Kara Penn, Co-founder and Designer at Fit Creative, a design agency with its roots in the local area, with many local clients including the Council and Visit Greenwich. Fit Creative were finalists at the Greenwich Business Awards.

What do you love most about your job?

I like ideas and I like problem solving. Brand and comms design is often about getting an idea across in a fresh way, and importantly within budget. So, in a way, design was the perfect job for me, and whilst there are always going to be things that niggle – it would be mad to say my job is perfect – I enjoy it’s challenges as they are always fresh and we can always do things better. I am really passionate about creating brands and can easily bore you to death with the detail of a project!

What is a typical day for you and your business?

There really isn’t any such thing as a typical day. As a full service brand and communications agency, our work varies from project to project and client to client. We offer the full gamut of brand services from brand creation through to brand application online, in film and in print. I can be directing a film shoot on Monday, designing an ad on Tuesday, speaking to a client about a new project on Wednesday, retouching photography on Thursday and thinking about brand positioning for a new brand on Friday. And then there’s the weekend!

We work with our clients long-term, some have known us for over 10 years, and so this means we get to know them and their business, and we are there as they evolve and grow. We can be proactive and helpful to get them saying and looking how they want to, and it gets better with time.

We never say we can’t do something; we always look for the solution or even sometimes point clients in the direction of where they can find it. So we are not a jack of all trades but we are problem solvers. We are really good at thinking, and then pretty damn good at making things look good, so you get the best brand and comms to suit your needs.

A tip for women who want to start their career in your sector

• Grab every opportunity that comes your way to learn something new, strive for something you haven’t done before, push yourself more, and don’t be afraid to try.
• During my career I was part of the team that branded the Millennium Dome and created the O2 brand, I was Design Director at Fitch in Qatar opening its first branch of the agency in the Middle East, and since establishing our own agency, I have been able to create many of the brands here in Greenwich including Visit Greenwich, Greenwich Learns, the Old Royal Naval College and Greenwich Market to name just a few.
• As a designer you don’t ever really switch off, and as many business owners know, it can be hard to switch off. I don’t really plan on retiring as I keep finding that this business still keeps my interest. If you want to get into design, you have to love it, as it’s a demanding partner.

Can you tell us a bit about your journey to where you are?

I followed the classic route to become a designer, completing an Art Foundation at Cardiff College and then a degree in Graphic Design at Kingston University.

I always say that I was lucky – in that I was prepared and I was timely –  to get my first job as a Junior Designer at The Workroom, a small agency run by two partners Bridig McMullen and Martin Devlin who gave me the opportunity to grow and gain skills and importantly learn how to think!

Following that I worked at Lambie-Nairn, founded by Martin Lambie-Nairn of the Channel 4 identity fame, where I was privileged to work as part of a team on large brands and gain a real understanding of how to structure work and complete big projects. This meant that when the job offer came at Fitch to head up design in their Qatar office I seized it as it was another exciting step to growing my skills. Over two years I had amazing opportunities to create new brands for new ministries and new building and new infrastructure and even some royal work, something not easy to get access to in more established countries. On my return to the UK I worked for Red Bee on a number of TV brands across the world and again was able to stretch my skills into another area as well as work with a truly creative bunch! 

I genuinely feel that my career has been one of luck and hard work. So when my partner, Jonathan Cook, and I set up Fit Creative, the thread of bon chance and tenacity continued with our first clients being Shell and the BBC. Since then we have established a good set of clients in and out of the borough, and of different sizes – we are happy to work with small businesses when we think we can create a good impact within restricted budgets. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all been smooth sailing; there have been some bloody long days, some mistakes on the way – small and bigger ones! – but we are established here in Greenwich, just completed 14 years, and we still love providing great design solutions to a variety of clients.

What do you like most about running your business in Royal Greenwich

Greenwich is a creative borough and over the 14 years we have been here we have created a network of both clients and suppliers meaning we can both source and deliver in the borough. True, not all of our clients are in the borough, but where we can keep it local, we often do, as we find that face-to-face interactions and personal relationships are what make for good business and in the end great results.

Many of our suppliers have also been relationships we have kept for many years, as there is a give and take in business which means when you need a favour; a fast turnaround; a compromise on price, we can agree that because we are all together trying to achieve the best and succeed.

And for a designer, nothing is more satisfying than seeing some of the brands you have helped establish, all around you, and seen by friends, neighbours and colleagues.

What role does your business play in the local area?

We pride ourselves on being part of the cultural industry here. Having established here in 2008, we feel strongly that we are a Greenwich design agency. Greenwich has more museums, attractions and leisure squeezed in our part of the London than any other, and that’s a pretty cool place to be. And we form part of the supply chain here, providing our creative services to clients based here and purchasing services from here for our clients.

Greenwich is continuing to grow and we will keep growing with it, providing new services as we gain skills and contacts, including recently expanding our film and animation remit to support clients through Covid restrictions meaning they needed to be more active digitally. Where we see that our clients have a design and communications need, we want to support them so that when they succeed so do we.