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From the subtleties of typography to the emotional impact of color, and the way everyday objects influence our lives, our guests share their unique perspectives on the power of design. Through candid interviews, we’ll get a closer look at the challenges they’ve faced, the breakthroughs they’ve had, and how design is not just about aesthetics, but about problem-solving, communication, and making an impact.
Join host Rae, as Type Speaks aims to inspire, inform, and showcase the voices behind the visuals.
This podcast is supported by WEGL 91.1 FM, Auburn University’s radio station. weglfm.com
00:00:02 [Speaker 1]
Welcome into Type Speaks, the show where I dive into the stories, struggles, and sparks of inspiration behind great design.
00:00:09 [Speaker 1]
I'm your host, Ray, and I'm gonna be pulling back the curtain on the creative process, but not just the work itself, but the people who make it happen.
00:00:17 [Speaker 1]
Each episode, I sit down with a different creative mind to uncover how they think and everything in between.
00:00:23 [Speaker 1]
So if you're curious about the why behind design and the stories of the people shaping our world one idea at a time, you're in the right place.
00:00:47 [Speaker 2]
Hello, everybody, and welcome into the next episode of the wonderful podcast.
00:00:52 [Speaker 2]
I don't know why I called it wonderful just then, like I'm blazing on my own podcast, but we can say that.
00:00:57 [Speaker 3]
It is wonderful.
00:00:58 [Speaker 3]
Thank you.
00:00:58 [Speaker 3]
It is.
00:01:00 [Speaker 2]
This is episode 22, which is fun because if I was not afraid of copyright, I could use the Taylor Swift song.
00:01:07 [Speaker 2]
But I am afraid of copyright, so I'm not gonna use it.
00:01:10 [Speaker 2]
But, like, imagine that playing in the background of this episode.
00:01:14 [Speaker 2]
In that song.
00:01:14 [Speaker 2]
I
00:01:15 [Speaker 4]
don't have any idea
00:01:15 [Speaker 3]
what that song is.
00:01:16 [Speaker 2]
So 22 by Taylor Swift?
00:01:17 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:01:18 [Speaker 2]
I'm feeling 22.
00:01:20 [Speaker 2]
Never heard it.
00:01:20 [Speaker 2]
That's Hate to break it
00:01:21 [Speaker 4]
to you.
00:01:22 [Speaker 2]
That is kind of crazy.
00:01:23 [Speaker 2]
Oh, no.
00:01:23 [Speaker 2]
Difference here.
00:01:25 [Speaker 2]
Do you know?
00:01:25 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:01:26 [Speaker 3]
I am.
00:01:26 [Speaker 4]
Absolutely.
00:01:26 [Speaker 4]
I'm glad.
00:01:27 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:01:27 [Speaker 4]
I do.
00:01:28 [Speaker 4]
I
00:01:28 [Speaker 2]
am glad.
00:01:28 [Speaker 4]
It is.
00:01:30 [Speaker 4]
It's okay.
00:01:31 [Speaker 2]
It's okay.
00:01:31 [Speaker 2]
You can look it up after, and maybe you'll be introduced to a really good song.
00:01:37 [Speaker 2]
But, yeah.
00:01:37 [Speaker 2]
It's episode 22.
00:01:39 [Speaker 2]
I am joined with Courtney Windham and Margaret Fletcher, and I'm gonna give you a short bio for everyone listening.
00:01:46 [Speaker 2]
You, Courtney Windham, are an award winning designer with twelve years of professional experience in teaching because you're one of my professors or you have been.
00:01:54 [Speaker 2]
Actually, you have been my professor, you've been co professing in the class I was in.
00:01:59 [Speaker 3]
That's right.
00:02:00 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:02:00 [Speaker 2]
I don't know if you've been like directly my only professor.
00:02:03 [Speaker 3]
That's, yeah.
00:02:04 [Speaker 3]
That's right.
00:02:04 [Speaker 3]
I haven't been.
00:02:05 [Speaker 2]
But I consider you my professor, so, you have been widely recognized for your approach of design and visual storytelling, and you've received many honors and accolades including, GRAPHIS.
00:02:18 [Speaker 2]
Is that how you pronounce that?
00:02:19 [Speaker 2]
GRAPHIS.
00:02:20 [Speaker 2]
GRAPHIS.
00:02:21 [Speaker 2]
Creative Quarterly, Journal of GDUSA Magazine, and the University of College Designer the University and College of Designation Print and more.
00:02:29 [Speaker 2]
And you, Margaret Fletcher, I don't know why I was so aggressive, I'm sorry.
00:02:32 [Speaker 3]
It's okay.
00:02:34 [Speaker 2]
You bring over twenty five years of experience in design publishing as both an author and a designer.
00:02:39 [Speaker 2]
You have an extensive portfolio of publications spanning architecture, visual communication, and editorial design.
00:02:45 [Speaker 2]
You have worked with esteemed publishers such as Princeton University Press, and the Princeton Architectural Press.
00:02:52 [Speaker 2]
And you're also a professor here, right?
00:02:53 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:02:54 [Speaker 4]
At Auburn?
00:02:54 [Speaker 4]
Architecture.
00:02:55 [Speaker 4]
Architecture.
00:02:55 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:02:56 [Speaker 2]
I don't have you because I'm not in that program.
00:03:01 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:03:02 [Speaker 2]
Does those sound good?
00:03:03 [Speaker 2]
Is there anything y'all wanted to add to those bios?
00:03:06 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:03:07 [Speaker 4]
I mean, the only thing that I would probably add, how long we've worked together, maybe.
00:03:11 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:03:11 [Speaker 4]
Because we started we started about the same time here.
00:03:14 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:03:14 [Speaker 4]
I started in '11.
00:03:15 [Speaker 4]
What year did you?
00:03:16 [Speaker 4]
I'm '12.
00:03:17 [Speaker 3]
'12.
00:03:17 [Speaker 3]
'12.
00:03:17 [Speaker 3]
'12.
00:03:17 [Speaker 4]
And so we we got put on, a lot of, like, Dean college level committees together and about that were about graphic design.
00:03:26 [Speaker 4]
So I think it was, like, website stuff and communications before we had communications department.
00:03:31 [Speaker 4]
And so Yeah.
00:03:33 [Speaker 4]
We sort of figured out early on that our, ideas aligned quite a bit just in those in that in that work.
00:03:40 [Speaker 4]
And so then we did what's that grant we did?
00:03:43 [Speaker 4]
The the president's Interdisciplinary grant.
00:03:46 [Speaker 4]
Oh, yeah.
00:03:47 [Speaker 4]
Interdisciplinary grant.
00:03:48 [Speaker 4]
And so we got on that team together as Courtney was a graphic designer and I was the information designer.
00:03:53 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:03:53 [Speaker 4]
And that would have been in, like, 2000 and
00:03:57 [Speaker 3]
That was 2017.
00:03:59 [Speaker 3]
2017.
00:04:00 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:04:00 [Speaker 4]
Okay.
00:04:00 [Speaker 4]
All the way through.
00:04:02 [Speaker 4]
So we've worked together a very long time.
00:04:04 [Speaker 4]
So that that would be sort of the other piece of that that I might add.
00:04:08 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:04:08 [Speaker 3]
And you're a graphic designer too.
00:04:10 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:04:10 [Speaker 3]
You've designed Yep.
00:04:11 [Speaker 3]
Plates for other firms and
00:04:15 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:04:15 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:04:15 [Speaker 4]
No idea.
00:04:16 [Speaker 4]
Books.
00:04:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:04:17 [Speaker 4]
My master's, my undergraduate and graduate degree are both architecture, but I worked with Nigel Smith when he was with OMA doing, graphic design.
00:04:27 [Speaker 4]
So, I picked it up there.
00:04:29 [Speaker 4]
Awesome.
00:04:30 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:04:31 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:04:33 [Speaker 2]
So I'm just gonna go deep dive.
00:04:34 [Speaker 2]
You released this book, and I'm gonna ask questions about it.
00:04:39 [Speaker 2]
Awesome.
00:04:39 [Speaker 2]
I read parts of it because I didn't have a copy and I borrowed Professor Fick, who is another guest on this podcast.
00:04:45 [Speaker 2]
He was the first guest ever.
00:04:47 [Speaker 2]
Fun fact.
00:04:49 [Speaker 2]
But I think my first question is why why the title?
00:04:55 [Speaker 2]
Into the Beautiful Mess.
00:04:57 [Speaker 2]
That's the first thing everyone sees and reads.
00:05:00 [Speaker 2]
So why would why'd y'all why'd y'all pick that one?
00:05:04 [Speaker 3]
We actually wanted to call it Into the Beautiful Mess.
00:05:06 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:05:06 [Speaker 4]
They they wouldn't let us
00:05:08 [Speaker 3]
they wouldn't let us do it.
00:05:09 [Speaker 2]
It's not the full title.
00:05:10 [Speaker 2]
Sorry.
00:05:11 [Speaker 2]
But it's part of the title.
00:05:12 [Speaker 2]
It's part
00:05:12 [Speaker 3]
of the title.
00:05:13 [Speaker 3]
They, for SEO part, they they needed us to call it discovering and have design process in it so that it would be searchable.
00:05:22 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:05:22 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:05:23 [Speaker 3]
And so So
00:05:23 [Speaker 2]
it was just a SEO kind
00:05:25 [Speaker 4]
of thing.
00:05:26 [Speaker 2]
A search optimization.
00:05:27 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:05:27 [Speaker 4]
Search optimization.
00:05:28 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:05:28 [Speaker 2]
I mean,
00:05:29 [Speaker 3]
I think
00:05:29 [Speaker 4]
the the whole Beautiful Mess idea I can't remember where that when that popped up, but we talk about the messiness of design studios.
00:05:39 [Speaker 4]
Like, when you really recognize that somebody's, making progress and really zoned in on something, that it it is sort of a fascinating visual mess that surrounds a designer where they're working.
00:05:52 [Speaker 4]
And it certainly, I think, is more prevalent for designers that work with their hands versus purely on the screen, even though the mess does sort of propagate itself outside of the screen, but it it is much more apparent in physical making, I would say, than digital making.
00:06:08 [Speaker 4]
I don't know though.
00:06:09 [Speaker 4]
You interviewed some digital artists that you probably still saw that mess.
00:06:13 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:06:13 [Speaker 3]
They have all kinds of messy files too.
00:06:16 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:06:17 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:06:17 [Speaker 2]
Which is like, you know, final one, final two, final three.
00:06:21 [Speaker 4]
Oh, absolutely.
00:06:21 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:06:22 [Speaker 4]
Got lots
00:06:22 [Speaker 3]
of code, right?
00:06:23 [Speaker 3]
So one of the people
00:06:24 [Speaker 2]
who we
00:06:25 [Speaker 3]
met, the designers, was a creative coder, so specifically in the branding, like, field.
00:06:31 [Speaker 3]
And so their files, they do all kinds of weird, you know, generative tools and things like that that help them develop brand tools.
00:06:41 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:06:41 [Speaker 3]
And, and they have experiments that they do that are that are they just put it in a a Slack file.
00:06:49 [Speaker 3]
They have all these mess ups.
00:06:51 [Speaker 3]
They call they just call them mistakes, but they're not.
00:06:53 [Speaker 3]
They're just, like, experimentation iterations
00:06:55 [Speaker 4]
in the code.
00:06:57 [Speaker 4]
So, yeah.
00:06:58 [Speaker 4]
They're messy too.
00:06:59 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:00 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:01 [Speaker 4]
So, you know, I think it and and certainly the way we tried to write about it was a way to visualize some of the thought process and design process that goes on, that that is a visual representation of what we're trying to talk about as a design process.
00:07:19 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:20 [Speaker 3]
I think it came from we were when we first started, we were talking about people that we love that are the beautiful weirdos Oh, yeah.
00:07:28 [Speaker 3]
Of our lives.
00:07:28 [Speaker 4]
Beautiful weirdos.
00:07:29 [Speaker 4]
I remember that whole conversation.
00:07:31 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:31 [Speaker 3]
That was the first one of the first conversations.
00:07:34 [Speaker 3]
We love all the the people, and we just called them beautiful weirdos, and we were like, oh, we just gotta find lots of Yeah.
00:07:39 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:39 [Speaker 2]
That's a good word.
00:07:40 [Speaker 2]
Beautiful weirdos.
00:07:41 [Speaker 4]
Nice.
00:07:41 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:07:42 [Speaker 3]
And then we decided we couldn't call them that because they
00:07:45 [Speaker 4]
might not take it right.
00:07:45 [Speaker 2]
That's funny because I've talked to board game designers, and when I'm like, oh, who's your audience?
00:07:50 [Speaker 2]
They're like, nerds, weirdos.
00:07:52 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:07:52 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:07:53 [Speaker 2]
But, like, they're like, but lovingly, I'm calling.
00:07:55 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:07:55 [Speaker 4]
It's
00:07:55 [Speaker 3]
very loving.
00:07:56 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:07:56 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:07:56 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:07:56 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:07:56 [Speaker 4]
The whole I I forgot about the beautiful weirdos conversation.
00:07:59 [Speaker 4]
But the whole thing behind that was people who are designers, I think, is what we're thinking about, that are just so incredibly comfortable in their skin Mhmm.
00:08:07 [Speaker 4]
That they just Bar.
00:08:10 [Speaker 4]
And they don't get wrapped up in the whole business of trying to position themselves a certain way and how they look and Yeah.
00:08:16 [Speaker 4]
All that sort of stuff.
00:08:17 [Speaker 4]
They just kind of accept Yeah.
00:08:20 [Speaker 4]
Their their core being as a beautiful weirdo, and that we were sort of gravitating towards people Yeah.
00:08:27 [Speaker 4]
Like that that were really authentic.
00:08:29 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:08:29 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:08:30 [Speaker 2]
I have a question about, like, the inspiration behind kind of creating and kind of digging into this type of research, and I'm assuming this is kind of why?
00:08:37 [Speaker 2]
Kind of the inspiration behind what even started, like, wanting to make this book.
00:08:43 [Speaker 3]
Wait.
00:08:43 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:08:43 [Speaker 3]
Well, the
00:08:45 [Speaker 4]
start of the whole book idea, that was from a conversation you had with John.
00:08:49 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:08:50 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:08:50 [Speaker 3]
Did you know John Morgan?
00:08:52 [Speaker 3]
He's one of the Paco members that retired maybe before you came.
00:08:55 [Speaker 2]
But I don't believe so.
00:08:56 [Speaker 3]
But he taught for in graphic design for thirty plus years.
00:09:00 [Speaker 3]
And he and I taught to get intro together.
00:09:03 [Speaker 3]
And so he, and he was always talking about how to document my process.
00:09:08 [Speaker 3]
And I haven't documented it yet.
00:09:09 [Speaker 3]
And he does these beautiful automata, like illustrated hand cranked, sculptures.
00:09:16 [Speaker 3]
And, and I was like, yeah, you really do need to document those things Mhmm.
00:09:21 [Speaker 4]
Because and maybe I should help you do that, you know.
00:09:23 [Speaker 3]
And so, that that it was a conversation that kinda started that thing.
00:09:30 [Speaker 3]
And then and then we got to talking about
00:09:32 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:09:33 [Speaker 4]
How did the whole book idea come up?
00:09:34 [Speaker 4]
Was that you?
00:09:35 [Speaker 4]
Did you pitch that
00:09:36 [Speaker 3]
to me?
00:09:37 [Speaker 3]
You you were Yeah.
00:09:38 [Speaker 3]
You said you said, yeah.
00:09:39 [Speaker 3]
You should get a seed grant for that.
00:09:41 [Speaker 3]
Oh.
00:09:42 [Speaker 3]
So here we are.
00:09:43 [Speaker 3]
And here we are.
00:09:47 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:09:47 [Speaker 3]
Seed grants are the, like seed funding for for ideas for the college, for our college, so Yeah.
00:09:54 [Speaker 4]
And so we, yeah, we had some continuous seed grants which helped make this book happen.
00:09:59 [Speaker 4]
It was hugely supportive from the college.
00:10:02 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:10:02 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:03 [Speaker 2]
How long has this been in in production?
00:10:06 [Speaker 4]
Five years.
00:10:07 [Speaker 4]
Five years.
00:10:08 [Speaker 4]
When did we when did we start?
00:10:10 [Speaker 4]
Had to have started before the pandemic.
00:10:11 [Speaker 4]
Oh, it was
00:10:12 [Speaker 2]
pre COVID y'all started?
00:10:13 [Speaker 2]
Oh,
00:10:13 [Speaker 4]
heck yeah.
00:10:13 [Speaker 3]
Oh.
00:10:14 [Speaker 3]
Maybe it was officially 2020.
00:10:16 [Speaker 3]
I think it was 2020.
00:10:20 [Speaker 3]
Really?
00:10:20 [Speaker 3]
2021?
00:10:21 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:21 [Speaker 3]
I think so.
00:10:22 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:10:22 [Speaker 4]
That's a great met during the pandemic because we had to we had to figure out how to continue meeting in this.
00:10:28 [Speaker 4]
Because we did we did meet in person during all that.
00:10:31 [Speaker 4]
We just stayed away from everybody else.
00:10:33 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:33 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:34 [Speaker 4]
But yeah.
00:10:35 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:37 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:10:37 [Speaker 4]
That's probably right because we were at Biggin House when we first started and then we were over them being in the academic buildings.
00:10:42 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:10:44 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:44 [Speaker 3]
A long time.
00:10:45 [Speaker 3]
Five years.
00:10:46 [Speaker 3]
Don't.
00:10:46 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:10:46 [Speaker 2]
I can assume.
00:10:47 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:10:47 [Speaker 2]
I I came to Auburn right after COVID, so I don't even know what their or I guess it was the the year that it was still obviously still happening.
00:10:54 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:10:55 [Speaker 2]
But people were kind of ignoring it.
00:10:56 [Speaker 2]
So everyone it kind of goes back to normal
00:10:58 [Speaker 4]
a bit.
00:10:58 [Speaker 4]
But, I don't know it
00:11:00 [Speaker 2]
was taking that long.
00:11:01 [Speaker 4]
Or Oh, yeah.
00:11:02 [Speaker 3]
Oh, yes.
00:11:02 [Speaker 2]
I guess I underestimate how long books take, I think.
00:11:06 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:11:06 [Speaker 4]
Well, this this one was hard because of the just the nature of the work Mhmm.
00:11:11 [Speaker 4]
And finding people to interview, finding people that we thought were interesting to interview Mhmm.
00:11:16 [Speaker 4]
And then actually traveling to interview them.
00:11:18 [Speaker 4]
And Courtney did all that travel.
00:11:21 [Speaker 4]
And then, like, the whole idea behind the book was that we would distill the message of the book from those interviews.
00:11:28 [Speaker 4]
So we couldn't write the we couldn't write anything in the book until all the interviews were done and transcribed and edited, and we had gone through them all, and they were I don't know how many hours of footage you have for each one, like four or five hours.
00:11:44 [Speaker 4]
It was transcribed.
00:11:44 [Speaker 4]
It was so much, transcribing and then culling through that to try to find, ideas to write about.
00:11:53 [Speaker 4]
So it it really was we had to have all that done first, and that took years.
00:11:58 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:11:59 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:11:59 [Speaker 4]
And then we had to design a process to write the book Yeah.
00:12:02 [Speaker 4]
From those things.
00:12:03 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:12:04 [Speaker 2]
So I did have a question about the interview process because I was I was curious about, obviously, because I interview designers.
00:12:11 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:12:11 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:12:12 [Speaker 2]
But, like, first, I think you made her you mentioned it.
00:12:16 [Speaker 2]
I was wondering, like, were these people you knew of before and were like, I wanna interview you.
00:12:22 [Speaker 2]
That's how I do it, is this is entirely selfish.
00:12:24 [Speaker 2]
So I just wanna ask questions to people that I already know, Or were y'all, like, reaching out to other people being like, okay, who is a cool designer you know of?
00:12:33 [Speaker 2]
What was that process of getting people to interview?
00:12:36 [Speaker 3]
It it was totally selfish in a way.
00:12:38 [Speaker 3]
It's exactly right.
00:12:39 [Speaker 3]
I I there's people that we really that we found that with some actually, some of them we would find in a magazine, and then we'd go, let's go research.
00:12:48 [Speaker 3]
And then, or somebody would recommend somebody Mhmm.
00:12:53 [Speaker 3]
Or a lecturer that came, right, previously.
00:12:55 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:12:56 [Speaker 4]
And we had we I mean, we started when we first started, we we had to do like a trial set and we couldn't we didn't have any money to travel.
00:13:04 [Speaker 4]
So we started with John Morgan because he was local.
00:13:07 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:13:07 [Speaker 3]
He's at
00:13:07 [Speaker 4]
John Morgan.
00:13:08 [Speaker 4]
And his his work is like, we knew it would photograph well.
00:13:11 [Speaker 4]
We knew it would be interesting.
00:13:13 [Speaker 4]
We knew his process was interesting.
00:13:14 [Speaker 4]
We knew he was interesting.
00:13:16 [Speaker 4]
And then we we bar is Atlanta.
00:13:19 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:13:19 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:13:20 [Speaker 4]
And so then, like, Courtney was really good about searching Instagram and sort of we were trying to come up with a a mix of designers, a mix of ethnicities, a mix of ages, and you know, all that sort of stuff.
00:13:34 [Speaker 4]
But we did have to stick with regional people first.
00:13:37 [Speaker 4]
And so we had Charlene Dunbar's fashion designer.
00:13:40 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:13:40 [Speaker 3]
And
00:13:40 [Speaker 4]
then James Mabry, who's a former student of yours.
00:13:43 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:13:44 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:13:44 [Speaker 3]
I worked with him in Atlanta.
00:13:45 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:13:45 [Speaker 4]
For some reason, I thought he's a former student of yours.
00:13:48 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:13:48 [Speaker 3]
He's he was one of my colleagues in Atlanta.
00:13:50 [Speaker 3]
Call.
00:13:51 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:13:51 [Speaker 4]
And And then who else?
00:13:52 [Speaker 4]
Did we have Yo Yo?
00:13:53 [Speaker 4]
And then Yo Yo, we have our artists.
00:13:55 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:13:55 [Speaker 4]
That was our that was our core.
00:13:57 [Speaker 3]
That was
00:13:57 [Speaker 4]
our first score.
00:13:58 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:13:58 [Speaker 4]
And so as as we sort of proved the concept of the interview process, we got more funding, and then we were looking at, I think at that point, we had reached out to publishers, and they were a little critical of everybody being in the South.
00:14:13 [Speaker 4]
And, yeah, first, they wanted, like, international people, and we're like, yeah, we will never get the funding for that.
00:14:18 [Speaker 4]
But but we did think, okay, we could do East Coast, West Coast, Texas, maybe something like that.
00:14:23 [Speaker 4]
And so then, we started thinking about other locations and I think the only one that I knew was Marshall Brown.
00:14:31 [Speaker 4]
Like, he Marshall was made of mine in graduate school.
00:14:33 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:14:33 [Speaker 4]
He's an architect.
00:14:34 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:14:34 [Speaker 3]
And he's lectured before
00:14:36 [Speaker 4]
here.
00:14:36 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:14:36 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:14:36 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:14:37 [Speaker 3]
Okay.
00:14:38 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:14:38 [Speaker 3]
He hasn't lectured here.
00:14:39 [Speaker 3]
He's come here?
00:14:39 [Speaker 3]
Marshall?
00:14:40 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:14:40 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:14:40 [Speaker 3]
He came here?
00:14:41 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:14:41 [Speaker 3]
Okay.
00:14:43 [Speaker 3]
But we No.
00:14:44 [Speaker 3]
I kinda it's
00:14:45 [Speaker 4]
I'm kinda living some interactions that are happening.
00:14:48 [Speaker 4]
It's funny that I'm like
00:14:49 [Speaker 3]
I feel like he came before you told me to go.
00:14:51 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:14:51 [Speaker 3]
Okay.
00:14:52 [Speaker 3]
Maybe not.
00:14:52 [Speaker 3]
Marshall?
00:14:53 [Speaker 3]
But I don't think so.
00:14:55 [Speaker 4]
I don't think so.
00:14:56 [Speaker 3]
But it but we we wanted to find people who are really open to sharing Mhmm.
00:15:01 [Speaker 3]
What they do and not not coming at close because Yeah.
00:15:05 [Speaker 3]
Because as as teachers, we don't
00:15:08 [Speaker 4]
I mean, we're all wide open Yeah.
00:15:10 [Speaker 4]
To our process.
00:15:11 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:15:12 [Speaker 3]
So we share every every way that we make things.
00:15:16 [Speaker 3]
And so, yeah, we needed people who are, like, really wanted to let us into their studio.
00:15:23 [Speaker 2]
Was that like a problem at all?
00:15:24 [Speaker 2]
Like did you find anyone where you're like, I really wanna know about your process, and they were like, no,
00:15:29 [Speaker 3]
it's secret.
00:15:30 [Speaker 3]
Everyone we talked to was a speculum.
00:15:32 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:15:32 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:15:32 [Speaker 4]
But you were you when you were looking, you were looking for articles that they talked about process Yes.
00:15:37 [Speaker 4]
Or, like, I know Marshall is is an instructor Mhmm.
00:15:41 [Speaker 4]
And he, is pretty open about his representation process, and his representation process has been really influential in architectural representation in general.
00:15:51 [Speaker 4]
And so I knew he'd be kind of Yeah.
00:15:54 [Speaker 4]
Interested in talking about it.
00:15:56 [Speaker 4]
But there were quite a few people who were instructors.
00:15:59 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:15:59 [Speaker 4]
David Walski was an instructor.
00:16:01 [Speaker 4]
I can't remember a very fast.
00:16:03 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:06 [Speaker 4]
But and we didn't get turned down by anyone.
00:16:08 [Speaker 4]
There's like maybe one or two that we'd never heard back from Yeah.
00:16:11 [Speaker 4]
But we didn't get turned down.
00:16:12 [Speaker 4]
Like, it's basically our experiences, they just don't email me back.
00:16:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:16 [Speaker 4]
So And it's basically our our a list of people that we wanted to interview actually agreed to.
00:16:23 [Speaker 2]
Maybe it's because I'm a a student podcaster.
00:16:26 [Speaker 2]
That's why they don't answer me.
00:16:27 [Speaker 2]
They answer
00:16:29 [Speaker 4]
you because you have a book.
00:16:29 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:16:29 [Speaker 3]
Well, they didn't answer.
00:16:31 [Speaker 3]
So I think they I think everybody really yeah.
00:16:34 [Speaker 3]
Really wanted to
00:16:36 [Speaker 2]
Maybe I'll have to reach out to people on the show.
00:16:38 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:39 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:39 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:16:39 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:16:39 [Speaker 3]
And they yeah.
00:16:40 [Speaker 3]
Anyone who because a lot of them would document their process on Instagram too.
00:16:44 [Speaker 3]
So that
00:16:44 [Speaker 4]
was that made it.
00:16:45 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:45 [Speaker 2]
It's kinda finding people who are already open.
00:16:47 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:16:48 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:48 [Speaker 4]
For sure.
00:16:49 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:16:49 [Speaker 4]
But then it was that mix.
00:16:51 [Speaker 4]
That mix was a challenge, like Yeah.
00:16:52 [Speaker 4]
Working on our sort of matrix of the mix we wanted.
00:16:59 [Speaker 4]
Product design,
00:17:00 [Speaker 3]
architecture.
00:17:01 [Speaker 3]
And we definitely wanted it to be interdisciplinary because that's how it should be.
00:17:06 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:17:06 [Speaker 3]
That was the premise of the whole thing, I think.
00:17:08 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:17:08 [Speaker 4]
Well, we had we had publicists.
00:17:10 [Speaker 4]
Like our whole idea was that we believed that we could find a thread of design process in all different kinds of designers.
00:17:18 [Speaker 4]
It didn't matter their profession.
00:17:20 [Speaker 4]
As long as they were designers, we could find things that overlapped and we we probably had eight publishers tell us that that was not true.
00:17:29 [Speaker 4]
And and so they turned us rejected us down.
00:17:32 [Speaker 4]
Like, just rejected.
00:17:32 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:17:32 [Speaker 4]
They just rejected us.
00:17:34 [Speaker 4]
And we, you know, we would always ask why, you know, and it was some some of the rejections were with publishers I'd worked with before.
00:17:40 [Speaker 4]
And so really nice frank conversation with them and be like, well, why?
00:17:43 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:17:43 [Speaker 4]
Well, that will never work.
00:17:45 [Speaker 4]
And so, you know, we we were set on proving those folks wrong, which I think that we have done.
00:17:55 [Speaker 4]
So, yeah, it was it was interesting because through that rejection process, which lasted a good year Yeah.
00:18:02 [Speaker 4]
Of rejections, we were able to frame things in a way that we thought, okay.
00:18:05 [Speaker 4]
Now this would actually work.
00:18:08 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:18:08 [Speaker 4]
So it was helpful getting rejected that many times.
00:18:11 [Speaker 4]
And and Rutledge,
00:18:12 [Speaker 3]
the pub they could see the vision, I think.
00:18:14 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:18:14 [Speaker 3]
They were they were they were open
00:18:16 [Speaker 4]
to Yeah.
00:18:16 [Speaker 4]
They were they were on
00:18:17 [Speaker 3]
board.
00:18:17 [Speaker 3]
Just trying it.
00:18:18 [Speaker 3]
And it's an it's an odd way to go about writing a book for sure.
00:18:21 [Speaker 3]
You don't normally approach a publisher with just a concept and maybe tests.
00:18:26 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:18:27 [Speaker 3]
You usually approach them with a a chapter.
00:18:30 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:18:30 [Speaker 3]
And then they know what you're talking about.
00:18:32 [Speaker 3]
But, yeah, we were
00:18:34 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:18:34 [Speaker 4]
They were open.
00:18:35 [Speaker 4]
It was They were open.
00:18:36 [Speaker 3]
It was really interesting.
00:18:37 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:18:37 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:18:38 [Speaker 2]
I haven't thought about the publishing world and design books.
00:18:41 [Speaker 2]
That's so interesting to me.
00:18:42 [Speaker 2]
It's like you have to be like, here, maybe this could be a book.
00:18:45 [Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah.
00:18:46 [Speaker 2]
It it was
00:18:46 [Speaker 4]
That's exactly That's exactly what In fact, our first seed grant was Yeah.
00:18:50 [Speaker 4]
A grant to write proposals for publishers, and that took a solid year.
00:18:56 [Speaker 4]
And do literature reviews of of all the other books about process.
00:18:59 [Speaker 4]
Yep.
00:19:00 [Speaker 4]
To make sure we weren't doing
00:19:01 [Speaker 3]
the same thing.
00:19:02 [Speaker 3]
The
00:19:02 [Speaker 2]
same thing.
00:19:03 [Speaker 3]
And you have to prove that you're not doing the same thing as other books.
00:19:07 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:19:07 [Speaker 3]
So interesting.
00:19:08 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:19:08 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:19:08 [Speaker 4]
And then it goes through review process, so you get, criticism back, sort of anonymous criticism criticism back on your profiles.
00:19:15 [Speaker 4]
And we had this reviewer number three
00:19:19 [Speaker 3]
that We'll never forget it.
00:19:20 [Speaker 3]
Reviewer number three.
00:19:21 [Speaker 2]
Reviewer number three.
00:19:22 [Speaker 4]
I can't oh, I'm not gonna read the quote because it's harsh.
00:19:24 [Speaker 4]
Like, it was, like, really harsh, but but Yeah.
00:19:27 [Speaker 4]
True.
00:19:28 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:19:28 [Speaker 4]
And so it was Yeah.
00:19:29 [Speaker 4]
Like, there were all these kind of things.
00:19:31 [Speaker 4]
It's like it wasn't all supportive.
00:19:33 [Speaker 4]
Like, we would get responses and be like, ugh.
00:19:36 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:19:37 [Speaker 4]
We've gotta pivot somehow.
00:19:38 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:19:39 [Speaker 4]
And so that that took years to get the framing right Yeah.
00:19:43 [Speaker 4]
Where a publisher would kind of get in line because we would get better with each submit to a publisher.
00:19:48 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:19:50 [Speaker 2]
So so cool.
00:19:51 [Speaker 4]
I don't know.
00:19:52 [Speaker 4]
I just
00:19:52 [Speaker 2]
hadn't heard about I guess I guess I don't I don't know many author people also, so this is fun.
00:19:58 [Speaker 2]
But with the way you framed the book, I really because I was reading the beginning, y'all talked about them as like case studies, like each kind of designer was their own case study.
00:20:08 [Speaker 2]
I thought that kind of wording was interesting to use, so I kinda wanted to ask why what was that decision to frame it like that instead of, like, an interview or any other way?
00:20:18 [Speaker 3]
We I think we thought that the so the interviews, they were super interesting, but we felt like we needed to summarize them a little bit and sort of pull out very specific ideas and quotes and thoughts and so and then just distill it down so that it would be a little more
00:20:38 [Speaker 4]
I may be approachable or something,
00:20:40 [Speaker 3]
you know, like, because the raw interview is, is so raw.
00:20:45 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:20:45 [Speaker 3]
And you would you would get lost, really.
00:20:47 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:20:47 [Speaker 3]
So we did the summaries, and they felt, like, really approachable, I think, for and and they're just still in the categories that we asked about.
00:20:57 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:20:57 [Speaker 3]
But yeah.
00:20:58 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:20:58 [Speaker 4]
I think in the beginning, like, the first sent out to for review was the raw interviews.
00:21:04 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:21:05 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:21:05 [Speaker 4]
That didn't Didn't go over well.
00:21:06 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:21:07 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:21:07 [Speaker 4]
Because I think in the beginning, we thought we would just sort of edit the interviews.
00:21:11 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:21:11 [Speaker 4]
And because I think in the beginning, we thought, oh, that'll be a piece of cake.
00:21:14 [Speaker 4]
We'll just edit interviews, half the book is written.
00:21:16 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:21:17 [Speaker 2]
Easy.
00:21:17 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:21:18 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:21:19 [Speaker 4]
So Yes.
00:21:19 [Speaker 4]
Some like, we got some criticism on that, we'll say.
00:21:24 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:21:25 [Speaker 4]
And then we're very used
00:21:26 [Speaker 3]
to criticism and rejection.
00:21:28 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:21:29 [Speaker 4]
By this time.
00:21:29 [Speaker 4]
Yeah, somewhere along somewhere along the way we got saying who the audience was, and that we wanted it to bridge an academic audience and general readership.
00:21:40 [Speaker 4]
And so, you know, there are some chapters, some like heavily footnoted, really academic chapter in the beginning of the publication, and then there's a lot of writing that is intended for general readership.
00:21:51 [Speaker 4]
And so that was something we were aiming for with the calling them case studies instead of interviews was this distillation process so that we could make easier would be easier to make association the different processes of the designers if we were able to pull out specific things that we thought were relating between the different designers.
00:22:12 [Speaker 3]
And we talk about case studies in class a lot too.
00:22:15 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:22:15 [Speaker 3]
You know, we use them in class to, like, I guess, as a demonstration or to make a make a case Yeah.
00:22:22 [Speaker 3]
For what what the project's about or something like that.
00:22:25 [Speaker 3]
So Yeah.
00:22:26 [Speaker 4]
And they were called interviews for a long time They were.
00:22:28 [Speaker 4]
In our table of contents.
00:22:29 [Speaker 4]
I I can't remember when that pivot happened, if it happened in one of our pin ups with our colleagues or or when when that shift shifted.
00:22:38 [Speaker 4]
But I think I think that was in a we we would do these, like, whole book pinups and invite I saw them.
00:22:44 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:22:45 [Speaker 2]
I was in a classroom with and you had them up one time.
00:22:47 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:22:47 [Speaker 4]
She was okay.
00:22:48 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:22:49 [Speaker 4]
So we would do that and have colleagues come in and sort of flag things for us.
00:22:53 [Speaker 4]
And we did Red flag.
00:22:54 [Speaker 4]
We did one with colleagues from my, my school.
00:22:59 [Speaker 4]
So I think it was all architects.
00:23:00 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:23:01 [Speaker 4]
It was all architects, interior architects.
00:23:02 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:23:03 [Speaker 4]
The first one.
00:23:03 [Speaker 4]
And they were sort of looking at content and, structure of things.
00:23:08 [Speaker 4]
And then the next one we did was with your colleagues, and they were really helping us frame how the design would support the ideas we were trying to generate.
00:23:17 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:23:18 [Speaker 3]
It was
00:23:19 [Speaker 4]
an immensely helpful process.
00:23:21 [Speaker 4]
But I think the whole interview to case study thing happened in one of those.
00:23:24 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:23:24 [Speaker 4]
I can't quite remember, but
00:23:25 [Speaker 2]
I like it.
00:23:26 [Speaker 2]
It makes it a bit it feels more like research y, which I like with those words.
00:23:31 [Speaker 3]
You know?
00:23:33 [Speaker 2]
Also, I mentioned something in that I didn't even have a question about, but now I do.
00:23:37 [Speaker 2]
When you were, like, was this were you focused on the audience being more, like, general designers of any kind of field?
00:23:45 [Speaker 2]
Or was it like a non designer reading this to learn about the process?
00:23:49 [Speaker 2]
Who was the audience you you envisioned?
00:23:51 [Speaker 2]
I guess the primary audience because there's always a
00:23:53 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:23:54 [Speaker 2]
Primary, secondary, tertiary.
00:23:55 [Speaker 2]
But
00:23:56 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:23:56 [Speaker 3]
I think I I think I mean, primary was, young designers, probably in college, you know, because we know we know we know how to how to speak to that audience.
00:24:11 [Speaker 4]
It's funny because I do think we started we started with that.
00:24:14 [Speaker 4]
And then, you know, we've heard from people who have, like, oh, I bought this for my daughter who's thinking about going to college for blah blah blah.
00:24:23 [Speaker 4]
Or, like, we've heard some other things like that, but I think, certainly, for us, it was young designers.
00:24:28 [Speaker 4]
And we we just keep thinking about how difficult it is to know how to go through a design process and how difficult it is to teach design process.
00:24:38 [Speaker 4]
And so, like, when we were reading these interview any, like, snippet of information, we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:44 [Speaker 4]
We gotta talk to we gotta mention that.
00:24:46 [Speaker 4]
And we'd we'd circle it and write something out to the side.
00:24:48 [Speaker 4]
And, I mean, that went on for months and months and months trying to figure out how to organize all the things we wanted to say, and some of them were things that we knew from the beginning.
00:24:58 [Speaker 4]
Like, on the our very first meeting, we it was hilarious.
00:25:01 [Speaker 4]
We pulled out this, like, big markup pad.
00:25:04 [Speaker 4]
Remember that?
00:25:05 [Speaker 4]
We were trying to write everything out on it.
00:25:07 [Speaker 4]
We found it years later, and we're like, oh, we did do this.
00:25:10 [Speaker 4]
So there's some framing of it in the very beginning as we thought we'd find, but it was definitely sort of with that in mind, with knowing how we teach things, and then reading all the interviews that all that stuff kind of formed up.
00:25:25 [Speaker 4]
So Yeah.
00:25:27 [Speaker 4]
But the primary audience.
00:25:28 [Speaker 4]
Primary audience, young designers.
00:25:29 [Speaker 4]
Designers.
00:25:30 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:25:30 [Speaker 2]
It makes it makes a lot of sense because I remember, like, my first year in design, I was, I think I look back and I was treating a lot of them just like assignments.
00:25:39 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:25:39 [Speaker 2]
Which is entirely different than treating them as a design problem.
00:25:42 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:25:42 [Speaker 2]
Because I didn't know what to do.
00:25:44 [Speaker 2]
Like I I was a freshman, I didn't know what a design process was at that point, so I think that is important to show that like, you don't have to just do it like you would do a math home, like math homework.
00:25:54 [Speaker 2]
Because I think a lot of students come into it
00:25:56 [Speaker 4]
and I
00:25:56 [Speaker 2]
wanna get it done.
00:25:57 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:25:57 [Speaker 2]
But they don't understand that there's this whole way to get it done.
00:26:00 [Speaker 2]
That it's not just getting it done.
00:26:02 [Speaker 2]
I don't know if that's any sense.
00:26:03 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:26:03 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:26:04 [Speaker 4]
But the work is the process, not the product.
00:26:06 [Speaker 4]
And, yeah, we find, it just flew in my head and flew right out.
00:26:11 [Speaker 4]
Oh, this sort of idea that there is a right answer, and they just want you to tell them what the right answer is, and that there there are a thousand correct pathways.
00:26:21 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:26:21 [Speaker 3]
And you have a really specific vision and like, you're you have so much experience.
00:26:28 [Speaker 3]
Like, you have different experience than we have.
00:26:30 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:26:31 [Speaker 3]
And so
00:26:31 [Speaker 4]
you've just life experience.
00:26:33 [Speaker 4]
Like, your family life, you're, you know, maybe you're an athlete or maybe you're an artist or but all that, makes you uniquely you and that's part of what you're trying to tap into when you're trying to understand your own design process.
00:26:47 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:26:48 [Speaker 4]
So this business of the right answer or just getting it done is like really frustrating when you're teaching young designers.
00:26:54 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:26:55 [Speaker 2]
I look back and I like I have like a when I remember in a class where, like, it it, like, it it, like, swished for me, and I was like, oh.
00:27:04 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:27:04 [Speaker 2]
It's Way.
00:27:06 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:27:06 [Speaker 4]
It's about interaction.
00:27:07 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:27:07 [Speaker 4]
It's And when the like, we see it happen.
00:27:10 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:27:10 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:27:11 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:27:11 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:27:12 [Speaker 4]
It is so remarkable when you see it happen.
00:27:14 [Speaker 4]
It's like you go home and you're like, yeah.
00:27:17 [Speaker 4]
I'm doing something.
00:27:18 [Speaker 4]
And I remember when you're really
00:27:20 [Speaker 2]
mad at my professor, who I will not name, but is is still my professor.
00:27:24 [Speaker 2]
And I remember being really mad during this project.
00:27:27 [Speaker 2]
I was like, why is he on my buttock belly?
00:27:30 [Speaker 2]
Like, this I just wanna get it done, but he keeps making me do different things.
00:27:33 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:27:34 [Speaker 2]
And I look back and I'm like, no.
00:27:35 [Speaker 2]
Well, it's better because I did the different things.
00:27:38 [Speaker 3]
But Well, you're going to grad school.
00:27:40 [Speaker 3]
You want to teach.
00:27:41 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:27:41 [Speaker 1]
So I will be a TA.
00:27:42 [Speaker 2]
I do have a confirmed TA spot already.
00:27:44 [Speaker 3]
Oh, I see.
00:27:45 [Speaker 3]
This is gonna be awesome.
00:27:46 [Speaker 2]
Because I do wanna teach.
00:27:47 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:27:47 [Speaker 2]
And also I do teach young children already.
00:27:49 [Speaker 2]
I think I've talked about this.
00:27:50 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:27:51 [Speaker 2]
I'm a art camp, like, counselor over the summers for young children, which is fun because I've people say that it's gonna be different in college, but I I am believing it will be
00:28:01 [Speaker 4]
that different.
00:28:02 [Speaker 4]
It's not that it's not it's not that different.
00:28:04 [Speaker 2]
And so this is not it's not like a negative on on my age group.
00:28:08 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:28:08 [Speaker 2]
I'm being realistic.
00:28:09 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:28:10 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:28:10 [Speaker 4]
But it's all the same thing.
00:28:11 [Speaker 4]
Like, you know something that you really wanna share, and there are people in front of you who wanna get it.
00:28:17 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:28:17 [Speaker 4]
And you've gotta figure out how to move between those two extremes.
00:28:22 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:28:22 [Speaker 2]
Now I like, once it switched for me, and I was like, oh wait, I do love it now.
00:28:27 [Speaker 2]
It's not it's not a task I have to complete, it's like a fun thing I get to do.
00:28:31 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:28:31 [Speaker 2]
And I always and I was, like, trying to teach the kids that it's fun to do the process, and they're like, okay.
00:28:38 [Speaker 2]
What?
00:28:38 [Speaker 2]
And I just wanna paint a picture.
00:28:40 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:28:40 [Speaker 2]
It's like, but no.
00:28:41 [Speaker 2]
But, like, while you're painting the picture, like, feel how you're painting the picture.
00:28:45 [Speaker 2]
And they don't understand that, which is okay.
00:28:47 [Speaker 2]
They're
00:28:47 [Speaker 3]
not quite there yet.
00:28:48 [Speaker 2]
I can be the hippie counselor that they don't understand, but Yeah.
00:28:50 [Speaker 4]
They might get it later.
00:28:51 [Speaker 4]
It's alright.
00:28:52 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:28:52 [Speaker 4]
Like, you're remembering things from when you started and you're like, oh, yeah.
00:28:55 [Speaker 4]
Now I get it.
00:28:56 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:28:56 [Speaker 4]
They'll do the same thing.
00:28:58 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:28:58 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:28:59 [Speaker 2]
I think it even in the art world sometimes, because I came from doing art in high school Yeah.
00:29:03 [Speaker 2]
Before design, where it was like, I was still viewing it as I need to get this done, like the final product.
00:29:09 [Speaker 2]
Because that's what is at least my generation, were very online.
00:29:13 [Speaker 2]
I came from being an online artist.
00:29:15 [Speaker 2]
Like, I had a following of people who wanted to see my art in, like, the final product.
00:29:19 [Speaker 2]
Like, they didn't care what it looked like sketching.
00:29:22 [Speaker 2]
So, like, I was coming at things, like, I have to get it done.
00:29:24 [Speaker 2]
It has to be perfect done.
00:29:26 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:29:26 [Speaker 2]
And there's no other, like, reason to really work on how it gets done.
00:29:30 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:29:31 [Speaker 2]
But now I've kind of flipped almost entirely in how I view my project.
00:29:35 [Speaker 2]
It's nice for my my my mental health Mhmm.
00:29:39 [Speaker 2]
Which is better Sure.
00:29:40 [Speaker 2]
Than it was.
00:29:41 [Speaker 4]
I think I mentioned this
00:29:42 [Speaker 2]
in another episode where it's like, coming through college, like, I make better work with less stress and less time.
00:29:49 [Speaker 3]
That's nice.
00:29:50 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:29:51 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:51 [Speaker 2]
Which is probably the the end goal for college, is to do better things with less stress.
00:29:56 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:56 [Speaker 2]
But Yeah.
00:29:57 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:29:59 [Speaker 2]
I wanted to ask, obviously this book is about finding that connection point between different designers and the processes.
00:30:06 [Speaker 2]
Wasn't that almost, like, shocked you about a connection point or maybe something that wasn't there that you thought was there or kind of any any major, like, woah, everyone has the same pen or everyone doesn't talk about using Adobe or something like that or
00:30:25 [Speaker 4]
Let's see.
00:30:26 [Speaker 4]
I don't know.
00:30:27 [Speaker 4]
There were a couple of instances and you might remember what they are, but there are a couple of instances while we were going through things that we were, saying, like, oh, so and so said that too or so, like Yeah.
00:30:39 [Speaker 4]
There were some things that and I'm not gonna have specifics right off the top of my head.
00:30:43 [Speaker 4]
But there were some things that were remarkably specific that multiple designers said.
00:30:50 [Speaker 4]
And then there were some funny things like, talking about intuition that people kind of equally equally got kind of not quite right, which is where we were in the beginning, the way we talked about intuition in the beginning.
00:31:07 [Speaker 4]
We got we got nicked on that quite a bit in early reviews Yeah.
00:31:11 [Speaker 4]
That we weren't being specific enough about it.
00:31:13 [Speaker 4]
That we're just that it's it's a it's a it's a brain process.
00:31:17 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:31:17 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:31:17 [Speaker 4]
And it can be explained through neuroscience.
00:31:20 [Speaker 4]
And so kept getting asked to explain it through neuroscience, and we were like, I don't know where it is.
00:31:24 [Speaker 2]
I don't really like it.
00:31:25 [Speaker 2]
So you would, like, write down, like, this designer uses their intuition, and then Right.
00:31:29 [Speaker 2]
Publishers would be like, what does that mean?
00:31:31 [Speaker 4]
What does that mean?
00:31:32 [Speaker 4]
What is that?
00:31:33 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:31:33 [Speaker 4]
And so we found because it was interesting.
00:31:35 [Speaker 4]
It didn't ever occur to us that we would have to define that.
00:31:38 [Speaker 4]
We sort of sort of thought, well, that's
00:31:39 [Speaker 3]
Everybody knows what you mean.
00:31:40 [Speaker 4]
It's intuitive.
00:31:41 [Speaker 4]
It's intuitive.
00:31:42 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:31:42 [Speaker 4]
We all sort of know what that is.
00:31:44 [Speaker 4]
And the designers all kind of talked about it in that same sort of level.
00:31:48 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:31:49 [Speaker 4]
And so when we kept getting dinged on that, I think, and sort of forced into this neuroscience research Yeah.
00:31:55 [Speaker 4]
I think we were surprised to kind of figure out more what was going on in your brain to make intuition an an actual scientific process, not just this loose thing that we like to to talk about.
00:32:10 [Speaker 3]
That is the one thing I feel like everyone hit on.
00:32:13 [Speaker 3]
They did.
00:32:14 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:32:14 [Speaker 3]
They all talked about at some point, they were tapping into Yeah.
00:32:18 [Speaker 3]
This intuition about it.
00:32:20 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:32:20 [Speaker 3]
They would
00:32:20 [Speaker 4]
they would let Yeah.
00:32:21 [Speaker 4]
They would let go of, like, their stranglehold on what they were trying to do and let themselves play in some ways.
00:32:27 [Speaker 4]
And that those were moments where they, like, moments of real discovery and what they were trying to do.
00:32:32 [Speaker 4]
Everybody had some version of that.
00:32:35 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:32:36 [Speaker 4]
Which when we when we were sort of figuring all that out, we both talked about the fact that we don't we don't actually teach much about play Mhmm.
00:32:45 [Speaker 4]
In our design courses.
00:32:48 [Speaker 4]
And I've like, I I keep saying to myself, I'm gonna do it.
00:32:51 [Speaker 4]
I haven't done it yet.
00:32:52 [Speaker 4]
But like I haven't started doing it.
00:32:53 [Speaker 4]
You've started doing it?
00:32:54 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:32:54 [Speaker 4]
I haven't started doing it.
00:32:55 [Speaker 4]
But, like, being really specific about what that freeing experience is like.
00:33:00 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:33:00 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:33:01 [Speaker 4]
Because, certainly for my students, they are trying to rationalize every decision that they make because they wanna make sure it's correct.
00:33:07 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:33:08 [Speaker 4]
And they don't allow enough play to sort of be able to use their intuitive brain to to discover things that that their rational brain is never gonna discover.
00:33:19 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:33:19 [Speaker 3]
So I'm creating workshops and things for in class Yeah.
00:33:22 [Speaker 3]
That will help
00:33:24 [Speaker 4]
Oh, yeah.
00:33:24 [Speaker 3]
Help to do that?
00:33:24 [Speaker 3]
I need to do that.
00:33:25 [Speaker 4]
I'll start.
00:33:26 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:33:26 [Speaker 3]
It's been really interesting.
00:33:28 [Speaker 2]
I really like to go to in class workshop because I don't have to work on the main project.
00:33:33 [Speaker 4]
Me too.
00:33:34 [Speaker 2]
It's and it's fun.
00:33:35 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:33:36 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:33:37 [Speaker 2]
I've talked about fun, and I've heard that come up multiple times in designers talking about their own processes on this show.
00:33:43 [Speaker 2]
Like, they sometimes wanna have fun.
00:33:46 [Speaker 2]
They're like, oh, I was just kind of just doing it.
00:33:48 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:33:48 [Speaker 4]
Seeing seeing around
00:33:49 [Speaker 2]
what happened.
00:33:50 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:33:50 [Speaker 2]
Messing around.
00:33:51 [Speaker 2]
Like Yeah.
00:33:51 [Speaker 2]
I'm guessing those are all things people said or just
00:33:53 [Speaker 4]
like Yeah.
00:33:54 [Speaker 4]
They all had some version of that.
00:33:57 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:33:58 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:33:58 [Speaker 4]
Or just doing.
00:33:59 [Speaker 4]
Yep.
00:33:59 [Speaker 2]
Almost.
00:34:00 [Speaker 2]
Just make something.
00:34:00 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:34:00 [Speaker 4]
Just make something.
00:34:02 [Speaker 2]
What also was interesting is you was it only you that traveled to the spaces?
00:34:07 [Speaker 4]
That was my deal.
00:34:08 [Speaker 3]
I said, I'm not traveling.
00:34:09 [Speaker 2]
Oh, you didn't wanna travel?
00:34:10 [Speaker 4]
I didn't want to.
00:34:11 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:34:11 [Speaker 4]
Because remember in the beginning, you were like, you can do this one and you can do that one.
00:34:14 [Speaker 4]
And then I called you and I tried to quit the whole thing.
00:34:16 [Speaker 4]
Oh, yeah.
00:34:17 [Speaker 4]
She did try to quit at some point.
00:34:18 [Speaker 4]
I tried to quit a couple of times.
00:34:20 [Speaker 4]
It was none of them were successful.
00:34:21 [Speaker 3]
I didn't let them work.
00:34:22 [Speaker 4]
But it was always something that I didn't wanna do, but I didn't wanna, like, completely admit that I didn't wanna do it.
00:34:26 [Speaker 4]
And so I finally was just like, okay.
00:34:28 [Speaker 4]
Well, I don't wanna travel any.
00:34:29 [Speaker 4]
I remember why.
00:34:30 [Speaker 4]
I just didn't want to.
00:34:31 [Speaker 3]
You just yeah.
00:34:32 [Speaker 3]
You just It
00:34:32 [Speaker 4]
caused me some sort of stress that I wasn't into.
00:34:35 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:34:35 [Speaker 4]
And you really loved it.
00:34:36 [Speaker 4]
And so I was like, oh, this is perfect.
00:34:38 [Speaker 2]
Where's the farthest you went, would you say?
00:34:41 [Speaker 3]
Went to, San Francisco Mhmm.
00:34:43 [Speaker 3]
And, San Jose.
00:34:45 [Speaker 3]
And they're right near each other, so that's not
00:34:47 [Speaker 2]
But this far, yeah.
00:34:48 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:34:49 [Speaker 2]
I was interested because you got to see all their, like, real spaces.
00:34:52 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:34:53 [Speaker 2]
And that's what I love.
00:34:54 [Speaker 2]
I love to like to see people's, like, desks and photos.
00:34:57 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:34:57 [Speaker 2]
As a messy worker of my own desk, I love, like, the spaces in which people design in.
00:35:03 [Speaker 2]
I think it says a lot about their practice.
00:35:06 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:35:06 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:35:06 [Speaker 2]
So, like, what was that like?
00:35:08 [Speaker 2]
And, like, I almost in my head, I'm imagining, were you able to, like, connect things in their space with what they were saying?
00:35:16 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:35:17 [Speaker 3]
You can oh, you can see their personality in that space too.
00:35:20 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:35:20 [Speaker 3]
It's really some were very clean.
00:35:23 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:35:24 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:35:24 [Speaker 3]
Because they had a a pretty small space or or some, it was just everywhere.
00:35:30 [Speaker 3]
And it was, you know, they they still had a small space, but it it was just all all their work was everywhere.
00:35:36 [Speaker 3]
But, yeah, it was really a privilege to, like, kinda get behind the scenes and, like, see who's, maybe what personality they were even just from their space.
00:35:46 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:35:47 [Speaker 3]
And, you know, some have lots of plants and some don't.
00:35:50 [Speaker 3]
And, you know, it's just, and some were super professional and in their you know, in the way they presented the work that they had.
00:35:57 [Speaker 3]
But, yeah, it was it was it was just that that was my favorite part.
00:36:02 [Speaker 3]
It was just get to kinda figure how to, ease them into it and let me in
00:36:08 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:36:08 [Speaker 3]
And then kinda get, get get into their space and and talk with them, in a way that they felt comfortable too.
00:36:17 [Speaker 3]
So it was really it was a learning experience for me for sure.
00:36:21 [Speaker 3]
The Telpis one was with Marshall.
00:36:23 [Speaker 3]
He's the architect that we're talking about.
00:36:28 [Speaker 3]
But after about three hours of talking, he smiled.
00:36:33 [Speaker 3]
And it was awesome.
00:36:34 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:36:34 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:36:35 [Speaker 3]
We got one picture.
00:36:36 [Speaker 4]
He's a pretty serious character.
00:36:37 [Speaker 3]
He's very good.
00:36:38 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:36:38 [Speaker 3]
But, yeah.
00:36:39 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:36:39 [Speaker 4]
It it was interesting because I Courtney would come back, and the first thing I would get is the recording.
00:36:45 [Speaker 4]
Because we had Rob Culpepper was our photographer, and so I wouldn't see so I would have no visual of what had happened.
00:36:52 [Speaker 4]
Sometimes she you'd have a couple of things on your phone.
00:36:54 [Speaker 4]
You'd be like, oh, this was cool.
00:36:55 [Speaker 4]
Look at this.
00:36:56 [Speaker 4]
Or Yeah.
00:36:57 [Speaker 4]
But I would listen to the interviews, and try to figure out what they were pointing to or talking about and Yeah.
00:37:05 [Speaker 4]
Envisioning.
00:37:06 [Speaker 4]
And and and I'm making notes on the as I'm transcribing and and reading through things, and then the photography would come in and that layering.
00:37:14 [Speaker 4]
So it was funny because Courtney got absorbed, like, you know, she was immersed in it.
00:37:20 [Speaker 4]
And I got it in these weird little layers.
00:37:23 [Speaker 4]
So I think that was probably good because we both approached the content slightly differently.
00:37:29 [Speaker 4]
And so it made me hyper focused on words, and I think you were Yeah.
00:37:33 [Speaker 4]
Were pretty focused on imagery because that was core to your memory of it, but I didn't have that.
00:37:38 [Speaker 4]
So I was hyper focused on words.
00:37:41 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:37:41 [Speaker 3]
The photographer, he traveled with me.
00:37:43 [Speaker 3]
And that actually, that was key to make sure that he we were, and and we we got to a point where we we we got we got it down to an art of, like, how Mhmm.
00:37:53 [Speaker 3]
How what the what shots he was gonna get and what he knew what I was gonna talk about.
00:37:57 [Speaker 3]
And so he could he could plan out exactly what he was gonna get.
00:38:01 [Speaker 3]
And so we were in sync and it was really Yeah.
00:38:04 [Speaker 2]
Did you know him before?
00:38:05 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:38:06 [Speaker 3]
He, We knew him.
00:38:07 [Speaker 3]
Well, I know we knew of him.
00:38:08 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:38:08 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:09 [Speaker 4]
He was a photographer at Rural Studio.
00:38:11 [Speaker 4]
Rural Studio is an arm of, the architecture program.
00:38:14 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:14 [Speaker 4]
So we were looking for somebody who did, portraiture.
00:38:18 [Speaker 4]
Portraiture.
00:38:19 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:19 [Speaker 4]
And was sort of interested in people, really.
00:38:22 [Speaker 4]
And he has done some of that with the with the clients out at Rural Studio.
00:38:26 [Speaker 4]
And so I think Rusty Smith maybe recommended him to us.
00:38:30 [Speaker 4]
And we we did a Zoom interview, and
00:38:33 [Speaker 3]
we were
00:38:33 [Speaker 4]
like, yeah.
00:38:33 [Speaker 4]
That's that's perfect.
00:38:35 [Speaker 4]
That's gonna work.
00:38:35 [Speaker 4]
He's good.
00:38:36 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:37 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:37 [Speaker 4]
So that was I mean, in all honesty, everything was pretty easy.
00:38:40 [Speaker 4]
Like, if you think about big picture Yeah.
00:38:42 [Speaker 4]
Oh, definitely.
00:38:43 [Speaker 4]
Of, like, the people who were involved, it was all pretty easy.
00:38:46 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:46 [Speaker 3]
All the pieces lined up.
00:38:48 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:38:48 [Speaker 4]
It was nice.
00:38:49 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:38:50 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:38:50 [Speaker 4]
Lucky.
00:38:53 [Speaker 2]
Most people you have have, like, a separate design space.
00:38:56 [Speaker 2]
Like, I know Trey Seals has, like, a has a barn.
00:38:59 [Speaker 2]
Right?
00:38:59 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:39:00 [Speaker 2]
Like, a shed or something.
00:39:01 [Speaker 2]
I don't know what it would be called.
00:39:02 [Speaker 2]
House.
00:39:03 [Speaker 2]
It's carriage house,
00:39:03 [Speaker 3]
isn't it?
00:39:04 [Speaker 4]
Or It
00:39:04 [Speaker 3]
was a barn.
00:39:05 [Speaker 3]
It was a barn that they transitioned into his studio.
00:39:08 [Speaker 3]
I mean, like, the hay block was still there that he had made into into a nice upstairs.
00:39:14 [Speaker 3]
Right?
00:39:14 [Speaker 2]
I wanna design barn.
00:39:17 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:39:18 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:39:18 [Speaker 3]
But he that was his studio, and then he lived right, like, a couple steps over the the house that he lived in on the farm, but it was his parents' his family farm.
00:39:29 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:39:30 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:39:30 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:39:31 [Speaker 4]
And some people just had, like, a a room.
00:39:33 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:39:33 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:39:34 [Speaker 3]
Like, they were sitting
00:39:34 [Speaker 4]
on the floor, working on a low table.
00:39:37 [Speaker 4]
So just a room in their apartment or Yeah.
00:39:40 [Speaker 4]
It was a it was a bit of
00:39:42 [Speaker 3]
a mix.
00:39:43 [Speaker 3]
It was.
00:39:43 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:39:43 [Speaker 3]
Because well, Marshall's was his own studio space, and then he that that was his professional space, and then he's he lives somewhere else.
00:39:51 [Speaker 3]
But, yeah.
00:39:53 [Speaker 3]
Apartments, home, houses.
00:39:55 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:39:55 [Speaker 3]
All all these different places.
00:39:57 [Speaker 2]
I was just curious because Yeah.
00:39:59 [Speaker 2]
A lot of the, like, I guess, higher I don't know if I say higher echelon, but that sounds really bougie.
00:40:06 [Speaker 2]
Designers, like, have a separate space, like a place they rent out or, like, another, like, oh, their garage is converted or something.
00:40:13 [Speaker 2]
And then some people are just like, oh, it's just like the corner of my room.
00:40:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:40:16 [Speaker 4]
Or the corner of my apartment.
00:40:17 [Speaker 4]
We saw you you saw every Yeah.
00:40:20 [Speaker 4]
Possible.
00:40:20 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:40:21 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:40:21 [Speaker 4]
With all very successful designers making whatever their personal situation was work, where they were doing their their design work.
00:40:30 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:40:31 [Speaker 3]
You can you can do your work anywhere.
00:40:33 [Speaker 3]
If you do wanna separate your space though, you if you need that mental separation, I mean, some of them did need that,
00:40:40 [Speaker 4]
but they
00:40:41 [Speaker 3]
they felt like they needed that, like, a space to create a mess.
00:40:45 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:40:45 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:40:45 [Speaker 3]
And leave it.
00:40:46 [Speaker 3]
And leave it.
00:40:46 [Speaker 4]
And leave it.
00:40:47 [Speaker 4]
Leave it.
00:40:47 [Speaker 4]
And that's
00:40:48 [Speaker 3]
that's hard to do right now as as a as a senior.
00:40:52 [Speaker 3]
I mean,
00:40:52 [Speaker 2]
it's to leave out.
00:40:54 [Speaker 2]
I liked having a desk though.
00:40:56 [Speaker 3]
Going for it.
00:40:56 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:40:57 [Speaker 3]
That's good.
00:40:57 [Speaker 2]
I liked having a little desk that I other other classes that you have to move all your stuff.
00:41:01 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:41:01 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:41:01 [Speaker 2]
And I am Yeah.
00:41:03 [Speaker 2]
Kind of messy.
00:41:05 [Speaker 2]
Not on purpose.
00:41:06 [Speaker 2]
I just Yeah.
00:41:09 [Speaker 2]
I got that brain.
00:41:10 [Speaker 4]
That's just you.
00:41:11 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:41:11 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:41:11 [Speaker 2]
So I liked having my own space in the corner where no one could see.
00:41:14 [Speaker 2]
And then when I have my professors come in to review my work, I'm like, don't look at this.
00:41:18 [Speaker 2]
Look at the stuff on the walls.
00:41:20 [Speaker 3]
But they actually wanna see it, because these are pretty cool.
00:41:23 [Speaker 2]
I have a tackle box that has all my tools in it.
00:41:26 [Speaker 2]
Perfect.
00:41:27 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:41:27 [Speaker 2]
My mom's tackle box from vet school.
00:41:31 [Speaker 2]
But yeah, I mean, kind of going to like the main thesis of this book, you know, there's this kind of thin, sometimes probably thicker line that comes through a lot of designers' processes.
00:41:43 [Speaker 2]
Was there something that in kind of your beginning going into making this book, you're like, this is definitely gonna be the line, and then you just realize that was wrong.
00:41:52 [Speaker 2]
Was there anything like that that happened while interviewing?
00:41:55 [Speaker 2]
We'll see.
00:41:55 [Speaker 2]
Or, like, shocking elements?
00:41:57 [Speaker 2]
If there isn't, that's okay.
00:41:58 [Speaker 2]
I just I I like the juicy bits.
00:42:01 [Speaker 3]
Juicy for the wrong group for that.
00:42:05 [Speaker 4]
The worst we have is reviewer number three.
00:42:07 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:42:07 [Speaker 2]
That was Well, now I'm so curious about this reviewer number three.
00:42:10 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:42:10 [Speaker 4]
They just made fun.
00:42:11 [Speaker 4]
What did
00:42:11 [Speaker 3]
she say?
00:42:12 [Speaker 4]
Oh, I probably have it written down.
00:42:14 [Speaker 4]
Keep talking.
00:42:14 [Speaker 4]
I'll see if I have it.
00:42:16 [Speaker 4]
That's funny.
00:42:17 [Speaker 4]
We we didn't
00:42:18 [Speaker 3]
I mean, she pretty much said we didn't know what we're talking about.
00:42:20 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:42:20 [Speaker 4]
She basically said these guys don't know what they're talking about.
00:42:24 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:42:24 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:42:24 [Speaker 2]
I mean, if if your thesis was, like, there's this one thing and you kind of knew what it was, then there's nothing really
00:42:31 [Speaker 3]
We knew we for sure knew that there there had to be commonalities Mhmm.
00:42:35 [Speaker 3]
Between disciplines.
00:42:36 [Speaker 3]
And so I think that that was
00:42:39 [Speaker 4]
that was part of it.
00:42:40 [Speaker 3]
That's why we wanted to do that disciplinary approach to it.
00:42:43 [Speaker 3]
Whereas a a lot of publishers wanted us, okay, just do one on graphic design.
00:42:47 [Speaker 3]
I mean, that makes more sense.
00:42:48 [Speaker 3]
But,
00:42:49 [Speaker 2]
no, we wanna see the
00:42:51 [Speaker 3]
I'm gonna see the And there are
00:42:52 [Speaker 4]
there are there are process books on graphic design.
00:42:54 [Speaker 4]
There are process books on architecture design.
00:42:56 [Speaker 4]
Like, that that those should exist.
00:42:59 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:00 [Speaker 4]
None of them as like, I feel like we worked really hard to make ours easy to read.
00:43:05 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:43:05 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:05 [Speaker 4]
And so we tried really hard to stay away from jargon and and things that got too esoteric or just difficult to digest.
00:43:14 [Speaker 4]
We really tried to make it easy writing and easy reading.
00:43:17 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:18 [Speaker 4]
Because some of the design process books are so thick.
00:43:21 [Speaker 4]
Like, both of us are like, oh, I don't know what this is.
00:43:24 [Speaker 3]
Couldn't couldn't digest them.
00:43:25 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:43:26 [Speaker 3]
It's too much.
00:43:27 [Speaker 3]
Maybe it was the failing forward or the talking about mistakes.
00:43:29 [Speaker 3]
Oh, yeah.
00:43:30 [Speaker 4]
There are
00:43:30 [Speaker 3]
a lot of Yeah.
00:43:31 [Speaker 3]
We've I thought that people would really be able to dig deep into that.
00:43:35 [Speaker 4]
Nobody would talk about impostor syndrome.
00:43:37 [Speaker 4]
Did you remember that?
00:43:38 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:38 [Speaker 4]
Nobody would talk about it.
00:43:39 [Speaker 4]
Nobody would own up to that one.
00:43:41 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:41 [Speaker 2]
That's crazy.
00:43:42 [Speaker 2]
I don't I own up that one all the
00:43:43 [Speaker 4]
time.
00:43:43 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:44 [Speaker 4]
Same.
00:43:44 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:45 [Speaker 4]
Exactly.
00:43:46 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:43:46 [Speaker 4]
There were some that we we did do this kind of list of, I guess, what ended up in the book being called key observations.
00:43:52 [Speaker 4]
But we sort of had this list of things we thought we were gonna find.
00:43:55 [Speaker 3]
Yes.
00:43:55 [Speaker 4]
And there were a a couple that we we just we couldn't get it out of people.
00:44:00 [Speaker 4]
And in the end, we I was starting like, you gotta ask this very specific question.
00:44:04 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:44:05 [Speaker 4]
Try to get that out of someone.
00:44:06 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:44:07 [Speaker 4]
And it was it was hard.
00:44:09 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:44:09 [Speaker 3]
And it was about it was about mistakes.
00:44:11 [Speaker 4]
It was about mistakes, failing forward.
00:44:12 [Speaker 4]
Failing forward, imposter syndrome.
00:44:14 [Speaker 4]
Any anything with, like, a a slightly not negative, but maybe challenging.
00:44:19 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:44:20 [Speaker 4]
Personally challenging.
00:44:21 [Speaker 4]
Maybe we had a little trouble Mhmm.
00:44:23 [Speaker 4]
Getting out of folks.
00:44:24 [Speaker 2]
I think it's like it's also like that's admitting a little bit of failure.
00:44:28 [Speaker 2]
Like, you talk about process sometimes, but once you say, oh, I've made a mistake, it's kind of
00:44:32 [Speaker 4]
you have
00:44:32 [Speaker 2]
to admit that there was a failure.
00:44:34 [Speaker 2]
People don't like doing that, I think.
00:44:36 [Speaker 2]
Even though
00:44:37 [Speaker 4]
they failed.
00:44:38 [Speaker 4]
Everybody so the failing forward bit, everybody talked about it, but in a slightly less onerous way.
00:44:46 [Speaker 4]
Like, they would talk about this time of play, I'm in a different direction that wasn't actually solving the problem they were trying to solve, but led them to something new and different.
00:44:55 [Speaker 4]
And so Mhmm.
00:44:56 [Speaker 4]
You know, we we call that failing forward, but, but other other designers were kind of framing it slightly differently, but it was the same idea we were trying to think through.
00:45:07 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:45:08 [Speaker 3]
And you're right, the imposter syndrome, not everybody wanted to
00:45:11 [Speaker 4]
And we didn't get any.
00:45:12 [Speaker 4]
We don't have that referenced anywhere in the book.
00:45:14 [Speaker 4]
We couldn't get anyone to talk about it.
00:45:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:45:16 [Speaker 2]
That's crazy.
00:45:17 [Speaker 4]
I talk about it.
00:45:18 [Speaker 4]
For sure.
00:45:18 [Speaker 4]
I talk about it all the time.
00:45:20 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:45:21 [Speaker 4]
That was Interesting.
00:45:22 [Speaker 4]
Surprising that that didn't we thought that would come up a lot, and it just didn't.
00:45:26 [Speaker 4]
For sure.
00:45:26 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:45:27 [Speaker 2]
So Yeah.
00:45:28 [Speaker 2]
I mean, I was thinking when you were talking about the rooms, and like, you had people had to warm up to you being there.
00:45:34 [Speaker 2]
It is kind of like, I think, at least for me, like my process and my space is like an extension of myself.
00:45:41 [Speaker 2]
So it's kind of like showing you like, personal.
00:45:43 [Speaker 2]
Here's my heart and my soul on my inside.
00:45:46 [Speaker 2]
Look at them, and it's like you're opening up to judgment.
00:45:49 [Speaker 2]
Oh, absolutely.
00:45:50 [Speaker 2]
And that's scary.
00:45:51 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:45:51 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:45:51 [Speaker 4]
I have I have role artist friends who do not allow people in their studio.
00:45:56 [Speaker 4]
Like, that's a thing.
00:45:57 [Speaker 4]
Like, don't nobody comes in here until I feel like it's ready to show.
00:46:02 [Speaker 4]
So it it was actually really remarkable that all of these folks were open Yeah.
00:46:08 [Speaker 4]
To that.
00:46:08 [Speaker 4]
Because it's it's exactly that.
00:46:10 [Speaker 4]
You're really bearing yourself open.
00:46:12 [Speaker 3]
And photographing it too.
00:46:13 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:46:13 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:46:13 [Speaker 3]
I don't work for you.
00:46:15 [Speaker 4]
And it works forever.
00:46:15 [Speaker 3]
And photographing it.
00:46:16 [Speaker 3]
Forever in in a book.
00:46:18 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:46:18 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:46:18 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:46:19 [Speaker 4]
But they they got when the agreement we had with all of them is that they would be able to the copy, they would be able to approve the imagery.
00:46:27 [Speaker 4]
If they said anything they didn't want Yes.
00:46:30 [Speaker 4]
Written, we would strike it and we were really good and faithful about that with all of them.
00:46:36 [Speaker 4]
So they approved everything that went out.
00:46:40 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:46:40 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:46:41 [Speaker 3]
They did.
00:46:45 [Speaker 2]
See, now I'm I'm now I'm failing forward.
00:46:48 [Speaker 2]
I'm trying to figure out, like, a transition question or a next question.
00:46:54 [Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah.
00:46:54 [Speaker 2]
I asked I wanted to ask about the design of the book itself.
00:46:57 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
00:46:58 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:46:58 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:46:58 [Speaker 2]
Because both designers and you have this one book you're making.
00:47:01 [Speaker 2]
So, like, where was that starting point?
00:47:04 [Speaker 2]
Because obviously, were you working with kind of an idea of what it would look like when you were working on the copy?
00:47:10 [Speaker 2]
Or was that completely after you had the copy?
00:47:13 [Speaker 4]
Oh, it was simultaneous.
00:47:15 [Speaker 4]
I think so.
00:47:15 [Speaker 2]
For both of you.
00:47:17 [Speaker 3]
We did have well, because of the proposal, you have to pitch the we had to pitch the concept.
00:47:21 [Speaker 4]
And so we did have to do some layouts to kind of get
00:47:24 [Speaker 3]
them, figure out the the grid and how to work.
00:47:27 [Speaker 3]
But but then it just evolved from there.
00:47:30 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:47:30 [Speaker 4]
And Courtney took the lead on graphic design.
00:47:32 [Speaker 4]
I mean, I think the way that we've worked in the past with Courtney as a graphic designer and me as an information designer, we just sort of naturally fall back into those kinds of roles.
00:47:43 [Speaker 4]
And it and it worked because we like, Courtney can put graphic things in front of me, and I can give feedback, and I can sort of think about structure things.
00:47:52 [Speaker 4]
And Courtney, like, it just worked really well because we sort of both know what each other does, and we both kind of do both things.
00:47:59 [Speaker 4]
We we did we were really distinct about it that Courtney was the graphic designer on this.
00:48:06 [Speaker 4]
So it was it was a funny it was like a collaboration with a lead Mhmm.
00:48:10 [Speaker 4]
On things like the the graphics, I would say.
00:48:13 [Speaker 4]
That's fair.
00:48:13 [Speaker 4]
Right?
00:48:13 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:48:14 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:48:15 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:48:16 [Speaker 2]
You mentioned, like, information design, and I feel like a lot of I'm I always say, like, a lot of students don't know this because I I I didn't.
00:48:24 [Speaker 2]
But or or even if people don't understand the importance of, like, laying out the book to be read.
00:48:30 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:48:30 [Speaker 2]
Like, you can't just write it one way and it'd be perfect to read.
00:48:33 [Speaker 2]
Like, you have to design that interaction with people.
00:48:37 [Speaker 2]
So, like, what was that process like of of getting all of, like, interviews and then having to find the through line and having to write, like, an afterword or all these other things?
00:48:46 [Speaker 2]
Like, what was that like as a as as a designers almost?
00:48:51 [Speaker 2]
It was a lot.
00:48:52 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:48:52 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:48:52 [Speaker 3]
It did.
00:48:53 [Speaker 3]
But I think what we found out in the end was well, we mostly started with the interviews.
00:48:58 [Speaker 3]
So figuring out how what's the experience of trying to read this interview as a as a case study.
00:49:06 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:49:06 [Speaker 3]
But a more of a summary.
00:49:07 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:49:08 [Speaker 3]
And how do you connect that back to the key observations Mhmm.
00:49:11 [Speaker 3]
And how those things are back and forth.
00:49:14 [Speaker 3]
That was really that became really important.
00:49:16 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:49:17 [Speaker 3]
And then we've so that it's not it can be read from beginning to end, but it's actually more fun to read jumping around.
00:49:25 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:49:25 [Speaker 3]
And so we figured it out.
00:49:27 [Speaker 4]
Designs that you could jump around,
00:49:28 [Speaker 3]
like a reference book almost.
00:49:30 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:49:30 [Speaker 3]
And then and and then we have at the end of every case study, even more of a summary that's kinda takeaways that has questions at the end that you can ask yourself and then fill that out.
00:49:42 [Speaker 3]
And and I've actually, I have students doing it now.
00:49:46 [Speaker 3]
Oh, you did?
00:49:46 [Speaker 4]
Reading it.
00:49:47 [Speaker 3]
Nice.
00:49:47 [Speaker 3]
And reading the interviews and and answering the questions.
00:49:50 [Speaker 3]
Oh, nice.
00:49:50 [Speaker 3]
And the answers are amazing.
00:49:52 [Speaker 3]
Yeah?
00:49:52 [Speaker 3]
I it's so fantastic.
00:49:54 [Speaker 3]
Oh, cool.
00:49:54 [Speaker 2]
I'll I'll just Yeah.
00:49:55 [Speaker 2]
I'll just go share
00:49:56 [Speaker 3]
that with me.
00:49:57 [Speaker 3]
It's, It's a workbook.
00:49:58 [Speaker 3]
And it it's it worked.
00:50:00 [Speaker 4]
It it was Yeah.
00:50:02 [Speaker 4]
And it was it like, that or figuring out how to organize that, that all came about through working through the material.
00:50:11 [Speaker 4]
And we had this really archaic process where we printed the scripts and we made Printing them.
00:50:18 [Speaker 4]
Oh, no.
00:50:18 [Speaker 4]
It gets it gets much worse.
00:50:20 [Speaker 4]
You're gonna be horrified by this, but this is how we did it.
00:50:23 [Speaker 4]
We printed everything.
00:50:24 [Speaker 4]
I mean Yeah.
00:50:25 [Speaker 4]
Thousands of sheets of paper.
00:50:27 [Speaker 4]
Any any idea that was interesting, we highlighted it, and we wrote a note in the margin that was a topic that we could we thought we could write about.
00:50:34 [Speaker 4]
So we might write in the margin, inspiration or influences or something like that.
00:50:40 [Speaker 4]
So we did that for all of the interviews.
00:50:42 [Speaker 4]
And then we went back and we cut those things apart.
00:50:46 [Speaker 4]
Like literally Users.
00:50:47 [Speaker 4]
Cut it apart.
00:50:48 [Speaker 4]
And so we would have, I don't know, we had thousands of these strips of paper that we had to have each author's, each interviewee's name on it.
00:50:55 [Speaker 4]
Like, it was this huge categorization system.
00:50:58 [Speaker 4]
And then we came up with similar topic piles that we could kind of put those in.
00:51:02 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:51:03 [Speaker 4]
So that we could begin to see where alignments were happening and how we could focus a narrative around that topic based on, narrative around that topic based on what the interviewees had actually said.
00:51:13 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:51:13 [Speaker 4]
And so Yeah.
00:51:14 [Speaker 4]
It it was a crazy, like, real analog because
00:51:19 [Speaker 2]
we we would have loved it.
00:51:20 [Speaker 4]
Insane.
00:51:20 [Speaker 4]
We would have
00:51:22 [Speaker 2]
very interesting.
00:51:22 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:51:22 [Speaker 4]
We couldn't have done it digitally.
00:51:24 [Speaker 4]
It just was collage and possible.
00:51:26 [Speaker 4]
It was there was word collages.
00:51:27 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:51:27 [Speaker 4]
And then the interesting thing is that we found we were working over at the our research park, which is the collaborative space for our college, but we so we had all of these sheets taped up with words and notes, and then we saw some other offices, and we're like, they have cut apart something and taped it back up together on the wall.
00:51:46 [Speaker 4]
It's like, do you remember when we saw that in one of the designers' offices?
00:51:48 [Speaker 4]
We're like, oh, that's beautiful.
00:51:50 [Speaker 4]
We have a good influence there too.
00:51:52 [Speaker 4]
They see what we're doing and think it might be helpful.
00:51:54 [Speaker 4]
But it was I don't I don't know how many sheets of papers that then we had to number, and then we had to write summaries of everything we numbered and then we had to throw things out that wouldn't fit.
00:52:06 [Speaker 4]
I mean, it was it was bananas.
00:52:08 [Speaker 4]
So that's how we did that.
00:52:10 [Speaker 3]
Okay.
00:52:10 [Speaker 3]
But it was about we want to create an experience where that they could we could cross reference And
00:52:16 [Speaker 4]
there was all of that back and forth.
00:52:17 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:52:17 [Speaker 4]
In order to cross reference it Yeah.
00:52:19 [Speaker 4]
We had to We had to do it by hand.
00:52:21 [Speaker 4]
Do it by hand.
00:52:22 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:52:22 [Speaker 2]
That's kind of incredible.
00:52:24 [Speaker 2]
I kinda love that.
00:52:25 [Speaker 2]
I do love that.
00:52:25 [Speaker 2]
I kind of love it.
00:52:26 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:52:27 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:52:27 [Speaker 4]
We have this crazy notebook that, maybe I have it.
00:52:31 [Speaker 4]
I don't know where it is, but it it has these topics and then it has these pasted up sheets that have all these notes on it with, like, we cut it or the person's number or the and then you can reference that to some other numbered thing that we wrote about.
00:52:45 [Speaker 4]
And and that was the tool we used to do all of the cross referencing in the book, which is heavily cross referenced.
00:52:52 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:52:53 [Speaker 2]
That's so interesting.
00:52:54 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:52:55 [Speaker 2]
Kind of to end this out, is there any key takeaways you want the readers to kind of come through with this book?
00:53:08 [Speaker 4]
I don't know.
00:53:09 [Speaker 4]
You know, we didn't write about this specifically, but I would this is gonna I don't want this to sound weird, so I'm just gonna try to say it.
00:53:16 [Speaker 4]
Okay.
00:53:16 [Speaker 2]
Weird.
00:53:16 [Speaker 2]
I can cut it.
00:53:17 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:53:18 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:18 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:18 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:18 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:19 [Speaker 4]
I don't think that weird.
00:53:20 [Speaker 4]
I can cut it.
00:53:21 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:53:21 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:21 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:21 [Speaker 4]
No.
00:53:21 [Speaker 4]
It's not gonna be weird.
00:53:22 [Speaker 4]
But it's sort of like with all the instructions we gave and the key observations, a lot of it had to do with sort of relaxing Yes.
00:53:31 [Speaker 4]
And starting and trying and trust your process and trust yourself and experiment with tools and it it had a lot to do with, like, saying not to take yourself seriously is not quite right.
00:53:45 [Speaker 4]
To say don't focus too much is not quite right, but it was this sort of attitude of if you attempt it, you will get somewhere.
00:53:53 [Speaker 4]
If you don't attempt any anything, you won't get anywhere.
00:53:56 [Speaker 4]
And so it's Yes.
00:53:57 [Speaker 4]
It's the act of the process Mhmm.
00:53:59 [Speaker 4]
Is how you're going to learn about process.
00:54:02 [Speaker 4]
But you have to start it without knowing it in order to get somewhere.
00:54:07 [Speaker 4]
It's a it's like you have to be really, really comfortable being really uncomfortable, and you gotta get really used to to that over and over and over again.
00:54:15 [Speaker 4]
Yes.
00:54:15 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:54:16 [Speaker 4]
Yeah.
00:54:17 [Speaker 3]
And I think yeah.
00:54:19 [Speaker 3]
For for our students, it's like, you know, and I know that project deadlines are coming.
00:54:26 [Speaker 3]
Yeah.
00:54:27 [Speaker 3]
But there there there is so much value in continue to experiment even up to even to the final because that's actually what I'm looking for anyway.
00:54:35 [Speaker 3]
That's what I wanna see.
00:54:37 [Speaker 3]
I don't know if, like, this being is exactly what we need right there.
00:54:41 [Speaker 3]
We just need to, like, find, find a way to figure out your process.
00:54:46 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:54:48 [Speaker 3]
Because that's that's the valuable thing coming out of school, I think, knowing how how you make things and how that's unique to you and what you bring to the
00:54:58 [Speaker 4]
table when you work in
00:54:58 [Speaker 3]
a professional environment.
00:54:58 [Speaker 3]
Mhmm.
00:55:01 [Speaker 3]
Environment.
00:55:03 [Speaker 4]
Mhmm.
00:55:06 [Speaker 1]
Hey.
00:55:06 [Speaker 1]
Thanks for listening to Typespeaks.
00:55:08 [Speaker 1]
Hope you had a good time because I sure
00:55:10 [Speaker 2]
but unfortunately, the episode is over.
00:55:12 [Speaker 2]
But don't worry, you can check us
00:55:13 [Speaker 1]
out in other places.
00:55:15 [Speaker 1]
Be sure to follow the show to listen to every new episode or listen back to some old ones.
00:55:19 [Speaker 1]
Check us out on Instagram at typespeakspod.
00:55:21 [Speaker 1]
And remember, always keep creating and always stay curious.
00:55:25 [Speaker 1]
I'll see you next time.
00:55:26 [Speaker 1]
I've been Ray.