Alongside his agency focus, Jonny has also worked client-side as Marketing Director at Nominet, the technology not-for-profit registry for the .uk domain, giving him a rare vantage point on design from both sides of the table, as agency partner and as brand owner. Says Jonny: “With a background spanning both design and tech, I want to help member practices find where AI can be genuinely transformative for them, a source of deeper client collaboration, and a catalyst for rethinking their value proposition and business model, not just their output.”

His work has taken him across diverse markets from Latin America, India and the wider subcontinent to Eastern Europe, giving Jonny first-hand experience of how design culture and values shift across markets: “British design carries real authority overseas and I want to help the DBA build on that, supporting members who are exporting their work and expertise, and making the case for design as one of the UK’s most exportable skills.”

Having been appointed in 2020, 2LK’s Andy Sexton and NatWest Group’s Stephanie Verschoor have stepped down from the Board at the end of their terms, and the DBA would like to extend huge thanks to them both for their invaluable input and support. 

The DBA’s AGM was held online on 17 September and included the launch of the 2026 DBA In Focus Report, the most comprehensive benchmarking tool in the design sector. The report is exclusively available to DBA members.

Reconciliations, invoice processing, and basic reporting are already faster and cheaper with automation, and it’s tempting for agency leaders to look at those tools and start questioning whether they need as many finance hires as they used to. But the truth is more nuanced if you consider the financial dynamic of an agency — juggling project margins, client scope creep, freelancer costs, and unpredictable cash flow, plus the continued challenge of client procurement on agency fees.

AI is changing what accountants do but, we would argue, not whether they’re needed. If anything, in creative businesses, the human accountant is becoming more valuable, not less.

Automation removes tasks, not judgement

AI is genuinely brilliant at the repetitive, rules-based parts of finance: categorising and posting transactions, flagging anomalies, drafting first-pass reports, chasing overdue invoices etc. For a junior accountant or bookkeeper in a design agency, this means less time spent manually coding expenses against project codes and more time actually understanding why a project overran its budget, why time was not recovered as planned, and what can be done to improve performance.

That distinction matters. A machine can tell you that Project X overspent its planned hours by, say 30%. It cannot tell you whether that’s because the client requested revisions outside scope, because the studio underquoted the job, because the team mix wasn’t as anticipated at the time of budgeting, or because a junior designer needed extra hours to get up to speed. Interpreting business performance and understanding the story behind the numbers is a fundamentally human skill. It requires context: knowledge of the client relationship, the creative process, the team’s dynamics, and the agency’s commercial history. AI has none of that context unless a person feeds it in and this capability certainly isn’t here now.

Junior accountants: from data entry to data literacy

For junior hires, this shift is actually good news, even if it raises the bar.

The days of a first-year accounts assistant spending most of their time on manual data entry are numbered. But that doesn’t mean entry-level roles disappear — it means they evolve. Junior accountants in agencies now need to learn how to question AI-generated outputs, spot when automated reporting looks “off,” and start building the commercial instincts that used to take years to develop.

Take project WIP reporting: an AI tool might flag that a job is under-recovered (or over-serviced), but a junior accountant who understands the agency’s billing cycle will know whether that’s a genuine problem or simply timing — the scope creep or work delivered ahead of schedule. Spotting that difference, and asking the right follow-up questions, is exactly the kind of judgement agencies should be nurturing early.

Agencies hiring junior finance talent should be looking for curiosity and communication skills alongside technical competence, because the value junior staff add increasingly lies in translating numbers for non-finance colleagues — not just producing them.

Senior roles: the rise of the business partner

At Finance Manager and Financial Controller level, the change is even more pronounced. Automation and AI-powered dashboards mean senior finance professionals spend less time producing reports and more time acting as strategic partners to the business. In a creative agency, that means sitting alongside project managers, creative directors, and account leads to help them understand profitability in real terms: which clients and/or types of projects are actually profitable, where is scope creep quietly eroding margin, how freelancer spend compares to using in-house talent, and what pricing models actually work.

This is where good FCs and FMs earn their keep. They don’t just present the numbers, they build the commercial acumen of the wider team. A great Financial Controller in a design agency will run a session with project leads on how to read a P&L, or coach an account director on why a “successful” project on paper lost money once overheads were properly allocated. AI can generate the underlying analysis faster than ever, but someone still needs to decide what questions to ask of the data, challenge the assumptions behind it, and translate the output into decisions the business can act on. That’s relationship-building, influence, and judgement — none of which AI can replicate.

Importantly, as AI-driven efficiency gains take hold, agencies need a strong counter-argument ready for client procurement teams who will inevitably keep challenging agency fees. That makes it more important than ever for agencies to have a tight grip on their charge-out rates and time utilisation and recoverability metrics. Coupled with the ongoing challenge of demonstrating value created for clients, this will be a key determinant of an agency’s future financial performance — and the FC or FM should be positively contributing to it.

No juniors today, no seniors tomorrow

There’s a longer-term risk that’s easy to overlook in the rush to automate (and no doubt this is a consideration throughout an agency from fee earning designers, account handlers through to indirect staff): if agencies stop hiring and developing junior accountants now, there will be no pipeline of experienced talent ready to step into Finance Manager and Financial Controller roles in five or ten years’ time.

The commercial judgement, client-facing confidence, and instinct for reading a project P&L that senior finance people rely on isn’t something that can be bought off the shelf or taught in a crash course. It’s built over years of doing the job, making mistakes and learning from them, and gradually taking on more responsibility. Junior roles are where that apprenticeship happens.

Treat AI as a reason to cut entry-level headcount, and, whilst it might save money today, this will likely be at the cost of a serious talent shortage tomorrow. The agencies still hiring and investing in junior accountants — but reshaping those roles around interpretation, communication, and working alongside AI rather than pure data entry — are the ones building their own future senior talent. Those that don’t will eventually find themselves competing hard, and paying a premium, for a shrinking pool of experienced finance professionals who came up the traditional way.

AI makes good accountants more valuable, not less

There’s also a quality argument.

As AI tools produce more analysis, more forecasts, and more automated commentary, the risk of “garbage in, garbage out” grows. Someone needs to sanity-check the model, understand its limitations, and limit the noise, particularly in agencies, where revenue recognition, WIP, and project-based accounting are rarely as clean as the software assumes. A skilled accountant who knows how to use automation well, rather than blindly trust it, becomes a genuine differentiator. Using AI to produce faster, richer analysis is a skill in itself, and it will be one that separates strong finance hires from average ones.

What this means for hiring

For creative agencies, the implication is clear: the demand for accounting talent isn’t shrinking, it’s changing shape.

You’re no longer just hiring someone to keep the books straight. You’re hiring someone who can interpret performance, challenge assumptions, partner confidently with non-finance teams, and use AI tools to work faster and smarter rather than being replaced by them. Whether you’re bringing in a junior accountant who can grow into a commercially minded finance professional, or a Finance Manager who can genuinely partner with your creative teams, the human element — judgement, context, and communication —remains the thing no algorithm can provide.

The agencies that get ahead won’t be the ones with the most automated finance function. They’ll be the ones with the best people using automation well.

VisionFR are a specialist Financial Recruitment agency for Creative, Marketing and People Businesses.

VisionFR is a proud sponsor of the DBA In Focus Report and can be contacted here. 

• Most of us think of ambition as a personality trait – something you either have or don’t. Hugo frames ambition instead as a force that shapes decisions whether we examine it or not.
• Our industry has weathered ups and downs, from recessions to pandemics and near-constant disruption – and that pressure to pick yourself up and go again often means we never stop to ask ‘is this what I really want?’
• Many founders rush to execute before they’ve properly considered what it is they actually want, mistaking momentum for direction.
• Realising your ambition is fleeting: you hit a milestone, feel a brief moment of elation, then disconcertment sets in, and the search for the next target begins almost immediately.
• The value of ambition lies in the journey of getting there, not in the moment of passing through the door – which is why the question of ‘is this what I want’ is hard to consider. Stopping to examine the goal can feel like it threatens the very thing driving you forward.
• A better question is ‘what does better than yesterday actually look like?’ – and, crucially, am I the one driving this, or is a third party (industry norms, peers, inherited expectations) driving it for me?
• It’s worth asking what your goals relate to at this specific stage of your life – both in and outside work – rather than defaulting to whatever the next milestone should be.
• Ambition needs to be managed like endurance, not just fuelled – the marathon parallel is useful for pacing relentless effort rather than burning out chasing it.
• Many of us would have had very different careers had we asked these questions earlier.
• Stop and ask ‘what am I using this drive to create, and will it build a meaningful life for me?’ It’s not to be answered once, but revisited and adjusted continuously as life and work change.
• You can get in touch with Hugo at Magnetic North and buy the book here. 

Our next meeting is on Thursday 17 September at 1.30-3pm BST, and and will incorporate the launch of the DBA In Focus Report 2026 and the DBA’s Annual General Meeting

We’ll be joined by the Chair of the DBA Board, Nicola Tiffany from HMA, for the AGM and then Esther Carder, Partner at Moore Kingston Smith will take us through the key findings from this year’s In Focus Report, the most comprehensive benchmarking report exclusively for DBA Members.

If that sounds familiar, you’re absolutely not alone. But the good news? There’s plenty we can do about it. And the agencies who get this right aren’t doing more. They’re just doing things they can keep doing. That’s a much more achievable bar than it sometimes feels.

I’ll never stop making the point that agency marketing isn’t something you switch on when revenue dips. It’s never too early to begin, and it’s not something that should stop. It needs to be the engine that runs quietly in the background, year-round, identifying new relationships, building awareness, starting conversations, demonstrating your value. It’s how you make sure that when a prospect reaches their point of need, which might be next month, next year, or three years from now, your agency is already on their list.

There’s a related point worth highlighting. The data from the DBA In Focus Report shows the average agency now generates around three-quarters of its income from existing clients. That’s a wonderful testament to the work you do. It’s also a quiet vulnerability. A reliable base built from a small number of relationships is a lovely thing right up until one of those relationships ends. Gentle, consistent marketing activity is how you stay ahead of that risk, by making sure new relationships are always being built somewhere in the background.

And here’s where it gets genuinely exciting. What “sustainable marketing” looks like has shifted in the last few years, and the shift is good news for agencies. The traditional model of the lone agency principal posting opinion pieces into the LinkedIn void is getting harder to cut through. It’s also exhausting, and most of the people I work with quietly admit they hate doing it.

What’s working better, for a lot of agencies, is more collaborative.

Co-created content. Rather than positioning yourself as the lone expert, convene the conversation. Interview the people your prospects respect. Host the discussion your sector isn’t having. Authority by association is a very different thing, and often a more effective one, than authority by assertion.

Partner marketing. Teaming up with adjacent specialists, perhaps a strategy consultancy, a developer, a PR partner, a researcher, to create something useful together. A panel, a piece of research, a guide, a roundtable. You share the audience, share the load, and you both look more credible by association.

And lastly…

Newsletters. “But no-one reads them!” I hear you cry! And yet, as reported in Up To The Light’s ‘What Clients Think’ Report published earlier this year, 70% of clients expect their agency to produce some sort of regular newsletter or update. 

None of this requires you to be the loudest voice in the room. It just requires you to be a useful presence in the rooms that matter to your prospects.

A few things to bear in mind as you think about your own approach.

Be honest about what you’ll actually keep doing. A monthly article you’ll abandon after four months is worth less than a quarterly piece of co-created content you’ll still be producing in two years. Smaller and sustainable beats bigger and burned out, every time.

Measure the right things. Network growth, conversations started, relationships warmed. These are the early indicators that matter. Don’t be too quick to write off an activity just because it didn’t produce a brief in the first month. That’s not what it’s for.

Most of all, try to enjoy it. Looking after the business, and that includes your marketing, isn’t a distraction from the creative work. It’s what protects it, and creates the conditions for it to thrive.

If you’d like some help thinking this through for your own agency, I’m running the DBA’s Marketing your Design Business course online across three 90-minute sessions on 22, 24 & 29 September. We’ll get into the smart, sustainable ways design agencies are building authority and starting the right conversations right now. I’d love to see you there.

For more tips on how to build your pipeline, head here. 

Catapults and Research and Technology Organisations were initially set up to help innovators from universities and private sector SMEs to navigate the pipeline from the first stage of frontier research and invention, through commercialisation and early-stage business development to adoption and diffusion. But Catapults and RTOs have grown to a point where their offer is duplicating existing services that are delivered commercially, at the expense of industrial design consultancies. 

Duplicating this already available market offer at a much higher cost (albeit billed to the taxpayer) and often to an inferior standard, the individual or SME consumer has no other choice than to work with them. Why? Because in the past, SMEs which did not have the budget for product development were able to draw on EU funding or SMART awards to enable them to work with industrial design consultancies. This funding has gone and left the Catapults and RTOs to dominate the space with no choice of provider for the SME.  

The consequence is direct and measurable.

Industrial design consultancies are losing work, not because they cannot compete on quality or expertise, but because they cannot compete with organisations which are having their costs met from public funds. 

Industrial design consultancies are the development layer of R&D, effectively the ‘D’ that turns the ‘R’ into economic output. They help to take outputs from research and translate them into manufacturable, market-ready products through user research, concept development, prototyping, engineering for manufacture, regulatory compliance and route-to-market support. They are the mechanism for translating innovation into commercial and investable activity across business. 

We are not seeking to protect them from competition, we are lobbying for a model that delivers real innovation support for businesses whilst creating the conditions for a sustainable commercial design sector to thrive alongside it. Displacing industrial design consultancies does not strengthen the innovation ecosystem; it hollows out one of its most critical components. 

What is the Global Talent Visa?

• The Global Talent visa is available for talented and promising individuals from the fields of science, engineering, medicine and humanities, digital technology and arts and culture, who wish to continue their professional career in the UK.
• The visa allows you to live and work in the UK for up to five years, and you can extend the visa after this period, or apply for settlement.

There are two routes available for people with different levels of experience. You must choose which of these routes is most appropriate for your current stage of career when you apply:

• Exceptional Talent is for people who have a substantial track record of working regularly as a professional in the last five years, and who are widely recognised as being current leaders or experts in their field.
• Exceptional Promise is for people who have a developing track record of working as a professional in the last five years, and who are recognised as being future leaders or experts in their field.

The Arts Council is the chosen endorsing body for arts and culture applications.

They assess applications from professional artists and arts practitioners who work in the following areas of practice of Combined Arts, Dance, Literature, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts. Please see The Arts Council Guide for Global Talent visa applicants for more details on the above areas of practice.

Those who work in the Film, Television, Animation, Postproduction and Visual Effects industries can also apply, and so can Fashion designers and Architects. From 1 July 2026 individuals working in specific fields of Design can apply – please see the supported disciplines guidance for Design applicants for more details.

The Arts Council is not an expert organisation in these areas, so they ask the following organisations to assess these applications for them:

• Applications from people working in the Design field are assessed by the Design Business Association (DBA)
• Film, Television, Animation, Postproduction and Visual Effects applications are assessed by the Producers’ Alliance for Film and Television (PACT)
• Applications from Fashion designers are assessed by the British Fashion Council (BFC)
• Applications from Architects are assessed by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)

How do people working in the Design field apply?

• All applications are submitted to the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) service via the UK website, and they send your application to the Arts Council and their recognised expert organisation in Design, the DBA, to assess. 
• Following the assessment, our decision is sent back to UKVI, who will tell you whether your application was successful or not. 
• At all times you will communicate with UKVI about your application, so you do not need to send anything directly to us or contact us for your decision.

Apply on this link: https://www.gov.uk/global-talent

You can find further information on these links:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-global-talent

https://www.gov.uk/global-talent-arts-culture/design-industry

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/global-talent-visa/global-talent-visa-guidance#t-in-page-nav-12

• The latest graduate pool is entering a challenging landscape – periods of stagnant economic growth paired with the take-off of AI – is it any wonder there are less openings for juniors in the industry.
• This drop in the number of junior hires has been pronounced since 2022. A recent report from LSE has found that the main reason behind this is likely the propensity of workers in the UK to work from home, rather than the arrival of generative AI in the same period. The report found the timing of the two is coincidental rather than causal.
• This is a good news story, because WFH is a management issue, rather than proof new technology is taking junior jobs. 
• With the share of paid workdays carried out from home now more than three times pre-Covid levels, what can we do as an industry to make sure we’re developing the junior talent that will be the seniors of tomorrow?
• How can we design our working together days to better develop our junior teams?
• This isn’t to say that we want staff back five days a week in the office – flexibility has seen diversity increase, especially among new mothers and disabled workers – but we do need to support juniors learning and absorbing the micro conversations about the work that put that extra shine on what we can do in person vs what we do over Slack. It’s hard to replicate the contextual information that only really passes face to face.
• Before mandating a return to the office, check the small print: what do contracts and any staff handbooks say, and how did the WFH arrangement arise in the first place? Even where hybrid working was never formally agreed, a consistent pattern over time can create an implied contractual right, so treat this as a legal question, not just a management preference.
• Any change needs a clear business rationale, genuine consultation, and express agreement from staff, and whatever policy you land on must be applied consistently across the board to avoid discrimination claims, particularly given the impact flexible working has had on participation among new mothers and disabled employees. For more legal advice, make use of the DBA’s legal helpline with HK law – find out more.
• We must welcome graduates in, keep enthusiasm for the sector alive. 
• More good news is that the fundamental skills of a designer endure: the tools and methods for getting there will keep changing, but knowing how to get there – the judgement, craft, beauty and taste – remains a constant.
• As does the importance of human agency. Use that human grit, charm, hustle – AI can’t replace all of that. Sound advice to those graduating this year. 
• For more from Kevin, check out his LinkedIn.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday 4 August at 1.30-2.30 BST, as our Scottish members have a Bank Holiday on the Monday.

We’ll be joined by author Hugo Brooks as we look at ambition and redefining success for a restless age. This will be of particular interest to those contemplating the next chapter in their already successful careers.