Ten Questions With Cameron Pitts

i'm cameron pitts, a designer from yorkshire, england, and i love anything creative. i just want the work to speak for itself.

the middle club is my creative studio, started in 2024. i help brands and businesses capture the world they're trying to create, and grow it through branding, design and film.

it's also how i show what i do. the world you see around the middle club, the pictures, the films, the clothes, is a showcase for the work i offer. if you like the world, that's the work.

it comes from blue middle white, the first company i ran, as a young teenager.

years ago my mum pointed something out in an old car she had: the bmw badge, the way she showed me, reads as blue, a middle line, then white. blue middle white. i was fascinated by it. that's probably where my love of branding started, with a play on a name.

so blue middle white became mine. it was a stage for every project i was doing, my creative outlet, and later a magazine my friends and family wrote for. it ran for a couple of issues before life took over and it went on the back burner. today blue middle white is an archive store for some of my own things and some of the middle club's merchandise.

the middle club grew out of that. my work is luxury hospitality, the world of members' clubs, golf clubs and sports clubs, so the name was obvious. to people who know me, it doesn't seem out of place at all.

anything, big or small.

at the big end, i'll overhaul a whole brand. world building comes first: the name, the identity, the voice and the art direction. then everything that grows from it: design, digital, photography and film, social and marketing.

or you can hire me for one thing. a menu. a photo shoot. a brochure, the signage, the packaging, the uniforms and merchandise. a website or an online shop. a brand film or a tv commercial. a paid campaign or a month of social.

the studio also builds ai systems: booking and enquiry assistants that answer guests in the house voice, and automations that take the repeating jobs off a team. if a business wants a full back-end system built, we can build it.

and when the project is done, some clients keep me on: on a retainer, or for straight advice when they need it.

because i grew up around it, and i've never really left. a lot of my family works in hospitality, and i've worked in it myself for a long time.

some of my happiest memories are in hotels and restaurants. i was lucky enough as a child to visit places all over the world, all over europe especially, and fall in love with them. they felt special because each one had a world around it.

that's why it disappoints me to my bones when i walk into a hotel or a restaurant, a chain or anywhere, and the world just isn't there. it feels lazy. the world is my speciality, and building it is what the middle club does.

it's in the films i love too. the grand budapest hotel by wes anderson is, to me, a perfect film. the shining is another favourite: the total opposite, but a hotel nonetheless.

it starts with a good conversation. i want to understand the whole scope and everything the place needs, and i'll give my opinion wherever it helps the project as a whole.

everyone wants a good brief, so i help my clients write one. good work starts there.

how long it takes depends on the job. whatever the size, i keep the turnaround efficient.

it depends on the job.

sometimes i work by the hour, when that makes the most sense, and i'm competitive at £40 an hour. if the brief is good and i know exactly what needs doing, the hours stay low.

but i don't think creative work should be valued on time alone. getting into the right headspace, understanding the scope, coming up with lots of ideas, narrowing them down and presenting the main directions all take time. so on a big project, the price reflects that thinking, not just the hours.

and it doesn't have to end there. some clients came to me for one main project and are now on a retainer, or i work with them by the hour as things come up.

i work mostly in yorkshire because i'm from here. there's a massive opportunity for businesses up here to have someone like me on their doorstep, rather than me setting up in london and putting my efforts there.

most of my clients are in yorkshire, the north of england or london. i also work with places in scotland, europe and parts of north america.

my base is in west yorkshire, in the village of kirkburton, but i work remotely from wherever the job needs.

honestly, this has been a massive change for me over the past few years, and especially the past few months. i had a bit of an existential crisis about it. should i boycott ai and make everything by hand? would people like that more? would clients prefer it?

at the same time, small businesses are using generative ai more and more, and some of my clients have drifted away. that's the natural progression, i suppose.

so i landed where a lot of the agencies i've talked to have landed: selective ai.

my process is the same. the tools are different. i use photoshop a lot less now, because the studio's own ai systems give excellent results, especially on smaller jobs, early thinking and mock-ups.

i'd be shooting myself in the foot if i boycotted ai. but i'd be doing the same if i became a full ai agency. my taste matters, and so does the finish of the work. that hasn't changed.

what has changed is the speed. ai agents now handle the jobs a junior would have done, so my workflow is quicker and more efficient, and the slow, less productive tasks go to ai. that leaves me free to focus on the real work that needs my attention.

the setting. i don't always remember when i first heard a song, but i remember where i was, and the place is what makes it stick.

in 2011 i heard frank ocean's nostalgia, ultra for the first time, in my room at belmond villa sant'andrea in taormina, sicily. ask me what else i remember from 2011 and i'd say nothing at all. but i remember that: looking out of the window and being transported to a different world, one i fell in love with. it was timeless, classic, beautiful, authentic and historic. sicily is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and that hotel's setting is phenomenal. this was before instagram took over and everything went viral.

if i'd heard that mixtape in my bedroom, i don't think i'd remember it half as vividly. the place embedded the memory.

that's why a brand has to engage with everything in its environment. a tropical-style hotel in the north of scotland just doesn't work, from a business point of view or any other.

think about pubs. there are two kinds that succeed. one doesn't really do food. it's the local, it serves great ale, maybe the odd cheese toastie, and on a friday night it's packed with an atmosphere you couldn't recreate anywhere else. the other cares about food: a fantastic chef, proper local produce, everything done right and promoted properly. lots of pubs like that do very well.

but if you're not one or the other, you're in a grey area. no man's land. so many businesses are there. you can have the best staff, the best venue and the best interiors, but if you don't really know who you are, the world you're in and who your guests are, and you don't nail it down, you won't be as successful as the places that do.

well established, with ongoing clients i really want to work with: people who trust me and let me spread my wings across their whole business.

i've got lots of dream clients in mind. places people truly love and come back to time and time again. to have a piece of that would be phenomenal.

this is also the start of something i can grow my creative work through. someone might love me for one job and come back for another. interior design, for example, goes hand in hand with branding, and so do the other branches of the trade.

i want the middle club to be a lifestyle brand too, and for people to recognise all the different avenues. that's how blue middle white was always meant to be, and still is: the foundation of all my creative work. the middle club is the studio. there might be a merchandise line from both, or interiors, or whatever comes next.

the middle club has so much growing to do. in five years, i see it as a well-established studio, recognised by some of the most famous and celebrated brands and artists.