Intern in the city: Rise of the multihyphenate

We’re a design agency first and foremost, with strong graphic and motion capabilities. Much of our work focuses on UX, and so we have UI web-builders and digital consultants too. At the same time we develop brand campaigns, from strategic positioning to messaging and copy, but we also publish annual sector research reports that track emerging industry trends, so we’re a research organization too. Put short – I felt spoilt for choice, and one or two words didn’t feel like it would suffice.

Yet the difficulty wasn’t a lack of focus. In fact, Living is a highly specialized firm. We work in a specific niche - branding and digital strategy for professional services organizations. Our expertise then lies precisely in understanding the unique cultures, constraints, and reputational dynamics of industries like law and finance. We’re able to think in a variety of ways at once, and each of our skills informs the others. We think holistically, and yet exercise a deep and precise approach. So the paradox is this: Living is highly specialized. But the way we produce that specialization is not narrow at all.

Relation to university experience

After the event I realized it was the same feeling I encountered describing my work at university. As a joint honors student, half my time was spent in legal seminars and the other in anthropology ones. The result was that since I was half law student and half anthropologist, I felt not quite ‘fully’ anything. Within anthropology itself, there were seminars that tackled democracy in India, others that dealt with photographic practices in Melanesia. Some lecturers looked at evolving economic institutions, while others focused on conspiracy theorists in the American South and ‘mind-expanding’ hallucinogens. My studies felt inherently multi-disciplinary – it’s what attracted me to them - but sometimes it did leave me unaware of what exactly my ‘thing’ was. What exactly did I do?

Vocational vs multihyphenated

I grew up with great faith in the vocational career. Family members around me were aspiring doctors or lawyers, and LSE had no shortage of those with their sights firmly set on the world of investment banking. CVs I assumed rewarded depth and specialization, not breadth. 
But that’s not what I see in the real world. My own mother went from a degree in chemical engineering to founding a consulting company, our CEO started in secretarial work on the very same program I’m on now, to working on the trade floor before heading our design agency. One colleague of mine began as an attorney for four years, before switching over to brand development, while another worked on marketing video games and guitar amps before she turned to the realm of lawyers and financial advisors.

The people I see around me and admire don’t follow a strict direction. They don’t pick lanes, but flow between them, drawing on different skills as they go. I’ve started to think of them as multihyphenated. Designer-strategists. Lawyer-branders. Researcher-consultants. People whose work lives at the intersection of several roles rather than inside just one. So we’re experts, but that expertise is a product of years of breadth and width.

Jump associates called this ‘hybrid-thinking’ – the “conscious blending of different fields of thought to discover and develop opportunities that were previously unseen by the status quo.” Put short - the future of expertise may belong to specialists built from hybrid parts.

New York as an accelerator

What role do modern cities play in this? In places where industries, ideas, identities and worlds are packed into one condensed space, the ability – and even the instinct – to ‘wear many hats’ becomes strong. NYC is a hub for fashion, finance, media, tech and law – our own coworking space will give you access to people in beauty or AI before you’ve had your morning coffee. Its streets are lined with food from 30 different countries, and you’ll see the same people who go to a techno rave all night wake up at 9am and drag themselves to a park run. In other words, moving between worlds feels seamless. 

The city compresses networks, conversations, and opportunities into unusually tight spaces. Over time, perhaps that compression shapes the people who live here – perhaps its even part of the reason Living is the firm it is today, one built by the collaboration of researchers, brand strategists and creative designers.

Perhaps that’s why New York feels like a natural habitat for the multihyphenate - a place where careers and companies, like the neighborhoods and days, rarely stay in just one lane.

Jacob Whiteley-Guest, Intern, Living New York