Creative Pep Talk
056 - Climbing the Mountain with Brandon Rike
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. Oh, the holidays are here, you gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Catherine, and her kids, Jetson, and Jetta, and Jeffrey, and Jacob, and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you gotta shop small, just it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon Goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chocked full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch-a-Day advent calendar, and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me, that was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk, that's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods, we're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, it's the Creative Peptalk Pod cast with Andy J. Miller, commercial artist, and I'm back fresh from the Creative Works Conference. And I had an amazing time. I'm here with Brandon Reich. - Hello. - He's a graphic designer. - Yeah, graphic designer. - Graphic artist. - I say graphic artist because it sounds more interesting. The graphic designer, but there's no difference at all. - Yeah, I do think it sounds better. And so we're in a fancy studio that we're borrowing. - Yeah, a full-on radio studio. Could not be any more official than what we're doing right now. - It's freaking me out, but before we get into it, I'm just gonna say that you can get this podcast on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on iTunes, SoundCloud, my website, whatever. You can find it all over the place online. If you go search out Creative Peptalk podcast. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. And I have applied this to my Creative Practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro. And that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out Squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTalk, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. (bell dings) - Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Today, what we wanna do is talk about the conference. We wanna do like a recap of some of the things that we learned and also I'm gonna interview Brandon 'cause he has a really interesting story that I think will be relevant to all the listeners out there. Does that sound right? Sounds fine to me. Am I missing anything? Yeah, if you wanna ask me questions about me and I know all the answers. Okay. I memorize my whole life. I've memorized everything. Yeah, I've memorized everything. Yeah, great, that's awesome. So I just want, so I got to talk at the conference. You talked last year. Well, let's talk about what conference we're talking about here. Creative works. Creative works.co, you can check it out. And it was in Memphis. A good friend of mine, Josh Horton, put it on. And now he's a good mutual friend of Andy and I. Just had a total bromance go down to Memphis, is what happened. Yes, absolutely. We had some porch time. Yeah, we had porch time the first night. Then we had barbecue every consecutive night. And let me tell you something about Andy. Andy is extremely disciplined in his diet these days. Every, we were in Memphis. And the only thing available in Memphis is barbecue. And somehow Andy found a way to order a salad at every place. There may have been a little bit of pulled pork. Yeah, there was some pulled pork and barbecue sauce in it, but my man made sure it was salad. The most of it was green and I come in Andy. I could never go to Memphis and I can be out. I can be a bit of a foodaholic, if you will. So I'm trying to keep it chill on the food portions. But you've lost a million pounds. I've lost a few pounds. It's between 50 and 60 pounds, it's pretty enormous. Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good. I feel a lot better, more energy. My whole thing is I'm very addictive. So I just have to get on a roll and then I'm ready to go. But if I break out, it can be not good. Well, you're on a diet roll at the moment and you're totally killing it. 'Cause every time we've had lunch, I've just been picking out and you've been controlling yourself. I've been impressed. You've had self control at restaurants, which is something that I don't have. It's not, it hasn't. Yeah, it's been a weird process to get into that zone. Yeah, so why don't you wanna tell like a little bit of background behind Creative Works 'cause you're friends with the guy who puts it on, Josh Horton, and you kind of saw it all unravel, right? Yeah, Josh has been my friend for a long time. I think the first time Josh and I met had to be somewhere around 2001, 2002. So Josh is this amazing designer. He used to work with Don and Ryan Clark and Dimitri Argus from Astrich Studio. They've changed their name to Invisible Creature, Dimitri split off and now he works at Digital Kitchen. So Don and Ryan Clark are probably some of the most prolific designer illustrators in my world of design and Josh was like the third guy with them. And I think they wanted to move on and do Invisible Creature, but Josh just had this love and passion for Memphis. So he moved back from Seattle to Memphis. And that's just kind of the paraphrase story 'cause yeah, I can't say I know all the details because we kind of just knew each other vaguely, but then we kind of reconnected, I guess, maybe around '09, 2010, something like that. So him and I talked and we kind of just gave each other opinions and gave each other just kind of a sounding board to each other what was going on in each other's lives. And my friend Jeff Finley put on a conference called Weapons of Mass Creation up in Cleveland. So I want to say that was in 2010. I think that's correct, it may have been 2011, but I was gonna, I went up there the first year and the second year I wanted to, the second year I kind of just slipped in and out. And then the third year, let's call this 2012, I think. I wanted to go up there, I wanted to sell a bunch of products. I had just launched this T-shirt line called The Racing Machetes. And I wanted to bring Josh up there to kind of help me out and also use it as an excuse to just hang out with a friend who was kind of like only a friend on the internet and phone or whatever. So Josh comes up and we really loved Weapons of Mass Creation. And I think even like the Dan's, Dan Krasofferson, Dan Kasserow and the third Dan Nitt Yutesh. They all kind of met at that same conference. I think that Josh came to the first time. I think Draplin was there that year. It was just a really killer year. So anyways, I think the whole time we were there, Josh was loving it and he just kept saying that he wants to do something like this from Memphis. And I've never met somebody with such a heart for their city, like somebody who is just, who loves their city and wants to continue to make their city better. And I think a lot of us tend to move. A lot of us tend to like, you know, if we don't like our situation, we move and we kind of abandon it. Well, Josh, instead of abandoning Memphis, he just wanted to improve it and make it better. So last year, 2014 was his first year of creative work. So right away, he's got this great place. The branding behind it is great. The designer, Matt Layman helped him on the branding. I helped him on some stuff. And Josh is just an amazing, he's an amazing designer, but he acts more like an art director these days. He's one of those art directors that's like a really great designer, but for whatever reason, he never designs, even though he's amazing. So, but anything Josh touches is gonna be beautiful. And anything he touches is gonna be well thought out and creative works was just like a really great design project that he pulled off with flying colors. So the first year, last year in Memphis, we had Invisible Creature Speak. I say we just because I kind of, I help him as much as I can with opinions. I wish I could help him more. He had Invisible Creature Speak. He had Aaron Draplin speak, Dana Tanamachi. And then a ton of other speakers. I spoke last year, Matt Layman spoke last year. Daniel Evans, Sasha Ball. I mean, there's all kinds of people that, I don't wanna miss anybody, but there was a ton of speakers last year. You can check out creativeworks.co and you can see last year's lineup and you can see this year's lineup. So anyways, he did it. It was awesome. Sold out and he needed to change venues 'cause he could probably sell a lot more tickets. Actually, the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies, Rick Trotter was the MC and did the MC again. So it's basically a low key chilled out conference. It's not, there's not a ton going on, meaning like he keeps it simple, being like there's speakers and there's workshops and there's barbecue and there's after parties. So it's really simple as far as like what's going on. And I think in just the same clean aesthetic that Josh can design with, he's sort of designing the conference in the same way. It's simplified. There's not too much going on that you can't kind of, you know, enjoy everything. They've even got shot, you know, vendors have tables and stuff. He calls it the market. So we had Mitchell Bat Company. These are things, studio temporary, inch by inch, the button company, ghostly firms, blah, blah, blah. There's a whole bunch of people I think. - Miscellaneous goods. - Miscellaneous good. The Holosylios, Clark Ore, just a lot of good stuff. I know I'm missing, I'm leaving some stuff out, but overall, it's like church, man. You just go down and you get inspired. People open themselves up. There's not too much pretentious vibes going around if any at all. It's a lot of-- - There's a lot of touching. - Lot of hugs, total hugs. - That was good. - A lot of people hugging, a lot of plaid. - I forget how much I like a good hug. - Yeah. - Oh, I'll get you a hug. If you need a hug really now. - You're a good hugger and I appreciate it. - I'm one of the best huggers. - I think so. - But we can be honest about that. I have, that's on my resume. I can do graphic design, do illustration. I can even copyright, but I can really, really hug. - Yeah, that's definitely true. When we were down there, I felt like, you know, when you're getting really chummy with everybody and you know, it's kind of like, I felt like I left a giant hug and I was a little bit embarrassed. I think looking back, just thinking, man, everybody was hugging each other all the time. - It's a group hug. - A group of basically a giant group hug for five days. - Yep. - Yeah, so it was really good. So real quick, do you want to tell just a, I think the inception of all of these things is really interesting with invisible creature and tooth and nail and all that stuff. And I wonder if you can kind of maybe try to explain why it turned into all of these different creative outlets. - Interesting. Okay, so I'll have to tell you some of my background, to give you this story correctly. So my friends and I started a band in 1997. At the time we were like 13 and 14 years old. We love bands like Green Day and Weezer, you know, bands like that. So we started a band and we kind of got really serious about it. We got to the point where we were going to stop like playing sports at school to start playing shows on the weekends, you know, when we get into like junior high and high school. Well, you got a basketball game this weekend or you can play a show. We wanted to play a show. So that sort of faded out. So it kind of got serious. You know, if anybody, you know, remembers what their high school years are like, if you're a sophomore and you're deciding that you don't want to really do any extracurricular stuff at school anymore and said you want to do your own thing that has nothing to do with school, that's kind of a big deal. So that's what, you know, that's sort of what we did. We started playing shows all the time. And by the time we were 18 years old, we signed to a record label in Seattle called "Tooth and Now Records." We basically sent them a demo. There's a big music festival in Illinois that we used to go to. I handed out some demos to them. Anyways, we signed a "Tooth and Now Records." Now, "Tooth and Now Records" stood out because they were like a Christian record label, but the aesthetic was way beyond any of their competitors. So at the time, we're talking about drive-through records or victory records or whoever was their kind of contemporaries, I guess, but "Tooth and Now," their aesthetic in their art was so far beyond anything anybody else was doing that it stood out. Now, come to find out, the people in charge of that was Don and Ryan Clark. So Don and Ryan Clark had a band back in the day on "Tooth and Now Records," well, "Solid State," which is a hardcore subsidiary of "Tooth and Now." They had a band called "Training for Utopia." And then that band later kind of evolved into a band called "Demon Hunter." And "Demon Hunter" is still around today. So basically, this record label sort of ushered in an entire underground movement of art and design led by Don Clark and Ryan Clark, who also were in the band "Demon Hunter," which is "Plan B" for them, like the main thing, they're artists and designers. So Don and Ryan sort of are like the godfathers of my world of design. So they would hire people on, like Josh Horton, who did creative works, like Greg Luzzi, who later started Visco, which is the app on your phone that you're taking really cool pictures with. So he was just a guy that kind of worked underneath Don and Ryan. There's a lot of other people like that. I want to say Danny Jones. I want to say Mike Madrid, Dimitri from "Digital Kitchen," you know, Zach, who's working with them now. Zach White, I don't know how to pronounce his name. S-C-H-W-E-I-T, something like that. So anyway, whoever goes up to Seattle to work with Don and Ryan comes out a freaking master. And for me, I never got to go up and work with them. I had an opportunity to go work at the Tuesday now Art Department, which was very close. Another person, Jordan Butcher, he came out of the Tuesday now Art Department. And I'm missing some, but there was a lot of people up there that got up there and worked. And they kind of get under the tutelage of Don and Ryan. And everything changes. They just become these great designers based on the principles that they learned from Don and Ryan. So whether Don and Ryan realize it or not, they are the godfathers of-- If you're listening, Don, I know that you enjoy the podcast. I hope that's the right story. If not, you can go attack Brandon. Yeah, Don, if I'm wrong, come on Andy's podcast and correct me. We're just going to sing your praises for the next 20 minutes. Yeah, you're the godfather. And so anyways, but Don doesn't-- Don chills out in Seattle. You know what I mean? He's got a farm up there. He's got a sweet barn, which is the new home of his-- It's also a goat, sir, I think. He does have goats. I've never been up there. But him and I have emailed back and forth a little bit about both being designers that own farm properties. I don't have any animals or crops yet, but yeah, I have the makings of a farm. So I have-- do you want to keep just telling that story? Well, basically, it's sort of like ushered this whole design aesthetic, I think. And I think Josh is a big part of that design aesthetic. So Josh is capable of doing that. And now, Josh's connections are huge because of all that involvement he had. And Josh has maintained all these connections. And he stays in contact with all these people. Jesse Bryant spoke last year from Belief. There's just all these really, really great artists and designers that Josh has been involved with. Because Josh has been involved with record labels more than just tooth and nail. I think he's been involved with Ardent in Memphis. And he's just been involved in the music industry. And obviously, my career is completely in the music industry now. So my career became I design graphics for T-shirts in the music merchandise industry. So I design apparel graphics for all the bands. And that's been my involvement in music industry. And there's some really cool fusion that I found between music and design. So that fusion of music and design has always been fascinating to me. And I think Don and Ryan were kind of the first people that I saw do what I wanted to do in life. They kind of clarified it. They were doing a lot of album art. But back in the day, with Asterix Studio, they were doing a lot of T-shirts, too. And they didn't-- they kind of stopped doing T-shirts. And I think they started referring some to me. And that was a huge help in my career, obviously. So I owe them a lot, man. Even indirectly, a lot of the ways they've influenced me. A lot of the ways-- they've always been cool. They've always been awesome. That's pretty amazing when the coolest designers in the world, like Don and Ryan Clark and Aaron Draplin and all those guys are just cool dudes. And so my hats off to them, they're sort of like the godfathers of the whole thing. Like I said, I know I've said godfathers too many times. But yeah, it all kind of stemmed from that world. It all stemmed from this dedication to doing it really, really well. And I see that in Josh. And it's really cool to watch Josh do a whole conference and know that a designer made something. And you get to see his creativity applied to-- you can see it on websites and print work and all that stuff. But then you get to see his creativity applied to a whole event, the whole conference. And he just pulled it off. And like you said, it is a big group hug. It's a bunch of love. It's a bunch of people sharing their emotion as opposed to sharing their knowledge. And I think there's something kind of cold about if your goal is to go up there and teach versus it's really warm when you go up there to just kind of embrace and to come down on everybody's level and say, we're all in this together. I think that's pretty powerful. And that's what happened down there. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I feel like we're going to go from Godfather to grandfather. OK. I feel like I've been kind of grandfathered into this. That's not the right phrase. But I feel like weirdly-- like I kind of vaguely knew about Invisible Creature before the podcast. Well, they're invisible. So it's hard. It is hard to see them. But they reached out with the podcast and I kind of made connections in my mind of things that I hadn't noticed before. And I don't know how we ended up meeting it. We live about five minutes away. We live five minutes away. However, our mutual-- or now mutual friend, Josh Horton, founder of CreativeWorks told me, hey, you need to hang out with Andy J. Miller. And then I listened to the Creative Peptock podcast, which I had listened to before. And I find out that you had moved to Columbus. Well, if you live in Columbus, you kind of have to assume they're going to live somewhere downtown because I live in this Northeast suburb called Westerville. And somehow, I don't know if I text you or email you or what, but I find out you live in Westerville too. And yeah, we live five minutes away from each other in the same suburb. And I wonder if Josh heard about it. I think he heard about it through Don tweeting about it. That's right. So it's just a very weird kind of-- It's all connected. Yeah. And you fit right into the world. I know. I feel very at home with these chaps. So I have a few questions about this. So one thing that is on my mind, just as a side note, is I'm trying to rethink how we do design education, design in commercial art education, because obviously, higher education is coming under attack. And I teach at an art school, and I love-- I feel like there's still some of the best artists come out of art school. But we know there are a lot of big challenges. And one of them being that a lot of that technical information is out there for free or cheap online. And so I'm always constantly thinking about what value is there at art school that's creating these great artists still today if it's not the technical information. So one of the things that I'm really interested in is creating space for residency program for young talented artists. And it seems like there was a bit of that with invisible creature and tooth and nail. Just being in proximity with these guys ends up turning these people into great designers. It's almost like an apprenticeship. It is, yeah. Because they had their studio, and then tooth and nail had their art department. And I think the line was pretty blurred. I think they were the same room at some point, or the same exact thing at some point. But then I think there was a time when they got divided. But it was always-- I know Ryan bounced back and forth between the two. And I don't know everything. I've never worked with those guys. I'm never really-- I don't want to speak for it. And I know that they're in their studio right now, rolling their eyes. I'll be like, that's not what happened at all, Brandon. So I don't want to say too much, but-- Challenge, Don. Come correct the story. Yeah, you're going to be the fact checker and fix everything, Don. Yeah, so I'm really interested in this. And I've talked about this before on the podcast about how I've got three kids. And each kid that comes along does things quicker by being around peers that can do things. So my three-year-old talks just are my seven-year-old because they want to catch up. And there's something that-- there's some kind of mental shift or a veil that is dropped when you spend time with somebody doing things that are far beyond you. All of a sudden, you have this quickening that's really interesting. So that's a side note. It's something I would like to-- I'm putting it out there into the ether to see if it comes back to me somehow, basically. My rough theory about that is that the thing that's actually going to make you succeed is a very hard thing to teach because it's tenacity. I think it's totally true. It's this extra gear that you have for whatever reason, for whatever you're trying to prove, whatever it chips on your shoulder, or whatever, like if your whole family had these really great jobs and you're trying to overcome them with your talent, your artistic thing, and your passion. You want to have a occupation based around your passion. Well, you don't really teach tenacity in a college. I think in college, you teach them how to survive it, which is just as valuable. But there's nothing guaranteed with a college degree. And there's definitely nothing guaranteed without a college degree. So the secret sauce is something that's a little bit abstract and undefined. I also think that-- so some people, you put them in that environment and it brings out the tenacity or whatever, but some people it actually kills their hunger, which I don't know, for me, one of the struggles of being in an environment that feels like a waiting room means that I feel like what I'm doing isn't meaningful. I want to get to the work. And so I think that, for me, that was a challenge. Luckily, I went to school in England where there weren't general studies and it was a three-year program. So it was pretty quick. So another thing, before we move on, because I want to talk about you and talk about the innate qualities that you think you have that contribute to what you do. But before we do that, what do you think it was about this environment with tooth and nail that kind of bred all these visual artists? I could make speculations, but just from being in that environment, because you were touring and you were interacting with these different bands. Why do you think that so many people from that school then move on to the visual art? I think Don and Ryan just teach everybody how to make it as best as it can possibly be and to take your time and to do it right. And I think that whether they realize it or not, I think they're the reason tooth and nail was so successful, because what was cool for us, me being-- I signed to that record contract when I was 18 years old. So I took my band from Dayton, Ohio, signed to a record label in Seattle, and boom, just like that, we were big. And just like that, we had amazing art, we had good videos. It catapulted us into that professional vibe. You've signed to this label, now you are completely professional and polished and slick from here on, and that wasn't only just design. That was in the marketing. That was in magazines, in the videos, and the production of the record. So we got to be in a studio with Aaron Sprinkle, and our record sounded amazing. So our second record, "New Madison," sounded amazing. And it's because Aaron Sprinkle. So you go through that machine, and in this case, it's a record label, but you go through that machine and you come out something so much more polished and so much more perfected that there's no way you can come back from that. So you're not going to make a poor quality next record. You know what I mean? Everybody's game stepped up once they went through that machine. And Don and Ryan were a big part of that machine because they're giving you the visual identity for what you're going to be for the next album cycle. So for the next couple years, this is your logo, this is your artwork, these are the way your stage banners are going to look, all that stuff. They established this air of professionalism that rubbed off on all of us. So none of us would allow ourselves to do crappy work from that point on. Something that is always on my mind, you hear it a lot. It's the idea that you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I think about, for young artists, when it comes to art school, sometimes that's like the most valuable thing that you're just around other people, like-minded people. I think you can even see how like, sometimes you'll have a year where there's no breakout artists in an art school and it'll actually bring the quality level down. But then if you get one guy who's pushing like crazy, all of a sudden, everybody elevates and gets better. The other thing I was thinking about was, now obviously, tooth and nail existed within a certain timeframe, a certain subculture. But I think within all of these things, it had this, I don't know, chip on your shoulder, it would be the right thing. But this thing where they were doing the real stuff or they were doing the best of the best within that zone. And that seems to have maybe rubbed off on everybody too, like. - Totally. - Yeah. I think that's- - Well, Brandon is the president of Brandon Ebel, is the president of tooth and nail. He has the same attention. I mean, you can take Brandon Ebel, and at the time, it was John Frazier and Chad Johnson, and then let's throw in Don and Ryan Clark in there. And a big, huge group of people, Jim Worthing, you know, Roy Culver, like there's a ton of them, I can't list the whole staff, but all of them were on the same level. This is going to be great. We are not going to send out crap. Everything is gonna look great, it's gonna sound great. If you come through the tooth and nail records machine, we are gonna give you the top notch product. And man, as a band, it made us feel so like, you just stand up straight, you know what I mean? And you try a little bit harder for your show, you try a little bit harder for your stage, whatever you're gonna do, you know, you get a cleaner van, you get at whatever it is, like everything steps up a notch. And I think that that just spoke volumes to all of us, and it's still in us today, you know what I mean? Like, Visco is awesome because of Asterix Studio, you know what I mean? I know that sounds crazy, but it all stems from-- - There's an excellence that's been passed on. - Exactly, exactly. - Yeah. - And I think, sorry to interrupt you. That's it. - No, I'm just gonna keep singing their praises, so if you ask me another question about them, it's just gonna be more of me singing their praises, so I'm gonna play it cool now, and act like it's no big deal. - They're cool, they're all right. - Don't mind, whatever. - Yeah, so I wanna move on a little bit to just do a small recap, 'cause I feel like there's a good transition here. - Yep. - I have a few things that I took away from Creative Works this year that hit me really hard. One of them was this idea of how to approach networking in a way that actually makes sense. And the reason I wanna transition here is because for those people who are either late to the game, I have a lot of listeners that, you know, they're 10 years after school and they're just deciding to be visual artists. - Yeah. - And they feel overwhelmed or they're questioning whether they can do it without going to back to art school. And so the thing I always tell people is, you don't have to go to art school, but you do need real relationships with people that are doing this. You need to go be around those people. And the thing that I took away, maybe the biggest thing that I took away from Creative Works was a networking tip, which is don't go out, we've talked about it before, but don't go out there and try to make contacts that are strategic like, you know, this guy can give me a leg up but I can use this person or whatever, go out there and make strategic relationships. And I don't mean strategic in like a way where you're manipulating people, but I'm saying in a way like, those people are doing things that are amazing and I wanna be around those people so that that awesome stuff rubs off on me. - Right, it's gonna better you to be around them. - Yes. - You're making sure your five people are worthwhile people and you can't hang out with a bunch of great people and not try to be great. - Totally. - But you can hang out with a bunch of, what's the word? Unmotivated people and then just watch your passion dwindle over time. - I almost see one of the things that I see or have seen in smaller towns that I've lived, you get these people that are brilliantly talented but they're unmotivated or they're not part of a greater community and sometimes you can feel really comfortable in that zone. You're like, well, we're both in, we have good taste and we both have talent and neither of us are doing anything amazing but nobody really is. But as soon as you're around other people that are actually doing amazing things, all of a sudden the pressure's on and you rise to the occasion. And so I think, just to say that I think we're in this really interesting time where there are all these interesting conferences and it is a place where you can go, if you can't go to art school, if you can't go back, it's a place where you can go and make these relationships. So I always tell my students, you need to go to these conferences. And I would say at least at this conference and I don't have a crazy amount of experience here but at least at this conference, I felt like I made a lot of new friends of people that I didn't know previously. I didn't even know their name, I didn't know what they did for a living but I spent a lot of time with them. And so at least at CreativeWorks, I felt like there was a humility to the people that were there where you were making real friendships. - Yeah, and it's pretty great when you, you're like, "Oh, I'm about to meet Mikey Burton." - Yeah. - The legendary Mikey Burton and he's just a cool dude. - He is such a nice guy. - They're all cool dude. Dan Casero, he's almost like a taste maker right now, and Dan Kristofferson and Nate Utach and Matt Stevens, who I think we all agreed is just the best. - Yes. - He's the, well Jay-Z is something guy right now but let's just call Matt Stevens, Jay-Z. - He can be Kanye. - He's Kanye, yeah. Maybe we need somebody a little crazier than Matt to be Kanye, we don't know yet. But I think that whatever it was. - Maybe we'll ask him to be Kanye. - Josh and I have, yeah, make Lewis's Kanye. There you go. So Josh and I talked, you know, we talk all the time but I think that the difference is that there's a lot of us who are not happy with being a big fish in a little pond. So I think that we all, when we're trying to be great, we're trying to be globally great. So when we're looking up to other artists, we're not looking up to the best artists in our city, we're looking up to the best artists in the world. And I think that's a different thing. I think that there's a lot of design firms that can really pat themselves on the back for being the best in the city. - Which is fine. - Which is fine. But I know the people I look up to are just trying to do the best work period. And that's what inspires me because it's to see a goal and they just know it's really attainable. It just makes your run a little slower 'cause you know you're gonna get there. - Yeah, absolutely. - And that's to be a balance of like, it's challenging to the point where you're questioning whether it's possible but it's not so massive that you can't imagine attaining it. I think finding a balance is important. - Yeah, there's a balance there. Yeah, 'cause I wanna have to run fast to get there. I wanna know that if I'm gonna get there, I've gotta put a lot of effort forth. But if it's 10 feet away, I know I can take my time and watch slow. - Watch the Netflix. - Maybe take a nap on the way. I'm not taking naps these days. - Yes. - I take zero naps. - So I think that one interesting point here is that there's a test out there called Strengths Finder. It costs like 10 bucks. And it's really interesting. It gives you like your top five strengths. One of mine is called Significance. And I know this is something I've just been in tune with now is that part of the reason I wanna like compare myself globally and work for, kind of compare myself on that level is because for me, that's what feels significant. And so some people don't have those things and actually chasing that is actually gonna make them unhappy or less fulfilled. 'Cause some people have these strengths where pouring into local things is where they're actually gonna find that excitement and fulfillment. But I know, I think it's common among our peers that there's a search for significant achievements. So for me, that's something that definitely rings true. - Well, that's an interesting point because if your goal is global, then your contemporaries could not live where you live. - Yes. - So, and if your contemporaries don't live where you live, then you feel like maybe you're not so pushed locally. And if you're not pushed locally on a daily basis with the people you're around all the time, then that can lead to a depression. That can lead to something, you know, just a lack of motivation in general. So what these conferences are are a chance to get and see your tribe. But seeing your tribe every now and then in the conference is fantastic. But there's something else if you can build a community locally. And I know what you're saying, like actually be able to take part locally in your city. I'm doing a lot of branding projects around Columbus lately. This is a new thing. I've never really worked in my own city. I've always worked on the coasts and stuff like that, always through email. But I'm working in my city and it's going to be interesting to be able to go to restaurants that I branded and to go to coffee shops that I did all the logos for. That's going to be a really cool thing. So, there's the significance. And there's this, I matter, someone sees me. You know, because if you're only saving it for conferences, then you're going to have to hit a conference a couple times a month to really keep that high going. And I think the other thing that happens, I think it's really important to go to these places where you're getting face-to-face with your competition, so to speak. Because there's something, you know, the effect the internet has on kind of feeling anonymous or not human. Like in terms of comments and stuff, I can get really nasty and all that. And I don't partake in that per se, but I feel like there's something that happens when you go see these people in real life that you're following on social media. And all of a sudden, there's a part of you that feels a little bit silly. Yeah. You're like, okay, that part needs to chill out. That part, that jealous part or that extreme competition, whatever, all of that negative side that has built up from, I don't know, viewing this through the lens of the internet. I think that's another thing that was really good. That's always good when I get next to these people that I'm so impressed by. Yeah. That's something that happens that I think is really good. The internet has no tone. So we only paint whatever conversation or whatever thing with our own tone. We may think that someone posts a bunch of work and it's really slick and pretentious. And we think they're a jerk. What we painted all that pretentious tone on top of that, that's not the case. So when you get to meet these people, you have this preconceived thing that you kind of got to learn to like just drop because, well, I want to say everybody's awesome. I wish that was the case, but I know it creative works. Everybody was awesome. And I think these days, if I meet somebody who I look up to, that's a total jerk, it's like it rocks my world. Like I can't even imagine why you would be a jerk in this type of world, especially at a conference where everybody's telling you how great you are. It is a big group hug. So why aren't you hugging anybody, dude? You know what I mean? And I think. Which there were those vibes. Yeah, everybody was in on the hug for sure. What's one of the things? You kind of seemed like you got a fresh inspiration by being there with your own business. What are some of the takeaways that you had? Well, I spoke last year and I spoke from the heart. I mean, I always speak from the heart, but last year it was my chance to go up and speak and be honest about the fact that I'm just not feeling it. Not the conference, the conference was great, but I basically said, like I'm not gonna come up here and talk about how awesome my career is right now because I am not feeling it. The career is good. The work is good. I am a machine. I can keep this work flowing. The demand is high. The man is always high. I'm really, really lucky in my industry. The demand's always there, but my emotions are completely, you know, unpredictable. Somewhere along the way, it wasn't as creatively fulfilling. The demand was still there, but you're not, it's not feeding the same thing that it was early on. I wasn't able to wake up stoked. And I realized that motivation is really just waking up with a positive emotion and it boils down to that. Like, can you wake up? You know, like this morning I woke up, I was excited about doing this podcast. So I woke up at four o'clock this morning. So that's the level of excitement I had to do this. And but other days, I'm not really stoked about the project I gotta do, but the reality of being a one of the top names in the music, merchandise industry is that, yeah, you design, you know, like back in 2005, I designed a ton of stuff for my chemical romance and that whole thing. Like I have designed everything for 21 pilots for this album cycle. I've designed a whole line of Fallout Boy stuff. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Awesome job, awesome job, awesome job. But I'm still designing like Christmas ornaments for like Kid Rock, you know? And not to call that out, but it's not necessarily about Kid Rock. It's also about the Christmas ornament. And it's also about just, it's not, you know, you don't have to make a judgment call on Kid Rock. I think we all have our own opinions about that. But it's more just about your internal, the thing inside you that says, that's what I wanna be doing. That's what I wanna be spending time with. Right, so I had been through this transition of, you know, we had a really great house in town. We found another property that was really, really awesome. It's kind of like the end game what we want for the rest of our life. We had an opportunity to buy that property. I had a time where I had one mortgage, another mortgage, and then rent for an apartment that I was gonna live in for the in-between. So it was a really, really stressful time. And this was getting me right in the middle of that stressful time. So I could not muster up a fake like, guys, you know, follow your dreams. I could not do any of that stuff. So I was just honest about that. But I thought my honesty was gonna be valuable. And I think to a lot of people last year, it really was valuable. So anyway, this year, we, you know, I came, you know, Josh actually wanted me to do a workshop. And we kind of went back and forth about it. He really wanted me to do it. I was kind of telling him I didn't want to do it. And I ended up bailing on it. And I feel bad for that. But I think Josh knows me enough to understand why I did it. And I showed up kind of, I just wanted to absorb. I wanted, number one, I want to be a servant for people. I just wanted to go and plug in their computers and be the audio video guy. And, you know, I would also get a chance to talk to all the speakers. That was really cool. But I definitely seem to be in sponge mode, which was great. I've been in that zone where things aren't feeling fresh or you're not, you don't have clarity about where you're going or whatever it is. And you go in this environment and just soak up all of this stuff. And you, I think, I think when it started, you are kind of excited and hopeful and everything, but you didn't have any like exact thoughts or feelings. And by the time you left, you had a whole list of things. - Yeah, I was digesting the whole time. And I think that, I think that, you know, you talked about sponge. What I've been visualizing is that, okay, so you know the sponges that you get in like an artisan shop where they're like, they're the real sponge and they got big holes on them. - Yeah, yeah. - They look like-- - SpongeBob. - They're from-- - The real SpongeBob. - Not SpongeBob. It's like-- - It doesn't look like a real sponge from the ocean. - It doesn't look anything like SpongeBob. It looks more like a brain, okay? So let's take a sponge with big holes and a lot of holes. It's really light, you know what I'm talking about. It's not the factory-made ones that we actually, you know. But let's take that brain. That's the brain I was there with. That's the brain that I want. That's the brain that I came back with. Now the brain that I have most of the time is just made out of this dense play-doh. That's like, it's dried, it's not even pliable anymore. It's just super dry and it's so dense you can't fit another thing into it. Like if you have a good idea, and you try to stick it in the play-doh, it's not gonna happen. - It just falls on the table. - Yeah, let's say like a toothpick is a really good idea. You can't stick it in the play-doh, but man, that sponge, that art is in sponge, that's the brain I want right now. So I got to come home from creative works with that brain because sort of what happened is like, if you imagine like a atom bomb or something where it starts from the center and just explodes everything, destroys everything in its path, so that was like my mind opening up. So it gave me the ability to stretch like 100 miles in every way, but I really only need to stretch like a few feet, but at least I had plenty of room. I had plenty of airspace. That's kind of the metaphor of how I came back feeling. So I listened to all these things. There was a lot of things that hit me. I got three, I got some points you want me to talk about. - Yeah, I go ahead, you know, just hit the first one. - I think my big issue, I guess the baggage that I showed up to Memphis with was, what's the next step after success? So I found myself in conversations with quite a few people and I kept repeating the same thing where I've been lucky enough in my career to reach a top of the mountain where I make enough money. I'm cool with where I stand in the industry. You know, I have a kind of a small niche industry. So I'm cool with where I stand there. I'm satisfied on a global human big picture level. Like I'm an artist for a living. I've been an artist for a living for like the past 12 years. Who isn't happy about that? It's a huge blessing that I have that. I'm so happy about it. But when you climb a mountain and you get to the top of the mountain, you have that moment of you look at the person you're beside and you kind of look at them and shrug your shoulders and say, well, what do we do now? - Yeah. - You know, there's, you've got there. This is what you planned your whole day around. You were just gonna get to the top of the mountain. So what do you do next? And, you know, you can maybe you could take off your shoes and try to have a picnic. - You have a picnic. - That's another thing. - Yeah, you have a picnic, but that's stagnant. You know what I mean? It's like in the city. - You can chill at the top. - Right, you want to keep going on something. You want to keep moving on something. You want to have a new idea. - So I think, can I just pause real quick? I just want to say that, you know, one of the things I try to do with the podcast is balance. I think wherever you are as a commercial artist, your frustrations stem from one or two places. They're either your demand is low. So you're not getting opportunities. Or you're not creatively fulfilled by the things that are in demand. - Bingo. - And so I, but I think that there's so much information out there, rightfully so, because there's this, there's a giant crowd of people that want to increase the demand. - Yeah. - And so there's so much, so many of the talks are geared towards the person that's just starting out, trying to figure out how to make this a thing. And there's not a lot of information about, once that demand's going, what happens when you want to shift to something that's more creatively filling? - Right. - Or what do you do once you're there? - Yeah, I think, you know, the biggest takeaway, well, in regards to that question, it was our conversation. And I think that what you kind of, what I keep seeing you talk about is, well, I took this when I was flying home, I kind of made sense of it all. And, you know, the flight attendant was going through the whole thing of, with the mask comes down, you're supposed to put it on your face before you help the people around you. And that's like such a selfish thing. And every time I've heard that, I've like, mom is not gonna do that. Mom is gonna save her kid first, you know? And I think about how selfish that is every time, but I understand completely. You need to make sure that you're completely healthy and available to help everybody else. If you've got oxygen going in your face, then you're gonna be able to help everybody around you. - And just as a side note, before you go further, I'm just gonna cut you off and stay at that moment. - Let's get an end out of four. - You know, partially, are you saying that, you know, your mask is on now? - Yes. - Yeah. - I have so much oxygen. And I want now to be able to help other people, but that's what you instilled in me. So that's what our conversation about now is like, okay, so we've been able to get to where we want now. Once you get to where you want in your career, you have to fine-tune it, because what happens is-- - Totally true. - I wanna, right now, I wanna make the same amount of money I make now, but I wanna do less work. So that means I have to be more selective on the work that I take on, I have to charge a little bit more for the work that I take on. - And you wanna be focusing more on the stuff that is enjoyable to you. - Right. - So there's all, after you get there, you're gonna be finding all, Dan Dixon, actually, his talk, he works at-- - Vivo. - Vivo, and he used to-- - Vivo. - Vivo. - He used to work at Nickelodeon, amazing guys, super great. His talk was about criteria, and once you're there, and you're like, 'cause he said early on, that you're looking for the demand on the creatively fulfilling stuff, once you get in there, you have to fine-tune the criteria. And I think that's totally true, and you get there. As a side note, I just wanted to say that I think it's similar to this idea of being an extrovert versus an introvert. I think people misunderstand the nuance of what that means, so I'm an introvert, and I like spending time alone, and that's how I get my energy. But what happens is, just like sleep, like you need sleep, and that's where you get energy, but you have to spend that energy, or you're restless. - Totally. - So if I'm an introvert, and I spend all this time alone, eventually, I need to go out there and be around other people and burn off that energy. - Yep. - And I think in the same way, you put the mask on, you got your career going, and everything's great, but all that hunger energy that was spent getting there, is all of a sudden, like, latent. - Yep. - And I think one of the things you can do is go help someone else get somewhere. And all of a sudden, you're burning that energy off. - Right, and kind of see that excitement in someone else for something so creative. I remember I had a time where, you know, I wanted to ask some of my designer friends, "Hey, do you want to design some stuff for no doubt, or Green Day, or whatever?" And this, you know, they were designers, and this excited them so much, to just be able to work on fun work. And that puts it in perspective for me, too, because now I get to go back and be like, Brandon, the work you do is fun, it's a blast. And you're sitting here, like, rolling your eyes at it. Like, put it back in perspective. Like, all of this, you know, part of your career, and part of fine-tuning it, is also coming back and putting in perspective. Sure, you've got to clean it out. You've got to have maintenance of like, let's get the old out, let's bring some new in, let's keep it fresh, you know, all that stuff. But also, let's step back from it every now and then and see what actually is going on, you know? So like, let's zoom out on the mountain and see where you actually made it to so you can see that whole climb and you see how great it is that you got to the top there. So it's all these mind games that you have to go back and forth with, back and forth between once you get to that level. And the top of the mountain is confusing because the top of the mountain is not complete elation. It's not, the journey is arguably better than the top of the mountain, but the top of the mountain is good, the top of the mountain is the goal, but the journey is as good, if not better. So, but you're not going to know that when you're in the journey, you're just trying to get there. I know, and I think, did you have anything else on that one? No, that's my point on what the next step after success is. So that was the thing in my brain when I showed up to creative works. Okay, so I want to transition to one of my points, which is because I think it's a good transition there. One of the things that I took away, one of the biggest things, and it was something I kind of uncovered while I was preparing for my talk, was that we're not designers, we're people. And I think one of the things that happens when you go to these conferences or when you're interacting online, you get so into this subculture of design that you minimize your, everybody has all these challenges. You have your challenges with your parents, you have your challenges with your spouse, you have your challenges with your kids or your bills or medical things and all these things. And I think often when we're in this subculture, we kind of minimize those things and pretend that they don't exist. And I think not only is that negative for the way that you interact with other people in the community, it affects the way that you make things. Because Frank Chimero, he and one of his talks, he talks about how design for other designers, about design, just gets so monotonous and ridiculous and it's so uninteresting to the general public. It's so not in tune with what people are actually like. I've found in my own career that if I'm left to my own devices, what I will make, if I make something just on my own accord, I will make something where there's almost nothing tangible in it. It's almost like illustration tricks. And I enjoy doing those things. But if there's nothing for a regular person outside of the field to sink their teeth in, you've made something that is basically irrelevant. And so for me, there were a lot of talks about moms and dads for some reason. That seemed like a weird theme. The theme of the conference could have been parents. But getting to hear these very human things about these people that we look up to and enjoy their work, all of a sudden, it starts to make more sense. And I'm just gonna tell my final point 'cause it kind of goes all in there, is that there was a lot of talk about non-visual inspiration. And that's something that I've worked really, really hard on being in tune with. What, when am I feeling inspired by life? Not design, not illustration? And I try to push my students too because you ask them to make a mood board and literally 100% on the mood board is other people's illustration. - The exact thing that they wanna review. - Yes, yes. And so for me, it's like getting in touch with, for me, this was a reset button of like, all the hugs and all the people and all this stuff. It made me feel and remember like, we're all people. We all have our own struggles that are real human things. And if you can inject that quality and you can inject real life into your art, that's when it actually starts to resonate with people outside of the field, which are the only people that matter because designers don't have infinite cash or wall space to hang your stuff all over their house. So you need to be able to figure out how you connect with people outside of this. - Well, there's this thing of telling a story that I think that, you know, I'll give a designer five years before they understand they have to tell a story. Five years they're learning how to use Illustrator, they're learning how to use Photoshop, they're learning how to make things look as cool as so and so. - A static stuff. - A static stuff, but there's no passion behind it. I remember I've been in situations where I referred work. I wasn't able to do something so I referred it to someone else so that person would say, hey, so and so has been just regurgitating old, like album covers. All the work they've been showing us is just regurgitation of old album covers. And I'm was so confused at the time 'cause I'm like, didn't you hear their story? Their story is different than anyone else's story. Therefore, it requires a completely different aesthetic. The story is way more important, but at that time in their career, they think a brand is like a graphic. It's not, a brand is the whole story, it's everything. And I think, you know, like for me, Don Draper solidifies it, you know what I mean? Like, I want to be able to Don Draper projects now. I want to be able to, you know, absorb all the information that I'm given from the client, absorb all the information that, you know, everything they tell me where they came from, what they're inspired by, all that sort of thing. Absorb it and then give it back to them in a simple way. And that's with graphics, it's with a story, it's with a narrative. You know, I'm working on this project right now that it's a branding for a coffee shop. And the solution that I have is extremely simple, but it takes everything about their story into account and it allows room for everything that they're gonna do. And, but the actual graphic work is so simplistic that people would think that they wouldn't understand it. If they don't know how to tell a story, they wouldn't understand why this is awesome. Same way with Michael Beirut doing the new Verizon logo in Helvetica lowercase. Like, even if you go, like I was showing my students that, I was actually, I just typed out Verizon 'cause they're working on logos and we're talking about how you make something simple look good. And if you type that out and you even current it a little bit, you notice all of the modifications, like the top of it is like a very straight line where he has adjusted all of the top pieces. And so yeah, there's other sides to that too. - Well, the funny thing about that is you can take a 19 year old kid with Illustrator and he can do the same exact Photoshop. I mean, the same exact end product. But Michael Beirut goes around the entire world a bunch of times so that he can come back and know why that works. But the 19 year old kid doesn't know why it works. - Don't get hung up on. - He knows what font it is. - I feel like often when we talk like this, people out there will get hung up on whether they like that logo or not. - Yeah, that's not the point. It could be any logo. It could be the Nike swoosh or whatever. There's a story connected to the Nike swoosh now. And it takes on this brand of its own. So you've got to create something that's going to allow for that and it's going to tell a story. And going back to your point before, if you don't know what it means to be inspired by a sunset or to be inspired by fall or to be inspired by the smell of something or whatever, then you're not getting it yet. And that's okay. - That's my next thing. - Right. Sorry, do you want to finish that? - No, let's segue right to it. - My next thing is that one of the things that really screws other people up when you start having dialogue about what it means to make good work or what it means to have a good career is that I think the lack of nuance can really hurt, especially young people starting out when it comes to like giving advice or whatever this advice culture, all that stuff. One of the things that hurt me early on was I heard one of my favorite people just saying like yeah, it's really like it's super easy to make cool stuff. Like it's super easy to make things look good and that doesn't really matter. And so not only was it not super easy for me early on to make something look cool, I didn't really have any bigger aspirations than that. And I think when you're 18 years old, you don't have a story. And so I think one of the, just as, and you brought it up too, is like it's okay if that's where you're at. Like, and I think I like to think of it in seasons and it's not important to try to disown the season you're in. It is important though, I think to understand the season you're in. So if you're young and you're just starting out, you do need to learn how do you just make something look good consistently. - Totally, learn how to use the programs, learn how to get whatever's in your head out onto the computer. - Learn the tricks. - Yeah, learn it. - Yes, learn the things. You know, we've all developed things that, the craft where it's like when someone put something in my inbox, the thing I deliver to them is going to be a certain level of quality, a certain level of aesthetic. Christoph Neiman has a talk on 99U where he talks about how 99% of the time he can make good work. - Yeah. - And 1% he can make something great. There's a lot of like randomness that comes into that, and that's great. But craft is about being able to do 99 out of 100 good. - Yeah. - And so I think, I don't wanna minimize the importance of learning how to do the aesthetic thing because you get so many of the big wigs once they get to that top of the mountain and they see that this veneer is very thin. The aesthetic is maybe not so big of so much of a big deal. They end up giving bad advice to the younger people because they're like don't worry about aesthetic. None of that stuff matters. Like, well, you actually do, it does matter. - It all matters. - You do need to do that. - It totally matters. - Eventually you are gonna get to a different season. - Well, what I've found is that you get through a time and maybe it's five years, whatever it is, you get through a time and once you know how to use the programs and you know how to make every single logo you've ever seen, then you gotta challenge yourself in a different way. So for you, I know that there's this difference that you see between one of your illustrations and another illustration. One illustration is really simplified. The other illustration has exactly the right pieces, the right texture, the right craft, all that stuff in it. You hate one and you love the other and that's crazy to most people who would see what we're talking about. - Like my wife. - Right, right. - What are you talking about? - But the thing is, the amount of satisfaction that the good one gives you is so worth it and that's the motor that you need to use to keep going and to keep pushing yourself. So what people may not understand if they're not to that point yet is once you learn how to do everything, you gotta find this extra motor to push yourself further. That actually gets into one of my points. - We can transition. - My next point is, in order to do this, in order to succeed in this, you need an extra gear. You need another level of push. You need something else that's pushing you, like I said before, it's like whether it's a chip on your shoulder or something like that. Whether you've learned all the programs and everybody thinks your work's amazing and you know how to impress everybody else, but you need to learn how, or you need to start impressing yourself, which is a whole other chapter of your career. Okay, I've impressed everybody else, but I look at every single thing I ever did and I pick out all the imperfections in it. But I've reached a point in my life where I don't pick out the imperfections in it because I know I put the time and I tried and I have these methods that I'm gonna be able to turn out better work than I could when I was 22 years old. At 32 years old now, I'm nowhere near the end of my career, anything like that, but I'm at this cool point where I can actually send something out that I'm happy with and I can send something out that I don't second guess. And I don't know if the lack of second guessing is because I have over a decade doing it, or if I spend enough time on it, or I'm-- - I think what you do, you develop these little, you develop things that make it so that you can be consistent. And you can say, I can do something in 30 minutes that is going to look good because I know five things that I can do that, yeah, you're just your tricks that you have in your bag. - Well, I have these things where I'm like, workflow systems or whatever, this always happens, this always happens, this always happens. I'm creative, I do whatever I want right here and it's a really great abstract, skipping around my office type of moment. And then I do this and I do this and I do this and I send it off. - Well, systems are about, you know, I was telling one of my students the other day, like when we're doing the design process, I'm trying to teach these illustrators the design process 'cause there's all this value in there. And we did the mood board and we defined what the problem was 'cause they're like branding their websites and stuff. And then when he goes to pick fonts, he's going straight back to the trial and error method where he's just throwing stuff against the wall, he's looking through every font there is. And I'm like, no, go back to the problem, go back to the mood board, pick out things. Like if you're looking at, you know, some of these Japanese characters that you have there, there's these big slabs, okay? Let's write that out and say, let's look for some like slab serifs. - Yeah. - And so you systematize these things to where you know if you put this through that machine, the thing that comes out there on the other side and that's part of the reason why you get paid the longer you go in your career or you get paid more because they're not paying for your time. They're paying for the time you've spent over the past 50 years. - The cumulative knowledge. - Yeah, exactly. So the other point, do you have any more points or we? - I'm done with my points, but I do have some stuff to talk about when you're talking about this push thing. - That's my third point. - Okay. - So my third point was Bobby C. Martin. If you're not familiar with Bobby C. Martin, he is from the design agency OCD. You can look him up on originalchampionsofdesign.com. And I love Bobby's talk because Bobby has done some work that I'm really, really stoked on. I remember when Saint Bartholomew's church in New York came out with their new brand. I think I saw it on brand new. And I loved it because I really, while I've done some of them, I really, really hate cool church logos. - Yeah. - You know, like the cooler the church logo is, it's like the more I roll my eyes. - The more empty it feels. - Yeah, and I just nod into it. Yeah. So anyway, Bobby goes through this whole, well, I should just say Bobby's agency was responsible for rebranding it and they rebranded it from Saint Bartholomew's, who I don't even know that I could pronounce that word correctly. But I'm glad because they kind of embrace the moniker of Saint, everybody calls it Saint Barth. - Yes. - So they did all this type, they kind of took some type that was already in the architecture. And I think the guy who carved the architecture, it made typefaces anyway. - Right. - Something like that. So, but what was really cool about his talk is he went through all these different things that he did. And while I'm watching this, I'm kind of thinking about crafting, you know, kind of redoing my own talks. I've done quite a few talks now. I kind of want to kind of like a comedian. I just want to come up with all new material. - Yeah, yeah. You're ready for your next show. - I'm ready for the next special. So what Bobby did in his talk was really cool. He talked about the whole process of one project and at the end he's like, "So we push, push, push and over deliver." Because when I'm happy, the client's happy. And he hit every project with that in tag. And I thought that was so cool. But the push, push, push and over deliver, because when I'm happy, the client's happy. So there's a lot of-- - Oh, that's totally true. - A lot of things running through my head when I'm thinking about that. Because push, push, push and over deliver, you know what it's like to over deliver for your client because there's a point when this is what the client expects of you. But you get so carried away in that project, you don't even care what they want anymore. Because they ask for one thing and you want to do 10 things. You're just, and I find that a lot of times when I design merch for bands that I really love. - A band like 30 seconds to Mars or 9-inch nails or whoever. These bands that have these really great aesthetics attached to their brand, if they ask me to do five designs and I'm like, cool, I'll send you 15 on Monday because I'm just gonna lose my mind doing this stuff. So that over deliver happens when you invest some type of passion, you find passion in some other way. So for whatever reason with these brands, they just get obsessed with these brands and they over deliver. And now, I don't know if this is always the case. I would like to think it is because when I'm happy, the client's happy is what he said. And I think that that had a lot of people scratching the heads being like, is that the case? When you're happy, the client's happy? We have so many clients. But I think there's something that he's doing. There's a level that he's pushing. There's a level that he's over delivering that is gonna supersede any client's criticism. And they're gonna be so overwhelmed with your over delivery that they're gonna love that you did it. - It's different when, so one of the things that happens, you get really jaded, the further you go, you forget about the things that keep you motivated and keep you, you know, getting excited to the point where you wanna deliver five times what they asked for. - Right. - Right. And that's a different mentality, that over delivering, that being excited about the project, that's a different delivery than the guy who says, you asked for three logos, I gave you one, this is right, eat it. And you're happy, the client's not happy, that's different. - Right, and there was just this big ego that you had to walk around and you couldn't critique that ego, so you could, it could be argued that you could create crap. And if your ego's big enough, they just, they're not going to come against you. And I would say that there's plenty of agencies that have that mentality. But Bobby's approach, which I like this, 'cause I like when I can see a New York agency with this type of mentality that Bobby has. But what Bobby thinks is like, we are gonna love your brand more than you love your brand. And we are going to wrap up in it more than you're gonna wrap up into it. And then by the end, we're all gonna be one big, happy family because you know that we want the best for you. I've been through home remodeling and having builders who did the bare minimum, and it just breaks my heart. And what I want to know is, I wanna work with somebody who just wants the best for me at all cause, wants to make sure I'm taking care of. And I think that's what Bobby was doing with his brand. I think that's what, at least that's what I heard with push, push, push, over the liver. 'Cause when I'm happy, the client's happy. That's what that meant to me. So that was one of my, you know, I think last year, it was Jesse Bryan, Jesse Bryan just, if you're not aware of Jesse Bryan, look up belief agency. And he's just this really prolific, I don't know, he like, he just, you know, like really inspired me on this really cool way. 'Cause he done drapered me, you know. He looked into my soul after just hearing my talk. He heard my talk, and then he was able to zoom right into my soul and he told me who I was, and I was seen, and it was amazing. And, but Bobby was that for me this year. - Yes. - So moving from Bobby, we gotta talk about Meg Lewis. - Yes, let's, before you go there, I wanna do that. - She's coming up. - The second half of the podcast can be spent on-- - All about Meg. - The awesomeness that was her talk and Meg. But real quick, I just wanna say that, you know, I think part of that, when I'm happy thing, I think it's important to have the self-awareness to know when you're losing the spark. And that part of the idea, I think, you can almost look at it in reverse, to where when you're excited about what you're doing, you're willing to over-deliver. - Totally. - And when you're not, you're under-delivering. And I think having this monitor that's saying, I'm losing the spark for this stuff, and then having the foresight to say, I'm gonna start developing this new stuff so that the next cycle will be led from that work. And one thing that we talked about, when we talked about climbing the mountain, I think, I do think, let's just as a side, just say, there are people that are going, trying to fill their entire identity and happiness and fulfillment all from their work. And when they get to that top of the mountain, there's gonna be an emptiness to that. And that is true, and we've heard it a billion times, we know that that's true. If you're trying to win the Super Bowl to save your soul, you're not gonna be fulfilled when you get that ring and you're just gonna win another ring, right? That's true. However, I think it lacks nuance again. Set that aside and say, if you're looking for the right amount of fulfillment, that's right type of fulfillment with your career, when you get to that top of the mountain, there's still going to be emptiness 'cause that hunger's gonna be gone. So that thing that keeps you alive, that thing that, for those people that go and retire, they have no extra plans and they don't live that much longer because they don't have that like zest for life anymore, right? - Right out of gas. - They ran out of gas. So I think that it's important to notice, okay, that little thing, that spark that was keeping me going, it's kind of died out, noticing that and also noticing that it doesn't mean that climbing mountains is meaningless, just in the same way that eating a meal and then getting hungry isn't meaningless. It's just part of being alive, it's part of growing. So I think it is important to say, okay, that spark that was there early on is gone. It doesn't mean that that pursuit was wrong. It means that I need to start opening my eyes and getting inspired again. I need to look out there into the world and say, what's the next thing that's gonna get that thing moving? - It's an important distinction, I think. - I'm struggling with that so much and I've been struggling with that a long time because in order for me to get the work done, I have to isolate myself. I have to, I am the most productive in an isolated cave and I can get so much work done but there's no new inspiration really hitting me. I get inspired every now and then maybe work will come through and the direction is really interesting or something like that. I can use that as kind of a temporary spark, but it's really just like I need a whole new motor and I think that having relationships with other creatives is huge and that's what we've already talked about. Being at the conference, our friendship has been cool because it's sort of just come out of nowhere and we just happen to live in the same town and we happen to kind of be kicking butt in our respective careers. - And it's good 'cause we do very different things. - Yeah and we're not competitors at all. You've got the market on your cute beautiful-- - Nickelodeon and 21 pilots are very different. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they won't, I don't think they'll ever laugh. - They're not gonna overlap. - So maybe 21 pilots could have been on your gab-a-gab-a though. - We could do that. - Anyway. - I'll talk to 'em about it. So yeah, so I think that you gotta be honest about what actually inspires you and you gotta do it. So going back to creative works, check out creativeworks.co. Josh Horton is putting on an amazing thing. He'll have one next year. You're gonna go, you're gonna get inspired and in the meantime, check out circles conference. Check out what's the one-- - Icon is coming out 2016 in Austin. - Just give it a shot, if you work at an agency, they might help you pay for it. A lot of times that's the way it works. So I think now after doing creative works, if someone would ask me like a Q&A after a talk, how do you stay inspired? I would say, go to conferences. - Yes, absolutely. - And it would be a really simple answer. - Even just going outside of your comfort zone, like when you travel to a different city, all of a sudden that spark starts growing. You're like, oh, I have these new experiences. One last thing real quick, just I wanted to cap off that. We talked a lot about success, working hard, hunger, all of those things. One of the reasons why I find it important to make that distinction of someone who has accomplished some of the things they wanna do, looking back and saying, oh, something's missing now or whatever, the reason I wanna make that distinction is I think that we have a lot of media and a lot of stories out there. A lot of storytelling around this idea that success is meaningless. And for me, looking to young people, that can be such a terrible message to tell somebody, don't go try to accomplish anything because once you get there, it's meaningless anyway. - No, no, no, but I know that there are people that that's part of the thing that's keeping them unmotivated is like, I could go accomplish something, but if I do, will it even matter? Does that matter anyway? - Your definition of meaningless changes, my big picture is amazing. - It's different in seasons. - Yeah, my big picture, I am so, honestly, I am so proud of myself. I'm so proud of myself that I'm an artist for a living. I've always been an artist for a living. Before I was an artist for a living, I was playing in a band with my friends. I didn't make any money doing that. So the only thing I've ever made money in is my own art, the thing I've loved since I was three or four years old, you know what I mean? So, big picture, that's amazing. But I think that if we don't want a little bit more all the time, we're gonna stop, you know? And I could totally argue, let's not want more. I could argue that point, but for this career, you gotta want a little bit more all the time. So, if I tell you that I'm unhappy, there's a big curve on that. Like, I'm unhappy based on the fact that I'm married to a woman I adore. I have a career that I love. I have a home that I love. There's some really great things underneath that, quote, unhappy, you know? But I am always going to be pushing for more. I'm gonna be pushing for better. And if I'm not pushing for better, then I would have another career, you know what I mean? I would be working for the man or whatever I'm doing. - Well, even in, it's not meaningless. Even though, as you get a little more tired of some of the stuff you're doing or you've been going that path too long, it's not meaningless that A, that I've accomplished some things. B, that I get to take care of my kids. C, I get to pay taxes. You know, all of those things. You know what I mean? - Dude, I get to pay some taxes 'cause I can't wait. - I get, oh man. - It's so much fun. - January hits and I'm like, oh, that another year of that, I probably just made the levels go crazy by screaming into the mind. - Well, no, let's blame the IRS for that. - It's absolutely. - No, but I think that what I realize is that no, you've gotta be successful, you've gotta make money because your goal needs to be be an artist for a living. If you're putting ads in a trading post, just be an artist for a living. Get to use an ounce of your creativity on a daily basis as opposed to doing some crap job that doesn't require any of your talents. If you have the ability to do what you're best at, then you are part of this very small percentage of Americans. - And not to mention that, you know, if you look at studies, it's like the people that really hate what they're doing, their kids are statistically more likely to be bullies. So there's the way that you, so these things that, you know, I think it's important to not minimize the meaning that you find in these things because yeah, it diminishes the power of that. Just because you're gonna have to keep working and keep finding new ways of staying inspired and the old thing or the new thing's gonna get old one day, doesn't mean that you just stop. So yeah, let's talk about Meg Lewis real quick. - Okay, Meg Lewis, I, so I know her, she's part of ghostly ferns. - Yeah. You may have seen her on the internet with some very prominent circle black sunglasses, so she's got a very, she's, if you've seen her before, you'll know who we're talking about when you search Meg Lewis. So you can check out on Twitter, I think it's @darngood with foros. - Yeah. - R-N-G-O-O-O-D, that's Meg Lewis. You can check out darngoodspeltcorrectly.co. And she runs this, I guess you can call it an agency, but it's more like a co-working, I don't know what the correct-- - It's like a collective of freelancers. - Yeah, so there's a bunch of freelancers together. They called themselves ghostly ferns. - So we had Jen Masari on the podcast before, she's one of my friends, she's part of ghostly ferns and I knew her first, then we saw Meg-- - Kill it. - Kill it, I just wanna do the, is it Nostradamus who was the guy who first saw the future? - Sure. - Okay, I'm just gonna do this real quick. Mark this in your calendar, it's what's the date, October something, 8th, 2015. - Oh yeah. - In the next five years, Meg is going to own our industry. She's going to be absolutely massive, she's gonna be booked at every conference, headlining, killing it because she totally changed the atmosphere with her talk. - Yep, absolutely brilliant. - She is the new best speaker in the design community. - I think it's true. - And check it out, ladies and gentlemen, this was her first talk. - I know. - And she killed it. There was confetti involved, there was a lot of talk about space, Olive Garden. - Yep. - I even went up and sat on the stage with her to keep her company. - I remember that, yeah. - She wanted, she dared people to come up and talk and since I had been plugging everybody's computers, I'll go up there and keep Meg company and take care of her for her first talk but she didn't need my help. - No, she totally killed it. - I saw her backstage beforehand and I thought she was joking but she had a plastic bag and she was putting a bunch of food in it and she was like, "I need some snacks for my videos." She literally brought snacks up. - Yeah, she ate some Cheetos during a video. - Yes, yeah, no, I mean, she was so awesome. So all I wanted to say is congrats to Meg, she's an awesome person, loved her talk. - I'm so glad she exists, I mean, it was this moment, you know, the whole conference was great but it was the first time that like, I don't know, she just, everybody sat straight up and I mean, it was fun. - It was just a breath of fresh air. - Totally. - Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think in the world of creative art, it is such a hard thing to do and I do think it's really important work, really important work, but I think for so long the design world has become more and more stuffy, more cerebral, more intellectual, more, you know, taking ourselves extremely seriously, which if you know me, I take life very seriously. You know, I'm not one of these people that's very like, you know, laissez-faire when it comes to life, but I do think we need that perspective. - Yeah, I found for myself, I wanna make sure that people can see the passion and intensity and I think that's what we lack 'cause a lot of times we do tend to be introverts and we kind of speak in the same way. So for my talks, I've always made sure like, I'm gonna wake you up, I'm gonna show you that I'm intense 'cause the only way I'm surviving in this world is that I'm intense, and I'm trying every day. - And try to pass that on. - Yeah, so we talked about Meg and I don't know how much you're gonna say about it, but I wanna talk about you. I wanna talk about your talk. So Andy spoke at the conference and it was so cool because him and I have, we've got lunch a couple times. I ate a lot, he ate a little at these launches. - One day, if I didn't think it would risk killing my diet, I would just prove to you my power. - I believe you. - I've got serious eating power. - I believe you. So what was cool was like, we were texting back and forth and I was like, "Hey man, we'll get lunch next week," or something like that. So anyways, we both have had this same phase of just crazy locked up busyness that we can't do anything else. - Keeping our heads down. - Keeping our heads down, getting all this stuff done, big projects, so I texted him and said, "Well, looks like we didn't get to hang out. I'll have to see in Memphis." So Andy and I live about five minutes away. We had to drive all the way down to Memphis, or fly down to Memphis, Tennessee to hang out with each other. So I had known about Andy through the podcast. I got to hear his opinion on the podcast and of course we chatted and everything, but to see Andy speak, I'm speaking, I'm talking about him like I'm not looking right at him. - Looking into my soul. - But it was so much fun because he had this effortless comedy and it was just funny stuff. And the cadence of it was really good. He embraced his ADD. - Yes. - We were talking about illustration. We talked about a tower and then we were talking about a Mantis shrimp. - Mantis shrimp. - Mantis shrimp and it was a really favorite illustration of the whole thing. - I spent, that's the tangent illustration. I wanted to put an illustration, a slide in there that showed that I like to go off on irrelevant topics. - Right. - That was the Mantis shrimp where I just talked a little bit about that. And I literally spent more time on that slide than the whole presentation, which is the ultimate tangent. - You may have noticed this about me. I've noticed this about myself for the past like four or five years. I don't necessarily go on tangents. I go on really long preface. - I'm a good prefaceer as well. Yes. - So I've realized, you know, like you'll see on a movie when someone tells a story, they'll just start telling a story that seems to have nothing to do with anything. And then they bring it around to the topic of hand. Brandon's problem is that Homeboy goes on for about five minutes in a conversation on the preface. And then you forget what in the world anyone's talking about. - I think, I don't know what it was, but I feel like part of why I do that is because maybe like back in the day with my family, that the things that I'm interested in aren't things that maybe they're interested in. So I have to like give it a big pitch first. So like here, before you turn your ears off, let me explain to you why this is relevant. - Then I'm going to tell you the point, I don't know. There's something maybe there. - But the more like Quentin Tarantino movies or like Memento or whatever, stuff like that, you really are like lost or Seinfeld when all comes together, whatever, you just want to hit them. You want to get that moment of like, oh, it all makes sense. But what you forget is nobody has that attention span. So I might just get rid of my preface. Anyway, true to form, we just went on a tangent from talking about a tangent on Andy's talk. So what was great about Andy is that I, it was really cool to see some body be really honest about why they do what they do. So there's something, and I'm the same way, there's something else pushing Andy and I like, we have this opportunity to do this, we have the opportunity to inspire other people. You know, I want to inspire my wife, Andy wants to inspire his wife and his kids. There's this, you know, I've always wanted to have this thing of my kids look up to their dad who loves what he does for a living. So if that's your motivation, which Andy explained is his motivation and you got a little choked up when you explained it. - I did some real crying on stage. - You balled your eyes out and started hiccuping. - I'm comfortable with the few tears, that's fine. - He fell to his knees, it got weird, no. But no, he just, you just stopped talking for a minute. No one could see any tears stop. So, but what was cool is that it was, it brought it all home for me. This was kind of like my grand finale of speeches, the ones that really, really resonated with me. It was that it brought it all home that there's another reason that we do this. There's, we have the ability to do what we're best at for a living, and that really inspires people. So if we can inspire people, we create, you know, inspiration for the next generation. Maybe our kids, our grandchildren, our, you know, great grandchildren get to be artists and creators and creative and they think up their new ideas because of something that we did, because the amount that we're gonna push. So it's almost seems like the harder we push, the more we can inspire people. So we have this obligation to inspire other people. So that goes back to my point of when you put the gas, or the oxygen mask on yourself, you gotta put it on the next person. Because I've gone so long with it just on myself that I'm so unfulfilled. And I really wanna save somebody else. - If you're taking a nap and you've got the oxygen mask on, and you're not even aware that there are other people out there dying from lack of oxygen, you're like maybe bored and whatever, but when you open up and look around, you're like, wait, there's a ton of people that could use the things that I've learned. - They're dozing off, and if you could get that oxygen mask on all of a sudden, you're excited. You've got that adrenaline, you know? - We have the ability as creatives to bring people back to life and to remind them what they're excited about, remind them what it feels like to create something from scratch. And so for all the creatives out there, push harder, try harder. Know that somebody's watching you, and somebody needs to be inspired by you, and way to go on your career and everything. But at some point in time, you're gonna have to help everybody out. - Look back and help somebody out. And I think just, you know, when I did that talk, my original point was about the term commercial art and learning about having a vision for your career and all that is great, but I think after I had done it, I realized that the underlying thing was finding a motivation that is more pure than jealousy or competition or making great stuff. - Or likes? - Yeah, or likes on Instagram, you know, finding, tapping into how this career is hard, but there's also some really important reasons why you need to do this. And so for me, I realized, I'm reminded a lot of like Jim Carrey's dad. He tells this story along where Jim Carrey, his dad was hilarious. And even he ended up being, after Jim is famous, his dad ends up being friends with Rodney Dangerfield because Rodney thinks that he's the funniest guy ever. And so Jim said that his dad could have went into comedy, but he took the safe choice of being an accountant. And he failed at being an accountant and ended up having to be a janitor. And so Jim always said that, like I know Jim. - Jim, I wish I didn't know Jim, dang. - But Jim, Jim Carrey always says, you can fail at what you don't want. So you might as well take a chance on what you do want. And for me, my mom was a picture of someone who, I have a strong feeling that if she would have had the dedication and the business acumen to make a career in the arts, her life would have been really different. And so I think that's, for me, that's a big motivation of like, if you do have this artist inside of you, that this unlived life, that if you go do it, you're gonna be a successful human that's gonna inspire other people, contribute to society. All those things, not doing that, might not just mean that you're in some boring job. It might mean that whatever that passion was, dies, and when that dies, you're depressed. Or however else that might affect you. And so for me, it's a lot more important than just making pretty pictures. It's about doing what you're on this planet to do and how that affects everyone around you. - Yep, you got a whole team of people behind you that you're doing it for. - Yes, absolutely. - And if you're not feeling it that day, you can use them as motivation, be like, you know, maybe they're feeling it, maybe they need me today, and I'm gonna push harder for them. - And I think it goes back to the oxygen mask thing. You got a lot of people out there that are like, you know, doing these things, we're like, oh, it doesn't affect anybody else. Nobody else should really care whether I put my oxygen mask on. - Right. - But it's like, so, you know, people like my mom who had these struggles and made some decisions that really affected her life negatively, it'd be easy for her to say, I'm not hurting anybody. I'm only hurting myself. Why would you, how can you be upset? But actually her decisions go on to affect generations. Like her decisions affect my kids. - Yep. - And so, if you don't take this-- - You could have been inspiring people. - Yes. And so instead of, it's not just about you putting your oxygen mask on. - Yeah. - There's actually a bigger picture. So anyway, yeah, I think that that pretty much wraps up. - Yeah, that'll come after year five. And so then, just keep working hard and learning how you use a program. - Yeah, but then that's true. - And then after that, you're gonna have-- - You're gonna make cool stuff. - Yep. - And then you can start thinking about learning to make good stuff. - Finding new motors and new motivations to push you through all this stuff. - So we have, is there anything we forgot on the CreativeWorks recap? - I got it all, man. I mean, there was too much to talk about, but I think there's gonna be some blog posts and stuff. - Yeah, yeah. - If you go to creativeworks.co, or I think on Twitter, it's cworksco. - I could literally, sorry, I just cut you off right up. I could literally talk about each of these talks and these people that we met for 30 minutes each, that it was fantastic. So if I didn't, if we didn't call you out, maybe that doesn't mean anything to anybody. But if it does, just understand, we had so many awesome connections. We loved every moment of it. I'd love to go crazy on each one, but we just don't have time. - No, I think we hit it. I think that we got down to what the heart of it was. So go next year if you can, because you're a creative and you need to be around other creatives and get inspired. - You will be so surprised by the random things that end up inspiring you. - Yes. - But they're there. They're floating around in the ether. - I was just inspired by being in that, the arcade cafe, like just being in this old school cafe across from the Lorraine, is it? - Yeah, the Lorraine hotel. - Yeah, motel, yeah. - Yeah, so we're right in a really cool area of Memphis. Memphis has a lot of history. Memphis is just a great city. - And it smells like barbecue food all the time. - Everywhere, everywhere. - But we're right across from the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. - Right. - So that got really deep in cities. - That got really heavy. But you kind of start realizing how such of a rich history the city has, and bringing it back to Josh, like Josh has a heart to just kind of-- - For diversity? - For diversity, for inspiration, for bringing a city. There's some, Memphis has a ways to go in certain areas. And Josh is doing his best to speed that process up. And, you know, Josh isn't leaving. He's staying there. He's going to continue to inspire that city and do the best for that city. And not only is it creative works, I mean, he's rebranding all kinds of areas around Memphis, so-- - Yeah, we saw as logos all over town. - Yeah, just being right. - Exactly, his fingerprint is all over Memphis. And that alone is inspiring. Knowing that, you know, and at the end, I don't remember word for word, but Josh got choked up kind of saying, you know, wrapping up the whole festival, because basically he was like, I hope you go back Monday morning inspired. I hope you know that you're not alone. I hope, you know, and that's really what it boiled down to, is like, we're not alone in this. We all are rooting for each other. We're all trying to be as creative as we can be. Push as hard as we can be. To find success in what we're best at. But we're not alone in this. We're all solo or whatever. But there's somebody there to give you a big group hug. And for us, creative works, 2015 really filled that void. - Did the trick, got it? It's to do whatever you can to take all this energy and excitement and interest to go get in the real world. Go, you know, go transition from this all being this fake world online. Figure out how to be next to your heroes and connecting that way. So I think we're gonna sign out. - We're good, man. - We're good to go. - Yes, thank you, Brandon, for being on the podcast. - I loved it. - It's so fun. Yeah, I feel like this actually put a nice bow on the conference for me. So I can actually take some bite-size things away and kind of go utilize these things. So yeah, thank you. I wanna thank illustration age for being my sponsor, cheerleader, friends online. They're out there pushing the creative podcast. Thank you so much. I wanna thank the Patreon backers who help pay for my SoundCloud and my microphone and all of that good stuff and the time spent trying to make this thing awesome. Thank you, guys, everybody at CreativeWorks. Thank you, Josh Horton, for making that happen. - Thanks to the Mystery Radio Studio we're in right now. - Yeah, we're in a weird environment. It's definitely like freaking me out. - Yeah. - But yeah, thank you guys and until next time you can stay peped up. See you guys. (upbeat music) Hey, y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. And if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. (gentle music) I'm Whit Msildine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Follow This Is Actually Happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad-free by joining 1D+ in the Wondery app.