Year 15. Jamhot Creative Diary.

Hello to anyone reading this.

And who is reading this? I'm not totally sure who might be or why you would be. But I guess it matters not a jot. The fact that you have found yourself here is good enough for us, and more welcome you could not be.

I'm Graeme, and 15 years ago myself and Craig set up our little studio Jamhot.

We started up on our own as we wanted to work together as two friends, creating work we were proud of, working with nice clients - people that we liked, and overall just to see if we might be able to make a go of things ourselves.

Beyond that, there was not big grand ambition. And that was just fine with us.

I'm writing this 15 years later as Jamhot approaches our 15th birthday having set ourselves up as a limited company on December 19th 2007. The date that Jam Hot Ideas Limited (our very formal name) came into existence.

I guess it's not as big a milestone as something like 10 or 20, those round numbers somehow do sound more significant. But I think this one does feel as if it has slightly more significance, to us at least.

Around 5 years ago we made the decision to slim the studio down to just myself and Craig after a few years with some other staff. We decided we wanted to focus more on improving our skills and craft, and looked to do that by the two of us getting better at what we did, rather than focussing on managing staff and taking on too many projects.

At the time it felt like quite a brave decision. We had grown the studio to cope with quite a lot of projects and to be honest we had been making pretty decent cash as a result of it. But we both felt that we were more interested in getting better than getting richer - that thought motivated us so much more than money ever could. So we set about taking on less projects, putting more time and effort into them and resolving not to take on any churn work and never to do anything just for the money alone.

Five years later, have we achieved what we set out to do. In a word, yes!

As we look back over the work that we have completed over the last 5 years we are incredibly proud of how far we have come and with some of the amazing projects and clients that we have had the pleasure of working on and with.

It's been amazing. And now our attention starts to turn to the future. How we refresh, recharge, recalibrate and get ourselves ready and focussed for the next five years.

And it does feel like it's time to do that.

Following the pandemic the world feels like it's at an inflexion point. A time of change.

Of course, while that can all seem a bit overwhelming if you watch too much, or actually any, news at the moment - when it comes to creativity the requirement to change is often good.

So to end the year, we've decided to write a few wee posts on our website about some highlights (and maybe even some lowlights) from the last 15 years in order to mark the end of this chapter and the start of a new one in 2023. 

If chat like that is of any interest to you then you are very welcome to read along. 

Cheers, Jamhot x