The entrepreneurial journey of designer and scrollytelling artist Caroline Beavon

Back in the 2000s, Caroline Beavon thought she’d landed her dream job. As a broadcast music journalist, she made her teenage self proud while working on some of the industry’s tightest deadlines. In 2009, however, the industry began to shrink, ‌and Beavon’s role was made redundant, which prompted her to go back to school and explore a new path. 

While pursuing a one-year master degree’s program in online journalism, Beavon fell in love with infographics and data visualization—namely, the way data viz  could make information come alive. But that was only one piece of the puzzle. As Beavon began to work for herself, she embraced self-employment for all its perks—the flexibility, and the motivation of knowing that her income is within her control. 

What led you to start your own business?

I’d always suspected I might end up being freelance because that’s how a lot of the music industry was going. One of the modules we all had to do in my master’s program was entrepreneurship, and they really prepared us for how to be an entrepreneur. They taught us the basics in accounting, how to look after your money, how to find clients, how to network, and also how to build the business that you want. 

How does it feel to run your own business?

I love running my own business. For me, it’s the freedom to do what I want, when I want. That’s obviously not always the case, because I have clients and commitments and deadlines and projects to juggle. But knowing that the harder I work, the more money’s in the bank is really important to me. I always invoice at the end of a job because I like knowing that once it's finished, I get the prize. It’s like a big pile of cookies.

A few years ago, I’d had a rough couple of months work-wise. Things were really quiet, and I thought, “That’s it; freelancing is over.” I got an office job, and it lasted one day. 

When you work for yourself, there’s a point when you’re not suitable for office environments anymore. You’re not suitable for a nine-to-five, turning up, putting smart clothes on, and going to work. I’ve gone far too feral for that.

What’s the best entrepreneurial advice you’ve ever received?

As soon as you can, separate out the money that’s coming in from the work you’re doing and the money that you pay yourself. Have a pool of cash that you build up with work, but then pay yourself a set salary that you increase gradually over time. That will help you avoid the roller coaster of getting a big project in and living like a queen for two months, but then suddenly you’re eating baked beans because the work’s dried up. 

How does working with an accountant help streamline your operations?

It’s knowing that there's a grown up doing it—someone who knows what they’re doing.

I remember when I was a kid, my gran always used to say to me, “You should learn to cook, because you'll need to cook one day.” I said, “I’m going to be rich enough that I can employ someone to cook for me!” I work a little bit harder each month so that I can pay an accountant.

Life’s so much easier if you don’t have to do the things you don’t want to do. And if it means I have to work a little bit harder at something else, then that’s fine, because it means I can pass on the stuff that makes me want to cry. They’ll do it quicker as well.

How did you first get into visual storytelling?

I was working in broadcast journalism and was made redundant in 2009 when the industry began to shrink. I was devastated because I was, at that point, a music news reporter at a rock radio station. It was the job that 14-year-old me would have thought was the best job in the world.

I went back to university and did a master’s in online journalism. I learned about infographics and data visualization. That was when David McCandless’s book Information is Beautiful had just come out, and everybody was crazy about infographics. Not being a numbers person, I really enjoyed that idea of turning numbers into visuals; making data friendly and approachable without it being this big, scary thing. Once I finished my master’s, I became an infographics and data designer. It was during the pandemic that I did my first scrollytelling website using the software called Vev. Now, 90% of what I do is web-based visual storytelling.

What exactly is scrollytelling? 

It’s a way of unveiling information online, but the story is in the hands of the user. 

With a normal website, you scroll down the page, read the words, and look at the pictures. It’s all fairly static. With scrollytelling, information appears, or scrolls out from the side, or overlaps, or fades in and fades out as you scroll. And if you then reverse and scroll backwards, those things happen in reverse. 

It’s like being a kid again, when you read a story book or pop-up books; books that delight you when something unexpected happens. It can make quite dull content really interesting. I build immersive experiences that get shown in art galleries using the same software as I use for corporate websites because it's such a fun way to allow people to experience a story. 

How does your journalism background shape your approach to visual storytelling?

Broadcast journalism has fast deadlines…hourly deadlines. You’ve got your next bulletin coming up, you’ve been given a press release, you’ve got to pull out three lines of copy in 10 minutes. What’s the most important bit in this press release?

That’s a skill that I’ve never lost, and it’s so useful. If I’ve got a client who’s just overloading me with stuff, I say, “Let's clear the decks. What are you trying to say? What's the message?” And then we build it out from there. The visuals support the story, but the core message is still the most important bit. Otherwise, you’re just putting a cherry on a really awful ice cream sundae.

It can be hard to be prolific when your work relies on an artistic spark. Where do you find inspiration when you’re feeling stuck?

I draw a lot of inspiration from media. I go to museums. I go to my local library. I’ll put on certain films, certain TV shows. There’s a film called Hackers from the 1990s, which is one of my favorite films, just because I know it inside out, and it’s visually stunning. It’s bright, and it’s neon, and the music’s awesome, and it starts to refill that creative well. If it's the middle of the night, then television and Pinterest.

I can always tell when I've been working too hard because things start to look gray. So giving myself time to play, giving myself time to be bored, is really important to me. I have this page called a scrollbook, which is on my website, and it’s absolute chaos. But it started as a way to get better at the software that I use for my corporate work. I wanted to see what I could do with it if I pushed it to the absolute maximum. I used to keep my art separate from my job, but now, the things I learn when I’m playing feed into my corporate work and make it more interesting. I can now pitch things that, possibly, other people wouldn't.