Harold Bennett is a freelance writer and designer. He has produced design work for Studio Lowrie and The Brand Identity and writes for the creative website It's Nice That.

MB—Can you guide us through your journey from a design education to writing professionally?

HB—It was kind of an accident. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do before university, let alone after. I fell in love with typographic and book design at university, which made sense coming from a house lucky enough to be lined with books, but always felt drawn to the research, academic and somewhat administra­ tive side of the discipline. I was also fortunate enough to manage to wangle a job as a graphic designer in London doing exactly the sort of work I loved, but found it wasn’t quite what I hoped. A position became available for a writing placement at It’s Nice That – a wonderful website champion­ ing the sort of exciting work that I admired throughout university, that I had often read about on the very same site.

I think I saw a diversion in the road that bent in my favour, and I think they saw the excitement I had to go down it. I’ve not stopped writing since, alongside my design practice, operating purely freelance and I’m so much happier for it. I get so much more fulfilment out of what I do now, and the weird thing is I never knew this was even a potential line of work whilst at school. I like to think that the me before university would see what I’m doing now and ...