Creative director Kirsten Murray on travelling the world and making friends with chaos

Kirsten Murray, 42, lives in Lyon, France, and was diagnosed with ADHD a month ago. “A radical change in how we work is needed, not just for the neurodivergent community but everyone,” she says. Here’s how she’s playing her part.

Tell us about your creative career…

I’m the founder and head of ideas at a fun-sized studio called wherenow. 

The studio name was inspired by my journey over the last eight years. I left my job as a senior designer in Edinburgh with a one-way ticket to Sri Lanka, and a dream of creating my way around the world. Thirty-odd countries and two international moves later, I’ve still got itchy feet. Switching up my surroundings fuels my creativity and I’m grateful to my younger self for taking that first leap.

My career didn’t have the best start. After studying communication and graphic design, I entered the creative industry as a hungry art director. But I questioned my life choices when this job put me in a constant state of overworking and anxiety (not helped by the fact that I had undiagnosed ADHD).

Fast forward a few more agency roles and I had built a creative community around me, started working on self-initiated projects, and set a plan in motion to become self-employed.

As someone who thrives on novelty and variety, niching in one creative discipline or becoming a specialist in one thing wasn’t the right fit for me. Strategy, art direction, copywriting, and design all felt like languages I needed to learn to communicate my ideas. So when I set up my business, I decided I would do it all.

Proudest career moment?

I think having the guts to start a business, and still be going after eight years, is something to be proud of. But some of the highlights along the way include:

Creating the brand for Edible, an allergy-mindful menu app that helps to make eating out safer and more accessible.

Designing education materials that teach young people creative thinking skills – now delivered in schools across the country.

Picking up a D&AD pencil for a brand voice crafted for a children’s charity (a dopamine high I’m still chasing).

What does a work day usually look like?

My day starts with a commute from the bedroom to my studio space next door. I’ve just joined a WhatsApp group for co-working meet-ups, so I’m hoping that’ll nudge me to spend more time in cafes, and make some new work chums.

Because my work varies from project to project, one day I might be running a brand discovery workshop with a client, the next making cyanotype prints for an album cover. I spend a lot of my time ideating, so I’ll often leave my desk to take my brain for a wander.

Whilst some people with ADHD use systems to help them be more disciplined with their time, I’ve gone fully rogue. Having worked in highly-structured environments before, I really value being able to work on my own terms now. I’ll work when I feel motivated – even if that means during “unsociable hours”. It can be hard to shake the shame of working and living in a way that doesn’t fit the norm, especially when clients see you’ve made edits at 4am.

Tilda Swinton’s first note for radical living is to ‘make friends with chaos.’ I’m not sure Tilda was thinking about tossing out timesheets when she wrote this, but I’ve taken it as my cue to accept how messy ADHD feels under the surface.

Where do you find new ideas and inspiration?

I love walking around a city I’ve never been to before and documenting what I see – hand-painted club posters in Porto, cement breeze blocks in Mandalay, characterful packaging in Kyoto. But you don’t have to travel far to find inspiration. It’s everywhere. The skill is in noticing it. 

What do you do if you become creatively blocked?

A tutor of mine used to talk about our creative reservoir. A well of inspiration we can draw from when trying to solve a creative brief. Let it run dry and you find yourself trying to generate ideas from nothing. So if I feel blocked, I top up my reservoir – visit an exhibition, watch a film, talk to people, go outside, look up.

A bigger block for me is when I lack the motivation to design or write ideas into existence. But I’m learning to be kinder with myself — to rest and recharge — and to trust that when motivation hits, my hyperfocus will make up for the time I’ve spent fannying about.

When did you discover that you’re neurodivergent?

My ADHD badge is brand new, as I only received my diagnosis last month.

The possibility of me being neurodivergent hadn’t even been on my radar until this year. What started as a quest to better understand and manage delayed sleep phase syndrome ended up with me in a psychologist’s office doing a series of cognitive tests for neurodivergence. 

The irony is not lost on me that I rescheduled my ADHD assessment three times, and when I finally turned up for it, I was late.

How did you feel about it, at first?

There’s a lot about me that makes more sense now. I feel like I’ve got more context to understand why I think or act the way I do.

What was school like for you?

Even though I struggled to finish exams in time and had difficulty focusing during classes that didn’t interest me, I was a high achiever and strived for perfection. I was often anxious about getting things right – I still am.

What got you through?

A good support system and structure at home got me through. My parents also encouraged my imagination and creativity. Without that privilege, I think I wouldn’t have done as well as I did, or been supported to pursue a career in design.

In what ways does your neurodivergence help you, creatively?

A friend once described me as having a ‘galaxy brain’ and I think this is such a beautiful analogy for how the process of creating feels to me. My ideas are vast and scattered, and they tend to appear in the still of the night, when there are fewer distractions.

This year, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology carried out a study into the connection between ADHD traits and creativity and found that our greater tendency to mind wander leads to improved divergent thinking. What many see as a distraction may actually be a creative advantage.

And, yes, I did take a break from writing this to look up how many points Neuropsychopharmacology is worth in Scrabble. It’s 46, if you’re wondering.

Does it bring any challenges?

It turns out that executive function is kind of a big deal when you run your own business and I’m still figuring out how to prioritise important tasks, catch those typos before I hit send, and recognise when I’ve done enough so I don’t work myself into the ground. Let’s just say I’m a work in progress.

Having to navigate challenges is something that’s typical rather than atypical — they just look different for everyone. There are business owners managing chronic illnesses, parents fighting for their lives to meet deadlines on no sleep, and people experiencing grief barely holding it together on video calls. A little understanding and compassion goes a long way in helping people show up as themselves.

Do you prefer to work alone, or with others?

I like a balance of the two, but the right collaborators bring out the best in me – and I have way more fun working with others.

What are your dreams for the future, in terms of your work?

With the seismic shift happening in the creative industry (and world) right now, the future feels uncertain. What I do know is that ideas are powerful catalysts for change. And I want to be part of designing whatever comes next. I don’t dream of growing my studio in size, but in impact – creating meaningful work that helps set direction, not just follow it.

And your dreams for neurodivergence/the neurodivergent community?

I think a radical change in how we work is needed, not just for the neurodivergent community but everyone. For far too long, uniformity and conformity have been rewarded in the workplace. And productivity pushed at the expense of play. The future of creativity depends on us breaking this mould.

www.kirstenmurray.com / Instagram: @kirstenmakes / Linkedin: kirstenmurray

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