Iconic design studios defined entirely by personal work
Some of design’s most admired studios built their reputations on work nobody paid them to make. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl tours a handful of them, from Experimental Jetset’s decades of posters and House Industries’ fonts and merch to Aaron Draplin’s nonstop stream of personal pieces and Portland’s own Fisk. Along the way, he points out what they share: a specific way of looking at the world, a playful sincerity, and the habit of cranking out whatever they’re passionate about. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on side projects, Why Every Designer Needs a Side Project.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl walks through designers and studios whose personal work came to define them. He starts with a favorite portfolio from a designer whose work stays playful, poetic, and sincere, even as he mounts full exhibitions of his own work.
He then looks at Experimental Jetset, whose portfolio runs back to party flyers from 1996 and who are still making playful work 30 years later, and House Industries, known for mid-century, sign-painter-inspired fonts, books, collaborations with Eames, and design-forward merch.
Calvin closes with Aaron Draplin, who treats small projects like a friend’s hot dog cart logo as seriously as big ones, and Portland’s Fisk, whose music posters and gallery shows exist mostly for the love of it.
Highlights
Showing your own work takes conviction and a perspective worth sharing.
Experimental Jetset has cranked out personal projects for three decades.
House Industries built its aura on fonts, books, and merch.
Draplin’s Cobra Dogs logo for a friend’s hot dog cart helped him break out.
Fisk makes band posters because they love it, not for the money.
Key insights
Sincerity outlasts irony
Calvin admires designers who approach their work with deep sincerity, especially during stretches when the design world leaned too hard into irony.
Volume builds a point of view
Studios like Experimental Jetset have a workhorse approach, making anything they’re passionate about until a distinct way of seeing the world emerges.
Personal work can become the business
House Industries and Draplin show how fonts, merch, and swag that started as personal output can turn into what a studio is best known for.
Small projects deserve full effort
Draplin treats big and small projects as equally important, and a logo for a friend’s hot dog stand became one of his defining pieces.
Detailed analysis
The clip works as evidence for the episode’s larger argument. Each example is a different model of the same idea: Experimental Jetset’s steady archive, House Industries’ analog product line, Draplin’s merch-and-festival hustle, and Fisk’s posters and exhibitions. None of them waited for a client to give them permission.
What ties them together, in Calvin’s telling, isn’t a shared style but a shared conviction. Their personal output is how people came to understand who they are.
Conclusion
For anyone wondering whether side projects matter, Calvin’s tour offers a clear answer: some of the most iconic studios in design exist because of them.
Transcript
Let’s just keep going through these. This is great. I’ve got a bunch in here. I mean, another favorite of mine. Just an absolute insane side project. Look at this. Also, this is just hands down one of my favorite portfolios to ever exist.
Yeah. Ren agrees that he managed to never take himself too seriously. Kept the head-up-his-own-ass vibe away. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of funny, because I love that you say that, because I think his head is pretty far up his own ass. You kind of have to, to want to do full exhibitions about your own work. You have to be so deep into what you do. You have to be proud of it, and you have to really have a perspective that you think is worth sharing. And somehow his stuff still comes across as really playful, really approachable, but still pretty poetic and thought-provoking and artful. And so, yeah, he always really nailed it. He had a level of sincerity, I think, that kind of got lost in the design world at some point. We had a moment where we got a little too deep into the irony world, and it always felt like he approached everything with some pretty deep sincerity.
Okay, for anyone who doesn’t know, this is the website we’re looking at right now of Experimental Jetset, which is an agency that, in my mind, is known for making incredible posters, maybe in the vein of Designers Republic. And this is their portfolio. It’s just this list of everything they’ve done all the way back to 1996. Let’s go look at what they did in 1996. This is just a bunch of flyers for parties, and this stuff is great.
And everything they do feels like they’re just cranking out little side project pieces. They’ve always done a ton of side projects. They’ve also done a ton of exhibitions and museum shows and things like that as well. But everything they do has this feeling of a really workhorse aspect, where they crank out anything they’re passionate about. Yeah, this is a site-specific install that they did. Where was this at? Amsterdam. I think they’re based in Amsterdam. Copenhagen, maybe? Who remembers? Amsterdam. That’s where they’re from.
But everything they do is great. It feels like they really have their own specific way of looking at the world, and they’re still playful. At this point, it’s been 30 years for them, and they’re still doing crazy stuff. I love these little tapestries with these designs they’re working on. Those are great. So, Experimental Jetset, if you don’t know them, hunt them down, dig through everything. They’ve done tons of incredible work. Just very classic, good, quirky print designers, I feel like, is how I think of them.
Next one: another agency who I think basically created the whole aura around them based on their side projects is House Industries. I feel like these folks don’t get called out as much these days. My first creative director I ever worked with, 20 years ago, was absolutely obsessed with these folks, and they were just starting to put out all these beautiful books then that were just about their work, and their books are always beautiful. But they’re really known for having this very mid-century, Eames-like look. They’ve done all the collaborations with Eames that we’ve all seen. They just had this very mid-century, very sign-painter-focused approach to everything. Very, very classically analog.
And they just started producing their designs in all sorts of swag, all sorts of home goods. I feel like they were one of the first agencies that really blew up because they started putting out all their own fonts. I feel like tons of designers do this now, but to me they felt like one of the first that just started cranking out tons of beautiful fonts, and it was always based on this very classic mid-century style. Everything they do feels aggressively Palm Springs, in a way.
Ran says, “You’re hitting on all my favorites.” Yeah, these are heavy hitters here today. These are great. I mean, House is great. I have used all of their fonts and stuff for years. Oh, yeah, this is it. This is a perfect example. At some point, I’d actually be curious how much client work House Industries does now, because to me, I just think of this as their only business now: incredible, design-forward merch.
Okay, last one we’ll talk about. Everyone knows Draplin. Draplin also only exists because of all of his cool side stuff that he does. And I think he approaches it in the same way that Jetset does. Granted, a very different mindset, but he is just about, here is everything I do. He has this really great way of treating the big projects as just as important as the small projects. If you even go on his Instagram, every post is just him designing a little thing based on some inspiration and sharing it. He just does so much great work.
And he’s a cocky bastard, too. So I always love his take on things. And I think one of the things that he was most known for, that blew up early on, was the logo for Cobra Dogs, which was just his friend’s hot dog stand. I’m going to see if I can find it. It’s probably at the very bottom back here somewhere. But he did work for a bunch of snowboard and skateboard brands back in the day, and it was just stuff he was passionate about. And I feel like this logo is when he really started to blow up, when he did the Cobra Dogs logo, for some reason. It was just a friend’s hot dog cart. Cobra Dogs still exists. Had a hot dog from them last year.
So, he’s just another guy who, all he does is crank out stuff, and his website’s a little nicer these days. He did the Super Deluxe stuff. Good cheeseburgers, good aesthetic for the inside. But, yeah, he just has nothing but nonstop. His merch stuff is ridiculous. I feel like this is where you end up seeing him all the time. He just cranks out tons of merch, and then he travels around doing festivals, just selling his own swag. So, very cool stuff.
Oh, yeah. Shout out to another local agency I’ve been crushing on that feels like a ton of fun side projects: Fisk. Yeah. Bejon, let’s pull up Fisk. They’re local folks. I don’t know what is on their website these days. This says permanently closed on Google, because they had a location up on MLK. But, yeah, Fisk is always doing crazy stuff. I think Fisk is currently doing this kind of gallery residency inside the Wieden+Kennedy space here in Portland. And so, yeah, Fisk Gallery at Wieden+Kennedy.
But their stuff is great. Yeah. This whole thing here on the right is a survey of music posters and everything that they’ve done over the years. And, you know, they’re just doing this stuff for fun. Nobody’s getting rich off of doing posters for bands, but they just crank them out, and the stuff looks great. This is an exhibition that they did at PNCA here in Portland. They actually just did a whole exhibition of their poster work. Really great. Sweet. Oh.