Latest / WiseNoise: The Creative Practice Podcast / WN12: Steve Wakabayashi
Transcript
- speaker-0: We think we could treat humans like machines and just put all this work on top of them. What is so fascinating to me is one, it doesn't work for humans to be treated like machines in terms of, you know, burnout and also ideas. It's just not as fresh and people just need to reset. But it's so interesting in the landscape of AI and technology. So many of these autonomous machines and robots are also there finding failure and they're finding right cyclical loops and data degradation over time. And I think there's something to be said about renewal pause resets that are just so valuable. But it just makes me think of, you know, if there's any technology issue. the value of just turning it off and turning it back on. speaker-1: Hello and welcome to Wise Noise with me Pierce O'Halrin graphic designer and founder of Wise Love Studio here in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. I am again for this episode hunched over the laptop recording right up to the Friday deadline. I will sort my calendar out soon with these podcasts, but yeah, projects. Just seem to be creeping up on me. And yeah, I apologies for the poor quality of audio to start, but I tell you this: we start off with poor quality audio, but the guest I have on brings high-quality takes from the design industry. I'm very delighted to welcome Steven Wakabayashi from Stranger Creative in New York. Now Steven's work. I've seen Steven's work and this is a bit of a w strange one. a lot of the times when I'm doing these podcasts, just because I'm getting used to it myself, I have normally spoken with somebody first and normally they're people I know. so I have that familiarity with them. So yeah, it's not as s weird or strange when they come on the call, but it was Steven's people that organise this and I was totally up for this. because he s sounded like a fascinating guy from the outside. As you'll hear early on I talk about him having a degree in neuroscience and a degree in dance, which are s I I assumed at the start were a bit out of sync with a a career in design. But you can see as the podcast progresses, not just the neuroscience aspect, but even in the dance And he has some very descriptive allegories for the choreography of dance, using that to describe information and data and b he he has a beautiful way of marrying up different disciplines and skills, which definitely comes across in his in our chat. It's a really lovely chat and I'm delighted that Stephen came on it. And i and again, as I said, it was the first time meeting him, but So calm, so at ease. I I think it this is a lovely almost ASMR podcast because he does have such a l a nice, softly spoken, calm demeanour to his tone that yeah, it's a lovely listen. And I I was soothed b just from the our conversation itself. yeah, and I I I'm just gonna get straight into it because we covered plenty of ground from his start in and how how he w c studied neuroscience but ended up running a creative studio in New York and all the various facets in between. We have loads of fun at the Bingo Wheel of Wisdom. He digs into his the design systems that he uses for his work and also at the end we see gives some absolute pearls of wisdom on the nature of burnout. some very fascinating stuff so if you are creative running their business that is definitely worth sticking around at the end for and yeah visit wise love dot shop buy some merch shipping internationally help support the pod etc etc I do have I just bought the full suite of t-shirts so I'll need to get some modeling shots and get and show you how cool the the the wise noise podcast t-shirts are. But anyway, enough about me selling my stuff. Well actually sales is one of the parts that Steven talks so eloquently about so yeah I I'll need to take some tips from him and shift these t-shirts. Enjoy the pod and I'll see you at the end for a Wii debrief. Easy Ozzy. Yeah, so thanks for coming on the call. Apologies I stood you up last time. It was one of those where I was in the middle of a project and thought it was like half past three. So yeah, thanks for giving me a second chance with this one, Stephen. You're very kind. speaker-0: Honestly, it's happened to me too. And I we've been traveling a lot between time zones. And so sometimes I'll book it for East Coast morning and then on the West Coast it's like six AM, five thirty AM and I will totally I I did that to someone, so speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: don't feel bad. yeah. speaker-1: Well th yeah, thankfully in the UK we just have the one time zone, so we don't even have that excuse to like you know, ha have ha have a five hour time delay or whatever like that, you know. yeah, and there's loads on your C V, Stephen. It's like fascinating and and I it's it's almost hard to pick which topic to start with, but I I'm really fascinated because you have a degree in physiology and neuroscience and a degree in dance and that on the surface of it doesn't really lead vocationally to a career in design. So yeah, I'd love to explore that in terms of those subjects that you actually studied and how they how they i i interpret into your career. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. so how do I take myself back? while I was going to college, I was actually trying to get into medical school early on. I think especially a child, an immigrant Asian mother. I feel like the career landscape isn't as expansive as I had thought back then. And so I was doing a lot of work to study. but actually, if you look further into my CV during college, I actually picked up dance as this extra side curriculum. I was enjoying my time doing it, but I was like, I think this is gonna look great on my medical school applications. I ended up coming to love it. I went to school at UCSD and the dance program was actually kind of like a conservatory, but it was very extremely modern conservatory, where you would have students put on these like dance pieces where they just do the craziest stuff where maybe there'd be a whole show and a student just sat in the middle of the room for like an hour and people are like, that is so moving. I thought it was the craziest thing when I was in college. And so I kind of did it for fun. I really, really enjoyed it. And also what was funny was all throughout college while still studying physiology, neuroscience, I actually to pay through college had been taking a bunch of jobs, designing websites for the school, different parts of the university. At one point I was working with the alumni association and designing out the emails that was going to the entire database of university alumni, which was hundreds of thousands of people. and it really didn't occur to me until after I had graduated. it was funny where my medical school advisor at the time was mentioning to me, hey, there's this really cool thing that everyone's doing called the gap year. You should really think about it. And it's also a great way to kind of prepare and package up your application. I took it But also in the meantime, I was like, hey, let me just, you know, take a few more additional site gigs freelancing. And so I was taking a few gigs, building up websites and stumbled upon an agency in San Diego and I just left it. And since then I've been in the industry and but yeah, it was an interesting amalgamation of a little bit of creative, a little bit of math and science, but came out of really a need to try to figure out how to make income to subsidize my school and life. speaker-1: Yeah. Well that's a that's a classic tale almost. It's like the side hustle in college becomes the main hustle once you actually come out of college, you know. So that's a that's a classic journey, I find. Yeah. You know, and it's the thing about university is that like, you know, I say to students, just get stuck into everything. You know, you d you know, there's like there's probably drama clubs, there's probably like you know, I sometimes going to see design students and they'll be talking about all wanting to do zines and I like, Well there's no start a magazine and student magazine and get get get or like try try and write for the student magazine 'cause like, you know, once once you once you can get stuck into that at university, you're already building up a portfolio for when you actually leave and getting hands on experience. So so yeah, that's right. G get stuck into other educational things, you know. speaker-0: And you know, I did try to go professional with dance afterwards and this was way back in the day. And I actually went to another dance conservatory after graduation and kind of in that gap here I was kind of also dancing pretty much full time, taking small geeks here and there. but I could never land a full time, full time kind of offering. with the dance career because also at the time I would go to auditions and they would tell me, hey, we're not looking for an Asian dancer. So thank you for coming, but we don't need that. And it was very tough just to land any gigs on commercials, on music videos and what was interesting also kind of that experience and then also just so much of the design experience I have is so not very linear and very academic driven. it leads to a lot of the work we're doing now, especially with our nonprofit. How do we get people who come from different backgrounds? For a long time we were running a boot camp, early stage career designers, but folks in their 30s and even some of their 40s, who've never thought about the ability to be able to do design work ever. And so, I think I think career in the creative industry is so, so special and so valuable and a really great opportunity to kind of open up your mind and speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean you so that you are the founder of QT B I B I P O C design. So that is based on I suppose what your own personal experience there of just getting knocked back and I I find it shocking that they're quite quite open just to say it's because you're Asian. so you've had that experience and you've set up this organization, a non profit, to create pathways for underrepresented designers. So so when did you set that up? And How does that work? speaker-0: Yeah, we built it up in twenty twenty. But just back on the piece on auditions, I think people were just explicit back then. And this was like fifteen plus years ago, and I would go to auditions and they were just telling me that they just didn't want some of the the the dancers to be ethnic or make the music video ethnic. And there was once I went to an audition, it was this crazy story where the director at the time decides to just gather up he was like pause pause pause stop stop stop and this is auditioning for a dance and a show and he's like you know let's let's all collectively help ideate and brainstorm things that Steven should actually be auditioning for. And so he proceeded to get a bunch of the casting directors and then a bunch of the auditioners and then they were just naming all these typecast roles that I should be auditioning for, a nerd in a school, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. at the moment I was very confused. And I think that was a big part of what I ended up kind of pressuring me to get out of the industry, particularly because I just felt so humiliated. And I think on this side with the nonprofit, I think, especially as I look at my career trajectory and how I stumbled upon it. it was so fascinating that I've been doing actually doing design for years before I actually got into it. I absolutely love what I do. I think I'm so lucky to be able to do it as a full-time career, but also the ethos in the thesis of the nonprofit is this belief that creativity and unlocking it and giving chances for people to do it is such a privilege. And is also so sometimes really hard, depending on people's backgrounds and where they come from. especially if we look about that the cost of art schools, they're so expensive. But also think about who can have the right experience and even some of the right entry way in to be able to practice design. Sometimes it's very much aesthetic driven or someone just took a chance on you. Right. And I think a big part of the nonprofit was to kind of change that paradigm. And what was funny was we were aiming for people who were early, early on. We were thinking maybe these are people in their twenties. But when we initially launched a nonprofit in a boot camp course, there's actually people in much later in their lives coming from not one but upwards up to three to four careers and then looking to finally pivot into design. speaker-1: Yeah, wow. So and in practical terms d then you run programs and give practical support and advice for people to come on? speaker-0: Yeah. For the background. So since then, yeah, yeah, yeah. so a nonprofit organization has since pivoted. I think right now, Pierce, you know, it's so hard to be a junior designer and to get into industry back in the day, and this is being fully transparent. We had partnerships with a lot of the tech companies, organizations who had internship, apprenticeship programs, and we were able to pathway people in directly and Since it got much harder to even have that direct partnership anymore, there was a like a year in which we couldn't place anyone even to free positions, apprenticeship internships, not just paid roles. And I kind of took a step back and I said, Is it fair to be running a program that is not pipelining people? And so we actually took the program back, revisited it. and evolved it into what is now a nine-month fellowship program that we take people who are in the industry already, because we are starting to see a lot of people in the industry who are at that middle point to senior level also starting to get exited from the industry. And so we essentially take them over the course of nine months, get them leadership training, expertise across different capabilities, new technologies, and we also bring in experts. What is so fascinating also is this was actually one of the advice we got from one of the speakers back in the day but we actually do not do any recordings in the fellowship session of the courses and the whole ethos is also built around these secrets to make people really successful are sometimes really unspoken. And so essentially what we do is we have these speakers come in huge experts of their domains and we also give them full permission To talk about anything. They could curse, they could talk about real life experiences, they could talk about things that they're even struggling with. And we found it to become this rich kind of environment, this educational space to talk about what's really happening in the design industry. Why are people not succeeding, getting promotions? and also what are some of the blockers and challenges that leaders face also with that? And it's become such a rich program. we actually piloted actually for the first time last year and it was such a success. we're starting to actually send out acceptance emails for the next program right now. speaker-1: Yeah, wow. That's fantasti fantastic initiative and I like how you get the founders involved and discuss their challenges to breaking down those barrier barriers. and you all do all this while running Stranger Creative, which is your an independent creative agency in in New York, so yeah. my you you your time management must be pretty speaker-0: Keep myself busy. speaker-1: when did you start Stranger Creative and like how how have you how have you found it in recent years, running your own creative agency? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So what was wild was I actually founded Stranger Greater at the same time in twenty twenty. Whoa. I it it was actually largely a freelance institution, freelance company that I started at the beginning. I had design work that was coming in and I had since pivoted. the T L D R was essentially twenty nineteen. I ended up just, you know, leaving, traveling in the world for a bit, studying meditation and doing all that stuff. And then 2020, I actually had this idea to start a few of these ideas that I was thinking about. One being the nonprofit, and then the second one being the agency. And I think the big thing that I wanted to figure out was, at least even for myself at the time, it was just, you know, a solopreneur activity. How do I create, you know, an environment? that was a lot healthier, more balance, just something that doesn't model after some of the full time positions I was at. And since then, since we've been running it for years now, we've grown to between full time and contractors almost up to twenty people right now. And definitely have a lot of learnings along the way, what's worked, what hasn't worked. But I think at the end of the day, what keeps me coming back and continuously trying to figure out how to evolve, how to get new clients, how to constantly think and shift our work in a way that meets the changing needs of this landscape is the people at the end of the day. we we pipeline some of the talent from our nonprofit, but you know. what's been really special is I actually go back into my old agency days and I also secretly pull some of the people that I really enjoyed working with and it's become this kind of amalgamation of really, really old friendships with, you know, deep community from the nonprofit, and also people who see some thread of commonality between it with some of the newer people that are joining and the culture, the energy, people are hungry, people are also excited. but it's been quite a wild journey, yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, like I spoke to a friend of mine recently on this podcast and he's gone from like a solar designer up to like a team of people over forty people in like Glasgow, London, London and New York. yeah, but I I was explaining to me because I knew him at the time when the both of us were like just solo designers and I'm like, you know, what what is the transition like? or like have you any advice? And he just like I keep winging it, like every stage you just keep winging it. And that's that's the only attitude that you have because you've you've got so many skills or like, you know, HR skills and like, you know, all these other kind of things that you were never never taught. you just have to jump in and just see what works and just figure it out as you go. So I'm I'm I'm I'm s thinking that's a similar feeling of you going in ex over six years, going from just you to over twenty people. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. It's I y the more I'm in this space and the more I'm learning, I realize less people know less. There is no certainty. And I talk with design partners all the time and organizations and leaders and what what's wild I'm realizing, you know, obviously with your team you have to have clarity, succinctness, and some definition around it. The reality, especially right now with all the technology shifts and even the changing landscape of who's you know, getting to design and, you know, with all these technologies, especially with AI, which is you know, eradicating certain roles and even junior level designers, we just don't know. I I I I feel like We just don't know. And I think the best advice I have is always approach challenges, just kind of like a designer with a lot of curiosity and open heart. And I think it's also to embrace that nobody has an answer. And I think the thing I had to learn along the way was to, you know, put down the social media, put down the e courses and just roll up the sleeves. I bet It's kind of the same thing with you and all the different initiatives you're running. It's just like constantly evolving, constantly changing. Times are also changing. And to think that somebody has all the answers, I I find the more and more I'm in this work, it becomes less and less true. but also when it comes to, you know, how do you create a space, right? For everyone to align with and create a culture within. I think that's also uniquely to each their own. And I I think we're after trying to create perfection, whether it's the work or whether it's spaces. And I think once we can get rid of that expectation too, I I find that we can be more open to seeing what germinates and cultivating that. speaker-1: Yeah, amazing man. Yeah, totally. And yeah, I think having those d skills as a designer is very handy because you can you realise you can apply those design skills to not just visual identities but, you know, designing your path forward as a company or ha you know those strong brand identity skills. are a good northern light to kind of keep you guided as you kind of fumble around and things you can kind of come back and reset to that b and as a designer you should have a strong as strong a brand strategy for your own company as you do for other companies. So I think that having that skill is quite very handy to have in your back pocket to as you grow a company, you know. speaker-0: Yeah. But you know what? I will say what's really helped is so I didn't touch on this in our conversation, but what actually ended up kind of kind of changing the course of my career. So I had been at a bunch of different tech companies, a bunch of big agencies back in the day, and I actually ended up in the hospital for a few months with really, really bad. health crisis and at the time I was, you know, you know, work hard, play hard. I was working with the teams in Asia, work taking meetings at one, two AM in the morning, splashing water on my face, getting to work at six AM. I was working in San Francisco at the time, and I had a really deep reflection with myself in terms of ways of working that was sustainable or I had to find something that was a bit more sustainable. And I I spent the better of 2018 kind of in rehabilitation, going back and forth with different treatments, different hospitals, different clinics. And then in 2019, I actually had decided to just, you know, just F everything, leave everything behind. And I decided to just study abroad and live out of monasteries for the better of the year. sat in silence for many months and what was I I think the most helpful experience, especially even in navigating right now, is being able to have a grounded practice of mindfulness, meditation, and also whenever tough patches come through, A reminder that, you know, health is number one. we have to create ways of work that's also very sustainable. And especially when you're the leader and you're creating spaces yourself, it has to start with you. And no matter hard we grind, that we have to first and foremost create some sort of boundary and space that can also sustain and nourish us. Definitely still work in progress, you know. practice kind of weans in and out over the years. But I I think that is so fundamental to a lot of the work that we do as an agency, how we collaborate, especially even as a manager. one of the big, you know, things at data points that I'm always assessing is vacation time and also people's allocation and just making sure that everything is balanced so that you're not ending up in a position where people are in crisis mode. And it's just so funny that we think we could treat humans like machines and just put all this work on top of them. But what is so fascinating to me is one, it doesn't work for humans to be treated like machines in terms of, you know, burnout and also ideas, it's just not as fresh and people just need to reset. But it's so interesting in the landscape of AI and technology. so many of these autonomous machines and robots are also they're finding failure and they're finding right, cyclical loops and data degradation over time. And I think there's something to be said about renewal pause resets that are just so valuable. But it just makes me think of, you know, if there's any technology issue, the value of just turning it off and turning it back on. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean Wow, that's a fascinating story. Absolutely. well, it's a marvelous turnaround from where you were. It sounds as though you're you're really at at the end of like some toxic grind culture there and you've completely reset. I I love that. And yeah, I I and absolutely renewal and replenishment is so important and it's one of the things that keeps coming up on this podcast in terms of when I ask desi people who work for themselves, like, you know, and a t talking about the avoiding burnout issue. that that stopping and it's also like it's also a counterintuitive because you you think the more you work hard, the better work you will get. But it's not that way because there's a certain point where you're working so hard you d that you're actually your brain is too stretched and you're not doing especially in a creative space, you're not being as creative as possible. So I I I I myself have been like that where and I've learnt that you can burn out doing something you love as much as you can do something you hate that pauses. Because you can sometimes be working on something that I enjoy so much, I'll be like, I'll just skip lunch and I'll do this, I'll do this or whatever. But I I've realized even when I'm on a really good high like that, just go out and take a walk or like have a half hour away from the screen and think about work. I just just calm it down a little bit in here because before you know it, you know, all those fight or flight responses will start kicking off and you'll start thinking this nervous system starts thinking you're in trouble for some reason, you know, even though you're actually quite enjoying the work, you know. So and so you've you put out a newsletter called the mindful designer. Is that still do you still send that out? speaker-0: Yeah, so I I used to write actually a lot more back in the day. And I I think it's just our agency has grown so much that I'm slowly get getting back into it. I was actually writing more, kind of triangulating a lot of thoughts on just like mindfulness, technology. I do have kind of this internal Slack, this Slack. message group thing where I share a lot of thoughts. And so internally we always talk about just kind of where all this technology is headed. but back in the day I was actually doing a lot of writing on just technology, digital surveillance, within the workspace and then also early, early AI and where things were going. right now, slowly picking things back up. but what we're finding is that a lot of even just the conversation that we're having is just trying to figure out how we're starting to think about, you know, navigating these technologies as a part of our agency's work. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. And before we round off this section, because I'm keen to move on to have a look at your work, the off the back of that then is there like so so is there some quick tips in terms of for people listening or watching to have to in in a practical working day to make sure you don't burn out or speaker-0: Hmm. on the burnout piece, I think I mean, some of the advice I mentioned earlier, right, which was assessing how much time are you spending towards work every week and then also taking vacations throughout the year. there's this one good advice, especially as leaders that I read where as employees or as people, you do need that week long, you know, time apart. To just reset. And so not only I think do people need time off, you just have to have a reset phase to just allow yourself to just kind of fill that tank back up. I would say the last bit of peace is a regular practice of just doing nothing. So valuable. even just a 60 second pause and just kind of sit in the chair consciously. Or unconsciously just settle yourself and find that moment of stillness, I think is so, so valuable. And especially when I'm in really, really stressful situation, I find that actually taking even that sixty second pause is so, so, so helpful to just replenish the tank a little bit. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely brilliant advice. soul do you have some slides ready there and we can have a look at some of the work you do with Stranger Creators? That would be fascinating. speaker-0: Let's do it. Okay. So a big part. So I'm gonna jump between a few different things. but let me share screw. Awesome. Let me let me also just adjust. So I'm just gonna jump between a few different things, but the thing that or agency. actually is starting to become known and we do a lot of work right now is on design systems. And what's so fascinating is a lot of the work that we've been doing and also the shift in our agency over the past few years. We have been doing a lot of enterprise level websites to think paid like 10, 30,000 pages, right? And obviously at that size, you can't manage individual pages anymore. I mean some try to But it's just really tough and challenging it to develop these systems. And so a large part of our work has been figuring out how do we construct design systems that can support these large behemoth kind of digital products, including websites, web applications. And so a big part of our work, I'm just gonna jump real quick to some of the design systems that we created over the years, has been just figuring out these systems of Handling assets, handling icons, handling cards. we were very much early on working with Figma and institutions that were Figma partners to figure out how do we even maximize a lot of the usage. Right now, we're also doing a lot of work figuring out some of the newer features like motion, how do we get into it? But a lot of our work early on was trying to figure out how do we develop these systems using these different tools that are also very dynamic. here you can see one of our clients, one of our clients, Everpure, their large storage organization, digital storage organization that provides storage to some of the larger companies, the largest digital companies of the world. Think about data and petabytes. we do a lot of work on their website and also their design system. And what was really nice was we were partnering also with a very mature UX and digital product team that really, really had good aesthetics. but was really great was collaborating together, we would be able to create these really, really beautiful icon design libraries that were very expansive, but also trying to think about, I mean, early in the day, years ago, these dynamic Figma templates that also had all these interlinked design libraries together. now we're creating a lot of different libraries that suit different clients with where they're at, but with also the different tools, what we're just finding are a lot of the websites we're able to create can all be pretty much generated at call depending on the components that we're pulling through and depending on the different assets that we're trying to create. What's wild is especially a lot of folks who probably watching this do a lot of work creating you know display ad, banner ads. We still have a chunk of that work ourselves. And what's so wild is this technology that I've been around for a long time is still such a really successful advertising business. the value of creating systems behind them. what you're able to do is you're able to create these artifacts that now you can start to create hundred variation of them once you start creating assets for each small piece, right? So think about if the person here is a single asset, the text is one asset, the logo is one asset, the CTA is one asset, and we start to develop a design system around it, we can actually start to create really powerful systems in which we can start to test out different paradigms and different assets. and have instead of running one ad, For $100, you can essentially run a hundred ads at one dollar each, kind of figuring out what works the best, copy-wise, image wise, asset wise, and overall aesthetic wise with the population that you're targeting. but a lot of that's work. We absolutely love figuring out how to create these systems. and we're always challenging ourselves in terms of thinking about a paradigm. that works for all of this. I think what's really cool is with the introduction of tokens and tokenized values and properties, right, over the past few years, we can really start to extrapolate certain values like color here, gradients and certain elements that are properties within these assets, right? So let's take the image on the very, you know, upper left, for example, this Garner ad, right? What's really cool with some of the design systems now, we can disaggregate an asset, which right is the image you see there, the magic quadrant, the logo, the logos, right? We can disaggregate the text itself. And then we can also disaggregate the colors, right? The dark gray colors, the orange, the gradients, all into these properties. And essentially, and when you start to compile these assets, you can start to create templates that pull in. all these elements. And so what's really cool now is you're able to create design comps that are not only fully responsive, so as you slowly, you know, change the dimensions of the image and Figma, they dynamically respond. This doesn't have to just apply to websites. You can actually do this with banners, you can do this with display advertisement, but also thinking about now specific, you know, components that swap in and out. based on different property and uses of it. I'm just gonna quickly jump through, I mean, that's a lot of what we create. And so this is for a nonprofit organization called Apex for Youth. And so a lot of our work is also to think about the systems that also fit within the client aesthetics. And so even as some of the work might feel, you know, very playful or very corporate and all of these things. We're always thinking about the system behind it from a creative execution and all and all all the play together in a way that we can then not only replicate it, but compound it and develop it into a larger cohesive ecosystem. Yeah. and a large part of our work is also now shifting. I do want to bring this up, and I'd love to chat a little bit about it, is This past year, we've been doing actually a lot of work figuring out how do we start thinking about design as data? And so with a lot of our enterprise clients and their shift towards an AI mandate, we were trying to figure out and how to think about AI really from a creative accelerant and cr from an actual Designer standpoint. And I think something that I personally want to challenge our industry and all of us is not just thinking about what is a sexiest tool, right? you and I, we've been in this industry for a long time. We've seen the F, right? And flow one day it's Adobe, the next day it's sketch, an omnigraph, and with speaker-1: I'm an OG Quark Quark Express guy from back in the day. speaker-0: Like the Quark Express, that's right. And and and and you know, these tools will always change, right? And I think especially with so much of the perspective of, you know, AI and the tooling these days, we're I think we're just concentrating way too many resources on what the tool is versus, you know, the core and the essence of it, right? And so a big part of what we've been doing is actually, and this is largely due to a lot of our work, thinking about also tokens and variables that go into these design systems, we've actually started to create these markdown based documentation files that can also enable different tools and technologies and platforms, whether you want to use it for your own you know, tools of AI that you have, Claude. Replit, whatever it is, to also your own proprietary LLMs that you want to create. when you can create these design system documentation, specifically that is a machine first, humans can leverage it in however way that they want. But what was also really helpful in this exploration, and I want to hear your thoughts, was what's fascinating that we learned was when creating design systems, design guidelines. There's always this fine balance between implicit and explicit rules. And what was felt so fascinating as an initial test was we had created MCPs early on when they started showing up in the industry. We connected a lot of the design systems to these MCPs. And what is a really big challenge is especially when you're working with these gargantuan, extremely large design systems. Now Think about a design system where you actually have to have multiple files because you can't have a single file encompass it all, right? Think 10,000 plus icons, think, you know, 10, 20,000, 30,000, you know, different types of components, variants, you know, hundreds of variables and tokens that sit across all of them laterally. These AI systems actually start to fall apart. when they just connect directly because they actually don't know what to pick. And why you're seeing a lot of these AI created designs look like a complete hot mess is because they really don't know how to discern both implicit and explicit rules around design that innately a lot of designers do. And so a lot of our work has been trying to figure out what are some really important pieces of implicit things that aren't readily shared, but known fact of design with certain brand standards that we want to make into explicit call-outs specifically for these documentation. What was also helpful was in writing these documentation, we also started to understand immediately where even for the human ready documentation, we weren't doing a good job capturing some of the detail. And so what was really fascinating in this work that we're doing has been also thinking about how do we start to standardize some of these things also in either Figma design system or, you know, these exported PDF design system files for teams to actually start documenting stuff that we may know implicitly, but haven't actually documented and spoken about explicitly. speaker-1: Wow, that's fascinating. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I get what you're saying, and like, you know, AI judgment isn't its strong point, but I get how amazingly efficient it would be at taking all these design elements and populating, as you said, their a f a ten thousand page website and being able to discern that and how much more efficient of that. So you're you're really trying to figure out a way of getting that human first interaction and then for the AI to pick up on that and do a do a better job of the judgment side of things. speaker-0: That's right. And what's so fascinating is all these markdown files, we have to have humans write them and we have to have designers write them. And so a lot of my work has been trying to figure out how we're starting to pivot and ensure that creatives still have jobs, still are in the industry. And obviously it once we create the documentation, it's not that the documentation is gonna do everything. But I think the documentation is essentially helping us to figure out how we create tools so that we can stay around, so that we can still have, you know, jobs in the future. And while I I do think there's gonna be a pivot and a reckoning in the future and things are gonna adjust once there is a, you know, a realization around token costs and inefficiencies with certain types of LLM models. However, I think there's something to be said about the empowering nature of thinking about design as data for designers. And what does that get to unlock for different creators who are thinking about, you know, it could be as simple as colors, as token values that you can apply to different systems, right? Or thinking about certain pieces and certain components. Components that you start wanting to put into this text-based documentation. because maybe in the designs, you want the actual capabilities to be more dynamic and more fluid in nature. but there's some really interesting things that I think this is starting to usher in in terms of this blend between, you know, where is the line between technologists versus designers? I think it's starting to get back into that liminal space in between. speaker-1: Yeah, I think they like I I'm thinking there because on my smaller scale level where I work with independent businesses and one of the things that I think we keep saying as designers is that you get get all the folder full of assets and you have the brand guidelines and you've walked the client through it and then you ha hand that off and obviously they can't pa pay you to be like a full time designer looking after or brand guardian. And then you kind of check in about six months later and the and the website is just like looking terri you know, they've they they've taken the colours but they've kind of messed it up and they've you know and a and and a lot of time it's just down to the fact that they don't have the resource. So I can see what you're trying to say in terms of like w we'll still build and have that human judgment element of like still work with the clients, still output like what's the right look, what's tone tonally right, all that stuff. But then once but then as you said, if you could break up because essentially what you're saying is the brand guidelines, they're all sort of instructions and then the assets are all like data, quote unquote. So if you can marry those two up, then you could have like an AI ready design system that makes sure that the brand is consistent how the designer wanted it, and the client then doesn't have to actually pay someone full time to actually be the brand guardian. And I don't actually have to they're like anytime there's a change to a website or whatever, they don't have to like come back to me just constantly, you know. So I can see I can see that where yeah, yeah, yeah. It becomes a more efficient on both sides on on mine where I can like make sure that have more satisfaction, the brand will be implemented and their side where, you know, it's you know, they they they don't have to worry about using their own very basic design skills to kind of build their own their website or whatever. speaker-0: That's right. And I think it's been a really great moment of education, also with a lot of creatives and designers in terms of just how do we navigate this landscape, right? How do we show up, exist, continue to do creative work? And what I remind everyone is at the end of the day, we're not just creatives, but we're, you know, creative, creatives for clients. Right. And we are inherently a client service. We serve other people through our means of, you know, creating. And especially when there's certain things, right? In terms of stuff that people don't want to maintain, right? And that they just, you know, if it's just some like test or something that they don't want the company or the clients just want to get off their plate and they just don't care too much, fine. Right. Create these systems, help yourself generate some of these things, help create it for them and get from that A point A to point B. But I think what's really interesting slash important also for designers, especially on how to navigate this era and just this unknown with AI, is from that point B to also then to point Z, that now becomes your territory to figure out what do you want to do there. Right. And so I think I mean it's been a great education for me to also figure that out. But there's no point in, you know, you know, there's so many great analogies, but for example, if somebody is trying to go to an IKEA furniture, right? get IKEA furniture, you you know, you're not gonna go into the IKEA store and try to convince them, you know, hey, buy this instead. Obviously there's so many facts. And how crazy it is that you can buy a table for just under $10. But maybe there's a space in which you partner with people who already have some of these things. They're looking for what's next, or they're kind of opening, expanding their horizon to figure out, you know, is it a table that I want that you're finding also people at that next stage? Maybe that's the place in which we come into play with more of this divergent creative thinking. but some of these things, I think a big part of this work is how do we really start to create these tools that address the needs that's coming up for a certain segment of the population in doing certain types of work, right? But how do we, you know, offload that so that we can still use our divergent creative thinking on the stuff that really, you know, require it and for some of the clients that really want it at the moment they're at. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks very much for sharing your work, Stephen. That's amazing. The w the one question I have when you're be because your approach to design, I keep thinking that i it it must have helped to have a ba a degree in neuroscience and there seems to be like a a sort of neurological level way of approaching design that seems to be embedded from your background. Do you think do you you think that where like that years of studying how the mind works is kind of it has led you to this design pr approach. speaker-0: definitely. I think I think the way it could be succinctly put is it's just like college. on one hand, I'm going to school for physiology neuroscience. I actually worked in a microbiology lab actually creating different bioinformatics platform for data analysis for protein vaults and was very much in like data code and doing a lot of that stuff and balancing that out with this conservatory-based design or sorry, dance experience, which is all about chaos and the unknown. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I find that there's just this fascinating space in between in which while data at, you know, a large scale is very powerful to give you signals in terms of Patterns, things that you might be able to triangulate together that you might not been aware of. But there is something beautiful about this this, you know, this space where you can also take that data and just throw it away and just exist in this liminal space in which anything can be. And and I think it's this two kind of oscillating ends of. Creative work that, you know, I I do think there's a point in which designers swung so hard, right? To be, you know, about data and about impact and about this. And all of a sudden you're getting designs to look this certain way. But what we're finding also in marketing and just what really touches people's hearts is not also the most efficient thing. And that also then brings us, I think, back to the other end of this space where it's just. existing, it might not even make sense. It's just maybe what you really like, this thing that you find beautiful. And I think at the end of the day, when we can bring design back to that in its kind of core, which is, you know, how do we truly connect with each other? the beauty of design is also inviting others into an experience, design as a tool, design as a vector. And when we can actually see that just as a way that even Design has brought you and me together at this moment. You know, I think that to me is really what's so special about it. but you know, I think it sometimes requires us to kind of step away from design trends, what's the latest and greatest, and all these tools to realize this. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, no, I I love that man. I love how be b the the the cold hard computational nature of data meets the kind of complete random chaos of choreography or like, you know, dance or whatever like that. And I do think, you know, in my own design experience, I'm fascinated by abstract logos. You know, there's just some logos, even you know, the Nike's the the Nike swoosh is probably the most popular one, but You know, it d it just works. It's not it's not a literal representation of the brand, but it works and there's the ex undescribable way of like, you know, it's it's hard to like rationalise it fully why it works, but it does it does work. And I think it's it it's having that you know, where where where where sometimes you get so gridded and optically aligned and it has to look like a certain thing to make sense and then sometimes that's right it completely abstract things will work. A heck of a lot better. You don't really know why, but yeah. speaker-0: I have a tip also I just had come to mind. So my book I absolutely love is it's it the book is called Logal Modernism. I don't know if you've heard of it, you have taken a look at the book, but it's this giant book that I purchased as a recommendation from another designer, and it's just logos from decades. And what's so fascinating. Is you just see all these permutations and all these things. And then you also realize a lot of the logos that we know today, Airbnb, all this stuff is all different permutations of what had existed. but one, I absolutely love the book. I think for inspiration, I think if anyone's a designer for logos, branding, highly recommend. But one huge tip I have is just there's so much beauty in this invitation of. the space that we're in and also design as design is knowledge. And so I'm huge on just having a large chunk on this little shelf here in the back of just a bunch of design books. And if we have guests over, if we're just sitting there, I think there's just something beautiful to open up a book, be immersed in design, to surround yourself with design, beauty. And I found that whenever I am either lacking inspiration or just wanting something to arise that in in looking through books and just surrounding myself with design books, I found it to be really, really powerful. books on different cultural design, books that just encompass like local modernism, a whole slew of design inspiration. I have a book on just like color gradients. but just having a whole library, I just find that the randomness of just opening up a page and looking at it, there's so much inspiration. speaker-1: But yeah, it all filters down to the subconscious and yeah, we'll we'll we'll f sort of feed back into it at at most points. d are you okay for time? I know we're running up to the hour. are you am I are you okay to just go over? 'Cause we're almost there. Okay, so there's a there's a random so this is the bingo wheel of wisdom, Stephen. I don't know if you're aware of this that's speaker-0: Do speaker-1: very very technical device I have here. Speaking of high technology. so yeah it's a bingo wheel. It's no expense spared on this show, Steven. yeah so I just basically have like I've got a list of ninety questions that I'll go through with all my guests and I just pick out random numbers so you kind of just I I don't even know what's going to be asked. So I'm as excited as you are. Twenty five. do you prefer sketchbook or iPad? speaker-0: Ugh, I it's so funny. I I take a lot of notes on the iPad. I have a i eleven inch iPad and I'm always taking notes in procreate and then I ship that back into my Notion. I use iPad more, however, I always love a sketchpad, a notebook. whenever I feel like I just need to focus. I just will give myself fifteen minutes, just go sit down and just write all my thoughts out. And I think there's just so much visceral tactile experience that you can get that comes from just the pen on paper that you know, it's just to me, it is the best technology, it's the most rapid, it's the most yeah, yeah. it's it's the to me it's the most high tech. Yeah, most high tech. and my preference. Yeah. speaker-1: Okay, number ten, name one of your design heroes. speaker-0: Design heroes. There's so many, there's so many. you know what? I will say who's inspiring me a lot lately is Georgia Lupi. and she's over at Pentagram right now and she does a lot of extraction of data using design methods. And I absolutely, absolutely love her work and her Book, 30 Days of Design, I think it was called. basically she chronicles through her life and collecting data and then transforming it to data visualization. I I just find so fascinating. And I read it a few months ago, and I was just so impressed by how she is triangulating both data, data collection. And also thinking about creatively how to bring it to life. she has some works at different museums, but for anyone who is really intrigued by just data visualization design, I highly, highly, highly recommend. but she's definitely kind of filling my cup right now. speaker-1: Yeah, data humanism. I'm on our website just now, but yeah, that's fascinating. I'm another one onto my like book design book wish list. Getting all all the recommendations. speaker-0: Highly recommend. And it's also one that you should definitely buy and just leave out. And what you'll find is you just open up to any page and you're just gonna be inspired. And especially when we're trying to think about, you know, how to use AI and all this stuff, it's just such a different dimensionality of thinking that I don't think you can really truly get AI to creating some of the stuff. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's it's reassuring that you know this this human genius is reassuring because it reminds you of that like AI's so far off creating this you know, anyway. That's right. speaker-0: That's right. speaker-1: That's right. so forty two if well this is one of the curveball ones. if Taylor Swift was a colour, what colour would she be? speaker-0: Well speaker-1: That's a curveball question, but it leads back to that kind of like the the unrational side to like Yeah, you're subconscious, yeah. Baby blue, baby blue I'll I'll go with that. speaker-0: Yeah, baby blue. I'm getting psychological. speaker-1: I had more of speaker-0: Maybe it's like dreamy in the sky, maybe, right? On like a good weather day. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You could definitely get some sort of rationale behind the baby blue, absolutely. Yeah. w we'll need to call up her management and say it's she needs to have her baby blue era, like you know. That's right. That's right. okay, number seventy-three, what's your preferred preferred afternoon pick me up? A five minute meditation or a strong coffee? speaker-0: I in the afternoon, lately has been coffee. But if it was an ideal situation, if I'm in a meditation and just the ability to center lately in this past, we're just going through a busy season. My pick me up has been coffee specifically. a double shot latte with oat milk and Yes. It we just recently bought a a really nice coffee machine actually. it's the Jura line J U R A. They're made in Italy and one of our friends had a had one of these coffee machines at their home and they were like, my god, it's the best thing ever and essentially makes the espresso in into a puck and then it just deposits it into this little chamber once it creates it, but everything's automatic. You it's kind of like the machines at Starbucks, which is cool wild, but then you fill it with your coffee beans and then it makes the espresso shots for you. And it's just really speaker-1: Wow. speaker-0: one of the things that yeah, that has really brought a lot of joy to our lives. speaker-1: Yeah, that that's pretty next level. I mean, I I I thought I was being pretty bling when I bought like a milk foamer for the canteen here, you know, but that that's that that's a few levels above where you make your own pods. That's pretty classic. speaker-0: It starts with it starts with the milk foamer, I will say. That's speaker-1: That's your entry level of the barista. speaker-0: right. That's right. but they but my the pro tip is they have a overstock clearance section that always during the holidays you can find stuff for literally fifty percent off. And so that was a tip we got. And then just over the holidays we purchased the machine at fifty percent off. It was a little pricey still. But it's just really I went from like all these like ten different gadgets to kind of make espresso to just pushing a button. It's almost very sacrilegious to the art of it. However, it it's just you know, maybe that's that's synonymous with the times that we're in. speaker-1: Yeah, I hope there's no it I hope there's no Italian baristas listening. They're gonna be like, you know, switching off just in their droves. yeah, it it's it's their version of like, you know, when when somebody shows me their Gen AI logo or something, that's their version of like when somebody's making a coffee by pushing a button. They're like that's their that's the same same feeling they have, I'd reckon. Okay, last question. So if you could swap jobs f with someone for a day, what would it be? speaker-0: If I could swap jobs with somebody for a day, what would it be? speaker-1: What w w w w do you all do you so do you sometimes maybe a lead with that question in terms of like because you still have a pa passion for dance, is there sometimes like a sort of hit musical or something like that or something on TV where you're like, shit, I I wish I was a part of that speaker-0: Honestly, when I was trying to get into dance full time, it is a grueling, grueling profession. And I have nothing more than respect for people who can perform constantly every day. Imagine, you know, instead of moving the mouse as designers and clicking a few things to create work, physically, you have to move your body all the time for 10 plus hours a day. It's exhausting and it's beyond, you know, even, you know, jobs where you're just standing. Just and and I think there's just something so powerful with, you know, also what does it look like to put your artistry out? However, I would not those days are long gone. but I have dear, dear, dear, dear appreciation. lately what's been coming up for me actually are Calligraphy artists. And I've just been watching a lot of videos on calligraphy art history. and I would love to swap jobs with and not even just calligraphy. I've been watching a lot of these artists doing very traditional East Asian based calligraphy. And essentially they have their versions of different papers that are more horizontal than it is vertical. and just watching them write in different calligraphy and scripts all day long. And maybe it is like a performer. It might get exhausting, but I've just been watching a lot of those videos lately. speaker-1: I get what you mean. I get what I I get what you mean, getting back to that sort of handcrafted nature of things. I went to see a design talk with a like a sign writer just like the other week. And I w I was quite envious when she was speaking about like, you know, getting the curl of the S and like doing that. Trying to the secret is to do the letters in as little strokes as possible, do you know? So you're just trying to get instead of stopping and starting with the curves. It's trying to get that all in one beautiful hand motion. So I was suddenly going like, Well that's that's what I I feel as though that's what I have to do next, you know. It's like the the tr trying to master the physical art of creating let letters, you know, and not not have that digital interface stopping me, you know. Yeah speaker-0: But that's a beauty of calligraphy, right? Is you see actually when they write that letter S, for example, right? They actually do it so uniquely and so differently from person to person. And some people might do the top first, then the middle, and then the bottom. Some people might actually go backwards, go forwards. And people to just get the same letter and even the same style have their own way in. And I find it so fascinating to watch these videos that you can actually see the action in doing it, which then I think, you know, you realize, wow, like the what I see is not how I thought you got there. speaker-1: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's fascinating. I I'm gonna share the heavy dessert menu. So Yes. I I I think we've touched on a lot of these subjects so far, actually. But yeah, so if you're not familiar, so this is how to price your work, the AI elephant in the room, the red flags of a nightmare client, specialist versus generalists, self promotion without the ick, avoiding burnout, your design and how to sell it, and the things they never tell you about in design courses. Steven, what are you choosing from the heavy dessert menu? speaker-0: I've these are good questions. I will say I think it was number speaker-1: Yeah, sorry, I lost the screen there. speaker-0: It was number seven. How to your design and how to sell it. So you're finding me also where I'm pivoting a lot more to just focusing. I do most of the sales with our agency though. So that's really my world right now. And I think there's something really fascinating about sales that I'm learning more as a creative that I really did not know early, early on. And For the longest time I thought to sell design was to create this perfect design and to talk about it perfectly, but the sales process is absolutely none of that. And it's 90% listening and 10% confirmation. And what I'm finding and the deals I'm able to close, the conversations I'm able to continue, the more I can get back into having a conversation, asking a lot of questions, understanding people where they're at. And then also using their language to then articulate the work through, I find that by creating that connection back towards the work, I find that selling becomes so easy. but oftentimes as creatives, we're after creating this such perfect thing and you know, being able to articulate it in the most precise and scientific, whatever way possible, that I think going back to the work that we do, if it is truly right. create a connection and to create a bridge, whether it's for audiences, whether it's for client, is to go back to right, asking questions, using their language, and just showing up in their space and how they are. And so I think that's the advice I have coming out of that is, you know, if you're doing more talking than listening, you're selling wrong. And if you're not also adapting your work differently to different people and coming in at different altitudes and changing your language so that people can understand and to get invited in, you're also missing the opportunity for your work to truly connect with people where they're with where they're at. speaker-1: No, that's absolutely magnificent advice and it's like it's one of those undiscussed topics because I think designers you don't see you you see sales as a grubby dodgy aspect or something, but it's so important to as you said there, it's not necessarily about y you know, getting sales from the client, but it's having sort a a good rationale behind your work. and that rationale comes from your discussions with your client in terms of the understanding their pain points, understanding the problems within their industry, 'cause you'll you'll go go in and you won't actually might not be aware of a lot of the landscape of the industry that you're working in. And if you pick up on these things and then when you kind of if you sort of almost show like Well, you said that this was a problem here, so this is why I did this and and therefore this is that. So if it's almost this rationale process, and then the client can get on board with the idea because t design sometimes you shove a l a sort of logo and a color chart in their face and it's like you know, sometimes they can't see it. You have to sort of help them along the steps of like showing like right, this is how the process of what what you the problem you're having and this is how I'm gonna solve it b by this, this and this. And there's a bit of education and hand holding as you go, but yeah, as you said, that's that comes from listening for for the most part, rather than talking, you know. speaker-0: Exactly, exactly. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I think that's a good point to finish it, Steven. This has been a fantastic chat. speaker-0: thank you for having me. Yeah. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. So that was Stephen Wakaboyashi. very lovely to meet Steven and I really love that chat. It's one of those ones where as I said at the top, it was the first time meeting him, so there i i it's listening back, I think it was quite nice how quickly we settled into conversation and there was nice overlaps in the conversation inter for the topics we were talking about. StrangerCreative dot com is the studio website if you want to go check out his work. this is also on YouTube as well. So I'll cut up that section where we spoke about the work so you can if you felt as though you missed out on the visuals, although Steven did g do a good job of explaining what the work was about. go head to the YouTube channel wise love.studio yeah on the YouTubes and subscribe and plenty of episodes now this is episode twelve so yeah there's eleven other brilliant episodes for you to peruse and enjoy either in an via the ears or via the eyes. There's no way of consuming it via the mouth yet. Maybe I need to put this out. in cake format. Wouldn't that be nice? next guest is Freddie Ust from SNASK. Freddie gave and I I tell them hit this straight away on the podcast the best design talk I've ever seen at Gab in Glasgow. Shout out the Jam Hot crew for putting on those excellent design talks. Yeah, it just absolutely loved it and had to reach out to Freddie and get him on podcast. just yeah, just excited by it. I'm even struggling to woof put into words how perfect Freddie is a guest on the podcast. So yeah, you're just gonna have to tune in and familiarize yourself with Freddie's awesomeness. Right, that's the end of the pod. Thanks so much for all your feedback. Do the usual if you haven't done it already of subscribing, commenting, rating, liking, tell your friends, putting a little sign up in your local co op or whatever. much love to your lobes.