Latest / WiseNoise: The Creative Practice Podcast / WN13: Freddie Öst on making Enemies & Shower Beer
Transcript
- speaker-0: think that naivety is still there in some sense. But I think we needed that naivety and also kind of looking at the industry from a critical standpoint, from a graduate to start climbing a ladder that is built by hierarchies. It's kind of hard because if you take sports or football, if you're a 16 year old Wayne Rooney and you know that you're best in Everton, you're going to... get the chance and you're going to be the best in the team, for example. But if you're a great graphic designer and you're just graduated, you will still earn the shittiest pay, even though you're the best at the agency. And for us, that never made any sense and we didn't like that. speaker-1: Hello. Welcome to Wise Noise. This is the Creative Practice Podcast with me, Pierce O'Halrin, graphic designer and founder of Wise Love Studio in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This is episode 13, the very last in the second series of Wise Noise, and we are going out with a bang. The wonderful Freddie Ust is my guest. For this episode, he is one of the founders of SNASC, a design agency based in Sweden. And I know Freddie from Gab Talk a couple of years ago, maybe now. April 2025. Gab is a fabulous design talk event that's been running for many years now. Shout out to the Jam Hot Boys, Graham and Craig and Jamie down there in Glasgow doing good things and putting on one of the best design talks yeah up this end of the country anyway. I think always a fun evening and Graham in the build-up to that evening kept saying that he wanted SNAS to speak for ages and I wasn't too familiar with SNASK. I obviously checked out their work before I went down but I was blown away by Freddy's talk. I I kind of I I won't say too much about it because I open up our chat basically eulogizing about the best design talk I've ever seen. I'm always drawn to a studio that makes irreverent work. But what I realized during the design talk is that SNASK that irreverence that constant going against the grain that constant playing with people's expectations con i i it feels as though they're playing a massive prank on the industry, constantly pulling the rug out from client spectac expectations, audience expectations, and that is part of their success in never conforming to boring stereotypes. And Freddie himself, as you'll s hear in this podcast, is just an open, honest guy But very direct, refreshing, really refreshing, and he's honestly after this chat, I kept repeating the words sexifarawings in his very endearing swinglish accent as we comes up in the talk, he suddenly we c s has this very unexpected obsession with Sucky Hall Street and I really love it as that section where inspiration instead of finding it on Pinterest you'll find it watching drunk girls in sexy fairy wings on Sucky Hall Street. So yeah. I feel like getting t-shirts with sexy fairy wings on it. but yeah, it's just fabulous. I'm so glad he came and spent w some time with me. The we do talk about the work as ever. If you are just listening on the audio, you can jump in to the YouTube if you want to see the visuals or just pull up the SNASC website as we are talking about it and go check those guys out. yeah, they're fabulous. They're amazing. And I feel quite tired saying this now, especially because of I've accidentally eaten a whole sheer bag of Maltesers today. I don't know what's going on. I think it might be my body responsing to responding to the dark evenings drawing in and just trying to store fats. Or maybe I'm just a bit of a greedy bastard. But yeah, I snaffled. I I I was taking the last two out of the bag and I was like, I cannot believe I ate the whole bag today. So I do have a bit of a sugarcrass situation that's making probably making me sound a little bit weary. But please, if you want to support the podcast. in any way. WiseLove.shop there's some merchandise on there. Why you can get a Wise Noise Cup, Wise Noise t-shirts. I need to put up a post of the cool colours that the t-shirt comes in. The graphite grey is definitely a winner for me. But yeah, let's get let's get some Freddy in our log holes and I'll see you for a wee debrief at the end of this Which I'm hoping doesn't turn into some sort of Oscar speech, but I do want to thank a lot of people who have helped me out on the podcast and I will give a run through of the episodes. Maybe this is your first time listening, tuning in for Freddie, and why wouldn't you? But yeah, I'll go episode by episode thanking people. But for now, enjoy the wonderful wisdom of Freddie Ist from SNASK. Enjoy! How did that speaker-0: It went really well. was three days in Tuscany and yeah, it was just super fun. It like a four week hangover. speaker-1: Wow. Three days, a four week hangover, that's that's some going. Yeah, amazing. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, I I found that as it is it is pretty much like if you have one one boozy day equals one week hangover. That's at this age, that's that's that's the ratio, you know. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. speaker-1: was w was it a big wedding or quite a small f few people or speaker-0: It was 72 people, family and closest friends. So was perfect for us. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Tuscany's such a nice spot as well, man. It must have been amazing w weather wise as well. speaker-0: weather, food, no it was amazing. Are you married? speaker-1: Yeah, I'm married, yeah. I had a much smaller wedding. There was about twenty people at my wedding. We got married on the lovely Isle of Arran here in Scotland. Yeah, so yeah. Yeah, like that. It was a beautiful i it was crazy 'cause it was absolutely proper Scottish raining the whole week and I was just like, man, it's like if it's gotta be just it was just really horrible weather, wind, s you know, classic Scottish summer. And then like just a Friday the clouds parted and the sun came out and it was like gorgeous sunshine all day long. And it just made the day special. And then the the Saturday back to really rain. So it was almost like destined to have a good day. So good. speaker-0: Nice. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, it was great, man. So yeah, they I saw your talk at Gab with the Jam Hot guys down in Glasgow. And I do think like I'm I I've been to many design talks over the years, but I do think it was like probably my favorite. It was top just in terms of like like it it had ever all the right ingredients, you know. Sometimes when designers get up and they just talk about their work and it's like, look at all the amazing work I've done. Thank you very much. Good night. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Sometimes you you'll get that and sometimes you'll get guys who are making really great points, but it's not like I sp their stage presence or their jokes or there's no it's a it's a little bit more like a TED talk and it's a bit more chin strokey and scribbling notes. But I think but you did a mix of mix of all three was super entertaining. There was amazing tips to be had from it. And the work was just knockout as well, and it was just so much fun. The the fun you guys have just goes through the work and how that becomes sort of the mission statement for the studio. And it has been since day one, is like, yeah, it was fab, man. Really loved it. speaker-0: Thanks, thanks, Piers. Super nice words of you, man. Makes me very happy. speaker-1: I I'm gonna get to a question. I suppose I better get to a question rather than to use the Scottish phrase blow smoke up your arse. and I did buy a book because I remember on the night only one person had bought a book, so I thought I was I felt speaker-0: Thank you. speaker-1: I felt bad. Make enemies and gain fans. And I think I wanted to start off. I I think one of the things I gleaned from the talk was the fact that you, Magnus and Petter That you straight straight out of straight out of from graduating, you just started the studio. And I think your thing was the fact that you made your you d you you weren't corrupted by the sort of agencies that were largely run by old white men, you know. You just almost went in and that naivety was a sort of strength in a way that you just didn't have any sort of like old rules to to sort of like be corrupted by, that you just made it up as you went along. Was that the case? speaker-0: Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, that naivety is still there in some sense, but I think we needed that naivety and also that kind of looking at the industry from a critical standpoint and from a graduate to supposed to start climbing a ladder that is built by hierarchies. It's kind of hard because if you take sports or football, if you're 16 year old Wayne Rooney and that you're best in Everton, you're going to get the chance and you're going to be the best in the team, for example. if you, but if you're a great graphic designer and you're just graduated, you will still earn the shittiest pay, even though you're the best at the agency. And for us that never made any sense and we didn't like that. And yeah, so we just felt like let's start our own thing. with our own rules, no misogyny, no stupid hierarchies and yeah, the way we wanted it to basically. speaker-1: Yeah, that's amazing because I think I'm working with a kin who are a group that's set up here and they just recently had like a a festival, but their whole thing is about getting students, recent graduates and people who are studying communication design to network and meet meet people within the design industry to give them that confidence. And a lot of them are like really scared, but I'm like, it's super exciting. You can make up your own rules. I I'm trying to flip the script on that because a lot of them come out into this big scary world where it's like, no, actually, you can you can design your own sort of rules for how you want to work as much as you know, don't necessarily have to depend on like the jobs market, which is pretty scarce out there. You just make your own way in the world and you'd be better for it. Yeah. but yeah, and I did enjoy the fact that you guys tried to apply for was it the Glasgow School of Art with one of your teddy bears? What w speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause you guys were down in Carlisle, wasn't it? speaker-0: We were down in Carlisle. We studied there for three years. We were told before we went over from Sweden by the Swedish teacher, said, Carlisle is close to everything. And then when we moved there, we realized it was rather the opposite. It was like pretty far to Leeds, the Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, everywhere. But we hanged around a lot in Glasgow, for example, we loved it. yeah, we applied to Glasgow School of Art by making this, we bought this second hand. like Toy Tedbear and we remade him into looking more mean and we put in a steel skeleton, we put speakers in his ears connected to this tape recorder in the bass and then they were supposed to play this message that he had and then on his backpack there was a phone and we sent this to Glasgow School of Art. They never, they played the message, but they never knew what to do because they didn't get the phone to work because they threw away the charger when they opened the package because there was a charger in there as well. And they never got the, yeah, they said they never got the charger. So they must have thrown it away. So yeah, we never heard back from them. But when we went to Glasgow School of Art, we actually went to an exhibition and The teachers were like, what? You were the guy who sent that? It's still in our office and they actually showed us it was still on the shelf. speaker-1: They kept it as a weird souvenir from these crazy s crazy Swedish speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, that that's great, man. And and I'm just fascinated about those early days because we'll we'll go on to talk about your work currently and I think it's always like exciting to go on and look at the shiny work that's been done these days. But I wonder about those early stages of SNASC and winning your first like actually making it a viable job, you know, like making it pay your bills at the start and that struggle. Yeah. How was that? Did you kinda have to w a wait a good few years before you actually made it like a viable business or did you get win work straight away or? speaker-0: No, no, it was dog years for sure. And we started basically in Carlisle working under the name Snask. So I remember me and Magnus made this identity for a bar in Carlisle. I think we got paid in beer. Not very good to be paid in beer if you want a good life. But anyway, we also did this work for this manpower company in Sweden. And we I think we charged them. 2000 pounds to do an identity website and everything. And then we were like, why are we quoting 2000 pounds? And we were like, we don't know. And then we were like, why don't we quote 4,000 pounds? And then we just doubled the quote, sent it to them. And they sent back like, what are you crazy? And they're like, no, I'm just kidding. The money will be in your account next week. And we were like, whoa, celebrating. Now, of course, we realized how super cheap that was. That was one of our first jobs we ever got while still studying. Then, I mean, we did the dog years in Sweden. It was like we worked every weekend. We worked in clothing stores to get paid. And it was a struggle. mean, it was hard in the beginning. You don't really get the big clients when you're that fresh off the start. So yeah, it's like a lot of work. We also wanted to go into culture and theme parks. Those were our two things that we were going to work with, we thought. Until we realized that there are very few theme parks in Sweden and culture never pays, you know. You get a lot of creative freedom, but you don't get a lot of pay. So, yeah, we kind of, after two years, we changed that. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. It's the culture section's not one that's flush with cash at the same time. speaker-0: No. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, 'cause i it it it is one of the topics of the podcast keeps coming up about niching or whatever, or finding your target audience. But it's also important when you're targeting an industry or sector like that, you go, Okay, well, like that is is there actually money to be made in the sector? It might all be very like as you said, you know, exciting briefs and they They understand giving you full creative reign, but you still have to keep the lights on, you know. So so speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. speaker-1: yeah, yeah. And I kinda like it now. I don't know if it's this like if it's almost a little bit like that in terms of like cause I know Meta and Clarna are big clients on your books, but then you've also got like these like really fun little side projects and you've I think you talked about like rebranding your local convenience store on the corner of your street. So I think it's that way, is it the is is it the big play paying clients like that allow you enough room to go smaller and maybe just actually just take on work for like the fun of it almost in terms of the business structure that they're that that that the big the big guys are sort of like giving you enough freedom of time to then have a little bit of fun with these offbeat projects and you know, that that everything's the overheads are paid for, you know? speaker-0: Yeah, no, hundred percent. also, mean, often when you learn bigger jobs, there are more rules, are less, more boundaries, of course, and less freedom to create like whatever you want. So in that sense, think we always like felt either we do a project because of good money or creative freedom or hopefully both, but that's always like a hard nut to crack. But so if you make a big project, we then feel like, then we can make a our own project or an NGO project or something like that. To make up for it and also for our own sake to be able to use our full creative freedom without boundaries. speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause I d I do think there I I think that that sense of taking really good ideas, just fun ideas for the sake of it and running with it. I think it actually works in terms of it's like even though you're doing lots of work just for the sake of it, I I do think it it exercises and it's a good way of showing you showing clients even if there was no rules and no boundaries, this is the fun that we can have and these are the great ideas that we can deliver, and those little kind of fun projects. So shower beer was one of the was one of the ones you talked about in the gab talk. So yeah, do you wanna talk about shower beer? speaker-0: Yeah, mean, we were basically, we did some labels for a friend who has his own brewery in Stockholm. And we got tired of getting paid in beer. So we said, like, why don't we make a beer together where we own it 50-50 % each, where we told him, like, you guys know best about beer, so you do the brewing and we do the branding, design and storytelling. And so we created Shower Beer, a beer made specifically to drink in the shower. So it's only 18 centiliters because if ever, if you ever drank beer in the shower, it gets hot really quickly. So it's only four gulps, but don't worry Scottish people. It's 10 % alcohol, same effect. It's a normal beer, know, screen printed so you have a good grip on it. and yeah, so, so that's basically it. And we, yeah, we decided to just make our own beer and it was super fun. speaker-1: And I think the success of this is because it's like it great it gained so much traction in terms of pickup from magazines and that thing. It was like it was a it was a the the craziness of the having a shower beer was picked up by it it it made its own sort of publicity and therefore became a b huge hit or like really promoted the brewery itself off the back of the the left field idea that you had. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. it became huge. It went viral. And you know, back in the day, so maybe still you could be like, from one day to the next, you had 1000 unread emails in iPhone because somehow the mail application went mayhem. And that happened on Christmas Eve. And I was like, called Eric and like, did you see like the email app stopped working again? He said, no, you haven't read. And so what do you mean? No, it's like it's, the shower bay went crazy just a couple of minutes ago. No, no, well, an hour ago, whatever. People are starting emailing from left to right. It was like, yeah, a lot of press coverage. It was fun. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. No, I th I think that was one of your points of just these ideas. you know, ha keep having these fun ideas will drive their own engagement, you know, the stronger the idea, it will naturally pick up itself. Yeah, and Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I I think that's the that's the I think that's the lesson to be learned in terms of selling that service to the client then. I wanted to talk about Love Korea because it's actually just I spotted it this morning and it it looked like, it was right up my street in terms of yeah, having fun with a a branding project like this that's just it seem it seems like a crazy idea that you had in the studio that you just went, let's do this. speaker-0: Yeah, basically we got a request from this magazine, Design Magazine, who said, we do this rebrand section where we offer an agency to do a rebrand of a big brand and we'll post it. Will you get like a spread in a magazine? And you can do Coca-Cola or whatever you want. We're like Coca-Cola, that's the most boring shit we would ever want to do. We want to rebrand North Korea, who said. And then we're like, okay, fine. And so we got Asta Ostrowska, a designer who we work with to actually be the designer on this project. we wanted to make it for real. it was like, that's a letter to the North Korean embassy, which you see there. So we basically said that when, when, or if you become a free democracy of the world, you're allowed to download this visual identity and use it for free. But yeah, so there was a letter sent on the website, love is Korea. is yeah. You can they can download all the files. Yeah, that's that's actually an impersonator who lives in Australia. So we actually made we printed the flag and we had to send it to him wherever he was. And yeah, he would record this video. And speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: yeah, so that's it. speaker-1: Amazing. Yeah. But but speaker-0: We received some threats. speaker-1: Yeah. But that's that's going it with the making enemies philosophy that if you're if you're not making enemies then you're probably not making good work or exciting work. Yeah, I love it. I love it. And as you said yourself, it's like I I'd I'm Really love this stuff. over and above, you just kinda as you said there, the boringness of doing something like a a Coca Cola or something like that. It's like, yeah. The picking the sub the subject matter is really important here, you know? Amazing. Yeah. speaker-0: And also I think maybe another agent will be like, we can win work with this case, so let's do Coca-Cola. But we didn't do it to win work, we did it because we wanted to, yeah, rebrand North Korea. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And again in terms of going against the green and it's al along with the shower beer, that headline of rebranding North Korea is far more exciting to click on rather than we our take on Coca Cola. Like, who cares? and I just wanna quickly talk about Clarna as well because like they're a client of yours where you've worked a lot w with them and I love how there's like I i it's it's almost like very abstract the concepts and it's like it's it looks to me as like the concepts they almost don't have like a a start, middle, and end. They're just a feeling a vibe, you know. There's no traditional here's your call to action or here's your head, your attention, your call to action, whatever. It's it's it's much more you just go into this world that creates a mood. And I I I wonder like w how Easy was it to convince Clarna to go with this visual language that you created for the advertising? Did they actually push you a little bit further in terms of going a weirder and weirder or did you have to drag them along with you? speaker-0: No, no, no, no, that was easy actually. And they were already on this track and building visual worlds and communicating the feeling of smoothness. It's just like way more fun than talking about any USP or product benefit, you know. So yeah, it wasn't that hard to convince them about that. It was almost like they never said no. So we could just present stupid ideas and they would actually not stop us. So yeah, it was really fun. speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause there is that visual with the the horses here where they vi violins. So it was all it's all just based around these abstract concepts of smoothness essentially. and like anything goes within that, you know. speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. It's fab it is it is one of those things that really gives me hope in this world of AI because they're so like it's only it's only humans could come up with something so abstract but still be very make it work at the work at the same time, you know. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I think it's time we have the time of the show to do the bingo wheel of wisdom, Freddie. So this is Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I I spared no expense at the local shop. Pretty pretty much like the local dollar store here. And I got like a bingo wheel. So I've kind of I've already drawn the balls 'cause it's quite noisy. And it's like I did I did it for the first couple of shows actually drawing out the bingo wheel, but it was so noisy you couldn't actually hear what we were saying. So so so I've already pulled out the numbers and the numbers respond to like, you know, I've got ninety questions here like totally random. And yeah. So so I'm gonna just throw them at you, Freddie, and see how they fit. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, let's do it. speaker-1: Get yeah, let me get my questions up. So number seventy three, what was the last thing you bought online? speaker-0: Last thing I bought online. think it was magnesium supplement or something to help me sleep because I have restless legs. I think there's nothing more fun than that. speaker-1: So yeah, so magnesium is a good sleep aid then, yeah. speaker-0: It is good for sleeping they say, maybe it's just placebo, but when I lay there and having trouble sleeping I feel like at least it's not the magnesium. I don't know. But maybe it helps me sometimes, maybe not. Don't ruin this pierce, it works, okay? speaker-1: Okay. Okay, yeah, well if it's a placebo you have to you have to like believe in the placebo for it to work. So I don't want to break the spell, definitely. speaker-0: Thanks. speaker-1: yeah, that's fine. So two, where's my questions again? Two, what was the first gig you ever attended? speaker-0: The gig, my, my, I have to think what was that? speaker-1: Really yeah, yeah. The first gigs are always kinda the first gigs are always quite quite cringy though, but you play in a band yourself, do you? speaker-0: No, I never played in a band, but I was a manager in a band for Eric's band. So I played money, the instrument money, basically. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's a hard one to learn, but it's very valuable speaker-0: It's very hard to learn. speaker-1: But f very more rewarding than being able to play the saxophone. speaker-0: Yeah, that's an admirable challenge, I must say. speaker-1: So any idea what your first gig was? speaker-0: I mean I think it was some stupid 90s band where I grew up in my hometown and I didn't even know that I liked or whatever. You were just like old enough to be allowed to do it to go at anything so I was just happy I think. speaker-1: Yeah, amazing man. number eighteen. So I normally ask what's your favourite place of Scotland? But I could actually ask you a favourite place in Sweden. If I was to travel to Sweden, where would you recommend that I go to first? What's your what's your favourite place to hang out? Well speaker-0: Well, first of all, in my favorite place in Scotland, except for the Islay Whiskey Islands, would be the Sockie Hall Street in Glasgow. similarly, similarly, would be in Stockholm, would be probably Skånegatan. We were situated with Snaskoffice. It's like a bar street in the more like hip and bohemian parts of Stockholm. I think that would be the best place for you. She would have free beer in our bar, speaker-1: Amazing, yeah, cool. I need to I need to organize a visit, but it's hip in bohemian. I definitely I I definitely have never heard anybody call Sucky Hall Street hip in bohemian. like it's speaker-0: I never said it was Perth. Well, think I same way. Yeah. speaker-1: so fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. I think you you were slightly equating the two and I was like, right, okay. It's it's interesting in its own way, but I don't think especially on a Saturday night, it's definitely not very, very much the opposite of hip and bunny. But it does have some it it it it it is very nice, pedestrianized and some good bars and stuff like that. So there is I suppose it is quite lively in terms of yeah. Places but twenty five what's your go to karaoke song? speaker-0: I have two. One is Bohemian Rhapsody and the other one is Forgot About Dre with Eminem and Dr. speaker-1: No way. So is that do you do both parts? Do you do and Dr. Dre in the song or do you do that as a duet? Do you do both parts? speaker-0: Yep. I do both of them. speaker-1: Is is it one of those ways are you able to rap it without the actual without the lyrics in front of you? Or you know, do is it stuck in your brain that much? speaker-0: I used to be able to do it entirely without lyrics, but nowadays I think I need at least a little bit of it. speaker-1: Amazing man. let's go for one more. eighteen. Instagram or Pinterest? speaker-0: Well, since I don't use Pinterest, it's probably Instagram. But I don't like either of them. I just use Instagram for my own travel memories and then I have to use it for snacks sometimes. But we don't care about algorithms. We're like too behind to use it like that. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. But I suppose the thing is like it's there's two sort of default following people for sort of inspiration things. So do you look at more offline methods of seeking inspiration then in terms of like I I I've I've become accustomed to treating myself to a really nice design book every month. So I have this like nice library that I can actually just forces me to get off screen if I wanna get engaged or get excited about a project, I'll just get random books and I e even in charity shops, just like non design related, but if they've kind of got good visuals on them, like, you know, like books about space or books about whatever, you know, these old seventies encyclopedias, I have a stack of those as well. Cause I just think just getting into that world of like, you know, really nice visuals or just that thing is like a much healthier direction than just pulling up a Pinterest algorithm that's going to fire you up everything that ten thousand other designers are going to be looking at. speaker-0: Yeah, I think that we, never been that inspired by other people's work, even though of course we can be, but we never really sorted out as much when we were students. But then it's more like we're inspired by stupid everyday life, like love is blind, shitty TV series on Netflix or, or Donald Trump being a fucking asshole, you know, all these things like inspires us in one way or the other to be like, wow, that's so stupid. That's funny in a way. Those things make us much more inspired than actually looking at visual work. speaker-1: Yeah, I I think that's a good way to it's all in the mix, You all in the mix in terms of how you react to your your moral compass and how you're reacting to certain situations and the you know the chaotic the chaos chaos that's in the world now and all that kind of feeds into like how your that that comes out and how you approach creativity. So it's yeah, it's all in the mix. You're absolutely right. It's not just like the superficial visual element. It's like very much, your emotional reactions, things will inform how how you tackle briefs. speaker-0: That's why walking on Sokki Hall Street on a Saturday night, you see, Neltsin Nan is smoking weed in a corner. There's a girl who dressed up as a fairy because she thinks it's sexy. And then there's someone eating chips on the pavement. And you know, it's just like you get all mixed up with everything, you know. speaker-1: Yeah, you don't you don't get that on Pinterest, I tell ya. Yeah, speaker-0: No. speaker-1: absolutely. Yeah. It's like s so yeah, they're you're you're opening my mind to like Sucky Hall Street bringing a hotbed of like of inspiration here. Like I've never looked at it like that, you know. I I I think I need to actually get my business credit card out and just like, you know, go for a few pints and Sucky Hall Street and actu I and say it and put it down as like research. yeah. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Amazing. That's so class, Freddie. so yeah, I gave you the dessert menu, heavy dessert menu, I suppose. Mm-hmm. No, that's not it. I don't have to pull it up, do I? 'Cause I d I I pull it up every every session. I I'm just it's generally yeah. You're gonna talk about burnout generally. That that's the topic you were avoiding. Burnout was the topic you wanted, yeah? speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that... Sorry. speaker-1: Yeah, no, I'm just how do you avoid it yourself is the question. speaker-0: think we started avoiding it many, many years ago when we were deciding that no one should work after five o'clock and that it would be beneficial for Snask that no one works overtime because you need to have a life outside of Snask. You need to have a working relationship. need to have a few pints with your friends and suck your holes through it. You need to have interest. You need to all have some sleep, you know, and all of that. Like instead of living to work, you have to like... and flip that to work so you can live. And that's like in longer time, it's more beneficial, of course, and sustainable. I think that's avoiding burnout, the easiest thing you can do is flipping that. So instead of living to work, just working so you can live and really respect that, you know. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, i it it's it's totally true and it absolutely ties into what you're saying in terms of I do I do especially when people are like soul traders like I'm a I'm freelance and I'm just kind of it's just me on my own. And I do speak to other people and it can become all com consuming because like, you know, you it's not just the work, but the finding the work and the updating and the updating of all all these other kind of marketing things and I and I I can I can find myself come about five or six o'clock. I I I have the laptop here. thankfully I have my own studio and it's and I don't work from home or anything like that, which can have its own issues in terms of like not knowing when to stop. but like I and it's it's I've become really healthy these days where I'm like my brain I'll just get to about five o'clock and I'm like, I need to send that. I need to send that. I was like well if I just take my laptop home Then I can after dinner I could just do an hour and and I'm like, no, that just actually needs to close. And it's it's it's in the overall interest of the health of the business overall, because like you said, if you don't actually switch off, if you don't engage, it's much more beneficial to me as a creative person to like spend some nice time, cook a nice dinner with my family, spend some nice time and then like maybe watch a really good episode of a like as I said, a T V show or like a film or engage in some other kind of bit of culture that not only is escapism and s switches off from this a bit, but it also enriches me, as you said, everything that goes into the mix in terms of just reading books or like, you know, doing other listening to podcasts about such and such, all these other little kind of things that are not related to this will will kind of make a mu a much broader view as a kind of designer that It's so unhealthy if all you're thinking about is the work, how to find the work, to do the work, what then you just start to become like a very boring as a person and then very boring as a designer and then v a very boring prospect for clients to hire essentially. speaker-0: Yeah, no, exactly. if it was like this that you had, you could only receive one million emails in the lifetime. Yeah, then it would make sense to sit in email all the time every day because you knew that those emails would stop coming after one million. But it's not. For every email you send, you get two back and it's unlimited. So when you die, you will just be like, how many fucking emails did I get and responded to? Stupid. It doesn't mean anything when you die. So in that sense, it's just like, no. If you send that email, you will get two back. speaker-1: Yeah, no amazing. That's quite that's quite that's like true and also very depressing at the same time that it's like, you know, it's gonna be I I I probably will have this moment on my deathbed just going like, how much of my time did I fucking waste replying to emails? But yeah, no, absolutely. You have to prioritize, you know, life's moving on. So and and do you have practical things like that in terms you said that SNAS goes finishes at five. and no work gets done. But is there and you and you said there as well, I think you hinted at like not being on Instagram and not getting stuck into the algorithms because I do think those things unnaturally speed up life and also create a kind of corrupted view of reality. So are there other things like that that you kind of you tr you try and kind of this help you to escape? speaker-0: think just basically turning off notifications on a lot of things on your phone is very good. And not feeling that stress like when you go and poop. Like I have to now read some emails and respond to them. No, just fucking poop. That will be fine. When the weekend comes and you want to dress up as a sexy fairy on the street, do that instead. Do that instead. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Freddy's Freddie's burnout tips. Dress like a fairy, eat chips on Sucky Hall Street, and poop when you wanna poop. yeah. Yeah. I'm signing up for that course, man. I'm signing up in speaker-0: Yeah, you wanted to know it. speaker-1: Avoiding Burnout by Freddie Ost. Yeah. Amazing. speaker-0: you Yep, sexy fairy wings. speaker-1: Sexy yeah, yeah. the intentionally sexy fairy wings, yeah. Amazing. yeah, that that's cool, Freddie. I I that was a blast. I was just trying to keep it short and sweet and under the hour 'cause like I know you're a man who likes to poop regularly, so we don't want to keep you from your poops. So yeah. I won't get in the way of a man with his poops. but yeah, thanks very much for having you on. Do you have any more visits to Scotland at all planned or do you do do any talks coming up? speaker-0: I don't. So tell everyone to book us. We want to come back. It's amazing. I love Scotland. speaker-1: Yeah, I might get on to the like as I said, there's a Kin are our design group that have set up and they get guest speakers over. So I'll give you a high recommendation to get you over to Aberdeen to the northeast. so yeah, yeah, I'll definitely I'll definitely the get Freddie to Aberdeen campaign st starts now. speaker-0: You can sell the burnout course, I can do it there, speaker-1: Yeah. Well Union Street here in like in Aberdeen is actually like it's a very similar sucky hall street on on a Saturday night, so bring your bring your sexy fairy rings as well so come in. speaker-0: Perfect. speaker-1: how good was Freddie, huh? just love that chat. I do need to start a campaign to get Freddy over to Aberdeen and dress him up in sexy fairy wings and go for a few pints on Union Street on a Saturday night, fill our inspirational buckets up and charge it all to the business credit card. Yeah, SNASK.com is where you'll find Freddy's work making enemies and gaining fans is the book. You can buy that directly from the SNASC website. it's beautifully printed, holographic, a great read, really funny, but yeah, excellent work as well to inspire you. This is the last episode of series two and possibly the last episode for a while. it has been very fun but also this year has made me realised how hard it is to keep promoting a podcast. The records, I've absolutely loved the records. they've been so much fun. But the editing, the promotion, the uploading, all of that has just really taken its time. I didn't realise how much time would go into it. I hope you've enjoyed it off the back of that and I definitely have I will say that I definitely have taken a lot of inspiration, a lot of wisdom from it. It's also just generally been really cathartic to chat to other creatives and there's a lot of connection in terms of you know the struggles that we have as independent creatives. Episode one was a chat with you and Lecky and that was the genesis for the podcast was that I wanted to chat with you in any way so I was thinking about just give a call just for an hour or so just to catch up and then I thought, well, why don't I use that to boost my social media marketing? What's the point in having a friendly conversation if I can't use it to sway the algorithm in my favour? So yeah, I searched out Riverside is the platform I've been using for this. it's been very good. I do recommend it. very handy for y clipping up a lot of the stuff automatically using the AI tools in the back back end. did although it did spit out AI generated covers. I was like, no thank you. I might share them on my Instagram for how horrendous they were. the AI version of me and Ewan is something to behold. But thanks very much to Ewan for being like an excellent first guest on the podcast. Ewan is one of those guys. I think his work deserves far more eyeballs than probably what he gets. 'cause I think it's absolutely outstanding. He's just got like every project he just absolutely smashes it out of the park. then following up from that, Chris Wilson is always a guy that I meet at Design Talks in Glasgow and always get on great with, just absolutely brand new to use the Glaswegian parlance. I had to stop the record there because my daughter is in the studio and she has informed me that this is already feeling like an Oscar speech. Which I can't argue with. Okay, I'm just gonna run through. But I've got James Barnard to thank for coming on for episode three. You know, it's hard not to be on Instagram and not have seen one of being a designer on Instagram and not seen one of James's videos. He's absolutely cracked the secret code behind that and he was just like a greased eel with the information, having done several big Adobe talks, etc., he has got wisdom in spades. Peter Kohlman is a Dutch guy now living in Scotland. I think he's I was intrigued to find out about his Brandsmith website and how he uses a subscription model. And Fraser Robertson is lost astronaut, illustrator in Glasgow that I've worked with, and I'm a big fan of his illustration work. A good rant about perils and the evils of generative AI on that one was the highlight. Chris Sanders was amazing. On episode six, I've followed Chris's work since way back when he set up the Coventry Design Festival, which slowly but surely morphed into Right Aligned Academy, which is a a global and international design resource that looks to smash the gatekeeping, often very tough gatekeeping. of the industry. Freya McLeod was on episode seven. Freya was fabulous of Freya was an employee of mine back in the Loom graphics days, but being so early on in her career, she's still smashing it. And yeah, had a such a great talk with Freya, especially about growing up in a rural location and making it in the design world. It was lovely to get that take. coming from the Hebrides. And then we started that was the f kind of drew a line under series one, which kind of was like the first half of this year. And then over summer I started to book in more conversations. So number eight, I always wanted to speak to Johnny Mo. And I would just kind of in passing see Johnny at design talks, but I've absolutely loved his work. always you'll you'll find a kind of pattern when people I have a good sense of humor in their work. I'm always attracted to it. And Johnny is excellent, absolutely exceptional. And I I'm just astounded at the amount of disciplines he's traversed from graphic design to illustration to film making, directing. Whew. I need to lie down just thinking about it. But yeah, just a top guy as well and really love that conversation on episode eight. Matt Burns this was great. I haven't spoken to Matt in years. and you'll find out from that podcast we knew each other back both freelancers in Glasgow and he'd not long arrived from Australia and he's gone on to do some exceptional work setting up his own agency, Thirst, which serves the food and beverage industry, pa packaging design, just phenomenal work and to get his insight from going from that basically him and a laptop to a team of roughly about forty odd in three different countries is yeah wonderful. episode ten, that was two students, recent graduates, I should say, from the Gray School of Art. yeah, when I went in I was kindly invited by Nicola Watson, a lecturer there, to come in and judge the degree show. And they were the inaugural winners of the I still don't know what the official title is, Wise Love Emerging Talent, I think. so yeah, I thought it was it would be excellent because I'm also aware, keenly aware that it's most of my guests on the podcast were sort of middle aged crusty designers so it was just a really good chance to get perspective of the graduate graduates in twenty twenty six plus get them on to speak about their work. yeah, just love speaking to I haven't said their names yet, Tegan McDougall and Charlotte Ann Grant. yeah, two fabulous projects, both very print based, which was also another thing attracted to in terms of a design. yeah, so they were fabulous. It was a great chat and an illuminating conversation with them. Number 11. that was Kirsten Murray and Alex D'Souza. I'm always excited when Kirsten drops a new project because it is always excellent. And We s both spoke at Curio back in May and her talk was largely about her ADHD diagnosis. So I wanted to get her on to speak about that. And when we were talking about what project to talk about on the podcast, she suggested of bringing on Alex D'Souza, which who was her client for the Edible project. so that was such a great suggestion. Alex was fabulous as well. He is like He has a background in design himself, so it was really great to get his whole story of why he set up edible. And then you had Kirsten come in and talk about the strategy that went behind the brand. It was such it it it it was the longest section that we've spoken about work, but absolutely top to kind of get the full range of client brief through to delivery. So yeah, that clip is up on the YouTube, well worth a watch on the episode as well. Really, really great, fascinating insight. Steven Wakabayashi was episode twelve then. And this was a total surprise in terms of it was his team that got in touch with me, saying he'd like to be considered for the podcast. And when I went down and read about him, I was like, whoa. This guy's looks as though he's got a story to tell. a degree in neuroscience and dance. worked with Google and then set up his own creative agency in New York called Stranger Creative, working with large enterprises. yeah, and he was every bit as good as I thought he would be. Came on with some invaluable advice for burnout essentially was one of his main topics because he himself actually had to take a year out and basically went on a monastic retreat for a large part of that year where he was sitting in silence. such was his complete neurological burnout that he had to go to that kind of extreme. But yeah, he it he was a total delight, complete surprise to me And it's one of the joys of doing the podcast is the fact that sometimes with with some of the guests that I didn't really know that well before coming on, it was always this tentative kind of steps of like trying to get to know them at the start. the usual kind of awkwardness of trying to get to know somebody. But then once you kind of get into it, I'm totally knocked out by their depth and breadth of their knowledge and I realise it's quite a privilege to speak to these people. so yeah, that's it. Rosa, did you think that was too long? No. Okay. Okay. I I do feel as though I've kinda gone a little bit. Gwen Gwenet Paltr at the Oscars acceptance speech. thanks everyone. Thanks everybody for tuning in and for sending me messages about the podcast. I've really loved recording and g getting these episodes out to your lovely lobes. As I said, I'll be taking a big long break from it, but what I thought about doing is getting a sort of best of clipping up some like little five, ten minute shorter shorter bite podcasts of some of the little little nuggets of wisdom that my guests have dispensed. And just getting those up and out there. yeah, in a more digestible format. But yeah, am I gonna say thank you again? Thank you. Thank you. Blu God bless your lovely lobes. WiseLove.studio is my main studio address. Instagram I'm at wiselove.studio. Wiselove.shop you can go on and feed my children. Speaking of fe feeding children, I need to go and get some lunch for Rosa. before she gets angry at me. Cheers, thank you. Bye.