Get back to the drawing board.

In 1988, the Apple Mac arrived at art college. It felt like the future. Clean screens. Perfect shapes. Everything sharper, faster, more controlled. Like everyone else, I was captivated.

But around that time, I was lucky enough to have something else shaping how I saw creativity. My dad friend Ralph Steadman. Yes, that Ralph Steadman — the wild, ink-splattered genius behind Hunter S. Thompson’s visual universe.

I’d talk about the Mac and how quickly you could create something and make it looked finished.

He’d ask me about the drawing.

Not the software.

Not the polish.

The drawing.

At nineteen, I didn’t fully understand the depth of that question.

Ralph wasn’t resisting technology. He was protecting something more important — the integrity of the craft. Because looking finished and being resolved are not the same thing.

In a world of speed and on demand Sometimes things aren’t ever truly finished — they evolve. They deepen. They refine. They become clearer the more you’re willing to question them.

Computers can give you completion. Craft demands evolution. And this has really stuck with me through my career and the launch of Tallulah.

Resolution comes from wrestling with the work. From redrawing it. From sitting in that uncomfortable middle where the idea hasn’t quite revealed itself yet.

That lesson shaped me more than I realised at the time.

Today, I’m proud to own a signed piece from Ralph. On it, he wrote a simple instruction:

Get back to the drawing board.

It hangs in my studio as a daily reminder.

Not to reject progress.

But to respect the process.

To keep evolving the idea until it earns its place.

At TALLULAH, we absolutely use AI and emerging technologies. They help us move faster and remove friction.

But the time they give us isn’t about producing more.

It’s about refining more.

Because good creative can be delivered.

Great creative evolves.

And sometimes, moving forward means going back — back to the sketch, back to the thinking, back to the drawing board.