I would wring my dad up sometimes. And I would say, Dad, Dad. Right. So I'm going to do this talk, and they're going to fly me over to London because I was living in Prague in private. This time they're going to pay for the hotel, All this kind of thing on dso But rich, can you eat it? Hi, I'm Craig Burgess. I'm co owner on the creative director of Genius division. And based on bands like in the UK I I'm Richard Bed, founder and editor, BP. You know,

I wanted to touch upon, uh uh, this profile versus capital thing in terms of promotion that, um, commotion can fall into way where you get more work, which is capital andi promotion. It builds profile, which is how people perceive you in the industry. Um, on that, you kind of have to decide the the ideal point is the synergy between the intersection between the two that you build your profile and your reputation industry, and that sort of filters out in tow across the other other industries, whatever on and you make money on, I've never mastered that and on, and I would I would wring my dad up sometimes. And I would say,

Dad, Dad, Right. So I'm going to do this talk and they're going to fly me over to London because I was living in Prague in private. This time they're going to pay for the hotel. All this kind of thing on you say, But Rich, can you eat it? Andi? There there were a few different things where I would say that so Well, can you meet it and what he meant Waas that well done, you're you're building profile. But are you making money from it? Can you pay your rent from it? And so will no insight trying to try and find it a point when you can get where both in harmony, where you're making money on your doing this sort of profile building and you're enjoying it at the same time and you're surviving.

And I think that's kind of important question for people promoting. Trying to promote themselves is what is it that you're trying to do? Are you raising a profile in the industry, or are you making intending to try and make some money from it? And can you find that in between? It's harder for me to apply that to, say, students coming out of uni because mostly that's I understand that that they probably want to find jobs right, and particularly now it's more. It's tougher than ever, and I haven't really gone through that process because I went straight into self employment. Um, and the promotion is slightly different. I hate saying back then, but it is 2005. Andi.

Well, imagine now I can only sympathize and no actually understand. But imagine 15 years now if we were starting as a designer today, the market is is a completely different situation. I mean, there was a lot of designers 15 years ago, but now anybody can be a designer and anyone who can pretend to be a designer and anybody can get a job from it must be sort off now,

absolutely on, do you? There are so many different platforms that offer this what I call potential social capital. This isn't something that I made up myself. I pulled it from somewhere else. It's where the platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter promises you that in return for your time, we'll raise your profile that you will acquire more people, it's Ah zee. It's a promise that's rarely fulfilled. You see people with a lot of followers and you think Okay, if I put more time into this, then I will eventually have a lot more followers, and then you will be able to convert that into capital. You product eyes, you're following you sell them as I do.

I sell them scenes. Um, but it's a promise. And so few times is that promise delivered on, and you just need to work out. Where is the best place in which you can? You're no exploited. So the 365 days a type on instagram instagram you only have one outbound profile link. It's a closed system. So you're basically uploading content for them on the promise of maybe getting some kind of reach. And some will find you who's looking for design services. It's so hidden you don't know how to work the system out or you conduce. Give yourself amount of time and do it and see how well it goes and see if someone picks up on that, um, that it yet a nightmare that that that it's your promise so much now um that it's very disheartening to see a lot of people um, e mailing me.

Please, Please, can you promote my work and then looking at their work and no one ever telling them? Okay, this is this is some feedback on your work and it will please focus on developing your work instead of trying to get other people to promote it because it is current standard or thinking that you made struggle to get that reached that you're hoping

for and the finger work the feedback. But is the bit

that we massively on because it's it's the time on. The people have built profiles that may help you do that. There are also ducks on a pond, you know, they local calm and they're floating around. And you might think that they're making money from my perception of success with their feet of paddling so hard because Instagram is playing with the reach every day. Sometimes, you know, the post goes out to 1000 people. Sometimes he goes out to 13,000 people, they give a gift and then we take away again because I want you to sort of pay for promotion. So even people with profiles, and they seem like they're successful a profile or capital really richest jogging or feet kicking our feet under the water, hard, trying to sustain it in a system that is actually built for a larger corporations to push that their sponsorship of cost.

I think one of the the ultimate thing that we've got to come back to in terms of promoting yourself, no matter what method you go far. And there's lots of ways to promote yourself, which I think we should probably mention at some point. But I think it ultimately comes back to the work. Andi presenting You work in a way that studios under people who might end up hiring, you understand? So I always think there's something I always remember from my first boss at the place that I was working. The my my first boss was running the studio that design stuff to a price list. He's a really good designer and heats that the studio with another partner who believed in the model. And so I always really looked up to him and I still do, and he and he always said when he was interviewing designers because because obviously the rate of the work that they pull out. It wasn't for every kind of designer, so people moved on quite a lot. So they hide a lot of designers on one of the things that always struck me. And it's the thing that I've always looked for is he looks not for the amount of work. So he is not looking to see a lot of different work to see how good of a designer they are.

He's looking to see their commercial opinions. So how they can commercialize the design he wants to see if he only sees one project. It doesn't want to see just a logo. He wanted to see a logo and then how it was commercialized across a corporate identity and then how it might be applied to a website. Maybe a deeper understanding, not just a a kind of surface level understanding, not just design in the Logar, which is the core fun bit but actually design in the entire system and proven that you are commercial designer are not just somebody who just does the nice bits.

Yeah, that Jessica point my when what I would be looking for if I was and I have hired on occasion for freelance stuff is that it's the most important thing is this kind of central idea from which everything flows from it could be a proposition. It could be a brand statement. Andi, It's unique to that company captures the sentiment of the corporate culture, that vision for the future. On that you can see that reflected in every piece of communication. And that means, in the choice of words in the color palette, materiality in the way you move through their website. So when and what? That's what I want to see right is that sort of central premise and seen that deployed in many, many different ways rather than this sort of, ah, designer fun logo. Because that challenges it's contained. It's understandable on then create a color palette and then choose two typefaces and then choosing materials,

said the That's not to me. What corporate branding is. Corporate branding is is sort of distillation of of intention. I want to see that expressed in appropriate ways in the appropriate contexts, not his his A logo. This is why the local excited. This is the color palette. This is why I chose a logo. It should all come back to that central conceit. Andi. I see that you see that very rarely. Onda, of course, that also says that we have this central conceit on, and this will give them legs for 15 years and be able to use this to do art direction. They can use this central idea in moving image or two in advertising campaigns that you're not constraining them with.

You've done your ecology loaders and you set the brand guidelines, and then you've given it. It's like, What is the idea that you've given them to play with in the future toe hand, their advertising agency or other designers? It's not being dogmatic. It's It is like a liberation right that you given them something to get behind. But it's not prescribed it, saying this could be interpreted in a few different ways, and that's the beauty of the idea. But I don't really get that in in the portfolios in designers. And it's not the design craft and looking for right. It's like that thinking. Did you understand the brief? And did you create something from which everything can flourish?

Yeah, I think the design craft bit can be proven quite easily. You just need to see a couple of pieces of work. It's the understanding of, you know, the creative thinking on to an extent, the wit behind the the workers Well, that you need to fully understand, because hiring a a technically brilliant design doesn't necessarily mean that the work is gonna be good. It just might be technically brilliant.

That can also, um, elevated his uncle the right. If they're missing an element of design craft and they want to introduce it into the studio, I think that could work. But I'm not sure whether you can necessarily teach ideas. Um, you can teach design craft. I believe that I've taught myself some degree of design craft from nothing. I can look back at the work from 15 years ago and think you knew nothing about design principles and now you know a little bit. Um, whereas ideas, I think you you're either a sponge that just goes up looking for ideas, reading all sorts of things sociology, anthropology, history on just everything. You just hungry for everything or on then you condone draw from lots of different sources and construct ideas.

But without that sort of in part, and I never really read outside of design until maybe five years ago, where what I was looking for was something that was had a really strong central idea of what they wanted to read us to experience and understand. And it was beautifully constructed in that I just wanted to read every idea that was in the magazine, and I don't know whether you've read real review, but no, that had such a fundamental impact on the way I understood the world that I would get a bit of politics. I get a bit of anthropology, sociology, a bit of meta narrative, um, abstract thinking, and it just It was so beautifully presented that I was all in Andi. It just made me hungry for ideas outside of design. And and that was led into the architecture thing is that I could now have a conversation with an architect with the language that they knew Onda. And although I was just a layman,

that we that we were connecting in a way that perhaps they wouldn't be able to connect with another designer who hadn't perhaps read that so in terms of self promotion that would be read anything and everything, trying to find things to bring into, deduct, to design and, um, so that you can have. And if you're having a conversation with an accident, it doesn't have to be about architecture. It could be sociology or politics are the politics of space where they're they're like, This person is thinking of the bigger than structure

lots of lateral thinking that the I think that's the thing that says, Ah, good designer from an amazing designer, the name

of the capacity to make connections, right? Whether wasn't one before.

Yeah, on I think anything that you read outside of design ultimately just makes you a better design because because you've got all these are the cultural influences that you can apply to the work that you that you're doing the work, the connections might not be a media, and you might never actually make them, obviously. But you'll be consuming it, and you it will be making your work better. One of the things that I've always really admired I've always secretly wanted to be. And Adam, um so like an old school admin, because I just I love words. I love. Writing is one of the things that I've always enjoyed doing on. I've never done it very much. Public labor is something I've always been really passionate about. Al. Of Reading and I will write in and I've always looked toe all the big out men,

the old Adam and my Ogilvy and Jorge Luis at Judge Lois. Sorry on. I love the simplicity in their work and the genius behind it, and that just that I've applied a lot of that stuff in the kind of design things that I've done because even it is different industry. But there's a lot to cross over with it, and there's a lot of graphic people in that industry to. But the the art of copyrighting is something that could be brought over. And then all the things I read a lot about the stoicism and things like that, which has a lot of value in design to boat. For my first probably five years and design, I read nothing like that. I exclusively read everything about. Designer was obsessed with reading every design block, every magazine, every single thing I could get my hands on, following every design on Twitter on.

I think that's just as you as you kind of tests mature as well as you get a bit further into it. You you want to. It's like music, isn't it? When it when I was a teenager. I love rock music and never listen to anything else. And then as you get older, you test. Want to mature, and you start to look into other places for inspiration.

Yeah, that and there's always has Touchstones where if you're entering into an industry, you want to centralize yourself because you're essentially on the periphery, wanting to move towards the center in the center, being the institutional components of D. N A. D awards design studios with high profiles individuals that are actually same things, driving the industry forward. So that's the way it sort of perceived. The journey of ah, new designer is that sort of moved from the periphery to center and at the center you there are Ah, as I said, like touchdown. So for when I was growing up when I was entering design, there was the printed design week, computer arts, computer arts projects.

I really wanted to be in that Andi sort of helped me keep my eye on sort of moving in. But there's a point where it actually the journey is like, uh, like a loop or its pre prescribed right that they use the same kind of conversation. Or, like the top 10 logo ticks, articles where you've read it so many times that there is no more to learn about it right there, us in principles. And I had perhaps don't want to use this word but say, uh, truths in design, off principles, foundational principles that do continue to work. But once you've learned inmates, you actually it's kind of stopped growing in that move towards the center. So you start to look further a field and,

um, you realizes the Venn diagram where there is design. And then there are all of these things overlapping design. Um, and you see. And I think that's the beauty of the day is that the conversations about systems, design or design in politics on the design is this sort of fundamental or is the construct of what we're living in? And there's lots of different things that you can learn from, and sometimes you realize that actually, designers use disingenuously to exploit people. Sometimes it's empowering rallies, groups of people and symbols. Um uh, just keep recurring right where you get the extinction rebellion symbol. And for me, I'm so far away from logo designed that I'm more interested in corporate identity programs in publishing.

Whatever the Dennis something like that. And you reminded. Actually, a strong, distinctive, memorable logo rallies groups of people, and they can have a really positive impact on the light dinos going outside of flat today and seeing someone and made a home a poster. It's just to help the block, to remind them to wash their hands and to keep a distance. And they were using symbols that they pulled off, and they decided which symbol they might have gone to Google and said Washington's symbol, new chosen it and they made their own choice about it. The in effects it everybody. Andi think it's fascinating to sort of cross over into different areas, and, um,

and that will help me promotion. Right again, it goes back to you can have conversations that are a bit more diverse and richer and bring people into your view, and you're always open to new ideas, and you can employ that you work.

I think there's a couple of different levels to promotion, isn't the I think when you first become a designer, so maybe you're looking for your first job zero to I mean, it depends on how fast you work, and I'll quickly build a profile. But maybe 0 to 3 years, you should be networking with people. And I don't think you should ever stop networking with people. But your primary focus should be networking with people, getting to know people and definitely using Twitter. Twitter's great for that, getting to know people get to know the industry, getting to know of people's work, understanding the whole landscape, which we kind of disgust. And then, I think maybe a year,

three member year, 33 to 5, you can start to look it, building a profile on that. I think there's lots of different ways you can look to build a profile. There's putting your work out. There is the designer. There's promoting other people's works or building a BP and AAR type thing. And then there's kind of the other ways about making really good content. Are starting a blogger are being really good at Twitter all those kind of things. But I think I think it comes back to the thing we touched on last time as well about people when they first enter the industry. This is an exclusive to design any more people wanting to rush to be in a creative director, even though it's the first year you know, people one year in in the industry and their creative director, people wanting to rush to the end result rather than appreciating the slower process on the build up of skills and getting better. And I think people looking for ways toe create a B piano off, create a logo archive that's got 150,000 followers. Those things weren't made overnight. Those things took you a long time

and not on. And they don't generate income, right?

Yeah, but I think also, and we're gonna get to that in a minute. But one of the final point that I want to make on that is that you started BP, you know? Did you say 2011? So you started BP? No. In 2011. So it's it took you from 2011 to now to get it to where it is bought. There's all the experience you had previous to that before you even started BP. You know, that made that project into what it is today. So, really, that project is a culmination of all your experience in the entire industry, don't you?

What? BP? No, actually, never wasa culmination of previous experience, right? That I would have said when I began in 2011 that I was still the level of skills that I had was probably equal to, like someone studying university didn't still hadn't got it. If you go that the Maybe when I was 345 years into doing BP, No. Was it beginning to look like a accumulation of of I've just, um, keeping going. And but also, its BP knows a bit more complex in that I was I was living abroad on I didn't know many people. I was at home working from home a lot. I didn't have much else going on.

I did have a bit of client work that there was zero distractions. Um, I was living in a bit of a kind of fantasy world because it wasn't expensive to live in Prague. I was just doing enough work to survive that I wasn't getting any kind of cultural nourishment and and I was getting a bit down. The piano is a product of kind of ritualistic behavior habit, and also it was deeply tied to my sense of self esteem. I would write for four hours and I would publish it on then. I was really unhappy when people wouldn't read it. Then I would be sort of a late tree and so excited when a lot of people would share it on. This is where I'm talking about Twitter and these things shaping your behaviors that what I want to share with people here is that BP no was really just a very a product of a very difficult circumstance. Andi, It was addictive, Andi. It was not healthy on the only reason it got to where it waas was because I had very little else. I'm going on in my life on DNA now. I have so much more going on that I can't do it every day,

Andi and I'm happy for it on DSO. This is the learning and what I would like to share with them design is, is that try lots of different projects. Don't get stuck doing that. One thing hoping that it's going to bring in more money or that you're going to live on the profile, that it creates BP. No, never brought in enough money. The profile was nice because I could talk to design studios on designers that I respected. And yes, it did generate a bit more work enough to survive. But I would say that it was. I never believe in a mistake, but it's something that a line should have been drawn on. A new project should of being created. Don't get stuck and do one thing. You'll just become very good at that one thing.

So, do you think in terms of logo archive and BP, you know, it's have an advantage to Correa as a designer?

Yes, because I had no skills on by doing that over such a long period and doing again. And then again and again, it filled in the absence of education. It just took 15 years for me to get to a point that would have taken other people three years. I don't regret it. I live abroad and experienced something quite different there, and I grew up. Um, but I I'm I'm a kind of a reluctant developer that it takes a lot for me to get over something and move on to something new on. Doing this with you again is like, it's quite a big jump for me to put myself in front of people on the threshold between thinking about doing something and doing something is really thin, but it's super sticking. Um, once you push through it, it suddenly reveals the that everything else is a lot less difficult. But pushing through it is quite difficult,

right? Could you play yourself out there and new people are going to criticize you are you're always gonna open yourself up. I cant hit behind words with deep, you know, But I can't really hide here. Um and that's something the promotion is. The more you do it, the more you reveal of yourself. And the more comfortable you need to be with yourself on that just takes time, right?

Yeah. Put putting yourself out there. Is that the just the hardest thing for anybody to do in terms of I get that with clients. Aziz. Well, I suggest things to them. You know, you should do a podcaster. You should do YouTube videos are because Because I used to sit in that. Meet him with them on. I'm thinking of a particular client right now. You sit in a meeting with them and you ask them one thing and they go off on it on a ton. Gin for 10 minutes. That was amazing. And you know what they're thinking. Damn. I wish this would have been recorded,

but so you can see it. You can see that the the potential possibility of what they're saying, their knowledge and how it could apply to another place. But that you say it's them. And I are. No, I don't want to go on YouTube. I don't want to put it out there. I don't And and people are scared of that step This and I've been I've been there too. You've been there too. We spoke about before, and I think that's the thing that stops most designers from promoting themselves. They get to a level like I did that. I was talking about the beginning. You try a thing, it starts to get a little bit of traction. And then you pull yourself back because you don't want to reveal yourself to the public, and we

fails. There's also the problem of being shaped by the platform that YouTube has Andi for me, that it's really sad how it's reshaped graphic design into this entertainment thing. It shapes the content of what designers can talk about on graphic design will regularly just talk. Do a show on logo design because this is the most the thing, the content, it could be consumed the easiest, that it has the broadest appeal. And then it has to be. It has to be seen is fun on entertaining. And it's not a space that encourages conversation about strategy, and it doesn't think you encourage designers to say. Actually, we designed the logo, um, at the very last minute in five minutes, because we felt that the time um,

value was best served by spending time on a website. Designers at your own designer, you don't want to hear that strategy is in the central part because it seems so hard, whereas you want to go on YouTube and being entertained, and they also create ah cult of personality where to do well on YouTube As a graphic designer, you need to have a personality that, Ah, I don't know. It is fun, convivial on outgoing and to do well. So we're putting these on YouTube. I am just being myself. And this will get X number of use and comments, and people will either be interested or disinterested on. I just want to make sure that we stay true to who we are, rather than changing ourselves to suit the platform that we want more people to see this.

So we need to be funnier and more entertaining and talk about logo design. We're still actually being shaped by because we're having to talk about promotion money. The in order for us to, uh, gain some degree of sort of interest that we still need to fold into these kind of subheadings on that if we talked about If the just I call this out of anywhere transitional objects in terms of books on the designer books and that transition object comes from psychology, and you put that in a title, it's just not appealing, right? They'd say, What on earth does this mean? Does it? Does it matter to me? So I think for you and I were enjoying these conversations and we'll put them out. But I don't. I'm not going to become like I won't be measured by it in the way that BP no began to shape me on, sort of clicks on and shares. I'm glad I moved past that. And I just hope that people find this interesting on hope that I speak about it in a sensible, riel way that I connected them brother and being an entertainer or worrying about the reach and potential social capital.

Yeah, I think, to to give people hope on that because certain some it's really difficult not to get pulled into the likes and the shares in the retweets on the followers and things like that aunt. To some extent, people do get pulled into that, and if it's the first thing that they do in the going to get pulled into that, and I think your your stories in our upon that will help people. But I think one of the shining lights on this is to just say, even if your work doesn't get a bunch of views, it still has value because when you come to promote yourself to a client or they look at your website and they see that you're making videos about design and they might watch one or two of them. They are. This is interesting, and it might only be one client that ends up viewing it boat. That's all the promotion. You need it. It's proven that you are an expert in your field, that you understand intricately what you're talking about, and it gives you just that extra boost above the kind of where we're out. I think we've got to be careful when we're talking about promotion to not just talk about promoting ourselves to other designers, just for the stick of increase in our reach. In the design world,

well, the designers can be a catalyst. So we talk about reaches that you can use designers to catalyze your reach. So all of these big design studios I pentagram have they essentially used designers, is a base in order to catalyze reach, So the first people to respond to Pentagon's work will be designers on. Then the algorithms regards popular, and there starts serving out abroad. A group of people, that's where the clients are, is that brought a group of people, so I understand what you're saying. But in order to get that sort of reach going, it could be helpful to engage the designers because they're most involved in, uh, what the work is doing. And that's why self promotion on clients agenda is interwoven.

And I've heard that firsthand. Where I've heard in an approach to its like this is the spread that we will take a picture off. We will promote on Instagram and I even think about that. I have a brochure at the moment on. I know which pages I will photograph or we're going to share with the community and some of them. No, I I think that it's naive to think that individual self promotion is exclusive from claim briefs.

What? So one thing we didn't really touch on is the money thing? Yeah, So you've got a big following on instagram for local archive 150,000 or something on. Then what I perceived from the outside to be a big following for BP and now as well. And you've got quite a few followers on Twitter on various accounts, does it turn into actual money or What, was she kind of opinions on that?

No, it doesn't keep, you know, on the bigger it gets, the more expensive it costs to run. So the if you want your content to be served quickly, you need to see the end. That just means that thedc, um pewter serving the website eyes closer to the people that are asking to see the most like so Cdn is like, um, putting your website storing in New York, for instance, other Everyone in American access you your website quickly. That has a price. Your, um if you're having 200,000 visitors a month, you need the server to be able to serve that many people quickly.

That's expensive. So the more traffic you get, the more expensive it becomes. And so, at one point, I just had to put an advert a tiny little carbon ads in the corner because it was starting to cost me £150. Ah toe, actually sustain it. Um, and that's not with the four hours I was doing every day on the side. Yes, I would get work from it. People would say, I read your piece on BP. No, on.

I know it's not your work, but we like the way you're thinking about design, so I can't say I'm very bad it. So this is good promotional. Tip on. My girlfriend says I should do it all the time is when the claim work comes in Assam, where it came from, where they came from. I'm so rubbish it doing so you can quantify what's working and what's not working. Andi, when BP knows, taken a downtown and I'm not publishing, is Aziz often on the ad clicks Go down is. That's when Bina sounds costing me money to run. Andi. You start to do it because you looked at me instagram.

It's a completely different beast, the zero money from it. Unless you can start product izing your content logo. That's quite difficult. I could have been tote bags mugs, but it wouldn't have felt right because it's not my work. It's ah kind of organisational institutional approach where I'm just collating it in order for more people to see it and understand it, um, zines that only came about because I I needed to make money, but I wasn't prepared to do the posters and the logo books because they just felt like there was enough logo books in the world. Logan modernism had done a fantastic job in collecting. What do they have like 7000? What is it that I could do? The wood changed the relationship between the content and the reader and format. If you change the former and the regularity of the format, um,

and you put fewer logos and it goes from utility Teoh a materially, um, or what we say, like the material objects energizes with the craft of the content within. Right that you're saying, Here are 25 logo's. I've chosen them because I think they're beautiful examples of this theme on that I presented them in a way that honors that content. It took three years for me to get to a point where I felt I had something that moved a conversation forward or changed the way people related to those logos. To me, the logo book is a utility that you pull out when you need some inspiration. Logo archive in its ongoing Siri's, is about building a tool box of techniques in which designers can employ on by doing it every so often that they're having being This connection is being renewed rather than the one off object that was getting putting in put into the book. It's so the mean monetization He has always been a problem that I never wanted to exploit on would be, you know, the work of of the design studios. And I was happy to take client work off the back of understanding that I had about design,

that I never wanted to feel like I was cheating anybody in saying, This is why work And that's the problem with Instagram is you've got a lot of these insta blog's where they're saying resupply design services. But they're actually that platform is based on other people's work, and I think that's a real problem for me is that if you know if if you're going to publish of the people's work on, put your services ahead of their um credits, that is really exploitation, right? Um, and then with Instagram, it's It's just it's you've got to create products that doesn't know the way to really to to monetize Instagram.

What do you think you do now? If you were to start as a designer to promote yourself

if if I What if I if I didn't know all that I've known or if I had What a lie. If I if BP knows taken away from me and low Garko was taken away from me. But I still had this knowledge I would start. Or do you mean if I was literally just as strip any understanding? Start now?

Both. So you've got no beef. You know, you've got no logo archive, but you've got the knowledge that you've created from it. What would you do next? Right now understanding today's landscape?

Yeah, I'm not I'm not someone that just comes up with things e hurried up to say I'll tell you next next episode.

Well, that's that's good, because we can both ever think about it. I think my thing I regret not doing. And when I started my career, because I just think about it now. What about 15 years of posts is keeping a block? No, even just a commercial, not commercial thing. Not anything to do with it. I just really would love to have kept a public block from zero in my career to right now. Any each may be just post once a week or something, just just saying What's what's happening? What I've worked on all that kind of thing and I would have really loved to have looked back through that right now because I hade this exact thing. When I was, I did a hitch.

Andy and Interactive Media, which was a little bit graphic design, a little bit Web kind of a mix of all sorts, and the electorate fosters to keep a weekly block. So I have that bit of my learning as a designer kind of crystallized, and it's still online now, and I can still see it, and I could see what I was thinking about what I was working on. I kind of really regret that I haven't done that. Now. I try but have still not great.

I think that's really, really good advice. Catalog your interests. What I do is even if I have a disparate thought or idea, I write it down in pages. Um, if I haven't image, I'll pin it to a board. What I really would like is a single place on Blawg is probably the great way to do that. I don't have the energy to start the blawg, as in just simply doing that. A stream of thoughts and ideas. Everything is valuable. You may go back to it at some point. Just lock it down. If you want a journal everyday journal every day, just make sure that you're making notes of any small ideas that you have.

Um, because you might be able to mix that with some later thinking on a new idea. Come from that, Um I think this instant blogging thing is a good idea. I would say Don't do what everybody else is doing and start collecting other people's work. Um, if you're interested in this is this is the beautiful thing about Instagram of the someone that is posting fruits sticker labels on. Did you just reveal the beauty in something that you've never seen before? Pentagram did manhole covers. If there's a if there's something you're interested in, document it, share it and keep doing it on. And if you have another idea to keep doing that and, um, just keep trying new things because it's all sort of followed into, I never really think of BP no,

and Low Gar covers disparate products I just see them as part of, ah, personal journey of learning like that. I never think that logo archive is the the, uh, the end. It's a stepping some, right? It's not something that I'm gonna lean into and do 2030 issues off. It's gonna end the things that I've learned from it and the things I've learned from BP no may fold into the third project. I don't know what that third project it. And you basically asked me. That's a very questioning only that I know that doing is far better than just say you're going to do or just thinking you're going to do it. You have to do it and then move on to the next thing. Never thing that you're going to create some amazing blogged. I'm gonna make loads of money from it,

and you're gonna get all the kinds from it. It's that is one step in a long line steps of a long career. In the long period of individual growth on, Do you mean change your interest in you may change your politics that, um, never see it like, um, each project is this is a desperate thing. It's all part, the continual journey.

Yeah, And then I think collecting on a website is really valuable to the one of my favorite blog's that's been around for so long is Ben Terris Block. Noisy, decent graphics. He's done it forever throughout his entire career, and it's one of the first blog's. I followed when I first became a designer, and he's still doing it now, and I still follow it. And then another blogger that I still read is Seth Godin's Blawg. It's only only a sharp block every single day, but he has done it every single day for a Sfar back as I can see, I don't know how long has been doing it, but it's a very, very long time, and I think there's this value in doing like you said, just doing something and no worrying about the results.

So much not worrying about it getting popular, just doing it because it gets you outside of the head space of thinking, Ah, what people are gonna think of me because you need to get over that as quickly as possible. I think the biggest thing that's changed for in the industry in the 15 years that we've been in it is the promotion promotion when we first started wasn't as necessity. I think you could. You could still get away with it. But now, because everybody promotes themselves, I don't think you've got a choice with promoting yourself. You have to do something in some fashion. You have to be cataloguing your work online or have an INSTAGRAM profile or have a Twitter or have something two point people toe point potential employees to potential work, potentially

the cross referencing thing. Right? So people find you on instagram and, uh, they don't they don't really know anything about me. And then then they're like, Oh, you also run BP? No. You also write about Griffey design, and they're just really surprised that you've done one thing. And then it's another thing, and that's the thing with promotion is that they might access you from one point, and it might just be a pin just profile. But then they jump off to a website or another thing, and they're like, Wow,

this person has lots of different interests and and they've stuck it it and it's nicely done. That's where you sort of build up not like a profile in the sense of visibility. But a profile a character profile is this person has a lot of interests and, uh, they have obviously experienced a few things are tried a few things. That's the kind of person people want to get involved in on and going back to promotion. And the I can't remember who it said. Who is this? Who said it to me. But it was basically that we're now the generation that are now looking to hire designers. Grew up with Pinterest and Instagram on When their bosses are saying we need to hire a designer, they will go on to Pinterest. They will go on to Instagram. They won't necessarily go through the previous generation approach, which might be headhunters or linked in. You have to think about how people are hiring and what generation there from because I love them are picking me up from Pinterest off the back of other pins and reading about what I'm doing and seeing low block of whatever in taking.

Yeah, that's cool. I'm gonna hand over my corporate project to this guy goes. I just really like what they're doing on so that I think just thinking about how businesses are looking for you or discovering me. Design it. It is good. And

now we're in 45.

I think I want

I want I want to leave it on one plane. It's something that's always struck me. Do you know Gary Vaynerchuk is so hold on my cot smelling school in So So Gary Vaynerchuk is probably the best way to describe him. Is on online celebrity an Internet famous celebrity on When I say that, I mean that he went from having a following online, and he turned it into being one of the good judges on the Apple version of Shark Tank. So Apple, you know, an apple launched Apple TV? The state,

the elevator pitch something.

Yeah, I can't remember.

It's like a non elevated escalated.

They go to go down Planet of the Apse. I think that's what it's called Plant

if there's been a terrible name,

so he so he waas and and he does a video about this as well. There was, I think it might have been. Well, I am somebody really famous again. An actress, I think, and Jessica Alba on maybe something and then Gary Vaynerchuk. So there was three worldwide celebrity non. You know, everybody knows them. You say their name and everybody knows them. And then Gary Vaynerchuk and I've just said his name to you and you don't know he is. And online. He has got millions of followers across everything and in business is pretty well known because what what he's always done for the past 10 years is used used the Internet to promote himself. So he runs us a social media agency, basically,

and to prove his worth to prove that he knows our social media works. He turned himself into an online celebrity by creating content on one of the things that's always struck me with him. And he's got a very strong personality, and some people don't don't like him, but I think that works to his advantage. He was the person who came up with a whole hustle culture and working harder and hustle, hustle, hustle, and you've got to be working all the time and it kind of grits with some people. But one thing you always said in one of his videos that struck me it was about creating your own TV channel So now he realized there's a video of Menlo Online somewhere where he holds up his phone like this. And he says, This is the TV now, and I realize this before everybody else that this is the TV on. He talks about how to promote yourself and the thing about creating your own TV channel on basically making your own portion of the Internet that people come toe to see you in whatever medium that might be. That might be blogged. That might be videos or whatever,

but it's always struck me. That little piece of advice about creating your own TV channel doesn't have to be hugely popular, but you can carve out a little bit of the Web that is Jahr's, which you've done with BP. No on logo archive that you can set your own terms and promote yourself on your own angle. And I think that's really valuable way of promoting yourself, and it gives you that safe space as well to be who you are in your own space and attract people in from the

absolutely That's a fantastic wait ended.

Yeah,