Tracing the winding career path creatives end up on, how to build studio culture with a small staff of freelancers, and the relationship between you and the environment you create.
Jonny: Thanks for, thanks for being a part of this, um, for joining me in my garage studio.
Alice: I'm really excited about it and I'm really excited about the color palette you have going for it.
good.
Jonny: And you're very prepared. So I, I appreciate,
Alice: If anything, I can do homework.
Jonny: Form made studio,
Alice: Rebranding.
Jonny: Who is currently rebranding. Okay. But it started in 2018. 2016.
Alice: it's been a while.
Jonny: Okay. But, you've only ever worked for yourself.
Alice: Yes.
I've, uh,
Jonny: take me, take me through that story.
Okay. Take me, take me back.
Alice: Back to the times,
Jonny: Back to the times.
Alice: So you and I never, did we meet in Bellingham? No, we didn't. Okay. [00:01:00] But we were there at the same time. Okay. And we did not cross paths because I was in the business school learning, accounting and statistics and marketing analysis
Jonny: Which is important.
More statistics, which is too much statistics for my taste. I got outta school and I was like, oh no, I don't like any of this. And while I was in school, I was at working and I was doing work for resources, which is like, um, they're like a, you know, resources. They did like the whole, studio.
Alice: Repurposing?
No, they did like the repurposing of unused, like old furniture types of stuff. they were all about sustainability and one of the departments that they had was the, Bay Soundkeeper, so that was the program that I worked with and their whole thing was preserving the bay and being a steward to the water.
So I was, what [00:02:00] was my title? I was a communications associate. I think that sounds right. A lot of, a lot of the work that I ended up doing for them was actually design work, which is how I started doing design.because I was not that great at the writing parts of what I needed to do, but I was like, I can visually communicate this graph way better than what you guys are doing right now.
So I started doing that and then once I graduated I was like, I'm still not really into the statistics stuff that I learned about, but I had to get a job. So I got a job at Amazon
as
a German investigator, which has nothing to do with any of what I'm doing now.
Jonny: What were you, what do you mean? What were you investigating?
Alice: Fraud in Germany. It's a long story anyway. Uh, I think they hired me [00:03:00] because I knew how to speak German. So that was, I couldn't even make it a year. so I went back to design school because I was like, this is just, this is not for me. And I loved design school. Went through that for two years and basically realized that the marriage of design and business school was kind of branding for
me.
It seemed to fit really well together. So after I got out of design school, I started my company and well, not company. I started freelancing and I worked with a couple of studios and I really felt like I wasn't able to have the direct communications with clients that I wanted to have.
I didn't feel like I had enough, enough contact with the client, to be able to get the information that I needed to get out of them to make a successful brand that they would love and use. [00:04:00] So I, you know, I started picking out my own clients and in 2016 I started a studio, for that purpose.
I think when I first started out, it was a little bit more general design studio, but I think as I've moved along in the last, Jesus, six years, or so, five, six years, let's stop counting. I think it's just solidified more in my mind that it's a branding company rather than,
cutesy design studio.
Jonny: you found that technical in between of business and graphic design, and you kind of found the place that you're,
you live in, that you, that you fit into.
Alice: Yeah.
It was the perfect, specialized generalized field that I could think of. It has a lot of the specialization that I knew from my marketing education that you needed, because the thing that [00:05:00] they taught us was you can't be everything to everybody.
You have to be specific about what you are and who you're talking to. And yeah, that seemed to work together for me.
Jonny: so in this transition of going from freelancing as an individual mm-hmm. into I am a company, was was there a, was there a personal turning point for you in that process? Was there a moment that you were like, okay, this is actually different.
You are hiring, you were hiring my company versus you are hiring me?
Alice: I think that moment was when I, it wasn't just me offering the things that I could do. Like I said, I'm probably not the best copywriter on the planet. I think when I had to start hiring people to work with, to create voice and tone for companies and expanded my services in that [00:06:00] kind of way, plus, you know, like all these types of expressions that a brand could have, like video or motion animation, there's things that other people that I had to hire were just so much better and faster at than me, and that's when it really became more of a we than an I
But it's still a lot of, uh, driving the boat myself too.
Jonny: Do you feel like you're the lone bus driver that is guiding everything or is it a like a team, you know, boat. Boat captain?
Alice: that's a good question. It's more like, it's more like I see you would probably, maybe correct me if I'm wrong cuz you actually know how to sail, but it kind of feels like the person that's leading the sail team where you're like, okay, turn the thing over here to get the mast to go that way.
Definitely. It's a little bit of that.
Jonny: Like, sometimes, you know, you, there's only, only the leader knows what's going on and everyone's [00:07:00] just trying to follow them.
Alice: Yeah. I had the frustration of not feeling I was really involved with the clients that we were working with when I was working as a freelancer for other studios.
So I do really try to incorporate the people that I'm working with on a project into the client meetings so they know what's going on and what the intonations are of the client when they express their needs. I feel like that's a really important thing.
Jonny: Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
I love to describe, and I, and I understand there's a difference, but I love to describe Design Studios as a practice, not necessarily a business.
Alice: I agree with that.
Jonny: It is, it is a business,
Alice: It's a business, but it's a, there's more love in it than there is in a business.
I gotta say.
Jonny: it's, is there, what is your threshold or where, where are you at in the process of this is just all stressful versus this is [00:08:00] satisfying, like this is, this is play?
Alice: Mm.
Jonny: or how has it changed over the last. six
Alice: I mean, I think there's always gonna be a level of stress when you're the one that's responsible for the payroll.
Mm-hmm.
Jonny: Mm-hmm.
Alice: Uh, but I think that there's a really, really rewarding aspect of it for me that's derived from selecting the projects that I work on. And I really make a point to work with companies that are actually innovative and contributing something to the world that I care about.
Jonny: I, when I look at your body of work, I see what I would describe as eye level, human level. Design work as you go through the city, you are engaging with the businesses that you've worked with, restaurants or, or cultural groups or something that [00:09:00] what, what I do is not, I, what I do is like sewer level
Alice: No, no, no, no.
Jonny: weird in the back cabinet level, but like the people that, well, that's true. The sewer ether,
Alice: Hey, come on.
Jonny: But like, but I mean, your work is very tangible, on an everyday basis.
Alice: Yeah. It can be. I think, lately it's been, I've been trying to hit the split of tech and culture.
I think there is culture in technology, but I also think there is culture. Culture that you see on the street, which God, it, it's like an ego satisfying thing to see. So a sign that you made it, it's stupid. It's really lame and I hate to say it, but it's really cool to see something that you've made when you don't expect to see it.
Mm-hmm. , it's satisfying, but I do also really enjoy the type of work that's like, more granular [00:10:00] than that.
I think the clients are very different. The work always ends up being the same, but I think the people that I end up working with, whether it's a culture client or a tech client, the process is very different,
Jonny: When you're working with these kinds of clients, where does the inspiration come from as far as, are, are you trying to put an opinion that you have are you trying to put that on top of someone else's,kind of mission in the world, or, are you taking inspiration from, them being out there and doing their own thing in the world?
Alice: I think it, a lot of the, a lot of the work I do is listening. really deeply listening to the clients and what their hopes are and what their dreams are because I've learned that if you don't make something that the client will [00:11:00] use, it's not successful.
It's not going anywhere. So my end goal is to have them be happy and actually use what we made together. Even if I'm not happy with what we used. And I know that's sometimes it can hurt as a designer, but I'm usually all for them using it.
Jonny: That's fair. where do you then kind of sit on that relationship of this is what I consider work that I'm proud of, versus this is, this is work that I'm very proud that I took home because it supports me and my family. where is that threshold for you on a daily and
Alice: 50 50
Jonny: No, that's, that's a good answer. Yeah.
Alice: I, yeah. I think, what actually really gets me excited is learning about what the client is really passionate about and seeing them light up and get really nerdy about their topic [00:12:00] and, be able to kind of absorb that and then step back a little bit and regurgitate it to a general audience, their audience in a visually appealing and concise way, which I've noticed a lot of founders have a really hard time doing.
They really wanna get into the granular detail of how something works. And I think, unfortunately people's attention spans are just getting shorter and shorter, so they're not necessarily there to sit and hear all of that.
So I feel like our jobs as designers is a lot of times to catch attention and deliver a message in an eloquent way.
Jonny: as far as then your process on creating something that catches someone's attention, are you working with the ideas that get your attention first or.
are
you coming up with a set of things and you let it marinate
and
you [00:13:00] slowly come to a conclusion of the right ideas
Alice: I'm all about the marination,
Nothing
tastes good without marination, right. ? I really, I like that question a lot because I think solving a visual problem sometimes when you're staring at it for too long, you can't actually see what the problem is. So walking away and letting it.
For 15 minutes, a walk around the block, it helps so much to have clarity to actually solve that problem in a eloquent way. Otherwise you're justlooking at it and you're like, I don't even know, I don't even see the problem. Let's just go with it. Cuz we're here.
Jonny: I don't even see letters anymore,
Alice: Yeah. It's just a, it's just a block.
Jonny: what kind of clients do you seek out and, and what is your process for finding them?
Alice: You know, I've been lucky enough that it's all been word of mouth so far. Yeah. I've gotten some, like inbound leads, but a lot of it has been word of mouth [00:14:00] because of the people that I've worked with.
And they're like, Hey, you should talk to, should talk to these guys. they're doing cool stuff. Let's. , get you an email with them. so I think I need to do more of the latter, the inbound marketing leads or whatever they call them, ,
Jonny: that's
your, that's
Alice: that's my marketing term,
Jonny: Yeah.
Alice: I think the kind of clients that I end up working with are, like I said, a 50 50 split of technology and culturethe technology clients just tend to be very different to work with.
There's a lot more of that agile process, whereas a lot of the more cultural clients are more artistic people per se, so they think they have an idea of what needs to happen and maybe sometimes they have it pretty spot on and maybe sometimes they need to be talked out of it.
Jonny: Versus
a tech client that's just constantly,
Alice: let's, let's try this, let's reiterate, let's test, which I actually really enjoy.
[00:15:00] I love that part of working with tech. it's a lot of testing, which is either validating or discouraging.
Jonny: testing can be fantastic until it's
Alice: until it's getting in the way of actual visuals that are lovely
Jonny: it's that whole idea of you are hiring someone for a visual opinion
Alice: mm-hmm.
Jonny: that may not always be appropriate, but that may also be the thing that, you want or
Alice: Right.
Jonny: testing can kind of,
Alice: Yeah. Negate that for sure. I think my Opinion, usually comes from thinking about the end user of a product, and that's something that I always have to talk to my clients about.
look, I know that your color, your favorite color is not purple, and your wife hates this aspect of whatever is happening, but we're not making this for you or her, we're making this for this audience. This is a profile, this is the research [00:16:00] showing that this is something that they will actually feel more comfortable with.
that's usually my goal is to make it for the end user, not necessarily my client. I just have to make sure that they understand that
Jonny: what kind of relationships do you have with your clients? Is it very one-on-one that you can have that conversation with them? do you feel like you have to structure that conversation over time of trying to convince someone out of something?
Alice: I think the relationship starts in the middle of the trust spectrum, right? they don't have it . there to gain, it's there to gain or there to lose. So I think over time, as they sort of gain my trust and I gain theirs, the relationship becomes a better collaboration.
Which usually ends up working a lot better and is a better experience for both of us than if it goes the other way.
Jonny: do you have a standing team that you, attached to all of your projects, or is it more of based on this project, I [00:17:00] will hire three to six
Alice: It's usually that there's, there's like a core group of people that I work with, maybe like two or three different people that I end up working with.
designer, developer, and content writer.
Jonny: Okay.
Alice: And then for different projects, I'll need photography, video motion, more design 3d. , depending on what, shape the brand is taking, I think the beginning of the project is usually the same. And then when it comes to the graphic assets or the expression of the brand, that's when, the team kind of has to vary
Jonny: The team becomes a reflection
Alice: Totally.
Jonny: Which is cool as opposed to trying to impose the skillset that you,
Alice: that I
Jonny: that you have to make it work for a client. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. I just felt like that doesn't necessarily result in what the client's benefit is.
Jonny: do you think that structure then is [00:18:00] a, like a long-term structure as far as the availability of those individual contractors? Or, I constantly need these two people, so should I bring them on full-time
Alice: yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that. And you know, before Covid I had, a halftime designer for a couple of years, which was great.
since Covid, it's just been very difficult to contain the relationship in a way that's just on the screen. And one of the questions that you had was like, studio culture. Is it dead or is it alive or what's happening with it? It's, it's a little weird, I gotta tell you. It's hard to have that creative time with somebody else where you need to bounce ideas back and forth.
So. , I would love to get to a point where I can have one or two full-time people that I can rely on maybe three. But I think that continuing with a bigger pool of [00:19:00] talent to meet the different needs of different brands is probably going to be the direction that we do continue.
Jonny: That's right.
You, you kind of playing the orchestra director. what is a design studio culture?
Alice: moving today,
Jonny: moving forward? Yeah, because I, I always have these classic ideas of the design, stu, the art studio, the design studio where you're in a space, it's a messy space, but it's a productive Um, and that, that probably comes out of history of
Alice: what a design studio is
Jonny: studio. Yeah. But what does that mean moving forward? Where, where there are people who are not in your city, so you can't even meet up with them. And does that, does that change the dynamic? Does that make it better?
Does that make it more awkward?
Alice: All of the things ?
I think
sometimes it's just so, like there's the people that [00:20:00] I, the core people that I work with now, we do meet up every now and again and we hash the big brainstorming picture out, and that's really fruitful and refreshing for everyone. But I do appreciate, personally, I appreciate the, the space, the brain space, the quiet that I need to get stuff done and be creative on my own terms after I have those brainstorming ideation meetings.
And I think the people that I work with do too.
Alice: The way that I think things are gonna go is it's probably going to be a hybrid thing. It's everything's gonna be everything that's real life is gonna be on the internet for somebody to come back to, which is weird, right?
that's how you wanna make sure everybody's tapped into what's going on and then just having the flexibility in your life to get the stuff done that you need to at your own schedule. Some people are mourning people. They really love to [00:21:00] get up at 5:00 AM and get the stuff done and be done by three or noon or whatever, whereas other people don't get up until noon
Jonny: and they love hammering it out until two in o'clock in the morning. Yeah,
Alice: absolutely. And you know, as a creative, you have your own. , you have your own flow and creative wanes and wes, and how am I gonna tell somebody when to turn those on and off? Creativity is not a faucet, .
Jonny: No.
It is a fountain that you have to the refill and nurture.
Alice: Totally.
Jonny: Is your creative muse something that you, that you refill yourself or do you feel like you have to go and recharge it by going to diff to going and experiencing something
Alice: else?
Yeah. I like that question. you know, again, BC before Covid, it was something that
Jonny: that's the first time [00:22:00] I've
heard that. Really? Yeah.
Alice: Oh, very much. BC
Before Covid, it was something that I would, I would get a lot of inspiration from international travel.
Jonny: Mm-hmm.
Alice: after C O V D, during Covid. It was, it was, it got really hard for a while and then I realized that I had to start looking at the simple things around me more cl I had to look at them more closely, whether it's like things around the block that I would see when I go take a walk, or whether it's movies that I would watch, or music that I would listen to that that had to be the inspiration because international inspiration wasn't necessarily the IT anymore,
Jonny: finding more inspiration from the things around you, but also maybe putting yourself in more local situations seeking it out.
Is that what you're describing? As opposed to putting yourself in a new, fresh [00:23:00] place you've never been that is and will force you to be paying attention
Alice: Yeah, I think that, you know, you're right. I think that's, I think that's probably why there was a lot of inspiration that I felt after I came back from a big trip, is because I had to pay attention to
everything.
because it was a new place with a new language. not having the option to do that anymore made me have to seek it out in a different way and pay attention where I'm at. And it's hard to find, you know, it was hard to find inspiration on the same block that you would walk around when you could walk around during Covid.
Jonny: That, And you're like,
I've seen this, tree 20 times, but this tree is new today.
Alice: Yeah. Or like I've seen, I live right next to the Capitol Hill Library and I love the way that they organize [00:24:00] the books.
They organize them in color coordination format. So it's like a rainbow of
books. It's not,
there's like one wall that they did that with. Okay. Yeah. Not the whole place. . That would be trippy.
Jonny: the opposite of a library.
Alice: the whole place would be pretty, yeah, that would be pretty chaotic.
Jonny: So if you had to create then a space for the people or with the people that worked with what would that start to look like?
Alice: I mean, I, I had that before Covid. I had a really lovely studio space on Capitol Hill and then one in the U District. And it was a, you know, beautiful, clean, or organized may, maybe different than your design studio looks.
it was an inspiring space with good light, big windows, tall ceilings. It was warm. And,[00:25:00] lots of books that you could pull from,
posters, art on the wall. It was lovely. I just, um, I don't know. I, I don't know that people would wanna come back to a space, even if it was.
I think people enjoy their time and they would probably enjoy, I, I, I think it's the hybrid schedule, like I said, they do want that occasional interaction, but not a forced sit here and work Environment.
Jonny: Yeah.
Alice: That doesn't inspire creatives, doesn't inspire
Jonny: so since someone is not physically in the space and you don't necessarily know that you're gonna get a certain set fixed hours from this person or whatever, does that change the way that you plan your projects and your team or, or the way that you organize?
Alice: I think if a person can keep deadlines, it doesn't really [00:26:00] matter.
Jonny: Yeah.
Alice: If somebody can deliver on what. Has been requested, which I am trying to do a better job at being very clear and concise with what is necessary. if they can deliver on that on a timeline, it doesn't really matter when it's done.
Jonny: Okay. So it's almost more trust. You're like less of a, employer employee relationship and more of a trust based
collaborative
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. I think when somebody is forced to do something, it's really hard to
actually
get the best of the, the best work out of them.
Is that, is that naive?
Jonny: when I was working in advertising, I very specifically remember someone saying to me of like,
as a
professional designer, you need to be able to turn the creativity on [00:27:00] and, and come up with something on demand, because that's your job, is to come up with something on demand. Uh, and I did it, you know, was it my best work?
I don't know, but I came up with 10 ideas.
Alice: Sure, you should be able to do it, but does that mean that that's what you want?
Jonny: Is that the culture that you wanna build over and over
Alice: I don't think so. I don't think it's actually going to be the most beneficial for our clients and their end users.
I think it's when something's, uh, got a little bit more love behind it and it has that marinade on it, it'll actually end up tasting better.
Jonny: Mm-hmm. .
Alice: So I, I think. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think deadlines are really important. I don't really need to hire people that I need to babysit.
Jonny: That's fair.
Do you wanna do lightning around?
Alice: Oh. I love the lightning
Jonny: because I'm This is for points.
Alice: Wow.
points. What is the [00:28:00] power? Okay,
Jonny: We'll see, we'll see what the points, uh, come out to. But they are for points. Uh, Bonia or Baskerville?
Alice: It was hellvetica in my questionnaire.
Jonny: Oh, I rewrote these.
Alice: I don't like it.
Jonny: I rewrote
Alice: wanna go with Hellvetica.
Jonny: There's a, there's a Hellvetica question later.
Alice: Uh,
Jonny: Bonia or Baskerville.
Alice: Baskerville.
Jonny: Okay. times Or Georgia
Oh, Helvetica or Futura.
Alice: Oh, that's cruel. hellvetica.
Jonny: what design application do you have open the most? What is like, literally time spent in
Alice: illustrator?
Jonny: what is your general setup? Are you Adobe?
all the way through?
Alice: Creative Cloud all the way through Illustrator in Design, Photoshop, and then Figma has been a new player as well as Webflow. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
Jonny: no sketch?
Alice: No. Well, I, I, I, I worked [00:29:00] with it and I hated it.
Jonny: That's okay. I don't like it either, especially now,
Alice: Sorry,
Jonny: cuz I have to use it.
I've never liked I've only ever argued.
Alice: It has a lot of things to argue about,
Jonny: like it not being good at anything. , what kind of, what kind of digital inputs do you use? I mean, are you a, do you use a Wacom, do you use a mechanical keyboard? Do you use a, are you fully just laptop or six monitors?
Alice: I'm probably not as ergonomic as I should be. Okay. I have laptop, front and center, keyboard, track pad from the laptop screen. From the laptop. Mm-hmm. above cinema display. And then, an iPad for watcom purposes.
Jonny: for drying and everything.
do you listen to music while you work or do you prefer silence?
Uh, and what kind,
what kind of silence?
or what kind of music, whatever you're into.
Alice: [00:30:00] I always listen to music when I work. It's tough to listen to music with words, English words. Yes. When I write,
So in those cases, I
veer towards music that has no words or foreign words.
I've been brilliant into French electronic music lately.
but I usually go all over the board from like funk mixes to jazz to more ambient kind of stuff.
Jonny: Yeah.
I've been listening to a lot of sitar Because it, it's both no words and also a music structure that I have no idea what's
Alice: Is it very dissonant?
Jonny: it's a time structure that is not western music.
Alice: Hmm.
Jonny: but actually to your point about words, I was told that you speak like six languages,
Alice: just four
Jonny: So relatively limiting out the kinds of music you can listen to, [00:31:00] but not too
Alice: Uh, I don't speak French. So French electronic is trending for me.
Jonny: All right. are you a Spotify person or a YouTube person, or a
Alice: I'm a
Jonny: father record person. Okay.
Alice: I do, my husband is a big music person, and he has a lot of records, as you may have seen in our house,
That's So there's a lot of inspiration to pull from, from all those covers, I gotta say.
So a lot of really cool stuff. to be honest, I don't know how to work the rig, so I usually just defer to Spotify,
Jonny: That's very valid.to your point of being surrounded by things, that's what the studio is ultimately for.
Just to go back to that's why I love that, that space, that dedicated space that you were taking a moment of commuting to and taking a moment of commuting from,
Alice: of
like mm-hmm.
Jonny: how the dedicated space reacts to you and how you react to
Alice: it.
[00:32:00] Absolutely. I I do miss it.there's an absence in the commute too. I will say the, my favorite commute was when I lived on prospect by Volunteer Park and had a studio in the Pike Pine Corridor.
That was a great walk. That was a great walk to work, and it was so central. It was very easy to meet with everyone that I needed to meet with.
and having that dedicated space where your brain is just there is helpful. But I do feel okay about having a separate room in the house now that I can just dedicate to work as well.
Another thing I miss is, uh, coffee house culture.
Jonny: Ah, that was literally my next question. Get it. Do you, do you have a coffee or tea ritual? Yes. And is that something that you do or that you go out for?
Alice: Both? All of it. it's just not a great morning unless you don't [00:33:00] have a good cup of coffee to wake up to.
I mean, we live in Seattle. Come on.
Jonny: Oh, no, I agree.
Alice: but I also really enjoyed, you know, the days, especially when I was freelancing. I could go and sit in a coffee house and there's all this like ambient noise around you and bustling, and the smell of caffeine just bursting through the air. That was really nice. Do you remember those
days?
Jonny: I, I'm trying to remember them.
Alice: It was a while.
Jonny: it's a, it's, it's like traveling. It's like you're forcing yourself to go into a situation where you don't know what's gonna be in that cafe.
Alice: Totally.
Jonny: And it, and you're like, who is that? Or, Hey, I haven't seen you in six because you're, it's a culminating
point I almost forgot that I had it, I think at this point.
Alice: Are you, is there places that you can go and do that at or is that not something that you're
Jonny: I have a coffee shop across the street.
it's not the same as me going to Pioneer Square
Alice: [00:34:00] Mm-hmm.
Jonny: and all the people who culminate in Pioneer Square and,
literally bumbling into another Right.
Set of people from a different studio.
Alice: Right. It's, it's hard not to run into people when you're at a coffee shop where all the designers accumulate at
Jonny: Yeah. Know. Yeah. It is kind of a core neighborhood, but I think that's why I go slightly insane when I live in one room and work in one room.
Alice: I get it.
so I've been trying to, you know, to kind of get out of the monotony of the apartment that we live in. It's a lovely place. Love it. It's great. But I do need to get out of the house and I have a membership to the cloud room, so I've been going up there every now and again to just take the walk, which is great.
Mm-hmm. , it's a great walk. But also I've been working with, a couple of other designers that we just co-work together. it's really nice.
Jonny: Yeah.
[00:35:00] I have one more lightning around question, but actually to, to your point of, I was in,
kind of in a digital brainstorming session. Right. And we're using Miro and it's all
Is that
Alice: the canvas? Yeah. Yeah,
Jonny: yeah, yeah. It's a sticky note based canvas tool. It's fantastic. It, it really is a fantastic tool. This podcast is not sponsored by Miro Uh, not
Alice: yet.
Jonny: Uh, it's, it's a very good application of the thing that you want when you have a dis distributed team. Totally. however, like I, I used to call that activity of like, literally just, you know, getting people comfortable and writing down everything they come up with, and then grouping that thinking.
I used to call that sticky notes and whiskey, which is Yes. Which is, there is a, there is something happening. You're in the same room, you're talking to people, whether not you're drinking whiskey, but like,[00:36:00]
Alice: or coffee, whatever, whatever you're
Jonny: there is a communal energy there that is happening. Yeah.
That you, that will never happen
Alice: on the internet.
I think it still is important, when we have
moments where big brainstorms need to happen. , it's really nice to meet with the people that we need to meet with in person.
Go up to the cloud room, sit together for an hour, look at the same screen, use sticky notes or not hash things out. I think it goes so much faster and everybody walks away knowing exactly what's gonna happen and feeling excited about it. I think there's a level of filtering that happens when it's digital that you don't necessarily get when it's in person and everyone's excited and there's whiskey.
Jonny: it's a self filtering that you don't Yeah. You don't realize, I would've laughed at something or I would've made a joke, or I would've chimed in and added a thought. [00:37:00] Mm-hmm. . but then I have to unmute myself and then I have to wait five seconds for me to not interrupt you, but also for the delay of you to realize that I'm not interrupting you, but now I am interrupting
you.
Right.
Alice: Maybe you should just not mute yourself and interrupt, and maybe that's supposed to be Okay. Great. I listen to something really interesting about like how people's conversation styles are, depending on where they are in the world.
like New York people style of talking. A lot more interruption happens and a lot more like fast talking. Whereas
here
in Seattle, that's really rude to do if you interrupt somebody. So I'm on more of like the East coast type of talking, so I feel very bad about it,
Jonny: But I, it's also a latency issue. I feel like. there is a technical issue there of like, I'm gonna still talk, but you're also still talking. in a one-to-one inter interaction, the interruption would've made [00:38:00]
Alice: Mm-hmm. .
Jonny: But now it's like, okay, I'll stop. Okay. You're gonna stop, but I'm gonna stop. But you're, yeah. Okay. the last lightning question is, r, G, or B,
Alice: Hmm.
I was
interpreting it as the colors, but now I don't even know.
Jonny: Are you A, are you an RG or B person is uh, as your aura, R, G, or B?
Alice: I
would probably say A
Jonny: rrg or B?
Alice: I would probably say G for aura sakes, but like
inner
feeling, heart desires, maybe an R. I don't the,
Jonny: You can be a combo. Yeah.
Alice: the, well, the whole thing.
If I can, sure. I'd like it, but if I had to choose one, I'd probably go with the G.
Jonny: Uh, Tata. Tata, how do you interact with the greater creative culture of the Pacific Northwest?
Alice: Again, [00:39:00] BC . Lectures. Exhibits,
Jonny: parti, like physical
Alice: participation.
Physical participation. Really energizing, really fun. Now it's, I guess more like this, one-on-one, like I said, co-working sessions with designer friends or people adjacent in the field or people that I'm collaborating on projects with.
Um, less exciting. I gotta say. I've tried a couple of digital conferences and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing the whole time
Jonny: because you're not there.
You're not in the trade show room
Alice: I think there's a lot of room for I, okay, let me back up. Let me say that I think it's really cool that conferences, I can go to a conference in like Finland, I think that's awesome. And I think that most conferences, every conference from now on should be available digitally, but I do [00:40:00] think that there's a level of interaction that needs to be included for the digital attenders,
Jonny: Not just passively
watching.
Alice: Yeah. Because why don't you record it and then I can watch it on my own time?
Why do I need to watch it when you're talking,
Jonny: real time?
Alice: I think there needs to be some addition to the liveness of those
Jonny: confidences. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's a whole nother topic as far as consumption of media in real time versus consumption of media.
do you recorded I love participation in realtime media. I started a business with a good friend of mine about the consumption of realtime media in space.
so I'm fascinated by why and how that's important when it's valuable.
Alice: Mm-hmm. ,
Jonny: most things can be consumed, recorded at the same, at the same value level.
unless there creates [00:41:00] a, a level of participation.
Definitely.
Alice: I think the interactive aspect is kind of the next level to be figured out.
Jonny: I love, I love going to design conferences. most of my traveling has been like, sure, I'll just randomly go to Toronto for no reason except for this conference.
Alice: My God, Barcelona Design Week. Paris Design Week.
Send me back, send me back
Jonny: half that experience is literally just being in the hallway, the hallway track of just being around people.
Alice: it's the energy. It's people that are excited about the same things and have these ideas that they wanna put into your brain that are in the same. The field that you're excited about?
Jonny: There's a hu the human aspect of it. Yeah. Human factor. I
Alice: I mean, we're humans. We're, we're tribal creatures. We're not gonna get around that no matter how many screens they put in front of us. .
Does that lead you to the print dead web dead question?[00:42:00]
Jonny: Is the web dead?
Is print dead
Alice: extinct species list
Jonny: is there a new type of, screen or media device that we should come up with instead?
Alice: I've been watching a lot of post dystopian movies lately I'm really excited for when they invent the computer tablet. , have you seen those things? it's kind of like what architects used to draft on the drafting tables, but a digital screen that you can interact with and move things around on.
it. So think iPad, but like the size of that screen.
I'm ready for that.
I pitched this idea when I was at Google. I think they killed it pretty quickly, I wanted to basically put a projector on the ceiling and create a dual space so that you could basically extend the space into someone else's mirrored office.
Ooh.
Jonny: So you have, well it,
Alice: it's like a window into a separate office.
Jonny: but it's the whole wall. It's not a [00:43:00] screen at that point, it's just the whole
wall. Mm-hmm. .
And you could talk to those people and they're just there.
Alice: did they nix that They're missing out
Jonny: uh, cha Chacha Does this, couple more questions. do you think the current dynamic of studio culture affects the way that you're going to hire people in And, and, and hire people at different ranges of
senior contractor, down, down to the intern of like, what is the role of the intern if there's no, if there's no studio,
Alice: well first I never have had an intern have a role where they get a co where they do bullshit work.
I never want an intern to be in a position where they're getting coffee and not learning anything.I'm not interested in that kind of intern. I can get my own coffee, and I'll get them coffee usually too. I think it's going to be more of a global, integrated type of digital space and I think I'm [00:44:00] still pretty drawn to the people that are in kind of my creative core brain, to be local, because I do really value that time physical brainstorming aspect with those people.
But I do think that there's going to be people that are on the other side of the world, like in the Philippines, that are gonna be really good at motion design that, I'm gonna get along with great. And we're gonna be able to get stuff done and they're gonna be able to work while I'm sleeping and vice versa.
And it's gonna work out.
Jonny: there. There
is talent everywhere. I completely agree with you. I love the, like they'll do work while we sleep thing, there's that dynamic there but you also need communication.
this is something I'm running into right now.
Where does a global workforce
Alice: when do they
Jonny: When
did they communicate effectively?
Alice: there's a short period of time where they're finishing their day and we're starting hours that. , [00:45:00] there is that level for, okay, here's what I had what I did, let's look at it together.
Okay, bye. I'm going to sleep. Or Okay, I'm starting my day. And I think that's okay. I mean, to be honest, I'm actually really excited to be able to work with somebody from where I grew up. I work with somebody in Ukraine now, that is a developer and he's really wonderful.
he lives several blocks away from where my grandmother lives. It's wild. I think that's really cool and I think there's awesome people around the world, and one of the questions that you had was what do you look for in people when you're hiring them? And you know, first you look at their work and if.
is of the quality that you need it to be. You talk to them and when I talk to them, it's not usually about the work, it's more about the soft skills and how we communicate is really the important part to me. Cuz collaborating with those people [00:46:00] is kind of going to make or break the project.
Jonny: Yeah, that's half the work right there.
Alice: Totally. it's half the work and the experience that you have working is the people that you surround yourself with.
Jonny: That's awesome. I would love to talk about design education and, like what is the university's role
Alice: in
Jonny: a semi distributed state?
how do you feel about design education today and,where do you think it would be the most productive for itto go in the future?
maybe not education as a whole, but specifically design
there's a lot of people between the two of us that we know that have gone through formal education, four year, two year degrees, or gone to for-profit schools or not gone to school mm-hmm.
and they're all equally successful.
Alice: Mm-hmm. , I think it, honestly, it really depends on the person. Formal education offers a really good structure. but for somebody that's self-motivated and determined and knows exactly what they [00:47:00] want, if they surround themselves with the right people, they can do the same thing.
they don't need a piece of paper to prove to me that they know how to do something. The proof is in the pudding. The proof's in the work, you know,
You either
know how to do it or you don't.
what do you think I, I know
Jonny: I'm turning this idea of like my connotations of a design studio. are the things that I was first exposed to design work So I, I was first exposed to, from a yearbook
Alice: Mm-hmm. ,and
Jonny: was a yearbook studio and you're all there doing work together and learning things together.
Same within,formal education at Western you have a design studio or a series of a print studio, digital studio, whatever, studio. And you're in there doing things with people, learning from them for as a, as a point of view of [00:48:00] trade and learning a skill in this place. Right.
putting
Alice: stuff on the board and
Jonny: it. Yeah.
Alice: giving each other feedback. And that's really, really valuable. I think that's kind of the more valuable part. It's not the sitting together and working around each other, it's the critique.
Jonny: Right. Right.
Alice: And I think that in a digital space, in a digital quote unquote studio, it's hard to do it the same way, but you, you still have to try and do it.
whether that's Hey, do you have a second to hop on a call really quick? Like, I'm really struggling with X, Y, and Z and I don't know if I'm losing my mind and if this is just really bad or really good, I can't tell anymore.
I, I think you hop on a call and somebody's like, oh yeah, sh, share your screen with me.
Let's look at it together. I, I think that's a form of it. it doesn't necessarily replace multiple people at the same time looking at a board and coming up with new ideas. But I think there's a way to maybe [00:49:00] get there.
Jonny: I just love that physicality of it. I think the thing that the, it's the detachment for me of, we're now two people staring at the wall. Mm-hmm. and the work's on the wall, and it, there's nothing personal about it. We are criti, we are formally critiquing a body of work together.
Alice: Mm-hmm.
Jonny: we're both doing the
Alice: mm-hmm.
Jonny: there's no person attached to it. And so that, that lets you critique it probably harder, but also, but also not take it personal in, in the resulting of like, okay, these are all things that I can, that I will now go back and work on the collective critique that we've
Alice: with.
Mm-hmm. , the collective opinion has decided X, Y, and Z needs to
Jonny: we should do X, Y, and
Alice: Mm-hmm. .Yeah.
Jonny: I am the executor of that work,
and Z, but
but the critique is not of of me.
Alice: not everybody that stood in front of those boards was actually able to take it that way.
I think [00:50:00] a lot of people. or maybe thankful that it's gone.
Jonny: the separation's better for that.
Alice: but I'm with you. I think that having that camaraderie of staring at something together is just really fruitful. I don't know. I, I, I've been thinking a lot about this. I think maybe this is silly, but I want to start like a design club where we do that with our work now, because I, I do miss that.
Mm-hmm. , I do miss that from school and from the studio times, and it seems like a lot of other people do too.
Jonny: I think it's a healthy part of that. You can only
work
on something for so long, before you're no longer making beneficial progress on and you have to have this step back.
Alice: But it's also the people that are staring at that board with, you have to be the right people.
Jonny: Yes.
Alice: Because
if you have people that you don't trust staring at that board with you, it's just really unproductive.
Jonny: Yeah. And then it's a waste of everyone's
Alice: time.
Totally.[00:51:00]
Jonny: Trust How do you build that culture of, trust in a studio or in a collective? I use the stu stu the word studio's a loaded term, but
how
do you create that peer group? That's a, that's
Alice: I don't know. We're
Jonny: a rhetorical
Alice: lucky.
We know. We know a lot of the people that we went to school with, and those are a lot of the people that I feel like I can still go to and be like, look at this with me, please.
Jonny: What? Yeah, what have I done? And then they can give you an honest answer of oh, you're not crazy. That's great. Or, what is this thing over here?
Alice: What happened? ? Yeah, over there. Yeah. I
don't know how to get that back in a space.
Jonny: Well, okay, where do you see yourself then? in five years.
Alice: You know, after all the studio talk, I, I kind of want my old studio back now.
It seems really lovely, but there's also, travel that I really need back so, . I think that [00:52:00] having, having a consistent schedule of meeting with people that are consistent, employees working with me mm-hmm. is probably going to be the place. I wanna have a successful studio that's growing and people are excited to work in.
And that is financially successful, that's doing inspired work. And it doesn't necessarily have to be like any, like anyone's chain to a desk. Does that make
Jonny: Yeah.
That's a good balance of
Alice: Yeah, balance
a balance.
Jonny: Balance is healthy.
Alice: Mm-hmm.
Jonny: What, gets you up at 5:00 AM with a smile?
Alice: an international flight and a good coffee. , , it's
Jonny: Yeah.
Alice: What about you?
Jonny: what gets me up at 5:00 AM an alpine start.
Alice: Mm.
That's a good
Jonny: Having,
having a group of people to either literally [00:53:00] get up in the woods and go hike something or having a, having a collective group of people that are stoked to be doing something at 5:00 like I, if I can get myself out of bed at six, other people can get themselves outta and we have a cup of coffee and then we're on the road or something or, or doing something, then,
Alice: then we're
good.
Jonny: that gets me
Alice: I like that.
Jonny: Thanks for being on
Alice: Always. No filter,