Three Conversations With People Who Inspire Me - Wonderhood Studio's Aidan McClure

I was going to write about how riding a bike seems to stimulate my brain. It’s like going to a well for ideas. And the radio, I love the radio, particularly Talk Radio. I listen to it in all the in-between moments of my day. I think it’s the best way to get out of the bubble.  

But the truth is, and at risk of sounding like a plonker, the single biggest source of inspiration for me is talking to people. When I think about where my ideas have come from, or whenever I’ve got stuck, chatting to people has always helped. Every conversation holds an insight, something you should look up, a window to outside our adland bubble. I think this is why I’ve always preferred being a creative director to a creative. It’s a people job. A large chunk of your day is spent talking through embryonic thoughts, swapping references, and figuring things out. I get a lot of creative energy from this.

Here are three people I’ve had inspiring chats with:

Paula Laren is a trained accountant and business controller for a Swedish industrial company.

Her work is about as far as you can possibly get from advertising, which provides me with a healthy perspective. Think of compressors more than 360 campaigns. She was born in Peru but moved to Sweden as a teenager, which makes her an unusual mix of South American and Scandinavian. Over the years, I haven’t just gotten to know Paula, I got to know two completely different cultures too. From ceviche to rollmops, Pisco Sour to schnapps, Mario Vargas Llosa to Astrid Lindgren, Maná to ABBA, if I hadn’t shimmied up to Paula in a dodgy nightclub in Nottingham, I wouldn’t have experienced any of this.

Gillian McClure is a children’s author and illustrator.

She has done this all her working life and has 26 books to her name. She is still writing well into her retirement. Her books are like an ever-evolving autobiography, representing her experiences, passions, and family. Despite my best efforts, she has never written anything purely for the dollar. Her latest book is a graphic novel about an old people’s home.  She is the most creatively driven person I know.  Gillian is also an avid collector of children’s books and a fountain of knowledge about children’s stories. As a kid, I was surrounded by this collection, and now her grandkids are too. I still find children’s books fascinating, especially in the context of advertising. The best manage to captivate short attention spans and convey ideas in a simple, entertaining way.

Roman Halter was a Polish architect, painter, sculptor, and writer.

I met him when I used to go swimming every morning before work in the Crouch End lido (pre kids). He used to swim incredibly slowly, suspended in the water like a wrinkly old frog. He had a brilliant sense of humour. We’d always have a good chat. He’d talk about his kids and his wife, Zsuzsa Nádor, who was an Olympic swimmer. He showed me his stained-glass windows and paintings, which hang in the Imperial War Museum and Tate Britain. Then, one day, he gave me his autobiography to read: ‘Roman’s Journey’. His life was an extraordinary story of survival. He survived the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz, Stutthof, and the Dresden firebombing. He lost every member of his family to the Nazis and had to rebuild his life from scratch, finding hope from nothing. Roman sadly died in 2012, but I still think about him and his amazing outlook on life often.