Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:18
Alright. Episode Seven, Mr. Rob, we’re back.
Rob Broadfoot 0:21
We’re back.
Don Mock 0:22
Do we want to mention the impending thunderstorm that’s about to destroy all of Atlanta?
Rob Broadfoot 0:27
Yeah, we’re on the edge of an incoming weather system.
Don Mock 0:33
So, this might be the quickest episode ever. Or we may pick back up, who knows what’s about to happen.
Rob Broadfoot 0:38
Bands of yellow, red, and I heard there was even a purple.
Don Mock 0:41
Nice.
Rob Broadfoot 0:42
I don’t know what that means, but doesn’t sound good.
Don Mock 0:44
Well, it sounds like an episode about color theory, as it relates to AccuWeather. But I don’t think that’s what we want to talk about today, actually.
Rob Broadfoot 0:51
Nope.
Don Mock 0:51
What do we want to talk about today?
Rob Broadfoot 0:53
Today, I think we are going to talk about our favorite types of projects. That come through the shop and what we like to work on.
Don Mock 1:02
Well, we do a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I’ve probably said that 100 times over, twenty years, right? And not all of our clients use all of our services. Very quickly, of course, we do basically three main verticals: advertising, design, and digital. Then various companies, various verticals, various industries use a select group of offerings of what we do. So, for some clients, we may be heavy on digital and doing SEO and web development and all that good stuff. And some other clients, we may do none of that. We may do all consumer packaging, right? And dare I say, business to business, sales, collateral and whatnot. So, I thought it might be interesting to sort of chat about what’s your favorite thing to work on Rob? And then I can talk about what is my favorite types of project to work on, although mine might be pretty obvious.
Rob Broadfoot 1:52
I think my favorite, I can come at this a couple of different ways. My favorite types of project to work on are, it’s a combination of clients that let us, that trust us to do what we do best. Okay, so that’s one way to think about it, is the client, where we’re not pigeon holed into something, right?
Don Mock 2:16
So, you’re thinking tactic agnostic?
Rob Broadfoot 2:18
Well, I’ve got a few different approaches. This is just one.
Don Mock 2:21
Pathway number one.
Rob Broadfoot 2:22
Pathway number one.
Don Mock 2:22
Got it. Okay, keep going.
Rob Broadfoot 2:23
I mean, for me, it doesn’t I get excited about a project, regardless of the tactic. If it’s a client that trusts us to do what we do best and is on board with us doing, sort of pushing things a little bit, and pushing a concept pushing an idea, of a campaign or whatever it is.
Don Mock 2:42
Sure.
Rob Broadfoot 2:43
So in that regard, it’s kind of tactic agnostic for me, because those projects are always fun, and, and allow us to kind of kind of push. It’s when clients come in and go, okay, I need a logo. But I know I want a coat of arms. I want to leopard, and I want my favorite flower, which is a tulip, in there. I hate the color red and I love the color teal.
Don Mock 3:07
That sounds like would happen at a tattoo artists. Coming in with clip art, coming in hot and saying I want these ten things on my ankle, right? And it’s like, hey, that’s not gonna fit there.
Rob Broadfoot 3:19
Yeah, if that’s the case, there are freelancers that are much less expensive.
Don Mock 3:25
Funny.
Rob Broadfoot 3:25
That you could kind of go get that done. I think the freedom and the trust, allow us to do what we do. We say like, you wouldn’t represent yourself in a court of law, or you wouldn’t give yourself a root canal?
Don Mock 3:38
Yeah, exactly.
Rob Broadfoot 3:39
So I think that trust, that’s when projects go really well. And those are the most fun to work on.
Don Mock 3:48
Gotta say, that’s an unexpected answer. I wasn’t expecting that.
Rob Broadfoot 3:51
And here comes the sideways rain, and the lightning.
Don Mock 3:54
We’ve got buckets of rain happening outside. It’s actually pretty exciting.
Rob Broadfoot 3:57
But, we’re gonna persevere.
Don Mock 3:58
Yeah, keep going.
Rob Broadfoot 3:58
Well, anyway, that was my first sort of approach to the answer, whatever that answer.
Don Mock 4:03
I think being on the design side of life, it might be a kind of an obvious answer. But I think that logo design, visual identity development, developing the look and feel the brand fabric, the texture of a company, I think is always an exciting place to be in. There’s a couple different ways that that is approached, meaning, we’ve got wide open spaces, white canvas, brand new company. We’ll obviously have to do our development and research and whatnot on the industry, right? Who’s the industry leader? Where do we want to go all the good stuff. And the subjectivity to your point. The tattoo parlor example, of client direction and whatnot. Or the traditional company A buys company B and there is a true merger or an evolution, or something like that. Logo projects are just fun, and it’s fun to go out and see what you’ve done in the wild. I mean, I never get not excited about seeing things that we’ve done in grocery stores or out on billboards and things like that, or dare I say, even getting a check from a client with a logo that you designed on the check that they’re writing to you.
Rob Broadfoot 5:08
Yeah, that’s a good double win.
Don Mock 5:09
Yeah, that’s pretty exciting. So, logo development, and those are one of those things, as a designer, you could almost kind of work on them forever. You know, there’s sort of endless possibilities within whatever sort of framework, I guess, you kind of hem yourself in, to sort of define creativity. So, definitely love doing the logo side of life.
Rob Broadfoot 5:30
That actually brings up a question then. So how do you? Okay, let’s say you’re, you’re designing a logo project?
Don Mock 5:35
Sure.
Rob Broadfoot 5:35
Aside from a deadline. I need it. I need it done on this day, or whatever. How do you determine when it’s done? How do you know when it’s done?
Don Mock 5:45
That’s a great question. Outside of the deadline, you’re saying, huh?
Rob Broadfoot 5:50
I’m saying outside of the deadline.
Don Mock 5:52
I think when you’ve reached a point where you feel like you have a broad enough assortment and a broad range to then solicit feedback on a client. I’m making this up right now, of course, but that may be ten logos. That may be twenty logos. That may be five. Some of it is commensurate to scope of the type of project, right?
Rob Broadfoot 6:13
Right.
Don Mock 6:13
Let’s just call it what it is. Then there’s a business decision with how much work is actually recreated for any given client based on needs. But, I think, the goal, at least our approach to logo design is to try to have a have a wide assortment, within any given design direction or parameter to provide clients a lot of options, for that first round. Oftentimes, you know, and we tell clients too, as obviously, you’re in those logo presentations. Is the logo in this presentation? I don’t know. It’s generally the first logo presentation.
Rob Broadfoot 6:51
We’re about to get the rain.
Don Mock 6:51
The rain is like, man, is the window gonna bust in here? This is hilarious. So, I think for the most part, I say, you can work on things forever. I mean, obviously, we’re not going to work on one item for months and months and months. But, I mean, a couple of weeks, you know, you’ve provided a wide variety of typographic explorations. We talk about visual identities and logos are kind of comprised of the logo mark, right? The typography itself, and then the symbol or the glyph, and any combination they’re in. So, there is a certain point where, okay we’ve generated enough variety here to elicit a conversation with a client and sort of share, here’s what we’re thinking, here’s our approach. Let’s have a good stop and chat.
Rob Broadfoot 6:58
I think it’s also too, anybody who has ownership of a project, right? So if you’re the lead designer on a logo project, or if I’m writing headlines for a campaign, or whatever it is, as the owner of that creative execution, whatever it happens to be, you just kind of know. I think you just kind of know, right? So it’s like, for me, if I’m writing headlines, it’s like, okay, I’ll have an idea for a headline. Then I’ll write it out ten different ways, with all different lengths and tones and things and stuff. But then there comes a point where you go, okay, I’ve kind of exhausted all of these different avenues.
Don Mock 8:12
Sure.
Rob Broadfoot 8:12
And then, somewhere along that avenue, you land on one, you go, okay, that’s it. And I’m happy with it. To me that’s when creative projects are done. Because yeah, you can move those twenty-six letters around infinite ways, almost. But there does come a point, where you think you feel, close to 100%, that you’ve accomplished the task, and you feel good about it.
Don Mock 8:38
For sure. The challenging part, I guess, sometimes with even our most creative things that we love to work on, is the dreaded feedback round. And, what if they don’t love the things that you love, right? So that’s always kind of a fun, interesting, twist of events.
Rob Broadfoot 8:55
Well, it’s always, we always get..
Don Mock 8:58
And not that it’s a bad thing. By any stretch. I’m not, you know.
Rob Broadfoot 9:02
No, but riffing off of that, we always get, whenever we go into a creative presentation. I think in advance, we’ll independently, we’ll have our favorites. Out of whatever it is we’re presenting, but we never really talk about it.
Don Mock 9:16
No.
Rob Broadfoot 9:17
But, then we always say to clients when we present, okay, alright. If you had to pick one, if you had to pick one.
Don Mock 9:23
With no changes.
Rob Broadfoot 9:24
And we’re not gonna hold you to it. But, just as a fun little exercise, if you had to pick one right now, what would it be? Then it always comes back on us. They go, okay. They pick one, then they turn around and say to us. Okay, well, what about you guys? Which Which one’s your favorite?
Don Mock 9:37
What’s agency recommend?
Rob Broadfoot 9:38
And then we go, Oh, yeah. Well.
Don Mock 9:40
What do you think the percentages of us being on the same level or the same selection on that?
I think for the most part..
More than not.
Rob Broadfoot 9:48
I think more often than not. I think more often than not. And I think part of that is because we’ve worked together for so long, that we kind of speak the same creative language, so we tend to like, generally speaking, the same sort of creative directions of different things. Sometimes there’s just clear and obvious winners.
Don Mock 10:08
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Rob Broadfoot 10:09
Objectively, like completely objective.
Don Mock 10:12
Sometimes, some of what we do can sometimes be misconstrued as subjective, right? I prefer this because of XYZ reasons..
Rob Broadfoot 10:14
And sometimes it is.
Don Mock 10:22
Yeah, but also times, even more so, I think we both think the same strategically as to this is the correct answer for your business. But you know what I mean.
Rob Broadfoot 10:31
Here’s why this one is smarter and more strategically aligned with what you’re trying to do.
Don Mock 10:36
We kind of remove our, subjectivity, or opinions from it. It’s really, making the recommendation for what’s strategically sound for their business to propel forward.
Rob Broadfoot 10:45
Right. So, I think another way for me to come at the answer to the overall question of; what projects do you like working on is, I like the ones where, if I had to pick a tactic, I would say, ad campaigns. I love the ideas to me. I love the first round of..
Nothing sweeter than that.
Whatever the challenge is, the campaign or whatever, it’s alright. And I’ll end up with my fourty sheets of paper with stick figures, and rough lines, and whatever else. But, that to me, the first round of concepting stuff is always the most fun. So I would say because of that, campaigns generally, to me, are the most fun project to work on.
Don Mock 11:28
Well, I think what’s fun to piggyback on campaigns too. We take a little bit of a traditional methodology for campaign development, and that a lot of our round ones are still sort of the black and white marker comp, sketch, sort of layout approach. We’re not poaching bad stock photography, and trying to comp anything color and digital. So, it still is very much a concept. It’s a little bit of theater of the mind. It’s a little bit of navigating clients through here’s what it could be, and I think great ideas like that are kind of, or when you develop great ideas, I guess they’re agnostic sometimes of execution.
Rob Broadfoot 12:02
Right.
Don Mock 12:03
So, when I’ve used the example in the past many times. I could be at a bar and draw on a napkin, a little stick figure, as you’d like to draw, right? A stick figure with a basketball, and write the headline Jordan, One Gravity Zero. That’s a great idea, right? I think that was actually an ad somewhere.
Rob Broadfoot 12:22
Yeah.
Don Mock 12:22
I’m poaching this. I’m not making this up right now. But, that’s a great idea. That’s a great ad. Now, that would be a great ad. If it was illustrated, that would be a great ad. If it was amazing black and white photography, or a great out if it was bad 1988, grainy VHS footage. I mean, that’s just a great ad. Everyone would look at that. It’s a great ad. So, I think that kind of helps influence why that approach is from an advertorial campaign.
Rob Broadfoot 12:46
Well, we do that for ad campaigns and concepts. But we also do that to a degree when we present identities and logos for frown. It’s always in black and white. And the reason for that, is because we don’t like for the production value, or the production highlights, of something to influence the idea. They can help the idea. And then that’s the role of color. All of these things are to help. But, at the end of the day, when you strip everything away, you need to make sure that whatever you’re doing is fundamentally sound. And, on strategy, and creative and solid and good without the influence of I love blue, or a certain kind of style of photography, or whatever.
Don Mock 13:29
Color exponentially complicates everything, especially from an identity development perspective. So, it’s always best to leave that for subsequent rounds. Maybe that’s a subsequent podcast, too, and talking about color theory, and how that affects what the general sort of organization of color means in our library, right? But, you always need a good old fashioned one color logo, to throw on the back of the sponsored AJC Peachtree Road Race t-shirt, right? So, alright, well.
Rob Broadfoot 13:59
I think the real answer is, we love all projects.
Don Mock 14:04
Of course, we do.
Rob Broadfoot 14:05
We love the work that we do, and everything presents a different challenge. But those are a couple of the highlights of projects that we really enjoy working on and would love to work on with you.
Don Mock 14:14
Correct? Alright, where can people find us, Rob?
Rob Broadfoot 14:16
Yeah, they can find us on the interwebs at mockthegency.com. We are there, and then you can find us also on all the socials, of course @mocktheagency as well. So,
Don Mock 14:28
Alright.
Rob Broadfoot 14:28
Thanks again until next time, stay safe during the storm.
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