Uncommon’s Lisa Smith: build a life that gives you something to say

It’s a tough time for people starting out in the creative industry right now. Together with Creative Lives in Progress we asked 27 people to predict what starting a creative career will look like over the next three years.

Words: It's Nice That
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Date: 9 November 2026
Tags: Career Predictions

Starting a creative career has rarely felt harder. Junior roles are disappearing, budgets are tightening and AI is taking over much of the work that new starters once learned on. So we asked studio founders, recruiters, educators, organisations and emerging creatives themselves to predict what they think starting a creative career will look like over the next three years. What skills will matter most? How will the pipeline work? And what can people do to take advantage of new opportunities? Their answers will help shape how Creative Lives in Progress can best support emerging talent through this period and beyond.

Contributor specific paragraph.

Lisa Smith, Global Chief Design Officer at Uncommon Creative Studio

Over the next three years, making something look good will get easier. Having something worth making will still take work.

The world isn’t about to run out of problems. Or people with needs, frustrations, desires and contradictions. Businesses will still need help being useful, meaningful and worth choosing. Making more stuff, faster, won’t solve that. We’ll still need people who understand what makes us tick and can turn that understanding into ideas that change something.

For young creatives, that’s an opportunity worth getting excited about.

Getting started will be tough. The tasks that once gave juniors a way in are increasingly being automated. Clients want everything yesterday, with the judgment of a very senior team. The space to learn is being squeezed. But the jobs we recognize today cannot be the limit of our imagination. New roles will emerge. Disciplines will blur. Young creatives will invent things we don’t yet have names for.

“The jobs we recognize today cannot be the limit of our imagination. New roles will emerge. Disciplines will blur. Young creatives will invent things we don’t yet have names for.”
Lisa Smith, Global Chief Design Officer at Uncommon Creative Studio

Looking competent will become a very low bar. Everyone will have tools that make something look finished. Beautifully executed, instantly forgettable, completely interchangeable. What will distinguish you is a point of view. Understanding something about people that everyone else has missed. Knowing when the weird bit is the best bit. Then having the commitment to craft it into something extraordinary.

So build a life that gives you something to say. Read beyond design. Get off Pinterest. Go somewhere unfamiliar. Make something with your hands. Get interested in people who think differently from you. Originality needs more to eat than whatever an algorithm serves up.

Learn the tools. Push them. Then give us something we couldn’t have asked them for. Make us uncomfortable. Make us jealous. Make something we haven’t seen before.

And to the industry, myself included: make room. You cannot download experience. Young creatives need real briefs, proximity to great people and the chance to contribute before they have all the answers. If the old ways are disappearing, build new ones. Protect time for learning. Take a chance on potential. Let unfamiliar thinking change the work.

We cannot tell the next generation to break new ground while keeping the door shut.

This series has been put together in collaboration with It's Nice That's sister company Creative Lives in Progress; a creative careers resource, on a mission to transform the way emerging talent access, understand and connect with the industry. Find out more at creativelivesinprogress.com