Cat How is co-founder and Creative Director of design and branding agency How&How based in Lisbon, Portugal. Before founding the studio Cat, and her husband Rog, spent eight years successfully running well-known design shop, Howkapow. During this time, they often found themselves art directing photoshoots, considering everything from colour to typography; their love of design eventually led them to set up their own design agency. As Creative Director, Cat uses the business, decision making and curation skills, she developed at Howkapow but in a different way, with the studio attracting a wide range of international clients.
How&How believe in using ‘head and heart’ to transform businesses for the better. As Cat describes it: “We believe in what we like to call ‘leftright’ thinking… combining two different ways of thinking (strategic and creative) to come up with something truly unique.” This strong ethos informs all the work they create, particularly now they’re in the position to choose working with people who align with their values. Completing some outstanding pro-bono projects that have a strong purpose, has led to exciting paid opportunities with like-minded clients. Many of these projects have focused on sustainability such as, their inspirational Eat Less Plastic or Deadly Dust campaigns.
Cat’s husband and co-founder, Rog, is currently the only full-time male member of staff, amongst a team of talented women. When employing new personnel, Cat has often found ‘focus’, ‘craft’ and ‘attention to detail’ a perfect formula in the women she’s hired. The personal, nuanced nature of hiring to a design team makes outsourcing to recruitment agencies difficult. Instead, Cat prefers to consider the finer details of job applications, looking at storytelling within someone’s portfolio and finding out about their ego from how they talk about their current team, all of which can influence hiring decisions.
Reflecting on her own career, Cat talks candidly about her experiences balancing parenting with running a studio. As a mum to two young children, she has found there can be much less space for accessing the wondering, daydreaming part of your mind, a lack of free time to reflect and be creative. Although initially building How&How whilst having a small baby and moving to Portugal, the studio’s impressive body of work and international client base speaks for itself, proving that the hard graft and dedication was all worthwhile.
We talked with Cat to find out more about setting up a studio, what her typical day-to-day as a Creative Director involves and managing a successful career with parenthood.
You originally studied for a degree in English Literature. Why did you decide to re-train in Graphic Design and does that background feed into your current practice as a Creative Director?
Yes, absolutely! I studied English Literature at Uni, but always found myself wanting to write about art or design in my essays on Shakespeare and Milton. My tutors despaired! I then became a journalist and wrote art reviews. But it didn’t scratch the itch enough so I retrained in graphic design. Now I think that the ability to conjoin words and images is one of the best assets I bring to my work in creative direction. You need to be able to articulate what it is that you like / dislike / want to change about something… and you need to be able to fight your corner in pitches or when presenting briefs, so a good grasp of language is a real bonus. It’s nice to now look back and see that what I once thought was a weakness (due to my flip-flop between two very different vocations) is now a strength.
Before founding How&How you setup and ran design shop Howkapow. What led you and your husband Rog make the decision to sell up and found your own design and branding agency?
Yes, it was a fun first foray into the world of e-commerce and buying and selling. It was great to meet so many talented designers and illustrators (we sold a lot of work by independent creatives), but we fell a bit out of love with retail as the years went by. When our second child was born, we decided to shake things up a bit and sell it. We swapped a big stock warehouse for a laptop each, and it was immensely liberating! A year later, and we had packed our bags and moved to Portugal — which I think was also, subliminally, part of the reason we decided to call it a day and do something different.
Can you tell us about your experiences of initially setting up a design studio in Lisbon. What challenges did you face and how did you attract clients?
Originally the studio grew out of a collaboration in the coworking space that we set up and ran in Bristol. It started in the final years of Howkapow and then became a business in its own right once we sold the shop. A year after the studio was founded, we moved to Lisbon, with one of our Directors staying in Bristol to help run the English wing. But it was a very tricky year. We had a few upheavals on our arrival here in (a car crash being the biggest) and the studio struggled. Our other Director grew too many grey hairs worrying about when we were going to next get paid (bless ‘im) and we amicably split. Rog (my husband) and I then took the studio into our own hands and scrubbed it over the last 2 years into what it is today.
In terms of working in Lisbon, when we first got here we wanted to establish an agency which catered to the large start-up community in the city (many of which flock here due to things like Web Summit and the amazing quality of life for digital nomads). But start-ups are cash-strapped and we could never get the idea off the ground. We then tried to approach the Portuguese marketbut even though I am half Portuguese and can speak the language fluently, it was very difficult to get any sort of cut-through. Now all our clients are international, with a large chunk who are UK-based but increasingly more from the US and Europe.
How has the studio evolved to where you are now? Have there been any pivotal moments?
We have learnt a lot in a very short space of time and have also been immensely fortunate to have found a team of incredibly talented women to help run the show alongside us. Rog is the only full-time guy among a team of women who just smash out designs, management, digital production… everything. Call me sexist — yep, hands up! I totally am — but I always look to hire women whenever I can. The combination of attention to detail, focus and craft is a perfect formula found in many first-class female designers and creatives. Sorry fellas. So a pivotal moment for the studio would be several pivotal moments in fact. Those would be when we met and hired all our lovely ladies… Cheesy, but true.
What is the ethos behind the studio and how is this implemented when approaching a new project?
We believe in what we like to call ‘leftright’ thinking — using head and heart to transform businesses for the better. We believe in combining two different ways of thinking (strategic and creative) to come up with something truly unique. We’re obsessed with pairs that work better together — particularly technology and sustainability.
As a studio you often work on projects that raise awareness for causes you believe in. We particularly love your Eat Less Plastic campaign. Is this part of your studio culture and how do you maintain a balance between working on creatively satisfying projects and profitability?
Yes, we developed our BeHalf studio series after talks I had with business leaders at WEF (Davos) and Web Summit (Lisbon) in 2019 / 2020. I realised that no one was doing work on behalf of Mother Earth… where she was the client. A client with a tight deadline (2030?) and no-one other than Greta who could truly grasp her messaging, positioning and tone-of-voice. I wanted to create a series of collaborative campaigns with companies who needed help spreading the stories that desperately need to be told. So far we have worked with The Tyre Collective and SeaForester. We used profits from paid work to fund these pro-bono projects, but now we are actually winning lots of paid work from clients within this sector as a result. Which is epic.
Can you tell us about a standout project that How&How has worked on, the process you went through and why it’s important to you?
This is like being asked to choose your favourite child! I love them all! Hahaha. Well, if I had to choose one it probably would be Eat Less Plastic I suppose. Perhaps more for what it represents. It is small but neatly formed and was the start of what we now see as our mission — working in the sustainability sector. I spun it out in 3 days with Marisa and a lovely freelancer called Adrien. It gathered a huge amount of press at the timeand sort of blew our minds! So thrilled with the results.
What is your role in the studio and what does your day-to-day typically involve?
My role as creative director means that I lead the design squad – the full-time designers and any freelancers working with us at the moment. I mostly spend 80% of my day on Slack and the rest in client meetings; catching up with designers on work; in Miro making all my post-it notes perfectly aligned; eating salty rice cakes at my desk and chewing the end of my Wacom pen. It’s gross!
Has being a woman and a studio co-founder impacted your career?
I honestly couldn’t say. In a way, it has opened some doors as female studio co-founders are still a relatively rare breed – although this is changing now thankfully. In other ways it means I’ve had to fight harder for my voice to be heard in certain client meetings. I almost hit the roof the other day when a male CEO told Rog (my co-founder and husband) to “take your wife to Versace and buy her lots of nice handbags”. Thank God that meeting was remote! I’d have made that CEO into a handbag.
How have you combined a successful career with motherhood and raising a family?
Having kids and my own business to run at the same time kept me sane when they were babies, as it gave me another focus — something else to think and talk about other than poo and nappies. But it also meant I had zero maternity leave. I remember sending a press release out from my hospital bed 5 hours after I’d given birth to Xanthe… Not ideal. As they have got older I do look back and wish I had been able to have given myself just a few untouched months off with them, just thinking 100% about them instead…. Bittersweet.
Recently, there has been lots of discussion in the design industry around how few women progress into senior positions. As a creative business owner and founder, do you have any thoughts on how we can redress this imbalance?
This is another difficult question. Fundamentally it comes down to women missing out on opportunities once they take time off to have children, and some studios can push working hours into no-family friendly territory too, especially for management. Fortunately, this is changing with shared parental leave becoming increasingly normal, but there is still a long way to go.
Do you have any words of advice for women and underrepresented creatives considering a career in the design industry?
Build alliances. Respect your colleagues. Don’t overthink things. Always send a follow up email. Personalise your folio submissions. Never apply for a job via Instagram. Take maternity leave, but never stop drawing. Leave the handbag at home.