Marketing, COMMUNICATION & PUBLISHING

ABOUT US

In 2007, Ned Hoste had an idea to bring together a team of highly experienced and skilled creatives to offer organisations more sustainability, flexibility and creativity in their branding and communications.

Joined by Jacky Fitt as co-founder and co-director, together they have developed The Big Ideas Collective’s unique services.

Offices in York and Exeter. 

Today, Ned and Jacky, each with their own specialisms, lead the team on a wide range of branding, communication and publishing projects, as well as business education platforms throughout the UK and abroad.

Collaborate with an award-winning team.

Jacky Fitt FRSA

Award-winning author, editor and copywriter, Jacky’s work is about listening, understanding and articulating ideas and concepts through words. Persuasive, engaging, informative. Making the complicated clear. Raising profiles and profitability through high quality content, its management and marketing application across print, online and social media.

With a career in film and TV production prior to copywriting, Jacky’s clients include: ITV, Littlewoods Online, Hertz, The Stable Company, CNG, Westex Carpets, The York Management School, York St John University, City of York Council, The Little Gym, Continuum Group, WGN, SHINE, CIEL, Fera Science Ltd, rradar, Skillogy International, Agri-EPI Centre, York Conservation Trust and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust.

In collaboration with Ned, in 2020 Jacky founded Micro Oiseau, a multi-lingual website in support of global enterprise and a showcase for professional translators.

Chosen to support the She Can Shine 2024 female entrepreneurial programme, at SHINE in Leeds Jacky’s new book How to Be in Business’ was published in March 2024.

In 2014 Jacky’s first book on content marketing ‘How to Get Inside Someone’s Mind and Stay There’ won the 2015 US Small Business Book Community Choice Award in marketing. The book is currently published in the by Business Expert Press in New York. It is available in digital download or paperback.

A TEDx PocklingtonEd speaker, Jacky and has delivered seminars at Leeds University, York St John University Business School and The Business Network. Read about the ‘Give to Get’ Philosophy.

Watch on Youtube – TEDx.

Jacky became a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce in November 2017.

Article/feature credits include:
York Conservation Trust
OVO Energy
Science City York

Book editor credits include:

‘I Am Human – Pain and Pleasure’ by Martin Johnson, 2024
‘How to be Good at Work’ livebook by Professor Roger Steare, 2018
‘I Am Human – 30 Mistakes to Success’ by Martin Johnson, 2017
‘It’s Not About the Beard’ by Tom Fitzsimons, 2015
‘If You’re So Clever Why Aren’t You Rich?’ by Elizabeth Ward, 2014
‘ethicability’ 4th edition by Professor Roger Steare, 2011

A Director of the Yorkshire Energy Partnership 2015 – 16, Jacky was awarded the Investors in the Environment Overall Achiever Award 2015 (Yorkshire and Humber region) for commitment, impact and continual improvement of environmental performance.

Institute of Leadership and Management endorsed trainer.

Member of the Alliance of Commercial Copywriters.

Ned Hoste FRSA

With experience spanning more than 40 years as graphic designer and consultant, Ned’s work covers art direction, corporate product branding and identity, website design and development, social networking and strategy combined with extensive experience in design for book publishing.

Ned started his first business when he was 14 drawing peoples’ houses and then started designing professionally at 15 producing covers for a national puzzle magazine while still at school.

“Nothing beats the feeling of walking into a store and being able to see your own work, that thrill has never away.”

In his career he has worked in-house at Sphere Books and as a senior designer and studio manager at a publishing design agency before going freelance with his own company 2H Design.  Ned’s design projects to date are over 4000 book covers and over 250 complete books and still counting. His clients, both national and international, include Random House Group, Quantum Books, Chatto & Windus, Hamish Hamiton, Jonathan Cape, Fodors Travel, Ray Mears/Woodlore, Imogen Clark (author), Nick Hern Books, Hachette Group, Foyles, Dorling Kindersley, Arcadia Books, RedBlue books, Roger Steare, Out-Take/Rolling Stones, Rally Driver Richard Burns, Rod Gordon author of The Tunnels series, The Russell-Cotes Museum and Art Gallery, Ciel Livestock, Agri-Epi, Skillogy, HorizonLeeds, Barbara Jacobs (Property solicitor) Jacky Fitt, Micro Oiseau, Richard Kenworthy, Blandine Anderson, Martin Johnson and Richard Watson .

The Big Ideas Collective also includes The Big Ideas Library. Building on Ned’s publishing experience The Big Ideas Library is proud to have published several bestselling titles and helped a number of independent authors make their dreams of publishing a book a reality.

Ned has been a speaker on the Goldman Sachs 10k small business programme also York St John University Business School speaking about design and communication, with an emphasis on the decisions we make when setting up a business. He has been a key speaker at a number of UK literary festivals, talking about his career in publishing and the world of independent publishing and running workshops. In 2016 to 2018 Ned ran creativity workshops at TEDxVitoriaGasteiz in Spain and in 2022 Ned gave a lecture on book cover design as part of Topsham Museum‘s lecture series.

Ned became a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce in April 2017. He is also an Institute of Leadership and Management endorsed trainer.

In Autumn 2023 he started leading a series of 3 workshops on creativity and communication for 4th Year medical students at Exeter University.

You can read Ned’s publishing blog  How to Design a Book and Other Stories here

Working with Jacky and Ned is a pleasure. They are both exceptional in their areas of expertise and are genuinely collaborative and supportive. There is no way I could have produced the quality of my books without them. I would highly recommend the Big Ideas Library to anyone who is thinking of writing a book, especially if you want to produce something to an exceptional standard. Jacky and Ned are simply fantastic.

Martin Johnson, CEO of Trans2Performance

”I just wanted to send a very personal and heartfelt thank you to you both – for everything!! Winning the Consultancy Award didn’t just happen because of the case studies we submitted! It happened because from the very beginning you have both given me, personally and professionally, the most incredible support, advice, guidance, friendship and input! From telling Ned I had an idea for a business all those years ago, to the Principles of Profit, right up to all the colouring in and word smithery you do today, this award is as much yours as it is Petros’s! Thank you both.”

Much love and indebtedness

Professor Jo Clarke | Petros Limited