Frankie Ratford is the Founder of The Design Kids, an online resource and community of over 175,000 Design Students across 33 countries. The Design Kids (TDK) mission is to bridge the gap between studying and working in design, and they’re hitting it out of the ballpark!

Frankie launched TDK in November 2009 (then 26), initially as an online store to give students additional exposure, followed by hosting exhibitions. Soon after, Frankie embarked on an epic roadtrip where she spent six years building a global design community from the ground up. To create this, she physically travelled to each of the 70+ cities, gave talks at universities, ran workshops and personally sat down with over 1,500 Creative Directors from the world’s top studios for a cuppa and a chat.

Along the way, Frankie has become one of the world’s leading experts on the Graphic Design industry and having recently completed the roadtrip we sat down with her in our Byron Bay studio to hear the whole story.