20 years ago today, I made the permanent move to London and set up my design business.

As a ‘girl from the sticks’, I moved from a small city where the prospects of continuing a design career were limited, to the big smoke. Setting up on my own wasn’t my original intention but at that time the freelance job market was more buoyant than the permanent one.

The move to London wasn’t just a career pull, it was an emotional one as well, as my partner had already moved there. A year of travelling back and forth on the train every weekend was no fun.

I started by researching, scouring the jobs section of Design Week. I found the design agencies that I thought my work was closely aligned to, developed a database and emailed them. I secured work – a few weeks at first, but then more and more. Building up contacts and a reputation for being a good and reliable designer meant that two weeks turned into 20 years.

Even now, I’m not sure exactly how I managed to make it work. But I think that was, and still is, my philosophy, to ‘just make it work’. Who knows where I’ll be in 20 years’ time? I’ll definitely be creakier that’s for certain! But I think that attitude will remain – to make it work in whatever form ‘making it work’ takes.