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Watch as designer Aaron Draplin of the DDC explains why working hard and doing great work for great people is so important to ones career.
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[This Treehouse Friend's interview contains explicit language. Viewer discretion advised.]
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[Treehouse Friends]
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Here we are at the 4th annual In Control Conference in Orlando, Florida.
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I am myself Mat Helme. I'm joined by
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Aaron Draplin, and we're here to talk about some design.
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How you doing, Aaron?
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>>It's cool, man, it's under 70 degrees.
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This is a dangerous climate for a man-mountain like myself to come down to.
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>>'Cause you're coming from Portland, correct?
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>>Yeah, Portland, Oregon. So I mean, coming down here, anything below that—
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it's just tricky.
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I have like February cutoffs and stuff for—
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[laughter] Yeah, you know. I went to Austin in March one time,
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never again. Never again.
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>>So for those who don't know who Aaron Draplin is,
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can you explain or describe yourself and what you do?
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>>Sure, I know, like it's going to sound cooler than it is or something,
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but I make logos, you know, I work for myself.
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I'm 39 years old, I'm from Michigan, but I live out in Portland, Oregon,
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and I work on—cut my teeth on—snowboarding brands,
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and still do, and then I transitioned over into a lot of identity work.
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And then, rolling the dice, I'm making—
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I have a little memo-book company called Field Notes,
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I work with Jim Coudal and a bunch of people way smarter than me
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up in Chicago, and we make Field Notes memo books,
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and all sorts of other crusty little pursuits—
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posters, bad hats, as much as I can do to get away with it.
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I don't like to wear pants, right?
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So, the metaphor is that in my shop, you can come there and be comfortable
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at all times. Clients, all of them, you know. And sure, I'm appropriate,
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but it's more this bigger idea of like—Can you work and get away with it
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and keep it kind of cool?
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And I've been able to do it for over a decade.
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That's it, yeah.
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>>So how did you get started in design?
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>>I come from a family that's pretty creative.
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My dad, he sold tools all his life, but he was kind of a wood worker
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and worked around the house on all kinds of cool projects—
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Just a creative guy in his own right. My mom, too.
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Basket weaving or whatever she was working on,
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there's all sorts of things over our childhood.
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But instead of video games when we were kids, we had LEGOs,
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and we had colored pencil sets, lots of sketchpads and stuff.
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Drawing—all my life I've been drawing.
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So out of high school, you have to go pick some shit. Based on height, weight—
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I'm going to be, what, a plumber or something, whatever—
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[both laugh], based on IQ—
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I knew I wanted to go into art, but I also knew I didn't
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want to go into some sort of weird,
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sort of heartbreak-illusion fine art world.
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So, when you got a little deeper into what visual communications sort of was,
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there was a trade quality to it that made sense.
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Also, 19 is really where I learned how to use a computer.
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I was on the cusp of this world—this industry behind me,
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1 day behind where I came in,
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1 horsehair brush to make a logo.
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So I got to see a pretty distant, you know, like, oh man,
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this technology coming in now is changing everything.
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So I have a pretty big appreciation for basically all the people that lost a job.
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And I've always kind of remembered that, so every little job I've had
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in design, it's been a weird step to see how to use the tools as simple as possible.
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You see what I'm saying? >>Uh-huh. [nods affirmatively]
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>>To answer your question, that would have been 1993.
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>>That's how you got started?
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>>I mean, yeah, that's it, I mean it was like,
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to go start getting jobs, I didn't really get a job for about 8 or 9 years.
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I went snowboarding with my buddies first.
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I went and worked in Alaska.
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I had a job at a newspaper doing PageMaker.
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It was a trade.
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I mean, I wouldn't even call it a design job.
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I loved it for that, you know.
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So to go back to school to learn about, that there's this really finite
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different focus set of directions that you can go in with this stuff,
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making it, you know, publication design, or crazy crazy skittery scad—
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this is the late 90s, you know—movie title design,
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or whatever the hell people were doing back then.
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You know, I picked print and logos, and function over fashion.
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And, you know, got my 1st job when I was about 27, and have not looked back.
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>>And what was your 1st job, your 1st gig, and how did you do that?
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>>Well, there's degrees to it; my 1st job was sort of like
5:10
not having to dig a ditch.
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My 1st job where it was a job I completely loved was for Showboarder Magazine.
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I worked with a great group of guys, and I was an art director.
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The title was—I was like the maker.
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I just made all the pages. I did the art.
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But then I got my 1st studio job, was with Cinco Design Office.
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You know, they rolled the dice on me, and it was—
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You see what I'm saying, there's different degrees.
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Each one was a triumph for me, personally, but then—
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My 1st studio gig—Each one of them I did long enough to realize
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I want to go see what's next.
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But when you get to the coolest one, Cinco, can I just go make it on my own?
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So 2004—I've been on my own viciously since.
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And I'm never going back.
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>>So you loved freelance, and—>>funlance.
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>>Funlance, there we go.
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>>How about this? Just being open to like, kind of whatever, you know?
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Big jobs, little jobs, ugly jobs, tough jobs, great kickass big loot jobs.
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I'm kind of open to all of it, and, oddly enough,
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if the guy doesn't have any money, I do a lot of those, too.
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Where someone just needs help.
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A friend or a colleague or somebody who's starting something cool,
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I do a lot of that stuff, because there's just a beauty to
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making someone look a little bigger than they are.
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Or giving them a fighting chance with a good idea.
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There's something subversive about that that I get off on.
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Because that's what we did with Skateboard, and then Snowboard.
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We made our own brands.
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If it's not out there, you go invent it, and, man, I'm so thankful for that.
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When people come to me, and we're working on something, I'm not really—
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Sure, the loot's got to be right, If they're even in that category.
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But changes, extra revisions—I'm not one to get too bummed out about that.
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In the end, it's not digging ditches.
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I did that. It sucks. I'm never going to—You know what I mean?
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If I boil the shit down, it is such—It's such a laugh track.
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I did this talk like 42 times last year.
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I've got 25 gigs just up until June this year; we're in February.
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And I'm going to go anywhere they'll have me
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and just tell the kid small is okay.
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Bigger—We're all gunning for the big job.
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But why? So you can work more, so you make some principal a bunch of cash?
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I don't even know if they've been in situations to understand what I'm even talking about.
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You know what I mean?
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Every dollar I make, they are from my hands
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It might not be as cool as what—big shoe company,or fashion or some shit,
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but it's my buddies sometimes.
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Or it's some guy that just didn't have any sort of idea what he was doing,
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and I could go in and not make him something that he couldn't manage,
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just make it what was appropriate for his problem.
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That's good design, too.
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I get talking, man, I warned you.
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>>You're passionate. >>Should I be interviewing you?
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Where are you from? >>I'm from upstate New York.
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>>Really? Whereabouts? >>Near Albany. Cobleskill, very small—
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>>God, if you're here, who's guarding the town?
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>>Uh, I got a brother.
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[laughter] >>I'm going to go speak in Albany in the fall.
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It's going to be great.
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>>But I completely relate, because I'm coming from the same atmosphere,
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and I think my 1st job was pulling weeds out of a field when I was 13.
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So I know bad jobs.
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[laughter] >>Or just how about, I don't know, there's just a bigger elephant in the room of
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listen, listen, these things cost money to go to.
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And that's cool. It's fun, everyone go to them. They're cool, it's fun to go see the shit and
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get a goody bag and hang out, and you'll learn a ton of stuff.
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But this idea of a kid getting right out of high school and then right into college
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and right into a job, and I meet a lot of people who are sort of empty.
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It's not about the money they're making; they want more creative control,
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and stuff—I just haven't been able to indulge in that stuff.
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Every stupid little job—pizza, chairlifts, whatever—
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We were creative how we tackled it.
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You learned to hate your boss, very creatively, in some shitty situations.
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But you make it fun. We knew it was a stepping stone.
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Now I meet these kids, you know, whatever—
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I'm 39, I still feel like a kid.
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But now I have to remind them, are you shitting me?
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You're complaining, because—First, we get to work on nice computers,
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you're clean, you're dry, you make a ton of cash, or enough,
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and I think they might go back to their job and
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look at it a little differently Monday morning.
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I just have a lot of perspective.
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Every job, I—Nothing ever feels like creative control or really bump someone out of—
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Someone says, you know, well shit, we didn't like anything you showed us.
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Well, okay, we go back to the drawing board.
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I do it so much, I'm not afraid of that.
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Sometimes I strike out, you know what I mean? You got to just keep fighting.
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>>Now when you present projects to clients, is it usually face to face?
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Is it usually through email?
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>>Oh, man, it used to be buddies in the chairlift
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would come down to Portland, and we would cage match in my basement.
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So every little piece that we were, let's just say, allowed to make was a triumph.
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It never felt like you're having to, like—You get to make it.
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You would get to make this napkin. We get to,
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it's just a napkin, who cares about the napkin? Who cares about the tag?
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But we would take each one of those as a little opportunity to do something great.
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When you have nothing, all of it tastes good, every little piece.
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Now, all these years later, I can handle the guy on the phone
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at Big Company X, no problem.
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I'm a nice guy on the phone, I'll watch my language, I'll dot my i's on my emails,
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I'll sign all the paper work professionally, all that kind of shit.
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As much as the kid will just show up in my shop, I'm kind of up for whatever.
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But strategically, I kind of like that no one's in the shop.
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And I'm presenting to someone via PDF,
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which is just—you know, the shit looks so good.
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You kind of get drunk on a nice form on a nice big wash of white.
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So I always try to make a little dirty element
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and pound it into some concrete, pound it into some wood,
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put it on a little embroidery or something—
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Show some real context to these things I make, because
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there's an asterisk that comes with every little round.
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Let me talk to you first before you go and not quite get this thing or
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miss the context or something.
12:05
So they're not in the shop, that's this new paradigm.
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I don't have to live in Portland, I could live in the woods maybe
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and still do this stuff, so I don't know.
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When they're in town, they come in, I talk so much, as I'm doing right now.
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It's fun. I loosen them way up, so they can just enjoy it.
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It's logo, it should be really fun.
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>>It seems like you design and thrive off passion for design,
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and a lot of yourself goes into these pieces.
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So I can completely understand how you're saying—
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>>I meet enough guys who don't like their job.
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They don't want to work.
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I like it. It's hard for me to really—Much to the dismay of
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family, girlfriends, friends, whatever—
12:53
Girlfriends, that sounds horrible.
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My better half—there. You got 9 or something, you know, whatever.
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Cut all that shit out—[laughter]
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But just, much to the dismay of people around you, I can't
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really deduct work from just enjoying it.
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I worked last night until 2 in the morning in the room, and
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there's nothing romantic about that.
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I could go out and—what do people do, dancing and shit?
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We're in Orlando, what do you do? You go out and have a nice meal,
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maybe you take photos of coffee with your phone,
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stupid things that stupid people do.
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I can't—it's all a big game of just like getting away with it.
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I have a hard time, I hear these guys wish more, whatever—
13:45
professionals aping their job.
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Man, you're so lucky to do that.
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That's their deal, you know. I know what I've got, I know what I could go grab,
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and I keep it sort of—I bite off way more than I can chew.
14:02
But it's never too much—you know what I'm saying? I just have to work late.
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>>Do you find yourself forming a process to creating these logos?
14:11
Do you do anything to maybe keep everything fresh?
14:15
>>Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm digging around at the sound guy back there,
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losing it, but—there's an unsolicited advertisement.
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You talk about this with your friends?
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Come on—[laughter]—put that in there.
14:32
I'm working on things I don't know if I even want to show you.
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>>We just won't show them. >>Well, you know, it's the idea of
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I'm working on logos at all times, some goofy idea.
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I'm always sketching, so the process might be—
14:46
I actually like plane rides now.
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I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a man of size.
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I fall through the cracks, sure.
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The plane, it's just packed in there, but I have 5 hours or 4 hours
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to chip away at email, draw, sketch, make lists, analog shit in here.
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And I've learned to use that really, really well.
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I feel bad when I watch a movie on there.
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When I get back to my machine, I've got stuff to go start building on.
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I can sit down and just start vector, too, but that's not usually the best.
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I invent things a little better than I would on paper starting
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or just looking at other things—I mean, it's like if someone comes to me
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and they have this little company X, as part of process, I do my research.
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I say, "What do you want to be?
15:40
"What could you be? And what do all the other turkeys
15:43
"that you're going up against look like?
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"Great, that's what you're going up against. What do you want to aspire to be?
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Who makes the big bucks but looks like shit? Let's go look at them, too."
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And we look at all that stuff, and that just gives me better targeting.
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I'm bearing down on all that stuff.
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Sometimes the funnest part should be actually making the things, but
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I think it's this weird sense of like way-finding.
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To say, okay, these little pieces of vocabulary now are fair game,
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are strategically—they didn't use orange anywhere else in this.
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Let's use some orange—or whatever that would be.
16:22
Sometimes it's really arbitrary.
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I'd like to say it's some scientific 47-point plan or some shit,
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but it's nasty. [laughter] And it can come to you at any time of day.
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So I keep this really close to me. >>Do you find it coming to you a lot subconsciously?
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>>Well, okay, this is going to sound—Put on your surreal filter.
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This is going to sound weird, but—not that all this other shit sounded proper—
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I dream logos.
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I've sold a couple. In my brain, you're sleeping.
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Great mysteries of the cosmos, and you fall off into this dead sleep,
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and I wake up and I design something in my sleep.
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Now get it on paper, and then oftentimes it's out there.
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But I've sold a couple of those.
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Where does that shit come from? So that is some subconscious shit.
17:15
I don't think dreams are as magical as people trump them up to be, but
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that's been a great little one in the quiver.
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That's a real kick in the ass, you know what I'm saying?
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You work all day,—Or I've toiled over shit in a dream.
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Like reworked something in a dream, you know like you do that, repetitive—
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It's a nightmare at that point.
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I'm kind of open to all of it. What I'm not open to is sitting down at 9:01
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and leaving at 4:59.
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I can do it creatively, sure.
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But I'll play my guitars, look at records, look at bullshit, read blogs,
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look at things, and start my job at 3 o'clock.
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And then do 2 hours of the most concentrated nectar you've ever—
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I just turn everything off, all the phones off, and piss my girlfriend off—
18:05
I was really working, and in that little hour or 2 hours,
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I solve it all.
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That might happen sometimes at 4 in the morning.
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So bad, so bad for your body and shit, but I love that, too.
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>>It's good design. >>That doesn't happen to insurance salesmen.
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Maybe it does, I don't know. [laughter] >>It might.
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>>Or web coders.
18:29
We'll have a little fun with these guys.
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>>If you were to give any bit of advice or the best advice to someone just
18:34
starting out in the design industry—
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>>Keep it fun. >>What would that be? >>Keep it fun.
18:42
You're lucky to do it.
18:45
Before I had to sweat figuring out how to make a payment with this stuff,
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I loved it because it was just like—it was a hobby before it became
18:54
a fight. So the heartbreak one experiences when they get a big old
18:58
paycheck for 3,000 bucks, Uncle Sam takes a check, you have to pay some
19:02
stupid rent, this, that, you know, and you've got 47 bucks left over
19:07
to pay for your life, right?
19:12
That's some character-building shit.
19:14
That was a little less for me, because I kind of look at it as
19:17
I've got 47 bucks to do something awesome, right?
19:21
I still do. Get a book to design. Because I've worked other stuff always
19:24
kind of waiting.
19:31
Okay, we're going to do this winter pushing chairs, because that's going to get me
19:33
a free pass.
19:37
And we're going to go west in a year or something.
19:40
We have to work all summer long to save that money, and then
19:43
when you get there, it's like this idea of being cognizant of the moment.
19:48
I'm a grass-is-greener kind of guy,
19:51
but I also know how to stop myself and take a note
19:54
and really think about that time and—
19:58
Advice: Enjoy that shit while it's going down.
20:01
Enjoy the ugly, you know, and
20:05
don't let it become a job.
20:09
It's going to, it's going to.
20:12
As my dad used to say, put shit on you.
20:14
It's a stupid thing, but it makes it rough for you, it gives you a hard time.
20:17
Part of this position that you're in is being graceful with that.
20:21
Being able to—water off a duck's ass—technical term.
20:27
Let it bounce off. Whatever. Chances are they got some title because they're
20:32
lying, cheating, and stealing to get to that point.
20:37
It'll catch up with them.
20:40
I see young kids wanting the big job, but big isn't always best.
20:42
I'm giving out a lot of little pointers—I'm just trying to think of my day.
20:48
When we're done, I'm going to go back up and work.
20:52
The things that I savor are the phone calls with my buddies,
20:54
because they're my friends. Do I want to be on the phone
20:58
splitting hairs over some ad? Hell, no.
21:00
But that's the currency of their life, and in a lot of respects mine, too.
21:04
But I'm sort of thankful it's them.
21:08
When I have to get on the phone with some professional, I'm cool with it, too.
21:10
I'm just a little different.
21:14
>>Well, I thank you, for the great insight.
21:17
>>Do something nice with it.
21:21
Say nice things about me, you guys.
21:24
Cool logo, by the way.
21:26
>>How can we follow you?
21:28
You're on Twitter and Instagram?
21:31
>>I'm on the Internet. I'm draplin.com.
21:33
I got a cousin of mine every now and again who calls me and says,
21:35
"Hey, I think it's time that I got draplin.com for a while."
21:38
[laughter] I'm on Twitter as draplin.
21:41
I think I have Facewiz—Don't go to Facebook, it's just sick of all that shit, but
21:44
come to the site, it's daily, sort of.
21:49
It's all free rad content. I number my tweets,
21:51
because every tweet means something.
21:55
And I'm real tired of having to read about coffee.
21:57
And parting your hair, and shit that says LOL or fart,
22:00
or whatever serious shit you guys are tweeting.
22:05
So I number my tweets, and you won't get any tweets about sports
22:07
and that kind of shit on the Draplin feed.
22:11
A little something, but— >>Cool. Thank you, I appreciate it.
22:14
>>Thank you guys. I was going to go in for a kiss! Shit!
22:17
Did anyone die behind us?
22:20
[laughter] That was another—
22:23
[Treehouse Friends] [? music ?]
22:25
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