Ryan Atkinson: A Few Of My Favourite Things

The things I love are evidence of the same fascination: how ideas take shape.

How a story becomes a world.

How a sketch becomes an object.

How a system becomes an experience.

How a handful of small decisions becomes something people genuinely care about.

The people, places and things that built my career look unrelated at first.

They’re not.

They’re the same question, asked in different materials.

The Black Sheep

I’ve spent most of my career sitting between worlds.

A brand designer in advertising agencies.

An advertising creative obsessed with identity systems.

A South African who somehow ended up building brands across four continents.

Finding joy at the intersections, never quite fitting into a single category.

That’s always felt very black sheep to me.

Which is probably why I’ve felt so at home at BBH USA, an agency that’s spent its entire existence zigging while everyone else zags.

It gave that black-sheep feeling a flock to belong to.

Since then, I’ve become slightly obsessed with BBH’s sheep, remaking it in every form I can.

LEGO, 3D prints, stickers, sketches.

I see them as personal totems and little reminders that the most interesting ideas often come from people willing to break formation.

The Shoes

These are the most important things in my life.

Not these scuffed shoes per se, but rather the people who fill them.

For all the energy that goes into creative work, whether presenting a branding system to a CEO or building a global advertising campaign, my family are the ones who keep everything in perspective.

They remind me that success isn’t measured in awards, pitches or promotions, but in showing up for the people who matter most.

Perhaps that’s why I love design so much.

At its best, design is an act of care.

It means thinking deeply about someone else’s experience and trying to make it a little better.

The Plants

I like things that grow in unexpected directions.

Ideas. Careers. Teams.

Sometimes monsteras.

My office is full of technology, prototypes and half-finished experiments, but it’s the plants that make the space feel alive.

They bring a little unpredictability into an environment that’s otherwise built around solving problems.

And unlike most creative projects, they don’t care what the deadline is.

The Sampler

I can’t play an instrument.

Which is exactly why I love this thing.

The EP-133 lets me strip away all the theory and replace it with curiosity.

Push a button.

Sample a sound.

Make a mess.

See what happens.

There’s something liberating about being a beginner again.

No expectations.

No expertise.

No established process to fall back on.

That’s how I approach most creative work.

Not by chasing perfection, but by experimenting until something interesting reveals itself.

Most of my best ideas start as noise.

The Vinyl Figures

I’ve always been fascinated by vinyl figures because they all begin with the same basic canvas.

Whether it’s a Funko Pop, a Freddie, IYKYK, or a Bearbrick, the starting point is largely the same.

What changes is the interpretation.

Give the same platform to a hundred different artists and you’ll get a hundred completely different outcomes.

I’ve spent my entire career working with creative people, and that’s still one of the things I love most about creativity.

There are rarely perfect answers.

Just different perspectives.

The 3D Printer

The Bambu A1 is probably the most dangerous thing I own.

Not because it can make toys, but because it turns every passing thought into a project.

A hook for the garage.

A prototype for a presentation.

A new black sheep totem.

A gift for my kids.

A solution to a problem I didn’t know I had five minutes ago.

Ideas don’t stay just in my head for very long.

I want to see them.

Hold them.

Test them.

Break them.

Improve them.

The printer has become an excuse to make things tangible.

A reminder that the distance between an idea and reality is often much shorter than we think.