Hi This Is Bry named top 100 Best Creative Arts Business in the UK by the Small Business Awards

When I found out I'd been named in the Small Business Awards UK top 100 for Best Creative Arts Business on a fairly normal Tuesday. I read the email, put my phone down, picked it back up, read it again, and then went and told my partner. I still feel a bit weird saying it out loud.

It still feels a bit strange writing that Hi This Is Bry is now a UK top 100 creative business, especially because the business is still relatively young. The recognition came alongside being named UK top 10 for Best Business Branding at the Small Business Awards, which made the whole thing feel even more significant because the two categories recognise slightly different parts of what I have been building.

See also: Hi This Is Bry named UK top 10 for Best Business Branding at the Small Business Awards

Where was I not that long ago?

Not long before starting my own business, I was working inside design and marketing agencies in Essex, which gave me genuinely useful experience across different clients, projects and ways of working. I learned a huge amount there, but the work ultimately belonged to somebody else and the environments did not always leave much room for the way I work best.

Starting Hi This Is Bry meant building something from scratch and deciding what I actually wanted the work to look like, including how I communicated with clients, what I charged and how much strategic thinking sat behind the design. It was exciting, but there is also a fairly large amount of backing yourself involved when you leave an established job and decide that the new plan is simply you.

Being included in the top 100 felt like some outside confirmation that those decisions had created something other people could see value in too. I had spent a lot of time making decisions based on what I thought would make the business stronger, so recognition from outside my own client base meant more than I expected.

See also: My time as a brand designer and web designer in Colchester

What do I think helped my entry stand out?

I was competing alongside much larger creative businesses, including companies with teams and resources very different from mine, so I knew the entry needed to explain what was distinctive about the way Hi This Is Bry works. Rather than trying to make the business sound enormous, I focused on what I actually do differently and why those choices matter to the clients I work with.

A big part of that is the amount of thought that happens before anything is designed. When I work on branding, I am looking at the market around the business, the people it needs to appeal to and what might make it easier to recognise or choose, which is why my brand strategy and marketing services are built at different levels depending on how much strategic work the business actually needs.

I also care a lot about clients being able to use what I create once the project is finished. Branding assets, strategy documents and other project materials need to be useful outside a presentation deck, because I would rather hand somebody something they can confidently work with than create a dependency where every small change has to come back through me.

My pricing has also been developed around giving smaller businesses different ways to access strategic creative support. Somebody with an established business that needs a targeted refresh may not need the same project as somebody building the whole identity from scratch, which is why my Creative Services include smaller diagnostic offers alongside larger branding, website and strategic projects.

The other thing I talked about was the value I place on human made creative work. AI can be useful for certain tasks, but my client work is built around understanding the individual business, its context and the people making the buying decision, because those are the details that make one solution different from another.

See also: AI logo risks every business should know

Why do I care so much about strategy behind the creative work?

I have never been particularly interested in making something attractive, handing over the files and disappearing without thinking about whether it will actually help the business. Design becomes much more useful when you understand what it needs to change, whether that means making the service easier to understand, helping the business look more established or giving the owner something they finally feel confident promoting.

That thinking now runs through most of my work, even when the final deliverable looks fairly simple. A logo might be the visible outcome, but there are still decisions behind what the business needs to communicate, while a website needs to consider what somebody sees first, which questions they need answered and what might finally persuade them to enquire.

It is also why I offer business strategy services separately from design. Sometimes the business does not need another graphic yet, it needs somebody to help work out which part of the offer has the most potential and what is actually worth spending time on next.

See also: What goes into award winning branding and websites

The client feedback mattered as much as the work itself

My client reviews were part of the evidence behind the entry, and that mattered to me because a creative business can say almost anything about itself. Clients are the people who can say whether the process actually felt useful, whether communication was clear and whether the finished work gave them something they could confidently use afterwards.

For a business that had been trading for less than two years, receiving that kind of feedback alongside the award recognition felt significant. I do not take it for granted because every positive review represents somebody trusting me with a real part of their business, often something they have spent years building before I ever get involved.

That visible evidence has also made me think more carefully about how businesses use recognition once they have earned it. Awards, testimonials and features can all help a potential customer understand that other people have already trusted the business, which is especially useful when they are encountering you for the first time.

The values behind the business came from experience

Hi This Is Bry exists partly because I wanted to create a way of working that felt more sustainable for me and more useful for the people I worked with. Inclusive design matters to me, honest strategy matters to me and I want small businesses to be able to understand what they are paying for without everything being hidden behind a sales call.

Those values did not come from sitting down and deciding which words would look nicest on an About page. They came from experiences I had before the business existed, including learning where I worked well, what made work harder and what kind of client relationship brought out the best in me.

Early in my career I was diagnosed as autistic, which explained a lot about how I process information and why some working environments had felt more difficult than others. Some people in the creative industry were very supportive, while other experiences made it clear that there was not always much space for somebody who approached communication, workload or problem solving differently.

Building my own business gave me more control over that environment, and it also changed the way I think about clients. I do not expect everybody to communicate in exactly the same way or arrive with perfect business language, because part of my job is taking what somebody is trying to explain and helping turn it into something clearer.

What did being recognised as a top 100 creative business mean to me?

Being recognised as a top 100 Best Creative Arts Business felt especially meaningful because the things I had sometimes worried made me work differently were part of the business being recognised. I had built Hi This Is Bry around a way of thinking and working that suited me better, then found that those same choices could become part of what made the business valuable to other people.

There is also something quite nice about receiving recognition for a business that is deliberately still very small. I work independently and bring in other support where a project genuinely needs it, so growth for me has never meant trying to turn the business into a large agency as quickly as possible.

I would rather keep building a creative practice where I can stay close to the work and understand the businesses I am helping. The award made that feel like a perfectly legitimate direction rather than a temporary stage before I was supposed to become something bigger.

FAQs

What is the Small Business Awards UK Best Creative Arts Business category? The category recognises businesses working across the creative sector, and Hi This Is Bry was selected within the UK top 100. For me, the recognition was particularly meaningful because the business had been trading for less than two years when I received it.

What makes Hi This Is Bry different from other creative businesses? A large part of my work sits between creative design and strategy, so I look at what the business is trying to achieve before deciding what needs to be created. My Creative Services cover branding, websites, business strategy and marketing support, with different levels of help depending on what the business already has in place.

Do you only work with established businesses? No, I work with businesses at different stages, although the right service depends on how clear the offer already is and what foundations are in place. Some businesses need help developing their direction first, while others already know exactly what they sell and need stronger branding, a website or marketing support around it.

Can small businesses use awards as part of their marketing? Yes, when the recognition is relevant and genuine, it can give potential customers useful evidence that somebody outside the business has assessed or recognised the work. The award still needs context, because simply adding a badge without explaining what was recognised tells the reader much less.

Where can I see your current services and prices? My Creative Services page lists my current offers and pricing, so you can compare the different levels of support before deciding whether you want to enquire. You can also get in touch to request a custom quote for projects that don't fit neatly into one service.

Recognition is most useful when you actually do something with it

Winning or being shortlisted for an award feels lovely, but the recognition becomes much more useful when potential clients can actually find it. Adding awards to your website, talking about what was recognised and connecting that proof to the work you currently sell can help people understand why the recognition matters rather than treating it as a decorative badge.

That is also the advice I now give clients, which means I unfortunately have to follow it myself. Writing this blog is part celebration and part me making sure I do not spend all year telling other businesses to use their authority properly while hiding my own recognition three scrolls down an About page.

Want to see what proof your business could be making more of?

Awards are only one form of authority, and plenty of businesses already have useful proof sitting across reviews, client results, features or experience without making much of it. My free Business Visibility Playbook helps you look at how people currently discover and judge your business, then identify where stronger proof or clearer information could make it easier for them to trust what they find.