Mo Ismail:

If you are a designer and you plan on making this a very serious career for yourself, I am going to have Emmy award-winning designer, Chris Do, walk us through the three fundamental skills that designers must have to go from good to great.

Okay. Chris, you've been in the design space going on 30 years now. I think you have trained many designers under you and you've seen the differentiators between someone who's really great at their craft and someone who, for lack of a better term, is mediocre needs some work. So I want to just microscope in on the three skills that you think every person who desires to become world-class designer should master. And let's start with the first one that comes to mind for you.

Chris Do:

Well, I'm glad that we're having this conversation Mo, because I get criticized a lot about talking about the business, about pricing, selling and negotiation, that they think, oh my God, you're just trying to tell a bunch of lame second, third rate creatives on how to go get more money and that for whatever reason is bothering people. First, I just want to address that if someone is lower tier and to make more money than you, maybe that's a signal that you need to learn more sales skills or marketing skills, because this is a good thing. When people with less skill than you are making more money than you, it should lift the entire industry up.

Mo Ismail:

Facts.

Chris Do:

Because the inverse is not good for our industry where they're pulling the prices down. So I think instead of sending me hate mail, you guys should send me love letters. I really think that, but let's get into it.

When you asked me this question Mo, how do I identify the three things that someone needs to learn to be able to go from good to great? So the presumption is you have some fundamental skills, you know the tools, either being self-taught, or you've taken courses or you've interned somewhere where you have some basic skills, you know how to put things together. So let me start off, and this is not in any particular order. The first skill that I think is going to be a game changer, it's kind of counterintuitive, is to develop great listening skills. And this is like why do you need to be a good listener to be a good designer? Isn't designing about expression and making things? Well, here's the thing, most of us who know how to create things can create anything. And although we desire the open creative brief where they say, anything you make we'll love, we think there's this fantasy in our mind that we just get to make whatever we want and people will give us money.

And in some instances that's true. When you ascend yourself to a state of being an artist or an artisan or something like that and you have a clearly distinctive style, people will just give you money to do more of the same. That's both good and bad. This is a longstanding practice within photographers and illustrators or image makers because they want to be known for a specific style. So when you hire me, you get my style. The only problem is when that style goes out of style and all styles go in and out, what are you going to do? Now you wish people would give you the opportunity to do a different style, kind of complicated. Or sometimes you get bored of your own style. It's like you can't do something else because they won't like it. So now you're stuck doing the same thing over and over and over again, even though you've personally moved on aesthetically.

So what I want to do is to say, look, yes, you're capable. You could do anything. So the real question is what should you be doing? Not how you should be doing it. So the only way I know how to do that is to engage with the client, whoever's giving you money through a series of questions and listening with open ears, not with happy ears. Happy ears are listening for whatever you want to hear for and then kind of morphing that into whatever it is you think you heard. And we see this happening all the time. Because as the expression goes, it's easier to hit a target once you know where the target lives. Something that I learned from my business coach, Keir McLaren, is you don't need to tell me where the bullseye is, you just need to tell me what wall it's facing, because oftentimes we're looking in the north direction and the bullseye is on the south wall. So I need to be oriented in the right direction. And the only way I know how to do that is by asking the clients questions.

Mo Ismail:

Rest in peace Keir, man. Rest in peace is brilliant.

Chris Do:

Rest in peace or rest in power.

Mo Ismail:

Rest in power. That's a fact.

Chris Do:

Right. So when he said that to me, I was like, wow, this is amazing because now I can start to design a series of questions and reduce the number of options down, hence orienting myself towards the wall in which the bullseye is on and it takes away a lot of stress. So I want to replace design exploration with questions and words and dialogue. And so instead of toiling hours, days, or weeks on a concept that may not work and then to feel super frustrated when the clients say, this isn't working, this is not what we expected, which is heartbreaking for any creative. I want to begin the conversation with dialogue by asking questions and then just being really silent and being very still and just listening. Mo, what do you think about what I just said?

Mo Ismail:

I agree with it, but I got to ask on behalf of the audience, Chris Do can do that. Chris Do can go into a meeting, listen really well, take solid notes, ask clarifying questions. But what if I'm the designer who needs the job and I ask all these questions and then the answers become something that I can't do?

Chris Do:

This is really good. Okay, there's two things that you brought up, your primary question and your other question, which is a lot of people think I need the job and if I ask the client too many questions, won't that signal to them I do not know what I'm doing? Won't that be annoying? And won't that drive or push them away? And in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. All right, I know you can find so many examples in your real life when you walk in as a buyer, as consumer of something, unsure of what it is you're buying either a product or service and the person actually spends time talking to you to assess your needs, your budget, your timing and other things that normal salespeople don't even bother to ask. What happens then is you build rapport and a personal connection with this person thinking they really care.

Whether they do or not, that's the feeling that you have. You might come in and say, I need a certain car. And then they go through a series of questions, diagnostic questions to help you understand you're better off trading in this car for this and buying a used car and you'll get more bang for the buck and has a higher resale value. And so you're building a relationship with people. So many creatives, myself, especially in the beginning of my career, I was afraid to ask questions thinking who am I to be asking them these questions and won't that signal to them I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm doing? But in fact, it's the thing that gets you the consideration for the job. Of course you still have to have the talent and the skill. It can't just all be cotton candy puffs of something that you can't bite down on. So that leads me to your primary question, which is, I need this job. What if I ask him certain questions and I can't do it?

On the surface, it seems like a really legitimate question, right? But let me just ask you this. What if you proceed on a job where there's nothing that you can do that will satisfy the client? Aren't you better off knowing that upfront versus later on?

Mo Ismail:

Bingo.

Chris Do:

Because that sounds like some form of torture, Mo. You're a hip hop guy, you could freestyle battle rap. There's a lot of skills that you have. I'm not saying that you can't do it, but what if I wanted you to compose a country song that is a mix between opera and country and you didn't know that that's what I wanted. So you're coming at me with heavy beats, super dope lyrics, and you keep showing me option after option and I keep telling you that ain't it, that ain't it. I'll know when I see it and eventually you like, bro, what's up?

And I say to you as a client, you know what's up? You're fired. I'm not going to pay you. I'm going to give you a really bad review because you just wasted a lot of my time. So now you've wasted time, energy, and goodwill when you know could not have come up with a solution that the clients would be happy with. So that fear of what if they say something I can't do? Well that's good news to find out early on to say, you know what? Based on what you said, here's what I heard. I heard you say this, this and that, and I don't think I'm the right fit. Here's something that's cool that's going to happen. The person's going to say, oh, thank you for the honesty, very few people would say that. But you know what? I have a good feeling about you. Tell me what you would do instead that you can do or can you hire other people to help you?

I'm just intrigued because of the rapport we've built that I want to continue down this path because I think someone else would just assume what it is that I want. So now what you've done is you've spoken about the elephant in the room, which is I don't think I'm a good fit. You've taken one step backwards, you've retreated. And if they're like, you know what? We really like you. They're advancing, they're pursuing you now and you're not pursuing them. It's a classic principle in the win without pitching manifesto, right? You're doing something really good there and you're being really honest and ethical about how you do this.

So now they've given you permission to go and work with other people. They've also changed their expectations about what you can and cannot do, and they're opening their mind to what else is there. And if they just simply say, I appreciate your honesty, I'm going to go look somewhere else, you've saved yourself some massive heartache and potentially you planted a seed for future relationship with this person who may very well come back to you and say, you know what? I love your honesty so much that I'm going to give you another shot at a different project that I hope you'll feel like you can do.

Mo Ismail:

I really wish that whoever is listening to this replays that last two to three minutes because I've done personally exactly what Chris has said about retreating and then seeing them advance just from a place of honesty. And I wish for everybody to be able to experience that. Once you lean in with courage, to be able to tell yourself with integrity that this is not something that you can do, you'll be amazed at how the client just looks for a way to work together or completely changes the scope. And I think having learned this from you, Chris, the position that you put yourself in, even if you don't work together, you're on their vendor list just from your honesty, for whatever they need something that you can do. And something that I've learned more and more with... I now really understand what you were talking about when we would do role plays that are super aggressive and you'd be like Mo, the clients that I've worked with, they don't even push against me like that, so I'm foreign to this experience.

What I've learned with high caliber clients is when you're listening and asking thought provoking questions, they're also listening to your line of questioning to determine your level of expertise and what you do. And they're deciphering is this person really what they say they're about? Does this person really know the scope of what a project like this would take based on the line of questioning, based on how they're trying to filter me of being a client or bring me in as a client? The second thing they're trying to do is understand if you can actually help them.

I remember a client saying this to me after we had worked together for a while. He was like, that first discovery call, I wanted to know... I saw your work, but I wanted to know if you could help me. And a lot of times that listening and that line of questioning is, it's a dance of they're on show for you as like, can you take them on as a client? And you're on show for them if you can actually help them. And it's really interesting how that happens from less talking and more question asking and retreating whenever you're not a good fit. So I really hope that people can experience that and lean into doing what you're telling them to do because it's a very liberating thing to experience. And I just wanted to add some context to my personal experience when that came up. Do you have anything else to add around this, number one, or do you think it's safe to move into the second one?

Chris Do:

You know I have things to add to this.

Mo Ismail:

Go ahead.

Chris Do:

Let me make a metaphor that everybody can understand, I think. Let's just talk about relationships. You're at an event, a party, you're a single person, you're out to meet somebody that might be a long-term relationship for you and you see lots of attractive people. This works, whatever gender you are, it doesn't matter. You see lots of attractive people and attractiveness is what gets you considered. Now you can consider your portfolio, your body of work, your real, all that kind of stuff as your level of attractiveness. But what's going to seal the deal? When you meet this person, whatever sex they are or whatever gender they are, they can say things like, I'm more interested in learning about you versus talking about themselves versus trying to sell you on how great and accomplished they are. And if you're anywhere kind of more mature in your life, you are already way tired of those people.

Whether it's men or women, it doesn't really matter. You're like, you know what? I've had this experience before. I'm not interested in you just sucking up all the energy. But the person who winds up being the most interesting person is the person who's most interested. They're interested in you, they want to ask questions, they want to learn about what your needs and wants are, and when appropriate, they might say a thing or two. And it goes down to this fundamental thing, everybody wants to talk about themselves.

Mo Ismail:

Facts.

Chris Do:

So if you want to be more attractive to other people, ask people genuine questions about what they're looking for and then just be willing to listen. Now I want to tell a story to put this into super concrete example. This is the real story. This is real life. I've worked in advertising and broadcast design for over two decades, unfortunately, as the industry evolved and there were more people, more suppliers than there were demand for the work, we got into this thing where the whole industry became highly competitive and was pitch based.

So you only win projects based on your ability to pitch. So being fairly new to this, I hated the pitch process. We were doing work for free in hopes of getting work. It's a horrible practice, but that's how the industry evolved into unfortunately. So in the beginning we'd get on the phone, we'd talk to them, they would tell us the script, the idea of the creative brief, and then we would go away, and with a team of five to 10 people, we would work on multiple ideas. And the reason why we did that was because we didn't have a clear idea ourselves as to what might work. We let the clients use broad language, they use suitcase words, words that have many meanings depending on who's asking. And we just did that and that's how we thought we were supposed to pitch. So instead of walking in with a few ideas, we'd walk in with volume, it was tonnage. We would overwhelm the clients with so much exploration and so many different possibilities. And we thought, well, that's a competitive advantage. They're going to be blown away by all the ideas.

Now you know this Mo, we start to create the paradox of choice. You ever go eat at Cheesecake Factory? It takes exponentially longer at Cheesecake Factory to pick what you want because the menu is like 10 pages deep and you're not worried that you're going to have a bad meal. You're worried that you're not going to have the best meal. So maybe I want the chicken cacciatore, or I want the pizza, or I want the Caesar salad. I don't know what I want. And so naturally it takes you a really long time to go through this. If you've ever watched an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, the first thing that Gordon Ramsey does is he chops that menu down to nothing.

Because what you can do is you can make a few excellent dishes and allow the clients to pick one or two things that is going to be a really amazing experience. And so we would pitch this way for many years until we learned that if we just ask better questions and we listen, the amount of exploration, let's say we're going to explore 10 ideas, becomes two, sometimes just one. And we tell the clients we actually have a very clear idea as what you want. We would say it in words and describe it and say, is that what you're thinking? Do we have this correct? And they're like, yes, that's it. Now imagine if we had the same 10 people that were going to work on the project, work on 10 different ideas. We get them to work on one idea. So instead of going a mile wide, we go a mile deep.

So now we can get into very specific ways in which each frame is going to look, the story, the conceptual development is really tight, and then we say that we might lose, but we have a better shot of clearly articulating our vision for what it is that we're going to do, that the clients then have one decision to make, not 10. The one decision they have to make is is this what we want? If it is, we got the job. And we saw something quite remarkable happen. Our win rate went up, our expenses went way down, we required fewer people to work on it, and it reduced the amount of burnout that people were feeling because when you pitch on a job that you don't win time and time again, it's demoralizing and it feels like it's a waste of money, time, energy, effort, and artistic capability. So that's a really concrete example of how when we ask the right questions and we listen and we focus our energy on doing less but better, everything works out better.

Mo Ismail:

Amazing.

Chris Do:

All right, should we move on to number two?

Mo Ismail:

I would love to.

Chris Do:

Okay, we're talking about designers, right? So you said how do you go from being an average designer to a great designer? And I'm going to tell you right now. You are like Superman or Superwoman. There's not a lot that you can't do, but you do have one kryptonite, and if this is your kryptonite, you're going to fall apart, and your kryptonite is...

Mo Ismail:

Talk to them.

Chris Do:

Typography.

Mo Ismail:

Talk to them.

Chris Do:

You know I'm going to say it. Typography. Now there's some misunderstanding about what typography is. People who design logo types sometimes refer to themselves as typographers. That's not correct. And typographers are not logo type designers. These are very different skill sets. So logo type designers concerned about the individual combination of very specific number of letters together to create one expression. They're not worried about if the letters were reversed or in different order, whatever it is, they don't care about that. And so they spend a lot of time designing the perfect alphabet for five or six letters. That's it. And in that exact sequence. A typographer in contrast doesn't design the typeface. What they do is they manipulate the arrangement and layout of type. It's point size, it's color, it's weight in order for someone to understand ideas. It's arrangement of letters and words on a screen or on a page or an app or something like that to communicate ideas. And sometimes the idea is to just capture your attention. And so some of the traditionalists who don't understand expressive typography say like, well, I can't read that.

Well, if it's concept, if its purpose is not for you to read it, but to stop you in your tracks, to get you to decipher it, then it's met its goal. So typography, at least in my instance, has taught me everything about design. And there's a famous Massimo Vignelli quote that says, "If you can design one thing, you can design everything." And I really believe that. So if typography is your Achilles heel or your kryptonite, it means that you're uncomfortable with this and there's good news for you here. The good news is if you go through a series of rigorous exercises, things that we teach and things have been taught to many designers, many generations before from the Basel School in Switzerland, then you'll learn this thing and it's painful to learn, but once you learn it, you can master design. And if they say that content is king, which a lot of people say, well then contrast is queen.

Learning about how to manipulate contrast in point size, like big and small, in texture, smooth and rough, in weight like extra bold and thin, understanding these relationships, a lot of negative space and a deep heavy concentration of type on a page, learning how to use this translates into every facet of design, not just 2D design with type, but also three-dimensional design. Once I learned how to design a poster, I could design a room, I could do interior design, I could design furniture, and all these things I've done. I've designed signage and anything that I can think of because I understand the formal relationship that exists when you start to put things on a page or on a screen, this to me is a ginormous unlock. You cannot, in my opinion, be a great designer if you don't understand typography.

Mo Ismail:

What I love about what you just said, and my key takeaway around this is you said the manipulation of the arrangement of letters and words for people to understand the message. At the core of that for me is you are not just making something pretty, you are making something that effectively communicates what you're trying to convey. And what you're saying is if someone misses that mark, then they're probably just good and not great. Am I hearing that right?

Chris Do:

Yeah. In my opinion, you cannot be a great graphic designer if you're not great topographer too. And in fact, if you look through the design annuals in topography and other international design competitions, you almost always see the people who win are the best topographers in the bunch. They understand space, they understand color and texture and contrast in creating tension and releasing tension. They know how to create primary, secondary, tertiary reads, and they also know how to do very beautiful expressive topography as well. We recently had James Victoria on our show and he does something totally different, which is something that many of you're going to say, well, Chris, I watched an episode, now you're contradicting yourself. No, you my friend are not paying careful attention enough if you think it's a contradiction. James does hand-drawn letter forms and he takes it to an art form where his scribbles, his brush marks and his personal handwriting become so beautiful that they become art itself.

Just the way that somebody is able to put ink on a page, and I kind of draw a parallel to Chinese calligraphers, and if you've seen them work, it's a thing of beauty and they're using ink on a page and they don't have two shots at this. There's no white, there's no building up. They just draw with the strokes. And calligraphers, master calligraphers and artists can recognize the skill level from one person to another who's put in 10, 20, 30,000 hours of practice versus someone who's just starting and they can see that. So James' primary communication thing isn't about whether you can read as easily or not. He wants you to work at it to decipher the meaning or the words that he's drawn is not illegible, but it does require some work. But in that instance, you stop and you try to figure it out, and when you can figure it out, a smile happens at least in your mind.

Now, James is not writing the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, he's usually using one or two words or an expression idea, and that's all that's on his posters in his design. And he's designing this for book covers, he's designed this for posters. He's not designing this for you to read a manuscript because it would require too much mental labor. It's too intellectually demanding for you to figure out on any kind of long-term consistent basis. So you have to kind of weigh what is the intention and the goal of what it is I'm designing and mix that with the right approach.

For the most part, 80, 90% of what you do is going to be legible functional typography, but if you follow all the rules, it's going to be really, really boring. Even Massimo Vignelli would talk about this and one of the famous quotes is something like, grids are like underwear, they're meant to be used but not seen. So many people put grids on everything and it's like, yeah, I get it. You understand Swiss design. Boring. You have to learn how to use all the notes and sometimes the space in between the notes is the music, I'm borrowing from Massimo again.

Mo Ismail:

Damn, that's a hell of a quote about the underwear.

Chris Do:

He's good at quotes. I mean, there's a whole Massimo Vignelli cannon and I hope to learn all of them.

Mo Ismail:

I love that it's a conversation and what tools and methods non-verbally or verbally, I think of things in communication are you using to convey the message? With James, the whole design is meant to be a mind game, and once it clicks you're like, oh my God, I'm in the know. This is no longer an inside joke versus what you're talking about where you're doing book covers or manuals or whatnot, and there's like you have to guide the person with the type, and I think that's just incredible. You were the person who introduced me to design in general, always been a video guy, but I think that's awesome. Okay, just so we don't nerd out together for too long, what do you think is the third piece that you want people to really focus on when it comes to going from good to great as a designer?

Chris Do:

Well, I think the bridge is supernatural because of what you just said. So when you put things together, it forces a relationship. When you put an image of a tomato over a person's face, it's not just the tomato, it's not just the person's face, but it's saying something. It's probably critique on the person. Maybe they're a clown, maybe they need to be removed from office or something like that. So we enter now into the third thing, which is conceptual design. Conceptual design is something that's used a lot but often misunderstood. So let's get into what my definition, my interpretation of conceptual design is. Now here's the telltale sign that is not conceptual design because you said it was a conceptual design. My concept is to use a face and a banana, and yeah, that don't mean jack to me. And students are notorious for using those words and say, that's a really strong concept. No, it's not.

So we get into some $6 words here, like semiotics. When you put things together, they have a hybrid third meaning, and if you're able to create a hybrid third meaning like this and this equals that, then you've done something that is written about extensively in the book, A Smile in the Mind. This is a book for wit and humor within design. So the way it's explained in the book... And it's an excellent book if you get hands on it, I think they now revive the printing again, so it's not going to cost you $600 to buy the book. When you create a conceptual piece that's witty, it's like a joke or a puzzle that the audience gets to figure out. If you make the puzzle or the joke too complicated, it's frustrating. You're like, oh, I don't get it. I just don't get it. You make it too easy. You're like, ah, that required no mental effort at all.

So there's a sweet spot and there's not like a scientific formula where you break out the ruler and you measure it, but there's a sweet spot that when you discover it, you smile in the mind. So let me give you a classic example. Classic example. Many people in the design space already know this. Many people outside have never seen this, but if you've seen the FedEx logo designed by Landor Associates. The FedEx is set in Futura bold, uppercase F, lowercase ed, and the uppercase E and X, somewhere in there between the E and the X, carefully designed and manipulated is a tiny negative space arrow, because FedEx gets your package absolutely overnight. And so when Landor and Associates or Landor Associates redesign the old FedEx logo, which kind of has a weird style to this, people are like, duh. And when you get it...

Mo Ismail:

It's so true.

Chris Do:

Right. I wish I was just driving behind a FedEx...

Mo Ismail:

[inaudible].

Chris Do:

Right.

Mo Ismail:

In that team. Like, oh my God, this is brilliant.

Chris Do:

When you figure it out. This is brilliant. And they probably explored a hundred different configurations until they came upon this. And I'm almost certain, I just imagine being in the room where it happened, where the creative director's like, that's it, all the other stuff don't matter. This is what we're going to sell them on because this is genius and it's going to last 10, 20, 100 years into the future. No one's going to sit there and say, well, that looks really dated. Because they used a beautiful timeless typeface like Futura. They find a simple expression that's not too gimmicking, not overly labored on, and that's the puzzle that we're talking about.

When my son was driving the car and he saw the FedEx truck drive by and he's staring at that, he's like, dad, is that a white arrow in there? I'm like, yes, it is. And his face lit up, and even children can understand that. So this is what is referred to as conceptual design. So if you're able to have a twist or a puzzle or something, a hook for people to solve, it's a brilliant thing. Let me give you some other examples of this. Now Chris Nolan's new film, Oppenheimer is out. It's the buzz. It's considered a masterpiece. Many people are calling it the best film in Nolan's career, the most important film in this decade. I mean, it is a great film.

Mo Ismail:

It's incredible.

Chris Do:

I'm not sure if I'm going to put all that on it, but it reminded me of a movie trailer and also a poster for Batman. I think it's The Dark Knight Rises. There's a bunch of scenes and the world's falling apart, and there's only one person can save is is Batman, and the city is crumbling and there's this shot, and the shot is the camera looking upward and the city is falling apart. But in the negative space, in between the buildings, it's a symbol of the bat. Now, not everyone sees it, but if you're paying attention, you are like it's the Batman symbol. So in one moment they're able to create an image that has two reads, it has a multiple read. It looks like buildings falling apart like the end of times, and also in the negative space, it's Batman symbol, a thing that he wears on his chest. Brilliant conceptual design. So there are countless examples of this, especially if you start to dig into this. The masters of this are people who work in advertising. Because they don't just create images, they create meaning.

Stuart Schuster:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. Welcome back to our conversation.

Mo Ismail:

I feel like there's this beautiful flow of these three skills into one another. You start with, you got to understand the goal, so you got to understand how to even create meaning, what the client wants, and then typography. It's organizing all the different tools in your tool belt and all the different things that you're going to create. So then at the end, which is number three we're talking about now, you can get to that meaning. So it's like understand the direction, create the organization to get there, give meaning. Do you do this on accident? Or is this just on purpose? You're always like... It's so linear when we're having a discussion every time. Was that intentional here?

Chris Do:

I don't know of any of it is intentional, Mo. I mean, I just do what I do and sometimes the pieces fall together naturally. Just like if you're doing some battle wrapping, all of a sudden something hits you in that moment and you see the opponent wearing something or doing something, you call upon that and the audience is like, whoa, Mo just did it. Mo just did it. And you're like, is that on accident? No, but it was not premeditated.

Mo Ismail:

Well, I got to give you the kudos with how it all aligns, and it would almost feel like if I was a designer and feeling like I need to up skill, I would do this in order of a masterclass, understanding everything in this particular order, but back to you about semiotics with what you were going to finish off with.

Chris Do:

Yes, there's many expressions of this. You can do this with words and switching orders of words or just taking a common phrase and having fun with it. I remember many years ago, this is over 20 years ago, there was a brand, it was called Doc Martens. And Doc Martens was famous or popular within a certain community, punks and anti-establishment people. And so they knew their audience. These are work wear boots, really. And they found an audience in those alternative cultures, probably made popular also by the grunge movement in music. And so I remember seeing this ad and it said, the mainstream is polluted. And this is just copy, it's brilliant copy. The mainstream is polluted. And there was this image of a gas mask and it was just dirty and it was like in the sewer, and it was just like, maybe it is, right?

Mo Ismail:

That's good.

Chris Do:

Yeah, it is really good. And there was another ad that I saw that they took a neck tie, like something that a person in a business attire would wear, and they just turned it upside down and it looked like a noose and it just said, Doc Martens, no words. So a neck tie doesn't have any meaning, turned upside down, framed in a certain way, lit within certain context and with a logo, has new meaning. Semiotics. This plus this means that.

There's another one, I think it was for Oxygen or some kind of inline skate company, and it said something like this. I still remember the copy of this. It's how good the copy is. Fluorescent light dims the soul. So you can just do this with words Mo, if you're a really good copywriter. And some of the best examples of brilliant copywriting that's been done so consistently is for the Economist Magazine. They're so brilliant. So I'll tell you something, and they're known because it's British. It's a magazine that is designed for world leaders, for CEO, for C-suite executives, so they know who their audience is and so they speak up to them, they don't speak down to them. So some of the copywriting... Now, the Economist has a very simple bold red image. It's all red, and then it's usually a Serif type face or something like Bauer Bodoni or Bodoni, something like that. Very simple. And the logo is always at the bottom somewhere. One of the lines was lose the ability to slip out of a meeting unnoticed. The Economist Magazine. Here's another one, the pregnant pause, don't be the father.

Mo Ismail:

Damn, that's good. That one's good.

Chris Do:

It's full of gems.

Mo Ismail:

That one's good.

Chris Do:

You could just study what The Economist does in terms of writing, and this one was brilliant. This is not a political statement, and this was a person gaining the kind of national attention that he's received. Back in the eighties, Donald Trump was known as the person with the Golden Touch, the Midas Touch. And so if you're reading a magazine for leaders, what are you going to do with a copy? You're going to say Trump, Donald. They just inverted that. So if you want to be Donald Trump, this is the magazine for you.

Mo Ismail:

Oh yeah, they're good. You're going to make me go buy copies.

Chris Do:

Well, just go search online, The Economist Magazine copywriting, and you're going to see amazing copy in terms of how it's written. So we can do this with words, we could do this with images, we do this with images and words. There's a lot of different ways, and now I'll take you into what I guess it's called ambient media, where we take the concept into three-dimensional thinking. There's a couple of different expressions of this. I remember seeing this ad. It was a photograph of a building, and the building was very gridded in terms of its structure. So what they did was they imagined what it would look like if the building were made up of Lego pieces. So they did a wrap on over one of the windows where it looked three-dimensional like Trompe-l'œil, where it felt like it was indented in, and there were Lego bricks on the bottom and the top, and there was a piece missing.

What a brilliant way to use existing environmental things to do something really cool with. They do this with bus boards. They do this all over the place. They do this with toilets too. Here's a campaign for responsible drinking like don't drink and drive, where they have a toilet and then they have two other toilets printed right next to it and they're like, if you can't tell which is real and which is not, you've had enough to drink.

Mo Ismail:

That's smart.

Chris Do:

So they do ads like that. Very smart.

Mo Ismail:

That's very clever.

Chris Do:

Right. It's like you can't aim properly, so you got to think about this. Another ad that I thought was brilliant was I think an ad for an exercise program, a gym, or maybe it was for Nike or something, and it showed back in the day, this is dating myself, we used to look at this thing called the TV guide, and the TV guide was to show you programs. This predates TiVo.

Mo Ismail:

I remember the TV guides.

Chris Do:

Right, you remember. So you have times and channels and programming, and then you would get the paper just to get the guide so you wouldn't miss an essential piece of television programming. So it would show you the TV guide and then it would strip out a small piece, either vertically or horizontally. It would show a person going up a hundred flights of stairs. So instead of you sitting there being a couch potato, it's like peering into something. Here's one that requires interaction from you as a person to get the concept.

Mo Ismail:

That's so clever.

Chris Do:

So it's a magazine spread and there's a woman in a exercise outfit and she's doing crunches. So right in the gutter is her midsection. So she's like this, hands behind her head and feet in the crunch position, spread across horizontally. So when you lifted the page, it looked like she was doing a crunch. So that was a brilliant interactive ad, old school.

Mo Ismail:

That's good.

Chris Do:

For you to like, hey, maybe you need to hit the gym instead of hitting the salad bar or whatever it is you're hitting. Don't hit the buffet, hit the gym.

Mo Ismail:

I got to ask you though, because I think the designers that are watching this are like, oh my God, this is brilliant. Theoretically, they probably understand it. What are some practices that someone can do to I guess develop this skill to get to that end result? Because I really believe that this last one is really what takes you from... There's good, great, and then this I feel like is God tier. If anyone watches Dragon Ball Z and then the final evolution of them in Super Saiyan. So off the top of your head, maybe some daily practices as they're writing or they're doing their design or anything that comes to mind that can get them to develop the skill to get to this end result.

Chris Do:

Well, you can understand that this is not one where you say, tomorrow I'm going to be a great conceptual designer thinker. I'm going to be a great adman or woman. This takes time to develop. So the first thing we need to be aware is just awareness itself. Are you looking at your design? Are you saying, I aspire to be a conceptual designer and thinker? And then you look at your work, does any of my work do this? And if that's not, at least you're out in the right place because now you can recognize it and just knowing what it is versus not knowing what it is. You've been head in the sand, so to speak, and you don't know what conceptual design is. You talk about your work like it's heavily conceptual, but it's really not. Nobody taught me this. When I learned I'm like, oh, that's what that is. Okay.

People give you clues, they give you examples. But me being a super analytical person, I start to break down what are the formulas? What are the patterns I see? Are there only so many ways of doing this, right? And they're in fact like seven or eight formulas that you use. And so that would be the next level. If you start to study enough of this, then you'll see patterns emerge and then you can organize different types of conceptual thinking into groups. This is how I'm able to recall these things and how I'm able to teach this. So in a different life, before you met me Mo, this is what I taught my students how to do, and I taught them how to do this not in a static image, but over time as a sequence. Because as a motion designer, this is what you're supposed to do.

I'll give you an example of that in a second. So some resources that we can dig into. There's a book, I already mentioned it, A Smile in the Mind. There's another book that you can read. It's called The Ad Concept Book, and you want to read that. And there are books on amazing award-winning copywriting. It's just words and just look at how this is done. There's a magazine, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of it, but it's Lürzer's Archive, and that is an international magazine that features the best in advertising. It's the only magazine I've consistently subscribed to in the last 20 years. As soon as I can afford it because it was kind of expensive, I've been subscribing to it. Even though print is dead, I still love looking at these things and breaking them down and saying, okay, what is the thinking here to reverse engineer? Why is this working?

Now, if you read the book A Smile in the Mind, it will tell you a couple of things. And I think it's important to take a minute to explain this. When you create a conceptual ad, you're asking participation from the reader, from the audience, and they need to use some intellectual bandwidth to solve it. And when they do, depending on how smart they are, how much context they have, and a lot of these ads are culturally relevant to a specific audience. Not all audiences can understand ads. Once you get it, you feel smarter. You feel like you're in on the joke and you feel connected to this thing.

This is why you'll see on social media, they have simple math problems that say only top 3% of the genius population can solve this thing. I just did it in my head, it's 14. What you talking about? And we can't help but to see can we solve this thing? This is why riddles are so fun to do and to be able to solve. It's a puzzle that you were given all the clues, and when the answers revealed to you, you're like, darn it. I knew it was that. Why didn't I think of that? And that's why these puzzles, these visual puzzles, these problems to solve are so fun for us. We feel smarter. We feel like we're part of an exclusive club, and that's what I think you want to explore if you want to be better at this stuff.

Mo Ismail:

I got to ask, I know we're talking about design, but is this the inception of the meme? Is this kind of like the foundation for how memes got created where you have a title and then you have an image and then connected together? You're like, oh, that's funny.

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Mo Ismail:

This is the... Okay, just making sure that I'm following.

Chris Do:

Yeah, that's semiotics, right?

Mo Ismail:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

If you strip away the image, the meaning is lost. If you pull away the words, the meaning is lost.

Mo Ismail:

100%.

Chris Do:

So how memes typically work is they take an image we've seen a thousand times and they change the meaning of the image by adding a certain phrase, and you're like, that's it.

Mo Ismail:

100%.

Chris Do:

Me on Monday, me also... Those frameworks, right?

Mo Ismail:

Right. So it gives the image even more power, and then it evokes that reaction in you from the meaning that you decipher. That's amazing.

Chris Do:

The greater the hook, the bigger the emotional expression like first of all, it's a piece of truth and it's really unexpected in its expression of a fat cat or whatever it is, like a bloated cat that can't even walk. That's me also. That is what they're doing. So before I forget, let me tell you how you do this on a sequential way, over time. We've been talking mostly about static. We talked about some interactive conceptual thinking and design. How do you do this over time? This is the art and design of title sequences. They have to figure out how they can surprise you. What is the hook? What is the big idea there? And what you're trying to do is you're trying to find a moment in time. This is just one formula, there's many. A moment in time where there's some ambiguity as to what it is, where in the moment prior to it feels like it's one thing and the moment after when it's revealed, it's something totally different.

That perfect merger where it exists in two spaces and it has two meaning is the hard part. I'll give you an example. I was working on a title sequence for a friend of mine. His name is Terry Rietta, or he was making a film, a short film about how this guy was kind of being stepped on all his life, like this doormat. And he got fed up because he has this tyrant bully for a neighbor. So he set him up by doing a crank call, and that's the name of the film, Crank Calls. So he crank calls him and he sets him up to fight with someone else, and their whole lives get disrupted, and he's just watching the whole thing. So I walked away thinking, so he's using the phone as a tool to exact his vengeance, and then it occurred to me what the visual metaphor is.

So he's using a phone to exact his vengeance on his crazy, a-hole neighbor. So I asked my buddy to go shoot a bunch of photos of an old rotary phone. You guys remember what that looks like? There's a little dial, two, three. You would do this. And that's how it was. So it's circular and there's cutouts. So you put your finger in the number that you want to dial, and it hits a little stop, and then you go again. So the entire film is like a starring, film production by, directed by, written by, and you see in the background, this phone, this old rotary dial spinning, and it would just spin. So we get it. There's music, it's building up some tension, and there's this one moment when it locks into place and it spins back and it's the chamber of a pistol, and there's one bullet in it.

Mo Ismail:

Oh, that's hard.

Chris Do:

So you see what I'm saying?

Mo Ismail:

That's hard.

Chris Do:

Can you visualize that Mo?

Mo Ismail:

That's hard.

Chris Do:

So in that moment when it spins and it comes back, it's no longer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, it's empty, and then there's a bullet and it ends. So now we as the audience member was like, something dark and sinister is happening. There's a phone, but it's not a phone. Somebody's going to get killed, maybe. There's this undercurrent of impending violence. And that was the perfect expression. So when we did the storyboard, that's what I said to Terry, and I pitched it to him. I said, here's the idea. It's this, this. It uses the phone as a weapon, undercurrent of violence, and it's just the right metaphor. And he goes, that's it, Chris. So we did it. One of my just amazing 3D artists, his name is Lawrence. He built this thing in 3D, animated it and it won a bunch of awards. It won what I have not been able to win again, the British Design and Art Direction.

Mo Ismail:

Wow.

Chris Do:

Yes. Because they can recognize there's a concept there. We submitted for it and we won.

Mo Ismail:

Wow. You are brilliant. Thank you for having this conversation with me. Thank you for pouring in these principles and these examples and the breakdown. I think if I was a designer and I was on the path of really cementing this as a career, I believe that these three principles are... I would have to watch this over and over again. So just a very short recap in case you missed it and you were like, all the juice has been flowing. The first lesson is being a good and thoughtful and patient listener that also asks good questions to understand the overarching goal of what it is you're going to be creating. The second one is understanding and then leveraging typography to organize the creative, to be able to send the message the right way, relative to what it is you're designing for, whether that's, as Chris said, static, motion, whatever the application might be. And the last one, which we did a huge deep dive on, semiotics, right Chris? Semiotics.

Chris Do:

Semiotics.

Mo Ismail:

Semiotics, which is making the design have meaning when the audience interacts with it. Simplest way I understood it as a simpleton. When it comes to design as a meme, the text by itself doesn't make sense, the image by itself doesn't make sense, but together they do. I really, really hope you enjoyed this series of us just jamming about what it takes for you as a designer to go from good or maybe not that good to great, and then from great to just God tier because Chris just dropped a bunch of gems. Chris, I want to leave the last kind of word for you that you want to ask the audience anything or any type of final words around all of this.

Chris Do:

I don't get many opportunities Mo, to speak about and to nerd out about design and its intricacies. Oftentimes people see me on YouTube like who's this wanker? Who's this 30 something kid who's talking about principles that he has no understanding of? Or who's this person who's perpetuating this idea of designers and creatives overpricing themselves? So I'm appreciative of the opportunity and the conversation that we had today, Mo. What many of you don't know is I taught at a private art school for over 15 years. These are concepts I've broken down time and time again. So I'm happy to share about these things and we can create content specifically to help you come up with these conceptual hooks because if you can do this, you've already solved one third of this puzzle in terms of how to become a great designer.

Stuart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Future podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Stuart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better.

Have a question for Chris or me, head over to the future.com/heychris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit the future.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

‍