Month: January 2026

This morning, Dan had the privilege of speaking at the Molineux. Not just his beloved stadium, but the home of some brilliant Black Country business connections. Maria Scuillion had invited him to share the Eighty3 story at Molineux Meets, and it turned out to be one of those mornings that reminds you exactly why getting out from behind the desk and into the room matters.

He was in good company too. Joining him on the speaker lineup were Sarah Cowell from Kindridge Bid Solutions, Charlotte Davies (Charlotte The Copywriter), Bill Etheridge from Acton Jennings, and Tim Hubbard from Your Digital Hub. Five businesses, five stories, and one room full of people genuinely interested in hearing them. Proper Black Country networking done right.

Dan’s presentation covered the journey behind Eighty3, from the early days through to where the agency sits today, complete with some throwback photos of Dan and Rebecca that clearly struck a chord with the audience. After the session, people kept coming over to chat. “We’ve always wondered where the name Eighty3 came from, now we know!” That kind of reaction says everything. People are curious about the story behind a business. They want to understand the journey, see the faces behind the brand, and know what makes you tick. It’s what turns you from a company they’ve heard of into people they actually connect with.

It got us thinking about how many businesses sit on a brilliant story and never tell it properly. Not because it isn’t interesting, but because it feels a bit awkward to talk about yourself. The corporate waffle kicks in, the personality disappears, and what could have been something genuinely compelling ends up sounding like every other About page on the internet. Sound familiar?

We’ve written more about this in our latest blog, looking at why your business story matters and how to tell it in a way that actually lands. If you’ve ever struggled to explain what you do, why you started, or what makes you different, it’s worth a read. Sometimes all it takes is someone asking the right questions and giving you the space to answer them honestly.

In the meantime, a massive thanks to Maria Scuillion for organising such a spot-on event and for continuing to build the kind of community that makes the Black Country business scene something genuinely special. If you haven’t been to a Molineux Meets event yet, put it on your list.

When Marc Austin from the University of Wolverhampton asked us to judge a national poster design competition, we didn’t need to think twice. The ‘Be Who You Want to Be’ brief had drawn over 200 entries from Level 3 creative students right across the UK. That’s 200 young designers putting themselves out there, taking a risk, showing what they can do. Marc and his team at the School of Creative Industries had the unenviable job of narrowing it down to a shortlist of 30 for us to judge. Even at that stage, every single piece had something that made us pause and take proper notice.

This afternoon, Dan, Rebecca, and Emily headed back to the George Wallis building in Wolverhampton to present the first prize to a brilliant student from Shrewsbury College whose work genuinely stopped us in our tracks. Choosing just one winner from that shortlist? Tougher than we’d bargained for.

Judging poster design competitions like this isn’t just about picking our favourite. It’s about giving students that first proper taste of industry recognition – the moment when their work stops being just another graded assignment and becomes something genuinely celebrated by working professionals. That shift matters more than you might think. It’s the difference between “I’m studying design” and “I’m a designer.” Every entry we reviewed deserved recognition. A bold colour choice here, a clever conceptual twist there, a confidence in execution that made us lean in and look closer. The standard was genuinely impressive.

Walking back into the George Wallis building always feels like coming home for us. The energy in those studios, the creative chaos pinned to every wall, the next generation of designers figuring out their voice and finding their feet – it reminds us exactly why we got into this industry in the first place. Supporting young creatives isn’t just a nice thing to do. It’s essential. These students are the future of design, and competitions like this give them a platform to shine long before they’ve even graduated or built their first portfolio.

To everyone who entered: you’re already designers. The fact that you put your work forward, that you took the brief and ran with it, that you created something from nothing – that’s what makes you a designer, not a qualification or a piece of paper. Keep pushing, keep questioning, keep making work that genuinely matters.

To Marc and the brilliant team at the School of Creative Industries: thank you for including us in something this special. Initiatives like this are exactly what the creative community needs more of.

And to our winner from Shrewsbury College: huge congratulations. Your poster wowed us. We genuinely can’t wait to see what you create next!