Modern Wisdom - #167 - Bruce Duckworth - Designing The World's Biggest Brands

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Bruce Duckworth is a designer and the Co-Founder & Co-Chairman of Turner Duckworth Design Company. Amazon's smile logo, Coca Cola's rebrand, Samsung, Elemis and Metallica are just some of the companies who owe their branding success to Bruce Duckworth. Expect to learn what it's like to sit in a briefing with Jeff Bezos, the full creative process behind generating the world's biggest brands, why packaging truly is the essence of a brand, how to have better meetings, how to monetise your creative passion and much more. Find new clients and raise your profile as a Fitness Professional by signing up to FitBook at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (enter code MODERNWISDOM for 50% off your membership) Extra Stuff: Check out Turner Duckworth's website - https://turnerduckworth.com/ Follow Turner Duckworth on Twitter - https://twitter.com/TurnerDuckworth Follow Turner Duckworth on Instagram - https://instagram.com/turner_duckworth  Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello friends, that's right, it is podcast time. So get ready for this one. Bruce Duckworth is a designer, he's the co-founder and co-chairman of Turner Duckworth. It's an award-winning international brand identity design firm. That is a complex way of saying that Bruce and the people that work for him build the biggest brands on the planet and when I say the biggest I mean Amazon's smile logo which you'll have seen on every box you've ever had delivered was Designed by him and they do Coca-Cola and Samsung and Elimis and Metallica So I just had to sit down with him and ask what's it like to work for Jeff Bezos.

You're not to sit down in a briefing and have Jeff Bezos at opposite you or to be charged with doing the rebrand for Coca-Cola. It's just so cool. So many awesome stories. There's some great tips in here if you are a burgeoning graphic designer or just someone who has an artistic tendency. There's some really nice takeaways from Bruce about how you can monetize your passion and some principles that you can follow. I'm pretty confident that if you coupled this episode with a couple from Richard Shoton and one from Rory Sutherland, you've probably got the beginnings of a world-beating branding branding, design, advertising and marketing company. So there you go, some free gains for you there. Credit modern wisdom, feel free to pay me 10%. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Bruce Stockworth. First things first, did you come up with the Amazon Box Smile design?

Yes. How many people do you think have seen that? Everyone that's listening, think about the last Amazon parcel you got, it was probably this morning. The fact that underneath Amazon, there's a little smiley face, but it didn't used to be like that, apparently. I went on your website, didn't used to be like that, used to be the other way, like a frowny face. Let's talk just to tell us about that. Yeah, so that's how many people is an interesting question. I think that somebody had worked it out, that just the logo printed on packaging

had been printed on packaging about 100 billion times. And I've just never, you know, that's just extraordinary. That's just packaging. That's a little loan, not on its side of airplanes or lorries or on websites, with gift cards or resets. So that's just an extraordinary That's a little loan, not on its side of airplanes or lorries or on websites. Gift cards or resets. So that's just an extraordinary thing, isn't it? When you design something and you're responsible for drawing it, and then it's repeated so many hundreds of billions of times. It's just unbelievable, isn't it? I suppose we didn't think it was ever going to be as big as that. Obviously, you know, I mean, who could have imagined?

I'm sure even Jeff Bezos didn't realize it was quite as big as he's got now. It was, I think we was about 20 years ago. Amazon were, they were the biggest bookseller, online bookseller, if you remember. And that's all they did, just bookselling. And they, it was, we have an office in San Francisco and we were working on a lot of .com boom and the subsequent bust kind of companies around the kind of 98 type time.

And Amazon wanted to change their business model from being just an online bookseller to sell everything on the internet. And so the meeting with Jeff Azos was we need to, the brief for him was we need to tell everybody that we're now selling everything on the internet, not just books. And we also need to tell everybody that we are the most consumer friend, we want to be the most consumer friendly company on the internet because at the time, although that seems like everybody is at now, at the time, that was quite a big deal. And so those are the two things we had to communicate. And the, you know, logo design is about communication. And so you have to try and find the unique thing that is to do with their name

and what they're trying to communicate. So Amazon, we were lucky or we looked hard, I guess. There's an A and a Z in Amazon, if you think of the name. And so, an arrow that went from A to Z means everything, right? So, we thought if we could link the A to the Z with a smile, which was a sort of, you know, looks a bit like an arrow, but is also a smile, it goes from A to Z and it's sort of consumer-friendly. Which is a sort of, you know, that's the answer right to the brief. Because it turned out that the logo before had a sort of underlined,

which was a sort of like a sort of frown smile, like an upside down smile. So actually just by inverting that and adding the arrowhead to the end, we managed to move it sort of manipulated from being one look of a logo into the new logo with meaning. And I think that sort of has done as well. I mean, wherever I go in the world, there is a piece of my work on someone's face. Who did the actual piece? Was it you that drew the thing? You specifically... Well, as someone in your team. I, in my team, it was a guy called Anthony Byles. Smiles Byles, we called him after that. No way. That's cool. Congratulations Anthony.

Your work's been served by billions and billions of people. Am I right in saying, Jeff Bezos said, anyone who doesn't like this logo doesn't like puppies? That's exactly what you said. I mean, it was a response, but somebody on it in his team, you know, you had these, there weren't that many people in his team.

It was very kind of, you know, talk to the main man and the key people, but there was somebody in consumer insights who said, shouldn't we at least test this with consumers? And he was like, really, if you're like smiles, you don't like puppies. And so, yes, that is a true. And actually, you know, like puppies and so yes that is a true. And actually, you try and capture a little bit of the personality of the company in the

logo. It's obviously just a symbol. It can't do everything. But actually, Jeff Bezos has a very sort of gophering laugh and somehow, when I see that smile, it reminds me of him. Jeff Bezos encapsulated in type and in type and in type. But it is amazing when you, you know, and I think that's part of the joy of graphic design, you know, and what I love so much about design is that, you know, when you do create

something, which has, you know, something good about it, that literally billions of people could see it, you know, it's not a one off. It's designed to be published many, many, many. Legacy, right? It really is very transcendent. Hearing the richest man on the planet behind probably the single most popular consumer company on the planet, likening the logo that you made to puppies, there's not many higher accolades that you can get than that, right? I mean, where'd you go from there? Exactly. Is there anything better than a puppy?

Yeah, no. I challenge anyone listening to tell us anything that's better than a puppy. So we've kind of scared around it. What do you do? What is Turner Duckworth? So, we're graphic designers. We design logos and the packaging and the visual identity for brands.

So, how would you know things that we've done if you walk into any supermarket and you pick up a piece of packaging, somebody has designed that packaging. And what I mean by that is they've designed a logo, the colors, the typography, the illustration of photography, has all been created by somebody like me. And so that's what we do. We create the look, the visual identity of a brand, and the way that sort of starts is often on packaging design because that is the one piece that everybody gets to see. And it's really the closest thing you get to the product itself. So for example, we redesigned everything for Coca-Cola

about 10 years ago, probably now. And when you think about a bottle of Coca-Cola, the closest you come to the liquid itself is the packaging. I mean, it has to. And it becomes something. And so it's inside you, yeah. So it's exactly. So the packaging becomes a truly sort of truly iconic thing and yeah so that's

what we've designed for all sorts of different people. And I have a company that has about 120 people and about 80 of those are other graphic designers and the rest are support team that make all of that work. Wow. That's so cool. Were you guys anything to do with the names on the Coke cans? Was that part of yours? Oh, you had to bring that up, didn't you? Very, bruised. Oh, inquires.

The same time. But no, that was done by an Australian team at Coca-Cola. Designs local of the anyway, even the ones without the names on. They look lovely as well. Well, it's a sort of interesting, you know, when you have a company, you know, we started by working for lots of little tiny little brands. So, you know, it wouldn't be unusual to have seen our work for start-ups. So, for example, innocent smoothies when they first started.

We did the original bottle, the shape of the bottle design, and that would have been a typical kind of client of ours back in the day. And then as we got more successful and the bigger guys came to see us, and ultimately the biggest brand in the world was Coca-Cola, Consumer Brand, and so to design that was an amazing thing. But of course, what they loved about our work, which is the reason that we got the job in the first place, was that we were able to get across a kind of interesting, looking design across all different sort of touch points,

which is every time you sort of see or touch the brand. First of all, companies, and they wanted to do the same for a big company like Coca-Cola, which can, a Coca-Cola, those kind of companies can come across as the kind of enormous corporate giants, and who wants to have any kind of consumer relationship with those kind of companies, they seem austere and like a big system. And so, you know, although we designed the packaging to start with, then we design everything else and the way and guidelines for the way everything looks. And our idea with Coca-Cola was to stop it looking just like a big corporate giant,

but to give it some kind of friendliness and humanity. Like there are actual humans in the Coca-Cola companies. There are, I'm sure there are actual humans in the Coca-Cola companies. There must be some rather... There are, I'm sure there are. We are no there are, rather than just a sort of big old corporate giant. Well, bizarrely, with the small company, you already have that brand communication just naturally. You know the size of the company. Everyone knows that Coca-Cola is big, so it makes sense that oddly from a signaling perspective, the small company

wants to potentially look more corporate because it signals that they have gravitas and they're established within the market. And then you get to the point where you have gravitas and are established within the market and you're desperately trying to look like John down the road who's just started his little company. Yeah, I mean, it's exactly that's exactly true. There's a there must be a sweet spot for the type of brand and the right exactly the right moment. And but you know, when you've got a brand that's 125 years old, like, I go to it's constantly reinventing itself. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly, that's exactly the, the, and you know, and the, I guess consumers are also looking for new things. And

you know, they don't want to just be buying the same old stuff all the time. And certainly if a brand like Coca-Cola starts to look old-fashioned, it's been around for a long time. You can see sales drift off. So what we do is keep them up to date. People say to me, do you really really can't really have designed the Coca-Cola logo?

Because that's been around for 125 years, which is true. Interesting in that Coca-Cola script, it's called a Syrian script, was actually taken from the original of that, was actually taken from the handwriting of the accountant of Coca-Cola who had the, the accountant's back in the day when he had his big ledges, had the most amazing calligraphic scripts. And so, yeah, that's where it originally came from. And over the years, that has been slightly tweaked and slightly tweaked to make a little bit more legible and a little bit more beautiful.

And although consumers and customers and customers and people, I mean, I don't know, I don't really like the term consumers, but that's what we all are. You don't notice the difference necessarily all the time, but it stops the brand. What we do stops that kind of brand becoming old fashioned. It must be a challenge. There's so many doorways I could go down here. It's like, I finally get to speak to Santa Claus and ask him how all of the toys are made. This is kind of how it feels a little bit.

Well, I'll tell you if you ask the right question. and ask him how all of the toys are made. This is kind of how it feels a little bit. But. Well, I'll tell you if you asked the right question. I'm desperately trying. I promise. It's certainly one thing that I think there is reinventing brands that don't need to be done. This goes out to my business partner, Darren,

who insists every year on us updating the artwork for our club nights, whether they're performing well or whether they're performing badly. And I'm like, man, there has to be a point. And the reason that I don't like it or that I have an aversion to it is that the market changes by exactly one third or more every year because the students leave. I'm like, look, at least one third of the people see this is brand new artwork. And because we tend toward younger students in any case, I'm like, the ones that were our market last year, they've already

pissed off, they don't care. But with the Coca-Cola thing, there could be a potential where you try and reinvent something that actually is fine. And I can imagine there'd be a lot of meetings where people sit around and say, we need a new design, we need to inject some more newness into this thing and you're like, ah, maybe that's not quite right. I wonder how many brands overshoot on refreshing their look. Well, I think, yes, I think some do, but they're actually more likely to not even try it,

not to go anywhere near it, I'll be shooting, because they're often so cautious. I mean, these are billion dollar brands. You know, they really are selling an enormous amount of product, and they really don't want to get it wrong. Because there are sort of channels of promotion and communication, which people hardly ever see, or half your audience never see. But packaging is one of those things that everybody sees. So it's an incredibly intense process of getting exactly, exactly, exactly right.

Exactly the right color rating. Exactly the one that I'll specific your guys have to be. Yeah, and I think over the years, I mean, I'm an art student. That's what I started by drawing at school and things. And you end up doing this. What I suppose we've done is we've become enormous specialists in the skill we have of choosing the right typefaces, choosing the right colours, the way the lettering is drawn, illustration, photography, all that kind of thing.

I can make things these days. If you say, I want it to be a little bit, look a little bit more classy, I know exactly what to do. But I want to make it a little bit less. You are a dream, Bruce. Because it's like a mixing desk, right? And you just pull things up and push things down. Because we have all graphic designers have this sort of, we see in, we see in, we're not in words or numbers like some of your guests have been, but we see we just work in pictures the whole time. Yeah, in my mind, I sometimes feel like I can remember

so many visual things, and I can't remember the last thing I read, even if I read it, two minutes ago. But I can remember things I've seen. When you have definition retention. Yeah. When you guys are working at the, it's Premier League design level, right? Biggest companies in the world, most important projects in the world. You need someone who, in the nicest way possible, has a freakish side to one particular domain of their competence, right? You need someone who literally can only see in pictures, can take the word. And you've touched on that there. I want to get into a couple of things. One of them being entrepreneurs and how we,

me as a good example, can communicate with other versions of you more effectively. And you've touched on it there about that. I want to just a little bit more sort of classy. Or can we have it a bit more kind of like edgy? And what people do, what I'm trying to say is I'm using a word, which is the closest proxy for an impression of something I want to see. And that's so inefficient. It's so many steps removed, but the fact you guys being able to take that and then have the skills to deploy it. Yeah, that's where I mean I think the skill is you know particularly when you come to do things like a logo for example I mean Amazon is just is it is any prints in one color you can't I mean there's nothing you can do

really with color particularly it's only got you know just a few letters and how do you communicate all these things and so we spend a lot of time when we've got a design, figuring out the reason why that design is the correct design for the client. And so we would use a lot of the words they've used, the edge of the class, or all those kinds of words, and explain how that manifests itself as a visual. So if it's class, what does classy mean visually?

I mean, I know what it means. In your head, it's the same as in my head. And so you could, by going through every single kind of personality trait that they're trying to communicate, you can sort of narrow it all down graphically to something that makes sense at the end. And you can sort of see in a typical presentation, in a good presentation, you can see clients kind of nodding along

and nodding along and you go, so this is the answer and they nod. There you go. Thanks for having me. That was great. How did you do that? So you often only show people clients, probably a maximum of three solutions.

Why? You know, because actually it's much easier actually, it's much easier. It's much, much easier if I were to give my team designing a logo, they go off and they come back and show me the logos that they've worked on for a few days. And there's maybe 50 logos there. Now I could take that to a client, and I could say, we've done 50 logos for you, which one do you like?

But then actually, they're then put in a position where they're becoming me, a creative director, because my job is to take but the best and only show the very best to the client and hone them until they're perfect. And I think it's a kind of lazy to show more than three. In fact, the hardest thing would be to show them one solution because then you would have to be absolutely spot on. It tends to be that you have to show clients more than one because the way they describe what they want

has slight different nuances. So you have to just tease out from them which one they really mean. This is a bit more classy. This is a bit more edgy, this is a bit more whatever it might be. But the principle and what you're trying to communicate through the symbolism is exactly the same. That paradox of choice is a real thing. When you have the entire world of shapes and colors at your disposal to make something from.

It's gonna be a chance. So, you design, you said, product like packaging, the way that products look and stuff. I mean, if you wanna put wings on a mcnugget's box, can you do it? Like can you just say, we really think that the wings would look good.

You mentioned about something having movement in it. Yeah, I sure you can. I mean, it's all possible, right? You have to, I think consumers are very, they think long and hard these days about recyclability and sustainability. And if the wings you put on a Muttucket's box are completely frivolous and superfluous, then they probably will think that's exactly what they'll think it is. So I think we have to think like consumers. I mean, in the last 10 years, our relationship with those kind of brands has changed because we do, particularly with food brands, because of course we deal with the aftermath of the product, you know, the packaging is litter and you know, whether it's recyclable or it's not recyclable, you know, we have to deal with that much more than we used to, we just used to just throw it in the

bin and forget about it. And these days we, yeah, we have to sort it out and we're very aware of what's good for the environment and bad. And so I think and brands that are, you know, excessive, you know, consumers don't like them, which is fair enough. Okay, I find it so fascinating that you start with the packaging and then work from there. I think it's so close, isn't it? So we designed the Visual Identity for Levi Strauss, the jeans, you know, and they're on the back of, and they have kind of packaging, you know,

they have a logo on, which is a little red tab that goes in, sewn into the back pocket. They have another logo that is across the back pocket, which is too sort of curved, it's like almost like a seagull, a flying seagull, kind of in very simple terms, called the Arcuit, which has always been a trademark of theirs. And then they have that leather patch

that you stick on the back of the gene. All of those become their packaging. Now, the denim trousers without those elements, are not lily eyes, but with them and the buttons as well, with them and all the trademarks that go around those, that's a pair of leave eyes. So the packaging is sort of absolutely essential to the product in a lot of cases. I love the way that you said about the packaging being the closest that you get to the product, especially with stuff that you consume.

Yeah. And where? I mean, if you're, you know, the logo is that you're wearing on your t-shirt, you know, that's another form of branding and another form of packaging. Yeah. What does, um, love the unmistakable mean? What you're trying to do is to all the time with every brand that we work on is find a thing that is truly unique about them and then communicate that in their packaging and their logos and everything else that we end up designing. And unique is one thing.

And unique is we call that being try and be unmistakable. And what we mean by that is that like when I go on the tube and I go to the office, I don't take any notice of the adverts in the tube, right? I don't really don't, I've got my head down and I'm doing other things. But as I got the escalators, these adverts flick past the corners of my eye, and they are, I am registering some kind of communication from them, although I'm not looking directly at them, and I think that if a visual identity, the things that we do, if it's truly effective, even that little peripheral vision actually registers that that's the brand. And because it is completely unmistakable.

So there's a good reason that co-cola is red and PepsiCola is blue. They're very different, right? And they're completely unmistakable. And yeah, so that's all we're always striving for is to be so unique that you're unmistakable. You're right, so it does more of the work for you, having a brand image, which is unique and is unmistakable. It scales itself beyond the communication, right? You can just catch it out the corner of your eye. I know I'm McDonald's I see a McDonald's even if I'm looking in like five percent of my vision is able to see it. I'm like, I had some McDonald's over there. Yeah, exactly. And that's like combination of yellow and red that do that, you know, those design elements. Now, you know, it's become very interesting in the

last sort of tin. Exactly. In fact, it's almost exactly 10. It may even be nearly 11 years, because our design world was transformed when Apple produced the iPhone. Because Apple, which I've always thought is a company where they've taken design principles to their absolute perfection, I think. Some, the products are

beautifully designed, the user interfaces beautifully designed, how they use their iconography of their Apple. If you're an alien and you landed on this planet and you saw an Apple store, you think we worshiped apples. It's that strong. And that strong and that's of apple you are right. Yes, and what the iPhone did was it made everybody realize what good design was and it put the standard way higher than it was before and particularly for these very large brands and the kind of the Coca-Cola's, the McDonald's, who I think had fallen out of step with good design and had spent all their money in other areas of communication. They realised that then, and certainly when we did our work on Coca-Cola, we want to be as good as Apple are. We need to be as good as Apple because our consumers are seeing

Apple every single day using, they're sitting their hand our consumers are seeing Apple every single they're using They're sitting their hand is in their pocket. They're seeing it every single day You know that beautiful box that your Apple iPhone comes in you know those kind of experiences are pure design experiences And they communicate to the consumer about quality that everything's been thought of you know And so you know by considering design, if they feel like everything consumers think then that everything that Apple produces has been carefully considered, which it has. A friend of my work for Apple and said to me, we don't send an email to anybody unless it's been through the design department because if we send one email to our Apple iPhone customers,

that's how many hundreds of thousands of millions of whatever it is of people, is that? You get the design wrong there. And it kind of, the whole, the whole, everything, everything so cohesive. And so I'd like to personally thank Steve Jobs for, you know, for promoting design in a way that other brands at that scale hadn't done it used to be a much more elitist thing, you know, where good design was seen in opera, posters for operas and beautiful, you know, expensive luxury products and spirits and wines and that kind of thing. And now I think that the good design is actually much, much more for everybody, which is a much better thing. And in flexion point of that was Apple releasing the iPhone. That's so incredible that a whole, you know, it's not as if what you're doing is

new, a new media, you know, people have been designing stuff for ages. And you can just look at the great logos of our time. You know, the probably the greatest logo is, I mean, depends on your religion, but I mean, the Christian Cross is a logo. It's a representation of the Bible. And a great, not a great example maybe, but I mean the swastika is also a fantastic piece of design, great design. I mean, it's based on I think the Hindu symbol for peace, I think, or oddly enough. And actually, you know, but it was an incredibly powerful piece of draft design. Not sure I believe exactly what the company stood for in that case.

Well, you don't need to. You can stand along as a good piece of art. As a good piece of art. Design. I remember, I don't know whether the listeners will be able to, but I remember buying phones, like maybe like a Blackberry in 2008 type time, 2009. And I remember getting that out of the box and it would be wrapped in cellophane and there'd be like a huge piece of documentation

that came with it and a big warranty guide and all this other stuff. And you are right, like when you now purchase, especially Apple are the elite minimalists when it comes to this stuff, right? And you're correct, opening it is one of the most joyous experiences of using it, which is again, very transcendent, very, very interesting. And really, every point that you touch a brand, whatever that brand is, should have the

equivalent of that, should be as good in whatever version, I mean, it's unlikely to be as expensive and as beautifully produced. But I remember we did something for Coca-Cola, which was, they had these little, so we did the packaging and we did the, and all these executions all over the world were being done by local agencies. But one of these executions came back and it was, and they said, we always have a little drink smat that goes, when you're on an aeroplane, and you order a drink, it comes, you know, Coca-Cola provide a little circular drink smat that goes

on your tray table. And, you know, I mean, it's a tiny little thing, right? And they said, oh, we said, how many do you produce of these? And they said, oh, we do roughly about half a billion of those because, of course, the scale, the amount of drinks you have. So, it's like, if you don't design that properly, then you're missing out on the opportunity of, you know, half a billion pieces of good communication. You know what I mean?

So these small tiny things can should be treated with care and attention. Yeah, it is this integrated cohesive and unified movement, this unified front, like a war, tripped moving and battle type thing, they all go at the right time at the right pace, I think, definitely seeing.

And you are right, I notice a change in the way that brands communicated, pre-iPhone and post-iPhone, and it definitely does feel like that was an inflection point. There might be some people listening, I think, well, this is interesting from a consumer perspective. I don't really know how communicating with someone like yourself, a creative director, a graphic designer, or whatever, is that interesting? Or that important for me, I suppose, in my life, but I challenge anyone to not have a problem with a graphic designer at some point in their life.

Like everybody, you've got your mum's 50th coming up and you've got to make a Facebook cover photo, a banner for Facebook or your brother started a dog grooming service. So you post recommendations online saying, does anyone know any good local graphic designers and get a million different things that come back? So I want to ask how as a client and also as a graphic designer, I know that our designer, Johnny, will be listening. Shout out Johnny, you're awesome. And a bunch of other graphic designers, creatives and stuff like that.

How can you ensure from both the graphic designers perspective and from the client's perspective that the brief and the communication between the two is as smooth as possible, there's no superfluous stuff in there, it's as efficient but as thorough as it needs to be. Have you got some strategies of how you do that? You mean between the client and the graphic design? Correct, yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Well, how does it become? I mean, I think back in the original kind of graphic designers who were

originally, like graphic designer used to be called commercial artist, right? That's what it was called before the we were all called graphic designers. And that kind of tells you a little bit about actually it's more descriptive of what we do. You know, it is a sort of art, but it's a four other people. It's the commercial part. We do it for money and we do it for other people. And there were always stories of how these kind of iconic, you know, spearheading graphic designers would stand on the windowsill of a 10th story building saying, buy my idea because it's so brilliant and I'll throw myself off if

you don't buy it, it's that good. We don't do that anymore, we don't need to do that anymore, right? And so I think the communication is just, it has to be, what we're always looking, what is a graphic design you're always looking for is that, you know, as I say, we think in pictures. So, whatever you say to me, that I need to translate into something that becomes a piece of graphic design, I have to be able to put that into pictures. Right, so you could, you could give me some words and say, Bruce, I need to be exactly like this. You give me all these quality high-end, whatever it is. But if I can't actually make it into a picture, if I can't draw it, if it's just something you just can't draw because it's a feeling and it's an emotion, you just can't do it.

And so I think the communication has to be like the designer has to speak to the client and explain that kind of thing to them. So that whatever they say, they can give them a 200 page marketing report and say, now I need logo, can you do it from that? And you say, well, there's no way I can condense all of that into a logo. You've only got one color and four letters, whatever it is. There's no way that can happen. So I need to tease out that conversation between the client and the designer has to be teasing out of the really, really important bits of information. What

do you really want to say? What do you really want to communicate? And then when you've all agreed that that's the right thing, then go away and work at it. And then come back with solutions that really do answer those four or five words, whatever it is, that has to, and so there's no room for getting it wrong. Should you always do your first briefing in person? Oh, I always, yeah. Because you, because how do you know, Jeff Bezos has got a good, foreign laugh,

if you've never met him. Well, you know that that smile is right for him, you know. I mean, you know, that's not the reason we did it, but it nevertheless is part of the personality of the company. So absolutely, you know, there's a, or whenever you design a, for example, a beer, like a brand of beer, you know, and you design a new beer, if you go to the brewery,

there's always, you'll see things, despite what the client will talk to you about, you'll also be observing all these different things, the way they brew the beer, the way the hops come in, the way the shape of the, whatever it is, the stills or the... The type of people that are brewing there are the pigeons that rest on those things outside. Exactly, and there will be a weather vein on top of the brewery and you'll get, oh, that's interesting, you know, or the brewery gates will have a bit of curly metal that will inspire you. So yeah, you have to really immerse yourself in it and see that. I think that's very, very, so of holistic artistic all-encompassing view. I think that's very, a very, sort of, holistic, artistic, all-encompassing view.

I think that's a really cool way to do it. I guess as well, the implication is, as a client, if you have an agenda and if you're desperate for your designer to not come up with something, you're going to have to strap blinkers to the sides of their eyes so that they walk through the bruder or what would you, particular premises and don't look at the pigeon over there that weather veins look for you and this isn't a thing and blah blah blah, don't look at the gates. Yeah, maybe, maybe, I think that there's, you know, some clients would definitely make a mistake of saying, this is what I want, now can you go away and do it? And really what

you're trying to do is this is what I need to communicate, how best would you bring it to life? I like that, I like that a lot. So one of the things that we touched on before we started, which I think is a really fascinating topic, is how creatives can commercialize their ability. Now I know one of the guys that works for us at the moment, Ben, who will also be listening fine art student and his final year of his masters at Newcastle University just on an amazing display, which unfortunately he never actually got to do because coronavirus has kind of killed that, but unbelievable, like phenomenal stuff that he did. How can he, as a Fine Arts student, someone who's good at drawing, someone who's got an

interesting graphic designer, anyone else that's listening, who has a passion like you had? who's got an interesting graphic designer, anyone else that's listening, who has a passion like you had. How do they go from just being considered to be the guy that gets watercolors out in a conservatory three times a year when she's bored, to someone that can actually make a living out of it? How do you make that jam? Well, I think in terms of graphic design,

and I don't really know how you do it with Fine Art. I mean, obviously, there are some amazingly successful and rich and fantastic artists, but in graphic design world, what we do is we do work for someone who's got a problem, a commercial, usually a commercial problem, or an opportunity that they need a graphic design to help them in order to make them more successful. So what we do is provide part of the solution that makes them more successful. So we do have a value, what we produce actually has a value. You know, you know, that Amazon, I wish I'd just thinking about it now. I wish we had charged

for the amount of times it had been used. I was thinking if you'd got it, it's a very impression. You could have charged, you could have charged an unbelievably low price. Yes, exactly. Yes, I should have, yeah, we should have done that. That would have been a great 2020 hindsight there. But now what we do is we do things that improve people's businesses and there is a genuine commercial benefit in us getting it right. So therefore, we get paid for doing it and the higher up you get in the kind of, if you're the best in the world, you should get paid the best in the world for doing it. So you can. I think what's amazing, you're absolutely right.

I started off as just being good at art at school and then went to our college. What future is there for that? I've got loads of people that were just like my mum was just good at art, but she's not Rianne Hammers Amazon's new logo company. No, no, that's right. So, you know, it's just, you just have to do something where there is a, there is a proper financial benefit to a client for using you, you know, if you get it done properly and you get it done well, I mean, you know, we did that Amazon logo 20 something years ago, you know, and, and it's still being used. That's. That wasn't, I mean, it was expensive

at the time. I'm sure someone said it was too expensive at the time, but now looking back when it was cheap. That's because it's a phase of. Does it drive in that price down, getting yourself a good deal? Yeah, and also I think that something to be very aware of as a designer is that often it is your, you know, some people think being a designer is a kind of gift. It's also kind of a curse at the same time because you can draw things and visualize things and you think in a different way to a lot of other people in business. But also you can't kind of turn that off either. So, you know, wherever you go, you'll look at

your friend's house and say, wow, we've've painted it. It's not. But also it's sometimes they're prepared to do the work for not much money. Because they just want to do it because that's just what they just need to be producing in them. And so, and you have to be very careful of that because what we do is produce something that does have a commercial value and a benefit. And so you need to charge the right amount of money for it. And so in my business, we have people who talk to the clients about money, which is who is not me. So I can be as enthusiastic and love from a pure design point of view, love the opportunity

that's about to present itself and truly genuinely love it. And then I leave the room and they keep it as you need to go now. And we need to talk about money. The parents are talking now type thing. Yeah. Somebody else needs to talk about the money, who isn't the person who is going to be creating the design. Because I think that then there's just such a conflict because you're so desperate to do the opportunity But you know, I remember years and years ago my There was a recession probably middle of the 90s sometime and

1990s and we were working for Schweppes the software and company and they had decided that they needed to pitch out the design for a new software that they were producing. And they had a maximum fee that was going to be £5,000 to pitch because we would never do, we'd never do any free pitching, we always get paid for it in our industry. And I said to my dad, I said, you know, we just started this business. And I said, I don't know if I can do that. I said, I know it cost me 8,000 pounds to do the work. And they're only going to pay me 5,000. The other agents have said they'll do it for 5,000.

But I don't think we can do that. And he said to me, you know, you said, what the worst, what you're trying to do is service your clients. And he said, the worst service you could ever give your client would be to go bust in the halfway through the process of designing. Because literally nobody would have anything and nowhere to go. And he said, and truthfully, you believe that it cost you 8,000 pounds to do this work, then you must go back to your client and say, actually, it's going to cost, I'm sorry, but it's going to have to cost 8,000 pounds. Otherwise, the danger is we'll go bust and we'll leave you in the lurch,

if we were to win the job. So I did go back and I said that and we won the pitch and they paid us 8,000 pounds. Because it was truly, it was truly, it wasn't a con. I wasn't drawing a con the amount of end of it. I was just really wanting, I just need to upgrade my vehicle and petrol's currently like 120,

and the gallon and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I really like the idea of using, breaking the fourth wall in business communications, especially in meetings. I think that the days of very stodgy business meetings where the elephant in the room isn't addressed to me seem to be very, very and buried and perhaps that's just my preclivic I'm sure yeah, I can't imagine that in Civil engineering there's many like jokes that get cracked

But when you're talking about trying to uncover everyone's biases and elicit the responses that you all are hiding and sometimes even you yourself as someone of, you know, however many decades it is of experience within this industry, you might need some work from your client or your partners in kind of dragging that out of you. That's a person, I don't know what you, like that's just before we move on. What exactly are you trying to say? You know, that collaborative, is it zero, zero sum game, but not. It's like one plus one equals five.

That's what you're trying to get to, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's what you really, because a lot of people behind in particularly in those kind of meetings hide behind sort of standard words, the difference between some brands, honestly. I mean, they all have the same values. They all have exactly the same values.

And what you're desperately trying to do to make things look, you know, unmistakably visually, you need them to have an unmistakable difference in the first place, to be able to communicate that. And so you're desperately trying to uncover that. And sometimes it is literally, you've done the meeting and you thought, well, okay, we'll go with the best we've got here But we haven't really got the answer, you know, they haven't really opened up and it's kind of almost in the elevator down to reception That you that they say what they're really on. Go back up. Yeah, you know, and you go, well, why didn't you say that in the first place?

So I'm but you need to get them in that level, you know, you get really I understand in that level, you know, you get really deep. I understand. I played a game with Richard Shotton, behavioral economist, consumer behavior expert, and it was called, what words I hate most in marketing? And I wondered if you've got what words

you hate most in design. So you're sitting down with the client, so for instance, I could give you one from events, which is energy. It just needs to look like it's got energy, you know, it's like, it's a club night. Like of course, it's got energy in it. I need to, oh, here's another one. Here's another one for you. Student. It looks good, but could be a bit more student. What do you mean? Like I, I, I see myself writing these briefs and going, I hate me.

Like, if I was Johnny, my designer, I would hate me, but somehow he's just got the patience of an absolute saint, which I'm presuming a lot of graphic designers must have to develop. I think so. So I sort of, and also I'm wavering optimism that there could be something great here. So this is the 20th email where the clients sent me

just pure shit. But this time, it might be good. So are there any terms that you would, if you were president of global graphic design, are there any words that would be outlawed or would be banned? Brainstorm. Let's do a Brainstorm.

And the reason, it's like, you know, you do a workshop to think of ideas and nothing ever come, good comes out of them. Nothing ever. Like as soon as I hear that word, you're gonna run a Brainstorm. We're gonna have a Brainstorm with a client. Everyone's gonna get involved. Nothing good comes out that word, you're going to run a brainstorm. We're going to have a brainstorm with a client. Everyone's going to get involved.

Nothing good comes out of them, you know? It really doesn't. And so that is a word that I would just, well, I just like to, from a creative point of view, thinking about ideas, you know, you need to have thought of an idea and then go for a walk around the park or travel on the bus. And then when you finish that come back

wake up in the morning go is it still a good idea now? Probably not, you know, we don't need to think of another one. Like they don't happen with 25 people in a room. All collaborating and throwing ideas, they're just never happened. Everyone comes away from them thinking that was great. We all had such a great creative time but we produced nothing from them. I think they're completely overrated. You have a proxy for creativity, don't you, which is actually that the creativity is being masked under volume and just kind of a velocity of it to this and it to this and it to this. It's like put 25 people in a room talking about anything and they'll say a lot of words.

Yeah, yeah. And nothing, I don't think I've ever seen anything good come out. I mean, I've seen, you know, good connections with people come out of them, but not actually any good ideas. But actually going back to that word, student-y. I sometimes think student-y, people say that, you know, that idea is a bit student-y. And what they mean is it's a bit naive. But actually, sometimes I think that actually a student idea is pure. It's sort of, it hasn't had the effects of 30 years in the design business, lavish to comment. So actually, sometimes the student idea

can be the best idea. And it's the way of like, student-tea to me is actually these days, I think it's quite a good thing. I think what we mean when we say student is more bottles of VK and girls in denim shorts, I think that's kind of what we're very taught, but I think from a design perspective, you're probably correct as well. So again, I'm going to ask you a challenging question. This might be like, again, I did this erichid choosing your favorite children, but do you have a

top three designs or it could just be some that come to mind of all time? There could be your work, there could be other people's works. Just stuff that you love. Yeah, I mean, I love logos, I love the FedEx logo. If you have a good look at the FedEx logo. Red and black. Red, it's sort of a purple and orange actually. And what it does in between the word fed and the word X, I think it's between the E and the X, the negative space is an arrow. Can you see the little arrow in the negative space? Yes, I can. And I just think it's a delivery company and that's a great, it's strong, it's bold,

it's distinctive, it's unmistakable and it's also a little bit fun little idea in it, which is in this negative space is an arrow. Now, negative space is something which is the space in between objects. So when you go to art school, it's something that art students know about. When you draw a still life, I remember somebody saying to one of my teachers saying, there's a jargon of glass of water. They said, now to get the proportion of the jargon of glass of water right when you draw it, if you draw the space in between, so don't draw the glass and then draw the jargon extra in, draw the space in between. Look at the space in between, that's what a negative space is, right?, draw the space in between. Look at the space in between,

that's what a negative space is, right? It's the space in between things. And that allows you to get those two things in proportion to each other. And it's a technique that graphic design is used all the time. And so what you're seeing in that FedEx logo is that I can see very quickly.

First thing I look at is that arrow. I look at the next space all the time. And it's a wonderful thing because it's a very, somebody said, great design, great graphic design, was something that gives you a smile in your mind. Like when you see it, you go, oh, God, that's great. I love that. And I think that every time I look at that, that FedEx logo, because I see the arrow and I think,

oh, that's pretty smart. Well, I mean, it's a small smart, that it, as a two-dimensional image, has outsmarted me for the 32 years I think that's pretty smart. Well, I mean, it's a small smart that it as a two-dimensional image has outsmarted me for the 32 years have been on this planet, you know. But now, it's actually about it, you'll tell all your friends. I can't not see it. You cannot unsee that now. Yeah, and people who had said that about our emissant, though, the A to Z, did you know there was a small, you know, because there's A to Z, they went, no, I had no idea, you know. it says A to Z. I went, no, I had no idea. You know, and they've seen it.

I didn't notice the arrow thing. I got the smile. I was like, oh, I got it. I got it. It was a smile there. And it's like, it's so much more than you knew. Yeah. Well, and I think that's what makes a good piece of design is that the more you look at it,

the better it gets. And that you don't want to just give everybody such an obvious thing that they get it immediately. It's like a great album cover. The more you look at it, the more you see, and that's what makes things great. I think depth of thought and depth of craft. Similarly, as well, I suppose, you have to make it sufficiently visceral or obvious for one of a better word. It has to remote very quickly. Richard, on the most recent episode, dropped his statistic.

I think it's 98% of online content is looked at for less than a second. Oh, yeah. I believe so. I think you're talking about an unbelievably short amount of time. So you was a graphic designer, not only have to make something which is like this beautiful timeless legacy inducing layers upon layers of brilliance, but also immediately gratifying and recognizable and all the rest of it.

And I suppose that's why you guys get paid the big books. That's right, that's exactly right. Because you need to do both and it's not easy to do both. Yeah, I bet it isn't. Any other advert or a bit of packaging and stuff that you love that come to mind? I mean, you can't not love the iconic Coca-Cola bottle, can you? Because it is the curvature, you know, the... Who did that, you know? The contour bottle. Now, I believe... I don't know actually who did it. I know that it was designed originally by mistake in that, which is probably why it's so unique, somebody originally thought that Coca-Cola had cocoa beans in it, and the bottle, somebody originally thought that Coca-Cola had Coco beans in it, and the bottle, it doesn't. And the bottle originally, the top half of it, the most coveicious stuff that were the shoulders are, was in the shape of a like a cocoa bean. And that's why it's got this

coveicious shape. So that's where the very first bottle came from. Raymond. Raymond Lowe. Yeah, he didn't design it originally, but he, he, he, he, he, he, he sort of perfected it. And one of his, one of the ways that he was allegedly said that I want, it wanted to be so distinctive that if you were to drop it and pick up a shard of that glass, you know, it's from that shape.

Wow. Isn't that a great. Beautiful's there. That's so cool. I love that. The fact that you could take it to pieces and still from one component part be able to work out what it was. Yeah, because it's so distinct, it was so unmistakable. So that has to be probably the most iconic piece of packaging there is in the world, I would imagine. And then I think I go into

other areas. I love all sorts of other design. I love car design. It's a weird thing at the moment. Cars are a weird thing at the moment. They're not so popular. But the shape of a car, and that has an enormous emotional value and a technological value. And I think there's some, and these things are part of our lives. That's what I love about them so much. All those pieces I've mentioned, the Coke, Colour bottle, or the card design, or whatever, we use them every single day.

It's not some beautiful object that you stick on a shelf and you look at and say, it's things you use every day. I think that's what I love about it. That's what I love working on these huge brands. It's art. It's your art in motion, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

It really is. Yeah. Somebody was talking to me about when anthropologists, when they study ancient cultures, they look at the material culture, the things that were left behind by the culture. And from the things that were left behind by the culture, and from those things that they dig up, archaeologists dig up, they can tell the lifestyle of that particular race of people, so they know the difference between

Saxon and Norman because of the design of the pieces that they find in the ground. They have no idea, they never met anybody from those eras because they're all dead. But they make deductions based on the material culturally behind. And I think that that's what we are sort of doing as designers at the moment. We are producing the material culture of our era. And so in thousands of years' time, they can say, oh yeah, people, they loved Apple design, they loved the curve and there's beautiful screens. And they said something about us.

And I just think that that should be the most brilliantly designed stuff because it's part of our lives. I love it, man. The implications of having a serious approach to... And on the surface of it, it's not just about consumer behavior, because it could quite easily be seen as you say. Not once today have you talked about conversions or customer retention or margins and things like that. Although that's obviously going to be a consideration, but that's not your consideration. What you're thinking about is something totally different to that. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking that if you had a, if you're trying to sell more, we've just done special K, right, for Kellogg's, right?

Great. And when you, yeah, and it's, it looks different now, and I think it looks, it looks, it's a really good job, a really like what we've done. You know, what I'm trying to do is, I know what they need to do, which is sell more special case, right? And you can do that in a very basic way. You could do it in a very basic way. You could do it in a very mediocre way.

But I don't think that you should do it in anything in a mediocre way. I mean, you could probably get more sales by, I don't know, making a picture of the bowl of the cereal look a bit better. You could do a little bit of things, you know, those kind of things, but I think you should look at that design and you should transform it into something that is truly great piece of design. And of course, by doing that, it will get you more customer sales. I mean, we're all in it for the same thing. We still want to get people to buy more, special K. We want to do it in a way that gives the client the design that will last a long time and that is stands out and is genuinely unmistakable. Because then there's so much value in that for the client, so much value,

because then when he comes to read his under-again in five years time, you know, they can, they can build on that and make it even more unmistakable. And I think the big, sort of the enemy, everyone has to have an enemy, right? You're fighting against it. And that is mediocrity. Average mediocrity has just got to, you know, as soon as anybody does anything that you go, oh god, that wasn't all that good. It's such a wasted opportunity, and yeah, we don't want to do that. There's a, I'm going to rehash an idea that I've heard a number of times before,

and you may have done as well. It's a rory Sutherlandism about how people, especially in the advertising world, would much sooner fail at putting out a safe project than succeed at putting out something which is risky, because if the risky choice ended up somehow not working, that is the onus of that is completely on Bruce's head. He went out of his way to come up with this real left field, very unique offering, whereas if you just follow the formula, and you're like, well, we followed the sheet,

like it's just the same as the last 10 adverts. Why didn't it work? Oh, wait, okay, Bruce, don't worry mate, you know, sometimes these things just don't come off. We know that the formula works, we'll get him next time. And I think it leads to a real homogenizing of the brands. And you've mentioned this with cars,

like I didn't think about it until now, but you're right, like, I'm been excited by a new car design in ages, absolutely, except for Tesla maybe, which I look at now and I still think, like, you see an X, especially the X, it's so big and so imposing. And you're like, oh my God, god, that's such a weird, cool, different sort of car, but it's very rare.

So, yeah, I think people playing it safe, especially when you've got varying degrees of stakeholders involved, and your firm doesn't want to be the firm that fucked up Coca-Cola. And, you know, it's difficult balance. Yeah, it would be irresponsible to fuck up Coca-Cola and you know, like it is, it's difficult balance. Yeah, it would be irresponsible to fuck up Coca-Cola really. I don't think we've kept many more projects if that happened. I don't think you have either.

But you can't necessarily, there are clients who would love to go further than you think that they should go as well. The opposite happens. You think that creative people always want to push clients, but actually clients sometimes always want to push designers as well. We've had a spectacular failure, which I'm happy to tell you. Yes, I want to know.

I want to know. There's a lot to learn from it, actually. We redesigned Mr. Kippling Cakespling cakes, maybe quite a few years ago now, and it was at the time when Nigella Lawson was making cupcakes, and everybody was into home baking, and Mr. Kipling were going to relaunch as that kind of a brand, so they were going to not be, because they're sort of charming for what they are, which is a sort of, you know, everyday, you know, in plastic baked good, then everybody knows what they're like. They're just, they were, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they're so, they type product. And so we did this packaging that looked absolutely spectacular and looked just like a home baked Mr. Kipling would, you know, is all, is beautiful photography, it looked fantastic.

And Nigella Lawson would have been proud of it. And then about six weeks before everything was due to launch, the factory found it very difficult to replicate the actual products, the change of product, to look as good as the actual homemade product that we had photographed. And so they said, actually, what we're going to do is we're going to launch with the old cakes and the new packaging because the packaging loved it. I think everybody who saw it in consumer research absolutely loved it and said, we would just buy so much more if it looked like that. And that was a classic, so many lessons you can learn from that.

So they launched it with the new packaging and the old product. And of course, everyone bought it. Spiking sales went through the roof. And then, everyone opened it up. And it was exactly the same as it was in the beginning like what was on the outside. So you have to be truthful in everything that you do and although they wanted to move into a new area and be really exciting, which

would have been great had they been able to produce the product. There's a real lesson that you can't pretend to be something that you're not. You do have to just be truthful. And what they should have done was just stalled, relaunch, and got the product right and then launch the two together. That's what it should have happened, but it didn't. And that's a lesson. And we've never had many failures, but that's a fairly spectacular. I can't believe that you've been flummoxed by baking.

You've got everything right, and then some fella somewhere in the factory put too much butter in and now you've got your designs, Nackid, actually. Well, it doesn't work. Because what you're trying to do is be unmistakable in what you're trying to visualize, but you're also trying to get the truth of what the product is out to people so that they under no illusion, it has to be honest and truth and decent and exciting to look at and lying doesn't work. With that integration now, I think, and integrity and having Virtue as a brand from top to bottom, from packaging to product to pricing to a company ethos to all of that stuff, especially

now with always on 24-7 communication, which is seamless and happens across the globe. There's no room to pull the wool over customers eyes anymore. You can't be the psychopath, the traveling psychopath that used to take advantage of every town. And then, oh, I'm done there now, like that snake oil salesman my way to the next one. There's none of that anymore. You see brands, you see people there now, like that snake oil salesman my way to the next one. Like there isn't, does none of that anymore? You see brands, you see people say sentences, my Lee and Uppelis, I was reminiscing about

my Lee and Uppelis' fall from grace. Like one sentence on one podcast, and that's him gone from the entire public sphere. Done. Oh my God, Sargon of a Cad is entire Patreon gone, one sentence in some bizarre corner of the internet. All of these different people and the same is true for Brad, even more so for Brad, leverage through the roof, right? And actually now's an interesting time for Brad,

so I mean, because I was noticing in my, on my essential trip to the supermarket earlier, the empty shelves, and I was thinking how interesting it was that all of the kind of funky new brands that are out there were actually on the shelf still, but the kind of older, more trusted safe brands had all sold out, you know, you know, the the disinfectant that isn't organic and just destroys everything. But sold out.

You know, Mr. Muscle is never going to struggle during a pandemic, is he? Absolutely. Mr. Muscle, with Mr. Kipling and Aunt Bessie, are absolutely loving it at the moment. They're all having a party around. They're not doing social distancing. They're shaking hands. I couldn't agree more. How they're behaving. Louis Vuitton producing a number of others now following the same suit,

producing some kind of hand wipes or some kind of disinfectant type products. You think that's a really good bit of branding for them. People will remember them as being branding for them. People will remember them as being a company that reacted fast. Louis Vuitton, you think, is so out of reach of most people. But I think the decisions they've made as a brand at this moment are fantastic. They are. I wonder how many brands are weaponizing Goodwill at the moment. I think they are. I think a lot of them are doing something that is, that is virtue signaling for the sake of it because they think someone in a meeting somewhere.

And maybe this is just my skepticism about brands that have turned the corner. And again, what that would imply, either it, one of two things can be correct either. The brands are weaponizing Goodwill and they're using it to further their brand equity that they can then monetize in the future. Or their marketing communication in advance of that wasn't sufficiently effective to make me believe that they were the sort of company that would do this off their own back. Exactly. Exactly. It's actually poor marketing, probably. And the ones that jump on the

bandwagon, you can see them all jumping on the bandwagon now. I think it'll have little effect on it. I think your skepticism is shared by most consumers. They'll go, really, you know, really? You know what they should do? Get Turner Duckworth involved. Get Turner Duckworth involved? That has been the answer to so many people's problems. I agree. So Link will be in show notes below. Of course, love Bruce.

Today's been fantastic. Thank you so much. I loved it. I really enjoyed chatting. And I just think, let's design everything beautifully. Let's have a wonderfully designed planet, you know, and the world will be better for it. That's amazing.

If people want to check out what it is that you guys do, where should they go? I'm going to turn it up with .com and everything's on there. Not everything's on there, but there's about 10 projects on there. And yeah, and but just look on the internet. There's plenty out there. Awesome. Bruce, thank you so much for your time, it's been great.

A pleasure. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend, it would make me very happy indeed. Don't forget, if you've got any questions or comments or feedback, feel free to message me at Chris Willek on all social media. But for now, goodbye, friends.