Lincoln Design Co: What Every Brand Is Getting Wrong About Risk | Dan Janssen Episode 15

0:00Chris Cruz:What you think makes a brand successful is completely wrong. Most think it's about having the perfect logo or following the hottest design trends. But Dan Janssen, founder of Lincoln Design Co. reveals it's something entirely different. It's the heart and soul of the company, he explains. It's everything outside of the logo. The history, the messaging, and everything that happens before that. The brands winning today are treating themselves as characters with real personalities. Companies that tell genuine stories will thrive, while trend chasers fade into irrelevance. This is Anatomy of a Brand, where we obsess over what makes brands tick so yours never settles.

0:33Chris Cruz:This is episode 15 with Lincoln Design Company founder, Dan Jensen. All right, Dan, thank you for taking time with us. I'm stoked to ask you a lot of questions and to learn a bunch, because you guys are an iconic studio doing remarkable work. So thanks for taking time. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you having me on. Stoked to be here. Yeah. Yeah. You guys have worked with some of the most notable brands, especially when you think about some of the disruptors in the space. You've got Liquid Death, then Harley Davidson, Nerf, Fortnite. I think you also did a complete rebrand or some kind of almost like entirety for U.S.

1:11Chris Cruz:skateboarding. Was that a recent one? Yeah. Yeah, that was. Yeah. You guys have done remarkable work over and over and over again. But you also have a book called The Brand Design of a Brand Design Agency. And I wanted us to dive in first to the idea of what is brand design, what makes it effective, and how can you actually build a brand? Like from your guys' vantage point, you guys do a lot of interesting brands, a lot of the outdoor, extreme sports, some of these more, I would say, disruptors even inside of their spaces they're in. I'd love to know how you think about what is brand design, how is it effective, and how does somebody actually go about it?

1:51Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's so many ways to look at it when it comes to like brand design and things, you know. it's I mean to me it's kind of the heart and soul of the you know whether it's the company or whatever it is you know um for us you know that would be Lincoln and um and our company and that's kind of why we did that book but yeah I mean you know it's the it's the history it's kind of everything you kind of built your company around you know kind of that messaging um everything you know everything basically outside of the logo you know it's everything that happens kind of before that.

2:26So yeah, so it was something that, you know, we work with a lot of brands, we work with a lot of brands that already kind of have that process set in stone, you know, we don't do a lot of work. So we, you know, we come in to, say a bigger brand, they had kind of have that brand messaging and everything kind of set, you know, at times we're brought in to, you know, maybe revamp that, whatever it is. But we don't get a lot of like startup kind of build a brand from start and that messaging and soul and kind of background of the company. Right. So in some ways it's different, you know, the work that we're doing because we are, you know, stepping in and almost being like an extension of a lot of these companies in-house studios or design.

3:09Chris Cruz:So what kind of, what kind of problems are they facing? Like if we could even jump into an example, like a liquid death or a Harley Davidson, like these are, like you said, well-established brands who have so much of their visual identity dialed when they're coming to you, what's the problem they're facing that you guys are like, all right, we're, we're the assassins that are going to nail that problem. Like, what's the actual thing that they're needing you guys to come in on? Yeah. Um, I think on a like high level, it's a lot of times it's that they're too close to it. You know, they're living in the brand every single freaking day.

3:43You know, like if you look at like, say monster energy, like they have a large team of creatives in-house you know that are doing you know ads and motion and things like that but and and myself like starting out as an in-house designer at like dc shoes you're so in the trenches with the brand day after day after day you know that it's hard for you to kind of step back and look at the big picture of like okay what are what are the consumers seeing our brand as you know because fascinating you know all of it you know you're in the middle of it you know what's coming, you know what you've done. But on the outside, the consumer, like a lot of times didn't see, you know, the ad the year before or whatever that creative was the year before.

4:24So it's hard for those inside in-house studios to kind of step back and really look at that. So a lot of times they'll come to us for like a fresh perspective on what's going on, what can we do, stay different or expand on our brand, you know, outside of what we've already done. and because we work in a lot of different industries, we kind of have a different perspective on, you know, maybe what they should do next or what's coming up or whatever it is.

4:50Chris Cruz:So when they, when they come to you for this kind of work, what, what is like the process you're taking them through when you're going, Hey, we, we know that you guys are super close to it. So you need to pull back and get a fresh eyes on this. Is there something that you start with? Is there even a question that some of these, you know, people that are listening, founders, CMOs of brands or chief brand officers or chief creative officers who are running those teams. Is there something you're like, Hey, I need to ask you this or start with this to get you thinking about this differently? Yeah.

5:21Yeah, for sure. You know, ideally it's something that, you know, we, we ask like, what, you know, what have you been doing over the last year? What do you have coming up in, you know, next year? The, you know, a lot of these companies are working, and, you know, 12, 18, 24 months out, you know? And that's where, like, to onboard us to, like, say a new company, like, say, I don't know, say it was Red Bull or something. Yeah. You know, and for us to kind of jump in and get up to speed, you know, it'd be like sitting down with the CMO and kind of going through, okay, what? Even though we're fans of Red Bull, so we kind of know a lot of what we've been doing, but you still don't know what they're working on and what's coming up.

6:00So just kind of like, what have you guys done over the last, you know, 12 months? What's coming up over the next 12 months? You know, what categories are you guys going into? What products are you launching that are new? Kind of things like that, I guess. So what's your, what are you sniffing for there?

6:16Chris Cruz:Because like, there's an element of your ability to discern that you can see and how you've pushed a lot of these brands in interesting directions with the way that you guys have, like, I'm a fan of your work. So I see how you guys end up expressing these moments with some of the other brands like Fortnite, Nike, Adidas, even thinking about Nerf or Tony Hawk. There's something it feels like you guys are regularly looking for that lands you into these spaces where you make this and you're like, oh, my gosh, that is incredible. How do they even start that road? Like, it feels like there's something you guys are looking for in those questions.

6:51Yeah. And I don't know if it's anything specific. I mean, the one thing that's, I don't want to say it's hard or I feel like is a little bit different is like all those companies, like the work we do for each one is so different, right? It's like Monster Energy. It's primarily 3D and motion work, right? Fortnite, Epic Games, it is 100 % style guides. We're building out these huge style guides. It's 12 months and then we flip it and start over another 12 months. Liquid Death. Wow. Those are kind of run and gun projects of like new products or new commercial branding for the new commercial that's coming out.

7:29So like everything, you know, a lot of studios will, you know, say focus on, you know, branding and logo design or something. So they kind of can set up a process and questions because most of the clients coming in kind of have the same problem to solve. Right. But I feel like a lot of our clients are in such different stages or have we're doing different work for each one. that that problem is always much different, you know, where we're like, oh shit. Okay. Yeah. Uh, yeah. You know, what are we going to do with this? Like Harley, they have like these events that are going to be rolling out all next year.

8:03So we're creating these badges and logos for, for each one. Um, that was a much different process than, you know, say what we're doing for fortnight or whatever. So yeah, it's, go ahead.

8:17Chris Cruz:Oh, no, there was, it was, there seems to be some resonance with the types of industries you guys kind of are established in and the brands that come to you because there's probably seeing that existing work of like, hey, they've done this brand, they've worked with this brand. We want to be in that kind of vein as well. Like we're in the skate world, we're in the extreme sports world, or we're in the high energy octane environments like Monster Energy or Fortnite. Like there seems to be some kind of common denominator between these brands that you guys have positioned yourself to be the go-to for that yeah yeah you know it's something like dust and i just did a talk at a phoenix design week and then circles conference in dallas we kind of have this this whole talk on you know building your personal brand um so much of it is like who are you and basically on top of like who are you what do you like to do like if you weren't doing design if you're not sitting here at the desk all day what you out doing and kind of building your career and your persona and who you are and your brand off of that right so so at no point do you have to basically fake it till you make it type of thing like you are who you are you know and I think basically our background comes from that right like we started in the skateboard industry grew up in San Diego Dustin Road motocross like so So kind of we always started in those industries and it's just kind of it's continued.

9:46Right. And we know them. We don't have to do a lot of market research because it's the it's the stuff we do on the weekend, you know, type of thing. So and fortunate enough, you know, some of those brands are are fun to work with. And, you know, yeah, and I have become bigger brands over the years.

10:01Chris Cruz:So and I think you said something in that talk because I was watching you post along your journey out there. You said something in one of your talks or had a slide at least, and I screenshot it because I wanted to ask you about it, where you said there came a point where you stopped trend chasing and started truth telling. And unpack that for me. What was happening that you're like, hey, that's the statement that encompasses what we're talking about. Yeah. So it was when we first moved. So I had a studio in San Diego for 10 years, shut that down in 2015, moved it up to Portland, Oregon here, and came up here and basically changed the name of the company.

10:37brought four of my employees with me. So when we landed up here, it was kind of like, okay, shit, well, got to educate all of our current clients on the new name, let them know it's the same team, you know, you're going to get the same service, same product. At the same time, wanted to educate new clients. So like, hey, this is Lincoln, this is what we do, right? So we basically kind of built out this poster and brand kit of a bunch of different logos. We didn't want commit to one we had everybody on the team kind of pitch in you know and it's so good it looks so good like how do we pick one we're like it let's not pick one it's just like let's build out a poster with it you know let's ship this out to all of our current clients you know we'll ship to a couple companies we want to work with and and uh kind of see what happens from there and so it worked out well where we started getting the first project was a nike project and we we basically we've been working with nike for years and they have this kind of structure of a brief they send over right and it has like references and kind of a mood board and then it kind of shows like what they're looking for well we got a brief back that was basically that poster and it was like with nothing else and it was like we want this applied to these products and it was like oh shit okay like they noticed i guess i guess it worked right yeah um so it was something that we ran with started making patches kind of did that whole deal and it it was great you know for the first, I'd say, two or three years, and we were posted on Instagram, and this is back in 2015, right?

12:09Getting a ton of likes, this and that. There was just a point where it seemed like a lot of that shit was happening on social media, right? And it was like, and you can tell, we can do it now today, where you post a grid of nine badges, and you'll get a shit ton of likes, shit ton of follows, all this shit, right? And so it basically got to a point where we were like, okay we're not going to do that like everybody seems to kind of have gone in that direction let's stop like kind of doing that let's just post like the work that we're doing don't need to curate it with a bunch of badges and kind of follow that algorithm let's just do our own thing you know um and so that was kind of the point that we kind of switched gears and just leaned in heavier to we're just going to want to do what lincoln is and who we are as a team um and kind of heading that direction.

12:59Chris Cruz:So that was part of that slide and that talk. And that makes sense where the pivot of like, all right, this is, you guys set a trend, people caught onto that trend and even started adopting that trend as their own. And then you're like, wait, we've got to do it again in another space. Okay. So let me, let me ask you a question about building Lincoln's brand as itself. Cause you also, the, one of the things that I've been inspired by Lincoln is the ability for you guys to take a non-traditional route with how your own studio is positioned in the world. It almost looks like it's not even taking on new clients.

13:35Chris Cruz:It's almost like it's its own brand. And I've taken a lot of inspiration for that, for the stuff that we're building with our studio is going, okay, they've decided to go, the lifeblood is client work, but there's also this internal brand that you guys are stewarding and nurturing. What was that starting point? And then I have a follow-up question about the conflict of keeping that going while working on client work. Yeah, yeah. That's a conflict. Yeah, so that was kind of that story of like it kind of happened naturally, like in the fact that we wanted to get our name out there. You know, we started making products.

14:14I'm a big hat guy, apparel guy, came from the action sports industry. You know, like I said, worked at DC Shoes. So like there was always this kind of apparel and product side of me that, I mean, go back 25 years. I maybe should have started an apparel brand instead of gotten to the agency. But I didn't. So I'm here. But no. So it's something that in some ways evolved naturally where we saw the feedback from clients. We saw clients basically going, hey, can I get a tea? like I love you guys to shop or like I would I would ship an order and I'm like oh shit this is being shipped to Johnny at Hasbro damn cool you know very cool so it was something that like we just kind of noticed like okay not not only are like other designers buying the product and noticing what we're doing for our internal design work but also clients are as well so then we kind of just leaned into it you know heavier started making like logo mayhem books and illustration and just more products.

15:19And then at the same time, when we moved up here, we started going to design conferences, showed up at the first one crop. We're asked to do a talk and then have a table to sell merch. So we did that. Worked out really well. It was super weird. I mean, this is back in like 2016 because we were there. We have our patches. We have a skateboard. We've got a bunch of tees and hats.

15:42Chris Cruz:Which nobody's doing that at the time. Yeah, there wasn't. Like you've not seen anybody. Exactly. there wasn't a lot of people doing it. It was kind of like a select few of like, there's five or six of us in this room. And we, we had a couple people ask us to sign like the skateboard, like our autographs. And we were like, well, this is, this is weird. Like we're, we're nobody. We're just like four dudes doing design work, you know, over in Portland, Oregon, like why the hell you want our signature? And so, so it was cool, but it was super fun. And so we just kind of continued doing that you know going to creative works and creative south and in some of these conferences and selling more merch selling more you know hats and products and the way it kind of and it still to this day it's almost like this natural thing of like i kind of control like how much are we going to make what do we need new hats do we need new keys like what what book's coming next or whatever it is a lot of it honestly is dependent on what's coming up like for instance this year we we didn't do any talks or anything until we just went on um on the road and did uh did those two conferences we only sold the brand book at those conferences but in october end of october we're going to adobe max right we're taking the van we're going to have a 20 20 by 20 booth so So for that, what do we need?

17:04We need a bunch of new product, right? So we're going to make new hats. We're going to make new tees. We're going to make a couple new notebooks and zine and have those for sale there. Whatever doesn't sell goes up on the website, you know, and we'll sell them the rest of the year. So it's almost like it's something that I manage in the fact of like when we need it, we'll make it. We don't. two, it was probably three years ago. I tried to hire somebody to come in and basically ship and run Lincoln brand, run the store and actually like have somebody dedicated to like looking at like, okay, if we're going to do like a season of apparel, what does it look like?

17:42You know, price it out. Let's get the team, let's assign it out to the team for projects. And I ran into an issue of like, got a ton of applications and everybody I talked to, every designer that was you know good and i was like okay i got four people i'm looking at you know get on a call with them yeah my first question was is this your foot in the door at lincoln to then end up doing like client work or are you truly focused on lincoln brand and all of them were kind of like well i kind of want to like do the client work and i'm like yeah that's the last thing i want you know is you in here in the you know stripping room hoping to get out of there into the studio to do that work you know yeah so i put a pause on it i haven't went back to it as far as bringing somebody in i think i think it's something that if we put a lot more time effort and kind of focus and structure to we could do more with it but for now it's promo for the studio you know it's it's worked well it's got our name out and and has it created moments where you're

18:47Chris Cruz:like all right there's a tension between like build your team working on that stuff versus working on client work or were you guys are you guys pretty like dialed in that way that you're like oh this won't disrupt our workflow no it can create some tension in a way like even just with like me kind of signing us up for shit like adobe max and a talk in a booth and shit right you know it's something that now it's like okay we got this new we got this new event coming up so we got these new projects these need to be fit into the mix with the client work you know and all of a sudden it's like oh shit okay we're super busy because we got all the shit for adobe you know that needs to get done but yeah you know the team's kind of big enough now that i can kind of pick and choose or like somebody will finish a project early you know they're like hey i wrapped that thing up it's good to go it's like okay cool you got another six hours today let's jump on a you know some of this stuff for adobe max love that okay so let me take juggling act yeah i bet I bet with the work you guys are doing.

19:47Chris Cruz:Yeah. I imagine it's a massive juggling act. Okay. Let me dive in a little bit, your personal story. I remember reading in your book, you were talking about you crushed school and your portfolio work, all this stuff. And then you land two gigs and one is with a golf company that was going to pay you more. And then you had DC shoes that was going to pay you less. And you took DC shoes. What was it like? Why did you take less money to work with DC? I mean, to me, it was a no brainer. I knew the market. I grew up skateboarding, you know, I went to school in Denver. So I basically applied when I was graduating, applied for a bunch of jobs in San Diego.

20:23Had a few, there was three or four offers that it was the golf company that paid more and then DC shoes paid less. But I was like, man, I know this industry. I know their team. Like, I feel like I can jump right in and, uh, and hit the ground running, you know, with a company like that where the golf thing, I'm like, I don't play golf. I don't know shit about golf. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to pay me more, you know, but am I going to love what I'm doing day to day? No, you know, so, so I went the DC shoes route and you know, good thing I did. I'm, yeah, it was amazing. How long were you at DC? Five years.

21:01Chris Cruz:Five years. And you were doing primarily what when you were at dc man so when i got there there was three three basically designers art director um whoa this is like you're at the foundation level of dc oh yeah yeah i mean basically ken block you know who rally car driver passed you know passed away two years ago um so he him and damon way started dc shoes damon way is danny way's older brother um but ken was kind of the visionary kind of the marketing head um and honestly a great designer like he had designed um a blunt snowboard magazine he uh drawers and dub they already had two successful apparel companies this whole deal so anyways it was ken block's office we had a big room of of the creatives one of the dudes was uh steve size who's an old uh pal peralta uh bones brigade skater back from the 80s and 90s so when I first these are og people kind of walk in there introducing introducing me it's like oh it's brian thompson steve size carl hyman and I'm like whoa I'm like steve size like bones brigade steve and steve's like yeah man hey nice to meet you I'm like oh shit okay um so instantly kind of mixed intimidated like first day you know like oh shit all right um at that time didn't really know too much about ken block you know he it's not like he was an athlete or anything at that point um but he was super heavily heavily involved in every piece of like design so we're doing like i mean i was doing everything from ads to 200 250 page catalogs plp for in store displays like it was everything everything every day every week was totally different but ken had the final say on all creative so he'd sit down next to us at our desk Like that time where I working in Cork express, there was no InDesign like at all.

22:53Chris Cruz:Okay. So he's like in Cork sitting next to us, like, Hey, move this, move that, uh, make this a little bigger logo, bigger dah, dah, dah. Um, so it was cool. It was a super rad. Okay. Let me ask you about that process. Cause I find that process to be so fascinating. Cause I had someone who, when I first started designing, who did that with me, where they're like basically looking over my shoulder and going like, fix that font, fix that logo a bit. And like, what, why do you think people aren't getting that right now? I feel like that's not happening as often where they're getting that mentorship and that design.

23:29Chris Cruz:And like, I don't know if it's the freelance world, I don't know what it is, but they're not getting that. Like, Hey, we need to fine tune some of this stuff. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And that kind of sitting, you know, I don't do that a ton here as far as like sitting next to somebody. Oh yeah, I would imagine, you know, over the shoulder, like move this, move that. Looking back, it was my first job, you know, professional job. Like I knew no difference. So I'm like, oh shit. Okay. This is how it works. Like him and I, we're going to just sit here shoulder to shoulder and kind of get this thing dialed in.

23:58Right. Instead of, well, you know, it's so invaluable. Yeah, no, it was, you know, and we were in a small kind of space that it was easy to do that as opposed to say, you know, there was no slack and even email wasn't it. email wasn't something where you're like sending designs to like can or anything like you're still writing letters man yeah yeah i mean it was i mean it's 2000 so 2000 2001 um oh man yeah i think it was great you know uh it was definitely a valuable experience and then over those five years dc kind of grew like crazy we had like 20 i was gonna say yeah gosh yeah no it just blew up and then they sold it to quicksilver and then And that was kind of like a perfect time for me to kind of exit and start my own deal.

24:44So, all right.

24:45Chris Cruz:I want to ask you a question. If someone came to you and was like, Hey, we were, we're risk averse as a brand, but we want to, we want to take more risks as a brand. Like say it's a CMO or a founder or someone chief creative officers coming to you and they're like, Hey, we're risk averse. How do you frame up them looking at risks differently? because I notice it in you guys, even you guys, like you did a successful creative conference and you decided to go, we're not going to do rinse and repeat. We're not going to do it again a second time because if we can't do something interesting a second time, we're not going to do it.

25:18Chris Cruz:Which is like, for some people, it's like, why would you do that? Like you just ran a successful conference. So there's something about risk that you're able to navigate. How would you coach up some of these people who are risk averse? You know, I would say, and that's kind of what we did for the conference, like sit down right away and look at like what does failure look like like if this doesn't work you know and we go in this direction like what is the worst case scenario like are we just going to lose money are we going to lose you know market share is the whole thing going to implode like what does that look like if we make this decision and go in that direction you know so if like into the woods like we knew worst case scenario nobody shows up and it's a giant party for the studio you know like nobody nobody buys tickets you know because because with like conferences like once you you book that venue and shit you're committed you know there's no back yeah you're locked in yeah it's gnarly contracts and shit so it was like okay worst case scenario we know what this whole thing is going to cost us if nobody buys tickets and no one gives a shit we're going to throw a big party for our employees and the families and and everything um you know best case scenario people come we sell the tickets and and our goal was like breaking even like we did the math like to make money on a conference and like walk away with like whoa i made a bunch of money like ain't freaking that's really hard ain't happening you know like especially especially that's the truth it's the truth and especially if you're going to figure in your time you spent like to to market and design and meet and lay out that whole conference like then there's no possible way you're going to make money, you know?

27:02Chris Cruz:So yeah, it's kind of like, what was, what was in your mind though, as the guy leading the tip of the spear in that, I want to get to the risk adverse thing, but you said something there that I don't know how many people really value when they look at it and say like, Hey, he literally said we might break even, but we're still going to do this. Like some people are like, we're not doing it. Like if it's, if it's breaking it, we're not like, what was, what was your mentality there? Like, even if we break even, we're doing this yeah why I saw it as a huge marketing tool for us for that year I've kind of seen what going to crop and creative works and and a lot of these conferences like what it brings like to the team to kind of getting our name out there and stuff and I think it's invaluable I think it's great you know it's great to meet people other creatives I think you know we're in a you're speaking to me right now because I'm like I'm running up against the idea of like man do we do an event like that yeah in the and that we have a 27 we're part of a 27 ,000 square foot space that's got so much opportunity for these kinds of things but I'm like the break even the reality is like you're not going to make any money on this thing yeah so like you have to look at it as marketing then at that point I guess yeah absolutely you know it's a huge marketing expense for that year but i do think like what you get out of it is is well worth it just as far as like notoriety or clients uh seeing or coming and and in the beginning like kind of half of our idea for that conference was we would like to get some of our clients to come we'd like to get a lot of professionals there you know there are a lot of conferences that are geared towards students and younger designers, which is great.

28:47Those are needed, and honestly, that's the core of conferences. So ours, we wanted to kind of put a twist on it and try and get it to be a lot more of professionals and things and clients.

29:01Chris Cruz:How did you do that? What was the way you did that? It was just who we marketed to and where we sent things out. I mean, I honestly recorded in this room like one-on-one messages to all of our clients, video messages of like, hey, we're putting on this event. Oh, wow. We got a spot for you. We'd love you to bring your team. You know, because like I said, a lot of the companies we work with. So good. Have large creative teams, you know. There's 10, 20, 30 people. I mean, fuck, you got Nike that's got 700 or 800 creatives on campus, right? So, um, so the idea was like, if we can get some of these companies to bring their team to this conference, you know, and show them that, you know, Hey, you can come to something like this, have fun, learn a bunch, get super inspired, go back to your in-house position and sit down and, you know, be ready to roll.