Structure enables creativity: bringing financial literacy into design

Design schools rarely teach budgeting, invoicing, or how to run a studio, and usually financial admin used to just mean a part-time bookkeeper doing the books once a month. Why do you think that gap exists, and what's actually different about the kind of consultancy you offer?

Hot take, but maybe they are overwhelmed themselves? Business isn't something you can cover in one workshop, it's so many different fields at once. Management? Marketing? Accounting? Logistics? Taxation? Controlling? There's a lot to cover, and it rarely fits into a single session, so people often don't even know where to start. And running a business in the real world is maybe something nobody can fully prepare you for anyway, no matter how many workshops you had! What's different about what I offer is that I'm not the loud consultant who tells you what to do and then leaves you alone with it. My approach is about making the numbers visible, numbers you can actually trust, because so many advisors set something up quickly, just for the sake of making things look better, but clients often end up more lost than before. I'm more: here's what we have, what do YOU want to do with it? It feels more holistic to me, because you uncover where you want to go, instead of me telling you where that should be.

Studios and agencies increasingly behave like brands themselves. Does that make your role more central to how a studio survives, not just how it looks?

If a studio is building a brand, which I think a lot of people and businesses nowadays do, that brand needs a structure behind it that can actually hold it. Looking good from the outside doesn't keep it running long term. The more a studio behaves like a brand, the more pressure there is on getting the numbers right and all these decisions that shape whether it can actually thrive. So my role is not to make it look fancier, I'm there to make sure the structure underneath can carry it. And honestly, that gap between how a studio looks and what's actually going on behind it can get a little wild. Sometimes the loudest "we're hiring, we're growing" energy you see online isn't backed by a prosperous business reality. And that gap, between performing stability and actually having it, is exactly where a lot of the pressure builds up.

The gap between performing stability and actually having it is exactly where a lot of the pressure builds up.

You were part of reworking Dinamo's entire pricing system for licenses. What was broken before, and what changed after? Licensing has historically been the thing studios skip when budgets are tight, do you see now that shifting for Dinamo?

When I came to Dinamo in 2018, Fabian and Johannes had just set up their business as they were growing, and I started doing their accounting. At one point they needed a sales report, and there wasn't even a way to export one, I was literally copy-pasting numbers out of a PDF into a spreadsheet. So Johannes and I sat down and went back to basics: what's the product, the weight, the license type, how do bundles and discounts actually work? We always worked well together like that, me showing what the numbers say, him figuring out what to do next. That foundation eventually fed into a value-based pricing model, one of the first in type design, built together with Rea Stamatoulakis, a pricing specialist, and Konradin Breyer, Johannes' brother, who brought in the product and economics perspective. My part in all of it was delivering the structure everyone else could build on, a bit thankless in the moment, but once you get it right, the sky's the limit. And yes, that shift is real: once licensing has a clear structure behind it, it stops being the thing studios skip when budgets are tight and becomes something they can actually keep building on.

How do you perceive the current state of design education?

From my point of view, the business side of design education is still treated like a last minute workshop in the final semester, instead of something woven through the years. If I could design my dream version of it, students would get continuous feedback on this early on, not just one workshop at the end. A real mix of know-how lessons and individual consulting sessions, so the business practice grows alongside their creative work instead of getting squeezed right before graduation. And that's not just for the self-employed! Even if you end up employed, you'd still benefit from it. In general, I think education across all fields could do more to prepare students for actual life. Things like emotional intelligence, negotiation skills, social skills, or tech literacy would serve students just as much as the theory of their subject and degree.

In your opinion, what is the role of emerging designers?

With all the technological progress happening right now, good or bad, and the way society is shifting, I think emerging designers will increasingly need to be tech-focused and business savvy. From there, it's up to you whether you want to become more of an all-rounder or dig deeper into a niche. Honestly, staying agile might be the biggest skill of all right now, whichever path you choose. Nobody really knows what's coming next, whether that's AI, the economy, or funding cuts hitting creatives in so many countries. So, whether you end up as an all-rounder or a niche expert, being able to adapt will help you either way.

What advice would you offer to a young designer entering the professional world today?

Let me answer this from my perspective: You don't need to know every business concept to run one. Even people with a business degree don't automatically know how, even if they have studied it. Honestly it's often the opposite! It's more about figuring out what works for you, testing things out, and adjusting. You will learn as you go! Especially as a creative person, it's genuinely interesting to combine the business side and the creative side as they complement each other more than people think. And you don't have to be an expert in everything, just understand the basics, and bring in support where you need it. If you're thinking about going freelance, here's what I'd keep in mind on the numbers side: Separate your private and business finances early, especially your bank accounts, it makes everything easier and some legal forms even require it. Build yourself a safety cushion, a common rule of thumb is three to six months of your average expenses, and if revenue isn't steady yet, it's okay to keep a side job going for peace of mind. Review your numbers (such as income, expenses, profit) regularly, monthly or quarterly. A well-organized accounting tool already gives you most of this. And know your personal expenses too, rent, groceries, travel, all of it, because if you want to live off your creative work, it needs to cover your own life as well.