Latest / Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary) / The psychology of typography - Sarah Hyndman

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The psychology of typography - Sarah Hyndman · Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)

0:08
Sarah: sometimes the mistakes are the best bits.
0:10
Sarah: That's the secret sauce.
0:12
Sarah: If everything goes well, you don't learn.
0:15
Sarah: Where the boundaries are.
0:17
Sarah: there are surprises from the mistakes that you can either just sit there and or you can go, okay, let's interrogate what went wrong, why did that go wrong?
0:24
Sarah: The very least.
0:25
Sarah: It can be a good anecdote to tell somewhere later on, it can actually inform you about something that will change the way you think or change the way you think about the people you're talking to.
0:35
Sarah: Maybe.
0:36
Radim: Hello and welcome to Creativity for Sale podcast, a show to help you start and grow your life changing creative career and business.
0:45
Radim: My name is Radim Malinich and creativity changed my life.
0:48
Radim: You see, I believe creativity can change your life too.
0:51
Radim: I even wrote a book about it and it inspired this podcast.
0:55
Radim: I've set out to interview the world's most brilliant creatives, designers, writers, musicians, makers and marketeers about their life changing experiences with creativity.
1:05
Radim: If you ever wanted to know how people go from their humble beginnings to the pinnacle of their success, our conversation should provide you with an intimate look into triumphs, challenges and untold stories behind their creative endeavours.
1:19
Radim: We also discuss the highs and lows of creative careers and creative life.
1:23
Radim: So Thank you for joining me on this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all.
1:30
Radim: Let creativity change your life.
1:33
Radim: Are you ready?
1:34
Radim: Today's guest is a graphic designer, author, and a public speaker known for her interest in the psychology of type.
1:41
Radim: Her aim is to change the way we think and talk about typography by demonstrating that it is fun and accessible for everyone.
1:48
Radim: Around the world, she's known for her experimental workshops and events, and I've been excited to get her on the show right from the start.
1:54
Radim: It's my pleasure to introduce Sarah Heinemann.
1:59
Radim: /Good morning, Sarah.
2:00
Radim: How are you doing?
2:00
Radim: Welcome to the show.
2:01
Sarah: Good morning.
2:02
Sarah: I am doing well.
2:03
Sarah: Thank you.
2:03
Sarah: I'm delighted to be here.
2:05
Radim: it's taken us a while to actually see each other again and speak to each other because our path sort of crossover like every couple of years.
2:12
Radim: And I think we are sometimes not the closest there are on the Amazon charts of actually with our books being closest than we are, in real life.
2:21
Sarah: remember the first time that I met you was at, I think, A-D-N-A-D event, and the first thing we said was, oh, our books are fighting for number one spot on Amazon at.
2:30
Radim: Yeah.
2:30
Radim: that was my, charming line.
2:33
Radim: It's like you and I, because it's sometimes you just never know who's the person behind the title.
2:37
Radim: So you just, you say, actually, that is me.
2:39
Radim: Because as most often actually happens that we are known for the work rather than being a person behind the work.
2:45
Radim: so am I right to believe that you're writing a new book?
2:47
Radim: Is that, is that
2:48
Sarah: Yes, I'm working well.
2:50
Sarah: Much like you, I'm working on two, possibly three at once.
2:54
Sarah: I've got two that I'm actively working on.
2:56
Sarah: Then another one that I wish I had enough time to work on at the same time, but yes,
3:01
Radim: wow.
3:02
Radim: is there any chance you can tell us a bit more about it or is it, is it all secret
3:05
Sarah: oh, when I talk to people, I, I guess I do explain bits of it from the research and the, the conversations I have on socials, I guess you.
3:13
Sarah: Pick up a little bit about it bit.
3:15
Sarah: one of them is going to be a very, very interactive book that goes through all of the, the multisensory research I've done over the years, but it'll be in the form of every chapter opens with an activity that you can do.
3:26
Sarah: Then it'll explain, you can compare your results with the results that I get, and then it'll explain the background behind it.
3:33
Sarah: So hopefully a very kind of turn how you respond to the appearance of words, upside down and really make you think about how you consume them.
3:42
Sarah: And then the other one is I've been gathering up personality, pairing personality and font pairing, data in lots of different formats for the 10 years.
3:54
Sarah: And I need to just put that into a book so people use it.
3:57
Sarah: And again, I want that to be incredibly There's this lovely book by, a woman called Nikki segment called The Flavor Thesaurus, and it's all about how you pair different flavors.
4:07
Sarah: And I really like the, the idea of it being a book that you would use in that way.
4:12
Sarah: So it's more like a cookery book than a typography manual.
4:16
Radim: think I'm, I'm a big fan of the, flavor for authors.
4:19
Radim: I've, I've got a copy and, and, and I've got a cover.
4:21
Radim: I think I'm, I've got a, the first edition where it just looks beautiful.
4:24
Radim: There's the colors on the cover.
4:25
Radim: I means it's just, I had to buy just for the cover itself.
4:28
Radim: And yeah, used it a few times, used it a few times, and what a great result.
4:33
Radim: So I really love that interactive nature of the things that you're trying to do, because most of the titles in our, in our industry and in our categories are very passive, aren't they?
4:43
Radim: I mean, they're just, read this, go away, you know, and potentially do something
4:47
Sarah: And sometimes they're, look how great I am.
4:50
Sarah: you can be great too if you do it my way, or if you look at all of my examples and buy my book.
4:54
Sarah: Yeah.
4:55
Sarah: Um, I, I I think with everything I do, I, there's lots of, you can go and see amazing portfolio talks.
5:02
Sarah: You can go, there are some really fantastic inspiring designers, but my, my audience is very much a mainstream audience.
5:10
Sarah: I, I want to, I want to represent the way that we consume works, to, to an audience who doesn't usually really think about it or who would be incredibly intimidated by it.
5:20
Sarah: if I say the word typography, people will just have that kind of rabbit in hair, lights, dazzled look, and they'll just walk away going, no, that's nothing to do with me.
5:28
Sarah: but the way to actually show everybody how exciting it is, is to create activities.
5:33
Sarah: So rather than, oh, I'm going to talk to you about.
5:36
Sarah: What words look like if I say, oh, come and smell this, and then pick which one of these word styles best matches the smell, and then tell me what mood it evokes.
5:45
Sarah: Uh, instantly there's, it's so bonkers that there are no right or wrong rules and people will start getting really engaged in it.
5:51
Sarah: And also they'll be really surprised that they know the answer.
5:54
Sarah: And it's, even though it's weird, there is a really obvious answer, and it's just fun doing it that way.
6:01
Radim: would you say that that's just unnatural creativity?
6:03
Radim: Like we, we tell ourselves we don't know about certain things because we don't engage with them every time or every day.
6:08
Radim: Whereas what you, what you describe, I think in my opinion, it's just people just don't think about it that often is as much, for example, you and I would do, what is the most bonkers experience that you had from these events?
6:19
Radim: what did you come up with?
6:20
Radim: Like, I wasn't expecting this because what I like about what you're doing, it's actually bringing it in mainstream and rephrasing it a little bit.
6:26
Radim: Like, because yeah, as you said, if you say typography or you and I might think about Eric Speakman, whereas, um, you know, what do you do?
6:35
Radim: And it's just actually opening up that, sort of knowledge and, and experience the people that normally would be Yeah, very much shy away from it.
6:41
Sarah: Oh, three questions in one.
6:42
Sarah: I'll come back to the bonkers one afterwards.
6:44
Sarah: 'cause it's more about the answers I get that make it kind of strange.
6:49
Sarah: I find the minute I talk about typography, it, it makes you think about designers and people who use type.
6:55
Sarah: If I talk about fonts, it makes people think about scrolling down a font menu.
6:59
Sarah: I want you to think about how you go about your everyday life and you consume information.
7:05
Sarah: And the way our Amazing Brains work is when the way that we read is it's this kind of sub-program that when, you've got children, have, are there, are any of them learning to read?
7:15
Radim: Uh, yeah.
7:16
Sarah: So when you watch a child learning to read, so you are literally literally watching your child rewire its brain, and it takes a long time and it feels really frustrating.
7:25
Sarah: It's like you're a backseat driver, but you're literally watching these wires, these these, um, watching it rewire the brain.
7:31
Sarah: And then once you've.
7:33
Sarah: Master this.
7:33
Sarah: You can't spend your whole time using that amount of brain energy decoding every single squiggle that you see.
7:40
Sarah: So your brain creates these little sub-programs and it performs these really, really automatically.
7:44
Sarah: They hardly use any energy, but it means that we don't notice that we're doing them.
7:48
Sarah: So when we are wandering around the world, you're looking at different packaging, you are looking at, oh, whatever you're looking at, um.
7:56
Sarah: You are not paying conscious attention to all of this information.
8:00
Sarah: Your subconscious brain is chatting away to the different type styles it sees the different messages, the colors, the illustrations, and you are not really, you can decide to be part of this conversation, but you are not.
8:14
Sarah: So I think what you and I do is we, one of the things that we do is to make the invisible visible.
8:19
Sarah: We start to say, Hey look, this is a process that's happening.
8:22
Sarah: You can choose to put what I would call maybe your funk goggles on and be aware of it.
8:28
Sarah: then you can start to understand maybe why you are making these decisions.
8:31
Sarah: You can still make the same decision, but you're going to make it in a much more informed way.
8:36
Sarah: Or maybe you're going to go, actually, I didn't want to make that decision after all.
8:40
Sarah: I want to choose something else instead.
8:43
Sarah: And I think it's about, it's about just showing, giving people, empowering people to understand a little bit more about how our brains work and how we engage with everyday lives.
8:54
Sarah: Um, I, I kind of think of it like, music or food.
8:59
Sarah: have professional musicians, composers, you have professional chefs, but it's okay for you and I who are not professional or musicians, just I can still enjoy music music and talk about it.
9:11
Sarah: I can still enjoy food and talk about it, but I don't have to use all the technical jargon so I can be a consumer as well as a creator.
9:19
Sarah: And I think that's field that I find is missing when we're talking about reading in the words that we read.
9:25
Sarah: Does that make sense?
9:27
Radim: It's fascinating.
9:28
Radim: Oh, it makes perfect sense.
9:29
Radim: I, think this is gonna be a great conversation because I'm, I'm, I'm learning here.
9:33
Radim: I'm learning here and, and I totally understand what you said about rewiring your brain, so you're creating new pathways when you're learning something like that.
9:39
Radim: It's, it reminds me of learning music instruments and it's just, it's so frustrating trying to know, learn something in a day and like.
9:47
Radim: Unless you have grown that sort of ecosystem in your head, like to, to be able to pick it up quickly, it takes time for it to, to, to, to bat in and to stay there for a while and just actually be as a sort of natural ecosystem.
9:58
Radim: And you get, for example, musicians or drummers who just, they, they step into a, a, a, a tour in the last minute notice because they have grown the, the, the, the processes.
10:08
Radim: And they've, they've worked out like how to actually learn a catalog in three hours, which seems absolutely impossible, but that's what they do all day, every day.
10:16
Radim: And that's, that's their craft.
10:18
Radim: But obviously that's, that's, that's more than, 10,000 hours.
10:20
Radim: There's more than 20,000 hours of actually creating this.
10:23
Radim: So, yeah.
10:24
Radim: No, I, I I love that as you say that, we, we just, we can enjoy it.
10:27
Radim: We can, we, especially, especially right now, you can be and do anything you pretty much because we've got not, not many gatekeepers.
10:34
Radim: whenever, whenever I think about what you do, I don't think,'cause you, you were once upon a time a graphic
10:39
Sarah: Yes.
10:40
Radim: but.
10:41
Radim: I just see know as more of a sort of behavioral scientist or psychologist.
10:45
Radim: this is, this is what you're creating is, is more of a studying of the mind.
10:49
Radim: So I, I feel like your typography are the tools that you have sort of design led by you more or less just getting the responses from, from the general public and kind of find out how we are sort of hardwired.
11:00
Radim: would you say your title is?
11:01
Radim: How would you introduce yourself?
11:03
Sarah: oh, I, I reinvent title.
11:05
Sarah: I really struggle to introduce myself.
11:06
Sarah: This is one of the things I actually wanted to talk to you about today and actually all ask everybody.
11:11
Sarah: I keep asking everybody is, how can I describe myself in a way that makes sense?
11:15
Sarah: I'm too close to it.
11:15
Sarah: I've been a designer for too long.
11:17
Sarah: I've been doing type tasting for too long.
11:19
Sarah: So I can't step back and think of phrases that explain at the moment my, it's not the shortest of phrases, but to actually describe what I do, I would say that I explore how the appearance of the words you read transform what you feel, think, taste, and do.
11:36
Sarah: But that's not a job title.
11:38
Radim: which is, I think, a perfectly good way to summarize what you do because with designers we try to say like, well, I'm a graphic designer, illustrator, art director, animator.
11:47
Radim: I think we just, whereas if you say, for example, I just wanna do things that make life better, you know, better design creates better, better society.
11:55
Radim: It all I think when you describe what is it, the actual connection, people can understand it much easier.
12:00
Radim: Because if you use words like graphic designer, then you only spend the next 15 minutes listing off the number of clients and pieces of work that you've done, rather than actually connecting about a mission, what we know, what we, for what reason we try to do this.
12:13
Sarah: Yes.
12:14
Sarah: So from my point of view, it's about inspiring curiosity and getting people to start asking questions.
12:20
Sarah: And as the world goes on, as more and more, as more advances and things like neuroscience, AI come in, there's going to be more and more, it's going to be more fine tuned how we can be persuaded to make the choices that other people want us to make.
12:35
Sarah: So the more that we are aware of how this is working, the more kind of cognitive Flexibility, cognitive freedom that we can, we can keep.
12:45
Sarah: So it's, again, it's like flexing a muscle.
12:47
Sarah: The more that you, the more, more time, more often that you become aware of it, the more you can be aware of it.
12:53
Sarah: Just like being a designer, we, we now can't go on holiday without photographing every sign piece of signage in every bit of rubbish in every rapper that we see much to the frustration of our our loved ones, who can't understand why that that crinkly letter is so fascinating to us, But because we see it all the time, it's like the end of sixth, the sixth Sense Sense movie, sorry, spoilers.
13:16
Sarah: But, when you suddenly see, I see it everywhere.
13:19
Sarah: and we just trained ourselves to be able to do it.
14:07
Radim: But there's something about a holiday mind.
14:08
Radim: Like when you go and stick to a different place, the music sounds better, the food tastes better, the lettering looks better.
14:14
Radim: You always, I, I mean I go to Canada quite a lot and I always find something like, oh this is fascinating.
14:20
Radim: I wanted to move to Montreal.
14:21
Radim: I wanted to do all sorts of things, I wanted to move to Bali.
14:24
Radim: 'cause like all of the, all of a sudden the food is much, much.
14:26
Radim: 'cause you, you remove yourself from your daily worry, especially, you just you leave that behind, like deeper back in London and have experience of a different kind.
14:33
Radim: So I think it's just that cross pollination of ideas is because we are open.
14:36
Radim: And again, it goes back to psychology and behavioral like stuff that makes you appreciate it more.
14:42
Radim: So with the events that you do, do you, do you find people skeptical, intrigued?
14:49
Radim: what's,'cause obviously you don't go and ask other designers these questions.
14:53
Radim: You actually go and speak to the regular mortals.
14:55
Radim: Um,
14:56
Sarah: Yes.
14:57
Sarah: I find designers are rubbish.
14:58
Sarah: 'cause if there's a, if one of the options you can choose is Helvetica, they'll always choose Helvetica So if anybody starts choosing that, I'll just say, okay, you're a designer.
15:06
Sarah: Can I please have a second choice?
15:07
Sarah: Now, because we, it's like us wearing all black to go to a client meeting.
15:10
Sarah: We, we want to be neutral and not give anything away.
15:14
Sarah: I I, the most interesting responses come from just regular people outside of the design world.
15:20
Sarah: The most interesting from children.
15:22
Sarah: 'cause they haven't yet learned what they're meant to think.
15:24
Sarah: So they will give really open, honest, and you can have really brilliant discussions about, so why And they are quite happy to narrate their train of thought in a way that as we get older, we get a bit more shy about doing that.
15:37
Sarah: We feel like maybe, maybe I'm trying to pull macken or something and I'm going to get some, find something weird and that you don't want to reveal, which is absolutely not the case at all.
15:48
Sarah: Um, so, but the most interesting results, as I said, were from, yeah, just from regular person on the street.
15:56
Sarah: So I tried to take my pop-up lab and my events to, to as many things as I can outside the design industry.
16:02
Sarah: but my favorite thing is to get, if you've got designers and say non-designers, I hate that phrase.
16:08
Sarah: I will get the designers to take part, and then I'll get them to stand there and wait and watch because then they can actually see how regular people go through the process.
16:17
Sarah: And I find it's just so enlightening to, it'll break down a few misperceptions.
16:23
Sarah: As designers, we think that everybody thinks the way we do.
16:26
Sarah: We've forgotten that people don't, and that there isn't one right style or one right way of saying anything, that everybody responds in their own way.
16:37
Sarah: And all got different experiences, different backgrounds and different things that we're interested in.
16:42
Sarah: And just going back to products, I might want a premium product or a cheap product, or actually I, maybe I want something that talks to me in a really cheesy way.
16:51
Sarah: We, we want different things.
16:52
Sarah: We don't want everything to look classy and good taste.
16:57
Sarah: it's just, it's really interesting to, to get everybody to watch each, each other's responses.
17:03
Radim: I have to say, as a designer, I've, I've allowed myself to think that I'm always wrong, if that makes sense now, because when I started, I, I thought as a novice that I'm always right.
17:14
Radim: Obviously I've, I'm in the front of the computer, I've got a com keyboard and a mouse at that time, and I thought I had all the answers, whereas the older I get, and I always feel now whatever I'm creating that I'm always wrong.
17:27
Radim: It, it might be okay in my land, but most of the time, let's see if, if, if, if, if, if we align, because as you just said, like you, you get your designers to watch what regular people do.
17:41
Radim: The answer is often different, and I think this is it.
17:44
Radim: 'cause obviously we, we see that we do our sort of market research and visual strategy and all of this stuff, and we talk all of this sort of lovely malarkey and most of the time we are wrong because it's just like creating a business plan.
17:57
Radim: it goes out of the window as soon as it hits the first CU customer.
18:00
Radim: Everything changes.
18:02
Radim: And I think we just, yeah, I think I, I don't know, I don't know about you, but I like, I, it's more about open eyes and sort of sort of having the con conversation about what is it really, what people do really respond to it because yeah, I mean the, the number of times now I see something, I think it just doesn't make sense and everyone goes crazy, it's okay, I, I'm definitely wrong again.
18:23
Radim: And I that, that's fine because you can't like everything, but it's informing yourself like how the world changes around you because what was I.
18:31
Radim: Hal heavy, heavy world in, mid two thousands or whatever, like it changes.
18:36
Radim: And the other, I think I'm sure you would agree, is now the more popular choice for everyone.
18:42
Radim: Um.
18:43
Sarah: I, I, I so agree with all of that.
18:45
Sarah: The more we, the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know.
18:49
Sarah: but I think what you'd also just described was that we can only judge the world from our own viewpoint and our own experience.
18:55
Sarah: things like marketing, and you can only do it from what you know because you don't know what you don't know.
18:59
Sarah: But then once you put it out into the other, people are responding according to their experiences and we're all different.
19:05
Sarah: So it's not that we are right or wrong, it's just that we are not, we don't have autonomy ours is not the only opinion.
19:13
Sarah: I think relinquishing.
19:15
Sarah: to hold onto that and understanding that actually it's better to listen and that some of the things that people will say are fascinating and brilliant and mind openingly, hysterical and weird.
19:29
Sarah: Um, brilliant.
19:31
Sarah: I saw, um, a, an activation a year, year and a half ago where, FMRI headsets were put on people's heads and they were shown lots of different, typefaces it would measure how your brain responded.
19:43
Sarah: And of course all the designer types went along like, yes, my brain is going to get really excited about health tica.
19:50
Sarah: But no, the brain would get excited about something like curls, or like the really silly, cheesy type faces.
19:56
Sarah: And I was really proud of mine.
19:58
Sarah: It got really excited about a hacked.
20:01
Sarah: Horrible typeface that looked like a David Carson knockoff, and it was really bored by the others.
20:05
Sarah: And I'm really proud that my subconscious was that mischievous And so even if we, we can teach our, teach our external.
20:14
Sarah: Yes.
20:14
Sarah: This is the, the, this is the me I put out to the world.
20:17
Sarah: But actually our subconscious is really getting excited about other different things.
20:21
Sarah: And that's also what I find a lot of the experiments,
20:24
Radim: I think when you've described it makes perfect sense.
20:26
Radim: it makes perfect sense now that the Helvetica is basically a baseline that's, that's the norm.
20:32
Radim: Like this.
20:33
Radim: That's, that's, it's almost it's I mean it's, there's, there's nothing that's super exciting.
20:36
Radim: There's a particular word for it.
20:37
Radim: I can't think of it
20:38
Sarah: Blanding, bland ation,
20:40
Radim: so
20:40
Sarah: neutral, or the.
20:42
Radim: ification,
20:43
Sarah: Or if you're doing experiments, it would be the, oh, now I've forgotten the word.
20:49
Sarah: it, that would be the neutral version that you test everything else against because it's not, although of course nothing comes without meaning, Helvetica is not neutral anymore.
20:58
Sarah: You see it and you still have a bucket load of associations that you make with it.
21:02
Sarah: but I'm really enjoying now that the, the typographic landscape is getting more exciting and varied.
21:10
Sarah: It's what I, I think of it as the ification of fonts.
21:13
Sarah: because we've now got all the access to Adobe fonts and all the history has been removed and everything comes up in the same jumbled list, it feels like it's very much a Spotify version of type.
21:25
Radim: Yeah.
21:25
Radim: Can you, can you tell me what you mean With Spotify, it's just because it's just so available, so ready?
21:29
Radim: is that what you It's just like on Spotify you can just go and listen to anything.
21:33
Radim: So is that the same with Adobe
21:35
Sarah: Yeah, so I'm of an age where I used to buy vinyl records.
21:38
Sarah: I used to save my pocket money up and buy vinyl records.
21:40
Sarah: And, the art on the records meant a huge amount.
21:45
Sarah: To me.
21:45
Sarah: It was a ritual.
21:46
Sarah: You'd listen to the tracks, you'd have and every single record you'd, you'd know when it came out, what it meant to you.
21:54
Sarah: That was that year.
21:55
Sarah: That was when I was doing this.
21:57
Sarah: And so music very much charted my history.
22:01
Sarah: So it charted social history, it had it, it was a timeline, and I think type used to be like that as well.
22:08
Sarah: So Helvetica, it was the 1950s, or it was the 2000 and early two thousands.
22:14
Sarah: all of the crazy type faces that looked like they're wearing flares, you know, those are late sixties, early seventies, or in fact actually also Art Nouveau.
22:22
Sarah: You knew that they would narrate the passage of time.
22:25
Sarah: now with Spotify, everything's jumbled together.
22:28
Sarah: You get suggestions.
22:29
Sarah: This is, you like that, so you're going to like this.
22:31
Sarah: So it's, the history has now been completely removed, so there is no timeline.
22:36
Sarah: And I think now that we can access type in the same way, I would say the same things happened.
22:41
Sarah: And to, I went to a really interesting futures event the other week about fashion and they were saying how fashion is now just completely mixed and matched.
22:49
Sarah: posed my ation theory.
22:51
Sarah: And she was like, absolutely, yes.
22:52
Sarah: That's completely what's happened.
22:54
Sarah: every style is now just mashed up together.
22:57
Sarah: And things like vintage mean that it's a similar kind of thing.
23:01
Sarah: You can buy things from any era, put them together and it doesn't matter anymore.
23:05
Sarah: Does that make sense?
23:07
Radim: I think it makes quite good sense.
23:08
Radim: Yeah.
23:08
Radim: Very, very much.
23:09
Radim: Good sense indeed.
23:10
Radim: I, but I always feel like with Spotify and Spotify, especially Spotify, I was a big fan when it came out and, and I'm still a big fan, but I now listen to what's called a modelle a mash.
23:22
Radim: You know, like it's just, as a standard graphic designer, I mean, when I get my report it says you've been listening to like 800 different styles in a year.
23:29
Radim: I mean, I didn't even know there's 800 different styles, but I'm someone who just likes literally going and listening to anything, that makes me happy.
23:37
Radim: You know, I just being always curious and I think that's the nature of what we do, but sometimes if you were to ask me, okay, so what did you listen to in the last year?
23:47
Radim: I would remember seven songs.
23:48
Radim: I'd be like, that one, that one, that one.
23:50
Radim: You know, there's something that would stick out.
23:51
Radim: And do you ever feel with, with typography there's this sort of sense of overwhelm that we've removed the gatekeepers.
23:59
Radim: You know, you don't have to ha you don't have to produce a commercial typeface by being a part of a type foundry.
24:03
Radim: You don't have to be, in a deal with someone.
24:05
Radim: Like you can just create stuff for creative market and, and sell it in the next day.
24:12
Radim: I just feel like do you feel there's an overwhelm?
24:14
Radim: Do you feel like there's too much stuff?
24:16
Radim: Basically?
24:17
Sarah: I, I'm, I'm a bad person to ask that because I don't use type in the same way that a designer would use type.
24:23
Sarah: I'm looking at it out in the wild, or I'm trying to find samples that will match styles that people might see out in the world.
24:32
Sarah: So I, I think if you asked just a regular person on the street.
24:37
Sarah: Is there an overwhelm of the different visual styles that you see everywhere?
24:41
Sarah: Nobody would say it's any more or any less than they used to be.
24:44
Sarah: I think maybe designers choosing from your font palette, your font, list might feel overwhelmed.
24:51
Sarah: Do you,
24:52
Radim: I do a little bit.
24:52
Radim: Yeah.
24:53
Radim: I do feel overwhelmed because psychologically, like the more choices we can, more options we can choose, make a choice from, you then regret not making the choices.
25:01
Radim: I mean, for example, for my new books, I was looking for one type phase for about a year.
25:06
Radim: I tried, is it this one?
25:07
Radim: Is it that one?
25:08
Radim: I was, and it's just continuous process because yes, I could have used Hertica, I could have used Circular, could have used any of those fonts and be like, we are done.
25:16
Radim: But it's, it's about expression of like, what is that I believe is the right mixture of elegance, readability, and feeling like, how does it make you feel?
25:27
Radim: Because you are in very much in the business of feel like how does thing, how does stuff make you feel?
25:32
Radim: Is this what you do?
25:33
Radim: And we'll talk about it in a second, but I feel like there's far too much choice.
25:37
Radim: And whilst I think the movement and the progress is right, it's what we need to do.
25:42
Radim: It's just almost like, do we need like a longevity cutter of like, okay, this has been good for now.
25:47
Radim: I don't know, it just, it just feels there's, there just, there's too much and nothing expires and we just adding in, adding, in, adding, adding and in,
25:53
Sarah: What font did you pick in the end?
25:55
Sarah: What What typeface did you pick?
25:56
Sarah: Peer books.
25:56
Radim: I picked mo it by Northern Block,
26:00
Sarah: Mm-Hmm.
26:01
Sarah: ..I like that you name check designers.
26:03
Sarah: We should always do that.
26:04
Sarah: should always list our fonts in our books as well.
26:06
Radim: I mean they, they made themselves known to me.
26:08
Radim: 'cause I, this, they actually, they came from creative.
26:10
Radim: They came from Adobe Font and I was very happy that it came from Adobe Font'cause I used it on my website.
26:15
Radim: And obviously, yeah, that ification of, of side faces is great.
26:19
Radim: And then I used something called roic ic, which is from New Zealand, from the designer's Foundry, I think.
26:25
Radim: And I don't know, I mean, I just kinda see it like, it's, um, like a kind of contemporary, it's a part display part.
26:32
Radim: I I don't know, I'm just showing it to you on the screen.
26:35
Radim: But it's, it's gorgeous.
26:36
Radim: It's so elegant and like.
26:38
Radim: Just, just, just trying to find a balance between what actually looks good and what, what, what can be actually with standard test of time.
26:44
Radim: Because you don't wanna create something too, too experimental.
26:46
Radim: 'cause sometimes you see books, there are types set in something quite like a geoscience.
26:50
Radim: You're like, why are you doing this?
26:52
Radim: Is gonna look very weird and dated really quickly.
26:54
Radim: Of course we can cap, we can encapsulate a moment of time.
26:58
Radim: Okay, this is what the book in 2007 looks like.
27:01
Radim: And this is the book from 2021 or 23.
27:04
Radim: again, I don't think there's a right or wrong, it's just is it gonna look dated?
27:07
Radim: Is it gonna look of its time or is it gonna be always transcending is it always gonna be okay?
27:11
Sarah: And also it's it's your voice.
27:13
Sarah: It's your book.
27:13
Sarah: So you, it's your tone of voice.
27:16
Sarah: It's, it's got to match the actual words that you're using, all of the examples that you're giving.
27:21
Sarah: So you instinctively have a big steer on that anyway, and it's quite hard to articulate it, you, you will have known what was right and what will have felt like the right voice for you.
27:31
Sarah: So great.
27:32
Sarah: And what you just showed me looked lovely, very gorgeous.
27:35
Radim: Thank you.
27:36
Radim: but the journey was a year.
27:37
Radim: Like I, I, I mean you, the thing for someone who works with type every day, most of the days, if it's just like nothing felt right, and I guess the journey is maybe sweeter because you, you validate, you test, validate, and you try to think like what other people do.
27:52
Radim: Just what's the sort of current vogue, like what, what, what's to expect?
27:55
Radim: And yeah, you can easily go with the first choice and then regret okay, there's more choices, but have I, have I not tried the right choices?
28:02
Radim: And I just feel that's too much.
28:04
Sarah: and then you've got pressure of you're a designer, so you've got to get it right.
28:07
Sarah: Whereas if you were, I dunno, a gardener, it doesn't matter so much and it still matters, but it's not the same.
28:15
Sarah: We put that pressure on ourselves that somehow we should know something which is a load of rubbish really.
28:24
Radim: Yeah, I think you're right about the self, self-inflicted pressure, if that makes sense, because Yeah.
28:31
Radim: we need to talk about your books.
28:32
Radim: We need to more talk about your books because I remember seeing a post that you put on LinkedIn saying that whoever published your approached with your book said that book on typefaces will never sell, and you must celebrate in 35,000
28:44
Sarah: Yeah, 40,000 now,
28:46
Radim: excellent stuff.
28:46
Radim: It's so great to hear.
28:48
Radim: how would you say that the book has shaped what you do now?
28:51
Radim: Like how would you say that the book was quite integral part of your story?
28:55
Radim: Or was it nice to have?
28:57
Sarah: Oh, it was,
28:58
Radim: you see it?
28:59
Sarah: it felt like it was short timing coming, but it actually wasn't.
29:02
Sarah: So just to, so I've never trained as a designer.
29:05
Sarah: I, I did sciences all the way through school, and then when I left school.
29:10
Sarah: I tried to study computer studies and turned out I'm really rubbish at programming.
29:16
Sarah: So I got a job as a, a sign maker.
29:18
Sarah: But when vinyl science had come in, none, none of this beautiful hand lettering, very sadly.
29:23
Sarah: And then just worked my way up, became a Mackay monkey back when Max were just, starting to when all the art directors were leaving, going, I'm not taking on this new fangled technology.
29:34
Sarah: So I went in and knew how to use things like Quark and all of these archaic programs inside and out.
29:40
Sarah: Um, and then worked my way up to being a designer.
29:42
Sarah: But it was all always through trial and error and from teaching myself and from learning from the most amazing designers that I was lucky enough to work with around me.
29:52
Sarah: So I think this is part of why I ask all of these questions all the time'cause I've never been taught what to, what to think, but also.
29:59
Sarah: thought that I was somehow outside the knowledge club of typography.
30:02
Sarah: And of course the big secret is that once you find out about it, everybody feels like an outsider.
30:07
Sarah: It's just this weirdly intimidating subject and it doesn't matter how much you still feel intimidated by it.
30:13
Sarah: And then you go, you think you are okay.
30:15
Sarah: And then you meet somebody like Tobias, Fred Jones or somebody like that who, and he's lovely, but it's oh my goodness, I don't know enough to talk to you when it is one of the subjects that does have really weird gatekeepers on it.
30:27
Radim: No, I agree with the typographer.
30:29
Radim: it's a special type of people that, yeah, I think, I think it's quite universal feeling when you speak to typographer about typography.
30:35
Radim: this might be gen generalization, but they're always really stern, always happy to correct you.
30:40
Radim: it is one of those sort of groups of people that feel for very, ring-fenced.
30:44
Radim: I think it's just, yeah, you're right about that description.
30:46
Sarah: I think some of the typographers, generally tend to be some of the loveliest people in the world.
30:50
Sarah: They really genuinely care about what they do.
30:52
Sarah: They want, they want you to come in and join in, like Eric Speakman wants you to get inky and play with type.
30:58
Sarah: Tobias wants to talk about, old mid-century signs up on buildings.
31:03
Sarah: everybody is really excited about it.
31:05
Sarah: so it's just a perception that they're are gatekeepers and that it's intimidating.
31:09
Sarah: And my, I think my advice to everybody is just find a way in, find something that you love about it, then just embrace it and stop worrying.
31:16
Sarah: Stop, stop having that.
31:17
Sarah: Put the imposter syndrome to one side and just, just love it.
31:21
Sarah: And, then you'll be fine.
31:23
Radim: I think that's a very good advice.
31:25
Radim: So going from where you are now, going back to FIS now, a few years and few steps back.
31:29
Radim: So you said you were a mag monkey, you were a designer.
31:32
Radim: So what was the transition between, what was the transition between what you used to do and what you do now?
31:37
Radim: Because I remember I read somewhere that you were, I think you feel, you, you, you quit a job and you didn't feel like doing, starting another job, therefore you started what you do right now.
31:48
Sarah: Yes.
31:48
Sarah: Oh, that's, remembered, researched.
31:50
Sarah: I, so I worked my way up, became the senior designer and then ended up freelancing and accidentally started my own business, which I ran for a decade or so.
32:00
Sarah: ended up with people working for me.
32:01
Sarah: Ended up with a business partner, really lovely clients.
32:04
Sarah: So people like the Al Maida Theater, the Phil Orchestra, like really lovely arts based clients.
32:09
Sarah: But then after a decade of doing that, I, were some natural changes in staffing at my clients, and I had this moment where I could step away for a year.
32:21
Sarah: And I think like a lot of designers.
32:24
Sarah: If you are just working at the, in the trenches, on and on, without really taking a break, you can fall out out of love with what you do.
32:32
Sarah: And I'd just reached that point where I needed to just step away, work out why I loved it work, and find my way back into the craft again if I wanted to carry on doing it.
32:41
Sarah: So I took one year out and in the past I'd have gone traveling around the world or done something weird and exciting.
32:50
Sarah: but this time I decided, I actually just wanted to explore a subject that I was a bit frustrated about, which is typography.
32:57
Sarah: But I didn't understand why.
33:00
Sarah: Firstly, as designers, we would just always say, oh, I know this is the right answer, because I say so because I'm a designer and it's.
33:07
Sarah: And we'd been taught all of these answers and then clients would say, but why?
33:11
Sarah: And I would come up with my spiel and I started questioning, but I don't know.
33:16
Sarah: But why?
33:16
Sarah: And I started looking for research and there was really very little research out there.
33:21
Sarah: And then also why we only took about typography as from the creator's point of view, we don't, we know loads about things like color psychology, about how food, how music and food I guess make you feel.
33:34
Sarah: But we don't really measure or talk about the appearance of the words we read in, in that way.
33:43
Sarah: And I, once this had got into my mind, I decided I wanted to spend a year just exploring this, see, find what the research was.
33:51
Sarah: And very quickly having discovered there wasn't much research, the only way to do your own research is to.
33:58
Sarah: I put on events, invite lots of people to come to them and set up experiments and invite'em to take part.
34:04
Sarah: So I did things like created big installations at the, the v and a for the London Design Festival.
34:12
Sarah: they would give me a big space and I would set up my pop-up lab and people would just come and take part or I would started volunteering to go and speak at events.
34:20
Sarah: But if I could do an experiment like hand out jelly beans during my talk, and after a year of doing that was having a great time and just finding all this really interesting stuff out and having all of these fascinating conversations.
34:35
Sarah: and just gathering all of this stuff that didn't seem to have been measured yet.
34:41
Sarah: you can find studies that go back to about a hundred years ago, but there was very, especially a decade ago, there was very little, people like Monotype are now starting to do some research into it.
34:52
Sarah: The reason I ended up writing the book was just because I didn't, I had no intention of writing a book.
34:57
Sarah: I didn't ever think I could, it had been on one of my dream lists of one day I want an idea good enough to do a Ted Talks and to an idea good enough to put into a book.
35:08
Sarah: Oh, and one day I want to work with Hesston Blumenthal.
35:11
Sarah: I had this list of Dreams, that weirdly all came true in that first year.
35:17
Sarah: and Lawrence King had actually asked me to write a book for them, but they wanted a, an an activity book, and every time I tried to turn it into a psychology book, they were like, no, that's not the book we want.
35:26
Sarah: So I ran off and Self-published my own book, and it was basically a collection of everything I'd found out in that first year or that first year and a half.
35:35
Sarah: And partly because it's, I felt like if I don't hurry up and write this, somebody else will, which was, they haven't.
35:43
Sarah: but the, the really big thing was if there's a book that you want to read and it doesn't exist.
35:49
Sarah: Writer and it was just as simple as that.
35:52
Sarah: And I approached a few different publishers and agents and as you said earlier, the general response was, we don't need a, another book on typography, especially if you're not Speakman or Fred Jones or one of these already famous typographers.
36:07
Sarah: and I kept saying that, but that's not my audience.
36:09
Sarah: My audience is a mainstream audience.
36:11
Sarah: So I ended up self-publishing it and just did lots and lots of marketing.
36:16
Sarah: And all of you who bought a copy, it was then called the Type Taster.
36:20
Sarah: It came with these weird 3D glasses.
36:22
Sarah: all of you who bought a copy of that, thank you so much, because I sold, I got 10,000 printed, invested my own money and it didn't do a Kickstarter or anything.
36:33
Sarah: 'cause I figured I need to trust in my own if I don't believe in it and I've got to convince you.
36:39
Sarah: And also Kickstarter, it takes a lot of energy.
36:41
Sarah: So I just wanted to spend my energy writing the, my time writing the book.
36:45
Sarah: and because I sold most of that first run of copies, I could then start talking to publishers.
36:51
Sarah: So I had about three different publishers all saying, oh, we're interested.
36:55
Sarah: And one of them was Penguin.
36:57
Sarah: And if Penguin offers your publishing deal, you go Thank you.
37:01
Sarah: But it was their Virgin imprint, which is their lifestyle imprints, which I was really excited about.
37:07
Sarah: And then Jamie Joseph, my commissioning editor, he changed the, he was like, the type taster doesn't make sense in a main normal shop.
37:16
Sarah: and he was the person that came up with the idea of the title of Wife Wants Matter.
37:19
Sarah: 'cause it's, it's the meme, it's speaks to a particular audience.
37:22
Sarah: I know it should be why typeface matter, but why font matter tells you who the audience is and people pick it up off the shelf.
37:29
Sarah: And it was just a genius idea for a title.
37:32
Sarah: It's now core stock in lots of bookshops around the world.
37:36
Sarah: ginkgo Press publish it in the US and they get it into places like Ssf, om a, the Guggenheim.
37:41
Sarah: So I get sent photos all from all over the world of my book doing, getting up into crazy places, and it's been translated into Korean and Chinese, which I find really weird, but.
37:53
Radim: what a fantastic achievement.
37:54
Radim: I I love that.
37:55
Radim: I, I've made so many notes for throughout your answer, for throughout your, farout your answer because I just love that fact that yours and my journeys are slightly similar that.
38:05
Radim: I don't believe in Kickstarters.
38:07
Radim: I just believe, like if, if, if you see a designer who tries to get 25 grand for a really nice portfolio book that's often, often fails and that designer never really follows afterwards, they're like, you know what?
38:20
Radim: I believe in this.
38:20
Radim: I'm gonna make it happen, and a hooker crook, I'm gonna make it happen.
38:24
Radim: And it never does.
38:25
Radim: Whereas what you've done, and I've, and I've done something similar, it's just Mr.
38:29
Radim: You, you just put your own money into something that you believe in.
38:32
Radim: And that's already half of the winning of the battle because this is, this is, this should work because, because you believe in it.
38:38
Sarah: I wouldn't diss all Kickstarters.
38:40
Sarah: And Ben Tallen is just, his new book has just reached its goal stretch goal.
38:44
Sarah: and that looks brilliant.
38:46
Sarah: it is, it is a way to go into it.
38:47
Sarah: It does make book publishing accessible to people, so I wouldn't diss it for one moment.
38:52
Sarah: the thing that I had was I, from being a print designer, I had a relationship with a printer who let me pay in installments.
38:59
Sarah: So my advanced sales paid the first installment, so I worked it out so I didn't have to use Kickstarter.
39:05
Sarah: So it was just, it was a way of working it out.
39:08
Radim: I didn't desk Kickstarter assess for such.
39:10
Radim: I spoke to Ben yesterday.
39:11
Radim: In fact, now, now is Ben.
39:13
Radim: Ben is on my phone asking questions what to do next.
39:15
Radim: But the thing is Ben's Kickstarter was very honest.
39:18
Radim: Kickstarter, obviously, he wrote a piece of work that he believes in, like I think there's the energy when you live and breathe what you're trying to do.
39:25
Radim: He was gonna make that book anyway in any possible way.
39:28
Radim: If it, the Kickstarter failed, that book still would come out.
39:31
Radim: That book is a live project.
39:32
Radim: What I was trying to insinuate that when you people, when people got half-hearted ideas and they think I'm gonna make something that's gonna celebrate me more than the content that often fails.
39:42
Radim: often fails.
39:43
Radim: and that
39:43
Sarah: I absolutely, absolutely agree.
39:45
Sarah: And I realize that's what you were saying.
39:47
Sarah: I just felt it was also worth reiterating.
39:50
Sarah: So I'm such a big advocate of, I think everybody has a book in them.
39:54
Sarah: It might not be the best seller in the world, but if you, and if you want, we are living the most amazing time where you can now publish your book.
40:02
Sarah: You find the route that works for you.
40:04
Sarah: If Kickstarter is the way that works, great.
40:07
Sarah: It's, there are so many other ways of doing it.
40:09
Sarah: Amazon Print on demand.
40:11
Sarah: There's, there's loads of ways.
40:12
Sarah: And also people like you, myself, Ben, all of these people who've been on this journey and we're really excited to share how we've done it.
40:20
Sarah: so for you, you've told me some really, really helpful things.
40:23
Sarah: distribution is, you're a distribution genius.
40:26
Radim: I, I think it all comes with working out your product.
40:28
Radim: I, I, I've got a five size books because they fit letter books, So I remember you and I had a conversation about your books that didn't fit the letter books.
40:36
Radim: so much intricacy and nuances when it comes to book publishing because you can get it really right by accident and you can get it really wrong even if you work on it for a, for a year.
40:46
Radim: But I wanna go back for a, for for a second, back to your year of, of, of experiments.
40:53
Radim: Two questions.
40:54
Radim: How did you find oh, getting doors open?
40:58
Radim: so you mentioned, for example, VNA and the London London Design Festival.
41:01
Radim: Like what, what did you do to get your doors open?
41:04
Radim: And the second question is.
41:06
Radim: How was your confidence?
41:07
Radim: Because you were doing something completely different, like something that was, was not your thing that you did for 10 years with your studio.
41:13
Radim: So how did you feel doing this?
41:14
Radim: Because obviously we always, we have natural anxieties, we have natural sort of worries and doubts and imposter syndrome.
41:21
Radim: How did you feel doing this?
41:24
Radim: How did you get those open and how did you feel?
41:26
Sarah: the beauty of naivety is wonderful.
41:29
Sarah: I would find it so much harder now.
41:30
Sarah: Now I know what I know.
41:32
Sarah: Back then, I was just incredibly enthusiastic and curious.
41:37
Sarah: 'cause it was this whole new thing that I was discovering.
41:41
Sarah: And when you're, when you're feeling enthusiastic, it's incredibly infectious.
41:46
Sarah: And I think also I, so because I'd run my design company for over a decade, I saved up enough that I didn't have to, I needed to earn, I didn't have to earn all the time for that year so I could volunteer.
42:02
Sarah: for, to the London Design Festival to, I will put this on for free.
42:05
Sarah: You don't have to pay me to do it.
42:07
Sarah: So, I think a combination of enthusiasm and just being available and constantly putting your hands up for everything.
42:14
Sarah: The next year, I think I and fact had, I met with Angus, who was then, editor of Design Week, and I knew they were curating the talks, so I said, oh, if you want somebody just to do the first talk in the afternoon to warm everybody up, I'm available.
42:30
Sarah: So I, I just volunteer for absolutely everything.
42:33
Sarah: it's like chucking, chucking spaghetti at walls and a lot of the time people will say yes, and then you start gathering a bit of momentum.
42:42
Sarah: Then I got invited to go and do the event to pick me up at Somerset House the next year.
42:46
Sarah: And the more you're doing these.
42:48
Sarah: And I think also my background had been working in the, in-house department before I ran my own business.
42:53
Sarah: the design department at a PR company.
42:56
Sarah: Seeing how PRS and marketing had worked and not being afraid to just send press releases out and cause the worst that happens is nothing.
43:06
Sarah: The best that happens is somebody says yes.
43:09
Sarah: again, like, like you were talking about with you just, you're just really honest and open about it.
43:13
Sarah: You explain why you're doing it, and yeah, people will come on board or else they will say, that's not right for us, but this might be, and then you start fine tuning things.
43:23
Radim: I've only got good things to say about Angus Mogo Montgomery.
43:26
Radim: He was, he was very good to us.
43:28
Radim: Um, um, I love, I love that get go attitude.
43:31
Radim: Know can, can do, can go,can do the attitude
43:34
Sarah: but you, you do the That event I met you, uh, you, you came over and ticked me.
43:39
Sarah: was like, Hey, I know who you are.
43:41
Sarah: Let's talk.
43:42
Radim: I am, I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy to speak to up and coming authors, designers, and they always say Hey, so I've got this book with a big publisher.
43:51
Radim: I don't think they're gonna gimme any talks.
43:53
Radim: I'm like, look, 99% of everything I've got in my life, I asked, I literally said, Hey, it's me.
43:59
Radim: Do I ever worry about looking like an ty?
44:02
Radim: Maybe, but not anymore.
44:03
Radim: Which is look, this is me.
44:04
Radim: Talk to me.
44:05
Radim: I'm here.
44:06
Radim: Because that's pretty much how I personally grew my design career.
44:09
Radim: I was like, look, I like what you're doing.
44:11
Radim: Can we do this together?
44:12
Radim: it's a bit like wooing people, like dating and look, you can say, Hey, I'm the most amazing creative, come and do stuff with me.
44:19
Radim: I'm like, but we don't know what you think.
44:20
Radim: okay, you might look good from the outside, but never no one, no one ever knows.
44:25
Radim: What you're about because you haven't really spoken.
44:27
Radim: I think this, there's this always fascinating stuff when people I watch on, on social media and they're like, I've got my profile on every single website, but no one's calling me.
44:36
Radim: I'm like, why You call people you don't know?
44:37
Radim: Un unless, unless even if you are the most amazing, creative and rubbish at business, you're gonna be very skinned, most amazing creative'cause no one will hear about you.
44:47
Radim: And I think it's just that sort of approach that, I love what you said, and, and, and opening doors and willing to do things for three because, people try to do their sandpit, make it paid sandpit.
44:57
Radim: They, they're not what they're exploring what they should be doing.
44:59
Radim: They wanna get paid for it.
45:00
Radim: They want to be like, no, they want to be asked.
45:03
Radim: Like, but if nobody knows you exist, no one's gonna come to you and, and do that.
45:07
Sarah: So the things I would do for free are the things I would approach people to do.
45:11
Sarah: There is also the whole level of people coming to you and offering you things for exposure, which I get very grumpy about.
45:18
Sarah: we make the choice, if I can give my time.
45:22
Sarah: And I am in a privileged enough position where financially I can do that, that's fine.
45:26
Sarah: But don't expect that of all of us.
45:27
Sarah: 'cause we can't always do that.
45:29
Sarah: And it's not okay, especially for companies who have budgets.
45:32
Sarah: They should be paying for things so that there's, there's a tightrope.
45:36
Sarah: Um, and in terms of publishers or publishers don't do any, they would love to do lots of things like that for us, but they don't, the margins are tight.
45:44
Sarah: They, they don't have time to do the promotion for us.
45:47
Sarah: And if we want book deals with big pub publishers in this day and age, what makes us attractive is if we are the people that will do our own publicity.
45:56
Sarah: So that is now part of being an author, is that you are also somebody who will get yourself on that talk circuit, who will do events, who will go and talk to things, get themselves whatever your social media platform is, but who will be really proactive about it.
46:11
Sarah: And that's part of why I got the deal with Penguin, because they'd seen that that's also what they were getting.
46:16
Radim: I fully understand that.
46:18
Radim: obviously, you know, I've decided to publish on my own, eight, nearly eight years ago.
46:22
Radim: And I think it was a happy accident because I'm impatient and I just Googled how to get books on Amazon.
46:28
Radim: I've, I've, I've been printing my, promo stuff for years and years, so I had some audience and I never really waited.
46:35
Radim: I never really wanted to wait for someone who say, oh, have you got booking?
46:38
Radim: You should, no.
46:39
Sarah: then it takes three years with a proper publisher.
46:42
Sarah: It's a three year process
46:44
Radim: I did it in three months.
46:46
Radim: I just, I just, for, for impatient people living in 21st century, three years is a long time.
46:50
Radim: you might just have a different book inside.
46:52
Radim: You might even disagree with what you created for the book in itself.
46:56
Radim: And I'm now being approached by traditional publishers saying Hey, what you doing?
47:01
Radim: Because obviously it's the proven track record.
47:04
Radim: Like obviously I've sold, overall I sent 75,000 books,
47:07
Sarah: Wow, congratulations.
47:08
Sarah: And how many books do
47:10
Radim: I've got six.
47:10
Radim: I published two books at the same time, And it, it's just one of these things like, why don't you try to do something that no one's ever done before?
47:18
Radim: I'm, I'm sure someone's done two books before, but it's, it's about bring in the idea to people.
47:23
Radim: just make them think, like just what you do.
47:25
Radim: you just, you make people think differently about their approach to type of feelings or reactions.
47:33
Radim: And I've reconfigured the message what I wanted to share with people.
47:36
Radim: It's just I.
47:37
Radim: Actually, I want us to do better.
47:39
Radim: And as opposed to looking at pretty pictures, here's some words that we might take and use and find them useful.
47:46
Radim: The problem is that we make works for people who like pictures.
47:50
Radim: They're not very good at reading long copy, so it's, it's that sort of, it's that battle because as you know in our industry, you tell people, what's the mistake I shouldn't make You tell them all the advice you can tell them, and they still go and make those mistakes because we all have to work it out.
48:03
Radim: this is the thing that, that's how we grow.
48:05
Radim: This is like what you mentioned about learning and we have to grow our pathways, but sometimes it's actually okay to know that you're not alone making those mistakes, not alone, no being and feeling how you feel.
48:16
Sarah: But sometimes the mistakes are the best bits.
48:19
Sarah: That's the secret sauce.
48:21
Sarah: If everything goes well, you don't learn.
48:24
Sarah: Where the boundaries are.
48:26
Sarah: You don't, there are surprises from the mistakes that you can either just sit there and go or you can go, okay, let's interrogate what went wrong, why did that go wrong?
48:35
Sarah: The very least.
48:36
Sarah: It can be a good anecdote to tell somewhere later on, or it can actually inform you about something that will change the way you think or change the way you think about the people you're talking to.
48:47
Sarah: Maybe.
48:48
Sarah: this nicely goes back to what you asked me at the beginning about some of the, the weirder and more bonkers things that happen at some of my events.
48:56
Sarah: And it's nearly always when I ask.
49:00
Sarah: So for example, when I ask you give you something to smell and ask you to match it to you, you get a choice of 40, 50 different word style, same word, but in lots of different styles.
49:11
Sarah: And there are distinct patterns to how most people will answer.
49:14
Sarah: But every now and then there will be some outlier answers.
49:17
Sarah: The outlier answers are the best ones in the world because you get to ask why So I think one of my favorite ones, which was really early on, I, gave people, and my stuff looks all, all, looks like scientific experiments.
49:30
Sarah: So it was a conical flask full of, and it was lavender scent.
49:34
Sarah: And everybody was pairing this, with like really frilly, scripty words or maybe very traditional phy, old fashioned words.
49:43
Sarah: And then a few people in the room paired it with, a really jagged typeface called Clut, which is the one that the Olympics 2012 logo was inspired by, by Gareth Hague.
49:53
Sarah: And it was not an obvious pairing for lavender.
49:57
Sarah: And there were four people in this room of about 30 people who'd all from different places pointed at this.
50:03
Sarah: And so I started asking, but why or who are you?
50:07
Sarah: And it turned out they were all friends.
50:09
Sarah: They all, in fact, fact were flatmates.
50:12
Sarah: And after a little bit more asking, it turned out that they, the air freshener in their toilet was lavender scented.
50:18
Sarah: So for them, the smell of lavender was like, oh my God, go away.
50:21
Sarah: Come back later.
50:22
Sarah: It meant warning, warning, danger.
50:24
Sarah: So for them it was really instinctive to pick this really jagged, angry shaped word instead of the frilly friendly words.
50:32
Sarah: And it was only from interrogating And then other ones, I did a, experiment where we know that we can make a chocolate wrapper look more expensive.
50:40
Sarah: So I test it out whether I could make the te chocolate taste more expensive.
50:44
Sarah: And you can, but only with parameters.
50:46
Sarah: If you do it wrong, you actually make it taste cheaper.
50:49
Sarah: which is a longer story.
50:50
Sarah: and so lots of different little weird things like that.
50:54
Sarah: Do you want me to explain that one in more depth?
50:56
Radim: absolutely.
50:56
Radim: I'm, I'm a c Chocoholic.
50:57
Radim: I mean, I want to know how do you make chocolate taste more expensive,
51:00
Sarah: so I'd read studies where they've shown that if I give you a glass of wine and I tell you that the bottle cost 80 quid, you will enjoy it more than if I tell you the bottle only cost of fiber, even if it's the same wine, the aspirins that you take the next morning, you will find that they work better if you think they were expensive ones.
51:18
Sarah: So in the nice silver foil and sci-fi lettering than if they were cheap ones, even if they're the same ones.
51:24
Sarah: So I as a designer, thought, Hey, I can make Things look more expensive.
51:29
Sarah: I bet I can do this with wine.
51:30
Sarah: I bet I can make wine look expensive.
51:32
Sarah: So I had to start off.
51:35
Sarah: So all of these experiments, you have to go back to basics.
51:37
Sarah: What is an expensive typeface?
51:39
Sarah: What's a cheap one?
51:40
Sarah: So I had to do lots of experiments to get that scale of cheap to expensive.
51:43
Sarah: Then I could take the two ends, the most expensive, the the cheapest, and brand chocolate.
51:50
Sarah: I was going to do wine.
51:51
Sarah: But it turns out that's a really expensive way to do research.
51:54
Sarah: So chocolate's easier went along to this three day event.
51:58
Sarah: Big food matters, live event.
51:59
Sarah: Along with, so I co-published research with Professor Charles Spence from the University of Oxford.
52:05
Sarah: So he's from the, he in, he's an expert in cross modalism.
52:09
Sarah: So I went along with his team and a lot of scientists and basically tested out exactly the same chocolate.
52:16
Sarah: But every half an hour, changed all the branding, changed all of the questionnaires to chief and expensive typeface when I used expensive chocolate people rated.
52:25
Sarah: As tasting better and more expensive when it was wrapped up in an expensive, luxurious typeface.
52:33
Sarah: But when the next day I switched it to cheap chocolate,'cause I'd blown my chocolate budget and hadn't figured how, how popular the experiment would be when I used cheap chocolate.
52:43
Sarah: When people ate that and looked at the expensive branding, it actually made it taste cheaper because their expectations and the experience didn't match.
52:51
Sarah: And the dissonance between the two amplified their disappointment and amplified the cheapness of the chocolate.
52:59
Sarah: But I would never have known that had my experiment experiment not have gone wrong.
53:03
Sarah: And then had I not have gone and said to Charles, but why it worked on the first day, why didn't it work on the second day?
53:09
Radim: I, I like that it all happened because you run out of a budget
53:12
Sarah: It's always budgets,
53:13
Radim: happen.
53:15
Sarah: but then also asked, yeah, and then also asked, and was curious enough not to just go, oh, that one failed.
53:20
Sarah: I'm gonna ignore it.
53:21
Sarah: But actually, no, that one failed.
53:22
Sarah: Therefore, that makes it really interesting.
53:25
Radim: That's incredible.
53:26
Radim: I've had this experience, I think it might find fascinating.
53:28
Radim: I, I, I did a color workshop in Toronto a couple of weeks ago and it's, based on, color thesaurus by someone called Ingrid someone.
53:36
Radim: And I'm really bad for not naming their full name, but it's basically she created these, these visual palettes of, of a singular sort of tone..
53:45
Radim: she's a writer and she's created, obviously a visual prop for describing yellows.
53:49
Radim: It's a, it's, it's daffodil.
53:51
Radim: It's all of these sort of tones, you can use and pick and choose.
53:54
Radim: And as opposed to saying yellow, mostly you've got lots more words to use and you're writing so you don't repeat yourself all the time.
54:00
Radim: and that she's created these charts for pretty much every, every sort of color block and a color tone.
54:05
Radim: And I was inspired by this.
54:07
Radim: I wanted to make a book about color the soul, just creating artworks, and based on colors and how it makes us feel.
54:13
Radim: But I've turned into a workshop on how do you respond to color?
54:18
Radim: And it's literally like name something based on memory, based on experience, based on item, based on like just literally using this, give it a silly name.
54:27
Radim: And there was some amazing like wet concrete on a Toronto Street, like it was, there was some like really amazing things.
54:32
Radim: And then I've got them to pair it down to, okay, pick your favorite, no pick, pick your choice.
54:38
Radim: And as a group around the table, just create like a color scheme and what product would it be?
54:43
Radim: So I have spent 45, 45 minutes telling them to think outside the regular color.
54:49
Radim: And out of the 10 tables, nine table set, we've got yellow, we've got green, we've got purple.
54:56
Radim: And I'm like, it works and it doesn't work.
54:58
Radim: We've got a lot more work to do because we revert to things.
55:01
Radim: Obviously we have to form these little habits.
55:03
Radim: How we rewire our brains.
55:05
Radim: But after having spent an hour like trying to, to rename things and just make it really interesting, they just said, yeah, yellow, orange, blue.
55:15
Radim: And I was like, okay, we've got work to do here.
55:17
Radim: We've got work to do.
55:18
Radim: But it was the experience.
55:19
Radim: 'cause we default, don't we,
55:20
Sarah: And I think also as designers and especially if you are in a situation where you're feeling a little bit nervous, you don't want to do anything too weird.
55:29
Sarah: 'cause we don't want to put our toes outside the safety.
55:33
Sarah: a thing I I, if I get asked, I've just been, I'm doing a talk and I've just been asked, can I bring three people up on stage to do one of my tastings so they can react in front of the audience?
55:42
Sarah: And it's no, because they won't react in the way we expect them to.
55:46
Sarah: 'cause they're going to be nervous and not want to show what they really think.
55:49
Sarah: And I think when you do workshops with designers, sometimes it's quite easy to, especially if it's different levels and people a little bit self-conscious of each other.
55:58
Sarah: Yeah.
55:58
Sarah: We default very easily to.
56:00
Sarah: Safe things that we know.
56:02
Sarah: Oh, I wonder how you could have spun.
56:04
Sarah: There would've been a way have spun that upside down, but I wonder what it is.
56:09
Radim: I think they say once you point, once you point a camera at someone, they start posing, it's just, you basically, the best photos are taken when people don't know they, they have their photo taken.
56:18
Radim: And I think that that's, that's what it is.
56:19
Radim: 'cause I think with general confidence, I think as, as, as, as a creative, I've been doing this for more than 20 years and I was very shy and, and secluded for the first 15.
56:29
Radim: didn't think like I, I, I want to be, on the stage or I didn't want to do.
56:33
Radim: 'cause it was like, we always think that our work is gonna do the talking
56:36
Sarah: that was when we were designers pitching presenting to clients.
56:39
Sarah: But now we're presenting our own work.
56:41
Sarah: You can't do that anymore.
56:43
Sarah: 'cause you've actually, people want to know your story.
56:44
Sarah: They want to know where it came from.
56:46
Sarah: Why are you doing this?
56:47
Sarah: Why should I be interested?
56:48
Sarah: You have to reveal something.
56:50
Radim: And it's so liberating because this is, you say, this is what I stand for, this is my message.
56:54
Radim: You know, you might not like it, but this is what I do.
56:56
Radim: This is, this is what it's about.
56:58
Radim: So tell me, what is the future of type tasting events like?
57:01
Radim: What have you, what have you not tried and what would you like to try?
57:04
Sarah: Oh, just got sketchbooks full of ideas.
57:08
Sarah: there are so many things I'd love to do.
57:09
Sarah: I'd love to get the two books written.
57:10
Sarah: I've got a couple of massive research studies that if I could get the funding for them, I would just vanish into them for couple of years.
57:20
Sarah: but funding for research, research studies is a little bit, it's a lot.
57:24
Sarah: I would go and.
57:25
Sarah: Oh, my real dream is if somebody, anybody's listening and you, you, you've got lots of money, wants to fund me to go and do my PhD with Charles er in the experimental psychology department at Oxford University.
57:36
Sarah: I love the idea of that's where I would study type.
57:39
Sarah: It's just so not the place you would expect it.
57:42
Sarah: And I, it would give me access to be able to really test out and publish a lot of the studies that I've been working on.
57:51
Sarah: But that's a dream.
57:54
Radim: that's
57:54
Sarah: in reality, just keep doing what I'm, I'm doing.
57:57
Sarah: It's now, I've now reached the point where I'm getting on bigger stages, bigger mainstream audiences.
58:03
Sarah: So it's not so much reinventing what I do, it's now redoing it with more people and getting more feedback, and I'm really enjoying that and almost just keeping it.
58:17
Sarah: Keeping it to the core message.
58:19
Sarah: 'cause the minute I go, the minute I go and do anything that really excites me.
58:22
Sarah: Now I've been doing this for 10 years, so it get, that gets quite obscure.
58:26
Sarah: or somebody who's talking about just, sometimes we just have to remember, keep doing the meat and potatoes, keep doing the, the ham and cheese sandwiches, just the stuff that actually everybody really likes.
58:36
Sarah: So I, I think the near future is actually just carrying on doing that, but doing it, reaching audiences.
58:44
Radim: I love your story because you, you've decided to pivot.
58:46
Radim: You've decided to do something.
58:47
Radim: You've decided to follow your heart, and Pivots are never easy.
58:52
Radim: you, you mentioned it, you had something, you had money saved up and you were happy to do it.
58:55
Radim: And obviously there is, there is something, what I call the fuel, the fuel and the feel that they go together.
59:00
Radim: Like obviously that naivety, like that little knowledge that you have and that sort of excitement and almost lack of fear because you wanna do the thing that you want to do so it gets you places.
59:11
Radim: And that's, that's the most amazing thing to have ever start.
59:13
Radim: But then the, the, the questions begin and obviously if everything's working, it's all fine.
59:18
Radim: But for people who try to do these things and they're like, they start in doubting themselves, like, why would you doubt?
59:23
Radim: Like just, just keep going.
59:24
Radim: Because the more you go and you get to that 10 year mark, more interesting things happen.
59:29
Radim: everyone thinks that we've got this sort of half, half a year, six months sort of op opportunity to make something happen.
59:35
Radim: If it doesn't, then let's do different.
59:37
Sarah: Oh no.
59:38
Sarah: It takes All of us, we've got all of that experience that we had before we even started doing this for ourselves, and I've been doing type tasting for 10 and a half years, and it's only now really starting to kick into the next level.
59:54
Sarah: It takes a really, you have to invest so much time.
59:57
Sarah: You have to really work out what your story is.
59:59
Sarah: You have to make sure you, you love it.
1:00:01
Sarah: Still.
1:00:02
Sarah: I, I still do this'cause I love it.
1:00:04
Sarah: And if I didn't I should be doing something.
1:00:06
Sarah: I would be doing else.
1:00:09
Radim: it totally shows that you love it.
1:00:10
Radim: I mean, that, that's the thing about that sort of 10 year mark, because with my publishing business, it, it, it's, it's gonna be eight years in March next year, and it's, it's only now getting to do the right stuff that I was ex hoping it might do.
1:00:23
Radim: it's, it's, but it was the journey of learning, like with the traditional publishing, as you said, like people are not always that well looked after, no one's gonna make your career.
1:00:32
Radim: Obviously, you have to promote your own books, whereas, when you live and breathe what you do, and that's exactly what you do.
1:00:38
Radim: It's, it's the, does the momentum that only governs more energy and more excitement that, you feel.
1:00:43
Radim: Okay.
1:00:44
Radim: So that was my groundwork.
1:00:45
Radim: What's gonna, what's next, next 10 and a half years gonna look
1:00:48
Sarah: And I think what you is you very much have the audience in mind.
1:00:51
Sarah: You are not, it's not a portfolio, but I love the idea of the mindful creative and how it's very much about mind wellbeing, how you, how you are more than just a designer.
1:01:03
Sarah: On a body, um, how it's a very, very holistic thing and how that is absolutely thinking about the audience with my staff, the audience.
1:01:11
Sarah: None of it exists without the audience.
1:01:13
Sarah: 'cause I, you have to do the experiments with me and I have this absolute promise to everybody that I don't sell my data, I don't gather it for anybody else.
1:01:22
Sarah: But my promise is that I will publish these books.
1:01:25
Sarah: It might take me a long time, but your, your, the data, everything that you do when you collaborate with me,'cause these are like mass participation collaborations will at some point be put out there.
1:01:36
Sarah: So I have to keep going as well, just to honor that
1:01:39
Radim: I mean, Sarah, it's, it's been great talking to you.
1:01:41
Radim: I, I just, I can talk to you for, for, for hours and hopefully we'll continue this conversation in some noisy restaurant after some event again very soon.
1:01:49
Radim: But I think the message I'm taking away from this is keeping going and being actually, as you said, after 10 and a half years is still being excited as it sounds like you were excited today on the day, number one.
1:01:59
Radim: I think that's, that's inspiring.
1:02:01
Radim: I think there's having that something that you can hold onto and grow and, and, and be.
1:02:05
Radim: I think whoever's listening to this, hopefully they can sponsor your, PhD with Charles because, hope, hope it happens, you know, but when you manifest it, the universe will, the universe will listen.
1:02:14
Radim: So thank you very much for your conversation, for your time today, and as I said, we'll continue at some other point.
1:02:19
Radim: Thank you so much.
1:02:20
Sarah: thank you.
1:02:22
Sarah: It's been an absolute pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
1:02:25
Radim: Thank you.
1:02:30
Radim Malinic: Thank you for listening to this episode of Creativity for Sale podcast.
1:02:34
Radim Malinic: The show was produced and presented by me, Radek Malanich.
1:02:37
Radim Malinic: Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil mackay,.
1:02:40
Radim Malinic: from 7 million Bikes Podcasts,
1:02:43
Theme music was written and produced by Robert Summerfield.
1:02:47
If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please subscribe and leave a rating or review.
1:02:52
To get your own action plan on how to start and grow a life changing creative business.
1:02:57
You can get a copy of the Creativity for Sale book via the links in show notes.
1:03:00
burning, and until next time, I'm Brady Malinich, your guide through this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all.