Alan Sawyers & Nathan Cockburn - AS Design
How long have you been running the business?
AS: I started the business initially in 2011 but was always in employment and AS Design was a sideline. I went full time in the business in September 2019.
NC: I started in February 2022 and this is only my second job.
What were your career ambitions growing up?
AS: As a kid I wanted to work with animals, but other than that I’m not sure I had ambitions as such. I do often tell Nathan and Josh [Cockburn, Nathan’s brother] that the kind of opportunities available to them at their age didn’t exist twenty-odd years ago. Running your own business wasn’t an option.
NC: I wanted to be an aerospace engineer or astrophysicist. I still really enjoy learning about the universe and looking at the stars through my telescope on the rare occasion we get a clear night sky.
Tell us about your current roles.
AS: We tend to share pretty much all aspects of the work. We have certain things we’re independently good at, and some things we’re similarly bad at, or don’t enjoy, so we talk regularly about the way the business continues to evolve, which sometimes means you stop doing some of the things you don’t like doing – or you find someone who does. As a business, our core is graphic design and web development, but we also offer services like SEO, digital ads management, marketing and social media.
What is your proudest business achievement?
AS: For me, and I know I sound like an embarrassing uncle sometimes, it’s been watching Nathan’s progression and how he’s literally transformed my business. So much so that I haven’t referred to it as “my business” for the past couple of years, I call it “our business” because a big part of it wouldn’t exist without him.
NC: Yeah, my development for me too. I’ve learned lots of practical and technical skills but also a lot about running a business. A few months after I started, we agreed a two-year progression plan, which was mainly about my development. That took us up to February this year and we extended the plan to five years.
AS: Now we pretty much know what the core offering of the business is and how we’re going to develop that, the extended plan is more about our personal goals and values.
How has your industry changed in the last decade?
NC: I’ve only been in it for three of them! But even in that time things like AI and other tools have helped us to change how we do things.
AS: Yeah, I don’t believe the industry itself has changed as much as you might think but the technology has and continues to do so. If I think back ten years, the things clients wanted then are the things they still want today, it’s the platforms that constantly change, and audiences consume information in different ways.
What are you currently working on?
NC: How long have you got!? We both struggle when anyone asks us that question because we do so much and once a task is done we’re straight onto the next one.
AS: About half of our business is made up of long-term retained work, so clients we work with on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and some tasks literally take minutes. We then have projects that can take months, it’s that varied.
Tell us about the team you work with.
NC: The two of us are full time and my younger brother Josh works for us part time. He started while still at school as a summer job and he’s stuck at it for over two years. He’s just started uni so he joins us by Zoom a couple of times a week and looks after social media and is great with Photoshop. Alan’s partner Nic also works for AS Design but based at our production unit about five minutes’ drive from the office, where we do a different kind of work for ecommerce clients.
What has been your biggest challenge?
NC: I like to be challenged and I’m pretty determined when it comes to making something work. We work for the singer Toyah and last year Alan asked me if I could re-colour some black and white photographs to match the artistic style of an original 1982 album that we were working on a reissue of.
AS: It probably took Nathan more than 50 hours, so way over and above what we could have realistically charged the record company, but it was a really one of the highlights of the last few years for me, seeing Nathan put so much effort into something and the end result was unbelievable. There are Toyah fans out there with a piece in their collection that would not exist without the work Nathan did. Toyah even namechecked him in a video on her YouTube channel and socials.
What’s been the key to growing the business?
AS: Consistency. We show up. I’ve tried to pass on various wisdoms to Nathan over the years and a couple of them involve not being indestructible. We don’t stay late at the office every night and work until we’re finished, or we’d never stop. We do what we need to and know the rest will be there tomorrow. And I told Nathan after he’d been here a while that I never want him to pull a sicky, and that if he can’t be bothered to come to work then that’s what he tells me. We know where we are with each other then, and not wanting to get up and come to work isn’t exclusive to employees – business owners experience it too.
What that has helped us to develop is a culture of structure and consistency. We’re flexible, we have a really good life-work balance, but we still show up every day. That’s allowed us to build up a base of customers who have come to expect quality, consistency and responsiveness. 80 per cent of our income in 2024 has been generated via retained clients, repeat work or partnerships.
How do you unwind outside of work?
NC: I like to play snooker and darts and watch football, usually big tournaments like the Euros and the World Cup, and NFL. I’m going to the Patriots game at Wembley in October.
AS: I go to a lot of gigs although for some reason my first gig of 2024 wasn’t until September. I’d say usually I go to at least one or two a month.
Favourite Book and Boxset?
AS: I’m not a reader but something we both enjoy is re-watching TV shows we’ve seen a million times before. We found common ground in The Royle Family and Little Britian, both of which Nathan was introduced to by his dad, and he got me into Benidorm, which he used to sit in the office and listen to while he worked.
asdne.co.uk
