I’m a graphic designer on The Apprentice – here’s what happens behind the scenes and why candidates’ designs are so bad
IT wouldn't be The Apprentice without teams suffering embarrassing clangers - and this series has certainly delivered.
From 'Artic Saviour' to highlighting the word "dies" in a baby food brand name, it's safe to say 2022's batch of candidates have often failed to live up to Lord Sugar's high expectations.
As the BBC reality show reaches its finale, two graphic designers who worked with the teams on the toothbrush challenge in week two have spilled the beans about what really goes on behind the scenes.
Ben Shutler from , who was forced to create the brown wand-themed toothbrush Lord Sugar likened to a turd, tells The Sun he and his boss were powerless during the process.
When his colleague tried to intervene and help the team out, he incurred the wrath of Karren Brady.
Ben says: "I just remember looking over at my boss, sat in the corner of the room, and we were literally just smiling at each other because we knew what it looked like.
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"And there was literally nothing we could do about it because we're not allowed.
"You're not allowed to intervene or give the candidates any guidance at all. So I just had to bite my lip and put on a bit of a poker face."
Ben insists the BBC were “very” strict about the no-talking rule while they were filming, and says they weren’t even allowed to chat with the candidates when the cameras stopped running.
His colleague Daniel Walkin - who was working on the opposing team's space-themed toothbrush - says he managed to bypass those strict rules, but got scolded by Lord Sugar’s aide Karren.
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“I was like, ‘What about all these great ideas, spaceships and stuff?’ and Karren said, 'You know Sugar is not paying you to do this. This has nothing to do with you' - effectively saying I should shut up and get on with it!
"It felt like being told off by a teacher. I was like, ‘I can't even shout back, even though this is my own office. I can't say anything!’"
Gruelling schedule
It would normally take around six months for Daniel and Ben to create a product like the Apprentice candidates did - but the candidates got nowhere near that.
“They were supposed to have an hour and 15 minutes for the toothbrush design and then 45 minutes for the packaging, design and logo,” Ben explains.
“But it’s actually a very stop-start process. They'll be filming bits and then get everyone to stop and take people out of the room for interviews, and the production crew will be talking to the candidates every so often.
“So in the end, it was probably more like half an hour of design time, which is hardly anything."
Karren said, 'You know Sugar is not paying you to do this. This has nothing to do with you' - effectively saying I should shut up and get on with it
Daniel Walkin
While many of their glaring mistakes seemed obvious to viewers, they're perhaps less surprising when you hear about their gruelling schedule.
“They really are up at 2am or something like that,” Ben explains. “And then they do all their initial filming.
"They were meant to get to the filming location in London with us for 11, but they didn’t arrive until 1pm because they were quite behind.
“But then we didn't start filming until 3pm because they had to have their allotted hour lunch break.
“And then, once we finally started filming, we didn't finish until 9pm.”
The sub-teams who worked on the interactive elements of the toothbrush - rather than branding with Ben - travelled to Salisbury to join Daniel and his team.
He says: “We started at 6pm and then they probably left just before midnight to go all the way back to London to present in front of the companies the next day!
“I can imagine that the weekends would have been very disorientating.”
Worked through the night
But the work didn’t stop when filming finished for Daniel or Ben, as both had to finesse the products behind the scenes ready for the next day.
For Ben it was due to a last-minute call from BBC producers about a copyright issue, after he and his colleagues had already gone back to their hotel.
He explains: “When it comes to the design of the toothbrushes, the logo and the branding, the producers have to run everything past the lawyers.
“The candidates initially wanted to have ‘Magico’ written up the side of the brown toothbrush, because it was supposed to be a wand.
"But it turned out that was the one thing they didn't check with the lawyers and, lo and behold, they weren't allowed to have that on the toothbrush.
“So we got a phone call from producers right at the last minute to fix it, and we modelled little brown discs that could be 3D-printed and stuck them over the word for the presentations the next day.”
Meanwhile, Daniel worked through the night to improve the girls team’s tooth character - which he insists was "even more hideously freaky” than it appeared on TV.
He recalls: “I tried to make it smile a bit more and have a bit more funkiness to it afterwards.
“We were planning so many different things in the office, and then the girls insisted, ‘No, it just has to be a tooth with teeth’.
“And when you've got 20 minutes, a tooth with teeth - plus some eyes on - effectively it looks like a monster, and technically, a tooth with teeth was exactly what they wanted.
"But I think everybody in that room knew it wasn’t what they wanted, so I just made it a bit sexier.”
Embarrassing typo
Having been involved in the show, Daniel doesn’t believe the candidates on this year’s Apprentice aren't as terrible at business as they seem on telly.
He says: “They're in a competitive environment where almost everything is set up for them to make a very easy bad decision.”
Although he and Ben are quick to point out there’s no way they’d have missed the spelling mistake of Arctic in (what became) Artic Saviour, or the fact First Time Foodies became "First Time Dies".
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The pair are backing Harpreet Kaur to win - for "the simple reason that her business has got more to it and more potential”.
The Apprentice final airs tomorrow on BBC1 at 9pm.