Case Study | Now Medical Studios
Making the Numbers as Clear as Science
Now Medical Studios turn complex medical science into visuals people can follow.
From their accountant, they wanted the same thing: someone who understood how their studio works, and who could explain the money side without making them feel silly for asking.
At a glance
Company
Now Medical Studios Ltd
Based in Glasgow, Scotland
Team
7 people
Work with WallsMan Creative
Accounts and tax, bookkeeping, self-assessment, one-to-one planning and forecasting
The challenge
Their previous accountant was good at accounting, but the explanations never quite landed, even in the simplest terms. The bigger questions went unasked.
What changed
A creative industry accountant who started by asking how the studio actually makes its money, talks in plain English, and keeps explaining until it makes sense.
The outcome
One-to-one support, a recovery that beat their own projections from the worst financial year in the studio’s history. The result they talk about most is confidence.
Now Medical Studios
A medical illustration, animation and design studio in Glasgow, co-founded by Annie Campbell and Emily Holden.
Their WallsMan Creative contact
Claire Flanagan
Business Consultant
The Studio That Explains Complicated Things for a Living
When a pharmaceutical company needs to show what a drug does inside the body, someone has to understand the science well enough to draw it.
That’s what Now Medical Studios does.
The Glasgow studio creates medical illustration, 2D and 3D animation and design for pharmaceutical, medical device and healthcare companies, as well as agencies and universities.
Its co-founders, Annie Campbell and Emily Holden, are both trained medical illustrators. They worked together as freelancers while they tested if a studio could stand on its own, then made the jump.
Lost in Translation
Annie set up the company with an accountant already in place. By the founders’ own account, that accountant was good at accounting. The real trouble was the conversation.
Annie calls herself number phobic, which is common among creatives: expert in their own field, less sure of the finance side.
Annie and Emily taught themselves most of what they know about running a company, from pitching to cash flow projections, on the principle of learning what you don’t know.
When the explanations don’t land though, the bigger questions stay on the shelf. Asking felt risky as well.
There’s no blame in how they tell it. “They’re good at accounting,” Annie says. “I think we just probably needed more of a handhold.”
'She's Just Speaking Normal'
WallsMan Creative works only with creative businesses, and Annie and Emily noticed that straight away in their first calls with Claire Flanagan, a business consultant at the firm. The conversation started with how the studio actually works.
For a studio that runs on project work for clients in more than one country, those questions matter. Picking apart the client base, and the way money moves in and out, helped WallsMan Creative understand the business. It also helped Annie and Emily see patterns they could plan against.
The other thing they noticed was how WallsMan Creative used no accounting jargon when dealing with clients.
A Safety Net in the Background: WallsMan Creative
Now WallsMan Creative handles their bookkeeping, and we are the contact points they talk to about the bigger picture. The people doing that work are people they know by name.
The Hardest Year With Specialist Support
Then came the worst financial year in the studio’s history.
Annie and Emily are clear that it had nothing to do with their accounting. It came from the state of the world and a difficult US market and, they admit, from a couple of years of being so busy with client work that they hadn’t kept a close eye on the finances. Every year had felt like things were going up, until suddenly they experienced a drop.
WallsMan Creative offered extra one-to-one sessions to work through it: forecasting what was likely to happen, laying out their options and flagging what they needed to consider.
But they are here!
The studio recovered better than it projected, and the hard year clarified what they want to be: a small but guaranteed team rather than huge, sudden growth.
Small enough that clients always know who is making their work.
Those planning conversations with WallsMan Creative now look further ahead, at what the money in the bank could be doing and at how to look after a team for the long haul.
Before vs After with WallsMan Creative
There are no percentages on this page, because Annie and Emily didn’t talk in percentages. They talked about what it feels like to run the business now.
Before
With WallsMan Creative
😕 Explanations too technical to follow, even in the simplest terms
✅ Plain conversations with someone they know by name
😨 Holding back questions for fear of not understanding the answer
✅ Comfortable saying “I’m lost now” and going over it again
❓ Bigger questions about tax and spare cash never really explored
✅ Accountants looking ahead with them, for the first time
😣 Their own bookkeeping on top of client work, and no time to think
✅ Bookkeeping handled in the background, income patterns understood
Let's talk about how your creative business actually works!
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Tell us how your money comes in, what your projects look like and what you’d like to understand better.
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Irregular income, multiple streams and quiet months. We build your numbers around how you actually earn.
- Personal tax
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