A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Nils Leonard from Uncommon Creative Studio ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Radim Malinic: Welcome to this bonus episode of Daring Forever Podcast. This is my chance to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview, find the ones that deserve a second look, and dig deeper in what makes them special. This week, I spoke with Nils Leonard, who's a creative founder of Uncommon Creative Studios with offices in New York, London, and Stockholm.

In our conversation, we talked about working at a top level, how to make work that has lasting impact, and many ways of attracting the best possible creative talent. The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Build Work That Outlasts You, and it was a great chance to get a behind-the-scenes of what Nils and Uncommon Creative Studios do.

If you haven't checked out a full episode yet, let me share with you these four standout moments.

No, it feels like a privilege. I just don't think most of us give ourselves a permission. I don't separate them. I think the truth is that everything you do and every minute you have is a chance, really. And if you imagine every piece of work can either contribute to some tapestry of your life or just fill up someone else's list, and that the only difference between those two things is how you decide to view your job, and that's in your power, not theirs,

Nils Leonard: why would you do it any other way? Oh, I went to a German festival for creativity, and they did the most amazing thing. Just down the left-hand side of the wall at this festival, I can't remember which one it was, maybe Cyclopea, I can't remember. They just had fly posters with blank gravestones on it. and someone at the end had written, their name and then put content solutions beneath it.Throughout our conversation with Nils, I got to hear a lot of his working and creative philosophies, how to produce the best possible work at every possible time.

Radim Malinic: And in this instance, he talked about the fact that, most of us can treat a brief, as a tick-box exercise. the brief lands, we do the work, we deliver, and then we move on. I guess in Nils' case, he turned that a little bit around. the client, the CD, or the budget don't don't decide what your work means.

It's down to a creative, it's down to every single one of us to decide that The same project can be a box ticked or thread in the bigger story of your life, and the only difference is how you choose to see it.

 what makes this project land is what Nils calls a privilege. It's a burden. I asked him, "What does it feel like to play at high level and strive to play at highest level?" And he said, it's a privilege." And I think that's brilliant reframing because sometimes with the fight, flight, or freeze, reactions to big things, sometimes we might see, this kind of level not as a burden, but as something that makes us a little bit scared.

 And when I asked him if chasing a legacy feels like an extra weight, he just said no. It's a permission that, it's that permission that he'd given himself that his ambition doesn't start with a bigger client.

Nils Leonard: It starts with how he shows up on Monday morning.

you've got to find a way to answer their problem and to answer their needs in a way that makes them have to do it, not want to do it. you have to find a way to make it the only solution, not the brave one. I don't buy that bravery score thing.

I never have. I'm much more about how do I create the conditions in which You don't even think this is brave, you just think this So I started a conversation with a project I remember that Nils did. It's actually something I got my hands on, crikey, ten years ago, and it was something called LifePaint from Volvo.

Radim Malinic: And LifePaint was one of the most talked about projects of Nils' time at Grey because it was a glow-in-the-dark spray first made for reindeer's antlers that turned into a safety tool for cyclists. the interesting part of this was that he doesn't talk about just it being a success story.

He actually talks about the fact that he's got a few things he would change. And of course, reflection is a fantastic thing. Hindsight, you know, again, fantastic thing. But what was the great insight here was that they actually spent months persuading Volvo to say yes to this thing.

Looking back, he wishes he's done a deal with the spray makers first and then walked in, into the boardroom saying, "Hey, we're doing this. Do you wanna join us?" It's the same idea, but completely different power dynamic. How many times we bend over backwards for our clients trying to make their idea work, where if we were left to our own devices, we could make it even better, you know?

So in this instance, he was talking about a bigger point that talks about bravery. He doesn't want clients to feel like they're taking a risk. He wants to answer their problems so well that the idea feels like the only way forward. he doesn't want them just to buy into the idea.

They just need to feel like it's essential. And I think that's the only antidote if you feel like you need to beg for permission. Just create something which is just the only solution.

I wish I wasn't, but I am. I think we all are. I think creative people are. But I, you what I have learned, like being back at school, the person you fancy the most, if you need them a lot, you'll never get them.

Nils Leonard: And this is true in the world, it's true of everything. And I know that if we're too thirsty and want things too much, and we wear it too much, we're forgetting the strategies and cardinal rules of being attractive, which is you just make on your own. You don't need others. You do your own thing.

You know who you are. You're clear about your mission, and you-- and there's nothing better than being able to execute your version of events without needing someone else

Radim Malinic: because, that's the scarcest thing in the world. That's power During our conversation, I felt that Nils reached a place where I guess you can say he don't care.

 I said, "Look, is the word needy in your vocabulary?" Because I gave him a compliment suggesting that he's moved beyond needy, but he laughed it off and owned it straight away. Guess there was a point in that honesty because creative people are needy, as Nils said, and pretending otherwise will get us nowhere.

 what he's learned about being needy is just to have to stop letting drive you. He compared it to the School playground when we want someone too much, we fall in love with them, and we'll never get them because we are needy, we are desperate. It was also Jessica Hische in my interview during the season called Mindful Creative when she said, "When you're desperate for work, you will never get it because people see that you're needy."

And that goes same for the clients because sometimes clients are needy. They, skew the dynamics with the fact that it might not always work the same way, and it goes for the same for the talent. what's really attractive is knowing who you are, being clear on your mission, and making things happen without depending on anyone else.

It connects to one of Uncommon's founding lines: Never be depending on people less ambitious than you to make your dreams come true. Wanting people is fine, and needing them is where the power slips away.

Anyway, he decides to host a show called The Void in Paris, and, he asks everybody along. and they all go and they're being told that it's not open yet. And the people in the queue are like the who's who of the day. They're fucking amazing, like the rock stars and the, kings and queens and all the above.

Nils Leonard: And they're being served drinks, so they're like, "Okay, this is fine." And some food, "Would you like some?" "Yeah." And they're out there drinking away and, it's been about an hour and a half, they're still outside. They're like, "Fucking what is going on?" Eventually, the doors swing open, and they're still being served drinks.

And two by two they're let in. And so two by two, they enter this room and they're like, "Great, can't wait to see this." They look around the room and it's all white. There's nothing in there. And they're like, "Okay, we'll wait for a minute." and they're walking around and they expect the windows to explode or something to happen.

Nothing happens. served a few more drinks. They're looking around, they're like, "Sorry, is..." and no one answers them. Eventually, they've had quite a lot to drink at this point. They've been there three, four hours. They're like, "Fuck this, okay? This guy's arrogant as fuck. He's taking the piss.

He's had us all come here to look at a white room. What a bastard." And they all storm off. And they all go home and they're like, "Arrogant bastard." They all go back to their hotels, back to their houses, back to wherever they're coming from, and, literally just before bed, they're ranting, "Arrogant bastard."

They go to the toilet and they have a piss, and a jet of pure blue piss comes out because all night the drinks were laced with his color blue. and so they didn't realize, but actually he had turned them into art and the whole thing had been in service of that. Now, that to me is a fucking huge story.

if I'd made that, I'd probably retire. But secondly, no social media, no phones, no cameras. They just stood there, and that story has stood the test of time and lives now, and it's still a reference point now. So to me, I look at that and I- I'm like, that for me is the definition of creativity.

Radim Malinic: I heard Nils saying this story at Off Barcelona Mixer in Uncommon offices, which turned out to be what I now call a bacteria heist. Nils was talking about a story about Yves Klein, who was famous for his color blue, called now Klein Blue. back in the day, he created an exhibition which was about nothing People didn't get to see anything.

They got a little bit annoyed, but they drunk a lot of booze and a lot of drinks and then got home, and when they peed Yves Klein's, trademark blue, instead of the regular color you would expect. And in some ways, I guess Nils tried to repeat the idea of, collecting germs and bacteria from anyone who attended the mixes for OFFF, by swapping, the DNA or swapping the germs and then growing, these germs into Petri dishes, which then became beautiful backdrop of, the branding for OFFF 2026.

Sometimes these ideas are not clear at first, but I felt what they did here was really, really exciting by finding a talent who specializes in, growing, artful bacteria in Petri dishes, find a way to make the link between how creativity is cultured, how we all work together, how we inspire and influence one another, and creating a really, really beautiful, branding system that, I got to see firsthand at OFFF 2026 just a few months ago.

And it was a fantastic story that kind of find it out from start to finish because seeing OFFF Uncommon featured at OFFF was a bit of a surprise, but it was one of the most fantastic additions to the lineup to see how, a slightly different thinking agency features within that ecosystem and provides a great value and great, add-on to what we would normally do.

Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. I wholeheartedly, encourage you to check out full conversation with Nils because it's someone who plays at the top level, only just solidified with the fact that, Uncommon won the Agency of the Year at the D&AD Awards.

And I think swept, twenty-one pencils just, a few days ago from re-recording this. Yeah, check it out. Nils can be inspiring character, full of big ideas, full of big belief and, backing it up with fantastic work.

Thank you for being here, and I'll catch you next week with the next interview.