近期文章
在不断变化的设计行业中，Jonathan Ford 如何带领 Pearlfisher保持前瞻性？
This article originally appeared on The Drum.
With over 30 years in the design game, Jonathan ‘Jonno’ Ford can pinpoint the exact person who encouraged him to follow his love of art. Mr Pope, a teacher at his comprehensive school in Bristol encouraged a young Ford to continue with the scribbles – which, he says, his dad “thought were stupid” – and pursue an education in design.
In 1980, he landed a place at Middlesex University to study graphic design for four years. It was around that time he became familiar with art design groups such as Hipgnosis, realizing that the London-based collective was responsible for creating the artwork on some of his favorite LPs like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and Black Sabbath’s Technical Ecstasy. But it was the book Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design, Including the Ones in This Book by Pentagram’s co-founder Bob Gill that instilled a drive in Ford to “become a really great graphic designer.”
Nobody told Ford how to get a job after university, but he was “so sick of education and being poor” that he drew up a list of the top 20 companies in London to work for. He designed a little package and sent it out to a bunch of creative directors. It took him twenty interviews to get to the one he wanted, which was Michael Peters and Partners.
“It was a challenger agency at the time” explains Ford. “It was a team of stars, like the Real Madrid of design at the time. I joined when they were about 30 people, and they then scaled very rapidly during the 80s. I was fortunate to be around all these kind of galactic talents, winning D&ADs and having great mentors like Michael and Glenn Tutssel who trusted in young talent. It was a rock and roll ride through the 80s as the company grew.”
‘It’s good to go through bankruptcy, but preferably somebody else’s’
As the company scaled, Ford grew as a designer and in 1989 the agency offered him the role of a lifetime at its New York office. At the tender age of just 29, he was to become a creative director.
Ford explains that the 80s were a time of real “excess” in the industry and references the novel The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. ”When I got to New York, the leader of the company who was running the office, said to me, ‘We’ll be bankrupt in a year.’ And I said, ‘I really don’t believe that’. And one year later, to the day, we went bankrupt. The whole company imploded,” says Ford. “One of the lessons that I took with me from that point is it’s good to go through bankruptcy, but preferably somebody else’s. It can focus the mind on what you need to do.”
He jokes that he could write a book on “the roller coaster ride of an 80s designer yuppie” based on his time in the Big Apple. Experiencing a vastly different culture, Ford encourages everyone who can live abroad to do so at some point in their life. His time in America contrasted with his British upbringing, gave him the unique ability to see the world from two distinct perspectives.
Ferraris, police and the Wolf of Wall Street
At the same time, he found himself invited to some “crazy parties,” one of which was particularly infamous.
On the Fourth of July, Ford arrived in the late afternoon at a lavish waterfront party in the Hamptons. “I found myself at this crazy party with wild people and Ferraris parked outside,” he recalls. “I just thought I died and gone to heaven.”
As the night went on, the guests made their way down to the beach to set off massive fireworks. Before Ford knew it, the police had descended on the scene. He was arrested – for the first and only time in his life – and taken to the station.
“I was let free,” he adds. “Apparently, there was a generous donation to the Police Retirement Fund by The Wolf of Wall Street.” Only later did Ford realize the host of the party was none other than Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street.
It was around this time that Ford says he realized he was a much better creative director than a designer. “My ideas are great, but my crafting is terrible,” he says. “But that’s why you have to have great people around you to do all these great things. And it was at the end of that period, early 1992 when I just realized I was getting into bed with people that I didn’t really want to be in bed with for the long run.”
In September of that year, he moved back to England and, alongside Mike Branson and Ford’s late wife Karen Welman, founded Pearlfisher. Coming back to the UK, with zero clients and a changing creative landscape was daunting.
“We would just roll up our sleeves and just start making phone calls, that yielded meetings,” he remembers. “And to set the tone, we did some of our own projects as well. We created our own brands.”
Those products included honey, teas and sparkling water. They weren’t just concepts either, Pearlfisher produced them. Through winning awards, press and designing a shopfront (this was pre-internet), the agency began to get noticed. Within the first five years, Pearfisher had around 15 employees and began collaborating with some big brands.
“Every five years, there was a signature piece of work that came along that tended to define us,” explains Ford, of the early days. The first was the agency’s work for Absolut. “It resulted in Absolut Mandarin, which was the first time somebody had ever thought about creating the illusion of having an orange inside the bottle. It was such a signature piece of work, it dovetailed all our creative ideas into a global brand.”
Over the next 30 years work for McDonald’s would become another seminal project, alongside Sipsmith, Lucozade and Cadbury. To mark its 25th birthday, Ford and his team decided that they wanted to do something creative and original to mark the occasion, as well as a big party. They decided to focus on the agency name, Pearlfisher, and devise an idea from there.
Originally, Ford, Branson and Welman took inspiration from the Japanese Ama, which translates to ‘sea women’, who are divers famed for collecting pearls. For Ford, the name represents “diving deep to get something of value,” he explains. “The idea of surfacing a pearl was like the idea of finding the gem in every brand.”
Winning the Chelsea Flower show
For the impending celebrations, they decided to focus on the ocean and so entered a garden design into the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Inspired by growing concerns about ocean pollution, Ford and Welman decided to create an ocean-themed garden for the event.
Their initial concept was rejected due to a lack of plants. Encouraged to revise their idea, they collaborated with garden designer John Woodland. Together, they used cacti, succulents and arid plants to mimic coral and seaweed, creating the illusion of an underwater landscape. After months of planning and a grueling two-week installation under the scorching sun, their efforts were rewarded with a prestigious gold medal.
“Inspiration is one of the most important currencies of a generous creative agency. When I say generous, I’m talking about in terms of science, because you need to keep a lot of people motivated,” Ford explains.
“If they [the team] don’t feel inspired, then they’re going to leave. We want to attract great talent, and we want to keep them on board. We want to fire their imaginations to produce inspiring work.”
As of 2025, Pearlfisher has approximately 140 employees across various departments. “When we started out, we were criticized for being a computer design company because my time in America in the early 90s had introduced me to technology, the Macintosh and working with desktop computers,” Ford says.
‘If you can’t imagine something, how can you create it?’
“And if you fast forward to today, we’ve skimmed through the web, the mobile revolution, and now we’ve got generative AI possibilities just hitting us in the face every day. But with all these things, I do feel like it’s the human imagination that is the most important thing. If you can’t imagine something, then how you actually going to create it?”
Ford says that when people ask him personally if he uses AI he answers by saying he uses “DI” which is ‘design intelligence.’ “That’s the human interpretation of all of these kinds of possibilities, to focus on something that is truly original, motivating and ultimately seductive.”
Making time for young designers
Ford truly believes in nurturing young creatives and encouraging them to come to him with ideas, no matter how big or small. 33 years later, he is in awe of his teams in the UK and US that are making “stunning” work. Reflecting on the past three decades of Pearlfisher, Ford says he couldn’t have pictured that he’d still be in this business and excited by it. Now, his focus is on imagining what the next five years might look like which he will have “a damn good go at.”
He jokes that he could write a book on “the roller coaster ride of an 80s designer yuppie” based on his time in the Big Apple. Experiencing a vastly different culture, Ford encourages everyone who can live abroad to do so at some point in their life. His time in America contrasted with his British upbringing, gave him the unique ability to see the world from two distinct perspectives.
Ferraris, police and the Wolf of Wall Street
At the same time, he found himself invited to some “crazy parties,” one of which was particularly infamous.
On the Fourth of July, Ford arrived in the late afternoon at a lavish waterfront party in the Hamptons. “I found myself at this crazy party with wild people and Ferraris parked outside,” he recalls. “I just thought I died and gone to heaven.”
As the night went on, the guests made their way down to the beach to set off massive fireworks. Before Ford knew it, the police had descended on the scene. He was arrested – for the first and only time in his life – and taken to the station.
“I was let free,” he adds. “Apparently, there was a generous donation to the Police Retirement Fund by The Wolf of Wall Street.” Only later did Ford realize the host of the party was none other than Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street.
It was around this time that Ford says he realized he was a much better creative director than a designer. “My ideas are great, but my crafting is terrible,” he says. “But that’s why you have to have great people around you to do all these great things. And it was at the end of that period, early 1992 when I just realized I was getting into bed with people that I didn’t really want to be in bed with for the long run.”
In September of that year, he moved back to England and, alongside Mike Branson and Ford’s late wife Karen Welman, founded Pearlfisher. Coming back to the UK, with zero clients and a changing creative landscape was daunting.
“We would just roll up our sleeves and just start making phone calls, that yielded meetings,” he remembers. “And to set the tone, we did some of our own projects as well. We created our own brands.”
Those products included honey, teas and sparkling water. They weren’t just concepts either, Pearlfisher produced them. Through winning awards, press and designing a shopfront (this was pre-internet), the agency began to get noticed. Within the first five years, Pearfisher had around 15 employees and began collaborating with some big brands.
“Every five years, there was a signature piece of work that came along that tended to define us,” explains Ford, of the early days. The first was the agency’s work for Absolut. “It resulted in Absolut Mandarin, which was the first time somebody had ever thought about creating the illusion of having an orange inside the bottle. It was such a signature piece of work, it dovetailed all our creative ideas into a global brand.”
Over the next 30 years work for McDonald’s would become another seminal project, alongside Sipsmith, Lucozade and Cadbury. To mark its 25th birthday, Ford and his team decided that they wanted to do something creative and original to mark the occasion, as well as a big party. They decided to focus on the agency name, Pearlfisher, and devise an idea from there.
Originally, Ford, Branson and Welman took inspiration from the Japanese Ama, which translates to ‘sea women’, who are divers famed for collecting pearls. For Ford, the name represents “diving deep to get something of value,” he explains. “The idea of surfacing a pearl was like the idea of finding the gem in every brand.”
Winning the Chelsea Flower show
For the impending celebrations, they decided to focus on the ocean and so entered a garden design into the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Inspired by growing concerns about ocean pollution, Ford and Welman decided to create an ocean-themed garden for the event.
Their initial concept was rejected due to a lack of plants. Encouraged to revise their idea, they collaborated with garden designer John Woodland. Together, they used cacti, succulents and arid plants to mimic coral and seaweed, creating the illusion of an underwater landscape. After months of planning and a grueling two-week installation under the scorching sun, their efforts were rewarded with a prestigious gold medal.
“Inspiration is one of the most important currencies of a generous creative agency. When I say generous, I’m talking about in terms of science, because you need to keep a lot of people motivated,” Ford explains.
“If they [the team] don’t feel inspired, then they’re going to leave. We want to attract great talent, and we want to keep them on board. We want to fire their imaginations to produce inspiring work.”
As of 2025, Pearlfisher has approximately 140 employees across various departments. “When we started out, we were criticized for being a computer design company because my time in America in the early 90s had introduced me to technology, the Macintosh and working with desktop computers,” Ford says.
‘If you can’t imagine something, how can you create it?’
“And if you fast forward to today, we’ve skimmed through the web, the mobile revolution, and now we’ve got generative AI possibilities just hitting us in the face every day. But with all these things, I do feel like it’s the human imagination that is the most important thing. If you can’t imagine something, then how you actually going to create it?”
Ford says that when people ask him personally if he uses AI he answers by saying he uses “DI” which is ‘design intelligence.’ “That’s the human interpretation of all of these kinds of possibilities, to focus on something that is truly original, motivating and ultimately seductive.”
Making time for young designers
Ford truly believes in nurturing young creatives and encouraging them to come to him with ideas, no matter how big or small. 33 years later, he is in awe of his teams in the UK and US that are making “stunning” work. Reflecting on the past three decades of Pearlfisher, Ford says he couldn’t have pictured that he’d still be in this business and excited by it. Now, his focus is on imagining what the next five years might look like which he will have “a damn good go at.”
