Designing creative independence with Ajaz Ahmed

What happens when you combine a love of design with a mind for business? For Ajaz Ahmed, it meant building one of the world's most successful creative companies from scratch before starting all over again. Ajaz is the visionary founder of AKQA, the global digital agency that he grew to 5,000 staff across 30 countries. After three decades at the helm, he stepped down and launched Studio One, an agile new venture built for the AI age, where creativity is unleashed and hierarchy stripped back. Born in the Thames Valley and inspired by architecture from an early age, Ajaz began working at a software company as a teenager, driven by obsession with design and a fascination with business. His story is one of ambition, humility and reinvention. Listen in as Vince and Ajaz unpack the role of AI in creativity, the myth of scaling and mediocrity, and why having taste still matters more than ever.

You can listen to Designing creative independence with Ajaz Ahmed online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Designing creative independence with Ajaz Ahmed is an episode from Design Your Life with Vince Frost by Hello.

This episode is 70:19 long.

This episode was published on Aug 5, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Design Your Life with Vince Frost when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.