designers on a journey like a personal journey, 1000 in life and in work and that were never always going to get it right. And if we start packaging this up and framing things is that we know everything or being dogmatic, I just think you lose people.

That's that's That's the exact dichotomy with promoting yourself. A za designer, Theo. Exact thing. The kind of thing I wanted to get to later on. But that's exactly it. It's you. You get to the point where you get too good at promoting yourself, Andi. Then you look too polished and you look too good. And then you turn some people off. You also turn. Turn some people on, which I guess is not a bad thing. But you know what I mean. Ah,

hi. I'm Craig Burgess. I'm co owner on the creative director of Genius division and based in Barnsley in the UK Hi, I'm Richard Bed, founder and editor, BP,

you know, but yeah, that's that's the thing I actually found last year. So I definitely want you to talk about what you're doing, because you in terms of promotion, you're somewhere like right appear, and I'm somewhere right down here. So what? You're doing? You on the outside anyway? You you figured all the promotions to foul.

Where is we're gonna have a real conversation

about that. Where is Millie? I have, um, and I I actually started to mess with stuff last year. Was it last year? Now know it was about a year and 1/2 ago. I started messing with with stuff. So I started doing Twitter and I started and doing a website. And I also wrote a book on

Oh, what's the book called?

It's called Extreme Production. So it's basically how I do lots of stuff.

Is that, um, self published or do you have a publisher? Is it book form? Is it?

No, it's a It's an e book. Eso is So it's an e book And I went down all this rue of promoting the extreme production stuff and promote. In kind of, aside from being a designer, I'm really interested in self improvement and, you know, just getting veterans to fly a lot. Andi, I went down this route of talking so much about this stuff that I wasn't really talking about design ever at all. Unless that is kind of seeing seen it resonate with some people. And I didn't like it because it wasn't what I waas Andi

at that point, particular groups of people that they you didn't necessarily feel like you had a ah connection with. But we responded to what you were doing in that it would set you down a particular path that you yourself were really interested.

I was interested in it, and I still arm, so I'm still interested in self improvement and stuff like that. But I didn't want to become like a a self improvement guru type thing because I'm still into design on I got stuck into this. This is where I first started messing with promotion. I started promoting myself is kind of this self improvement guy, and suddenly is that working to a point, and I just backed off from it straight away. So I think that's

what we shall channels for delivering your experience. Was it It was the evil Well, what else do

you do? So I was, um, blogging on a website. I had an email newsletter that I wrote every day I add a podcast which I still got on and I add And Twitter, I was just using Twitter as well. On the things I'm mostly talked about was self improvement and all that kind of thing and never spoke about design or marketing. That was kind of the reason I didn't ever speak about that stuff is because uneven from the very beginning, I said this was kind of a test a market in test to actually try all these techniques that I've seen. Andi When they started working, I didn't like it and I just backed off and stop doing it.

I don't I don't think that that thes there no exclusive, right that, um, the problem is that when when you package things up that you need a clear demographic to speak to, you, being need to be able to say in in a single line what it is that you are What What is the proper decision on that? The sort of a market economy says, Well, you need to packages up product ties. It know which group of people that if you say well, I'm really interested in this, a self improvement aspect, really interested in the design industry that assumes you put them together you have untested mix of of of what you like, a proposition of designed to self improvement or whatever like that it becomes like a higher risk thing because there aren't the channels for that particular niche on DSO you get. You either end up with a design Policastro self improvement called Cast. But I think these things air deeply into related the, um,

I think it might be Karl Marx. I every so many different things. So I get confused about where these originally come from, which is terrible, that a person finds himself in production so they would obviously was talking about a manual labor. Ah, but if you sort of extrapolated today, it might they ah, and the production of material, a product or a digital product, Full collaborative endeavor services, all these kind of things that I think if you move through different areas of design practice, you challenge yourself in new ways and you will find yourself. But if you only ever do one sort of set of things that, um, if you never feel a pain,

a difficulty if you never feel affronted or offended, ah, challenge by ideas or principles or practices are production, Difficulty said. You will never be reshaped by them and grow right, so I think that they're intrinsically linked. It's just that when it comes to creating a product ized version, So what you were doing was personal development products that it just it's easier to choose one instead of bringing them together. But I think that that conversation about designers having a very opportune oh, that there's did in design practice we have a unique opportunity to learn from lots of different people clients, for example, across lots of different industries. That's quite rare on I think in In a in A in a job in an industry toe have that kind of interaction in so many different groups of people,

and it's amazing as well. That is one of the best bits of the job, you know, working with someone in an industry you've never worked with, just meeting them for the first time since. So how do you how do you actually make this thing? And then they just give you this amazing answer. That's that's one of the things because the thing that they often say about promoting yourself as a designer is about nation down into a specific industry, isn't it? So you become known to be a designer. I mean, the hot one right now is becoming a designer and cannabis industry because it's booming. So people say you shouldn't each down into cannabis industry. You shouldn't each down into only making designed for sparks, teams or whatever. But I often find that when you do that, you lose a lot of the bit that I love about design, which is working with the laws of different industries.

Absolutely. And the cannabis industry is a good a good space because the visual language has bean. So it's subcultural right that it's very specific and small, and now it's exploded. And what you people are doing is they're trying to find ways of communicating on the benefits of something that was, um, illegal. Andi doesn't necessarily have ah related visual language that is mainstream, right? So you know, when you go into these shops and you see the park packaging for for um ah, that the associated paraphernalia? It it it would draw on, say, subcultures. But now it's kind of folded into like a different group of people, and their expectations are quite different.

And so I think designers are drawn to because there's a lot of freedom with that. Whereas, for instance, are you working architecture? Er ah, lot as I do is there is a lot of established visual language there that you need to draw on and you drop in you 10%. That's different and hope that it drives their business slightly further forward in terms of communication. Whatever, um, which I I really like, I just doing that 10% different in 90% is within the visual language of what's already established. And I want that

I want really working in an industry that people thinks boring as well. There's nothing better for me finding something interesting about something boring because there's always interesting stuff in everything. But I think they're the most challenging jobs when you're tryingto visualize something that people say is barring in court marks it working for I can't think of an example, but you know what I mean. Something in manufacturing are things like that. That's traditionally it's visual language is very dull. But working in that space and trying to make it interesting is a really cool challenge. I think

think would to bring it back to promotion. And you talked about You can get known for being a specialist in a particular industry. So if you're working and I just keep on going back to architecture because that's what I'm most familiar with and you're putting out bits and pieces of work for architects and then another architect is looking for on identity, they're gonna use the ah, they're going to use Google and they're going to use interest. These are governed by algorithms and that.

So you again say words again, arguing governments

algorithmic governance, which is shaped by the the the trading of information between different different companies know individuals. So they made money off off trading on your information that, uh, they're not really they want to give people exactly what they want and not challenge them. So I my work tagged up with architecture will be served to architects looking for branding that the chances of me being discovered outside of that without the work associated with other industries becomes nominal. Um, it's more like a It's like evolution where there is a mistake where we talked about the Dubai Klein I had accidentally finding a pin I posted that wasn't my work. Wasn't in my field of expertise that then getting employed in, ah, law, working in the field of corporate law. That's Ah, one of those sort of environmental mistakes where the algorithm shouldn't necessarily have served me up to this client. Um, it was an accident. And now I have a lawful where is really I should just be getting architecture clients,

which I continue to do on the self promotion thing is where you you construct a net a very, very big net with a very, very fine mesh. Andi, this is what I do across social media across multiple projects, where your aim is just to try and catch lots of different fish from which you can choose what you want to do. It's across a multitude of industries. Um, and then and then you sort of accumulate different experiences and cross pollinators between industries or whatever.

So do you You mention architecture? Do you actively look for more architecture clients than would you say that you specialize in that?

No. My approach to promotion has never bean around me. I've never promoted myself. I've never had a marketing program of never really put much time into my own website. Um, I've never had a portfolio. Um, I've never done marketing out peach, so it's quite different from I had in the past, you know? How do you get more clients in denial about when? When I was reading through it, it just felt so dull to me. Um, one interesting formulaic, um, on.

And the thing is that it just gets re populated across multiple blog's. So you get the top 10 ways of, um, finding new clients and this kind of thing, and then they all say the same thing. And it's always framed within the within the agenda of getting more clicks. Right? So miss tickles catchy headlines and titles. And I don't know why I've accumulated a bit of a sensitivity to this kind of click bait E top 10 thing

because you're a designer. Yeah,

because I don't doesn't like to be engineered or taken advantage off. I just want the design precedent to tell me something new that comes from their experience. Instead of taking what they've read elsewhere and reformatting it to suit their blood because there's such a fast content culture, where in order to survive as a bloc with ad revenue that you just need to keep on pumping things out. And they do, of course, right pieces that come from their own, uh, experience. But that's in between Doing the things that they know are going to drive is like the top 10 logo tips article, right? You just have to keep going there to keep driving traffic because Google basically assigns time value to your content. So what they call light this is it evergreen content or is a tie to a particular time and you get Barrett buried. So you update that article over and over again, or you take that content and you re publish it new pictures and whatever. So going back to a marketing thing, you just never felt like I was getting anything substantial and that I would need to find my own way through it.

Andi on beep. You know, he's a good example that I'd seen other blocks, and what they were doing was just reconfiguring press releases of design studios. So I would go toe one website and I would see a piece of work. I say Collins or pentagram. Andi I would read and I was because I would I'm myself would get a press release right and I would read through the Pentagon and I would know what Pentagram had written and then I could see it on the website and I could see how it was restricted on ah website warned website to website three. And they would essentially just reconfigure it in their own weight. Um and I just I could see the way that the world would saturate itself so quickly and this notion of credibility just went out the window. There was no one saying I believe in this work and this is why I believe in this work and why believes that I want to spend an hour or so writing about it and sharing it people. It was like it's pentagram. People like Pentagram or even people just generally disliked pentagram. For whatever reason, it's kind of a hot topic on Desai. Check out the new pension, but I never understood why they chose to publish Pentagram.

Aside from being part of that ah transaction of I'm promoting pentagram because I will get had revenue and clicks on Pentagram benefits because it races continues to sustain or their profile is already huge, right? So there's that kind of quid pro quo. Whether is no demand in which to spend any more than an hour reconfiguring a press release now when I started, BP knows they not prepared. Teoh do what everybody else is doing and this is my own person. Struggle it and we can go and talk on it more about it, where I'm just not made enough money doing these things. But it was because inside I said to myself, I just simply can't do that. It doesn't seem like I'm driving the conversation forward. Even if people disagree with me, you just need to add that, um, an opinion element. All the design becomes that or a Boris where is not being fed.

It's just consuming itself again and again. So I would end up spending four hours trying to understand the project, researching a project, um, building upon opinion, and sometimes I would I would really like and work to begin with on I read about a bit further than I would see that to me, this doesn't have as much death as I would have hopeful, because it was beautifully crafted, and I would actually write myself into a hole where I couldn't publish it because I didn't believe in anymore. Or I would take a leap of faith where I would start writing about something that perhaps it wasn't has crafted in a way I would be particularly interested in or, yes, that it wasn't, uh, didn't speak to me, but may have spelt spoke to a under the group, and I was prepared to just dive in for a narrow to start researching.

Start writing by the end of it, after four hours, and this is between 6 30 in the morning till I would publisher 11 15 I would be completely in love with the project on I would I would be so excited to hit the publish button because I'd spent the time to try and understand it on that's essential to what BP Nawas. And you know, the worst thing would be is when you hit the publish button and, like 100 people read it in the day. Anything on No one shares it, and you just spent four hours trying to sort of explore it and say, Can you see how amazing, beautiful. This is. It's just because when people go through the article and they look over the images that the images just don't jump out because it is not like, seductive or it's not shot in a way that is pin pin Ebola instagram mobile that it requires that kind of investment in time. And I think that nowadays it's also worth bearing in mind that when you're promoting yourself when you using instagram and Pinterest on, if you decide to do blogging is that you're not competing with other design site were basically competing with every content provider for a finite amount of time in the day. Is your proposition strong enough to sit against the Guardian?

Um, is someone going to go and look at your website because they know you publish it 11 15 every day and they just have to see what you've got to say about something? Um, are you kind of changing? Is your publishing Um and that's another thing we could talk about,

I think promoting yourself. I think you touched something a little bit as well in this one reason why I like BP and AAR over a lot of the over design size is that you can tell that you've taken time to actually understand the work on There's this thing, often in design, that particular on design magazine type websites they think are well, designers don't read and they don't appreciate it. So the words of the afterthought on the images of the far thought where I think there's an element with some of the stuff where you can tell that the words have Bean thought about sometimes more than the images which I think sets it apart, and I think that links quite strongly to promotion stuff, whereas we kind of we think we want to promote our work and we've gotta promote it in the same way as everybody else has done. We've got to make the same instagram post. We've got to make the same tweets. We've got to make the same Beyonce profiles, but the truth is that if you want to stand out, you can't repeat the same ship that everybody else is doing. You've got to figure out a way toe cut through the noise on. When you first start doing something, nobody might be reacting to it, but if you're loving it and you enjoy doing it eventually. If you keep doing it with consistency people, you will start to find an audience for it, and people will start to become known for what you're doing.

My, my understanding of it Is that the problem with what you're describing the B hands, things and that is that you're always showing results. Andi. Yes, indeed. People, some people will buy services looking at the results that I've found that in terms of growing, um, playing so getting bigger kinds is that they're not necessarily wanting to buy into what you've done that who you are. So who is this person? What do they stand for? How deeply do they understand that their practice, How willing are they to go a bit further to understand my business? Do do they speak the same language or a My is a kind going to learn something from this process? Can I trust this person on how passionate is this person? How far are they willing to go that can never really be communicated in a B hands profile?

And that that is actually the hardest thing to do because designers from my experience don't know how to write about themselves. Andre will hide behind well polished images. This is out of the market of mock ups that this faux realism of I did this pretend project. Andi. Now I've used a mock up so that it gives it credibility. Um uh, that the case studies are basically a cup of a couple of lines of industry X. They needed a new logo, that kind of thing. Andi, also with case studies on that when I sometimes every in case to these four design studios, which gives you a bit of insight into their thinking. And there's a design studio and their work is incredibly beautifully crafted. It does exceptionally well on blog's. I know when I published work that it gets a lot of traffic, a lot of clicks.

Um, Andi, whenever I've taken the time to write about it and research it, I thought, Yep, this is This is really thoughtful stuff, and it's a synergy of design, craft design, thinking or strategy. However, I went in to meet them to talk about doing I think it was a strategy document they needed to help reword it for a client before they presented it on you would not believe the death of thought that went into this strategy document on it, really? The end result. The way they photograph it, the way that they sort of drip it into the stream of Instagram. The work in progress shots actually really belie the depths of thought that had gone into the work on bond. That's the sort of tension right is that Instagram and Pinterest necessitate on put forward design craft over strategic thinking, and that folds into promotional

and created and creative thinking to where, when I mean creative thinking, I don't mean visuals, Amine and the actual idea behind work. The visual element off the work is the most important thing ever. 100%. But the thoughts behind the work is the thing that never really gets communicated.

Well, there is this argument that you shouldn't have to read about it, that the idea should be simple. It's like the book smiling. The mind really promotes this visual humor wit. That three idea should just immediately be communicated, but I would argue that indeed that it that is, um, one element. Ah, however, work with a sleight of hand or a nuance or in market idiosyncrasy. So in architecture, there are things that we could talk about, like 10 port temporal ity or volumes and voids. Things that are very specific to that group of people will be lost when you send it out into Instagram is that he might look visually nice, are very reductive.

But actually, if you put in front, architect, uh, there is a meaning there that the general populace wouldn't get. And that's where instagram and algorithmic governance actually fails. Graphic design is because the algorithms do not accommodate for that nuance. Um, what it does, is it It responds to, uh, the immediacy of the work. Oh, or how people immediately respond to it. And if only 20 people click like it will not send it out to many people. If ah,

100 or 1000 people click in the 1st 5 minutes, it's like, Okay, I'm good. We're going to make some money from this weekend s adverts or whatever. So things that that a delicate their specific Teoh to a market were no, necessarily SIA's much regional will not help shape, um that the industry in any way they will give designers more tools to work with, Um, yeah,

something something I've found is not necessarily a shot cut to better promotion. But certainly when I look at what everybody's producing, not just in the design industry, but marked in wider, you know, any kind of industry, the shot cut to get in your work, understood on a deeper level. Because, Aziz, we've just mentioned the difficulty with the designer is that the majority of our stuff is visual. So the temptation to promote ourselves is to just talk about the visuals, are not even talk about the visuals, just promote the visual. But the way to get people to understand, um, get better clients on and to get people to get you on a deeper level is through the words.

But a lot of a lot of designers don't like writing. Oh, they don't value the words on the all the designers that I follow that can think off. I follow them on Twitter. Primarily. I understand them deeper on Twitter from their words, not from the visuals.

Well, that's a character that is intrinsic to Twitter. There are people designers on Twitter that, um, I like the work, but I just find them really compelling individuals. Another people where I think that perhaps, uh, there isn't as much complexity. Um oh, actually wants quite nicely. Sometimes you just find that people want to have a chat about anything there, that it's a very honest um

the interaction side is the bit that a lot of people forget. I think Aziz designers, when we promote in ourselves, the interaction side is more important specifically as a young designer. So I when I was teaching design, I got a lot of people asking, May I used to tell them all the time going. Twitter set up a Twitter account. Start following designers start following big designers. Start following local designers. Start talking to your local design studios to find jobs and things like that. Get an understanding of the industry on one of the first things I did when the reason I always say is because one of the first things I did when I was looking for a job, remember, delicious, delicious the yeah, I I used to use delicious. They called it social bookmarks.

They still exist, but nobody uses it now. Since Yahoo bought it, I I use delicious to find all of my local design agencies and there was about 70 or 100 or something, and I put them all in a big bookmarks list and they used to go on their website every couple of days and just look at what they were doing. Find the block posts on Twitter or whatever there was doing at the time. Did Twitter exists? Then? I think it did, but we weren't really using it. I just used to keep up with locally what people were doing and try to keep in touch with them and try to just interact with these agencies on a human level, not promote in not sending them CVS and things

like that. Well, yeah, this is I think this is so important what you're just saying there is when when you run like a instagram account and it's 150,000 is that the people that are I describe. It is like a difference between visibility and invisibility that if you don't have much reach on, you assumed that the people that you want to get the attention of people with with reach your visibility that they forget that that person with reach and a lot of followers is getting a lot of people tagging them in stuff. Andi, it's it's very mechanical, cause all they're doing is dropping in and act on their not having a conversation with me. They're just saying they're kind of waving that hand desperately is. I look at my work and actually ask someone the other day and I see that you've tagged Logue our kite on you looking for white. Why did you take me? You looking for some feedback? And all I got is I don't know. I just did. You know, the shrugging shoulders emoji.

And you think I bet that what's really going on there is that's what people think they need to do to get anywhere because the platform really is against. There's so many people pushing out content other than mechanically timing people rather than really getting involved with anything. And the other thing is, with BP, you know the same thing. You get a lot of emails. I don't have a submit button purposely because I need some kind of filled filter to stop people just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks and sometimes I'll have oh, sometimes I get grumpy right on. They'll say, Please look at my work. I think he'll be a good fit. And you say, Well, have you taken time to have a read through what it is I tend to publish or how I talk about things? And do you think this is, Ah,

the right kind of fit in that? Okay, I see that this isn't the cry, the right kind of work. It's It's not even in the right category might be advertising and new corporate identity work. That there is this desire to just blitz everybody in everything rather than doing what you said is making those riel connections where when you get in touch with someone, it's without an agenda. So even if you want to fake it, please, by all means. Just email me and say, I like what you're doing and no, perhaps ask a question or a provocation, whatever.

I'm learn your name.

And then in the second email, perhaps you say, Maybe, can you have a look at your work? Have a look at my work and I'll probably respect how right you know that they did that. That is where you get this constant barrage of people just asking for things for themselves. Um, not thinking about the, um, I have to remind myself that each person is an individual and that just because I've had 10 emails asking things from me that that doesn't mean each one of those people is, um they are our collective with an intention of sucking my time. Which one really might want to be seeing a bit more on DSO Just doing what you said is just tempering your behavior bit to think about um, like a real connection is you said that you genuinely find the work interesting. And of course, I have to outreach to design studios. If I want some more information and it's taken, have been doing it for years and now have this relationship with lots of different studios where I can that they don't.

It's not too much trouble for them to give me a bit more information. But of course they didn't know me in beginning, and I had to think about how is going to approach them and ask them, and sometimes it it might take them an hour or two or even, uh, there will put a junior designer on it to produce, um, more images for a case study, and that was so generous off them to do that right that I I was just starting out. I had no beeping. There was nothing they would take the time to do that. And they were done so questions because nobody was asking those questions. They were just taking the press releases. So I think that's a good tip on self promotion. Is building relationships with people that may promote your block? Are your work or help you promote your work?

Or I offer you some kind of advice instead of just expecting, uh, people to give you answers to your question, there's or give you space on their INSTAGRAM account calls. An instagram, of course, has made it worse. Because the content is so fast that does its net benefit. It's better to quickly tag 50 people 50 insta blocks. Then it is to sit down and type an email toe one offline blood. It's it's very hard because it's time consuming green.

Yeah, I I think I think you touched on something there that's important when you're trying to promote yourself is to trying when you promote yourself not to make about you and make it about all the people first. So if you're looking at maybe to create inside projects and I always recommend sigh projects, especially to people just getting into the industry. But I think we should be doing them all all throughout our career, to be honest, to continue growing. As you said at the beginning, we we always need to keep growing and getting better or trying new things and exploring. I think that's why when you're looking at doing side projects, it should be something that benefits. Others are that you can Paul or the people in tow kind of build those connections. So as a young designer doing something like BP, you know, for example, where you collecting other people's work of of designers that you admire or whatever actually trying to get in touch with them said, I'd love to know a little bit more about this project because I publish on my website.

You know, my thoughts on this work and things like that. Trying to find a kind of a selfish way, not selfish or selfless way of promoting other people is always a good way to kind of promote yourself. I think

the writing aspect is really important to me that I would never be wary. I'm now because I don't have ah degree in graphic design that I had to learn it from the ground up. So, um, having written about design work over and over again over such a long time and having to research it and reading through whatever documents are available is that you begin to assimilate that information a lot quicker. So instead of and we talked about it in previous episode this idea of passive consumption rather than active consumption, where you're engaged in what you're seeing and you're trying to understand it a bit war and that's the same with blow Garc. I visit. I'm breaking down these logos because I need to sort of research them. I need to produce these vectors off them. On that, I'm understanding how difficult it is for them to be producing. I'm loading my mind with techniques for generating low those rather than researching architecture logos when you need to produce an architectural. But the downside is that when you're promoting yourself, mostly you're looking to other people to see how you might go about doing that. Ondas. You just said it's like taking BP known.

Perhaps it's writing, um, in your style about other people's work, and I don't think it's possible to almost sell up into people that are listening now that that's what you should do to promote yourself, because I was just lucky that it was a particular time, Um, in the thing was 2011 that I started it where very few people were writing reviews about work. So you had creative review in the subject, a large cultural institution. And we're writing about design and all associated creative industries in lots of different ways. There was a simplicity to be piano, and, of course, it that came off the back of brand new. But I only really had brand new is a template, and I knew I would never write like brand new,

because Armand's right in the so idiosyncratic, so much full of humor. It was very much an expression of his worldview and his character, and the way he saw that I never knew or I knew I would never be able to write like I don't have a humor in that kind of way that I'm a bit cynical. I need to understand things a bit and it in my own way and write about it in my own way. So there was always a space for that. Now. I'm not entirely sure they saw Mr Tape people, you know and which is built on a brand new on Do and Mitch Blah gone call Pride into design with their own tone of voice. It would really work is just. There is so much designed content now that to build a profile up, depending site Pinterest. I got lucky because I was on it in the first wave of invitations, and I was one of the few designers, so that whenever a new person signed up and they said they're like design that Pinterest would automatically load my boards into their profiles. And that's how I built up all of that following it was just serendipity, right? Or first entry.

It depends what you mean by working, though, doesn't it? Because I think there's value to start in any of these projects, even if you think it's not gonna take off if you're doing it with such passion and such zeal in my end up taking off. But even if it doesn't, it's a thing that's inside your portfolio. For example, if if they're only a year, if this design of the fictional designer we're talking about is only a year into their career. But on their website, they've got, ah, 100 reviews off corporate identities that sets them apart from everybody else, doesn't it? So they in terms of promotion, they have made something.

And this is why I think the value of side project is so important. They have made something that goes above and beyond what other people will do. Where is when you get a regular CV through through the dollar and agency? And I see this quite a lot. You get a CV through the door well on email, and it's just a one page PDF with a pdf, another pdf attached with just work with no explanation on Don't even BOTHER to find your name out on you. Just bin it.

The problem is that you're not. If you're then asking the design agency to take a bit more time over your particular submission so you might have 100 views of corporate identity, whether you find interesting that when uh, people are looking through portfolios and having sat inside studio for a while, seeing how they do it, that they they are quickly flicking through portfolios, looking for a general design sensitivity and then going deeper to read about the ideas or other other ideas on the surface that catch the eye and draw you into reading more that Teoh you need to house that 100 reviews on your website, and we're being very specific. Are told me here is that it's still so difficult to because you are asking the design studio for their time and they just don't have it. So the way I see it now is BP No has gone on for nine years. Local archive has gone on for, what, 2015 so five years that I because I have two projects that did quite well. It's better than having one project that did quite well that I would say to ah, young designers that it might be better to do. Maybe it's a block of corporate identity views, but you limit yourself to a year's worth and you do as many as you can,

then move on to another project and try something that is printed that again keep it contained, don't lose too much money on it, and then and then do perhaps it in instagram profile That is very, very specific about a particular interest that nobody else has, um, and then trying to see how that goes for a year. And I think you tweeted about earlier systems of slow but methodical, um, approach and you say that will win. I'm not very much interesting. This was a notion of winning or losing, but building a portfolio of of meaningful, thoughtful ideas that reveal something about yourself and just making sure that you're no, that you're limiting your time, that you don't get lost in trying to make it work.

You've just described the exact process I followed for the last 13 years to promote myself,

and we're still doing it right. This is why we're here is it's another

project exactly the thing that that's always resonated with me because I I struggle to stick a project over a long period of time. I always have done. I have right now. I've got 3 30 ideas back here somewhere, but I can't bring them to fruition and I can't see them through. So the method that I found worked for me was the first year when I was working as a designer on I spoke about it last time about doing lots of work because I worked for a design agency that was working to a price list. So I had to do a lot of work every single day under that gave me the idea that I wanted I wanted to improve my illustrator skills specifically So my vector skills because of the time I really admired a vector designer. I can't remember his name now, but I really loved his work on. I wanted to do that work. I wanted to know how to do that work. So my thought Waas, I'm gonna make a name for poster every single day for 365 days. That was the first project ever side project that I did, Andi. I managed to rope my Boston to it as well. Somehow I don't know how eso we set up this kind of website.

We called it novel cuisine and I set up this website and by the way, the name came from a demand that I had that I bought for another project. That's the only reason it was called that. And so we set up this website where there was my poster one side and his poster of the other. So it was kind of a design stunned off every single day on, and we add comments on there as well. So people usedto all our friends, used to come on and pile comments on. I used to get ripped to shreds. Most of the time I hated it. I hated the fact that people used to rip me to shreds, and I did that every day for 365 days, and by the end of it, my illustrated skills were fantastic. On my idea. Generating skills were much better than they Waas, and I found that the 365 day thing works for me. In that particular instance,

you do you think that, um, 365 day or a year project is a is a good a good time scale in which to experiment with something because it it it is quite a commitment from doing something every day on, even if you just spend 10 minutes. Um, it's that there's, Ah, there's a kind of it impedes on your life, right? You get to the end of the day. It's being a really hard day, and it's nine o'clock 10 o'clock and nine night. Shit. I need to do a poster for this thing otherwise have failed

or well, there were. There was there was a party that I was up and it was quarter to midnight because we used way used to set nothing, that it was midnight that we had to upload them by and I at and I've forgotten to do a bust. I sat there in this part here, a couple of drinks down Sasha and Emma poster. And I went and scurried off from got my laptop out when I was saying middle of this party, making a really crappy bus that took a lot of So it doesn't pain in your life. Yeah,