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How to Unleash YOUR Creative: W/ James Victore
Chris Do and artist James Victore discuss how to build a career by rejecting conformity and finding your authentic creative voice.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · June 11, 2023
The Rebel with a Heart
There is a perception of James Victore. You see the work: big, bold, expressive phrases scrawled with an unapologetic hand. Words like Feck Perfucktion. You see the social and political posters that have landed in the Museum of Modern Art, work with real teeth. The immediate conclusion is simple: this is the work of an angry man. A rebel. An anti-establishment force.
But then you meet him. The man Chris Do introduces is warm, charismatic, and deeply human. He is, as Victore admits, a dreamer and a lover of things. The perceived anger is not anger at all. It is passion.
“You misconstrue passion for anger,” Victore explains. “I wasn’t angry. I was passionate. I give a [__] and I still give a [__].”
This passion now extends beyond his own art. After a long and lauded career, his focus has shifted. His website is no longer about him. It has been renamed. “My website is no longer jamesvictore.com, me me me me me,” he tells Do. “My website is yourworkisagift.com. We want to be about other people.”
This is the central tension and the ultimate truth of James Victore. He is a man who built a career on a fiercely individual, iconoclastic style, only to arrive at a place of profound service. He wants to help others have better careers. He wants to facilitate their path.
He sees his career not as a series of reinventions, but as one long, continuous arc. From a 19-year-old who moved to New York knowing exactly what he wanted, to the design school dropout who started working immediately, to the teacher, author, and artist he is today.
“My work has always been about what it says, not what it looks like,” Victore states. That ethos has simply been refined, whittled down to its purest form. The visuals are just the vehicle for the idea.
This is the foundation for a career built not on pleasing clients, but on expressing a point of view. It is a model many creatives admire but few have the courage to pursue. They see the result, James Victore, and assume it’s a status he earned. They have it backward.
As Do’s friend and fellow designer Carlos Segura once said, “You can do this because you’re Carlos Segura.” His reply was sharp: “No. Because I do this, I am Carlos Segura.”
Victore echoes the sentiment. “That’s okay for you, you’re James Victore,” people say. His response is blunt. “No, no, no, no. I have always, always since I was 22 or 23, I’ve always pushed to be James Victore. And that means there are some times when you fail. You need to accept that.”
The Gospel of Illegibility
A debate erupted among designers online. The new Kia logo, a stylized, continuous line form, was deemed “illegible.” People were apparently searching for “KN car.” The design community, in large part, was up in arms. It was a failure of communication.
Victore’s take is different. He saw it and thought, “Oh, that’s pretty funky. I dig that.”
The controversy, for him, misses the point entirely. He compares the situation to the outrage when UPS changed its classic Paul Rand logo. People were upset, but now, nobody cares. We get used to things. The real test is not the logo. It is the product.
“I would complain to the ends of the Earth if your service was bad or if your car sucked,” Victore argues. “But if your logo was illegible for me for five minutes? I don’t know.”
Do agrees, pointing out the hypocrisy of the internet design police. One moment, they decry the “blanding” of luxury brands like Burberry into simple, sans-serif typefaces, demanding more personality and heritage. The next, they attack a brand like Kia for moving away from a boring, legible wordmark toward a unique, ownable icon.
“Anybody with half a brain can figure this out,” Do says, explaining that we recognize shapes, not individual letters. Great brands know this. A Mercedes is a three-pointed star; a Lamborghini is a bull. Over time, a unique symbol becomes associated with the feeling and quality of the product. Moving toward iconography is a smart, bold move.
This philosophy is the bedrock of Victore's own work. He prioritizes immediacy and opinion over perfect legibility. His style feels immediate, not because it is clear, but because it is human.
He tells young designers: “Do yourself a favor and don’t become a designer.”
Designers, he warns, tend to think like designers. They read the same books, dress the same way, and convince themselves the answer is somewhere “out there.” This is wrong.
The answer comes from your own opinion and voice. When clients claimed they “couldn’t read” his work, his response was often a challenge. “You can read it, it just took a little bit of time.” He is fine with that. He gives his audience the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are intelligent and willing to make an effort.
He recalls doing subway and bus shelter posters in New York City.
- He never wanted them to be immediately clear.
- He knew his audience would walk by the same poster multiple times a week.
- By the third, fifth, or seventh viewing, the message would click.
- This delayed revelation creates a more powerful, guttural reaction. “Oh, [__]! I get it. That’s awesome.”
It’s a different goal. The job is not just to inform. It is to create curiosity. It is to make someone stop, look closer, and feel something. That is a lesson explored in how to build content people actually react to, where the focus shifts from clarity to impact.
Forging a Voice From Scraps and Masters
Victore’s voice was not born in a vacuum. It was forged in the reference department of a university library, where his mother worked. As a ten-year-old boy, he would wait for her after school, and she would give him paper, a pen, and stacks of European design annuals.
“She gave me picture books to look at, and the picture books that she gave me were Graphis and Print… from the 50s and the 60s and the 70s,” he recalls. “So I unconsciously was getting this education of the history of graphic design.”
His father, a military pilot, would bring back treasures from his travels: bullfighting posters from Spain, manga from Japan, early comic books from Thailand. Much of it was in languages Victore couldn’t read, forcing him to engage with the words as pure shape and form.
This early, accidental education was supplemented by an interest in fine art. He was drawn to the abstract expressionists. “I want to make work like Franz Kline, but I want it to be words,” he says. He sought the emotional power of a broad, gestural brushstroke, like those of Kline or Robert Motherwell, and aimed to infuse it into typography.
Yet, this signature style didn't emerge overnight. When he first started as a book jacket designer at 21, fresh from dropping out of art school, he followed the rules. He looked at what was in the bookstore and mimicked it.
“I was making book jackets look like book jackets,” he says wryly. “I was making the obvious more obviouser.”
The work was safe, it paid the bills, but it contained none of him. “I had no opinion whatsoever.” Then, a realization hit. “I’m a funny guy. I’m charming. I have my own sense of humor, my own sense of timing, my own sense of color, my own sense of style and proportion.”
Around the same time, Chip Kidd was rising to prominence, doing exciting, expressive work. Victore felt emboldened. He started to use his own handwriting on a cover. It didn’t get rejected. So he pushed it further. And further.
That push became his entire career philosophy. As he puts it, “I just want to get paid to be James Victore.” This isn’t a statement of arrogance. It is a declaration of intent. It is the core of a strong personal brand: to be so uniquely yourself that you become irreplaceable.
He wants that for everyone. He wants you to get paid to be you.
The Four Stages of a Creative Career
There is a life cycle to a creative’s career, and if you are lucky, it unfolds in four acts. Victore lays them out with brutal honesty.
“My pal back in New York… he says, ‘You know, they say most people get like three acts… you’re on like number seven,’” Victore laughs. But within that long arc, he identifies a familiar pattern for successful artists.
The stages are as follows:
- Stage 1: Who is James Victore? This is the beginning. You are toiling in anonymity. You are trying to do good work, but nobody knows who you are.
- Stage 2: Get me James Victore. Your work has broken through. You are in demand. Your name is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. You are the solution.
- Stage 3: Get me someone like James Victore. A subtle but dangerous shift. You have become an archetype. Clients now want a cheaper, younger version of you. They think you are too expensive, too busy, or perhaps, as Victore notes, some even think he might be dead.
- Stage 4: Who is James Victore? This is the fade into irrelevance. The new hotness has arrived, and you are part of the old guard. The phone stops ringing.
Victore found himself at a crossroads when his commercial work began to wane. He recognized he was entering the third stage. To avoid the fourth, he knew he had to make a change. He needed to find a way to stay vital.
The answer was not to chase trends or lower his prices. It was to pivot. He shifted from being a service provider to being his own client.
He realized that what older, experienced professionals get paid for is not their hands, but their minds. “What older people get paid for is their wisdom and their knowledge, and to share that,” he says. This is a critical pivot in any creative's career strategy.
This led him to invest more heavily in writing books like Feck Perfucktion, speaking, and sharing his ideas through social media. He transformed his business from making things *for* people to teaching people *how* to make things for themselves. He was no longer just selling design; he was selling his philosophy. He was selling his wisdom.
This is the path to escaping the fourth stage. You do not quietly slip into the night. You make a racket. You share what you have learned. You stop being just the artist and become the mentor, the guide, the teacher. You ensure your legacy is not just a portfolio of work, but a generation of creatives you have inspired.
The Bricklayer and the Buried Dream
The most profound story Victore shares is not his own. It is the story of a young protégé, a cautionary tale that silenced the room when he told it on stage.
The young man wanted to be a screenwriter. His father, a bricklayer, encouraged him to follow in his footsteps. “It was his lot in life, his father said,” Victore recounts. “The Arts don’t make money. Bricklaying is a decent wage, and the world needs bricklayers. You’ll be one, like me.”
For ten years, the young man obeyed. He laid bricks and swallowed his dreams. He chose the practical, responsible path his father laid out for him.
Then, one day, his father’s best friend died. At the funeral, his father stood up to read a eulogy he had written. The son was moved to tears.
“Not by the eloquence of the goodbye,” Victore clarifies, reading from his book, “but by the realization that his father was a writer.”
It is a devastating moment of clarity. The son sees his own suppressed dream mirrored in his father. He realizes the advice to be a bricklayer came not from a place of wisdom, but from a place of fear and regret. His father, a closeted poet, had pushed his son away from the very thing that might have brought him joy, because he had been too afraid to pursue it himself.
“We deny ourselves our dreams so hard,” Victore says. He remembers hanging out in a pub in his early days, listening to cops and sanitation workers who were hilarious, politically astute, and sharp as a tack. “Any one of them could have turned into Seinfeld,” he says. “But they would go, ‘Nah, I could never do that.’”
This is the lie we tell ourselves, often inherited from those who told the same lie to themselves. It is the voice of the uncle who tells his nephew not to pursue poetry, without ever admitting he failed because he never truly tried. It is the voice of Victore’s own father, a man he describes as “wildly creative,” who built the family house and was an amateur chef and photographer, but would never, ever admit to being creative.
When asked if he was creative, his father would deny it. But if asked if he could figure anything out, the answer was a confident, “Oh yeah, I can figure anything out.”
That, Victore argues, is the essence of creativity. It's the ability to figure things out. To solve a problem. To take a blank canvas and make something from nothing.
The story of the bricklayer serves as a powerful warning. The regret of a life not lived is a heavier burden than the struggle of pursuing a dream. The young man, upon his realization, eventually became the screenwriter he always wanted to be. He broke the cycle.
The Permission to Be “Bad”
The biggest obstacle for many is not a lack of talent or opportunity. It is the paralyzing fear that their work is not good enough. Victore has a simple, and perhaps jarring, piece of advice: keep going anyway.
He describes seeing the work of an artist who paints flowers. His initial, internal reaction was not one of awe. “Oh, damn,” he thought. “What do I tell this woman?”
His advice was not a detailed critique. It was simply: “Awesome. Keep going.”
This is not an empty platitude. It is a core tenet of his philosophy. We are terrible judges of our own work. The quality of your work today is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that you keep doing it.
“Even if you think your work is bad, keep going,” he insists. “Because eventually, it’s gonna get good.”
When students at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught for over 20 years, would bring in uninspired work, his response was not to crush them. It was to guide them. “Talk to other people. Get direction.” He might ask, “Hey, have you looked at so-and-so’s work?” or “Have you ever thought of putting it together in this form?”
The problem is rarely the ink on the paper. The problem is what happens after. Most people know how to make something, but they do not know what to do next. How do you commercialize it? How do you get it out the door? These are questions that require bravery, consistency, and a willingness to talk to people, as discussed in this personal branding masterclass.
Victore practices what he preaches. He still actively seeks feedback and connection. When a new person of interest comes up, like a chef making the world’s best pizza or producer Rick Rubin, he packages up his book and sends it to them with a personal letter. He is always seeking mentors, asking questions, and talking to people.
“If you work in a closet and you just keep stacking paintings up,” he warns, “you’re expecting dealers and buyers to come to your house, ding dong.”
Success is not a passive process. It is an active pursuit. The most important metrics are not an outsider’s opinion of your portfolio. They are:
- How does your work make you feel?
- How consistent are you in your practice?
- How good are you at getting it out the door?
Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting to be “good enough.” Your job is to do the work, put it out into the world, and then do it again tomorrow. The quality will follow the action.
Your authentic voice, however imperfect, is your greatest asset. Do not hide it.
TRANSCRIPT
you taught for a period of time in your career you're working professional your public speaker you're an author you're an artist not just a designer something that very few designers have been able to do which is to have work that's considered art I moved to New York at 19 I knew what I
freaking wanted to the point that after like two years of school I was asked to leave I was happy about leaving design school and started working immediately having a great career and you want to share it I want other people to have better careers I want other people to I want to facilitate
their their their journey through this stuff you shared a story on stage I'm gonna kill you off and hopefully it's enough for you to start telling a story here now I got into a little bit of trouble okay so my next guess is James victori and you may know of him from several
different touch points maybe you've seen one of his works in the Museum of Modern Art maybe two of them you've seen maybe you've seen these big bold expressive phrases and ideas these these I uh these Concepts distilled into some words and you see as handiwork his his hand is in the work and
maybe you've seen that or maybe you've seen him speaking on the stages where I met you for the first time in person I've met you online before James but there are some things that I guess surprised me about you and I'm just full disclosure I don't know that much about you I've known
about your work for a really long time I purchased your books before we even knew that we should be talking to each other and and I see you on stage very natural warm charismatic and I'm like something is not so I don't I I just maybe it's on Prejudice that I just thought
a guy who writes the way you do using the language that you do effect Perfection I hope I said that right because I'm scared to say that you know is that I think of you as like really anti-establishment a rebel but I think there's Rebel but a rebel with a heart um there
is this Humanity that emanates from you I think maybe you're romantic I don't know if you would describe yourself as such uh yeah as a dreamer as a lover of things and deeply passionate person yeah as a person who's not afraid to connect with people and here's the other thing you're a really
fit guy too [Laughter] that's about you more about me please yeah you're really fit I saw you walking around and I'm like look at the the uh triceps on this guy what's going on here so I told Mark not Mark who was that I was there with a couple of my friends with
David Talus I'm like dude I gotta I use the push-ups on stage or something I gotta get pumped up because James is like just shown it's a gun show here with James what's going on so it's very sweet of you thank you we don't usually associate designers and artists with being physically fit
why are you so fit oh I just um I've got two little kids and I've got a young wife and I gotta keep up with them um I also just love it I just love it I've been a long distance Runner since uh before high school um so I've always I've always run
and um I'm kind of classic Alpha in that I am only happy and I shouldn't say this too loud because I'm Only Happy When I'm doing [ __ ] I'm only happy when I'm when I'm making I'm only happy when I'm when I'm producing things that I know are gonna make money and
I'm Only Happy When I'm like exercising or active I can't be like I'm not very good like hanging out at the beach sitting in a lawn chair with a drink all right I got to go to the beach and go surfing or gotta go you know run up and down or you know
so you know being being physically fit and active I think is just just goes hand in hand um and it's funny about the how the that kind of dichotomy that you've felt or that poll that like wait this guy is that guy um early on in my career because of the because of
the political and social and cultural work that I did that had tooth to it I think people saw the work and didn't know me and what happens when you do that is you you you misconstrue Um passion for anger so people think I was you know the Angry Young designer yeah I can
see that I wasn't I was passionate I give a [ __ ] and I still give a [ __ ] you know and now I give a [ __ ] for for you know the the the other people who make design I mean my work is I mean we just we just um
you know under the influence of of Shannon um my new you know partner and wife um my website is no longer jamesvictory.com me me me me me me my website is York is a gift dot com you know that's huge that's that's we want to be about other people I've had a great
and I'm having a great career you know like you and you want to share it I want other people to have better careers I want other people too I want to facilitate their their their journey through this stuff right and I want to ask you a lot about this idea about your work
as a gift and the story that you shared and I want you to share with our audience but before we do that you mentioned careers I'm just curious how many careers has James Victoria had I got I got a pal back in New York a designer pal back in New York and he
says he says you know they say most people get like you know three acts you know three three three phases that I he says you're on like number seven [Laughter] um I have had one career I see it as one career I started um I started very early on like I moved to
New York at 19 and I knew what I freaking wanted uh to the point that to the point that after like two years of school I was asked to leave I was happy about leaving design school and started working immediately um but I knew what I wanted to do and since the beginning
my work has always been about what it says not what it looks like but that doesn't mean that I'm trying to I don't care you know effect Perfection is about doing your best work but not getting not letting Perfection stop you you know like in the form of perfection or procrastination or self-doubt
or you know too much thinking or whatever but um so my work has always been about what it says and now it's just kind of whittled down to really what it says and and the visuals are just the teaspoon of sugar to get these larger ideas across uh so I think I've had
just one long Arc career and basically the the details of how I how I perform and the and the audience and the intention has changed a little bit it's always been the same okay fair enough I like that I guess the way I was looking at it is you taught for a period
of time in your career you're working professional now you've created a course or a subscription Community your public speaker you're an author you're an artist not just a designer so the works that you've done and you've done something that very few designers have been able to do which is to have work that's
considered art yeah so that's why I'm like I see lots of like maybe you might see us one continuous Arc I see these Peaks and I would say valleys but different spikes in what you're doing yeah but even the even the even the artwork yes is I paint in words so it's still
ideas and it's still typography and it's still somewhat design based much so much like you know Jasper johnswood with uh or Robert motherwell because they use a lot of typographically driven pieces um or to for me to go back early early influences were like um the Picasso and some of the some of
the boys back then because they did a lot of posters to Loosely track majority of his work is posters lineage of artists who were technically graphic designers could work with shape and form and color and type can you describe your own style of putting thoughts on paper like how do you describe that
style um I think there's I think the word that I would use or the thing that comes up is immediacy like I don't want it to feel like work first of all I want it to feel immediate um one thing I urge um especially what I had the opportunity to talk to younger
designers I tell them listen do yourself a favor and don't become a designer because designers tend to think like designers they read all the same books they dress the same they you know and what happens then is you is you you you teach yourself that there is an answer out there that you
don't have and that's not correct the your answer is you know comes from comes from your opinion and your voice and I want to use my opinion and my invoice and I want to get it on the paper in the most immediate fashion um the detriment of that is sometimes I do things
that are somewhat um illegible you know I I often have uh I don't have a ton of clients I don't seek that work right now but um but historically I have had clients pull things back with they quote unquote couldn't read it so um and that's fine um I either I either alter
it or I say what couldn't you read and they said well the G in gift and I'm like now wait a second I don't quite understand that you can read it it just took a little bit of time so and I'm I'm fine with that I don't mind when people have to think
I give him the benefit of the doubt that they can then my that my audience Beyond a client that my audience is is intelligent and will make the effort and if they don't then they're not they're not they're not my audience I think some young people especially I'm assuming quite a bit of
our audience are younger at least in their pursuit of their career and they don't quite understand why one person would work harder to make something unique and risk being harder to interpret than to make it super clear but here's the thing whenever this was a controversial thing so let's let's let's introduce into
the conversation a new logo I'd love to get your opinion and your take on it and then I'll share my opinion because I've not spoken about this before the internet the internet designers all of them we're kind of up in arms about how the new Kia logo was illegible and people were Googling
like what is this company so there's a very strong opinion about it I'll give you a couple of seconds here to think about what your opinion is and then what does James Victoria take on the redesign of the Kia logo you know that's a great question um because I remarked I saw it
early on I'm driving along and I'm like oh that's the new Kia logo and then I because I had driven by you know there's a strip that I have to drive by here that has all the car dealerships right and I see it has the old literally spelled out k-i-a and then it
has the new one and I thought oh that's pretty funky I dig that and then somebody peed in the pool because once you see it one way you don't see the other but somebody peed in the pool and said oh did you you see the controversy about the KN logo and I was
like what oh [ __ ] now you just ruined it because now I can't I cannot see but k n um and I think you know business-wise there were a bunch of different ways they could have handled that I don't know I I guess they're maintaining it right are they just keeping it
Chris do you know what I haven't seen I don't think you have any intention of changing it to anything else no and you know part of it two things one it could be a it could be a paint splatter and if they do a really good job in a very short time everybody
will recognize that paint splatter as Kia I mean when when UPS changed their logo from the Paul Rand logo to the current one people were like oh nobody's there anymore no nobody's there anymore I'm not saying I'm not saying I love Nostalgia I'm not saying I hate change or that I love change
but I am saying we can get used to things and um that's just human nature you know it's funny because I was sitting with Brett at breakfast this morning with my kids and my son was like um we have the bong mama Jelly which is the The Gingham tablecloth looking cover on it
and a handwritten literally a black and white handwritten basically label and he was saying he says how he liked the the thing how it looked like a tablecloth I'm like this is what I do like we when we go to the grocery store this afternoon we're gonna go to the Jelly section and
look at all the jellies and figure out which one you would buy and why do you want it because it looks like someone's grandmother made it or do you want it because you know what are the things that attract us to these and um the it if something is illegible or or for
example if you go to the grocery store and there's some new jelly and it's all in French and you don't read French you're like that's interesting I'm gonna take that home because I'm cool because I want to be erudite because I want to be International and you bring it home and it tastes
like [ __ ] there's a problem right now so if Kia just does a good job stays on course yes I would not want to be the guy who did that right you just bring it home and show it to your kids right and they're like kn um I wouldn't want to be
the guy who did that but um I think if they do a really good job like FedEx like UPS just do a damn good job and nobody will complain because they'd rather I would I would complain to the ends of the Earth if your service was bad or if your car sucked but
if your logo was you know illegible for to me for five minutes I don't know you know again we could talk about the the new the the what is it the we love New York thing same thing same thing I I think it's I you know we love New York thing I detest
because it's it's gone the way of All Flesh it looks like you know an emoji which is like oh okay I get it Emoji lazy typography okay whatever so here's where I have some problems everybody seems so smart and so talented on the internet but they're really not that talented they're not that
smart true so you know a while ago there were people were up in arms about all these luxury brands like helveticizing everything that they do they Stripped Away like Burberry did it a bunch of Brands just moved towards very simple blocks and syrup typefaces and what they're saying is in in one breath
we want funkiness we want individualism we want Heritage and we love the intricacies and even if it's not legible and that easy to use and apply many different things so we hate these new marks and on the other side we have Kia the old logo which is highly legible yeah but boring and
kind of in my opinion ugly yeah and we have this new form that becomes maybe Beyond just a word Mark becomes an icon which I think is wonderful yeah anybody with I'm sorry to say this I'm gonna hurt a lot of people here half a brain can figure this out you know we've
done tests before where they literally scramble letters and words and you can still read it it's because what we don't do is we're not actually looking at individual letters we're recognizing shapes so the people who know who spend a lot of money working on these things developing their craft they know what they're
doing not always but they know what they're doing yeah so everybody just relax with one personality but when the personality doesn't agree with the way we think that we want it to be boring yeah so for me I look at the larger picture the business model I'm agreeing with you if the car's
been used to grab it I don't care how good your logo is and if the car is great conversely I don't care how bad your logo is it doesn't matter because I'm buying the car to drive the logo right I'm buying it because it's uh it's a it's a piece of moving sculpture
there's a visceral connection with the machine and the sound it's not the logo because let's face it car companies have notoriously bad logos out there I mean ugly cars yeah ugly cars too right so there's more sins to like fight over here yeah but here's here's where I think people are missing the
bigger picture and this is where I think we're gonna bring it back to you in a second here you you you love maybe a BMW most people don't even know where that symbol comes from can you even read it no because over time like many things you associate a unique symbol Mark word
Mark with an idea of feeling a consistent product or service Mercedes is a three-pointed star many times people ask to or who are asked to draw it they draw the P symbol they don't even know the symbol and nobody's complaining about it you know so it's like everybody's just relaxed and I think
it's a it's a big bold and smart move for for Kia in companies like Kia to move a wave from letter forms and moving into iconography so hence I never saw it as a KN and I could still unsee it it doesn't bother me at all it could be a lightning bolt for
all I care you know Lamborghinis is a bull you could barely Ferrari's lettering is terrible from just a purely designed point but I'm not buying it for that yeah okay so when it comes to you and you writing something and somebody's like well the journey isn't quite legible James now they're asking you
to kind of change it yeah to move away from why they hired you in the first places I think what you do is you inject a lot of personality and it's expressive and most importantly it's human so we try it and I suppose you could draw them helvetica if they wanted but what's
the point yeah well helvetica but all but the whole book you know but you know broken up in a weird way too you know yeah but the whole book right is yeah illegible so yes it's yes yeah I would never just use helvetica for in a traditional form yeah you always have to
you always have to have that opinion in it you all there's always work there's always something that you can do to make it to make it interesting um and I'm you know I'm with you with with with uh you know on on the Kia logo you know um there are there are other
fish to fry right I remember early on when I first started out I was hanging out with with designers and Designs you know we were just getting out of school it was designing students and we'd go to a restaurant together and people would pick up the menu and they start talking about the
typography and I was just like oh my God shut the [ __ ] up you know like criticizing the freaking restaurant menu because of the bad typography or the bad spacing between letters or the leading or whatever I'm like oh my God is the Burger good yeah burger right um um I try
not to get into those things I think there's a bigger there's always a bigger picture you know there's a publisher that worked that I work with that they're gonna have their um tent they're having their 10th anniversary this year we've been working together for 10 years and I've done every single one of
their covers and their covers many of them are very close to illegible very close to their hard to read but when they're displayed they're displayed five at a time or ten at a time where they're displayed at the Tate modern in in in London or they're displayed like in the museum Modern Art
uh because there are other values to see my covers say be curious pick me up they don't say this is a book about a death that occurred in a lake you know I'm not trying to tell you what happens I'm just trying to say be curious pick me up yeah that is the
job of a book cover is it not yeah yeah pick it up yeah oh that's interesting oh let me then you're eating this bit and then you read oh then you read this bit and then you read the table of contests and anybody else oh dang right I say it is it is
a whole it is a whole it's it's the same hierarchy that you would use when designing a poster something big to stop them and then then once they see the big thing then they're gonna go to the second you this is your typography lesson right then they go to the hierarchy what's the
next thing I can see oh it's a tagline or it's three words that makes me curious because it goes or doesn't go with the image and then you you come up with the you come up with the with with with the uppercut because you show them the logo and it completely blows their
mind like that came from them like oh my God that's awesome or I'm still really freaking curious like and then you walk away and you see it three more times like I've done a number of um bus shelter and Subway posters in New York City and I never wanted to be clear I
never wanted to be clear because I knew my audience was going to walk by this twice a day three four times a week and by the third or fifth or seventh they're gonna go oh [ __ ] I get it that's awesome built-in timing I don't need I don't need immediate I want
that guttural that immediate gut reaction but I don't need immediate legibility oh um I want to come back to some of this um but I just want to say this because I'm sure people are having a fit right now I want to just let you know there is appropriateness there's a time and
place for super highly legible design I love how Vedic as much as some of you love helvetica I also can appreciate somebody's handwriting as expressive typography and there's a time in place and I guess you wouldn't want to design the manual on how to operate life-saving equipment handwritten in bold espresso not appropriate
of course and we're not inappropriate you know it's funny because I I you know um I mean I know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate and I try to play with the boundaries of that I remember you know early on uh it hasn't happened in a while but I remember being in a
on stage one time and having someone stick up their hand and they said you know Mr Victoria your early posters were you know uh were um not for profit so basically you didn't have a client telling you exactly what to do so so are don't you work more as an artist than a
designer and my answer my only answer and I'm not trying to piss anybody off or something because I said oh you're one of those people who gives a [ __ ] about that I don't see that delineation you know Paul Rand didn't see that delineation you know I'm in charmaya if the the
you know the big modernists they they they were they were commercial um graphic artists commercial artists but they were artists and they wanted that Artistry in in their work and the problem is I don't see that as much anymore I see either or I see artists and I see you know the the
the stuff that sticks to the script that that that fulfills the um the brief and that is rather dull yeah okay so I want to ask you how you developed this style of lettering and Design when did this come about and when did you know like hey I think I'm onto something here
um again so so to make it a really kind of a short story and when I when I was a kid I love stories that start like that and when I was a kid my mom worked in the reference Department of uh the University Library in our town and we lived outside of
town we lived in a you know a dead end Road outside of town so I would walk from school and sit down and wait for my mom there was no bus so wait for my mom to take me home and it was usually like an hour and a half to two hours between
time school got done and when she left she knew I like to draw so she gave me sheets of paper typing paper and pen and she gave me like um picture books to look at and the picture books that she was look that she gave me were graffish and print and European design
annuals from the 50s and the 60s and the 70s so I unconsciously was getting this this education of of you know the history of graphic design and I would like look at these things and I would like you know try to like draw them or try to do something different or try to
whatever um and so early on my influences were these kind of old guys um who eventually I met most of them which is really cool I just like got up one day and said you know I could go to France and I can meet this guy and this guy and go to Switzerland
and meet you know Mendel and oberer and I could meet you know all these kind of Heroes um um and I kind of it was kind of an amalgamum of of amalgam amalgam of like being interested in Franz Klein the painter being interested in motherwells knowing art and my parents had a lot
of art books in the house when I was a kid from from from Norman Rockwell all the way to the abstract stuff um and all of this all of this influenced me like if I if there was a typographical influence that was strongest in me is like I want to make work like
Fonz Klein but I want it to be words like his stuff is just these broad Strokes or sideworm Lee or some of these kind of um American Abstract artists who just do the work just it when I see it it just it moves my heart and that's the thing I want that's the
thing I want in my work I just want I want to do work that people just go ah you know there's there's there are three ways to to to to to get into some inside of a person you can do it intellectually you can do it through the heart or you can do
it through the groin right you can just go yeah it can be shock Factor um I want to in to to I want a mix of of uh of all three sometimes but it always always has to be smart it always has to be to be to be um in intellectual process not
an emotional process you are a very fortunate person to have parents who surrounded you with Art and Design and to have a mom who kind of paid attention to what you're interested in had the access to to graffis and some of these magazines and books that you were talking about because most of
us don't even know what that is and then the fact that you got exposed to this at a very young age like how old were you standing there waiting for your mom at the bench or whatever looking at these books really yeah 10 11 12 wow and um um and on top of
that my father like I was reared in the military and my father flew um and he was away and most of my childhood um but when he came back he would bring back magazines and um uh posters bull fighting posters from Spain and manga and early comic books from Thailand and I just
like what the hell is all and the interesting things Chris is that it was like words that I didn't I you know that weren't translated so that was I was just looking at the shapes of them and yeah it was fascinating really fascinating although I do remember once the Broadway Mecca toy that
had batteries in it and um it stopped working so I opened it up and I take out the batteries and they're little Triple A's but they are black and yellow and they've got like Japanese script all over them and they're just fascinating like little bumblebees or something and I went I went to
my father and I was like look at these Butters like I'm trying to explain to him like the intricacy and he's like he's like what do you care they're just batteries and I was like Wow interesting not everybody gets it not everybody cares that's fine that's fine not everybody you know I'm not
for everybody you know I'm not for everybody just the sexy people I don't I don't I I understand that not everybody's gonna like my my work I was going to appreciate my angle not everybody you can't you can't appeal to everybody it's just impossible um and the people who I remember once being
on stage and somebody was like really livid really livid that I was saying listen if you're just dealing with typography and color you know uh you're leaving so much more on the table you were leaving so much on the table and they were just you me you're discounting you know I was discounting
like their their classical design education that never once said what do you think what's your opinion I want to get back to the question though when did you develop this lettering style that you're so well known for when did you know that this was going to work I started as a book jacket
designer when I quit when I quit uh when I quit uh the art school and I was at I would think I was 21 and I literally started working professionally like three or four months after I dropped out of school and had not stopped okay but when I first started I worked out
of one of my teachers um Studios and he was classic book just DOT book designer from the 40s and the 50s I mean his you know he had done everything all the big name covers all the big name authors from Fitzgerald all the way through so my my work I would look at
him and go oh that's what a book jacket looks like right and and for the for the first year or more of my career maybe a couple years I was making book jackets look like book jackets and now I call that I was making the obvious more obviouser yeah like I was I
was following the rules that I saw in the bookstore uh self-help books look like this Romance Books look like this right they were rules um and then one day I started like um I was making good money too because I was following the rules and being a good boy right but I had
no opinion whatsoever so one day I was like I'd made money I bought my first motorcycle cash I was wearing nicer clothes and I was like you know what I'm a funny guy I'm funny I'm Charming I have my own sense of humor my own sense of timing my own sense of color
my own sense of style and proportion and this and that um and at the same time I started about the same time chip kids started so I'm looking over it looking over his shoulder and I'm like hey that guy is pretty sexy he's doing good stuff so I started putting my own handwriting
and I don't know that I know the very I had had it around here for a while my very first cover that I just did my own handwriting um and it didn't get turned down and I thought oh okay let's push this a little further and see how far we can go um
so all the the the the the where I am with my especially if we talk about typography where I am with that now is it an interesting place because I've gotten a little bit bored because it's just my handwriting I use different tools to kind of manipulate it I use like um like
a uh uh might might use a a sumi brush or I might use a a big a big Sharpie pink pen and then I cut up the tip to make it kind of more of a mop than a pen you know um but I've gotten a little bored of my handwriting and I'm
looking for something new now I'm looking for some new way to influence or some new letter forms or you know even more crude or more abstract more artistic forms to put on the page um so it's it's it's it's it's it's been a long process and it's influenced by you know early early
designers it's influenced by um European designers it's influenced by um painters and um um and now I'm just trying to I'm trying to I I don't want to hide you know I've always just been like people say you know your work your your handwriting is so iconic it looks like James Victorian I'm
like that's all I've ever tried to be is James Victoria I just want to get paid to be James victori I want everybody to get paid to be themselves that would be that's awesome and that's what you do which is awesome so just like you don't hide behind [ __ ] you don't
have to make [ __ ] up you're just like this is what I do and this is who we are and this is how we do it right yep now it can be hard for someone to hear this because I I think I don't think I'm going out of blend by saying this
James I think you and I and others like us are the exception versus the norm yes and because of that that's why I teach now yeah that's why you yeah right but it is it can be difficult because this is usually where people say I talked to Carlos Segura about the same thing
I love cars yeah he's like wherever he's like you could be bold and you can do this because you're Carlos segor and he goes no because I do this I am Carlos ago or it's not the other way around well people do that mean that they're like hey oh okay that's okay for
you you're James rhetorical like no no no no I have always always since I was 22 or 23 I've always pushed to be James Victoria and that means there are some times when you fail yeah you need to accept that you seem to be a person who has high self-awareness who has leaned
into all the good and the bad super transparent vulnerable how would what do you think the perception of the James Victoria brand is and does it align with your concept of who you are um I have a fairly good idea of the perception of me because um I'm I'm very active on social
media and I respond to everybody and the feedback that we get is is is um pretty spot on um um uh so I think that what I'm trying to put out into the world is is working um merely by testimonials Alone um um I never I think I was I think I'm writing
a new blog piece uh I'm writing like a couple things at a time here so um there's a new blog piece where I'm basically really trying to be like super honest how I have no idea what I'm doing I'm just doing it um I don't want to know the ending you know um
but I think that um because of the feedback like I gotta I gotta I gotta um a text out of the blue I haven't spoken to this guy in like over a year maybe more um very prolific author uh was a kind of a pal of mine we know each other fairly well
he's he's mentioned to me in his books um and out of the blue he was just like hey thank you for doing what you're doing he says you know you're you're pushing for creativity and you you know you free all of us and I was like who's us John well it was us
you're talking about but to get that from up here is kind of awesome um or to you know to get the the kindness that you show me is is kind of awesome you know because I'm I'm I'm at heart I'm like everybody else we are we're all like everybody else I'm like everybody
else I want to be liked I want to I don't I don't want to do work that makes people go well [ __ ] you you don't know what you're talking about you know I'm not a um I'm not a divider you know I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a lover
not a fighter yeah you know what I mean yes obviously okay well if if people if you were reading the comments right now scanning for like who they think you are what are the three words they would say James Sartori is um I don't know I guess I would hope that uh people
say uh um authentic or vulnerable that's that's one word and um possibly bold um um and it would be really it'd be really great if they said hey this goes really [ __ ] funny hahaha okay yeah you know I mean I want a certain amount of wit yeah and I don't like
the word clever clever is is demeaning but I like the you know I wanna I wanna make smart work um I want um you know interesting thing in that in those words is um I woke up a bunch of years ago in my commercial the commercial aspect of my of my work was
waning and I was like what what is that why I mean I'm not I'm not actively going I don't have an agent actively looking but and I realize that you know as you progress and get older um you know the lives it's the lives of the artist so the first part is who
is James Victoria right so nobody knows who you are and you're just toiling and you're trying to do good work the second is get me James Victoria and that's when when you're doing good work the third part is get me someone like Victoria right it's like get me the cheaper version get me
the you know the younger version and then the fourth part is who is James Victoria and you don't want that you don't want where you fade out right um um so I realized to stay vital and to just basically keep doing what I like doing I need to switch from actually making the
commercial work to one becoming my own client you know getting rid of the middleman basically and becoming my own client um and two um what older people get paid for is their wisdom and their knowledge and to share that so now hence writing books spending a lot more emphasis on writing and sharing
ideas um being being um open and available through social media that kind of stuff so let me just get this straight there's there's like four stages that people go through if they're lucky like some are not even that lucky you start out with in who is this person in total anonymity nobody cares
everybody's doing their own thing yeah you've not done enough work that gets you noticed and then eventually you do something consistently enough that people are like wow there's something about this character so now they are like you're in demand you're the name on the tip of everyone's tongue you're the top of the
list get me James Victoria and then you get to a certain point of success right or yeah or Christo and you get to a certain point of success where maybe you're too expensive now and somebody's like give me a knockoff version of Jane yeah they yeah I literally literally when my first book
came out when who died major boss people like would get in touch with me and they they'd say Oh I thought because that book came out a coffee table book they were like I thought you were dead or or they now think that you're too expensive or they now think that oh he
wouldn't oh well he we can't call him he would never touch it you know these weird things yeah and then you you kind of hit that that Pinnacle and then after a while there's the new newness the new hotness and then you're kind of part of like the old guard and no longer
relevant and so you're saying hey man you don't want to slip into the night quietly you want to share your knowledge you want to still make a Ruckus as South Garden would say yeah and you help move the ball forward which I think is a great point for us to transition to the
next part of conversation which I know we want to land here you sharing a story on stage I'm gonna queue you up and hopefully it's enough for you to start telling a story here now I got into a little bit of trouble because I use this term bricklayer I say we're all Brick
Layers if we're doing production if we're not thinking we're not Consulting we're not advising wear bricklayers and there's nothing wrong with that now you have a story quite literally I believe the bricklayer can you share that story because it was really moving yeah you know what you mind if I read it please
because it's because it came it comes from the book okay all right comes from fact perfection um hang on one second I might have to put my my specs on here all right take your time ah this is verb these are for protection purposes Safety First safety goggles so that yeah it's it's
it's chapter 10 in the book and it's called um you're a lot in life I had a young Protege this is a True Story by the way um he wanted to be a screenwriter but his father encouraged him to be a bricklayer like himself it was his lot in life his father said
the Arts don't make money bricklaying is a decent wage and the world needs bricklayers you'll be one like me so for 10 years my young Savant laid bricks and swallowed his dreams one day his father's best friend died presumably from laying bricks at the funeral the father got up to read a eulogy
that he had written my friend was moved to tears not by the eloquence of the goodbye but by the realization that his father was a writer so we deny ourselves our dreams so hard you know I mean this kid this kid is his his father should have been an author he should have
been a poet he should have been you know um I was just telling I was just telling Shannon the other day about a a pub when I was um first starting out as a book jacket designer there was a pub that I used to hang out uh a little Blarney Stone on 57th
Street tiny little place um um I go there after my shift as a book check designer I go like at five o'clock and it was all um cops and sanitation workers and these guys were politically astute and hilarious and charming and funny any one of them could have been could have turned into
Seinfeld any one of them they were that smart and that sharp and that funny and just to hear them and have conversations I'm like God you're a [ __ ] genius you know that you know but they would they and they would go like my father like nah nah nah I could never
do that well I could never do that you're right we just deny it so hard so his father was like no you're gonna be a bricklayer and and and and he's now a writer he's now a screenwriter like he wanted to be so it's a beautiful story there's a lot of lessons to
unpack in it when you told that on stage it hit me like how was resonating with the audience I was feeling something I looked around the room and I see them feeling something too the first part is the denial of one's gift and one's passion and true Pursuit four the Practical the pragmatic
yeah reasonable and reasonable and responsible right and and there's a clear plan forward and there's comfort and safety in that in that if you join the guild if you become an expert expert Mason yeah there's a person you know and you there's a path and we know it's predictable and we we can
have a certain life maybe it's not the life we wanted but it's a life you don't have to be a burden on your family or society and so the father says to his son give up your dream of screenwriting because it's like winning the lottery yeah and instead of listening to his mentor
he's like I probably you know I'm more more influential mentors my father better do what he says and so he does that and it's only in this moment that he realizes his dad has done the exact same thing he suppressed his dream and that maybe this writing thing runs in the family and
he doesn't want to make the mistake again yeah so it's that moment that he he cries to see like perhaps I'm interpreting too much here it's like the wasted opportunity of talent and and the gift that his father was given because presumably the father before him his grandfather had a similar conversation with
his father yeah yeah and it's like the battery story with my dad it was like my father you know my father built the house we grew up in it was an amateur Chef an amateur photographer you know what I would say wildly creative yeah but I asked my mom after my dad passed
I asked my mom I said hey you know if I if you if you asked Dad if he was creative would he you know admit to that she'd go now oh never never never but if I asked my dad hey hey Dad can you can you figure anything out he said oh yeah
I can figure anything out yeah and to me that's what that's what we do you give me a project you're getting something to build you give me something to break you need something to fix it give me some I figured out give me some you give me some blank canvas and and uh
and a nice chick and and you know I can I can figure out um even though neither of my parents wanted me to do this and they still don't you know they never understood until they until I took him to the to the MoMA for my for my first show they didn't they
only understood that I owned a house and had children and um those were the two things that they knew about yeah but anything else they didn't really understand and and I am I am who I am um because of them and in spite of them it's kind of interesting how we respond like
your your mom feeds you with design magazines and introduces you the world of art and culture but doesn't think that that might be your career is that there's a disconnect there it's pretty profound you know yeah well I think to them there there's this term that um that should be stricken from all
language and lexicons and slang slang and uh it's just the the term is a starving artist yeah uh because we throw that around here's you know here's another story like that Chris is um is I had another uh another Protege who I was um going through a series of coaching with and private
coaching and um um he wanted he wanted to be a poet and early on in the conversation I said so you know what were the block what are the blocks let's deal with let's go backwards let's go find the blocks let's go find those pre-recording voices that said no no no and he
said well you know what I I remember showing a collection of things that I had written in high school to my uncle who I thought was you know creative and his uncle said oh yeah no one in poetry don't don't you know don't pursue that so I was talking to my guy my
student and I said is your uncle still alive they said yeah he is I said okay go back and go talk to him and go ask him how many poems he tried to get published go ask him how many he wrote go ask him what efforts he put in or did he just
pull that expression out of his ass because it's a lie I personally know three people making a damn good living as poets with books and tours and the cut and and they're just humping and they love it it's not a hustle they just love it so so you know there's all these stigmas
out there that don't that aren't really true when do we know when it's time to say maybe that was a hobby and not something that could make into a career never do we go to the Grave push pushing in and persevering but never achieving any kind of real success if you do that
alone and don't share and don't talk to people then don't ask the right questions then yeah you'll go to the Grave you know pissed off but never never stop never stop I've seen Chris I've seen so many people I follow so many people on on Instagram and in different ways and and they're
vocal to me so so I look at their work I some of these people I'm like look at I'm like you know there's this one gal she draws flowers she paints flowers and I'm like oh damn like oh what do I tell this woman what do I tell this woman am I right
awesome keep going and you know what dollars to Donuts when I see these people later on I'm like [ __ ] she's doing the work she's doing the work it's getting better even if your work even if you think your work is bad keep going because eventually it's gonna get good you know
we're terrible judges we're I'm a terrible judge of my own my own my own Beauty My Own Strength my the quality of my work the the the the the the power of my words I'm a terrible judge but I just keep going and I talk to people I ask for what I want
you know I've got a I've gotta I've got a list of you know I still this book has been out you know two years and I still have a list and create a a list when a name comes up I package the sucker up in a nice box with stickers and a nice
letter and it goes out to this Chef that I've just heard about who's just but the best pizzas in the world and he lives in Phoenix or or Rick Rubin you know his new book is just like oh my God oh my God Rick and I used we speak the same language you're
getting my book you know I'm just gonna try to reach you you know we just keep seeking mentors and keep asking questions and keep talking to people if you work in a closet and you just keep stacking paintings up you know I yeah you're expecting dealers to and and buyers to come to
your house ding dong when you saw this person's work this woman who draws flowers that wasn't like oh like that was amazing I was like oh this is not very good that was like okay I just want to clarify yeah right and there's the part of you who says in your brain look
this is terrible oh my gosh where's this gonna go and then there's the part of you saying you know I keep going keep going I don't know how to reconcile that in myself I have to be honest with you and I have to ask you this question too I know you taught for
20 plus years at the School of Visual Arts your students will bring in work and it was like oh this is not very good were you like all right keep going or would you say like uh you know this is uninspired work it feels derivative or it it's like I think you need
to put more time and love and into this because I'm not seeing it here yeah I mean that's what I said about you know talk to other people get direction um so once once once I can once I have a foothold besides something to say you know ugh that's terrible um like I
said even if it doesn't speak to me no that's not important well I'm a terrible judge of other people's work too you know it's like people say hey James take a look at my portfolio I'm like okay here's my standard answer my opinion of your portfolio doesn't matter what matters is how your
work makes you feel what matters is how consistent how much practice you put in and what matters is how you good you are at getting it out the door right there's work out there that I think is terrible but it's successful so who am I so but what I can say to someone
who's drawing flowers and I think okay uh is at some point I I can start adding some some quality criticism say hey have you looked at so-and-so's work hey have you ever thought of putting it together in this in this you know in a in a in a a forum besides individual just
individual like make a drawing put aside make a drawing where's uh make a drawing put it aside most people know how to like put ink on paper but they don't know what to do after that like how do I now how do I get rid of this how do I commercialize this that's
a big question and that's a very individual question two you know it's not like there's one blanket statement down how to commercialize your work you know one is one is first of all you have to like the work second you know if you like it enough to be consistent about it second is
to be able to show it to people and and how to talk about it you know how to be brave enough to show your work you know um um and then figure out how to how to um um how to sell it how to put a price on it are you making a
book are you selling individual prints are you doing this you know I've got one guy who I who I who I who I've been talking to for for a bunch of years and it's we're extremely frustrating to work with him because he keeps jumping [ __ ] he keeps losing faith in himself
and it's like all of a sudden he's showing like watercolors I'm like what about those other things you were doing those are pretty good just you know be cool stay with it you know when people start people and I have to say listen people won't know what you do they won't know what
you stand for like I said earlier I paint with words that's that's my thing like I try to come up with strong powerful phrases and put them into a form that make them memorable like you know you know go f yourself for example um which is that's only that's a test because if
you come up with if all you can come up with is go [ __ ] yourself that shows a lot about you you know right as there's a frame print right behind you yeah yeah what does that say about James Victoria since like this is a test right here underneath it you know
um um and people love this because they take it home and then they put Post-it notes over it so it says free or find or fuel or you know feel or you know which is awesome yeah um but yes yes it's it is it is tricky Chris but I think that I think
that um I have to I have to I have to give people I think a big part of my job or my role is to give people permission I don't want to do that but I need to give people permission I had a uh there was a as I just got back from
Barcelona you know we met in Croatia I just got back from Barcelona and the story I told in Barcelona was a friend of a pal of mine literally um um he's been a Mark he's been marketing for years I mean we used to play tennis together in New York you know early 20s
he's been he's been in marketing for years and he writes me and he shows me all these goofy drawings that he's you know he says James I've been doing these drawings about my life he says and I think that's what I want to do I want to be an illustrator and I want
to tell you stories about my life I want you know I want to be an artist do you do you have any advice his name is Norman and I said I said Norman I think you're already an artist just keep going you know and I think I think we need that we need
encouragement we need someone to give us permission we need um um we need some guidance you know I also wrote to him and said what do you want some [ __ ] fairy dust like you know there's no magic I can't give you any magic but I can give you I can give
you encouragement and I can give you some inspiration and I give you some along the way I can possibly say awesome here's a vein here's a vein here's some other here's a three here's three other people who are doing exactly what you want look at what they're doing see if there's something there
for you you know go looking I don't know it's all Steinberg's work or you know like I don't know who see if there's some venue do you want to work editorial in magazines or you just want to publish on your own have your own story and your own little books start selling that
um and there's a there's the there's so many different ways to play it out that I can't predict what's gonna work for somebody but I can give them encouragement and I can give them permission um when you said vain are we talking about the vein in the body or a vein like a
Weather Vein pointing in a direction uh vein like a body meaning they mean a path there are so many different paths that work can take yeah I like to draw flowers what do I do with them okay do you want them in the museums do you want to sell them on cards and
you know in in bookstores do you want a collection of them or do you want yeah what's that where do you want to that's and that's just like the commercial end of it like how do I how do I unload these drawings um I I just have a crazy thought an observation here
is what you do in encouraging people to be more of themselves and to pursue what makes them happy a way of you parenting the way that you wish your dad might apparently [Laughter] the crazy question you gonna make me cry again I said James I when I was telling that story about uh
the in Barcelona about my friend Norman I literally said and in my best most fatherly tone I said I think you're already an artist keep going um yeah no totally totally I've mentioned it to my kids the other day at dinner and and my wife was like um we we were chatting and
I'm um I'm very gushy with them right um yeah I'm Stern and but I'm also like a you know I'm a Stern like disciplinary dad um but I'm also very gushy and very Hands-On with them and it was funny because I had said um said something to my boy um um and I
I it kind of got quiet for a second and I said I said Wyatt I wish once in my lifetime my dad had said that to me right he would just change change your direction you know I see it in my protege I see people who come to work with me or people
who like want to study with me um they we talk about I try to make them hip to their subconscious you know the pre-recorded voices that's that just constantly tell you no you know we're all born wildly creative the guy the guy you know on the roof across the street fixing someone's roof
wildly creative guy could be ingenious could be a painter could be wakes up in the morning with brilliant ideas but just doesn't follow through on them because of these pre-recorded voice no you've got to go to work no you've got a family no you have to do this no you have to right
um and those voices come from originally from family I had an assistant from from Russia who came and worked with me for a summer and she got real comfortable with us and she at lunch she told us this story that she want always want to be in ours so where she was she
came to us her company paid for her to be in New York for three months to work with us and her company did um event marketing so they did like big huge concerts and all kinds of stuff and she worked there but she wasn't really a designer right she worked close to designers
close to the artists and she tells us a story about how she always wanted to be an artist always wanted to paint always wanted to draw and her parents took her to the museums when she was a little kid and she said one day they took me we went to a museum or
a gallery and I came home and I wanted to express to my parents how much I love them and how much I wanted to be an artist she said I sat down and I drew the most meticulous the most beautiful thing I could draw a picture of both of my parents holding hands
and then she says that I called my parents into my room and I drew the picture on the wall and they flipped and in that [ __ ] moment Christo in that [ __ ] moment they destroyed her they destroyed any possibility of her actually being an artist she will always work close
to artists she will never make that leap because that thing is so strong in her so embedded that she's gonna get her hands slapped so I wrote a piece on this um it's called it's only paint like if you can't if you you know we have to we have to let our kids
do this [ __ ] and the problem you know the problem is you let the genie out of the bottle you know creativity out of the bottle is dangerous so you got to be ready for that you got to give it a safe space you got to say okay we're gonna do this
like even with even with my kids I'm like if they if they mention the word paint I'm like outside we're going outside it's raining we're going in the garage I'm like it's gonna be everywhere oh my God I can't handle it but James that's only paid please find out I remind yourself I
know but huge pieces of paper and give them a lot of space and let let because or else if I do it in the house I'll give him a huge piece of paper I'll do all this stuff but I'm gonna I'm not gonna be calm and I can't do that yeah so yeah
but these things stop us so with everybody I kind of try to take them back through you know say what's stopping you yeah what's the belief because I'm going to show you that it's a lie yeah can't make money as a poet lie right don't draw on the walls lie all this [
__ ] um yes I get it respecting of the house respect property I get that [ __ ] uh I understand but it's really just [ __ ] paint what's more important I say this to my kids all the time they make it they drop something in the truck and they're like well
I'm sorry that I'm like dude what's more important you or this truck he's like I am like yeah remember that okay so I I see like you as this Russian nesting doll okay so let me see if I can just pull them apart and show people what I see on the outside is
James Victoria the designer who sometimes makes book covers you pull that apart and then inside of that is an artist and you pull that apart and you see a writer and you pull that apart and you see a philosopher he pulled that apart and you see a therapist and a loving human oh
he ain't gonna make me cry again bam that's pretty good um yeah philosophy and uh quite frankly therapy because I mean it is Art therapy right yeah I like that you use you talk about these things I think you have much more loving nurturing encouraging energy than I do is something I need
to work on but we have I think similar goals that's why what you say really resonates I feel it right we just take different approaches and I think the world's more beautiful if there's more than one approach yeah versus one homogenized like you must do it this way approach you say and I'm
reading your LinkedIn bioses I help you get paid to do what you love what is the future's mission to help a billion people make a living do what they love we want to help creatives these people who are born wildly creative that go out there and not let that one voice that one
story that narrative that you can't do this this is impractical to help them fulfill that passion that desire because I believe this if people do what they love they'll be happier yeah and happy people have stronger relationships to make for better parents and they make more money they make more money and there
will be less fighting there will be less Wars there will be less hate crimes there will be less murder that'd be and the world would be a more beautiful place because we're living to our Highest Potential Maslow's hierarchy of needs correct at the very top is self-actualization so James Victoria you're helping them
to move from I need to make money because I got to buy food shelter clothing so you teach them a way up so that they can realize their highest yeah without you know without jumping ship and quitting their job yeah you know I get a lot I get I quite frankly get people
who like uh we took down all our YouTube videos but but I get people who like would write me and say you know a couple years ago I watched a video of you and I quit my job and now I'm doing this and this and this and this and I'm like wait wait
wait you quit your job you didn't talk to me first like what are you crazy what are you saying on your video effect perfection yeah okay well let's transition to where where I need to catch up with you which is she got a new site it's called your work as a gift I
know that you recorded it at your own expense some very high production lessons video content yeah to teach people some of these things where are you at with that and tell me a little bit more about your work as a gift um yeah you work as a gift is one of the one
of the central core ideas from um effect Perfection the book um and the whole idea is that you pretty much you put it fairly succinctly earlier is that when you were talking about when you're happy right so like you know I I just I I told you we're at a new house and
because of the new house I'm like hey I don't know how much shit's gonna cost I don't know how much the heating and the gas and the this so so I kind of cut back on [ __ ] and I and I and I quit my gym one because I don't live next
to the gym anymore I'm in a new you know two neighborhoods over and I drove by a gym and I was I came back to Shannon I was like hey it's a really kind of groovy jam and I like the people and and she said do it like no doesn't matter what it
costs do it she says when you when you exercise you are happier then you're more productive and then you make more money and then you're right so um but your work as a gift is um when you when you understand that you work as a gift um it changes how you think about
your work it changes um um what you make and who you work for um because you now understand that you no longer your your your your your purpose is no longer to gain a paycheck or satisfy a boss or a client your purpose is to is to give something of yourself you start
you start putting yourself in your work you know your purpose is to make yourself happy first and if you can do that if you can make yourself happy that excitement breeds excitement and then now you start to make other people happy you know before I was a commercial designer I I had a
bunch of odd jobs when I was in New York in art school but I always Drew and I always had little funny captions and I would leave them all over the place I worked at a Publishing House I worked at Simon Schuster for three four months in a summer and I would do
these people collected these things kept them in their office I knew that mine real work it had some meaning to it so why was I designing book jackets for [ __ ] I didn't care about you know they just put they give you a couple of envelopes do those I'm like oh okay
um so when your work is a gift what you're giving of people is something of yourself and that that has value like the girl with the flowers she's gotta figure out that level um I think we have very similar ideas you just have better writing solo you've got better feeling so you know
we should work together you know like you write better you know and you letter better and you uh you have the accolades of an artist and that when you say your work is a gift I've been going on stage saying to people you are the gift um and and for for gifts to
work you can't keep them you have to give them to people yeah the gift of them share and if you study like I did the etymology and The Roots and read about the gift um the gift is to The Giver the gift is to The Giver right and then if you look in
in poetry and literature um uh Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet there's a line that says the more I give the more I have for both are infinite it's out there I mean it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's right out of Napoleon Hill man right um it's it's just really hard for
people to stomach that idea Chris right you know that it's really hard for people to grasp onto that and go really but my mom doesn't like my work or they don't understand it or or I got criticized for for drawing in my books when I was in grade school all these silly things
that happened to us that become major blocks to us just allowing ourselves to be free and that's one thing I wanted to say to you is I think that there's something similar in what you and I do in that um we we we work to give people a certain amount of freedom Freedom
creative freedom yeah I want Finance I don't want I don't want I don't want hoodlums out there just quitting their job and writing graffiti and living in a you know in a shack I want successful powerful creative people if I'm one of these self-identified free-range humans and I want to play in the
victory verse how do I go down this Rabbit Hole where do I go what do I need to look up what does it cost me what do I get yeah um well the first thing would be to you know follow on um Instagram and and uh subscribe to our love love letters which
is our newsletter that we send out because most of those are um are literally just like love letters they're just like hey here's the situation I have do you have the situation like you know here's what here's what here's what gets my goal here's what stops me do you have this right so
so we try to be very vocal and um um Barcelona and moving his Shuffle the the schedule a little bit we're getting back to like the regularity of sending it out you know once or twice a week so news the newsletter um and if you really want to get curious then you go
into um um two things one is um born creative which is up now that's on that's on the site and born creative is my uh the master class that I put together which is based on that 20 years of teaching at the School of Visual Arts and I literally take people through um
um I've got a I've gotta I kept this class small so we could we could get some work done um for people and the whole thing is filmed and I give them abstract assignments meaningless assignments meaningless not like a reggae album because if I say reggae album or I say a milk carton
or I say you know certain all these we get all these um cliches all these references come up milk cows white uh Farms like the shape of the thing I'll let you know but if I say big nothing little nothing um nothing comes up if I say um always the other That's a
classic Victory assignment always the other okay design that show me that in two Dimensions they're like what huh what now so I show them how they can not only show me always the other in two Dimensions I can show them how to take what they've come through because they all they have is
their opinion they present their opinion and I say okay now how do we change the world with that now and now I'm the client I've given you I've given you 100 a hundred thousand dollars I want a um a uh a billboard campaign how are we going to take that simple thing and
and and change people's ideas on culture or on never politics but how on culture or social issues or this or that and it is fascinating how quickly they get there from from a complete abstract to something that literally has meaning for other people it's great I love it so um so that's that's
the that's the master class that we have up now and we're just about to um um one of my dates in the next two weeks I don't have the dates in front of me the the next couple of Mondays we're going to start really we're going to start um a new subscription and
there'll be three different three different three different levels and it's called um uh the right answer excuse me the right question because that's the thing we get a lot of questions but we don't get the right question yeah so it's going to be it's going to be built on the audience writing in
their questions and me answering them um and help literally trying to help people go from I've got these drawings what do I do now so born creative yeah uh it's a self-study course is it 200 199 it's 200 and I yeah I think I'm I think we we're we were going to give
you a a discount for your audience okay we'll include the link in the show notes if you're watching us on YouTube check the description below if you're listening to this we'll include in the show notes we'll provide all the links that James talked about including his Instagram handle so you can go check
them out you can subscribe to his love letters and we'll give you a code that you can use if you wish to go down this Rabbit Hole I do want to point out something that the assignment that you described is pretty genius as a teacher myself identify as a teacher I've taught for
over 15 years not as long as you but I can see the genius in the assignment in the way it's constructed it says a lot about the teacher so when James is talking to you about this assignment but is did you see the big nothing where the big uh big nothing little nothing
big nothing little nothing what he's trying to do is give you a brief that you can't fall into any tropes any patterns any uh instant easy solutions you really have to think and you have to pull something out within yourself yeah so you're like okay find James Victoria I'll just make something abstract
and weird and you'll be happy and then the second part to this assignment now you gotta go make it commercial so now he's activating both parts of your brain in its purest form right brain creative left brain let's go make some money that I don't know how else to end this episode except
for James is going to teach you how to get paid to do what you love in the most beautiful way and in that happy space in between I think we can be successful happy productive humans awesome yeah James Victoria it's been a pleasure dude Christo you're a genius I love you thank you
so much it's mutual foreign
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“I want everybody to get paid to be themselves.”
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