Showing Up With Nothing To Show with Laura Palmer

When anyone can push a button and get something that looks good, what's actually left that matters? For Laura Palmer, it's the idea — and the slow, unglamorous, occasionally frustrating process of getting there. A senior digital designer now freelancing, Laura came into design sideways. She studied art history at Leeds, where the assumed path led toward the art market and internships at the big auction houses — a future she knew wasn't hers. She'd been teaching herself After Effects and Illustrator making posters for a DJ friend, and a Shillington course during lockdown turned that instinct into a career: an internship within months, and years of studio and agency work since. The conversation gets into the pull between efficiency and craft — where AI tools genuinely help, and where reaching for a shortcut robs you of the satisfaction of learning something the hard way. Laura and Jack talk about designing against sameness, and why she now starts projects away from the screen — at a record store, or reading the type off the back of a spray can, rather than looping through Pinterest. They dig into the messy middle of the process — the word maps, the walking away, the days you show up with nothing to show — and what freelancing across a run of agencies teaches you about process, feedback, and holding onto who you are. If you've ever worried that a roundabout route counts against you, or that everyone else is further ahead, this one's a reassurance: you don't need a straight line, a design degree, or a tidy-looking process to be on the right path. Sometimes the swerve — and the stretches that look like nothing — are exactly where it starts.