Sophie Thomas is one of the two founding partners of London-based communications design agency thomas.matthews and co-founder of Three Trees Don’t Make A Forest.
I have always had a passion for communication. Communication can be done in many different ways, not just through paper, such as using three-dimensions and installations to create a message.
Some of my earliest memories are of being taken on CND marches or up to Greenham Common. I come from a very left-wing family and grew up surrounded by discussion and politics. It feels good to continue this discussion through a visual direction.
All of our projects are done with the principles of sustainability underlying them. It’s possible to reconcile good design and sustainability. It’s not just about doing ‘hairy jumper' design.
Most people think we only have sustainability clients, but we don’t. It’s a real mix. We work with arts organisations such as Battersea Arts Centre, and have long relationships with charities such as ActionAid.
We also do a lot of work with people like Unilever, looking at their Corporate Social Responsibility programmes, helping them. For example, we might run art courses for a client, or even end up putting poetry on the walls of their buildings. We also work a lot with developers, pushing sustainable regeneration.
It is a meeting of minds that makes the work interesting. You never know where a project may take you. When we worked on the Weller Space Galleries for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, we visited a lab looking for dark matter in the depths of a potash mine in Selby.
We’ve always called ourselves communication designers, we don’t always do graphics. We are known for our conceptual thinking, not just our output. We help our clients to communicate to different audiences.
A lot of my interests lie in materials, and I spent years screen printing. I still like printing onto different materials and getting my hands dirty. That’s why we’ve got a print room on site. It means designers can experiment and do their own work.
We get very geeky when we discover new materials we can work with. Particularly ones with good stories behind them and solid sustainable credentials.
I work four days a week at the studio. Normally I start work at 9.30am after dropping the children off at nursery. I’ve got two children, aged four and one. We live in Stoke Newington and I cycle to work in Southwark. I normally finish at 5.50pm to get the kids.
I’ll start work at 8pm again at home, and work for three or four hours. There’s usually paperwork and writing. I find it quite hard to write here in the studio. Usually I spend a lot of time following up emails. There’s a lot of traffic through my email. During my working day, I’ll also often have meetings with clients, talk to suppliers, meet with staff, just checking up on what’s going on.
Every Monday morning we have a meeting at work where we discuss how the studio is running, that deadlines are okay, checking proofs. It’s quite hands-on.
Wednesday afternoon is usually devoted to my Three Trees Don’t Make A Forest work. It’s not funded currently, except from the goodwill of the three partners. I’m very dedicated to it.
I’m out and about a lot, actually. I really like doing that. I love meetings. You never know what’s going to happen, what will come out of it. I sometimes have meetings until late.
These days I do very little hands-on designing, much less than I want. I do a lot of pitching and presentation work, a lot of conceptual thinking. I’ll brainstorm, but don’t do so much of the execution. I have a really good group of people who are brilliant designers and are much more skilled at the programs than I am.
The bit I like least is not having enough time in my day to get involved in all the things I could do. I get criticised for trying to do everything, but it’s hard for me to say no to a lot of projects, as there is so much going on that I want to be part of. I would also like more time to read.
Sophie Thomas is the founding partner of Thomas Matthews, a communications design agency with a sustainable design philosophy
She set up Three Trees Don't Make a Forest with Nat Hunter from Airside design and Caroline Clark from Lovely as a Tree