there. How can you reflect that? How can you reflect that in the way that you speak, the people that you show in those pieces of communication. But the way that you speak is a structure as well. So it enables lots of different people to access it in different ways. A really useful thing that a lot of people probably don't realise is the average UK reading age is nine. When you think about that, that can be the basis of a lot of your communications. But also think about how things are structured due to that. Imagery is really important. We talk very much about self-identification. If you're not showing people in communications, they won't feel it's relevant to them, they'll shut down. If you're not listening to people and how they talk and how they see themselves, then you will won't allow communications to be seen in that light. So talking to as many people as possible when you're creating communications enables it to be tailored or, or non-exclusive is probably a better way than saying inclusive, non-exclusive is probably a better way of tackling it. How are you not going to exclude people rather than, how are you gonna include people is a much better way of tackling it, I think.

Yiuwin Tsang: 8:32

That's a really nice way of putting it and a really lovely way of putting it. And what are the practical steps of a company or a team could go about doing that? Cause I think it is so important. And I, and I feel like from what you're saying, there's almost like the first step is a level of self-awareness. What are the practical things that a team could do to try and broaden that? Again having an open mind has to be one of the first things there, but what else could they do to be less exclusive? I think is the turn of phrase, isn't it?

Gail Hoban: 8:59

Yeah, definitely. It's always talking. A huge part of our design process is enabling diverse testing of whatever you're doing. So you do some discovery at the beginning that talks to everybody. So you hope that you've included all the voices and all the opinions. There might be a level that you have to go, okay, I can't do everything , because there is a limit, there is a practical limit. Because you might not be able to do braille for every single communication, but what other ways of communicating can you enable to make a communication accessible for as many people as possible? Talk to as many people as possible before you start a communication. So you see the obstacles that might be in the way. See and understand maybe the biases that people have, the bits that they might tune out of. Or tune into so you are understanding where the edges, where the boundaries are so that you are not going outside of them and you are including as many people as possible, making a communication that's as getting the core bits. What are the important bits that are gonna appeal and feel relevant to as many people as possible. And then at the other end, so at the discovery bit you do your creation bit of the middle, and then at the end, how do you test that that's actually really happening. That what you intended to do is actually getting across to the people that you want to talk to and the diverse groups of people that you want to talk to. Make sure you in involve representatives from different community groups or different parts of your audience. When you created this piece that you want to get out to people, don't just send it out , check that he's actually gonna work. Check that people really respond to it, that it makes sense that what you were trying to say is coming across. Get them to say what they're seeing and then your testing that it's really working. And if there's anything that's being misunderstood, your chance to adjust it and tweak it and involve them in the process. Is there anything we've missed out? Is there something really crucial that we've not seen and that's come back in our, in our testing as well. Little, little bits of communication that we have missed that were really crucial can then be adapted and and involved and included and that for photography briefs as well. Make sure you are really clear that what you are putting out there is very representative.

Yiuwin Tsang: 11:27

What every single answer that you give has really hammered home to me at least, and hopefully to our listeners as well, that there are many layers to this and it needs to be a thorough process. And there's a lot of exploration that needs to be done. A lot of discovery that needs to be done, but there also needs to be a lot of time for that analysis at the other end. That examination, the testing that comes through as well. There's no quick fix to this, be it, you know, in terms of the company's identity, right the way through to inclusivity and accessibility. Cuz I would imagine with some of the partners and the charity partners that you work with and some of the organisations and not-for-profits that you work with as well. That piece around inclusivity and accessibility is absolutely key in terms of marginalised parts of society there might be communities where , there aren't as many mobile phones in the household, for example. Or it might be limited internet connectivity or whatever it might be and that's the depth that we need to go to, right in terms of our thinking, in terms of our considerations. And as you said, it kind of goes beyond just that. the veneer side of things, but it's really understanding, what are we trying to achieve with this communication and who it is we're trying to reach and a real appreciation of the circumstances that those individuals might be in.

Gail Hoban: 12:34

And I think it's also there might not be a perfect solution. It's very complex, you may not be able to reach everybody as much as you try to be as inclusive as possible. It's a really difficult thing. So that's a little bit what I was trying to say about boundaries as well and really understanding your audience. I think that's the biggest thing. It's not a science, unfortunately. People think it is, but there's an element of an art in it because of the balancing.

Yiuwin Tsang: 13:00

Good stuff and the last question just wrap this bit up, Gail, in terms of the projects that you've been involved in and the work that you've done, what's the most inspiring project or piece of work that you've had the chance to be involved in capacity?

Gail Hoban: 13:12

We're involved in. Interesting one at the moment, which is for very close. It will be out there soon for Enfield Council, and we are doing an active travel brand, but it's meant that we've reached out to diverse community groups. We've spoken to the youth mayor of London and all sorts so it's, it is become really interesting because we've had such insights into what motivates people within their communities. Can't wait for it to be out there right now.

Yiuwin Tsang: 13:39

Fantastic. Sounds really good. Can't wait to see it. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Beautiful Business Podcast. And thank you to Gail for being a wonderful guest and sharing your experiences and creating positive change in the world with Gas Studio.