Today we’ve got a very special brief to celebrate the birthday of my mum!

Most of you will know my mum as the most supportive OMBLE in our community. Retweeting and liking all of your great ideas every day, offering encouragement to newcomers, providing support to those who have had a bad day or felt down about their work and she even created a map to show all of the OMBLES who are participating in the daily briefs across the world. She won OMBASSADOR of the Year last year too and she has become a hugely important part of our community.

So I’d like all of the OMBLES to help me wish my mum a happy birthday in all sorts of different creative ways, whether it’s a poster or birthday card style.

Tweet them to @OneMinuteBriefs and @LynneMWhite1 with the hashtag #HappyBirthdayMOMBLE

I will, of course, be entering a few myself.

She likes motorbikes, cars, Mercedes SLKs. She’s Scottish but doesn’t like Celtic (or football) despite my Mother’s Day card that I designed for her many years ago in the image below. Random concepts and crazy art direction. No change there. Disappointed in myself with the your instead of you’re though. She does however follow the results of my team Man City and also sometimes goes by the name ‘Mumguero’.

From a personal perspective, my mum has helped OMB become what it is today by giving me support since it was created whilst I was at university in 2010. As OMB has grown, so has the responsibility and pressure it puts on my shoulders. Every single weekday, I receive hundreds of notifications and this has become a way of life rather than a job or a hobby. I had to deal with OMB growing whilst in full time jobs as a Creative Director, whilst giving talks and organising OMB events. And the person who was always there to tell me to not overdo it and take on too much was my mum.

In 2015, I did overdo it and the stress could well have been the cause of my heart attack. And the first person I called when it happened was my mum. Since then I tried to put that to the back of my mind but it is always there and can be demotivating when you want to grow and push forward. However, the first job I had when I went back to work was to do a music video for the NHS and me and my mum were both sat in tears watching it on TV on Christmas Day as it beat Justin Bieber to Number 1.

And, when you do grow, there are obstacles along the way that you do have to overcome. My mum has been there to speak to and help overcome those things. At times, when you just want to walk away from it, she has reassured me that we are doing great things and making people’s lives better with what we do. And she’s right. Mums always are aren’t they.

At #OMBLIVE6, I spoke of the last year being the worst of my life due to suffering agonising pain every day from a slipped disc, neighbours from hell and family issues that have really got me down, whilst trying to put on a brave face and keep OMB going. My mum was there to help me through it all.

In fact, I wouldn’t be in the creative industry at all if it weren’t for my mum. She’s creative herself, a qualified interior designer, works in the fashion industry currently and was fully behind my decision to do graphic design at college when my teachers were heavily pushing me to do English, History and Law. The fact I could write better than I design found it’s own way when I became a copywriter within a creative team.

Going back to when I was even younger, I used to draw cars and products when I was young and learnt to read and write by watching Countdown with my mum! I also started my first business aged 16 with my 12 year old brother, holding our first meeting with a big engineering client at the dining room table of our house whilst my mum waited in the kitchen for us!!!

So there’s been plenty of ups and downs but there has been another person behind the growth of this incredible OMB community. And that person is my mum.

I hope you’ll all join me in saying #HappyBirthdayMOMBLE