Open Studio #7: Eve McDonald Built Her Portfolio Managing a Pub's Instagram.

Open Studio is a brand new podcast about what the creative industry's actually like. For the people in it, the people near it and the people still working out whether to jump in.

So Eve Macdonald ran a pub's social media instead.

Not exactly the fine art career she'd planned. In episode seven of Open Studio, the Kiss Branding designer talks us through what happens when your first plan collapses, why the old junior-to-senior ladder doesn't fit how creatives actually work anymore, and why she's tired of pretending London has a monopoly on talent.

Eve Macdonald joined Kiss Branding in 2025 as a junior designer and has since grown into a role that blends creative strategy with business growth. She holds a degree in fine art and history of art, with a background stretched across fine art, PR, marketing and advertising. Outside Kiss, she runs Pencil in Leeds, a community calendar built to connect creatives and push back against how isolating the industry can feel.

..was the best thing that happened to her.

Eve graduated into a pandemic. A curatorial internship she'd lined up evaporated as fine art opportunities dried up overnight. What she did next wasn't the plan, but it worked.

"I had this portfolio of fake work that really helped open doors for me because I already had a real client that I could show people," she explains, of the social media work she took on for a local pub.

The lesson isn't "have a backup plan." It's that real client work, however unglamorous, beats a portfolio of hypotheticals every time.

Junior, mid-weight.. senior. Eve doesn't think that ladder describes how careers actually move anymore.

"There's a lot more wobble, but it's a good thing. Multi-hyphenate creatives are becoming something people want," she says.

That wobble is an opening, not a problem. Skills that don't fit a single job title, fine art plus PR plus marketing plus advertising, are exactly what's shaping careers now.

Eve's take on portfolios cuts against the instinct to only show your best, most finished work.

"As someone who's had this kind of multi-hyphenate career, I want to see your thinking before I see you muck anything up," she shares.

Sketches, scamps, mind maps. The mess before the polish tells a hiring designer more about how you solve problems than a perfect final file ever will.

Technical skill gets you shortlisted. What keeps you in the room, according to Eve, is something else entirely.

"We want someone who's going to fit into the culture," she asserts.

Listening, reading a brief properly, connecting with a client as a person aren't extras bolted onto the job. As the industry evolves, they're becoming the job.

Ask most people where the UK's creative industry lives and they'll say London, automatically. Eve isn't having it.

"The North has an incredible amount of creative talent and studios. It is such a creative hub," she states.

You don't need to relocate to build a serious creative career. You need to look at what's actually happening where you already are.

• Take the "unglamorous" client work. A real brief, however small, beats an imaginary one every time.
• Show the mess, not just the polish. Sketches and process reveal more about your thinking than a finished file does.
• Fit doesn't mean fitting in. Culture fit and soft skills matter as much as the technical work, if not more.
• Stop assuming you need to move. Build where you are, the talent doesn't only live in one city.

Open Studio, made at Shillington. Episode 07, listen here.