All You Need: Scotland's Design Agency of the Year

School drop off is over – Laura Thomson and her husband, Ed Watt, walk six minutes down the road to their studio in rural Stirlingshire. For three of their five working days, agency hours bend around the school run, prioritising blended family life over the rat race. They work from the quiet loft of a former architects’ office in sleepy Balfron, covered in climbing ivy and with skylights overlooking the Campsies.

But on “a Thursday and a Friday, it's balls to the wall,” laughs Thomson. This approach is paying off – Need has grown into one of Scotland's most respected design practices, having just won Scotland’s Design Agency of the Year.

“I feel a little bit embarrassed about it,” she caveats, “it’s just in Scotland.” This humility belies an international body of work, that judges unanimously agreed ‘they want to see more of.’ Clients typically come from the cultural sector, including a plethora of architects, reflecting the couple’s personal interests. “Good people doing good things,” she summarises.

Working with clients who share their values is high on the priority list, having turned down lucrative work from global megabrands in the past. “As soon as you start that stuff, there's no going back again,” Thomson explains.

That confidence to choose projects, however, comes with experience. Early in her career, she took every job she could get. "If you're from a working-class family... you have to say yes."

After graduating with a BA in Sculpture from Gray’s, she moved to Glasgow and took a retail job at Hobbs. Accepting her fate as an art school graduate, she prepared herself to work up the ranks, charming the business ladies with her wicked sense of humour.

One day Audrey, a regular who Thomson had built rapport with, came in, needing quick help finding a flexible outfit for a meeting she had in London the next day, flitting between her fashion and banking clients. At the till, curious as to where this glamorous lifestyle came from, Thomson discovered she ran her own copywriting agency.

Coincidentally, Thomson explains that “at the time I was doing loads of creative writing, just for myself, not for anyone,” so she confessed to Audrey, “‘I'd love to be a writer’…and she was like, ‘Here's my business card, get in touch.’

“I didn't because I was like, ‘Well, who the fuck am I to do that?’ And then she kept coming back in, and she was like, ‘You haven't been in touch. You have to get in touch.’ And then my mum and dad were like, ‘this is a huge opportunity... get in touch!’"

Audrey offered her a job. “I worked five days at Hobbs, then two days there freelancing. It was absolutely nuts. She gave me a job as a junior, and then three months after that, she was like, ‘I'm taking Junior off your title.’

“I was like, yes! I was managing the L’Oreal account, I was 23, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so glamorous, this is amazing.’”

Photo: Charlotte Kinsella

On the day she was promoted, Thomson realised she couldn’t shake a feeling of nausea. A visit to the doctor revealed she was two months pregnant with her daughter, Violet.

Audrey gave her five months off and a job on her return. “She was fantastic, like really, really good.”

Although Thomson now has the luxury of choosing who she works with, her advice to those just starting out remains: “Someone's always watching.”

The same pragmatism underpins Need's design ethos of necessary design. “Quite often, a client will come to us and say I need a website. And we'll look at their stuff and we'll say, actually, you just need a rebrand, maybe a reskin. Or maybe you do need a website, but it doesn't have to be as big.

“It's not always cutting things down. Sometimes a client will come and be like, ‘I just need a logo,'” she counters, explaining that “we don't do logos… the price that we would give you for designing a logo wouldn't be worth designing a logo because you need all the other parts. You have to do the thinking.

“It's just, really, exactly what the client needs.”

Once the work is done, Thomson and Watt keep the doors open, forming long relationships with clients, checking in and offering advice as the brand develops in the hands of its new custodians. “We never just disappear... you can just come back to us and say, ‘Is this on brand?’”

With a roster of happy clients, beautiful work, and a growing team, a couple of years ago Thomson and Watt discussed what the future might look like with architects Paper Igloo, clients who have become good friends of the couple. “You guys could totally grow,” Need suggested to them, but their response was firm.

“We don't want to grow.” Paper Igloo explained. “That's not success to us. Success to us is having enough money that we can do what we want – we have our beautiful house, and we work in our house, and we can pick and choose our projects.”

“I was like, ‘Oh shit…’” Thomson mutters. This conversation shifted the studio’s priorities, prompting the move from Glasgow and leaving their studio next to the Barras for life in Balfron.

“We don't measure success in the scale of the business [anymore]. We measure success by how good our lives are, and right now they're... the best they've been.”