A boundless creative playground: Zeus Jones takes us inside the fourth issue of Athena Jones

“It takes a magic mix of open-mindedness, humility and courage for us to go on this journey together,” Zeus Jones’ Strategist Morgan Hay-Chapman tells us about the making of Athena Jones. First started in 2019, Athena Jones is a “creative playground” for the agency, where the team gets to explore a chosen topic, carte blanche. A sense of discovery is woven into this practice – team members bounce ideas off of each other, work in lockstep, experiment freely, and let the process steer them to the final output. This year, brainstorming sessions led the team to the idea of ‘Joyful Resilience,’ and they peeled back the layers of the concept through footloose experiments. Prioritising a playful approach, they instinctively jumped from one experiment to the other, creating art, conducting interviews, and exploring the many dimensions of the topic before finally landing at a four-track EP, kitted out with digital listening rooms. To take a closer look at the process, we spoke to Hay-Chapman and Designers Alex Register and Denzel Boyd, who tell us about the deep, intellectual collaboration that leads to each issue, and underscore the importance of not being too precious about the work.