Latest / WiseNoise: The Creative Practice Podcast / WN06: Chris Sanders on Process over Portfolio

Transcript

WN06: Chris Sanders on Process over Portfolio · WiseNoise: The Creative Practice Podcast

• speaker-0: Hello and welcome to episode, let me just double check, six, would you believe it or not of Wise Noise, the podcast about creative practice, the creative practice podcast. And you would think six episodes in, I'd have that bit right. ⁓ I'm Piers O'Halloran. I am a graphic designer and I run Wise Love Studio in the Northeast of Scotland. ⁓ Yeah, I've gone a bit too radio friendly. I'm in the studio recording this. I've abandoned the outdoor intros. I was quite liking the excuse to get outside and do a walk and record this. But I'm realizing it's been a bit windy up here in the Northeast and the old cheap lav mic that I was using isn't up to scratch and The wind feedback is just really annoying when I come in. It's very inaudible. So I'm just recording in the studio and shout out to my mate Pete Fletcher who runs BlackBase Studio in the Isle of Loose, which is an amazing recording, residential recording studio over on the west side of the island. And I was having issues. I thought the audio that I was recording here. was just not as good as it should be. It sounded tinny and distant. And after a little bit of investigation and back and forth on the old WhatsApps in terms of my setup, he asked me, was my mic the right way around? What? Mics have a front and a back, but apparently they do. And I, since day one, had mounted this Rode NT USB microphone the wrong way around. So for about a year, I've been recording my voice. bouncing off the monitor and back into the microphone, which obviously didn't sound great. So I'm hoping that this is a big improvement on previous podcasts. But we live and learn. Speaking of learning, I'm really going radio friendly with my intro. The segues are smooth like butter. Chris Sanders is my guest and he runs Right Aligned Academy, which is an online resource to learn from the world's best design studios. ⁓ Kind of over above that, Chris has been on a bit of a mission to smash gatekeeping within the industry and make it more open and accessible and is very geared. You'll tell from this interview how passionate he is about the subject. And I did kind of realize as we were talking, we were both very much from the same backgrounds, kind of starting out in print factories. was dial up modems days and have seen been through the mill a bit. And this episode is quite deep, I suppose, compared to other episodes. You'll you'll kind of recognize when we do the Bingo Wheel of Wisdom, which is normally a kind of lighthearted. It is a lighthearted little palette refresher. Normally after we've been kind of geeking out about portfolio stuff and then we do that. just before we head into the heavy stuff, maybe. it's a good way of, you know, just talking about getting to know the person away from design as well. ⁓ But yeah, don't know this tonally, it shifts too dramatically. ⁓ As I think we touch on very deep subjects from the start and then we do the bingo wheel of wisdom. And then at the end, ⁓ speaker-1: because speaker-0: Chris gets very personal talking about burnout and I open up a bit as well. So the Bingo Wheel of Wisdom kind of feels like a sort of whoopee cushion at a funeral. In the middle. I've left it in there for you to judge, but I was kind of listening back and considering actually maybe taking it out because it did a disservice. And that's not to say Chris's answers weren't fun and it wasn't it was good answers, but It just seemed to be a bit like this betrays the mood of the show because it is an excellent chart. And Chris has been doing this for a number of years now and has an excellent perspective on the design industry. And, I'm pretty much just going to get into it largely because I've got a really nice flapple, flapple, a flapple wrap, which is a flaffle with apples in it. It's not really, I just meant to say Flaffle. Flaffle rap. Here's Chris Sanders. Hope you enjoy the show. Like, subscribe. Do all the... I don't mean to sound like a thirsty bitch every time, but yeah, please do all the things you need to do to, yeah, just keep some motivation to record these things. But yeah, here's Chris. speaker-1: You speaker-0: Yeah, so is it over 500 right-aligned workshops or interviews you've done? speaker-1: feels like much more. I'm not sure how many it is to be honest. Cause there was quite a lot of stuff that we did before like this sort of type form like before, we even started to do like the actual where we're at now, like the content for the website or for the actual, you know, sort of educational led sort of content with studios. So that's been around about 150. So there was many, many more sort of conversations with individuals or sort of group panel debates or type things that are available. speaker-0: Yeah speaker-1: back cataloging sort of of stuff. I've got to know how much that is. And then you throw in the in-person sort of type things that we've done. there's, yeah, it's just, I don't really like to sort of count it too much because it's just all been a great, you know, sort of journey into something completely new for me, you know, from being working primarily as a designer for clients, you know, that was either freelance or in-agencies or building your own thing. So to still stay within the same sector, but do something, you know, build something that There's no real format to follow. You've just got to do it by instinct. And I like that sort of stuff, but it's still quite scary. Yeah, it's just a wide range of things that we put out there that are just mounting up really. instead of sort of maybe seeing it as a number of anything that could be seen like it's, you you've been going around for centuries. It's just great to be able to sort of see it, learn from it and keep on trying to improve. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. Like, and I think that I want to kind of get back to a little bit that part before you were a designer, because I think maybe people who are familiar with right aligned Academy, which is the Academy that you set up with, which has great workshops and resources. And it's an educational tool for designers. A lot of people who come onto the call, but not realize your background. So can you kind of give me a bit of an explainer of like your career in design and how you kind of that, that inflection point where you kind of turn towards these educational resources. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, 100%. So it really started ⁓ as someone that didn't have any formal education in terms of higher education, did got, you know, usual school, college, etc. It was, I just went straight into the, work because I just, you know, just thought that was probably one of the best ways to learn is just to get your hands on the, hands on the tools, so to speak. but not really understanding or having any experience or portfolio or really sort of knowledge of design. was sort of starting really at the bottom. So it was a case of just entering with literally lifting up boxes of paper and putting them into printers. And it was sort of a really industrial sort of type of thing, know, for just watching print rooms all the time. that sort of, within the same firm, it was a family firm that I entered in, within that, that gave me an opportunity to sort of do, which was really more, I suppose, artwork in some respects, you know, it was, watching people that were creating adverts for local media or producing brochures, etc. It was a travel firm. Back then, that was 1999, so that was very much print led still, and with a little bit of digital, digital was really very... speaker-0: in its infancy. yeah, yeah. They still have those dial up dial up modems. Yeah, I remember I in the pretty pretty much the same time, but I had worked in a printing factory and I had to go upstairs and ask them if I was allowed to go on the internet because it was charged like a phone call. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. know, make that horrific noise, but even files, were sent. I think it's because it was maybe within the printed media was our main form of outlet for advertising. It was like ISBN numbers. So had to send it through, know, files. So like tiny little adverts in today's world is, you know, it's like a thumbnail. It would take about half an hour to get to the other side of the city we were based in. But at the time, that was like magic. How did that get from there to there without, you know, any real understanding? You say that today, that sounds like we're talking about. five centuries ago, but was, know, was about 25 years ago. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But then, you know, I sort of stuck around at that and then sort of, there was no real, what I always find quite interesting in the conversation around, sort of what level you're at. So there was never any real gauge of where you were, who you were or what you did. I sort of think that that merges into a junior role. It was in such a sort of small environment and there's only like three or four people within the team. You sort of just took more responsibility on, but you were, you're never given that. speaker-0: in our lifetimes, ⁓ speaker-1: Now, a certificate that said you're a junior now, or you you got a badge that sort of, you know, sort of told everybody what your role was. And then from there, I then just sort of got a little bit more curious to think about the world of design and designers and clients and those relationships, because it was within an in-house team that was very confined to seeing the same things all the time. You you did the same jobs on a weekly basis because it was just, you you were selling our products that that company made. But was really interesting the idea that you could work with. within a creative team, but then work with multiple clients in different sectors, different industries that really opened my eyes and that felt like the big time to me at that point. So I sort of applied for a role. Again, in them days, it was seeing it in the local paper or seeing it on a notice board. You know, it's something really, again, it's half really archaic, but it was the work that I was doing privately, seeing the traditional thing of young designer working with their mates who are in a band or set up a record label and creating flyers and posters. And I didn't realize that the person that I then went to apply to have an interview with, they had seen that work because they were also going to the same gigs at the same venues. And they'd like that work more than the work that I was doing on a day-to-day basis, like nine to five. So I won my first junior role based upon my self-initiated work, which is quite interesting for people that always question how to get into industry. And from there, it really went up just over the next 10, 15 years to midway senior. did bit of freelance, went back into senior creative director, and back into freelance. So there's a lot of different experiences of most of the roles that you could probably hold within the industry. And then I started my own agency very naively, and that collapsed very quickly. And I did it again, and that collapsed again very quickly because I just wasn't prepared or have any knowledge apart from I'm going to start an agency without any sort of understanding of what it was supposed to be or what we were trying to do. And then thankfully, after... a lot of heartache. I did it again, third time, and that started to work and progress quite well. unfortunately, after about four or five years, that collapsed within about 20 minutes when COVID struck because all of our clients were hospitality-based. So we specifically targeted those sort of businesses at the start because you could see a gap in that market. But they were the ones that were hit hardest with COVID. And because they shut their doors, automatically all of our clients went with it at the same time. So that was, like I say, about four or five years building solidly. just to see it disappear, you know, through no fault of our own. And then during the lockdown, I was homeschooling my daughter and it was that period that I was thinking, do I want to go through that again? Do I want to put myself through that sort of mental pressure and stress to build something again and work with clients and start that circle? And I didn't, I just couldn't sort of face it. So it was a case of what can I do to stay within the creative space, but also then, you know, try and build a future. after the pandemic ended, but we didn't really see it at that time. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was a very scary, messy time for everybody, wasn't it? So it was a case of just starting something little, and that small thing happened to be right aligned, which just snowballed from there. speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, yeah. It's very interesting what you're saying there. And there's a few points there in terms of when that sort of building an agency where you actually try to focus on building beyond being a freelancer then we actually tried to scale up and even kind of look at employees when you're talking about building an agency ⁓ in that respect. And what were the particular things that made the business fold essentially? speaker-1: Yes, I think first off was, when I say freelance, I sort of was made redundant from a position. And I just carried on like I was still there. You know, just the next day, I still had a mortgage to pay for, still had a child to look after, and all the other bills that everybody else has to sort of meet. So I just sort of carried on like normal really, but instead of going to an office and sort of being around people, I just sort of reached out to those that I'd worked with previously. And it wasn't a case of like, I'm going to go freelance and I'm going to create a website or portfolio that had my name on it. It was always a case of I'll just continue like I was already at the same place. It was a strange mindset. think by it, no, I think, you know, it sounds quite odd. But I was also never really keen on putting my name, not fronting it as myself. I've always had this sort of strange sort of thing where I've always used to say we, even though when it was just me, you know, it's this idea that you sort of, I don't think it was just the industry I thought needed. You needed to portray yourself to be bigger or better than what you were. you just fronted on your own wasn't enough. But also there wasn't much education at that point. So was, I think the whole idea was it was two very defined ways. If you freelance under your own name, you basically just freelance yourself back to an agency. And if you went under a student name, that was you then sort of claiming that you wanted to win your own clients. And I sort of, I took that route because again, I think I could hide behind a name a little bit more than you could hide behind your own. And also if I was a client working for what I thought was a big business, would they just want to hire a person or would they want to hire what looked like a business? And I think that's the sort of approach I took. And the reason for, well, the first time the agency started folding was purely because it was just done on a whim with a friend after a few drinks. Now I'm sure a lot of people could probably relate to that. was, you know, following weeks you realize that you're not probably as compatible as you thought you were spending as much time as you did. And there was reason why you only met at the weekend once every month. speaker-0: Okay, whereas on Monday to Friday night to five, weren't as friendly. speaker-1: Yeah, well, 95 was probably about 11 till 2. It wasn't really professional outfit. And then the second time we positioned ourselves, or I positioned myself, as more of a, you could see the emergence of digital really taking off. A lot of businesses were going into e-commerce and those sort of things. And I positioned it to run businesses that I knew locally that we could do these things and just wasn't capable of doing these things. So, was trying to figure out WordPress on the fly, but you required some product photos and you know, didn't know how to create WordPress websites, didn't know how to create a brand or anything like that. So you saw winging it to the point of just annoying people, which isn't doesn't go down very well. And then the third time is learning from all of those mistakes and actually doing some of the things that I never wanted to do like networking and going to more business local corporate sort of top events. And even though it wasn't something that I wanted to be doing at 6am, you know, in a local B &B on a B road, you know, speaking to other businessmen that just basically wanted to sell you conservatories and golf clubs. It wasn't sort of the type of thing I wanted to do. You had to swallow your pride because they were tried and tested routes and you knew they worked. It was just very difficult from a creative mindset to be in those environments. But it really did help gauge it, lock doors in terms of naturally met people like marketing managers and business owners, which led me to sort of find a client within the hospitality sector, a hotel that was a franchise of a bigger global brand. And that was really quite transformational because at first I actually was doing work that I enjoyed because, meanwhile, I could go to restaurants and go to visit different cities at the weekend or go to a bar or a gig or those sorts of things. So we were familiar with those environments. So it made sense to work within those spaces because we subconsciously knew things like menus and signage and print and all those sort of things. So we could speak authentically. And that did start to lead to hiring freelancers and thinking about employing people through. Circumstance more than choice, know, was the case that there was too much work. So that was the natural thing. I didn't really want to particularly hire people. It was never the ambition. And it came about, but like I said, unfortunately that was put to a halt because of the pandemic. speaker-0: Pandemic. Yeah. Well, it's funny how you kind of almost naturally niche down there because, you know, there's one of the conversations I've been having, I guess, is keeps coming up about the generalist versus specialist. I've been kindly compiling a list of pros and cons with both. And obviously that's a big con in terms of specialism. If you're kind of wedded to one industry, when that industry gets, I mean, well, you know, the COVID-19 pandemic was pretty bit of an anomaly, but if that industry does face a slow downturn, you naturally kind of are going down with it, you know. speaker-1: Yeah, that's, sadly for that, because I, you know, I can speak from a perspective of getting to know a lot of really nice people within that space. And it's never recovered. Yeah. And we're talking about five years since. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's on its knees deeper and deeper per day through, you know, wider economics in the way of the world. And it's really sad to sort of see because it is a lifeline for a lot of people. And it is a fantastic sort of space to be creative, to work, you know, from a design perspective, there's a lot of what it was, a lot of opportunities. But to sort of say, the niching down thing is weird because I spoke about this to a few people before and I that's not what we're here to speak about now, but it was this idea how a topic like that or an industry, I think sometimes the conversation around niching needs to be reframed. And I can only say that through my experiences. You'd say, we were niching, but once you scratched that niche, it really opened up to be huge. So it's sort of locally, there was 50 hotels. there was 50 bars, was 50 restaurants, et cetera. Then you start to look regionally, then there's 500, then you look nationally. And we were then started, at one point we were working with a chain that ran hotels across Europe and America. You're talking about millions and millions of businesses that you can service. So you might be nearing down in terms of what the industry, the sector or the topic or the theme of that industry is. You can really then open it out into, right, now you've got every type of cuisine. In most cities, you've got every type of cafe and meat shop and so on and so forth. So you can still stay quite diverse in terms of the creativity output. Just like my traditional sort of circles, you might say that that's more specialist compared to working with everybody. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely another kind of pro in that respect. I've got to talk about Ridelined Academy. It was born out of pandemic because I do remember you had like, because we first got in touch when it was the Coventry Design Festival and did an article. So was it to, you started out promoting because obviously you're based in Coventry so you had a initially had a plan to kind of host a series of events just based from this Converging Design Festival that then morphed into Right Aligned to become more broader general national thing. speaker-1: Yeah, was, again, during COVID, it was a case of what was, what could we do, or what could we start to do and plan and think about. Coventry at the time was the city of culture, the national city of culture, which is sort of a government celebrated initiative. And because of the pandemic, put everything, know, screwed everything up, you know, for want of a better phrase. The city of culture thing started a little bit online or it started a little bit remotely, but it morphed into the second year when it was quite a strange sort of time. So I thought something like the Design Festival could be quite good because I think like a lot of places, there's big emphasis through the public sector on arts and culture, but think design can fall through the gaps on that conversation quite quickly. There's the wider cultural and artistic communities, but design seems to be seen as a little bit of a, you know, a little bit. or elitist I think by some communities. So as a case of why don't we sort of look to maybe jump on the Cultural Award bandwagon a little bit to sort of see if we can get their support. And I know of great venues and places and a lot of younger people that wanted to find the inspiration but there wasn't really much of a community in the city of Coventry for design agencies for instance or communities that came together for events etc. So could we bring in people like most festivals do, bring them in. was to sort of show younger people or show the wider community, you know, some of the leading voices maybe or some of the ⁓ bigger work that's going on in the world. But because it was a pandemic, that was just really a series of conversations that led to a sort of social media page, just to sort of draw and draw a pin chest. And as a of fringe type online series to gain awareness for it, we started something called Right Alight, which is that's what that was originally, you know, it was just a name picked out of the design jargon, handbook. was just, that's all it was. It was a way of just having this sort of interactive sort of side art to the festival. That really took off more quicker than I thought in terms of generating attraction. And really the festival idea got put to one side and it's still sort of bugging away. But we decided just to keep the digital sort of side of talks running because they were the... They were really our only form of output at that time. Unable to leave the house very much. During those two years, still homeschooling my little girl in there. Digital was quite a simple and quick way of building up that awareness of what we were doing from the wider perspective. And it's just rolled on from there. I say, it's just morphed into something I never thought it would. speaker-0: Yeah, like I've subscribed to these talks from the early days and I do find it fascinating. you I mean, you do have some like, as you said, they're on the title of the website, Learn from the World's Best Design Studios. And that's what's fascinating to me. It is properly the world's best design studio. So I'm amazed that they were so forthcoming. You know, it's just in terms of when you email these people are. Are they that forthcoming? should ask, you know, when you send an email, do you actually have to pester them a little bit or are they quite willing to kind of come on? speaker-1: think in the early days, everybody was as bored as I was. So I think that they had lots of time on their hands during lockdown. my first port of calls to reach out to all the people that I had admired from a distance, know, those people were agencies. And I think that, you know, I was amazed how quick the response was to those early conversations that we're having here. James at Koto, James at two times earlier, guys at Bixby, and so on and so forth. And I'm not really keen on sort of throw it out, you know, well-known names too lightly. But I was really surprised because my career has always been very sort of selfish in some ways, you you just focus on what you needed to do, you got the ladder, you know, you just got to sort of keep afloat, make it sustainable. So then, like I said, a few minutes ago, pivoting to then face the industry and work to try and support the industry is something completely new and I sort of think am I the right person to do this? Will anybody accept me? this unknown person from the middle of the UK, is anybody interested? I mean, thankfully, I say all of the people that we initially reached out to have said yes. And I would say 99 % of people have said yes very, very quickly. Obviously, there's sometimes difficulties finding space in the diary of teams that are increasingly busy. But I think what we've always tried to do is that we give people the freedom, even though we have a rough theme. The website is now based upon this idea of teams or freelancers sharing how their work was made. So we give them the freedom, I have no control, I never want to see what they present before hand. It's entirely up to them to sort of show that off because they know their work better than I do. And I've never wanted there to be an identical sort of way of presenting for right of line. I love the idea that their individuality shines through by them just being them. And that's amazing. We've been very fortunate to have agencies that I presume most people will recognise if you've been around long enough. You've got Design Studio, have now changed names further, but like Ragged Edge, Koto, all of those guys that produce really high quality and high awareness work. Some of the stuff that gets featured in all the big blogs and magazines and all over the websites, and they've got big followers of their own. But there's also a big focus on, and that's I feel a little bit shady about learning to the world's best agencies because it's not all about that. There is a high percentage of that work because it naturally catches attention and people are really interested to know about high profile work. But there's also a lot of teams that are just small regional teams as individuals. There's groups that are in big cities but they're not as well known purely because some of their clients maybe don't attract as much attention. So think it's really important to give those guys that space too because it's a real cross section of the industry. It's an industry that I know. It's not just a bit of a distorted view of just the top, you know, 1%. It's hopefully over time, it will build up to be a collection that represents, you know, everybody, different parts of the world, different sort of sizes, different approaches. I hope, biggest dream is for people to realize that there are many, many ways to have a career in creative space. It's not just about, you know, relocating to another, know, working for one of the, you know, top 10 agencies, it's about doing it in a way that works for you based upon your circumstances and where you are in the world. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big fan and like I do what I love about it is that I normally have it on sort of Friday mornings and I find it a really nice way of kind of getting it on and sort of dabbling away at work at the site and then tuning in and getting the conversation and watching these top studios open their ⁓ files. And that's one of the things I love about it is the fact that like sometimes I sort of have the Templo branding there on screen. And you do sort of see the sort of final finished articles on the, certain kind of blogs, ⁓ like under consideration, et cetera. But what you kind of get with the talks is that they actually expand upon it a bit more and they'll show you sort of roughs. They'll show you, you know, sort of the gritty kind of illustrator mood boards. And it further kind of expands upon the rationale. ⁓ increased upon and I think it's so important, especially like obviously with with Templow and their work for GF Smith. You know, obviously that was like fairly divisive branding. but what I found about kind of going on to the workshop was that it was a better way of getting behind the agency's rationale and their thought process behind it. And whether if you still had issues with the actual ⁓ execution or not, you still have to respect like the consideration. I've found a lot more appreciation for the consideration of thought that went into these projects. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that from a personal perspective, since starting at Rightline, it's changed my perspective on the industry, 100 % compared to what when I was an actual designer. It's that something like that project's perfect. also, Koto did a brand called Bolt, probably two or three years ago now. Both of those projects, the Tempo one and the Koto one, I invited them on specifically because I'd seen the backlash online. because I think it's really, really important to put context to everything that we see. This isn't just about seeing the logo. And it's ironic, really, is that our industry or people in our industry shout to the public that a logo doesn't make a brand or a color system doesn't make a brand, et cetera. But as soon as somebody releases a logo, everybody follows on it to say, that's crap. The irony of that isn't lost on me. The reason for asking those girls up because I think it is ever so important to break down the barriers of A, for me, when I first started out, I always wanted to go into the agencies I admired, but it was just never possible unless you were hired. It was because I'm more interested in not necessarily their output. was more interested in how they got the make to be. was just that sort of size side of it, sorry, is really important. That's the reason why majority of what we do and why we are so process-led is because I think it doesn't just take you behind the scenes of how the project was built because I think seeing things like mood boards and, you know, how people use things like Figma, et cetera, just to compile all these ideas before they then They boil it down and filter it out into a final solution. I think that's important. I think it's really important, even more important, is to hear the voices of the people that did it. So that was, say, Tempo. Pali came on and talked about it in a way that was just nobody else could. No case study could ever portray the way that he spoke about that. And ultimately, case studies, I think, are for clients. They're for people to go, ⁓ they're amazing. I want to work with them. They're not really for us as designers. We just look at them. go, no, that looks pretty amazing, I know if it'll be as good as that. That's usually quite a, you know, a way just to feel inadequate. So I don't think I think we need to sort of, again, re-align the conversation to sort of understand that as creators, it's really, really important to understand how people craft their ideas. So whether that's the way that they communicate with a client or rewrite a brief or build some sort of form of strategy out because otherwise all of these phrases and terminologies. and the output then also becomes a sort of promised land that everybody aspires to be like. Really, if we take some of the thought processes and the way that they think and the way that they germinate ideas, if we use some of those to improve ourselves, then I hope we'll then see a less homogenized industry and people just start to live in their own ability and thinking. I I'm influenced ever so slightly by some of those more smaller nuance points that agencies bring together. And I know for me, when I look at naturally the most privileged person because I've seen all of these, you know, I've got, you know, got fortunate to get to spoken to a lot of the people behind it. And that's what separates them. I think most people are equally as good as each other when it comes to creativity, in a design, in a design industry, for instance, at certain levels. But it's the, it's the way that people find curiosity in things that they bring that influence into their work. It's what they do privately, and it's the teams that they build, the cultures that they make. That's what allows them to stand out as an agency that's different to any other agency. it's ones that seem to just follow what others do or try and replicate it. just become just a shadow of that thing that they're trying to replicate as opposed to shining brighter. speaker-0: Yeah, it is fascinating. And I do remember on the template talk, everybody was so positive and the feedback because I think Pally was like, you know, I'm open hit me if you want to be cruel or whatever. think he was expecting that but I think it was really positive. And I don't know if it's that fact of like, we kind of forget about, ⁓ you know, the human side of designers, know, as in when you're sort of there with a designer. And again, I kind of go back to appreciating the craft and appreciating very relatable in terms of like these dealing with the client handling and all those jumps, steps you have to kind of the battles that you kind of have to win in terms of just getting this out there. So it's like an appreciating that you're, you know, doing the best for the client essentially, and not maybe not always kind of doing necessarily what you want to do, but kind of doing the best under these circumstances. And all of that was very relatable. And that's one of the things that I kind of get from these talks. Even I remember tuning in today, Gala's talk ⁓ about their work for Unfold. And I thought it was great to start. They just kind of said, like, we totally undercharged from this job. was, ⁓ you know, we charged like 2k and it was like up front with the kind of thing in terms of like, but you know what, when it was in here, when it was in the studio, We just, we just said, we're just going to do the best job possible. speaker-1: That's really relatable, isn't it? That sort of stuff. I've done that a million times in the past when I first went freelance, undercharged, really realizing how long things are going to take, but you still want to do great things. People that go up and beyond and do more work than what's necessary. I think there was a design studio talk, one of the first ones for Center Parks, and they did what they were told to do, or asked to do. And then there was a big part that they just took it on their own back, know, an agency of that size and reputation at the time. They just took it on their own back to create future proof of work that the client didn't didn't ask for, but they thought it was right to then push the limits of that project to sort of in six months or 12 months, it's not just going to fall flat on its face. There's potential for this to be a 20, 30 year project. We'd be commissioned to rebrand Centerparks Europe, but they wanted to really show what it was capable of doing in the long term. then going back to the Smiths one with Tempo, I think it was... speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: fascinating that the narrative where that project was released, the case study was released online. It was a 50-50 split from what I saw, but the negative split was so voracious in its hate. It was just like outstanding. I just couldn't believe it. I'll just roll my eyes every time I see that sort of output. It's up for debate why people do that, if it's to generate attention for people to look at them or if they genuinely just feel that. that disgusted at life that they have to of slant state of the people's work. But I've been on the side of that in the past in my career. And it's really harmful because you put your heart and soul into creating these projects, whether you get it right or not, is a different argument. But when people just sort of really pile in on you, it's horrible. But like you say, when he was presenting that, it was very positive. But little things like when they changed the name of the colors, I remember seeing things like, what's this woke nonsense? What's all this really illiterate sort of type? feedback but when Pally explained the reason why and to fit the modern world and you know some of these references are a bit archaic. speaker-0: Yeah colonial kind of references you know. speaker-1: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. But even like the logo that you've got there on screen, when it was moving, everyone was saying, the narrative was about how terrible it looks when it doesn't move and how childish it is. It's a rip off of things like Paul Smith. I think it's really, really important for people to take a step back. I'm not saying come and shoot into what we do, but go and find some sort of context from somewhere. Reach out to the agency, go and read their case study. Don't just... have a knee-jerk reaction based upon one slide that you've seen from a project that took them 12 minutes to create. It's a really important lesson, think, for people just to sort of breathe a little bit and soap it all up and start to process your own thoughts in time and don't just follow the herd and jump on the badmug. speaker-0: Yeah, mean, it's like critique is important in the industry and it's not to sort of like ⁓ everything that comes out to kind of like blindly kind of go, ⁓ this is amazing. But there's a healthy critique and a very negative, as you're saying, just this sort of ⁓ the toxicity of pylons that kind of is it's really unhelpful. And it's just I think it just the values are work generally. So if you're sort of piling in on like that and you're not being constructive about it. You're ultimately doing yourself a disservice because you're kind of, you know, we're sort of cannibalizing ourselves in the industry. But yeah, I wanted to talk about like one of the things I like about BrightLined is the price point as well. you like, when you come out to a live talk, it's by donation and the courses there, you can kind of download them for like a five reach. And I think it's really good value. The subscription for a year is like 60 quid and then you get all the courses and all the resources. So that seems kind of on the low side in terms of like what I've seen in terms of what other people charge. I take it this is part of your sort of values and your ethics of just trying to not keep too much and keeping it as open a resource as possible ⁓ while at the same time not actually completely giving this stuff away. speaker-1: Yeah, it's a conversation that runs around my mind ever since we even put a price point on it. know, reluctant to do that in the first place, but you know, the reality is that we all have to keep a roof over our head as best we can. there's, there needs to be some sort of point there and that has changed. It's fluctuated at different points just to sort of see what's the community sort of deemed to be worthy of what we produce. There is a general sort of structure behind all of the madness. is actually some sort of For me, the live webinars that we do, always wanted them to be, we did have a set price point at one point, think it was about five pounds. But I'm really conscious of accessibility in our industry. And that comes in many, many shapes and forms. But in this instance, financial accessibility is really important. If we want to sort of speak or communicate or even just have people on our side, part of our tribe from students all the way up to creative directors, I think if we give them the power to choose what they decide to pay, then that's a real nice way to work those live sessions. So we have a lot of students that will pay a pound all the way up to creative directors or agencies. So we've got a session coming up soon with Mike Reed from Reed Words. So people that are tuning into that from a copyright perspective and a language understand his position in the industry. So the majority of people are paying a bit more for that because it's Mike, I presume that's the reason why. But if we have less or known smaller agencies or freelancers, we'll attract a different demographic and they might be students or younger juniors, et cetera. Because of maybe their current circumstances financially, they'll... have got accessibility by just paying a pound. So it just feels whether that's a model that's sustainable, I don't know, but it feels like the right thing to do. You know, it feels like if I again, if I was starting out and a lot of the time, decisions made internally are based upon what would we have wanted when we were starting out. ⁓ And those sorts of things make it really make us feel just that little bit better about ourselves. But there's also from that webinar perspective, all of the proceeds from those sessions get reinvested back into the business. So that's back into the initiatives that we do, whether it's, you know, we run an awards sort of program, which is you can't enter, you can't pay for it, and you certainly don't get charged to be part of it. You know, we just send that to people because we think it's nice to recognize the work that people do in their community and not just make them feel excruciatingly long forms about, know, this, that, the other and charge them a fortune for it just to, just to. make money, it's about creating a community that's in my eyes, right now it's turning something that I like it to be a legacy that lasts way beyond my career and my life. It's something that would be lovely to pass on to the community and be owned by the community. How that looks, I don't know, but it's something that I think has, there's a need for it to exist within our industry. ⁓ these sorts of things are important. So price point is always going to be something that I'm conscious of. And like I say, There's not a huge amount of data to go by. It's just about what do we feel is acceptable for people to get. In my eyes, I'd like the idea that the more we create, the less, you know, the cheaper it gets. The theory that, you know, like some sort of Netflix type capacity where you grow the community so that everybody can pay less because there's more people paying something is more important, more important than having a smaller amount of people it appeals to, and they all have to stomp up 400, 500. And I do sort of see courses and I see platforms, I feel like they're quite exploitative, if I'm honest. think that there's no need for people to be charging thousands of pounds just to share insight that's quite freely available in lot of places. And that's even though I ought to hire education. What people charge for that sort of stuff is just unreasonable, think, well beyond unreasonable. So for me, it's a case of What, you know, can I sleep easy? You know, we're not trying to get people off, you know, it makes life tight and things are difficult and you've got to sort of go through the hard parts and hopefully that's behind us. there's also that, you know, that simple thing that we're appealing to grassroots, primarily grassroots creatives. And many of those don't have that luxury of middle or elite global backgrounds that could never afford them, the luxuries that a lot of people have done in this industry. Most of us are sort of just... day-to-day people, working class people that want to have a career in the creative space but it's damn hard if you have to keep on paying a fortune for subscriptions and software and hardware and all the other things that come with it. So if we can make people's lives a little bit easier then we'll do that. speaker-0: Yeah, that's amazing, man. think I love all of that, that it's like, you're trying to almost be a gentle hand on the tiller in terms of like not being as it as it says, not it's not about you. It's it's your building it for the it's for trying to get to a place where it's for the community by the community almost. speaker-1: The idea of things that studios that are owned by employees, I love that mentality. I don't have that cutthroat commercial businessman mentality. It's just not in me. I can't change that and I don't want to. Reading Richard Branson's book is not going to change that. More than anything, it's going to confirm that I don't want to be that way. Nobody would make me more pleased if I could turn off the price point completely and just sort of say, here's access because once we can find sustainable routes of income in other areas. That's something that I might have a look towards. But it's got to be done with, for me, has to be done with the long term benefits in mind, because I've seen so many things come and go in our space. People get used to something they're comfortable with and it disappears because it loses funding. things like that for us, don't want to be a professional form filler for the Arts Council. I want to find a sustainable platform that allows us to be, that we can direct our own future for the benefit of the community. backsteel and borrow just to squeeze by and then you never know what's going to happen from year to year. We need to make that sort of model work for us. So at the moment it's, you know, it's just so trickled but it has legs so we'll keep at speaker-0: Yeah, great, man. And it's starting to come offline as well. You're putting ⁓ real life IRL sessions together. So I've seen a few, you've hosted a few in here already, but I see there's some popping up in Australia, some events you're organizing. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, so last March, so it'd two years, no not last March, two years March, we started something called Process, which is highly imaginative title, but it's sort of just what it says on the team. But again, it's this sort of spin on what Right Align does. So I sort of like to sort of classify it, Right Align is the nine to five disciplines of working in design. So we've got, as you know, have brand teams, motion, et cetera, et cetera. And I've always wanted to create, it's probably actually, it flips off the, the design festival idea that I had for Coventry. I always wanted to create in-person events because there's a huge amount of value in them. But because of COVID, again, a lot of things just disappeared. Me and a guy called Pete, we met in Manchester and we just sat, had a drink and just said, there's a lot of events that we used to attend and always felt quite cold and little bit networking. know, sort of same old characters talking about the same old. sort of stuff or just going through their portfolios. And industry events always give me the shivers a little bit, to be fair. So it was a case of, we create something that was a little bit more reflected us as people, the passion was for the wider culture, not just design, music, art, fashion, film, all those sort of How can we sort of package that up into a type of event that's made for creative people, but not specifically designers, it's made for the creative community as a whole, anybody that sort of sees the world in color. instead of just black and white, was for the eggnog of those race. Process was born in Manchester at a place called Joshua Brooks, which is primarily a nighttime space. We just sort of to mix things up by using those environments. For instance, the speakers at Joshua Brooks are in the DJ booth, the screens are on the opposite side of the room. So the whole idea is that everybody's like staring at the speaker and making them feel awkward and, you know, a little bit sort of anxious. We're also lean heavily on the idea of regionality. So we don't bring people in from London just to speak in. in a far away city and then disappearing, there's no long-term impact in that format for me. Our idea has always been the hosts are regional, the volunteers are regional and all the speakers are from those regions and that's why we then started it in Leeds, did it in Sheffield, London, Berlin, Sydney and Melbourne and we're speaking to quite a few of the people about taking that sort of theme and that mentality to other parts of the world as well. It's been lovely to see it embraced so well and the things that get shared, you we don't, sort of try and ban portfolios as much as possible, try and, know, without being too police-like. We want people to share their personal stories and that's why it works well where right-align is the day-to-day, 95-and processes, the after hours. Nobody wants to talk to anybody at half-nine at night in a bar, abandon their latest piece of typography, they? I don't know, I prefer to know about their life story and their... I prefer to know about the worst things in a non-sodistic way. I don't sort of bear all horrible parts of their life, but I'd like to know about the things that went wrong in their career, just because I think I can relate to that. Sometimes I think the industry is somehow bent on success stories and elite levels of output. And it leaves 99 % of the people feeling inadequate because we can't reach that level. We're not all Peter Savile. The majority of us are just plugging away our best that we can and we go through some pretty weird stuff during our careers. I don't know why I think I'd boast a bit, I'd rewrite if I could. But you know, without those things, I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing now because if it was all plain sailing, I would have no reason to stand there and bemoan everything. So it's a, you know, there's like a balance there where we want those evening things to be A, be enjoyable. A reason to go for me isn't to go and just sort of sit and listen to somebody tell me about a great portfolio is, it's the reason why I go is because it's a great social experience just to sort of understand that I'm not the only one that has toxic boxes, bosses and horrific clients. Maybe it just makes me feel better. speaker-0: Yeah, being able to relate to people about the wars of the industry is definitely one of my favorite things about these events. speaker-1: And also quickly, think that a lot of people, they like us. ⁓ I think we maybe sometimes work alone or we work remotely and sort of don't have that connection with people regularly. But I think also a lot of people I've experienced in are fearful of saying this stuff. They're fearful of, I'm in a different position because I don't have a client maybe watching me on LinkedIn because I'm not going to work with them because they've swore or they've shared something, they've overshared. But I think it's really important to give people the space and to create environments and safe spaces where they feel that they can be part of that conversation. It's like a private club without membership type vibe. People sort of speak, know, we've had speakers share some of the most detailed experiences they've had as a human and a room full of, you know, a hundred strangers all crying and five seconds later all laughing. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: find in a sense that they feel like some sort of relief. You know, there's, there's this true emotion that we stupidly bottle it up for an industry that's so focused or so heavily influenced by us expressing ourselves and creativity comes through, you know, to express ourselves. But there seems to be a lot of people just unable or don't feel comfortable enough to express the true self. They hide behind the work. And I love the idea that we've created these spaces where people do just They're really hysterics, they're in tears, and it's sort of like this collective of sigh of relief. And it's sort of just, it's really, really an absolute privilege to be sort of at the back of most of those rooms and just soak it all up. speaker-0: amazing, man. It's just so good to have that outlet and it's got our this industry so kind of a roller coaster of emotions. It's great to kind of get out there. Yeah, let it out. This is the bingo wheel of this is the bingo wheel of wisdom. I'm just going to do a turn for the camera because I've learned because I was rattling away with the bingo wheel of wisdom ⁓ while I was asking questions. But the feedback was the sound of the wheel turning was pretty apocalyptic in the ears. So I've pre-rolled your numbers, Chris. I have 90 questions here. So I will get on to those. and ask you quick fire questions, okay? So first out of the hat is four, are you a morning person or night out? speaker-1: Morning, very early mornings, very early not. speaker-0: Are you good with getting to bed at a decent hour then to maximize your morning output? speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, that's quite a relatively early bedtime, but yeah, like say, very early mornings when you got to deal with people on either side of the planet before you. speaker-0: Yeah, I'm a morning person too. do love getting up way before the family are up and getting a head start to my day. 35, what's the capital of Colombia? What can I ⁓ well done man. Knowledge of design and geography. D5 CMYK or RGB? speaker-1: See you, bye, speaker-0: Yeah, all the long. That's the old school old school printer in you. ⁓ speaker-1: I like the vivid colours out with RGB but I just love paper. ⁓ speaker-0: ⁓ Worth clay and story in exactly three words. speaker-1: ⁓ bloody fucking accountant Ha ha ha! speaker-0: ⁓ brilliant. 65, are you YouTube or Netflix? speaker-1: ⁓ Netflix. speaker-0: Netflix, okay. 35, quality or quantity. speaker-1: policy. speaker-0: This can't be quality. What's your desert island font? So that one font that if everything else was deleted off your hard drive, you have one font left. What could you survive on? speaker-1: comic sans just to piss off the designers. speaker-0: Nice. Yeah. Good. ⁓ That would be a fairly torturous desert island. Yeah, speak. Well, 46 is related. Would you rather be up a mountain or on a beach? Beach. I'm not much of an outdoorsy type, which clashes with my wife's sensibilities of trying to climb every mountain in the Aberdeenshire area. speaker-1: Beach. speaker-0: 57, if your work was a song, what genre would it be? speaker-1: Heartbreaker or Led Zepp. speaker-0: Nice. So yeah, right lane is that I think that's enough for the balls. I'm actually running out of numbers because like you've been the sixth guest on I've had a no repeat guarantee. So I actually don't have that many balls left. So we're gonna drop that one Chris. speaker-1: I thought there was a YouTube game show in that, ain't I? speaker-0: I know I need to get like a sparkly suit on that I kind of change it in a bit more of a microphone. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It makes good for the ⁓ Reels clips. That's my excuse anyway. So for to finish up the increase, we have the heavy dessert menu. ⁓ I'll just put it up on screen. speaker-1: alcohol. That would make that more fun. speaker-0: There we go. So the topics are how to price your work, the AI elephant in the room, the red flags of a nightmare client specialist versus generalist, self promotion without the ick, avoiding burnout, your design and how to sell it, things they never tell you about in design courses. So which are you taking from the menu? speaker-1: Now look at them, I'm no good, I wouldn't answer, probably the right answer for anyone, but I think number six, avoiding burnout because I've experienced a lot quite frequently. I don't know if I could tell you how to avoid it, I could tell you how to get it, but it's a, we can do our best to try and find a solution. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, so tell me about ⁓ your burnout and you know, is it something that regularly happens and as much as you sort of put things and systems in place, you almost seem to get burnt out on a regular basis then? speaker-1: Yeah, so before starting Right Align, I'd never experienced any of these, you know, say, poor mental health, I don't know, hypostermia syndrome, I've never really experienced any of those. And ironically, since starting this, which I thought would be really liberating, creative perspective, I've experienced all of those quite heavily, in heavy doses in the last sort of, might be five years next month, Right Align. So, and then they've all been really inadvertent, know, not expected and then it went to right, it's been a real sort of... That's quite a difficult thing to deal with because you don't really understand what it is that's happening. And then you sort of start to sort of maybe piece together and sort of, know, thankfully having a supportive small knit family, very close by and people can sort of start to the changes in you for the first time or maybe point towards bigger problems. But Burnout is a funny one because I think like a lot of things, maybe you don't want to downplay people that have got things really serious. So you don't want to just sort of flippantly say, oh, I feel like could burn out of it all day off. You know, like an excuse to, you know, not do anything. But was, for me, was, it was, I think it really combined it. And I don't know what the official diagnosis is of something like burnout, but it just combined a hell of a lot of things such as feeling completely lethargic and unable to, you know, literally get off out of bed. Sort of just thinking about just deleting the business. You know, mentally just thought, What's the point? What am doing? Nobody cares. I'm not the right person qualified for this. Am I just sort of just making stuff up just to try to create a platform or a business that makes money or is it, you know, there's far better people out there, far better qualified people out there. What, what am I trying to achieve? Is it just the world even need this stuff? So it's like, you know, there was a lot of sort of, sort of internal questioning as well as physical, you know, inability to sort of, you know, nift yourself and it's quite a scary place to be when you don't know what that is. And also, in it maybe the time of I was born and brought up was still that very much, you you've to be strong, you've got to be the workhorse. Yeah, but even though those sort of things are quite sort of psychological and maybe they're just, you you think that yourself, people don't actually tell you that. There was just that culture of the time, you know, would male role model if you were lucky to have one, just when it worked and the female. role models, stayed at home or did the stereotypical things. And was the idea that someone like, they're on 44 this year, just 45 next month. The journey of my youth was around that sort of idea that nobody talked about their feelings, shared anything. It was just, met your mates and we just watched football. you went out with your dad and you just changed modes and you just talked about football. ⁓ Well, if you weren't talking about it, you're at it or you're doing it yourself. It was like literally bare old fags. And that was sort of like, you know, the first 20 years, that's all I saw of my life. So it was the old idea that you then maybe sit down and talk about your emotions or your feelings or you're unable to do a hard graft, you know, for a day of the week was just, it didn't happen. So he just keeps on pushing on and I think that that's quite detrimental in the long term. yeah, that was, it was really that that happened. speaker-0: I speaker-1: And it was a case of starting to look after myself, but then you just naturally slip into this, this idea, especially building sort of from scratch. And I think probably the, in a weird way, the biggest blessing and the biggest curse is that I care so much about this. And it's sort of, I've really started to realize that there's a lot of people that it's like looking back 20 years, you know, there's a lot of young people out there are really lost. There's less opportunities. The world is really hard to navigate. I think if we could be that voice of reason and a bit of trust based upon it. real lift experiences. So the whole idea of sort of saying, I'm just going to give it a rest for a bit. It's like, can't happen. You it's good, you've got to keep your foot on it and keep on going and going and going. And I think that that's really led to sort of a down to a personal health on the things that surround it. So and then that combined with things like, you know, sometimes the best way to deal with it is how to say it is at the bottom of a bottle. Sometimes, you know, you can't get to sleep. So you make me drink a bit too much. You can't You know, you get up too early in what we're saying only about being mornings. I'm not lying. I get up at four o'clock most days and I'm it straight away until I'm of eight o'clock at night. I know that goes on and on. You do that for years. You just sort of generally weigh yourself to the bone. mean, you have to have to step back and sort of at some point say, I need to look after myself first. Otherwise it can't continue. That's what I had to do at the start of this year was to sort of start to look, but I still slip into it. Just don't go back to that old way of doing it because I say the community that we're building, it's not a community for the sake of saying community like social media, loves to love. It's a community of people that generally try to get to, know, in person events, trying to speak to as many people as possible, to want to get to know their name, you want to get to know their story, you want to remember who they are, so you can help them in future. And all of these sorts of things, you know, that puts a lot of self-initiated pressure on your shoulders. And I don't think people really want it, but I just might do it. So, you know, I think burnout is a result of my own lack of looking after myself. I don't really know where that ends. think you just go through that cycle. I sort of have to admit that that will happen every now and then. I'll of step away. I do like getting out and about and sort of just escaping it, device free for a day or two. But yeah, your business then still catches you adding to the Slack channel when you're in the toilet or in the shower. You you can't help yourself. still get to get stuck in. So if you don't want to lead these things, I've now got the responsibility of other people in the team and host events in parts of the world that they're awake when I'm asleep. Yeah. If I want what's best for the wider community, then I've got to sort of put my neck on the line a bit. I have to sort of get at ease with that. You know, yeah, you've got be well on the road. speaker-0: Yeah, there's a lot of relatable stuff you're talking about there because I just relate in terms of when I go through difficult periods of burnout, that sort of low self-esteem thing, as you're saying there, that like, you know, you kind of have a sort of like somebody else could do this better or like you start kind of thinking that the work is really bad at this. And there's so many other people that are like really better at this type of thing. That's a really negative mindset that can kind of come on. And the toxicity of that sort of masculine culture that we're brought up in, because I totally get it, because I also feel as though when maybe work is slow and I'm not kind of pulling in, ⁓ you know, my wife obviously has a readier job, readier paid income. And so like I can kind of fluctuate in terms of like how much I'm kind of bringing in. So when it's like a lot less, feel as though I'm sort of letting them down and letting the family down. that this kind of weird idea, as you said, you were growing up with that you're the provider, you meant to be the provider of the family and kind of being instilled that without if I'm sort of not pulling in, ⁓ if I'm not the breadwinner, as that term goes, if I'm not doing that, then I'm sort of like that plays on me. It's weird how that I do think it's a mindset that is from that generation we were brought up with Chris, that you're kind of like not not you're half the man if you're if you're if you're if the wife is paying for everything kind of like she's kind of getting the bills and stuff like that, you know, so there's a lot of things that you're saying there that kind of ring true where it's like it's such a stupid mindset. My wife will try and snap me out of it and just kind of go, I realized that there was a period where, you know, during her maternity leave, where I was kind of, I was bringing in most of the income and stuff like that. And she said, like, look, it's just, it's all just where it's combined, but there's this weird kind of mindset going on. speaker-1: Yeah, psychology is a difficult thing to ever sort of master, even if you're not. From an amateur perspective, you sort of look at it and sort of try and understand why these things happen. I think for me, in recent times, more than anything, because I've been through those sort of things, is a case of, and that really started at the sort of festive break this year, when a little bit of downtime was to start to sort of actually feel comfortable with, A, with me, you who I am as a creative. I always sort of say, and this isn't to be, I put myself down, not quite an average designer when I was a designer, know, just what it was. Can't do much about that. But that was when I was working for clients and there's like a lot of parameters there that are in the way for you to be fully expressive. Because I think a lot of us entered because, you know, for me, like I was saying earlier, looked like... record slings or being at gigs and seeing posters and merch and flyers and all that sort of stuff. That's the reason I wanted to get into it. I wanted it to be failed musician. So the closest thing I could get to it was make CD covers. that was not my entry point. That was what really unlocked a lot of ⁓ my personal not-for-trading. But then you get into the commercial world and there's obviously different things. Businesses have different ideas and they let you turn their work into some sort of... some crazy piece of artwork, it's about doing a job and to the brief. So it's of like, it's re-given me that opportunity to be fully creative. our output is of our own making. So we use creativity in so many different ways. It's not just the visual sort of side of the design and what you see on social media or the promotional sort of side. It's like the structure of the business. think that's what we talked about, financial sort of side earlier. And that for me is a really creative decision. And we have many, many, many of those internally about what we do. say like our in-person events, we're looking at loads of different forms of output and initiatives that we can do to make it a really interesting experience. like sort of having that ability to have that output, there's the freedom to let your mind do what it wants to do, instead of being the feeling of it being caged because it's a client relationship. I think that's something that I advise a lot of people to do is, I understand that probably after you're to five, you don't want to go home and start to start another project for yourself. I think giving yourself that freedom to, and it could be anything, could be the way that you decorate your house or the way that you do your garden. You can use creativity in so many different forms, but having that form of escapism. So I've started to not really enjoy cooking, because that's all I think about when I'm doing it. It's still a creative pursuit, but I'm not there already, I'm about the smallest of little things, know, constantly on a line thinking that if you're not proactive, or people can't see you are active. then you're not very good at what you do. I think having these extra-curriculum activities where you can sort of unlock what's in your head instead of bottling it up is a really nice way of overcoming some of those sort of things. And then obviously also the natural ones of finding boundaries at weekends, you're not on it all the time. I see a huge difference in my own personality when I'm on LinkedIn at 10 o'clock at night or if I'm not emailing. curiously emailing people about tickets to an event on a Sunday evening, whatever else is enjoying their life. It's not going to make any difference if you send that message then, wait till Monday or Tuesday when people are actually going to read it. There's all these sort of little things that sound then obvious that really go a long way, think, just to alleviate that pressure in your mind to be something that you think everybody wants you to be. When really everybody just wants you to be you. And that's when you're at your best. And so I just want to say something recently. And this is definitely something that I need to pay more attention to because as you can tell, I talk a lot. It's the idea that as from a leading perspective or from somebody that's trying to build something, being quiet, it goes a long way because it allows people that may be under you or within a team or within your circle to feel like you're listening and not just talking. it's, you know, things like that could really help. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah, there's some good points there in terms of using your creativity, away from this actual discipline of design. Yeah, absolutely. Just making for the sake of making as such, you know, because I think one of the things that's we're sort of obsessed with commodifying everything, you know, trying to like everything we do actually has to make money, know, anything creative, because we're sort of we rely on ⁓ these especially like freelancers that rely on your creativity to earn money. So if you're not actually doing anything that makes you money because you're creative, then it's like not worse why you kind of get into that mindset. But as you say, there's an escapism to kind of like, as you said, ⁓ out the shrubs in the garden or making a really nice curry or, ⁓ you know, I've kind of got back into. sketching with charcoal of an evening's I kind of get like black and white photo and that escapism that kind of anything that kind of takes you away and out of thinking about the emails 24 seven is very healthy because I am more and more kind of like you can burn out doing the things that you love as more as much as the things you don't enjoy. So even if I'm on a project that I'm really getting stuck into it. I'll try and be disciplined and just go half an hour, just go for a walk outside, whatever. And then then just kind of pack up at like four or five o'clock and just be when I'm gone, I'd leave my stuff here and that's it. I don't think about it until I'm back into the studio again. And having those disciplines, because I totally recognize what you're saying there when it's when you get into that, you get into a negative spiral where it's the more burnt out you are, the more you're turning to these kind of devices. You kind of feel so you'll work your way out of it, you know, that if like we get on top of everything, then then I'll stop feeling burnt out. But then you're kind of burning yourself out more. I tried to get there, but it's as you said yourself, you know, you have to get at the work and wait, you know, there's just take a day off and like come back tomorrow and I guarantee nobody's died. The world hasn't been, you know, nothing's gone on fire. speaker-1: Yeah, I don't think there's... speaker-0: You can take your hand off the controls for a bit and yeah, I've been a bit more relaxed with that kind of feeling. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that you could sort of set it better, really, idea that, you know, that if you leave it till tomorrow or the following week or even the following month, that there's, it's really reluctant to sort of sound like a sort of LinkedIn or some sort of cliche machine. This idea that, you know, that to be the best version of you is to sort of, you've to put yourself first. That sort of, if you don't do that, and I can only say this from recent experiences. sort of just content and being like the, you know, going full speed for way too long is really detrimental to the whole project. You know, it's in terms of the knock-on effects of family, the people that you love the most, even the way, all the way down to the people that you work with, if you're not present or you're not able to meet commitments because you're going too fast or too hard, it's just not a good way to... to live really. I think social media has got a huge amount to play with this, but specifically certain people that have got big voices, not within the media area. There's a lot of conflicts in self-interests in that, think people, especially younger people, that are easily influenced to believe a lot of what gets said. I think you've got to somehow find a way, and this is another big shift for me, is to really nail the purpose of what you're trying to do and you follow that relatively rigidly and you don't deviate because I always remember quite clearly when I first went into my own start-up agency, ⁓ week to week we'd offer different services or do different things because you sort of followed either what was trending or what you thought might make the most money or make you ⁓ gain the most popularity. Well, something like that, I really worked hard to sort of write our own manifesto, purely for my own benefit, you know, it's not something we publish. And I've tweeted since, but I've also spoke to a lot of people privately that I respect from different businesses and different sectors. And that's allowed me to really sort of follow a set path and not deviate from it. So there's a lot of, when things are difficult, you get things like burnout or wellbeing issues. You can return whenever it is that's right for you, you return to rejoin that. that path again, because it's not like we've faced adversity. Because to do what we want to do, we have to challenge and disrupt different things. Education is a big one, there are areas of the industry which I think aren't doing what they should be doing. But to do that, you have to put your voice out there and you have to be on the farming line a little bit. And that also leads to anxiety and well-being and mental health issues, because you start to sort of wonder if that was the right decision to make or can you, you know, is it, that makes me realize how negative thought toxic commentaries around projects because, you know, when people start to aim at you, it can feel really, really isolating and lonely. you know, you don't have that sort of, don't have that purpose to keep on going towards that longer term vision. And I think I never know why more designers don't sort of put that into place with their agencies or the things that they're building. You know, they preach it to clients, but don't know themselves is is to have those core values in place, is to have that reason to keep on going. And it's not just because you want to make things up, there's got to be bit more substance to it than that. And I think for us, that's the thing that has really sort of put me back on the straight and narrow, what's overcome those difficulties is to really understand that we're on ⁓ a longer term mission to make a difference than just have a couple of events or a couple of bits of online content. It's a bigger... storing that, like I say, to help me overcome those difficult moments, that's the good solution for me. speaker-0: Yeah, I saw a phrase, don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm was the phrase. And I think that's a good way of thinking about it, you know, to avoid burnout and that's a just giving too much of yourself away and not leaving enough for yourself to leftover that you're yeah, what burnout describes the phrase perfectly. Chris, that's been amazing. That was so excellent to kind of get your a story behind Write Aligned, writealignedacademy.com if people want to go on there. And as I said, the price points are ridiculously low compared to a lot of other educational resources. And you can find events on Eventbrite for the live kind of conversations and process as well. Where are the process events coming up? Where are they being held? speaker-1: Yeah, so if you look, you can follow the process on, we've got a main account on Instagram and LinkedIn, but then each of the cities have got their own accounts that are run by the hosts of those places. The forthcoming programme is next Thursday, but this podcast will be going on obviously at different time relative to today, is next one is Sydney and then Leeds and Berlin and then we're doing a special edition of Process Manchester at Motion North, which is a big two day festival. which is really exciting. So we're collaborating with other people. And then we'll be back in Manchester the week after that. Then in London and Sydney. And then we'll do it all again in the spring and then summer and then the autumn. speaker-0: Fabulous, man. Yeah. Excellent. Glad to see them popping up internationally as well. So that was Chris there. What a great guy. As I said in the intro, it was actually quite a quite a therapeutic session in the end. Far more therapeutic than the episodes we've had previously. Go to ridealignedacademy.com for Chris's output on that front. All the workshops are there and 60 quid for the subscription for the year is a bit of a bargain, I think. I also subscribe to RiteLite Academy on Eventbrite and that way I get notifications about live events that are coming up and live events are great because Chris just asked for donation on those so they're as expensive as you want them to be or as your budget can allow. My falafel was really nice actually, thanks very much. It was a little bit on the dry side. I didn't get the hummus to falafel. ratio right. But you know, I've been failing at a lot of things this year, but I am absolutely smashing my lunchtimes lately. I hope that keeps up for 2026. This was the penultimate episode. I do have Freya McLeod coming up next week. Freya is from another Isle of Lewis resident, a Leoshoch native. So Freya I worked with me at Loom Graphics in the studio and I don't know if you noticed, but the majority of my guests have been straight white middle aged men. And so I had been on the lookout for people of a slightly too broad and diversity of it. But generally there was a few people kind of postponing maybe till season two type of thing when they're ready. And I thought Freya had postponed initially, but Freya thankfully came back ⁓ and was like, ⁓ I'm ready to do it. So I was like, grand, great. Because I was going to stop at six, but you kind of get a bonus seventh episode next week. Freya is a designer, ⁓ studied environmental design and Duncan of Jordan's the DJ, DJ CAD. And yeah, she's generally just a good pal of mine. So yeah, it's great to have her on. That's next week's episode. Hope you do join in. in. Join in. It's late in the day and I'm full of flaffle. Yeah, if you join in and subscribe and again, do all that algorithmic friendly stuff and even share it and tell your dog and stuff like that. All that stuff. catch me at Wise Love Studio on the socials, Wise Love Love Studio, do send me an email. I'm desperate to hear some feedback. I'm kind of getting some snippets. There's been some very positive things and a lot of people enjoying the podcast and the numbers have been pretty healthy. So yeah, I'm really seeing this first season as a kind of a real tester in terms of podcasts and a learning journey for myself about putting. this whole new medium out there. And yeah, anyway, fizzling out as ever. See you next week. Bye.