Over the last year I've been doing a lot more work helping clients with their content—from running workshops, creating inventories and doing audits, to creating guidelines and writing copy. In order for me to concentrate on this role even more, we've hired a fantastic new team member to be Studio Assistant. Meet Bryn!
Bryn is our youngest Toward-er and rides his bike all the way from Barry. He may be a young'un but he's pretty smart too, having graduated from Swansea University with a MSc Business Economics.
It's been three months now and Bryn has well and truly settled into the assistant role. In that time he has taken on increased responsibility and already proved to be a valuable addition to the team. He approaches every task with a smile, even the more basic stuff like dealing with the recycling, sorting out water for the cooler and other general admin.
I have been introducing Bryn to our clients bit by bit and he's managing projects on a daily basis, I’d be lost without him now! From day one Bryn understood what we like to call the ‘Toward Way’. He joined in with our daft and fun downtime, he understood the importance of the messy chart, he ‘got’ the way we talk to clients, often adding his own amusing flair to his emails. When Bryn had to send invoices in the post to a client he asked what style of writing he should write the address in. As a joke I said Olde English. The result was incredible. He mentioned in his interview he liked to draw but we hadn’t really seen any examples.
Well, we were in for a treat. It turns out that beyond his organisation, communication, writing and obvious numeracy skills, Bryn is a pretty awesome doodler. This became clear one day when I spotted him doodling Nick Clegg (!) during a screen break. Impressed, I wondered if he'd do one for me, so I requested a sketch of Winston Churchill wrestling Jennifer Aniston. Off Bryn went and dutifully doodled away. I was impressed but being the perfectionist he is, he wasn't so it mysteriously disappeared.
This started off a bit of a trend that we thought we'd share with you. Let's call them "Request-a-doodle, by Bryn". Here's some of the favourites...
Being a big Queen fan, Paul was first up with his request of Freddie Mercury in a Christmas jumper, and him skydiving. Bryn delivered.
Mike wanted Michael Jackson rollerblading whist eating an ice cream and Tom asked for a doodle of Steve Jobs bopping Bill Gates on the head with an iPad.
Gareth clearly wanted to open up his weirder side by suggesting Bob Dylan in a bikini. Somehow Bryn managed it!
Finally, Louise wanted Zooey Deschanel riding a rhino and Rob wanted to see Tom Hardy doing a round of Supermarket Sweep!
Hiring good people is hard. Hiring good people to fit in to our team and add their own brand of fun is seriously hard. We reckon we struck lucky with Bryn and his doodling skills is the icing on the cake. If you'd like to Request-a-doodle, why not drop Bryn a tweet (@BrynRuston). You never know...
