Episode Transcript
Cuyler 0:20
Right episode 27. We’re back. And we’re also back with Mr. C, who’s filling in for Rob while he’s out. Say hello to everybody.
Hello, everybody.
Don Mock 0:29
Hello everyone. Yes, whoever’s listening. There are dozens of listeners. Yes, dozens. So Cuyler, Rob and I recorded an episode talking about some of our favorite parts of our job. Right. I thought it might be an interesting back to backers dare I say, there we go where I say, “dare I say.”
Cuyler 0:47
You do say that gooc bit.
Don Mock 0:48
I do say it a lot, man.
Cuyler 0:50
Being the person who edits these.
Don Mock 0:51
It’s one of those things. I didn’t know that I said it a bunch, but now I catch myself saying it all the time. I don’t know why I said it? I don’t even know where I got it from? But yeah, and also it should be known I don’t necessarily listen to these since I live them. So I don’t really know what I say. Maybe I should listen to these?
Cuyler 1:06
My wife always says that I say, “hate to say it,” before saying like everything.
Don Mock 1:12
So like for good news or bad news. You say “hate to say it.”
Cuyler 1:15
It’s like, something where someone thought they were correct about something, you know.
Don Mock 1:21
Yeah. So you’re politely correcting someone. So I hate to point out that you’re incorrect. But here we go, you’re incorrect.
Cuyler 1:26
Exactly.
Don Mock 1:26
All right. So, back on track focus, focus. We were chatting about some of the things we love about our job, and thought that it might be interesting to flip the script and say, hey, is there anything out there that we, and I don’t want say don’t like about our jobs, but maybe don’t like about our jobs? Or sort of what clients might be surprised or not surprised about? That isn’t necessarily the glory, sexy, most amazing part of advertising and design ever? You know what I mean?
Cuyler 1:53
There’s a fair amount of it, with any job, I’m assuming?
Don Mock 1:57
Yeah. I mean, everybody, take pride in their job, whether you’re, you know, tar on a hot roof, or designing a cool logo or whatever the case may be right? But at the end of the day, sure, it is a job. I mean, I love my job. And I think you love your job as well.
Cuyler 2:12
Yeah. Better than grunt work.
Don Mock 2:14
For sure. So, you want me to go first, you want me to share a little bit?
Cuyler 2:19
Ya you go first.
Don Mock 2:20
Okay, I’ll go for it. That’ll give you time because I’m kind of springing this on you. You didn’t even know we were going to do this. So yeah, what I talked about, just to catch you up to speed, last time was the love of learning. Which I thought was the coolest part of the job, right? Was learning all sorts of different things in all these different industries and whatnot, right? And I was thinking about doing this, sort of the flip side of this. And I’m going to say and this is kind of an oddball.
Cuyler 2:46
Okay.
Don Mock 2:46
And you’re gonna have to follow my train of thought on this one, but years and years ago, I went and saw a lecture from a famous designer, Steff Geissbuhler, okay. Designed the Radio Free Europe logo had a hand in Merc’s identity, all sorts of old famous…
Cuyler 3:05
This was the one with the Time Warner?
Don Mock 3:07
Yeah, Time Warner Cable into the Time Warner Cable, which is the eye in the ear, that whole thing, right? And part of his lecture, and everyone’s wondering where in the world I’m going to this right now. But part of his lecture was, hey, I designed this awesome identity and this system for Radio Free Europe. Right? And it was like, not even joking, dude. It was like 50 or 60 slides, okay. Of him clicking through his logo all over the world, but absolutely mutilated. Like stretched, squished the wrong colors.
Cuyler 3:41
I think we’ve all experienced.
Don Mock 3:43
Yes!
Cuyler 3:43
I have a buddy who I did a logo for their band. And they just continually on every flyer, squish it this way, squish it that way.
Don Mock 3:51
They can’t get it right. They can’t get it right.
Cuyler 3:52
Like, if you need a condensed version. Let me know.
Don Mock 3:55
Yeah. So, part of the lecture was, hey, you create these things. And you go through all of this torture in a good way, but developing the rules around how to use your mark, how to develop the brand, how the brand is properly utilized to maintain brand integrity, right. And here, it is literally all over Europe, all over the world. And it’s totally destroyed and done horribly. So I think, you know, for me, I think one of the things that is the most challenging and again, not the things I hate about my job, but is that letting go factor and sending things out in the world when it’s in our building, and when we’re working on it and we’re talking about with clients and everything. We totally control everything, like we own it. It’s ours, there’s nary a pixel out of place right? Everything is perfecto right?
Cuyler 4:47
Particularly with brand design, you get really meticulous with it. So yeah, that’s the last thing you want.
Don Mock 4:51
Well, we’re writing the brand guidelines, the manual like here’s how to do it. Here’s what you do for this case, for that case.
Cuyler 4:56
And for those of you who don’t know, within the brand guidelines, there’s usually at least one page that shows all the things you can’t do to the logo.
Don Mock 5:04
Correct. Yeah, I mean, just that section could probably be 100 pages, you know, for you and me, right? So I think that, giving birth to something and then sending it out into the world, and then going, oh, dear Lord. You know, like, how bad is it? Like, what happened? Like, who was thinking or or maybe someone wasn’t thinking as part of the problem.
Cuyler 5:24
Right.
Don Mock 5:26
So, what I was thinking about, you know, this topic for today. That’s what kind of was my, hey, were sending it out into the world and seeing it not treated the way that you would treat it. But, you have to let it go.
Cuyler 5:39
I mean, losing controlof the design. I will say we do a pretty good job, of trying to put all the final files together in such a way that we try to eliminate as much of that as possible. But yeah, I mean, with a logo. There’s almost no stopping someone from…
Don Mock 5:59
Yeah, destroying it. I mean, you know, we do the best to set everybody up for success, right? Give everybody the color guides, the manuals, don’t do this, don’t do that. But then, man, oh, man. Our clients do a great job of policing. But boy, it gets down to that trade show tablecloth vendor. And I don’t know why I just picked on that. But like, you know, it goes seven or eight lines down, and then you’re like, Oh, my word. What happened to our logo?
Cuyler 6:23
Some kind of cheaper printer person just gets a vector or a PNG? And they print from that?
Don Mock 6:30
Oh, god.
Cuyler 6:31
Yeah, they squish it to make it fit.
Don Mock 6:32
Ya to make it fit on a pen.
Cuyler 6:33
It’s hard. So explain that, the verticals and the horizontals of typography, right?
Don Mock 6:40
Oh boy.
Cuyler 6:41
The parts that go up versus the parts that go horizontal?
Don Mock 6:44
Correct.
Cuyler 6:45
When you squish it, you’re changing the proportion of that. It wasn’t designed to look that way.
Don Mock 6:52
No, absolutely not.
Cuyler 6:54
I’ve realized it doesn’t bother a lot of people as much as it bothers us.
Don Mock 6:58
No, definitely. Well, I think we joked about this in the past. I mean, we view the world a little bit more critical and a little different in that respect, you know? Like, don’t even get me started on book spines and vertical placements of logos, right? I mean, if you allow me to tangent for a minute here, right? Like, if you look at every single book on your bookshelf, you tilt your head to the right, oh, and they’re nine from the top down. That’s the way everything is meant to be is you read from the top down, you’d never, never, never, read from the bottom up, right? It doesn’t make any sense for Western utilization, right? Go to any like strip mall, or corner sign of some type of multi complex scenario. And there almost always as like an Office Depot sign or there’s a something where it’s going bottom up, and it’s like, Oh, my god, I want to strangle somebody turn your head to the left. Yeah, to try to read it. Yeah, it’s so bizarre, you know. So there’s all these, I don’t want to say unwritten rules of society that we just have to sort of grin and take it right.
Cuyler 7:55
But well, there’s definitely hard and fast rules in the design world for sure. And so what’s frustrating is that, but the rest of the world doesn’t live by those rules.
Don Mock 8:06
Yeah, well, hey, man, the world would be a prettier place if we just got to design everything. Right?
Cuyler 8:11
Right.
Don Mock 8:11
So all right. Well, flipping the script here. I mean, I’ve been practicing on for five minutes or so about sort of my challenge here, you know, and you’ve been, obviously picking up what I’m putting down, what are your thoughts on sort of the frustrations? Or, you know, I don’t want to say, you know, worst part, but kind of the worst part, right?
Cuyler 8:29
What we were talking about before we started the podcast, and the part of a project that I look forward to the least I should say, is usually the the middle meat of the project, right? The ideation process coming up with a lot of cool different directions. You know, letting a client see a range of of work.
Don Mock 8:47
That’s the fun stuff.
Cuyler 8:48
That’s the fun stuff.
Don Mock 8:49
Yeah, the upfront stuff, is the good stuff.
Cuyler 8:51
Then they pick a direction. Usually, that direction somehow meanders away from the original concept that they picked at some point.
Don Mock 9:00
Yeah.
Cuyler 9:02
And so the beginning part, I find a lot of fun. You get a lot of kind of like inspiration. And you’re, you’re pulling things from different places, juices are flowing.
Don Mock 9:12
You’re cooking with gas.
Cuyler 9:13
And you’re thinking, okay, this could become something really cool.
Don Mock 9:16
Totally.
Cuyler 9:17
And then there’s the end of a project where you feel really satisfied seeing everything finished.
Don Mock 9:23
Oh, yeah.
Cuyler 9:24
We’re even seeing it in the wild. Making it Real. But there is a large portion of the middle. Wherey ou just have a lot of work to do. Yeah, animations definitely that way. You know, creating a storyboard is a lot of fun. And there, you have to figure out how to tell the story. And there have been many times where when I’m making a storyboard, I’m kind of thinking like, I’m not really sure how to animate this, but I’ll figure it out. Well, once you get to that moment, though, it can be a little frustrating.
Don Mock 9:55
There is definitely a grind of the production aspect. It’s like, congratulations, the client has picked this direction, surprise! Now you’ve got to do that direction
Cuyler 10:07
Right.
Don Mock 10:07
You know, whatever the case may be right? What’s that board game where you try to rush to get at the corners? Is that
Othello with the white in the black? You know what I mean?
Yatse?
Yatse?
Cuyler 10:17
I don’t know.
Don Mock 10:19
For whatever reason I’m struggling here. But there’s a game, you know, you got to get to the corners. But then it’s like well you still got to fill in the whole rest of the middle of the puzzle. Or maybe it’s just doing a puzzle? It’s doing a puzzle.
Cuyler 10:29
It’s similar to a puzzle, you know. Youu got all your edges, and it’s like oh, man, I got this.
Don Mock 10:34
Yeah. And then it’s like, oh, baby.
Cuyler 10:36
There’s there’s a large black section.
Don Mock 10:38
Yeah, there’s the big sea in the middle. Where you’re like, man, all these pieces look the same. But in order to finish the puzzle, you gotta…
Cuyler 10:45
Muscle through.
Don Mock 10:46
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I can see that. Yeah, and it gets…
Cuyler 10:50
That’s just the less kind of romantic part of being a designer. It’s not inspirational. It’s not…
Don Mock 11:00
It’s making a real.
Cuyler 11:01
Yeah, it’s making it real and then it’s, it’s really just a lot of work. It’s not spreadsheets.
Don Mock 11:06
No. No.
Cuyler 11:06
But it’s still better than that.
Don Mock 11:08
No, but it’s, hey, I figured out the menu. I’ve designed what the menu is going to be. I’ve done all the shopping. It’s awesome. You know, and then at the other end, you’ve got wow, everyone was really impressed with everything I cooked, right? But we’re kind of talking about the act of cooking the meal. Like, oh, my word, you’ve got to braise this thing for five hours. I don’t even know if that makes any sense?
Cuyler 11:27
It does. I do a lot of cooking. I totally understand that. You get an idea for a dish. You test it out. You get it right.
Don Mock 11:34
Yep.
Cuyler 11:34
And then you’re like, okay, I gotta make this for however many people. And then it’s like oh, there’s a lot of prep.
Don Mock 11:40
Any other random little factoids, or tidbits or thoughts or anything around like just the day to day grind? Dare I say? No, is a perfectly acceptable answer. Because I’m totally putting you on the hot spot.
Cuyler 11:51
There are times where your juices are flowing on one thing, but there’s something time sensitive that you have to jump to.
Don Mock 12:00
Yeah.
Cuyler 12:00
So breaking that kind of flow can be frustrating, too. But that’s, I mean, that’s just the nature of it.
Don Mock 12:06
Yeah, that’s a lot of different places. Well, we joke here that, especially Rob loves the variety is the spice, right? We’re always jumping from thing to thing. Doing a lot of different projects and a lot of different types of projects, tactical deployments and whatnot, right? So you know, there definitely is something to the frustration of, speed, right? Where it’s like, hey, I need something really quick, which has to supersede something else. Or it’s the oh my god, these clients are taking forever to make a decision on this because the lawyers have this or that.
Cuyler 12:06
We’ve gone through that.
Don Mock 12:07
We’ve gone through that. Yeah, where it’s, hey, we’re waiting on the trademark approval of the things. Things that are just kind of out of our control. I mean, we’ve talked about how we’re so efficient in terms of everything we do. And then it kind of takes, you know, a lawyer, not to pick on lawyers, but to sort of monkey with things.
Cuyler 12:53
Or, there are times when the client loves the project, but and then they’ve given you a green light, but it hasn’t gone through legal.
Don Mock 12:54
Yeah, exactly. So we’re waiting.
Cuyler 13:02
Yeah, or you’re designing and then redo a surprise.
Don Mock 13:07
Yeah. We decided to change the name of the company. There’s some inside jokes for everybody. Okay, well, I think that’s it for today. I think we’re good. You know, it’s kind of interesting factoids behind the scenes, so, alright, clients don’t butcher our logos once we send them out.
Cuyler 13:24
Ya no squishing.
Don Mock 13:25
Yeah, no squishing, no squeezing. You know.
Cuyler 13:27
Leave it the way it is. Give it some clearance room. Don’t change the color.
Don Mock 13:31
You’ve got specifics, man. Yeah, no, I love it. All right. Well, everybody you can find us online at MOCKtheAgency.com. You can find us on the socials and we will chat with you next time Thanks.
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