“We want British Design”

By Rachel Alexander

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Passport stamps for the different countries JUMP staff have worked or countries JUMP have worked with

Our experience of working with international clients

JUMP has experience of working with international clients, both as a company and from the individual interactions of our team. These unique experiences give us a broader view of the world as a whole, as well as giving us insights into the different cultures. This allows us to broaden our thinking and adopt new practices into our work. For example, we have recently worked with Oakio, previously known as ProTechWood. Based in the Guangdong province of China, Oakio design and manufacture wood-plastic composite (WPC) decking products for homes and businesses. They approached JUMP for a new website to appeal to their global audience as they prepared to expand into new markets.

Oakio – Chinese client working with an English studio

As with any project, this job wasn’t without its own unique set of challenges. Chinese Standard Time is eight hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, so when we were arriving at work in Newcastle, the Oakio team were preparing to head home for the day. As the project progressed we developed a routine for sending and responding to queries that worked well for both parties.

At JUMP, our usual process when it comes to presenting a website design to the client is to meet with them in person to talk through the designs, structure and function of the site. This allows for conversation and questions and a clear sense of direction for the next stage of the project. However, when English isn’t your first language, the speed and accent with which a native English speaker talks can prove challenging to understand. The solution we found to work best was to talk over instant messenger, as this allowed the team at Oakio time to understand what we were saying and the opportunity to formulate a response with the correct words. Finding the right words did prove difficult at times however, for example when we received feedback on part of the initial design, describing it as looking like ‘a heavy shoe’.

Two laptops displaying the Oakio website in English and Chinese languages

Through our research on designing for different cultures we were aware that the ubiquitous hamburger menu wasn’t exactly that for the rest of the world. In China, a ‘discover’ button, represented by a compass, is often used instead. With this in mind, we asked whether a compass would be preferable in the design for the Chinese language version of the site. However, we were told to keep the Western design conventions we were familiar with in order to appeal more to their global audience over their local one.

“We cannot produce the quality design standard that we require to appeal to our global audience. We want British Design because it is the best in the world.”

Juno Zhong, Marketing Director, Oakio, based in the Guangdong province of China

Lucy – English designer with experience in Italy

Our Creative Director, Lucy Batley, spent five years working in Milan for prestigious clients such as Audi, Fila, Max Mara and Montecristo. Here she shares her experiences:

“I found the language barrier a real challenge when trying to understand the subtleties and nuances of a client brief. Meetings were also difficult; the formal “you” in Italian is the third person feminine, so “she”. I remember being in a meeting with a female architect and having no idea if the client was talking about her or formally addressing me. As they say in Italian it was a “casino” (translation: utter chaos!) .

A selection of the work Lucy worked on while in Italy, including David Bowie and Max Mara

“The other cultural difference is that they work much harder and longer hours. A normal day would start at 8:30am in the office and we wouldn’t finish until 7:00pm, which was “aperitivo” time. Everyone would go for a cocktail in the local bar, normally to meet friends to arrange where to have dinner; the Italians love eating together in big groups. Quite often we would meet in a bar, have a negroni (or three!), then someone would go home and grab a salami, another would go and get some pasta etc. and we would then all reconvene and eat together. Their passion for food and their love of communal eating is something I really miss.”

Adrian – Spanish designer with experience in Spain, Brazil and England

Our Graphic Designer, Adrian Martin, worked in Madrid and Curitiba (Brazil) before he moved to Newcastle to start working at JUMP. Some of the prestigious clients he has worked for include Milka, LG, Aperol and El Corte Ingles.

“Working in a different country is very different from the first minute; even the interview process was different for me. After four years working for JUMP, we still joke about my interview, how I came empty-handed without a physical portfolio or a laptop… just me. I explained that I was expecting them to already know everything about me as I had sent them my portfolio beforehand and we had discussed it in my first interview over Skype. I just thought they wanted to meet me in person to have a nice informal chat as that is how it mostly works in the design industry in Spain. I think Lucy having an international background helped them to understand that I wasn’t being disrespectful or not caring about the job; that’s why I think I still got the job even with my interview being a little bit unusual, showing them my portfolio on the tiny screen of my phone.

A selection of the work Adrian worked on while in Brazil and Spain.

“When I started working at JUMP the language barrier was a struggle, but not in a way you may think. I was able to speak fluent English and understand it, but the intention and tone I didn’t get quite right to start with. In Spain we are very direct, we get straight to the point with our opinions and make our thoughts very clear. This made me sound very blunt and even sometimes a bit rude to British people. At JUMP, designers work hand-in-hand with clients, so I had to email clients and speak to them on a regular basis. It was a difficult process for me to learn how to word my phrases and not just translate directly from Spanish. Andy, our Head of Design, would type emails for me, and would I keep track of all these new ways to express myself in a separate document so I could build my emails by mixing and matching these expressions. Eventually, it became a natural thing for me and after four years this is part of my personality. Even my mum is very pleased at how cordial and polite I am! So now if I’m blunt or rude, I will actually mean it.

“When it comes to actual design work, JUMP has embraced my style and my international influences, as they feel it brings a uniqueness to JUMP’s work and adds value to our creative work.”

Danielle – Cultural dimensions

As the digital age makes the world smaller, we increasingly need to work together with colleagues, collaborators and customers from across the globe. This brings its own unique set of challenges as the examples above demonstrate.

We are all individuals and of course each bit of relationship-building is always a unique process, however there are some broad behaviours we can look to that might give us more awareness as we meet new people.

In the 1970s, Dutch Social Psychologist Geert Hofstede pioneered research into the behaviour of groups of people from different cultural backgrounds. His ‘Cultural Dimensions Theory’ explored patterns of values, beliefs and thought processes shared by a group of people. His initial research was based on the study of employees from the same organisation (IBM), but based in different countries around the world.

Hofstede found common behaviours in employees from the same regions such as how risk-averse they were, how much they respected authority or how individualistic vs collectivist their attitudes were, all of which can have an impact on how we communicate and what influences our decision-making.

This type of thinking has prompted similar avenues of research over the years, for example Erin Mayer’s research on how we use emotion and conflict in a business context (see this enlightening video).

Screenshot from the Harvard Business Review video.

The diagram in the video shows that in Spain it is acceptable to be very emotionally expressive and to embrace conflict as a valuable method of debate. In the UK by contrast, we tend to be less expressive and less comfortable with confrontation in the boardroom, explaining why Adrian found things quite different when he first arrived. If we take these research findings as absolutes we can quickly get into the territory of cultural stereotyping. Used correctly however, they can help us to be more accommodating of different styles of communication.

The second part of the research demonstrated here explores how we build trust through relationships. The study puts the UK on the side of the strictly professional relationships in business, at JUMP however we feel that relationships are a very individual matter. Where some successful new business contracts may be developed from a formal networking event, others have certainly come from a few too many glasses of wine shared in the pub.