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    CAREER STRATEGY
    Podcast 13 min read

    How to Take Creative Risks and Win w/ Craig Black

    with Craig Black

    Craig Black and Chris Do examine how creative risks become commercial opportunities through craft and preparation.

    Chris Do

    Chris Do

    Founder, The Futur™ · October 4, 2025

    The leap was not the whole story

    Craig Black says his family had £52 left in their joint account when he launched the project that established his visual art career. The Scottish artist, a former professional footballer and typography specialist known for his Acrylic Fusion technique, had already spent two years developing the work in private. His experience matters because the breakthrough contained both serious preparation and a financial exposure he does not recommend others imitate.

    The bank balance makes an arresting story. It does not explain why the work found buyers.

    In conversation with Chris Do, Black describes a transition built from several different decisions: learning a physical process, leaving an established specialty, financing a self-initiated project, and showing prospective clients exactly where his art belonged. Courage connected those decisions, but courage was not their only ingredient.

    The visible leap followed years of invisible preparation.

    That distinction is easy to lose when a successful artist looks backward. The commission arrives, the portfolio changes, and the uncertain period becomes the opening scene of a story with a reassuring ending. At the moment Black committed, however, there was no ending to consult.

    He had stopped taking typography work. His wife, Ali, was on maternity leave. Their daughter, Olivia, had displaced his home studio from the spare bedroom, giving his creative ambitions a practical deadline: find somewhere else to work.

    Black found a studio in Greenock, his hometown in Scotland. A friend opened the shutters to reveal water and hills beyond the window. He saw room to paint, rather than another office in which to continue an established design practice.

    The choice was not presented to him as financially sensible. Black says three business coaches advised him to maintain both activities. Typography could keep paying while the art developed, preserving income and continuity.

    He understood the advice. He also believed that keeping the old practice alive would divide the attention the new one required.

    This is where the story becomes useful and dangerous at the same time. Black's conviction explains his decision, but it cannot establish a universal rule that creative businesses should abandon dependable revenue. His account supplies evidence of what worked for one family, not proof that maximum exposure produces maximum opportunity.

    Do makes that boundary explicit. He does not want listeners translating the outcome into permission to load up credit cards and gamble on a dream. Instead, he pushes Black to identify the practical choices that gave the project a chance.

    Those choices are more transferable than the bank balance. Black did not merely announce a new professional identity. He produced work that made the identity credible, documented its creation, and placed it inside a commercial context that prospective clients already understood.

    The public encountered a finished proposition. Behind it sat years of practice, a difficult household conversation, and a deliberate plan for getting the work seen.

    The risk was real. So was the preparation. Removing either one distorts what happened.

    The ambition changed, but the material stayed

    Football was Black's first intended profession, not a convenient theme selected later for marketing. As a child, he played with his older brother and friends until dinner or darkness brought him indoors. Then he continued the game on paper, drawing boots, balls, kits, and the names on players' shirts.

    He did not yet know that the lettering absorbing his attention belonged to a discipline called typography. He knew only that the visual world surrounding football held his interest almost as strongly as the sport itself.

    At 15, Black had an opportunity to become a full-time professional player. Rather than leave school entirely, he arranged a split schedule: training with the first team in the morning, studying art and design in the afternoon.

    His art teacher, Mr Murray, gave him space to work independently and direct feedback when he needed it. Black remembers a relationship strong enough to accommodate disagreement, rather than a teacher simply endorsing whatever the promising athlete produced.

    Then football took over. Black says he spent five years playing professionally in Scotland's lower leagues without pursuing art.

    Eventually, the career he had wanted became a source of frustration. He felt that performances in training and matches were not translating into opportunities. Offers to stay in the game did not change the underlying problem: he was unhappy doing the thing that had defined him.

    Leaving was not the same as knowing what came next.

    On the day he decided to stop, Black encountered his former art teacher in a pub. After hearing what had happened, the teacher suggested studying art and design and invited him over the next day.

    There, according to Black, Mr Murray produced the portfolio he had kept from his school years. “Craig, I knew you were going to need this one day,” Black recalls him saying.

    The preserved work gave Black something more concrete than encouragement. It helped him return to education, with an interview for a graphic design course in Glasgow following soon afterward. The role of that intervention gives personal weight to the broader subject of The Importance Of Mentors: another person had protected evidence of an ability Black had stopped considering.

    At college, the connection between football shirts and typography finally received a name. Black began studying independent designers, lettering artists, and typographic artists, then spent two years working in agencies before opening his own studio.

    His ambition became specific: create the typeface for Rangers, the club he had supported growing up. He had once imagined himself on its pitch. Now the route into that world ran through its shirts.

    When the commission arrived, it carried enormous personal pressure. Black's answer to the scale of the opportunity was blunt: “Why not me?”

    He completed the project. He says it brought approaches from other football clubs, but the next logical commercial step held little appeal. Rangers had been the goal, not an entry point into an endless sequence of similar commissions.

    A completed ambition does not have to become a permanent business model.

    Black was not discarding football or design. He was changing how those interests could appear in his work, while refusing to let a successful specialty become another identity he could not leave.

    A signature built through physical work

    The next direction began with a pattern on Ali's gym leggings. Black found himself studying the colors and wondering how someone had made them. That curiosity led to YouTube searches for paint mixing and paint pouring, followed by a trip to buy acrylic paints, pouring medium, and a small canvas.

    Back in the apartment, he positioned his phone to record the experiment. The attraction was immediate: a physical process, a problem unfolding in front of him, and paint on his hands instead of another day entirely at a computer.

    The initial excitement did not amount to a finished practice. Black spent the following two years developing the technique alongside his typography work, with Ali the only person who knew what he was building.

    That private period is essential to understanding the later public confidence. He was not asking a launch campaign to validate an activity he had tried once. He had already invested sustained attention in discovering how the material behaved and how he wanted to handle it.

    Acrylic Fusion, as Black describes it, combines acrylic paints to produce intricate blends across different surfaces. He pours from cups, moves objects to let gravity influence the paint, and uses his breath for finer interventions on flat surfaces.

    He had tested alternatives. A straw did not produce the effect he wanted. A hair dryer moved air with less control than he could achieve by adjusting his own breath.

    The resulting technique was not just a visual preference. It was a set of working decisions refined through trial, error, and close contact with the surface.

    • Gravity moves the paint as Black changes the position of the work.
    • Breath guides smaller blends and details on flat surfaces.
    • The same colors and canvas do not produce an identical result each time.

    That last quality gives the practice a useful tension. The work needs enough consistency to be recognizably his, but enough variation for each object to remain distinct. Black treats that variation as part of its appeal to clients and collectors.

    A recognizable process can produce unrepeatable objects.

    His account of a Porsche commission shows how that process can adapt without being abandoned. The original request, he says, was to pour paint directly onto a car. He flagged the risk of paint getting into the engine and proposed a different route.

    Black created an original painting on a 60-centimeter-square MDF board. A high-resolution photograph captured the artwork from above, and an external partner used that image to wrap the vehicle.

    The car carried the artwork without requiring him to treat a functioning machine like a movable canvas. The physical original remained the source; the application changed to meet the brief.

    This is a more useful account of creative integrity than simply refusing adaptation. Black protected the character of the work while finding a production method appropriate to the object. The distinctive thing was not that paint had physically touched every surface carrying his imagery.

    It was that the imagery began with his process.

    By the time he moved into the Greenock studio, he understood that process. What he did not yet have was an audience of buyers for the new practice. Technical preparation had answered how to make the work. The next project had to answer why someone would commission it.

    The footballs were a commercial proposition

    Black's answer brought him back to the object that had occupied his childhood. He decided to apply Acrylic Fusion to footballs, starting with colors associated with Scotland and expanding to a series based on countries participating in the European Championship.

    He connected the idea to Scotland's qualification and the excitement surrounding the tournament. The precise calendar dates in his recollection are inconsistent, but the strategic sequence is clear: make the series before the competition and release it when football attention was building.

    The project was not a departure from his history dressed up as an authentic story. Football, color, and visual identity had been connected in his work since those childhood drawings. Now the connection took a form he could own as an artist.

    Applying the technique to a ball introduced a fresh problem. Black had developed his process, but he had not previously perfected it on footballs. Once paint covered the object, there was no digital undo command.

    He says the handful of finished balls visible in the studio came from buying roughly 50 to practice on. The final collection concealed a much larger volume of experimentation.

    That distinction matters commercially. A compelling demonstration is not necessarily cheap or quick just because the finished object looks simple. Black had to fund both the objects that worked and the attempts that taught him how to make them.

    He then invested in photography and videography. Together with Ali and a content team, he developed enough material for six weeks of publication, rather than recording one successful pour and hoping it would travel.

    The presentation had several jobs:

    • Show the finished footballs as artworks, not merely experiments.
    • Make the physical process visible through video and photography.
    • Pair national designs in match-style graphics, including Scotland versus England.
    • Demonstrate how the imagery could function inside a tournament campaign.

    The portfolio showed the application, not just the artifact.

    That is the commercial intelligence beneath the spectacle. A prospective client did not have to bridge the distance between an attractive painted ball and a usable campaign. Black had already supplied examples of that bridge.

    Even the typography he was leaving behind still served the launch. He created lettering for the match graphics, using an existing skill to make the new practice easier to understand. Leaving a specialty did not require pretending he had never learned it.

    The distinction also sharpens the subject raised by Free Work That Actually Pays. Black's unpaid project was self-directed evidence of a service he wanted to sell, not an unspecified promise that exposure would eventually reward effort.

    He was effectively showing football organizations how his visual language could work for them. The series contained an artistic proposition and a buyer-facing demonstration at the same time.

    Do identifies the timing as another advantage. The project attached itself to an event people already cared about, giving the work a reason to appear then rather than at any arbitrary point in the year.

    Black did not need to manufacture interest in football. He needed to contribute something distinctive to an existing concentration of attention. The ball was familiar. His treatment made it newly visible.

    The risk belonged to a household

    The production plan had a cost that Black could not keep separate from family life. Earnings from Rangers and other design projects had initially provided a cushion. Some of the savings were intended to support Ali's maternity leave.

    Then Black discovered a tax obligation he had not properly accounted for. Money earmarked for maternity leave had to cover it, reducing the reserves available while he was trying to establish the art practice.

    He describes the mistake plainly. It is not a motivational detail, and it should not be polished into one. The project became more financially exposed partly because the original budget had failed to include an obligation.

    Paying for the content team would consume most of what remained. At that point, Black brought the decision to Ali, explaining both his confidence in the project and the cost of carrying it through.

    He told her he would stop if she wanted him to. Not resentfully, and not with an ultimatum attached. He says he would have stepped away happily to protect the family.

    Ali backed him. Black remembers her response: “Craig if anyone can do this it's you.”

    The encouragement intensified his determination, but Do focuses on the permission that preceded it. The decision affected both partners. Black's belief did not entitle him to make the exposure unilateral.

    That is an important correction to the solitary-founder version of creative ambition. The person making the work was not the only person absorbing its consequences.

    When the compilation video launched, Black says their joint account stood at £52. Three days later, he received the first commission from UEFA for a television promo, followed by work with the Premier League. He reports collaborating with FIFA within 12 months and later going to the World Cup in Qatar.

    Those results explain the relief in the telling. They do not make the preceding financial position a recommended operating model.

    The practical sequence Black and Do extract is more disciplined:

    • Make the distinction visible. Present work rooted in a developed process and a subject that genuinely matters to its maker.
    • Make the commercial use visible. Produce imagery that helps a brand imagine an application without inventing the entire campaign itself.
    • Put the work in circulation. Combine social publishing, outreach, and relevant media opportunities instead of relying on a single upload.

    Black used LinkedIn and Instagram, pursued coverage, and contacted a person at UEFA directly. He says that contact initially ignored the message before calling three days later because the work was too strong to pass over.

    The distinction is important: publication and outreach were separate actions. The work being online did not remove the need to place it in front of someone relevant, a useful companion issue to Demystifying LinkedIn.

    Do adds a production lesson: “Number two, thinking campaigns.” Preparing multiple assets allowed Black to sustain attention and get more from the team he had hired.

    None of these actions guaranteed the call. Together, they gave his conviction something stronger than a declaration. They gave a prospective buyer a finished body of evidence.

    The business has to serve the life

    After a breakthrough, another pressure appears: turn what worked into more of everything. More production, more people, more capacity, more revenue. Black has already confronted that version of the next logical step.

    He says investors have approached him about building a larger operation to produce artworks. He has resisted because the proposal threatens two things he values: direct authorship and time with his family.

    His studio operates with Ali as managing director. Their commercial work includes brand collaborations and activations, alongside bespoke pieces for galleries and private collectors. External specialists can join individual projects without requiring the permanent operation to become a factory.

    That structure is not presented as the only legitimate way to run an art business. Black leaves open the possibility of a larger studio later. It is the structure that fits what he wants now.

    His daughter travels with them, and he values her participation in their creative life. The business is successful, in his terms, when it allows the family to remain together while making work he finds absorbing.

    The distinction brings a different lens to How To Grow A Small Creative Agency. Before growth becomes a management problem, it is a question of what the owner wants the organization to make possible.

    For Black, the operating boundaries are concrete:

    • Keep the core studio small enough to protect family time.
    • Choose collaborations that align with the studio's values and creative interests.
    • Maintain his direct involvement in the artwork and live performances.
    • Bring in outside support when a particular project requires it.

    Those boundaries also shape the client experience. A brand speaking with the studio knows it is dealing with the artist and managing director. When Black is commissioned for a live art performance, he is the person who appears.

    The same presence matters to a collector purchasing an object made by his hands. Scaling production would therefore change more than his calendar. It would alter something he considers central to the work's appeal.

    There is no contradiction between taking an ambitious creative risk and declining an aggressive expansion plan. Both decisions can come from the same principle: refuse a model that succeeds commercially by moving life further from the reason the work began.

    For creatives considering their own change, Black's example leaves a harder standard than simply feeling ready. The new work needs development. Its presentation needs to show an application. Its launch needs more than hope that the right person will notice.

    The financial plan deserves scrutiny separate from artistic confidence, especially when another person's security is involved. A compelling idea does not cancel taxes, household expenses, or the right of a partner to refuse the exposure.

    And the destination needs definition before outside demand supplies one. Black did not leave typography to become the largest possible producer of painted objects. He wanted to make art, remain directly involved, and build a working life with his family.

    The test is not whether a creative can risk everything. It is whether the work, the evidence, and the business being built justify the risk.

    The gamble is not the method. The preparation is.

    TRANSCRIPT

    We share stories about transformation and reinvention. And then I come across Craig, and he's had some interesting shifts in his life. And well, I won't tell you about him. Why don't you introduce yourself, Craig? My name is Craig Black, and you're listening to The Future. I'm a visual artist from Scotland. If you can't tell from this accent, I'm best known for my specialist technique, Acrylic Fusion, which is a unique way of blending acrylic paints together to create interesting and mesmerizing effects on almost any surface. I run my studio alongside my wife, Ali, who is the managing director. And so essentially, she's the boss of my life. And together, we travel the world with our little girl, Olivia, and collaborating with global brands to to bring their visions to life through product and brand activations and that elevate their campaigns in bold and creative ways and alongside our commercial work we create bespoke artworks for galleries and private collectors blending creativity and craftsmanship to create one-of-a-kind pieces that captivate and inspire So in case people haven't checked out the Instagram account, I'm going to describe to you what I see and then you tell me, oh, no, that's not it. I see you mixing paints in little plastic cups and a whole bunch of paints. It's a bit messy, right? There's a lot of hands getting dirty. And then what you do is through a process of selecting what paints and what layers, you start to build things up and the acrylic paints mix and then they create fascinating patterns and colors and swirls and things of that nature. Now, I saw something interesting. with a Porsche that had this design on it. And I was thinking, wait, did he pour it on a Porsche? Or how did you do that? What happened there? Well, that was a fascinating and amazing project. So the original brief to that project was Porsche reached out to us and says can you pour paint on our car and I said yes I can but as a disclaimer paint could seep into the engine and make it not work and it could be a bit of a problematic thing so Porsche or Porsche that's how you pronounce it I didn't really like that idea. Of course. So I had to think how I could apply my artwork to that car. So what I did was I created an original artwork which was on a 60 centimeter by 60 centimeter wooden MDF board canvas. got my little cups of paint and I poured them on top of this canvas, did my technique using blends of using my breath to create all these things and we've got a super high-res camera to take this image in a bird's eye view of the artwork so when you blow up you can see all the details and I worked with an external partner to wrap the car so my artwork was then wrapped onto the car using my artwork and that's how we all brought it to life. I see. The mystery has been solved because I was thinking when you're dealing with objects, you can control it via gravity and it's going to blend a certain way. But with a car, you can't pick it up and rotate it. So I was like, how do you get it all around the edges like this? I knew something had to be up there. No, just to say on that point, a lot of people with my work is quite physical. So I literally left canvases and large tables and stuff like that. So they were originally thinking to me is there any way that we could rotate this car and I was like if we can put the car on a large turntable and get cranes and stuff but I don't think it's going to work so yeah that was quite an interesting way of not doing it anyway. Yeah that would have been really cool to see though on a giant crane where you're controlling that that would be cool okay. I know. Now there's something that you mentioned that maybe our audience didn't pick up but there's something about breath work and how you actually influence or guide the paint to go a very specific direction. Tell us a little bit about the breathwork stuff. So what I was when I'm doing my acrylic fusion technique, it's a constant process and I'm constantly finessing. And what I've found is that when I physically have these cups of paint and then I pour it on a surface, I use gravity like you mentioned physicality of moving paint but to get more intricate details I use my breath so I get very close to the surface specifically on flat surfaces that I then blow into whether it's a blue, into a purple, or blue into a white or whatever it would be. And those natural kind of blends that happen, those color schemes that happen organically from that are so beautiful that I can't physically recreate in any other way. So that's what makes the artwork so unique in that instance, and being so close and intimate to the artwork as well. And also being that close, you get kind of high on the paint fumes, which is good to an extent but then you get a little bit dizzy so I need to be careful of how much breathing I do on it. Do you ever push your breath through a straw or something to focus the breath? I did at the beginning but it wasn't giving me the desired effect that I was looking for and then we went from a straw using my breath and then like using like a hair dryer and I was feeling and when you use the hair dryer it's harder to control kind of thing because it goes so even if you narrow down the funnel of it it still wasn't as controlled as the way I want it so I can blow air hard, soft, delicately and all these kind of factors it's much more controlled by the way that I do it and I feel like that's the way it works best. Okay, if you're listening to the pod and not on the YouTube, you're going to see a bunch of objects behind Craig's head. I think there's soccer balls back there. Is that what I'm seeing? That's correct. Those soccer balls are the... The project that started this whole incredible career for me, that's the self initiated project that started it all. And I've had offers from countless people throughout the years wanting to buy them, but I won't let them go because they're such a prized possession. Do you make other objects that are for sale? Those aren't for sale, but yeah. Those are the only ones that are not for sale. Basically everything else is for sale and that we sell throughout brands and through our shop and private collectors and stuff like that and galleries. And what are the price ranges for some of these objects that you make? So some of the objects for the soccer balls, for instance, they can range from like 5000 British that is. And then the larger scale stuff can go from 10, 15, 25 grand. Also depends on the complexity of the work. fabrication if it's a larger sculpture type thing. We're working on larger scale stuff right now which is getting up to the 50 grand stage which is quite exciting, between 50 and 100 actually, which is quite fascinating. Large scale, what is that? How big are we talking? We're talking, so the very recent one that we're working on is One and a half meters wide by two meters kind of thing and height kind of thing and it's a big large scale I can't say anything other than a large scale sculpture or my wife will get me into big trouble on this one. Okay so bigger than a refrigerator I think right? Yeah. Okay that's pretty big. All right. And these are private commissions? That one is. That's a private commissions. Yeah. Okay. Are we in the shop right now? This is the studio in my hometown in Scotland, a place called Greenock. So I've got a beautiful studio and you won't be able to see it, but I've got this huge window and you can see the beautiful river and the hills and the beautiful sights of Scotland. Usually on a clear day, but right now it's grey skies and raining. So that's a typical day in Scotland. Yeah. All right. Let's take us back to the start here because we talked about reinvention and transformation. You are the, I believe if my memory serves correct, the second athlete that's been on our show that is related in the visual arts. So the first one was a professional kickboxer who wanted to win a title in Thai kickboxing. Yours is a bit different. Tell us about your former life. So in my former life, I used to be a professional soccer player. I played in the lower leagues of Scotland, so it wasn't the top end, but I was a professional for five years. And honestly, growing up, all I ever wanted to become was a professional soccer player. But as time went on, I found it hugely frustrating. And due to opportunities not being there, and it's no matter how well I did in training, no matter how well I did in games, the opportunities weren't coming that I deserved. And it got to a point where I was just sickened. and very very frustrated by the game that i decided that well i got to a point where i was actually very unhappy and i wanted to step away and find my happiness again and that's where creativity came into it how long did you think that this was going to be your thing how when did you first start playing soccer and then to what point do you get to this place where you're like maybe this isn't right for me well i've always i played soccer from i mean a very very early age like my older brother played a massive influence on that he used to drag me to the park and play football or soccer sorry and so it was always a burning ambition because when you're playing at that young age you dream of being like the the superstars of the game and you're emulating them so i was like i want to do that but what i was doing kind of so to give you an example We used to go to the park during the day and me, my brother and all my friends would play there for hours and hours upon hours. Then my mum would shout from the window, "Dinner's ready!" to go home, have dinner. But in the evening it was too dark to go back outside. so what I used to do was get my paper and pens out and I used to draw like soccer boots or cleats as we call it in America isn't it cleats yeah and soccer balls and football kits like everything football related but in a creative sense so I was always drawing but they're related back to soccer and that continued through me from an early age to a teenager and then from high school there was actually probably an interesting story to share So at the age of 15, the football club or soccer club, sorry, what decided me as a full time professional soccer player. So essentially taking me out of education and to start this career. But there was There was something in me that felt like I had one more year to go at high school and my mum who is incredible and most importantly as well is my art teacher Mr Murray and I should call him Paul even though it's weird to call him by his first name but he had a massive influence on me because he noticed that I had something in talent wise before I even knew it if you were in my life back then everyone was like "Clay Black, soccer player" I said it's always going to be but he noticed I had a talent in art and I loved it did I feel I had a talent enough not at that point because I was over not overshadowed but this thought of becoming a soccer player was all I ever wanted but we had a special agreement in place with the soccer team which meant that and which was uncommon at the time which I would go train with the first team of the soccer team in the morning and then in the afternoons I would go study art and design in the classroom in the high school so but I wasn't part of a typical curriculum so I didn't have any like classmates so it was a big massive classroom and on one side the teacher Mr Murray was teaching all his students and then I was on the other side figuring this out all on my own and he would give me five minutes of his time when he came over and our relationship was so strong there was very very direct feedback basically going why are you doing this and I would push back and it was it was a perfect relationship that I needed in that time in my life So I came away from high school graduating with the advanced high years, what you call it here in Scotland. And then I went and played football for five years without touching art or even thinking about creativity or anything like that. And then I mentioned a lot of things of not enjoying soccer anymore. And I decided to leave the game totally, which shocked everybody because I had offers to stay at the club, go to other football, soccer club, sorry. But I had no ambition to do it because it wasn't making me happy. And then I had that pivotal moment where I was like, what makes me happy? And I thought back of art and drawing and all those kind of things. I thought, I love that. So the weird thing is, is the day that I decided to say no to soccer, I went to the pub or the bar, for instance. And the first person I meet after five years is my art teacher. Oh, wow. Which is incredible. So I see Mr. Murray and he says, what's happening in your life? So I offload, tell him, I hate soccer. I hate soccer. It's not happening for me. I don't know what to do with my life. I want to find my happiness again and he said these wise words to me he said Craig you were crap at football anyway why don't you go study art and design and I was like art and design and it was just like a light bulb moment going oh like we did back five years ago kind of thing I was like I don't even have my portfolio I don't have anything at all and he said to me come to my house tomorrow I've got something to show you So I was like, I had no idea what he was talking about. So the next day comes, I've got a terrible hangover. I go to his house and he's like, come in, come in. And as I walk in the house, he walks out with my portfolio from high school. And he says to me, Craig, I knew you were going to need this one day. And I'm a very emotional person. And I burst into tears because it meant so much to me. And I couldn't believe it. and I was like and he said to me I knew that you're gonna need this go on and do what you were supposed to do and like a week later he got me into an interview for a college course for graphic design in Glasgow and I went into that college course and I absolutely loved the world of creativity design and therefore led me into art so if it wasn't for my art teacher I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today so what am I in years What an incredible moment that must have been like you can't script this kind of stuff. You're totally right and it was such a pivotal moment and the weird thing is also is we've actually had interest from TV companies about this kind of story and we've done a docum I got interviewed for the BBC here in the UK and we caught we got I'm going to call him Paul if it's like call me Paul if I ever remember I may call Mr Murray it's about football soccer Mr Murray Paul he came in for this documentary big thing in the Salmon workshop and because every people knew this story and like we want to cover this so he's sitting there the camera crew is there and he tells it in his terms and he's a very strong proud Scotsman right not as emotional as me so as he tells it I'm sitting in the corner there's a camera crew and I'm hiding in the back and he starts talking and I start choking up and I'm like making like small noises like holding back the tears and he's like is that Craig crying again it's like he's always crying and I'm like oh no I wouldn't cry baby. I don't want to cry baby. You said earlier when you're playing with your older brother in the field and it's dark and your mom called you in for dinner that you wanted to live in your mind at least the game again because if you can't go outside you can leave it on paper and it's kind of interesting that you did this in the most unusual way and that you were drawing what you couldn't be doing outside. Because I thought you said you were going to say you came home and you were laying in bed and you're just like bouncing the ball inside and causing all kinds of trouble there. But yeah, you found creativity as an outlet for that. Now, you said you've been doing this forever. So this is like, you're still a young person, right? You're drawing. Do those drawings still exist somewhere? Probably in the darkest depths of my mother's cupboard somewhere. She would have kept them definitely. There's some poignant artworks I've made over the years that she's definitely kept and framed. So funnily enough, last week we were looking for them. So those sketches is something I'm going to have to find because they've actually played a part later in my life, specifically in my design career. I'll share it now actually so I used to draw the type on the back of shirts so when I made the football kits I used to write Zidane and Roberto Carlos like these are the players that I idolized when I was younger as I was writing these things it was typography but at the time I had no idea what type was now my older brother used to so we support a team in Scotland called Rangers Football Club So which is massive here and there's two sides, there's Rangers and the Celtic right, two rivals, but we on the Rangers side. So we used to go to Ibrox, which is a stadium and I used to dream about being a player and playing on that pitch. But at the same time, I was mesmerized by the football kits and more specifically the tape on the back of the shirts. So the players that was watching and it was like, I'm going to rhyme off some players that probably no one's going to know here, but like Gascoigne, Alan McCoy, these are like legends and heroes of mine. I was always mesmerized by who made that type, who made that stuff on the back of the shots, but again, not knowing what typography was. So I always played on me and went from an early age. And then when I, I'm totally saying tagging here, so just bear with me here. When I went into that college course of graphic design, the first day, where the lecturer the teacher was talking about football and he says oh this the tape on the back of shirt is called typography and I was like what typography shirts and I was like tell me more and he's like yeah like it was going through like all football kits and this is typography and this is fonts and this and I was like that's what I want to do I'm going to do that I'm going to figure out how to do that thing so While I was studying graphic design, I was learning about branding and various elements of other graphic design courses and stuff, which was great. But again, internally I was thinking about I want to do this type thing so I was starting to look at people in the industry who were already kind of doing it in terms of like independent designers and typographic artists and lettering artists and all those kind of things and I thought it was so fascinating and so exciting and exhilarating I was like I want to step into this field so While I was studying in that time of graduating, I already had a decision in my head that I was going to go out on my own to become an independent designer, specializing in typography and lettering. But I knew that I had to get agency experience and learn from others. I didn't want to come out of uni and just go, I'm the superstar type guy. I'm like, you know, I need to learn. And then I managed. So after two years of agency life, I ended up starting my own studio as an independent designer specializing in typography and lettering. But my dream goal that whole time was to do the tight face for Rangers Football Club, that team that I supported growing up. And then five years after starting my studio, I got to create the tight face for Rangers Football Club. and that was in pinnacle of my typographic game and it meant the whole world to me and that's a whole different story that I don't speak about later but that was that journey from childhood to doing the tie face for rangers and that encapsulated all those moments of playing football but also in the creativity side as well and bringing it all together was such an unbelievable experience for me still is to this day unbelievable. How old are you when this commission comes in that you're doing this project for the Rangers? I am 36 now and so this commission came in when that was nearly five years ago so 31 I was and I was running my studio at that point for four years, five years at that point. I think doing my own thing. Did you not crumble under that kind of pressure? There's a few things and feel the fear and do it anyway. With moments like that, I'll be honest, Chris, I was racking it. I was like, oh no, this is a magnitude of project. But I'm like, Why not me? Why does it have to be someone else? Why can't this guy from a small town in Scotland go on to do the tight face for Rangers Football Club? And then when I started to program my mind to be, and this is something I've been doing for over the years, actually, the resilience and the belief that I can do this. And when I start saying those even out loud to myself, then that means that I can do it and I always think about you go so though that M&M just came in my head that one shot one opportunity so I thought to myself I'm going to go into a stadium and I'm going to give it my all just the same way that if I was an athlete or I was a football player in that pitch I would give my all it's the exact same thing that I do with every single project that I work on to this day I give my absolute best and I know I could always hold my head high because I thought I've given everything regardless of what that outcome would be if it's a success or it's a failure or whatever at least I've given my all and that means more to me than the actual finished project if that means this so that mindset was the catalyst and I knew if I could show that passion then half the battle is won because people buy into people and I think that's a lot that creatives don't realize they think it's the works enough but if you're presenting and you'll notice more that the way that you present and you articulate and the way that you show enthusiasm you've already got you're already one in a sense that they want to buy into you and then because of that the work not that it's secondary but it's byproduct of what you do and I felt like having that and acknowledging that and knowing that internally has been a key to why a lot of things have happened for me down the road. Let's get into the art part like where do we go from doing commercial work commission work for people and then exploring your own visual art So with the Rangers project, to end that one, that was the top, right? That was the pinnacle for me. And the success of that project led to, let's say, Premier League teams and La Liga teams, bigger teams than Rangers, supposedly bigger teams, to commission me to do the typeface for their clubs. I had zero interest. because for me when I was studying my goal was to do the typeface for rangers and I accomplished that and I always say to myself internally once I get to that moment I'm going to pivot my career and become the artist that I've always wanted to be now becoming a visual artist is what I've always wanted to be since I was a kid like when I was drawing and stuff but there was the paints of the the freedom to experiment and create and create things that were unimaginable at first and then being brought to life so The moment of the tight face for Rangers so we're going back two years and I'm going to tell you the story of how Acrylic Fusion was born. So two years prior to the tight face being released my wife Ali comes home and she's wearing these pair of gym leggings so these gym leggings have this crazy pattern on them which resembles acrylic fusion. As she walks into the room I've kind of she starts talking to me and I've zoned out because I'm looking at her legs thinking how does someone create that pattern and I say it out loud and she's going what are you talking about I'm like your gym leggings they're so cool So I'm at the desk and I go, you know what, I'm going to go onto YouTube and type in paint mixing and paint pouring. I watch one video, I watch another and I'm in this endless videos of paint pouring stuff and I'm like, oh my God, this is incredible. I want to try this. So I literally run out of the house and I go to the local art store and I buy like a rudimentary like acrylic paints and pouring medium and that and a little canvas and I get back home and this was, this is going back nearly what six years ago, seven years ago, six. I had my iPhone, I had it over my shoulder watching my process and I thought hey I'm gonna try this and I started working on this canvas pouring cups of paint and I absolutely loved the process, I loved the challenge, the problem solving, the instantaneous of it. It took me away from the computer which I also loved as well but that getting my hands covered in paint I absolutely f'ing loved it to be honest and I was like this is it that was a moment I was in this two bed we lived in a two bedroom apartment and the spare bedroom was my studio at the time so I had this canvas on the floor and I thought this is the thing that's going to change my life I knew it I knew it right there I had this feeling my gut was telling me so that's two years prior to the rangers thing so What I did for two years in the background is I perfected my craft of acrylic fusion. I worked tirelessly and working on my craft and my process of figuring out this paint pouring and then along the way I started figuring out a unique way that worked for me which ended up becoming acrylic fusion when I've devised this technique because technically there's no one in the world doing what I'm doing. I'm doing it, I'm creating a unique selling point in every artwork I create regardless of the same canvas, same color scheme, it will be totally different every single time and that becomes a unique selling point. So for two years in the background I was perfecting this, building up to becoming the visual artist because I knew one day I was going to pivot. At that point I didn't know rangers was going to happen so fast forward two years, I've got two years in the bank of practicing, the only person I knew about this was my wife Ali. Rangers was released. Now my daughter was born Olivia and we had that two bedroom apartment so I had to, I got kicked out of my studio and became her bedroom so at that point I had to find somewhere to work so there was either an office space where I could continue doing type or where I'm currently at is I found a studio where I could paint and as soon as I came in here and there's a friend of mine who owns the workshop space he says I've got this studio come see it so I've come in here and right I mentioned about the window here he put the shutters up and it's a beautiful sunny day and I could see across the water I could see the hills this whole place was a blank harvest and I thought this is it this is where it begins so I've decided mentally and I've told my wife I'm ending typography at the peak of where I was at Pio Falk was crazy because I actually spoke to three business coaches about this dilemma of wanting to move in and becoming a visual artist but every one of them said to me keep both going because it's financially safe and it's better for your brand and all those kind of things but I have the mindset of if I want to become a visual artist over here I need to go all in because I can't be distracted by over here so I had to cut all ties to focus on everything here and that is what I did so I jumped over here to become a visual artist came into the studio I've been two years of process development knowing how I can do the technique but essentially I had no clients no projects no nothing no money coming in So what I thought about is what happened in my previous career as type is self-initiated projects leading to commercial work. I'm a massive, massive believer in the importance of self-initiated work. So that's where these footballs in the background came in. So I, one of those moments and the Shiver moments and I thought, how cool would acrylic fusion football like be poured onto a football and the brand colors of Scotland because at that time Scotland qualified for Euro 2020 which is the first time Scotland qualified for a tournament in 22 years so it was a very joyful moment and so I created this football in the studio for the first time and I was like this is incredible I'm on to something here I phoned my wife Ali and she was out pushing Olivia in the pram pouring rain and I was like come to the studio right away I've got something to show you in the studio and I purposely didn't tell her what it was I opened the door and she was like my god this is incredible and I thought you're right this is incredible so that was in January 2020 and the tournament kicked off six months later so my strategic entrepreneurial brain kicked in and thought rather than just focusing on one ball why don't I create a series of footballs based on countries participating at the tournament but also at the same time showcasing the process behind it, allegedly showing how I create the artworks through videography and photography and we spent like me and Ali spent like six months bringing this to life working with a videographer who I swore to see because he said like don't tell anyone about this project And then it's six weeks worth of content. And the reason why I created this content was very specific to like a brand collateral for like a football tournament. So what we do is like, I would have two footballs beside each other and an image Scotland v England. And having I've still hung up in tight a little bit. So I created like a tight face and it was Scotland v England and it would show how my artworks could make an impact on a brand specifically in a game setting like that. So I rolled out this compilation video a week before the tournament kick off, which was like showcasing all the footballers being brought to life. Again, at that moment, no one in the world knew I wanted to announce myself as a visual artist. I had this deep belief that this was going to change everything. and then when I hit play and ascend there was a little second I'm not gonna lie Chris a little moment going oh is this going to work but I thought no feel the fear do it anyway hit play send went out to the world and it I don't want to say it went viral but it went everywhere and literally everything changed from that moment and it changed my life but not only my life my family's life and the opportunities we have is based on that self-initiated project. A couple things here to unpack Number one, you basically have a habit, I see a pattern here doing things that everybody's like, this is what you should be doing. Nope, I'm tired. I'm doing something else. Everybody's like, why? Don't do that, Greg. You're like, no, there's an inner voice. I must listen to it. I must obey it. I'm going to go do this thing. And then you stop. But in the time in which you stop doing client work and go all in on the art, because it takes a while for you to perfect it and figure out your own way of doing things. How are you surviving? What are you doing for money? So Off the back of the Rangers project and various other projects, we banked enough money to cover me at the start of becoming an artist. Now, to give you insight into the financial part of that was actually very scary because we banked enough money for my wife, Ali, to take maternity from her job. So we had a bunch of money for her. Now, I was dealing with the business of my studio at the time. I accounted for one tax account but I didn't account for the second one so I had to go to my wife Ali and say see that money that we've saved for the maternity like I need to use that to pay for my tax bill and this is in between the January and the June to announcing that project she's like okay but then I started to formulate this idea and vision of how I wanted to do the footballs behind me and I knew and again I've never practiced on a football prior to that moment so I was very much experimenting at the exact same time and to give you context I had to buy a blank football which says costs like 15 bucks straight and once I put pain on it you can't control Z or command Z and go back the way that's it so I bought you see about seven footballs there but it was about 50 in total that I had to practice and finesse and all those kind of things but to bring that vision to life I hired in a content team to do the videography and photography so to do that though it basically was depleting all the money in our savings and to give you context Chris like I don't have mummy and daddy to back me up right so I went I was like to be honest it was going to be a huge financial risk now Ali's off work I've stopped doing type I've said I'm doing I'm focusing on this art I went to my wife Ali and I said listen to do this I need to use up practically all the money we've got in our account to bring it to life now on paper and everyone else will tell you no and if you tell me no don't do it like we've got a family now we need to protect ourselves I will step away happily happily step away I totally believe in myself and I know for a fact that this is going to change our lives but you have the final say and she turned around and looked at me and says Craig if anyone can do this it's you I believe in you go do it and that lit a fire in me because I swear I was like a superhero at that point I was like come on so I went to the wire and see the day that I so you mentioned that six months of earnings dwindling down paying rent mortgage all that stuff the day that we launched the compilation video we had 52 pounds in our joint account 52 pounds not knowing what was coming next right when the next bit of voice is coming in but that I don't it's very emotional because it's such a personal thing I don't put on anyone else to do that but i just knew it was the right thing to do and i did it and it literally three days later my first client was uefa which is the one of the top football institutions in the world who commissioned me to do a tv promo shortly after i was a premier league and within 12 months i collaborated with fifa it was the pinnacle of the football world and i went to the world cup in qatar and everything changed and i managed to fill i managed to fill that pot up very very quickly based on that and so it was a huge huge risk but the people around me believe me enough to give me that fire to go on and I'm so grateful for them to encourage me even though on paper it's mental to do. There's an expression I changed the expression a little bit behind every great man is an even greater woman. Absolutely. So it's like she's like I don't want you to do this and you're like done. I want to give you some credit here You're a good man for saying it the way that you did. I have to risk everything to do this, but I will walk away from this right now because there's no guarantees this is going to work. And I'll happily, this is the part that you say, I'll happily do it if you just say no. So that was the most permission base. No strings attached. What would you like to do? Because we have to do this together. And you're a good man, Craig. Thank you. I'm thrilled for all that's happened since then. let's do this though let's make this super practical for people because i also don't want to be irresponsible here it's like everybody pursue your dreams and put everything on on credit card and roll the dice and live the dream like craig did yeah because that's not going to work out for a lot of people so let's do this what are your three key insights for for how you're able to break through i i know what they are i think but so this moment where you're heading all in you hired a team there's a big gamble there's a big cultural event that's happening, you're tying to culture. What are the big three takeaways? If you want to have a shot at something like this? What do you think they are? For me, and I'll refer it back to that project, because that was the breakout kind of thing. And I would say having a unique selling point was a great thing. Having creating something that was bespoke and very much authentic to me. And I was very much sharing that with the world and it came from internally from me but also when I'm sharing this the content of it it was the highest possible content and quality that I could possibly produce and I think that was a key as well I was basically I was in the mindset of thinking of the brand how could they use these assets so that's why I invested quite heavily into the videographer and the photographer to get the best I could possibly do because if the brand can envision using these assets it makes their life easier and I felt that was a key thing because every project that I've ever done I've invested in photography and videography and due to the highest possible quality I could possibly do because especially on the self-initiated projects because if you imagine a brand was on your Instagram, I'm talking to the creatives listening in, if there's a brand looking on your portfolio then they can envision how their brand product or activation or where it could be could be articulated in your style and your vision by the quality of visionary videography if at all we've been taken to it kind of thing and also don't be afraid of putting it out there as well like when I released that project I doubled down on it like in terms of using social media platforms such as LinkedIn which is a massive platform for me but also Instagram all the other social media platforms I was using at the time but also PR and getting into blogs as well and doing as much outreach is possible and don't be afraid of if you've got someone like for instance I sent it personally to the guy at UEFA privately it says look at this I can make an impact on your brand and he ignored me first but then he phoned me back three days later and says you know what this is too good to ignore I want to talk to you about this project but if I didn't have the bravery to send that message to him with the content it may have not happened So I'm a big believer in putting yourself out there. And because I think what I've learned from other creators as well, they're crippled by sharing things to the world and what people may think. And I can understand it to a certain extent, but you've got to put that aside because if you don't share about what you're doing how can you expect anyone to see or believe in what you're doing and that was the kind of mindset I had that was the key takeaways and breakthrough to make that project going forward. Here are my takeaways. Number one, do something that taps into people's deep passions. People are very passionate about soccer, football. They're very passionate about hot sauce. I don't know why they are. People are very passionate about coffee. So there's things that you can do for mustard and no one cares. Just no one cares. But if you tap into something that people are deeply passionate about, they're actively looking for it. And when they see that you understand them, their souls kind of light up. Number two, thinking campaigns. I love how you were like, okay, we have a certain amount of time and I have to create these assets and I'm kind of thinking not a one off, but like six weeks worth of content I could drip out and really build on something because a lot of people just think in onesies, they do it once and they'll have a hit and then it's like days or weeks before the next thing happens. And there's, there's There's power in that because you can leverage your resources to maximum potential because you don't want to keep hiring these guys for a day shoot and then you only do one thing. You want to try and get as much done as possible. The next thing is you were very good at timing this to tie to a cultural event. This is happening. It's the first time Scotland's made it in 22 years or something like that. It's significant. So even if you don't get global support, you're getting at the local support. And that's very, very important. There's a bunch of other things too, like you said. You want to tell stories visually, which you did. You want to create assets that they can use and you just don't want to leave it up to their imagination. Here's what you can do. Here's how you can apply it. It's so easy. You have to be kind of a dummy. There's a book. It's called Don't Make Me Think Stupid. It's It's a user experience design. And that's true about almost everything. When people have to think too hard, it gives them a headache. And that's going to likely get in the way of you doing something with them. And then everything else, hopefully, takes care of itself. Craig, we're almost out of time here. I want to ask you one last question, okay? And you may already have answered this, but you have... success in the art world, had success as a soccer player, footballer, and success as a typographer, letter form designer. The inevitable question is, how do you balance your creative integrity with your commercial success so that you don't become like an art factory? We do here at our studio, at Studio K Black, is it's a lifestyle business. So for me, success is working alongside my wife, Allie. which is amazing but we get to travel we take a little girl and travel the world working on these brand collaborations so we've purposely kept our studio small because we value family time more than anything so Olivia Long has massively helped her development from a young toddler and our way that she's been cultured seeing the world so we want to bring her and part of our world in terms of creativity as well. So I've had, I'll be honest, I've had offers from investors and stuff like that to create a huge factory of turning out artworks and stuff. But I feel personally that I lose the authenticity of what I'm doing. I also and I think that's very, very important to the consumer and to whoever's buying the artwork like you know that came from my hands and that means more to me than anything. And I'm happy with that. Like I don't need, I'll be honest, I don't need multi millions in the bank to justify happiness. I am I always say I'm the happiest guy in the world right now because I get to do what I dream about doing and I'm doing it alongside my family which is great and that's the most important thing and also what I've realized is when collaborating with brands specifically is they know that it's me and Ali and they know you're talking to the artist and you're talking to the managing director so when I come on to doing a live art performance they know it's me it's not a little another team member here who's coming to do it and it's not quite the acrylic fusion we thought of so i've purposely kept that intact of where she do so we're very selective of the projects that we do and and make sure that it aligns with our values and the excitement that we want to do and i'm very fortunate that brands align with those things most of the time and every project we've collaborated on or continue to collaborate on are so varied and different and constantly different challenges. Don't get me wrong there's times where we could potentially expand the studio and we bring in people externally for certain projects but we're happy with that we're happy with the model we've got right now. Saying that maybe in five years time and I might have a bigger studio and more people maybe but right now my focus is on I'll be honest my little girl and she comes first and foremost so that's the most important thing for me is that I don't affect my creative endeavours and goals and challenges and take that away from her she's part of this as much as anything and I think that's the most important thing for us as a studio. How old is your daughter right now? She is four and she's going to be five in August which she keeps telling me about every single day just to reinforce that. So I know this is a weird question, but let's fast forward. She's 18 and she's like, dad, I have this idea. I want to drop everything I'm doing to pursue this one crazy thing that you cannot even understand what it is. What do you say to her? Go all in. I'm fully behind you. Go all in. Whatever she wants to do in this world, I'm going to support her no matter what, because that's the support I got. when I was younger my mum like incredible woman and whether it was football, design, being an artist she's like all I want to see Craig is that smile on your face, I'm getting emotional saying that and that's the one for Olivia, she keeps saying she wants to be a professional artist like her daddy which I'm very happy about but if she decides she wants to go and do something totally different I'm happy with that as long as she's happy that's all that matters for me I think that's a beautiful way to end this. I want to reiterate something you've said at least twice on this episode, just so that our audience can hear it. Feel the fear. It's real. Do it anyways. Felt the fear many times, Greg, and it's not stopped you one time. You're still a young man, 36 years old, still big, beautiful, bright things probably ahead of you that you don't even know about just yet. Not a betting person, but history would have it that you're going to have another pivot somewhere in a couple of years and we'll see you at that road. Yeah. Whatever that might be. People want to find out more about your artwork and your studio. Where should we send them? So you'll find me on Instagram, which is @_trekblack. I'm on LinkedIn as well. You can find me @trekblack and I should come up as a visual artist on there. TikTok, which I need to double down on, is at underscore Craig Black. And then you can go to my website, which is craig.black.
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    “Feel the fear.”

    — Chris Do

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