Uprising: Miranda Lawn's Journey to Solo Creative Contentment

“My journey to where I am now wasn’t the smoothest of sails,” says Miranda Lawn. It’s been a long one, too. She’s known that she wanted to end up in a creative job from a younger age than most, ever since she spent her childhood making up her own games with friends, drawing in her room and watching cartoons. Her earliest inspirations were “cheesy girl magazines like Girl Talk” and the British kid’s TV show Art Attack.

She was, at first, embarking on creative pursuits alone though, starting life introverted before transitioning through “a variety of angsty phases”. She was always drawn to extroverted and louder than life personalities at school, and this in turn pushed her out of her introverted mindset. “I definitely thought I was a bit of a rebel too, but looking back now, I was just a massive nerd in disguise.”

That nerdiness didn’t mean she was particularly interested in academic studies. The only subject at school that she really felt drawn to was human psychology. “Design and psychology seemed an odd mix to most,” she says, “but I later discovered they were the perfect combination to go into advertising.” And so she took steps in that direction.

Miranda finished a Creative Advertising course at Lincoln University in 2016 and most of her coursemates journeyed to London to begin placements in their creative duos. “This wasn’t the case for me sadly,” she says. “In order to move to London, I had to save my pennies and find a creative partner.” So she stayed in Lincoln for just under a year and worked in restaurants, factories and dabbled in videography until finally making her way over to the big smoke to join them.

Having finished her studies without ending up naturally in a creative duo, she found her first creative partner on singlecreatives.com - a site designed to help find your creative ‘soulmate’. She found a partner, created a portfolio and embarked on the gruelling journey of trying to bag a placement.

Miranda and her partner worked as a team on two placements at both FCB Inferno and St Luke’s in London and she grew immensely as a result, giving her the skills and confidence to tackle live briefs and work in a fast-paced environment. “It was everything I was told it was going to be,” she says, “until I eventually fell out with my creative partner due to a personality clash and I decided to give advertising a small break.”

But shortly after the split, the reality began to dawn that it was near impossible to get a solo gig as a junior creative. Slowly she fell down what she calls “a two year hole of freelancing and grabbing any creative job that flew my way.” 

The random freelance gigs she picked up at Cleo and MTV allowed her to develop her design skills and pushed her out of her comfort zone. “It made me realise how hungry I was to get back into advertising and start my journey as a creative,” says Miranda.

Luckily her wait ended this year, and she was offered a role at Fox & Hare in July as their first junior creative. “I couldn’t believe my luck when the recruiter told me the news,” she says. She knew she was up against over 400 candidates who were all in the same position as her. 

It’s been a long time coming, but Miranda’s learnt a lot and found purpose. “In light of my struggle, I feel it’s my duty to advise agencies to evolve and adapt to a new way of working. Personally, I found collaborating in a duo to be tiring and sometimes an unproductive process. In order to be my best-self, I learnt I needed to work alone and trust my own intuition.” 

Now she’s grateful to be part of a talented team who are just as passionate about giving young creatives a chance as they are about the work they produce. “Their empathetic approach to normalised toxic situations is applaudable. Bigger agencies - take note.” 

With the support of a team to fall back on, Miranda still draws a lot of creative drive from isolation. Brainstorming is the most exhilarating part of the creative process for her. “I love being given a fresh brief with hardly any restrictions from the client and letting my imagination run free,” she says. And that’s best done sitting on the floor and surrounded by books and research. 

She keeps her social media feeds well stocked with inspiring accounts for when she fancies a scroll, but says her main source of inspiration has been documentaries, lately. “I feel they’re the perfect combination of facts and design and they always leave me feeling inquisitive and full of ideas.” 

Never one to stand still, Miranda’s been taking a motion graphics course during lockdown. She saw it was a skill that most companies would find useful. “I think it’s important to stay on top of desirable skills, and develop them as time goes on. We’re all a work in progress, and in order to evolve as a creative in any industry you need to evolve your craft and learn new skills constantly.”

When it comes to role models, for Miranda it doesn’t get much more inspiring than director Alma Har’el, a documentary maker who's made ads for HP, Visa, eBay, Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Linkedin, Levi’s and Twitter, as well the phenomenal Honey Boy, starring Shia LeBouef and FKA twigs.

Her first encounter with her idol was when Miranda watched Bombay Beach, a documentary about a desolate American town, which filmed locals acting out their dreams and childhood experiences. “After it finished, I was mesmerised by her unique creative style, and fell into a hole of watching absolutely everything she’d produced, including this stunning advert for Chanel:”

Miranda’s not only inspired by the director’s filmmaking, but also her non-profit initiative Free the Bid, which advocates on the behalf of female directors for equal opportunities to bid on commercial jobs in the advertising industry. “She will forever be my advertising muse!”

Closer to home, Miranda’s privileged to have talented senior creatives around her who she says have helped her grow much faster than she would if she was at a bigger agency. “They motivate and inspire me to strive for excellence as I can see my end goal within them.”

But what most excites her about her place in the industry is the fact she can use this platform to create better work. “Work that not only looks good - but does good. I have an innate drive to change even a fraction of the world’s toxic behaviour through campaigning and problem-solving.

“By working in a Social Impact Agency like the Fox & Hare, it allows me to use this platform to promote positive change and that is what fuels my drive and creativity everyday.”