The Origins of Scout

The journey from a self-guided co-op to an on (and off-) campus creative force.

Scout
Scout
Nov 5 · 8 min read

By Veronica Cihlar, photo by Artie Ghosh

Have you ever found yourself asking, “Where did Scout come from?”, “How did Scout come to be?”, or “Could I create something like Scout?” Us too. Hence, we called up Scout founder Laura Marelic and took the opportunity to delve deeper into the first days of Scout.

So what did those first days really look like?

A Creative Director who told Scout’s founder that one of her early designs was “trash,” a secret Northeastern warehouse in Jamaica Plain, and six cups of coffee were all involved. Read on to find out more about the history of your favorite student-led design studio.


Veronica Cihlar (VC): “So I just wanted to start with a general introduction — who you are, what you do, what industry you’re currently working in, etc.”

Laura Marelic (LM): “Okay! So I’m Laura. I graduated from Northeastern in 2015 with a Design degree — a B.F.A. — and then I had minors in Computer Science and Photography. I graduated in 2015, so I guess that makes me four and a half years out of school now, which is insane. I graduated and started a software company with Connor Russo, who was the founding C.O.O. of Scout. We tried to get a food app off the ground, and ended up raising some VC. We worked on it for two years, we ran a test kitchen, we had almost 4,000 users, and people really liked it. But it ultimately didn’t have a business model that would sustain the company, which sort of culminated with an interview with Y Combinator (a prestigious SF-based venture accelerator). We were totally shocked that we got an interview, and then we were rejected, but it was kind of the best way to be rejected.

Then, we moved out of Boston, and it was essentially just a few months of getting our heads back on straight, licking our wounds a little bit, and trying to figure out what’s next. We then started Loco Studio, a design agency. We had a pretty good network from Scout as well as our food app, so we got a decent amount of work and clients from there. We saved up and were able to move to Berlin, Germany. Connor and I were there for 14 months, and Berlin was just the perfect base. Fundamentally, we were start-up people, and all of our clients were remote, which was really what allowed us so much flexibility and freedom. Eventually, our visas expired and we didn’t really know where we were going to move, so we decided to move to Philly, which is between both of our families.”

VC: “Wow it seems like you’ve had some really cool experiences since graduating. I’d now like to shift a bit and ask more about some of the beginnings of Scout. Who were you when you started Scout, and what gave you the initial idea?”

LM: “So beginnings of Scout, let’s see. This was 2013. Honestly, I was just a normal student, although I was pretty involved in the entrepreneurship scene. I was the Creative Director of the Entrepreneurs Club. Both me and my friend, Kat Garcia (who was another one of the co-founders of Scout) were very involved with start-up people. So I did my first co-op during my third year for HubSpot and that whole community of people was on the same cycle. We all were freaking out about how much we were learning and were totally loving it. And at the end of co-op in the summer, we all had just so much energy from this environment where we were all able to do design.

After I resumed classes, I thought, “Why does class feel a little bit different? How can we all be so energized in class the same way we were while on co-op?” That was really what gave me the motivation to start Scout. However, I feel like I get a lot of credit for it because I was technically the first Executive Director. But really from the get-go, there was always a team of us. It was never just me. I called up my friend Kat and we started to have these informal meetings. I invited some upperclassmen at first to say “Hey, have you guys… ever thought about doing something like this? Let’s get a group thinking.”

And then from then on — from that first original meeting — there was a group of maybe eight of us that consistently kept coming and kept becoming more invested. We began to call ourselves the Network of Freelancers and got more involved in start-ups on campus.

Alex Turnwall was an adjunct faculty member and he and I had a great working relationship — he taught me how to write proposals. Professors like Alex Turnwall and Dan Gregory were essential, I can’t stress that enough. I wound up talking to Dan Gregory about Scout, and he was really the one who asked, “Have you considered making this something like a studio that’s supported by the school, or that lives at the school?” We didn’t really know what that meant. But that was the seed of Scout, and it really went from there.

And then Northeastern paid me go full-time for my second co-op working to develop Scout, working all on my own. They gave me the keys to Scout’s first office, on the fourth floor — it was the smallest thing. Eventually, I had to go to Northeastern’s warehouse in Jamaica Plain, to find chairs. I didn’t even know we had a warehouse!

We had the first Scout event that September 2014 and that was crazy. I mean, it was so packed that we had to have an overflow room. And from there it just kind of blew up. We were maybe like 15 people, and then it grew to 35, and we formalized the processes. We figured out how to hand it off when I graduated in 2015 — it could have all crumbled, but then there were enough people involved at that point to keep it going.”

VC: “Thanks so much for sharing all of that. I now wanted to ask a few questions about ways that, as a designer, you have been most impacted. What moment do you think was the most pivotal for you in terms of design while you were at Northeastern?”

LM: “I think a lot of my formative stuff was from the Entrepreneurs Club (or E-Club) and IDEA, which was pre-Scout. When Scout was started, we were all just in love with design. We knew we wanted to do it, but didn’t know exactly what that would look like. I think what really locked me in and really impacted me as a designer was when I got involved with E-Club. I was onboarding to be the Creative Director, and the Creative Director at the time was named Wells Riley. He was one of those design superstars. The department looked to him as a model upperclassman designer. I designed a poster for E-Club and Wells looked at it, and said “This is trash. Meet me in the computer lab. I’ll sit with you, we have to start over.” And that was clutch. I mean it was very difficult, but it was clutch. It’s one of those times where they break you down, but then you learn so much and you think, “Oh, I’m so much better now.”

I think it just proved to me how much I care about design. I’m really, really grateful, because he held me to a higher standard.

Finally, I also think that first Meet Scout meeting, in September 2014, was a pretty pivotal moment for me.”

VC: “Wow, I mean that’s definitely a quick learning curve. On that topic: if you could give one piece of advice to a current Scout member, or a current college student, what would it be?”

LM: “So the thing I would say would be sleep more, but that’s pretty impossible in college. I don’t know anyone that sleeps enough in college. I also really like the philosophy of “saying yes,” but not to the point where you’re overextended. It’s not “saying yes” to perpetuate the culture of being constantly busy. I think that is really unhealthy, and I reject it. When I say “saying yes,” I mean more in terms of getting value from attaining a diverse array of skills. There’s value from specializing deeply, but there’s also value in being able to do a lot of different things. So a designer who can write copy instead of using lorem ipsum, a designer who can also understand a business instead of having to outsource, and a designer who can also animate a landing page all have really valuable skill sets.

What I would say specifically to my past self when I was in Scout would be drink less coffee. When we got a coffee pot in Scout HQ, I would drink like six cups of coffee a day. No attack on coffee, but what was I doing?”

VC: “Do you drink less coffee now?”

LM: “I drink one cup in the morning. Then just water. Turns out water is very energizing throughout the day. My advice is “hydrate, kids, hydrate,” but what a post-college person thing to say, right?”

VC: “Well, you’re not wrong though! Moving on, what’s one skill you think all designers should have that they don’t teach you in school?”

LM: “That’s a really good question. I would say personal finance. That’s something that applies to everyone and when everyone graduates, you learn from your friends that no one really knows how to manage their money. Also, learning how to self-teach yourself outside of a classroom is definitely helpful, as well as learning how to do “deep work” without distractions and without fragmenting your attention.”

VC: “Final question: how did Scout get its name?”

LM: “It took a while to come up with a name that fit. One day, we went back to the drawing board and wrote out all of our values, vision, mission, etc. We realized that as designers, we are in large part messengers: between our clients and their customers, between software and its users, between words and visuals, etc. So we looked up “messenger” on Thesaurus.com and saw “scout.” Immediately after saying it aloud we all liked it; it felt youthful (#studentled) and bold, was short and easy to say, and was unique.

We liked it, Alex Turnwall (the original faculty advisor of Scout) liked it, the rest of the design faculty liked it.

So it just stuck.”

(a few current members of Scout today)

Scout Design

Northeastern University's student-led design studio

Scout

Written by

Scout

Northeastern University’s student-led design studio. https://neu.edu/scout

Scout Design

Northeastern University's student-led design studio

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