Sioned Young

Mwydro is a digital design company established by Sioned Young from Caernarfon which specializes in creating GIFs for social media. Mwydro's work includes designing GIFs for Businesses, leading GIF Workshops for Schools and design commissioning. Mwydro also leads workshops for businesses on a variety of subjects including Mastering Instagram and Canva, and sells a collection of Welsh language cards and stickers.

The business is conducted almost exclusively in Welsh, and Mwydro's GIFs have been seen over 250 million times. In 2023 Sioned won Young Freelancer of the Year at the IPSE awards in London.

I worked in an office job and was looking for something creative and fun to do in the evenings, and through the support of Big Ideas Wales I was supported to turn that hobby into a real business. I attended Big Ideas Wales’s Bootcamp to Business and it gave me the confidence and the skills to go for it. 

I'm the first member of my family and circle of friends to start a business, so I was looking up to Big Ideas Wales’s Role Models and celebrities as inspiration. The performer Carrie Hope Fletcher is an inspiration to me as she's also an entrepreneur who does many different things, in her case she's a musician, an actress, an author and a YouTube star.

During lockdown all my craft fairs were cancelled so I had to think creatively and innovatively and change the business to survive. That's when I found the gap in the market with regards to creating GIFs and I haven't looked back since.

I also run the business part time alongside another job, so I've had to work hard and master good time management in order to ensure a good balance between both as well as a personal life.

Certainly the freedom to be creative and play around with different ideas. Making cartoons and interacting with kids doesn't feel like work, but that's what’s great about it!