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A Creative Life in Motion
Some careers begin with a carefully planned trajectory. Others grow organically from curiosity, conversation, and a willingness to follow interesting ideas wherever they lead. Eve Macdonald’s path belongs firmly in the second category.
Today she works as a creative strategist and growth specialist at KISS Branding while also running Pencil It In, a platform that helps creatives find events, opportunities, and each other across Northern England. But long before brand strategy and creative campaigns became her professional world, Eve was learning something far more fundamental about people.
Her early professional life began behind a bar.
Looking back, she sees the connection clearly. Hospitality, like branding, is about reading a room, understanding human behaviour, and responding to what people actually want rather than what they say they want.
While bartending, she also found herself managing the venue’s social media. The opportunity appeared naturally because of the work she had already been doing at university, organising events and running social channels for student groups. What began as small responsibilities gradually revealed a pattern. She enjoyed the combination of creativity, strategy, and human connection.
That discovery would quietly shape the direction of her career.
From Art Student to Creative Strategist
Eve originally studied Fine Art and History of Art at the University of Leeds. Her interests were rooted in heritage spaces such as galleries, museums, and cultural institutions. For a long time she imagined a future within that world.
Then the pandemic arrived and altered the landscape for many creative careers.
With studios closed and physical spaces inaccessible, Eve began experimenting more deeply with digital communication, marketing, and storytelling. What started as a practical response to circumstance slowly opened new possibilities.
She remembers attending a marketing event early in her career that changed her perception of the industry entirely. The speaker was someone who travelled, shared stories about campaigns, and explained the thinking behind creative work in a way that felt both human and intellectually engaging.
In that moment Eve realised that brand strategy was not simply about advertising or promotion. It was about narrative, culture, and understanding how ideas move through society.
Around the same time she joined a twelve week programme in Leeds called School of Thought. The experience was intense. Participants received briefs on Monday and had to pitch solutions by Thursday. The pace forced everyone involved to think quickly, collaborate under pressure, and trust their creative instincts.
The programme reshaped Eve’s understanding of what a creative career could look like. Instead of limiting herself to a single discipline, she began exploring how design, strategy, storytelling, and cultural awareness could intersect.
It also left her with a conviction about something else. Many traditional educational pathways struggle to replicate the real world conditions that creative professionals actually face. Fast moving environments, collaborative problem solving, and live briefs often teach lessons that formal coursework cannot.
For Eve, learning happened most powerfully when people came together to work on real problems.
That belief would later become central to her own community building work.
Learning by Doing
Eve’s first agency role placed her in a position that accelerated her learning in ways she could never have planned.
She joined a public relations firm as the only designer on the team. Being the sole creative voice meant that she was involved in nearly every aspect of the work. Photoshoots, video production, social media strategy, and campaign ideation all passed through her hands at some point.
It was an intense environment, but it also provided a rare opportunity to experiment widely.
The campaigns themselves ranged from unusual to imaginative. One project involved delivering pies by drone.
Another celebrated the launch of an airline route from Liverpool. There was even a campaign built around a hair temperature calculator designed to help people avoid damaging their hair with straighteners.
For Eve, the variety was exhilarating. Each campaign demanded a slightly different combination of creativity, research, and storytelling. Over time she began to recognise that her real strengths were not only in design but in connecting ideas across disciplines.
After several years she realised she needed a new environment that would challenge her further. That decision led her to KISS Branding in Leeds.
Finding Her Place at KISS Branding
Joining KISS initially meant taking a lateral move into a junior design role. Yet the environment proved to be exactly what Eve had been searching for.
At KISS the leadership recognised that her talents extended beyond traditional design. Her ability to think strategically about brands, connect people and ideas, and interpret cultural signals became just as valuable as her technical craft.
She describes the experience as a moment when her professional identity truly came into focus.
At KISS she works closely with founder led businesses, helping them clarify who they are and how they communicate that identity to the world. Brand strategy in this context goes far beyond logos or visual identity. It involves translating the internal language of a business into something coherent, meaningful, and emotionally resonant.
One of her favourite parts of the process is the moment when a client recognises themselves in the work.
“It’s the moment when you land on a phrase and the client just says yes, that’s us, Translating how someone feels about their business into words they truly recognise is a very special moment.”
Those moments remind her why the work matters.
The Birth of Pencil It In
While her professional career was developing, Eve was quietly noticing a problem within the creative community around her.
Networking events were happening regularly across Leeds, yet many people struggled to find them. Event platforms were poorly organised, filtering systems were confusing, and information often circulated only within small social circles.
For newcomers to the industry, this created a barrier that felt unnecessary.
Eve herself had experienced how powerful a single event or conversation could be in shaping a career. Yet she also knew how easy it was to miss those opportunities simply because the information never reached you.
The idea for Pencil It In came from a moment of simple frustration.
After missing a creative industry party that many of her peers attended, she realised that events across the city were scattered across multiple platforms with no central hub. Instead of waiting for someone else to fix the problem, she built a solution herself.
Pencil It In began as a simple calendar listing creative events happening in Leeds. Anyone could submit an event, and users could quickly see what was happening across the local creative scene.
The concept was straightforward but powerful.
“I really did not want anyone else to miss the event that might change how they think about their career,”
Within weeks the response from the community made it clear that the idea filled a genuine need.
Two thousand people returned to the website in the first two weeks after launch. Soon after, a collaborator reached out to replicate the model in Manchester. The platform began expanding beyond its original city.
What started as a personal project quickly became a growing community resource.
Creativity, Restlessness, and Burnout
For someone who thrives on ideas and connection, slowing down can sometimes be difficult.
Eve is open about the challenge of balancing creative energy with personal wellbeing. Living with ADHD means her mind often moves quickly from one idea to the next, and if something she believes should exist does not yet exist, her instinct is usually to build it herself.
That combination can be both powerful and exhausting.
Burnout has been one of the most significant challenges she has faced during her career. Learning to recognise the signs early and step back when necessary has become an important part of sustaining her work.
Rest, for her, does not simply mean doing nothing. Instead it involves reconnecting with creativity in forms that have no professional pressure attached to them. Theatre, exhibitions, reading, or experimenting with something entirely new can restore the sense of curiosity that originally drew her to creative work.
Support from her community also plays an important role. Many of her close friends are founders and creatives who understand the rhythms of intense work cycles. They recognise when she needs to pause even before she does.
At home, her partner provides the grounding stability that keeps everything functioning.
Creativity as Community
When Eve talks about her work, one theme appears again and again. Creativity is not only about producing ideas. It is about bringing people together.
Her motivation for building Pencil It In reflects a broader belief that the creative industry becomes stronger when access is more widely distributed. Too often opportunities remain concentrated in a few geographic centres or social circles.
Northern England has long been rich with creative talent, yet many aspiring professionals feel pressure to relocate to London in order to build careers.
Eve challenges that assumption.
By strengthening networks within cities such as Leeds and Manchester, she hopes to help create vibrant local ecosystems where creative professionals can grow without leaving their communities behind.
One of the most meaningful moments she has experienced through Pencil It In came during a networking event when a student approached her to say that the platform had helped her secure her first creative placement.
That single conversation affirmed everything Eve hoped the project might achieve.
“It meant someone earlier in their career found a door that was open because of something I built one evening out of frustration”
The Values That Guide Her Work
Throughout her career Eve has developed a set of personal principles that shape the way she approaches both creative work and professional relationships.
The first is simple and direct. Treat people well.
Creative industries can sometimes develop reputations for competitiveness or ego driven behaviour. Eve believes that kindness and collaboration create stronger and more sustainable networks. The people you meet early in your career often become colleagues, collaborators, or advocates years later.
Curiosity is another central value. She is deeply interested in cultural trends, emerging technologies, and the subtle shifts that shape how people communicate with each other.
This curiosity feeds directly into her strategic work with brands. Understanding cultural context helps businesses position themselves in ways that feel authentic rather than reactive.
Community sits at the heart of everything she does. Whether working with clients or organising creative events, she consistently focuses on creating spaces where people feel supported and inspired.
And finally, courage matters.
Having the confidence to voice an opinion in a room, particularly as a young creative professional, can be difficult. Yet thoughtful disagreement and honest conversation often lead to stronger ideas.
Looking Ahead
The future for Eve’s work is already beginning to take shape.
Pencil It In continues to expand across Northern England, with plans to reach cities such as Newcastle, Sheffield, York, Liverpool, and Durham. The vision is not simply to maintain a calendar but to develop a network of local stewards who care deeply about their own creative communities.
Alongside the events listings, Eve and her collaborators are also exploring the possibility of hosting their own events. Portfolio reviews, design sprints, and collaborative workshops could provide emerging creatives with opportunities that are not always available through traditional pathways.
Meanwhile, her role at KISS Branding continues to evolve as the agency grows. Being part of a company entering its eighth year of development offers its own opportunities to experiment, learn, and shape the direction of the work.
For Eve, the most important thing is simply continuing to grow.
A Life Built Around Creativity
When asked how she defines success, Eve does not describe awards or career milestones.
Instead she returns to a much earlier memory.
As a child she once drew a picture of a dolphin for a school yearbook. Beneath it she wrote a short introduction describing herself. She liked talking, drawing, and eating sweets.
Years later she realises that description still captures the essence of who she is.
Her career now revolves around conversation, creativity, and helping others bring their ideas to life. The sweets still appear occasionally during late project deadlines.
In many ways the core motivations have remained unchanged. Curiosity, creativity, and connection continue to guide her work each day.
And for Eve Macdonald, the ability to keep doing those things is more than enough.
Success, in its simplest form, is simply the freedom to continue creating.
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