In Conversation With: Nick Shackleton from WorkGroup. Tom sits down with WorkGroup co-founder and all-around great guy - Nick Shackleton to learn about his creative process, some of Workgroup’s most successful collaborations and how brands can get the right outcome when working with external creatives.

I’m Nick, a multidisciplinary designer from Auckland, New Zealand. I started WorkGroup with my business partner, Tom Crampin, as a way of combining and expanding our respective creative skills. The partnership has allowed us to tell new stories, in interesting ways, primarily through the use of 3D motion graphics and video work. Our work aims to be both technically impressive, whilst also putting a strong focus on collaboration to ensure every piece of work we output tells the client’s story in a new yet authentic way.

I met Tom at the tail end of a long lunch in 2021, and we clicked right away. At the time, I didn’t know many people my age who were freelancing, so it was good to bond with someone in a similarly unique position in the industry. As our friendship progressed, we quickly realised that our commercial offerings were very complimentary, and we began planning what would eventually become WorkGroup.

Luckily for us, our complimentary personalities and approach to work have made collaboration quite straightforward. Tom can creatively see a project from start to finish, fleshing out a concept, and visualising how it will come together. As an animator, his role is more important at the ideation stage, and the final assembly stage. My strengths lie in the technical foundation side of a project, and seeing the project from start to finish from a logistics lens. Once we have come up with a creative concept for a project, I will dive into the software, prepare assets, and give the work a visual language through lighting and textures, before passing it over to Tom for animation.

Even when I was a young tadpole studying Geophysics at university, I was always so intrigued and captivated by the creative industry, whether it be fashion, homeware or furniture. Naturally, that love led me towards earning my first work with companies such as Yu Mei and Kowtow. I think that Tom and I feel proud to be a part of the story and offer a contribution to big brand systems. It's all very exciting.

When it comes to our work, we take pride in our ability to soak up as much information about a project as possible. We love to research what makes a brand tick as well as learning about what they love. Pairing that up with our own references and what we love allows us to create something that ticks all the boxes for us and a client.

I think a standout project was our work for Blunt Umbrellas. It was such an honour to be part of this amazing brand and it’s something we continue to be extremely proud of.

We started off working with the team at Milk and gained a greater understanding of the rebrand they were putting together, not only visually but also in a more emotional/narrative sense which was something that we wanted to incorporate within our renderwork. As the project progressed, we met with Grieg Brebner (Blunt Umbrella’s founder) and the Blunt team to chat through our process, and also gain more insight into the technology/engineering that makes the brand as impressive as it is.

Through all this insight and learning, we were able to adapt our process to create work that worked not only in a physically accurate sense but also factored in the beautiful brand work completed by the Milk team whilst staying true to the Blunt mission statement. With a bit of ‘WorkGroup sauce’ too…

We have found that transparency, regular check-ins, and clear creative feedback are the best ways to ensure the right outcome for a project. This way, as a project evolves and we discover more about it, we can regularly consult with the client and steer the original scope of work towards the best outcome. It isn’t always clear from the onset what the best way to approach a project is, so having flexibility built into our systems helps us absorb some of those unexpected but essential direction shifts. This, in turn, results in more comfortable clients, as their expectations of the work are regularly updated.

With any client we work for, we understand that they know their brand the best, so we really try to be respectful of that. We know that our best work comes from extensive consultation with the client, and once we have a strong understanding of their brand, will prescribe a solution that aligns with their vision. As exciting as an open brief sounds, for us, good work tends to happen when we are adding to a brand that already has a strong foundation, rather than trying to reinvent them through a single campaign.

Given that I’ve turned my hobbies into work, I’ve been trying out new ones that I’m keen to keep as just hobbies. I have been learning how to ski at Snowplanet a lot recently, and have just started to get into track cycling. Aside from this, I like pottering, seeing friends, making coffee etc.

I will allow myself to be in the rut, and find peace with it. I don’t put pressure on myself to be creative again, I just assure myself that the feeling comes in waves, and it will be back shortly. That’s the benefit of having Tom around, he’s very creatively reliable and will pick up the slack when I’m not performing.

I’m looking forward to the continued evolution of WorkGroup. Seeing the increased creative scope of projects that are starting to come in, I’m excited to see how that impacts the perception of what WorkGroup can offer, and in turn, the new jobs that come from that. Aside from work, I’m excited to go skiing in Queenstown and see Arca in Sydney.