Why every designer needs a side project

Transcript

Intro and studio news

What’s going on, everybody? Welcome to You’re Not the Audience. Today I’m going to talk about why every designer needs a side project. But let’s get started with what You’re Not the Audience is. This is a weekly live show where I break down brands, products, and subcultures that stand out by not appealing to everyone. I’m Calvin, creative director at Parliament. We’re a brand transformation agency that helps brands reimagine themselves when they’re facing big changes, and we help them do that through strategy, identity, positioning, messaging, all that good stuff.

Today is going to be a fun episode. We’re talking about something I’m always really, really passionate about, which is why designers should always have side projects going on in their lives, and what I think that says about designers when they’re showing that work. We’ll do some dives into some of my side projects that I work on. And if anybody drops any into the chat, we will go through other folks’ side projects if they’ve got them up online somewhere. So keep that in mind. If anybody’s in chat right now and you’ve got side projects that you’re working on in your life, throw them in the chat and we’ll see what they are.

I think it’s going to be a pretty simple episode. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to eke together an episode this week. It’s been so crazy this week, so I’m glad I was able to squeak it in. As far as starting with our normal news and obsessions, there’s not really a whole lot of news and obsessions this week. I think this whole episode is about obsessions in a way, and the things that we obsess over as designers.

So not really any big news. It was just a really big heads-down week at Parliament. We had clients in town, so a lot of meetings with them—our clients at Netlify, who have been a blast to work with. I think we’re nearing the end of a big, long brand strategy project with them. We’re working on some messaging for them right now. And I think they’re about to do—I mean, I guess maybe this is insider knowledge—but I think they’re on the verge of a big reinvention of the company, in a good way, and just getting really clear messaging, really clear strategy behind them. They’ve been a blast to work with. So that’s been what’s been on our agenda this week. It’s been a lot of that.

So let’s just get into it today. Might be a short one today. Is that possible? Is there a possibility of a short live show right now? This is just a subject that comes up a lot for me, and it’s been on my mind to talk about. I don’t know how much of a deep dive there is in it, but I think it’s important. So how’s everybody doing in chat today? Everyone good? You got any side projects you want to share in chat? I know one of our regulars in chat, Jared, might be getting a shout-out today, because I’m talking about weirdo designers who make side projects. Oh yeah, Fuel in the Tank—we got Ryan here. Ryan, I know you’re working on some weird side projects somewhere. If you got them, share them.

Show me what kind of weirdo you are

Okay, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about why I think every designer needs a side project. This comes up a lot when I meet with a lot of student designers, a lot of junior designers. Shout-out to Portland State University—I spend a lot of time over there meeting with designers, doing portfolio critiques, chatting about things. And they always end up asking me, “How do I get noticed as a junior designer? How do I stand out from everybody else when we’re all working on the same student projects?”

And I think the most consistent advice I give them is the exact same advice I give veteran designers: I want to see how much of a weirdo you are. I want to see what kind of freak you are. When you’re not being paid, what are the things that you just can’t stop thinking about? What are the things that you’re making obsessively no matter what? And I think the big separation here is that I’m not always necessarily meaning design projects, either. Even if it’s just a hobby that you are deeply, deeply immersed in, I think actually sharing that can be a good thing, because then you become the designer that does this, and it becomes a little memorable moment. So we’ll talk more about that later.

Oh, Ryan says, “Not working on side projects, unfortunately. There’s Sasquatch beer cans from years ago, but that wasn’t anything I’m particularly proud of.” Oh, no, the Sasquatch cans are great. They’re great. I’m going to show some beer cans that I just recently designed in a very quick, frantic project just for a friend. They look good, but… and actually, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what level of polish and pride needs to be involved with side projects. But we’ll talk about that later, when I get into some of my side projects.

What you believe deserves to exist

So that’s where this idea for me comes from: I want to see the things you are passionate about in your portfolio, not just the client work. Side projects show what you actually care about on a personal level. As branders, as designers, we spend all day solving other people’s problems. And the best brand work captures the spirit of your clients. It twists their problem into a good thing. But for designers, creatives—this applies to copywriters too, really any creatives in our business—seeing how you look in the mirror at your own problems is really exciting, and it tells me how you think and what spirit drives you, whereas all your client work says what drives them. So it just tells me: what do you believe deserves to exist? I think that is what side projects do. What do you believe deserves to exist?

Also, Ryan, if you have the Sasquatch beer stuff somewhere, throw a link to it. We should look at it. We can talk about it.

So I think that’s the important part. We’re always waiting on clients to give us permission to do something, to work on a project we want. And when you take initiative, run your own projects, or take on those free projects that you know aren’t going to pay you but that you’re super passionate about, that’s you saying to the world, “Hey, I think this deserves to exist.” And I think that’s a thing we don’t think about a lot as designers, because we’re often waiting for permission from clients.

Taste, experimentation, and originality

The other side of this that I always tell junior designers, or hardcore veteran designers: the reason I like side projects is that I think they reveal your taste. And especially in branding, I think we are only as good as our taste. And taste is always an indefinable thing.

(Oh, dang. For some reason I’m not seeing your link in the chat, Ryan. I wonder if that’s a thing I can adjust in here. They should be popping up here. Let me look at something really fast. Maybe I can set it so links will appear. No, it should be showing up. Who knows how the YouTube comment moderation stuff works. Okay. PDX Shorter on Behance. All right, we’ll look at it. I’m going to pull it up right now so I remember. PDX Shorter, Behance—if I knew how to spell Behance. All right, I’ll get it loaded up and we can take a look later. That’ll be fun. It’s like your sixteenth project down. Your Behance is looking stacked these days, Ryan. Okay, this is great.)

So I talk about taste, and taste is always this amorphous thing. It’s hard to describe, but I always like to clarify what I’m talking about when I talk about taste. I think taste is simply having a vision and being willing to stick to it in the face of the doubt of others. I think that’s really all taste truly is: having a vision, having an opinion about it, and being willing to put all your effort into it. Because I think anyone can learn the basics of design, and they can become a decent designer, a decent creative. But taste is a harder thing to develop, because taste comes really directly out of a deep, primal drive within you—your curiosity. Side projects show taste in the way that they show the things you’re obsessed with: what references inspire you, what kind of worlds you’re naturally drawn to, and what kind of worlds you naturally build. So I think taste is evidence of your curiosity, how you research things, and how you perceive the world.

The other reason why side projects are really fun is because I think this is where innovation can happen in your own work. I hate to call it that. It feels very odd to call it innovation, and I don’t think of it as innovation in my work, but I think that’s kind of the essence. That’s the place where you get to come up with new ideas, branch out into new territories that maybe you don’t get to when you’re working for a giant global financial company—or, for some of us here who’ve worked for unnamed giant global athletics companies—where you don’t necessarily get to stretch out and do some things that you really want to tackle. With side projects, you’re free to get freaky a little bit. That’s your opportunity to do weird type, crazy aesthetics, some abrasive messaging—that’s always my favorite. Or in my case, I feel like my messaging always gets very poetic in my side projects. So I think being free to dream up whatever you want is great, and those end up being pretty major growth opportunities for yourself.

It’s also a chance to cultivate your own originality. I think that one’s really hard to do. For myself, I’m a really proud design generalist. I like to apply my thinking across a lot of different styles of work, a lot of different types of brands. So when I get those moments to step back and challenge what my own original direction on a thing is, it’s good to have that little reminder.

When side projects become client work

Ryan says they’re a great way to see if you actually want to work in or with a particular industry. Oh, absolutely. Even at Parliament we did that some years ago. It was a really intentional shift. Once upon a time at Parliament we did a ton of work for Microsoft, big tech work. We did all the Microsoft Store work. And after that all stopped, we did this really hard pivot to target outdoor industries and that lifestyle adventure brand space. And we did a ton of free work. We would just take products out, shoot them, offer them up to companies. We would go on adventures and photograph it and set up shoots, basically. And then we created a whole separate brand for Parliament that revolved around doing these outdoor adventures. That ended up leading to us getting work in that industry and attracting other clients. Doing all that outdoor work was how we eventually started working with Olympia Beer, and that led us to Pabst and Rainier Beer, and all of those things were just because we said, “This is a world we really want to get into.”

So that’s my next point, absolutely: at some point, side projects can become the client work. And I think that’s because clients—people—most often hire you based on—they never like to say this, but they really want to have a somewhat predictable outcome. It’s the same reason that if you’re hiring an illustrator, you look for an illustrator who can deliver the style you’re looking for. Big clients end up looking for companies that look like they might be able to deliver on the direction that they’re heading as a business. So as a designer, or even as an agency, I think if you start showing who you truly are, you then get hired for who you are.

Designers defined by their side projects

And that’s worked for tons of folks. I feel like we don’t necessarily think of this, but I just pulled up some—there are tons of agencies and designers where their side projects are what came to define them. Their personal work has absolutely been everything that defines their careers. The work they do for free turns into the work that they actually get known for. So let’s talk through some of those.

The first one I’ve got on my list is an agency that is absolutely defined by their side projects, because damn near everything they do feels like a side project. We’ve talked about these folks a lot. This is The Designers Republic. We talked about them back on the branding episode about Wipeout, the video game. They’ve come up a couple times. Ian Anderson, the main guy of The Designers Republic, has been doing a bunch of interviews lately because they’re at their fortieth anniversary as an agency—which reminds me that Parliament, I think, is twenty years right now. So we’ve got only twenty more to go. Aaron, if you’re in the chat: twenty more. We’ve got to hang on twenty more years. But everything that The Designers Republic does feels like it started as just—this image right here is a classic poster of theirs that they did years ago, and it leads to work. This is just a poster that’s their own perspective. So they’ve nailed it. Aaron says, “I’m here for twenty more.” All right, twenty more. Let’s do it.

So The Designers Republic is the greatest. Another person who I think is incredible, who we know because of their side projects, is Sagmeister. It turned into Sagmeister & Walsh at one point, and then Walsh separated, so now it’s &Walsh, when Sagmeister kind of retired from client work. His side projects were so successful, he retired from client work, and now he’s done all of these various art installations in museums and things like this. I think he’s actually one of the few designers who’s bridged that gap between design and art in a fairly meaningful way. Maybe that’s a whole other discussion for another day—how I think design is not art and art is not design. That’ll be a hot-take episode. But I think Sagmeister has done a really good job of bridging that gap and is now just fully known for all of his various side projects and art exhibitions.

Let’s just keep going through these. This is great. I’ve got a bunch in here. Another favorite of mine—just absolutely insane side projects. Look at this. This is 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, it’s kind of funny, I love that you say that, because I think his head is pretty far up his own ass. You kind of have to be, 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. So yeah, he always really nailed it. He had a level of sincerity, I think, that 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, the website we’re looking at right now is Experimental Jetset, which is an agency that, in my mind, is known for making incredible posters, maybe in the vein of The 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. 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 real workhorse aspect, where they just crank out anything they’re passionate about. Yeah, this is a site-specific install that they did. Where was this? 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 thirty 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 and 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, 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, twenty years ago, was absolutely obsessed with these folks, and they were just starting to put out all these beautiful books about their work. Their books are always beautiful. But they’re really known for having this very mid-century approach—they’ve done all the collaborations with Eames that we’ve all seen. They just have this very mid-century, very sign-focused approach to everything, very classically analog, and they started producing their designs on 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. 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.

Ren says, “You’re hitting on all my favorites.” Yeah, these are heavy hitters here today. These are great. House is great. I have used all of their fonts and stuff for years. Oh yeah, this is it. This is a perfect example. I’d actually be curious how much client work House Industries does now, because to me it feels like this is 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 the cool side stuff he does. And I think he approaches it in the same way that Jetset does—granted, a very different mindset—but it’s all, “Here is everything I do.” He has this really great way where the big projects are just as important as the small projects. If you 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.

One of the things he was most known for, I think, that blew up early on was the logo for Cobra Dogs, which is 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. 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—I had a hot dog from them last year. So he’s just another guy who cranks out stuff. His website’s a little nicer these days. He did the Super Deluxe stuff—good cheeseburgers, good aesthetic for the inside. But he’s just nonstop. His merch stuff is ridiculous. I feel like this is where you end up seeing him all the time. He 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, let’s pull up Fisk. They’re local folks. I don’t know what’s on their website these days. Google says “permanently closed,” because they had a location up on MLK. Fisk is always doing crazy stuff. I think Fisk is currently doing a gallery residency inside the Wieden+Kennedy space here in Portland—Fisk Gallery at Wieden+Kennedy. Their stuff is great. This whole thing here on the right is a survey of music posters and everything they’ve done over the years. They’re just doing this stuff for fun. Nobody’s getting rich off of doing posters for bands, but they crank them out, and the stuff looks great. This is an exhibition that they did at PNCA here in Portland. They actually did a whole exhibition of their poster work. Really great.

Ryan’s Sasquatch cans

Sweet. Okay, Ryan, we were talking about your stuff. Let’s look at yours. That’s what we’re going to do now. So, for everyone who sees this—Fuel in the Tank, Ryan, great designer. I worked with Ryan years ago, doing a lot of real good stuff. But we’re here to talk about your fun side project stuff. We aren’t going to critique your portfolio. We all know you’re legit. But this is great. As a person who does a lot of beer things, even for our agency and on the side, we all know beer stuff doesn’t pay a lot when you’re working on the microbrew side of things. It’s things you’re just really passionate about. And this stuff is great. And you did all the illustrations in this, too, right, Ryan?

“Not an illustrator. I just worked in trade for beer.” Honestly, that’s all we need. I do all my work for Son of Man, and it’s mostly in trade for cider. I’m going to show that stuff in a second.

All right, first of all, the illustrations are awesome. Actually, I love this because you’re doing something that a lot of microbreweries don’t do. At first, a thing that always drives me crazy about craft breweries is when every label has a completely different illustration on it. It’s just not my style. But you’re doing the super smart thing where you put the band up top, and the band is always the same. You’ve got the band at the bottom to hit your beer types and categories. It turns a craft brewery that focuses on novelty into something that is super good and consistent. This is great. And this is just side project stuff. That’s awesome. This is a lot of effort for side project stuff—a lot of illustration work. Damn. Oh, this is fun. Little notebook style. I do love these versions of things, where these are the odd little beers on the side that they make, so you get to have fun and do crazy stuff. I didn’t realize that they also made New Westsider. So this is great. Nice work, man. I love this. Maybe we just need to do a critique day where everyone drops things in and we go through them and I just give, apparently, very glowing critiques.

Yeah, this stuff looks great. And I think this is the stuff I love, because these are the things that you then become known for. For some reason we always remember this stuff more easily. We’ve all done work for, like, Nike, or at Parliament we do work for Capital One Bank or something like that, but no one’s ever like, “Oh, you’re the designer that did the Capital One stuff.” For me, it’s always like, “Oh, I was the designer who was an artist,” or, “I was the designer who ran a gallery.” That was my thing. I was always known for that stuff. So I think that’s the side where you become memorable. I wouldn’t be surprised if people see this stuff from you, Ryan, and say, “Oh, you’re the guy who did Sasquatch,” because we all have a passion. Everyone loves this kind of side stuff. You can just tell.

Starpoint Brewing

Okay, I’m going to show off some of mine. Actually, I’ll start with this, since we’re talking beer side projects. (Seriously, Ryan, thanks for sharing that, by the way. I love it.) A buddy of mine bought a brewery in Durham, North Carolina, and maybe a week ago was just like, “Hey, we have a bunch of beer that’s ready to go. We need it canned immediately, and we basically have no branding and no labels for the beer, except I like this star. I like this idea of a star.” So he sent me a star. His name’s Andy—super good guy. I know him through another buddy. He’s a hardcore beer connoisseur and bought a brewery with a couple other guys in Durham, North Carolina. It’s called Starpoint Brewing.

So in the quickest possible way, I was like, “All right, let’s figure out what you stand for as a company.” I’m doing this all the same as you, Ryan—I was doing this for “just please send me a bunch of free beer.” I’m not even that hardcore of a beer drinker, but if you send me a bunch of it, I’ll be happy. There wasn’t a lot of background behind the brand. The name Starpoint apparently comes from a big, elaborate intersection in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where the brewery originally started. So it comes from this idea of the local, and location. He told me that they really wanted to do a brewery that was truly a local brewery, where they become the darling of Durham, North Carolina. There are other breweries in Durham that hit on the “we’re a Durham brewery” thing, but it turns out a lot of them aren’t actually even brewing directly in Durham. So we wanted to own some of this. The colors you’re seeing here are the colors of the Durham flag.

The whole point behind the brand is that they just want to be the place where our paths cross. They just want to brew moments for getting the community together. They’re really community-minded. The owners also run a community brew festival where they try to bring in people who aren’t normally in the brewing industry, like people of color and things like that. So they’ve got a really strong community mindset.

So here’s how the cans turned out. Very simple, just riffing off of some ideas they had: put the star front and center, get the logo on there. The beer types are always really simple—they’re just the name of the beer. One little fun aspect: you see all these textures in the background. The textures always come from a very specific building and location in Durham. You can’t see it here, but on the side of the label it always says the exact location where the texture was sourced from. Little touches like that. Just a super fast, quick-and-dirty design project, but it turned out pretty fun. I like how this stuff looks. I’m probably going to do a lot more work for them. I feel like all these labels will probably be completely different by the time next year comes around, because this was definitely a rush project. But I love how it turned out, and from what I’ve heard, their head brewmaster is pretty legendary, so I’m excited to try some of the beer. So this is the kind of side project I love to then be known for—“all right, the designer that did Starpoint.” That’s super cool.

And yeah, thanks, Ryan—“Piques your interest. I’d grab one off the shelf.” Yeah, for sure. That was the thing. This is probably a whole other consumer goods design discussion someday, but there’s the idea of brand blocking. We wanted all white cans. The only thing that’s changing color is the star, because if they’re next to each other on the shelf, we want all white cans to block out some color space on the shelf. That’s also the reason I like your Sasquatch stuff: it has good brand blocking. The illustrations are consistent, but you always get that little band across the top.

Art, Son of Man, and game design

Part of the reason I wanted to talk about this today, too, is because for the longest time I had a career as an artist and as a designer, and I kept those worlds very separate. At some point I realized it started becoming a strength. So this is another reason I really like to tell people to put their side projects out there. This is my design portfolio. There’s a whole separate section for artwork. I don’t really paint anymore—I got too burned out—but I still have my artwork up on here. These are all paintings I did for many, many years.

And the big thing this has done for me over time is that when I would go do interviews, if I was ever applying for a job in pre-Parliament days, one of the first things they always asked me about was my artwork. It feels really gross to say this, but at one point I realized that my side projects became my personal brand. God, I hate saying that. It’s so gross saying “personal brand,” but you know exactly what I mean. That was what people started remembering me for: “Yeah, yeah, he did these projects. He has the chops.” All the side projects start setting up me as a brand, almost, as a person, and it becomes its own bit of world building around who I am as a designer, as a creative. And as we know from our world building chats on this show, that level of specificity about what I’m interested in is the thing that becomes memorable.

So these are some old paintings. And I’m so passionate about side projects that for years I ran an art gallery, where I showed a bunch of artists—a lot of Portland, LA, and Chicago folks. I ran this for a couple years. So that was very fun.

My very consistent side project is that I work on Son of Man cider. For anyone who doesn’t know, Son of Man is a natural cider made in the Basque style. The big difference is that most cider we drink now is made like beer, and this is cider that’s made like wine. Made once a year. It’s really funky. Technically this is a client, but I don’t really get paid for it. I just took it on because I love the people. I love the product. This is absolutely my favorite cider and one of my absolute favorite drinks. So I started working with them, and it feels like a side project, because they kind of just let me do whatever I please, and they have a great eye.

Fun fact about this: I did not do the illustration of the man. The actual man was done by the legendary studio Land. We asked them to do that, and then I did the rest over time. I do work with them every year. I think some of the photos here were taken by friend of Parliament Michael Fischer at some point. So this is years of Son of Man stuff. I haven’t looked back at some of this in a while. This is fun to look at, because this goes back to 2019, these original photos. I’ve worked with them a long time, so it’s fun to see how the labels evolved. Here’s what it was in 2019. Here’s their custom house blend that they did recently.

Speaking of side projects, these bottles here are literally side projects for Son of Man. They did a house blend with Sugar Pine, the legendary drive-in here in Portland. They’ve done some with Bi-Rite, which is a premium grocer in the Bay Area. They do a lot of fun little house blends with people. They’re working on some with Free the Brewery, so Free has their own Son of Man blend that they sell.

Okay, last crazy side project, because this one is not shared on my portfolio yet. I don’t know if it will be. Maybe at some point—I like how it’s looking. At some point in my life, I became not only a graphic designer but a game designer, and I started a small company on the side for self-publishing games. So far we’ve published one. It’s a print-and-play game—you print and play it at home. I worked on it with my wife and another friend who’s a game designer and writer, and my wife wrote all of the lore for it, which was great. So this is a whole other side where now I’m making games. And the funny thing is, this is all stuff that ties back into my life as a graphic designer and a creative director, because game design is basically just a really, really specific type of user experience design. You’re always trying to anticipate what people want to do, what they need to do. So this has been my other fun bit of exploration in life lately. And if anybody wants to try it, you can download it for free on itch.io. If you don’t know what itch.io is, go on there and you can become a big indie game nerd. So you can get it for free on there.

Jared’s studies

Okay, let’s do one more. I’m having fun just running through things. One reason I’ve been thinking about this lately—I don’t think he’s in the chat today, so I’m going to have to roast him—is Jared, a designer who does really great work. This is his personal website. I love the style of it. He did some Ace Hotel stuff and things like that. But this is the thing I love when designers do this: he has this whole studies section on his site that is just, “Here’s the weird stuff I make. It’s for me. It’s not really for clients. Maybe it’ll lead to something with clients someday.” Or sometimes it looks like it’s one little tiny project that he did for a client—it’s not really a whole case study, but it’s a cool thing he really likes.

So he posts stuff like these prints he’s been doing that I think are really great looking. They look kind of like risos. All these different illustrations. I just love seeing this stuff of his, because you can see how diverse his interests are and where his curiosity takes him. This always gets me really excited as a designer. Oh, these are great. Look at these things. Seeing a designer explore like this is awesome. It makes me want to do it on my site. At one point I had a miscellaneous section where I had collections of inspiration and things I designed. So this makes me want to steal this from Jared. If anybody wants to check this out, it’s isomeplace.com. Go hunt down his stuff. Yeah, right, there’s a lot of dope work in there. He’s just got a great eye. He runs big campaign work for other agencies, but it’s cool to see what he makes when he’s free to do as he pleases. I love that stuff.

A voice and a vision

Sweet. Oh, here’s our homepage. That’s all the fun stuff I’ve got to run through today. So I think that’s why I love this stuff. Going back to when I’m talking with designers and they’re asking for advice on portfolios or things like that, it always comes down to: cool, your work needs to be good. Your actual portfolio work is what shows that you have the chops, but your side projects are what show me what you think deserves to exist. They show me what you’re actually obsessed with. They show me your vision for the world. And I think that’s much more interesting, because it’s hard to show that kind of personal level of creativity, that touch of personalization, when you’re working with clients. Our jobs for our clients are to make them look incredible.

I think the other part of it, too, is that I just have an expectation. I expect you to show that you’re curious about the world, but I also expect you as a designer to have a voice and a vision for what you want to make. Especially over the years, as I’ve done more and more brand strategy work and really helped companies figure out who they are, one of the biggest problems companies have is that somewhere along the way they lost the vision for what the original founding purpose of the company was. They’ve lost sight of that original fire that ignited them inside. So I think if you’re a designer who has regularly trained yourself to find and harness a vision for yourself, it makes it a lot easier to do that with clients. And I think you turn into an almost inspirational and aspirational figure for a client, where they say, “Yes, you’re right. That is why we originally started. Please take us back there.” We run into that with clients all the time. The secrets are within them. The vision was within them, but through the repetition of day-to-day business, that stuff slowly goes away. And then you pull in designers with a vision and with a voice to help them rediscover that.

I don’t know. Maybe also since I went to art school—I didn’t study design, I studied painting and sculpture—I always really struggled at first with what I felt was the problem of designers always just wanting to make something that looks cool. But when you see a large swath of work—like we were just looking at Jared’s work—you start seeing how it goes from “I like making stuff that looks cool” to “I’m doing explorations of things I observe about the world,” and it starts actually defining a vision for that person. A lot of the work may look different, but you start seeing through lines, the same way you do with an artist when they’re working on paintings. You start seeing all the little things that tie them together, and I think that’s so awesome.

Wrap-up and next week

All right, I think that’s all I’ve got today. It’s almost 12:50. We’re doing great. What an efficient day. That’s what I’m concerned about today—I was just looking at my to-do list before this and I was like, “Oh dear God, I’ve got so much stuff.” So Aaron in the comments is probably like, “Calvin, stop doing your live stream and start doing your to-do list.” He’s the one that keeps me on track.

But sweet. So yeah, work on side projects. Ryan, you’re making cool stuff. Make a little side project thing. I want to see it. I want to see a new side project from you. Yep, it’s back-to-the-grind time now. Well, thanks so much for hanging out today. This is really fun to talk about. I just love going through projects.

For next week, there are some things I even mentioned today that I want to talk about soon. Some hot takes, in a version of this show where I talk about the separation of art and design, where they come together and where I think they separate. I also want to do a show about consumer packaged goods design and all the little things about packaging design that I love but also hate—like why throwing those tiny little stickers and bursts on consumer goods that say “30% more” and all that kind of stuff actually works. I feel like designers hate those kinds of things, and I like to talk about that stuff. So I think next week will probably be art and design, or some packaged goods design talk. I think that’ll be great. Thanks so much for showing up, everyone. Have a great weekend—it’s Thursday, I don’t know what day it is. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you all next week.