Dare to find curiosity in all things - Dora Drimalas

0:12Radim and Dora Drimalas It costs the same to print ugly and to print beautiful, right? When you're putting, just say, four-color ink on paper, running it, taking the time to run it through a press or build a website or whatever, it's time, right? You're paying for time. So if you think about it and if you've done all the homework and the years of learning, right, you're carrying all those experiences with you, it shows up, right?

1:05Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, the show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

1:55my guest today co-founded one of san francisco's most influential design studios and she spent 24 years proving that the refusal to specialize is not a liability it's a superpower dora dreamalas is the co-founder of hybrid design the studio she's built alongside her husband brian after five formative years at Nike where fearlessness wasn't of value, it was just how things got done. In this conversation, we explore what it takes to keep creativity alive across decades of real client work, why curiosity has to be a studio-wide practice and the monumental effort behind Hybrids debut monograph, Curiosity in All Things.

2:32This conversation is about designing with our fear and why the best creative work starts with a very good question. It's my pleasure to introduce Dora Trumalas.

2:52Hey, Laura, it's great to see you today. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. You're most welcome. I am so excited to talk to you today because your new book that you guys released, even the title got me really excited because I call myself Eternally Curious human if i speak to my friends i say i'm eternally curious idiot because i try to discover the things that we cannot find in many places but your book is called curiosity in all things and it's a wonder of design color shapes thinking philosophies so i'm glad you're here so we can talk about your book but for those who may have not heard of hybrid your design studio and your book in yourself How would you introduce yourself?

3:35I'm Dora, and my studio hybrid design was started 24 years ago by my husband and myself in San Francisco. And the title is a reoccurring theme in our studio ethos in how we explore new projects and what influences us and inspires us. And it's truly 24 years of all of it, the process. And the process of design isn't a straight line, as anyone who's in design knows. I like to say the design process looks like a plate of spaghetti. There's phases. There's the beginning of the meal, middle of the meal and the end of the meal. But if you truly get to explore, right, and you follow that spaghetti around, that's what the creative process is like, at least in my head.

4:24And it's beautiful that way. You said it was you and your husband who started High Bridge. and in your description of who you are you guys say that you are problem solvers improvisers artists craftspeople thinkers collectors adventurers roll up our sleeve doers and many other things how did you get up to be at the helm of such intricately beautiful output that you run right now i think to be really curious you have to let it all in and you have to follow the inspiration. And the beauty of being, I've worked in-house and I've worked at an agency on the outside. And the beauty of being on the outside is your clients are different.

5:05Different clients are going to come in through the door. And we've never wanted to specialize. I feel like our lives would have been a lot easier as business people if we focused on one thing, if we were a branding shop only, if we were a web studio. But our clients have more complicated problems. Our clients have campaigns with multiple touch points and our interests are varied so as a creative person i can't understand why i would just want to do one thing it just seems like a great way to kill creativity i've been thinking about this for very long time because i admire people who can do the one thing potentially they might be more happy and more content because they know what they want they've got it and they're doing it but as you said design is a bread of spaghetti Do complex things produce so many more complex solutions or possibilities that we just, you know, if you do just that one thing, it might be a lot of potentially be more predictable.

6:05But I like that when you say to be curious, you have to let it all in. You have to let it all in. And some people embrace change. Brian and I very much have different design styles. So when we first started, I'm the Swiss grid designer. Brian is the mad scientist illustrator brain. So where I have a love for typography, Brian has a love for illustration and chaos. But we both love telling stories in those two different ways. So the studio from the beginning was this blend of styles, was a blend of clients. And then as we brought on employees, we hired in these two buckets, right, and made sure that we were balanced.

6:49and everyone who came in wasn't a copy of somebody else. They had their own unique voice and their own unique point of view and their own unique weirdness, which made everything better. Right. And then we all I think that's the those are the conditions to create good work for us. And I have a good friend. We spoke about this earlier. You need fertile soil to plant a lot of different seeds and see what comes up. If everything is the same, that's one crop. That doesn't work for us. How would you keep your soil fertile? It's that diversity of interests, ideas, points of view, people from different countries, guys, girls, right?

7:31If anything gets too much of one thing, it just throws the whole thing off completely. You don't have the same mixture of ideas and it just gets boring. I guess that's why we would call it biodiversity in the world out there, right? Again, I feel like the nourishment comes from that curiosity. As a creative person, you have to. And we have crazy standards in our industry where the client wants to know what's new, what's beautiful, what's the latest thing. And there's only so much of that chasing the trends and whatever, but there's solid foundation, good design. right you gotta have the solid foundation of a brand is the brand behaving as it should is the brand doing all the right things and then if it is then you can start telling stories then you can start activating on the good things that are already there it's not about chasing trends it's not about oh everyone's using this illustration let's do that it's about challenging yourself every time and it's not efficient from a business point of view it doesn't make sense at all right you have to get up to speed every time new client new process new homework new skills new technology but we do it right that's what it takes to do something new i think there's a time and place for the work like that to happen because it's not to everyone because as you said it's not always the best for business it's not always the best for for time and speed but this sentiment has been echoed on this podcast before by other people that you know you need to do your best work and do it afresh otherwise you're just repeating your best hits if at all best hits when i look at your book and i see your profile it just says change change and more change and to some people change is scary because you've established you know hypothetically someone's established what they've got is working why break it i am with you change change and more changes is uncertain but it's so thrilling.

9:34It is thrilling and you get one pass at this right and some people need comfort from rinse and repeat right and that stable world and others that is not satisfying right and for us I feel like it's not satisfying like I can see the look on the designer's face if we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again it's this I'm dead on the inside face that I get and then we have to have a discussion about what are you doing outside of work. What are you doing right now to keep it fresh? Because if work isn't giving it to you creatively, then where are you going to find it? And I say that also because the work in the book is this much of the work that we've done as a studio, right?

10:17And part of including the inspiration and the essays and the thinking in there is that it takes work and you do a lot of really, I say ugly. You do a lot of work that you don't want to put in a book to have to get to this. We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lax Coffee Co., the first creative speciality comfy company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lux Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices.

11:01And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxcoffee.co.uk. You can use the code podcast to get 15 % off your first order.

11:25this is interesting and i really want to talk about the curation of the book and how you guys put it together because i know the feeling when you've got so much and how you curate it but before we get there i still want to trace it back a few steps back because you've co-founded hybrid with brian how did you guys meet and how did you decide to start hybrid together that? Brian and I met in college. He was a design student and I was a film student. And I was really close to graduating, met Brian, saw what he was doing and then realized, oh, you know what? I think I've been doing this design thing all along too.

12:02I just didn't know that it was design. And then I thought about film and decided to change my major and, but still love film, still want to do something with film, but changed my major to design. Brian graduated, got a job at Fossil Watches, then was recruited to go to Nike. And then while I was still in school, I got an internship at Nike and then went up there and then stayed up there. So we were both in Portland for about five years working at Nike. And it was the absolute best time to be there because they were growing like crazy and you got thrown into all kinds of projects and all kinds of work and I really you didn't have to be an expert in environmental graphics you were a designer and you were going to figure it out so you got thrown into projects it was amazing it was absolutely amazing to work there what was one of the fundamental things as a takeaway apart from this one that you've taken from Nike from that time there so many takeaways from Nike my time there was wonderful I know everyone has a different experience but and I'll speak for Brian too we learned so much and we saw how fearless a company could be and how a company could elevate design and really care about design and really get behind the stories of innovation and product innovation and athletes storytelling and it was everything it was grad school for design for us completely and I was thrown into environmental projects Olympics World Cups you name it opening of flagship stores everything and it was fantastic it was the right place to go and learn and understand that you can be fearless and you can touch logos and different mediums and video and print and photo shoots and that's being a designer when you say that the benefit of your time being there at that time was that it was more of an age of innocence or ignorant shall we say because nike this is not a show about nike but obviously it's going through different phases now this is more about the bottom line about the margin about the shareholders price about to send that and again the sentiment has been mentioned on this podcast before have we lost that fearlessness because at that time you didn't almost i'm assuming that's what happened is that you didn't have that baseline of previous precedent it was like some of the things were just done for the first time whereas now as you say there's a lot of precedents there's a lot of trends there's a lot of examples and references.

14:28How did you enjoy that time that when you reflect back on it, are you able to recreate it now? I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And when I left, I left a good, really good job. I loved what I was doing, but I knew that creatively I had touched, if you have a creative bucket list, which I think we all should have, I had done all of the things that I really wanted to do at Nike. And it had given me so much. But it wasn't just about Nike at that time. I wanted to live in a different city. I had done big and in-house, and I wanted to go to a big city. I wanted to work at a small studio. I wanted to do the opposite experience.

15:12And for some people, that's ridiculous. But for me, I did big. Now I want to do small. And I want to see what that's like. What is that pace like? What are those projects like? How do we work with our vendors? How do we work with our clients? So completely different. And what is it like to have different clients, not just one? What was the new list populated with when you realized that you can go and do your own thing? The new list was essentially the opposite of what my experience had been at Nike. I wanted boutique. I wanted to, what I thought was maybe spend a little more time on projects, which I got to do.

15:50but then that was too long right like I can't a project that takes a year to complete is difficult for me I needed to go much faster so I got the opposite experience and I wanted the opposite experience including city but it wasn't just for me at that point it was for Brian too it was both of us had checked all the boxes he had gotten to work in different departments he had gotten to work on a skate shoe before Nike had a skate department. That was pretty amazing for him. But we worked there at an interesting time when sportswear and collector culture was just coming into being. So when we were there, what was being discovered was dead stock of inventory, of Cortez, of Air Force Ones, of unit dunks.

16:41And that became sportswear, right? That became collector culture for shoes. Now, at the same time, Brian and I are collectors of design, right? So we understood, like we were like, oh, you're a collector. It happens to be shoes, right we collect design stuff right design ephemera design furniture books brian vintage toys so if you're a collector you're a collector and if you're a collector of design and culture you understand how these things feed into each other so it was interesting to see and we understood it there and helped it get off the ground brian did the first limited edition logo for collector shoes.

17:26And then it was like, okay, we did all these things. We did all these things. They're not getting this off the ground fast enough. Our momentum was still to leave and come to San Francisco. Did you do that thing that you left Nike, but Nike then became one of your first clients? Is that what happened? Yes, exactly. Because I love everyone we worked with. We worked with great people, talented people, incredible people. And Nike has been a client ever since. So that's pretty good. Yeah. Did you feel like you actually can switch the gears because obviously one thing is to be in-house and within the brand and the other thing is actually now be on the outside and have been more scoped to be dynamic?

18:03And did you have more freedom? Did you enjoy yourself on the other side with more flags? I did. And I understood the internal workings. I knew who to go to to get things done, to get answers. But then I could also satisfy the creativity of, oh, okay, now I'm also going to work with a paper company. I'm also going to work with a technology company. I'm also going to work with and learn from them, learn about their business. And maybe as a business owner, that's interesting to me to understand business needs. So it was the best of both worlds. It sounds amazing. But now with the reentering the curious phase, the wider the lens when you can work with anyone.

18:44So it wouldn't feel like after years of being immersed in the world of sports, and then all of a sudden you've got a chance to work with different clients, did you find that muscle memory had loosened a little bit? Because it's one environment that Nike is the new client, but then the other conversations happen. So did you feel like you had to switch gears or was it naturally? Were you ready for the change? I was super ready for a change. And that's just part of enjoying change. But everything we learned at Nike, we brought with us. So Nike was that grad school. And being able to take those ideas and bring them to a different client and say, hey, have you thought about this?

19:23What if we tell a story this way? What if we activate the brand this other way, right? And borrow from one client behavior and execution and bring it to another. And that is one of the biggest strengths of being on the outside, of being an agency is that you get to cross-pollinate and that's really important. I think it's happened. I think so many people have left Nike specifically and gone on to a million other companies and you see the playbook. You see the Nike playbook for activating, for marketing especially, but it's more fun. It's so much more fun to do. So what I like about this is that we have traced it to the beginning, but now i'm going to fast forward 24 years because as you just told me a while ago some of your work is documented in your new book curiosity and all things i want to know how did this come about because this book landed on my doorstep i said landed a courier brought it in a very heavy box it's like nothing i've ever seen before in terms of production the diversity of the thinking the words and as someone who's been publishing books potentially in a combined pagination to yours this gives me mild palpitations because there's a lot of work that's gone into it how did you plan it how did you do it so i really want to get to now with your book i can see your copy behind you how did this come about are you finally relieved that it's out there and it's done it's a huge relief that it's out there the worst part of the process was proofing that thing that was unbelievable.

20:59And it's like, how are we still finding mistakes? We've all looked at it a million times, right? It's hard to proof 650 pages over and over and over again. But what is a book made by people who love books? I mean, hopefully that just comes out at you is, oh, these people love print. These people love books. And Brian and I have collected books. I have a book problem, I feel. If I go to a bookstore, I'm leaving with books. It's just what's going to happen. And since going to bookstores while I was in college, I've just been a good student of beautiful books and beautiful printmaking. Back in the day, you could go to a paper merchant.

21:44Remember, you could go into a paper merchant and get all the paper samples from all the different paper companies and you would leave, even as a student, not a working professional, with bags of samples and they would push it on you. Take all this good stuff. Look at what you can do here. Look at how you can print on this paper. And that was experimenting. That was learning. That was spot inks on different colored stock and different printing techniques and the edge painting. All of that stuff, all of those details, those are like the little love letters to bookmaking and to printing completely in that book.

22:19So when you see it, you're like, oh, this person loves books. But then the stories that are woven throughout are seeing so many monographs from different creative people executed differently. And everyone has a slightly different story to tell. Everyone has a slightly different thing they want you to walk away with. And I think what we want people to walk away with is that it's all about the process. It's all about exploration. And creativity is something that has to be fed. so hopefully you get that diversity of thought there's multiple voices in the book it's not just brian and i we didn't name the studio after ourselves we named the studio hybrid to reinforce that thinking to reinforce inputs and outputs and hopefully that's people get to take away 100 because when you talk about this book is made by people who love books it shines through it it absolutely shines through it and i was on my monthly book i call it trip i make sure that when i'm in central london i spend half of the day just walking around bookshops and just see what's happening not just in a design category and i'm kind of sad to say that our design category section is it's a little bit sad at the moment your book stood out but the monographs the great books the kind of thing you only need to pan by 20 degrees in a bookshop and you go, oh my fucking God, what's going on here?

23:47Because stuff is incredible. I feel so incredibly lucky on our behalf that we live in such a visually privileged times that the books that are not meant to be interesting are incredible. In fact, beyond incredible. And in our category, I think it's a little bit stern. I think it's a little bit safe. It's a little bit maybe outdated. I'm trying to bring my own sort of version of chaos and riot into what books can be. feel like with what you guys did it feels like a salvo to the new era of what a monograph can be because even just seeing and if i can't see right six bookmarks those ribbons that's already giving me goosebumps because you know that someone thought about it and not just in one color there's lots of colors a lot so how do you tackle a project that's going to have output of 600 pages is how do you build a storytelling?

24:40How do you build the peaks and highs and the lows? And how do you keep the reader entertained? Because this is something that is going to take a while to jump through. So how did you get to first planning? And how do you get to actually bring the project to life? Did you get approached by publishers or did you pitch it? Can we zoom in onto that? We knew we wanted to do a book and we've started and stopped a few times over the years. but it's probably great that what happens in a small studio is you get busy, real work comes in, and then you have to stop working on your book, and then you do the stuff that pays the bills, which makes sense.

25:15But we had gotten a book pitch together, and we were starting to go out, and early on in the process, Victionary said, yes, we'll do it. And we had worked with Victionary multiple times in the past, contributing to their books. And their books are beautiful, And you can tell they love bookmaking and they weren't going to cut corners. So it was a no brainer for us to work with Bictionary. And throughout the process, they were fantastic. They were absolutely fantastic. And as we moved through the process, we kept adding pages to the book. OK, it's going to be another 100 pages. OK, another 50. Because we would put stuff in and edit it out and put stuff in and edit it out.

25:57But they never said, what are you guys doing? They were just like, OK, crazy people. Sure, keep going. But they were fantastic. So it was important first that we had a partner that wasn't going to cheapen the experience. And I say cheapen because paper matters. The finish matters. The bookmarks matter. The edge printing matters. So when you make a book for us, we're making an object. Even though we think of graphic design as 2D, that is a 3D thing. So that was really important, first of all. Victionary. Second was we knew it would have work. It's the proof. It's the proof that, hey, we're a good studio.

26:40Look at the work. Okay, check the work box. Diversity of studios, diversity of kinds of projects, stories, people we got to work with. But I always feel like it sells a studio short to only show the finished work because any designer will tell you behind the finished work are tears, is a messy process, is a ridiculous timeline. Every project is different. And years and years and years of that gives rise to theories and approaches to doing the work, which are the essays that you see inside. It's the writing. It's the thinking. And even before that is the inspiration. So including the collecting weirdness and showing how disparate that can be.

27:33It's a glider pilot training kit. It is their vases from Italy. It's Japanese vintage toys. It's movie posters. You know, what are all these beautiful things that are everywhere that designers and creatives, I think, should be paying attention to? They should be building on this knowledge. And when you get to build on the inspiration, then it just flows into all these other things seamlessly. And I love a snackable book. So back to food. We're going to, there's going to be a lot of food. I wanted people to come in wherever they were. And I wanted the book to meet creatives wherever they are in their career.

28:16And I'm usually not a linear person when I pick up a creative book. I will just snack. I'm going to flip through it and decide where I want to enter the story. And that's okay. You can enter it anywhere and it's fine. Or you can start at the beginning and go through. I found out when I did my first book in 2016 that it was a snackable book. It was a hidden portfolio in plain sight. I just create a book with my showcase but I put lots of words in it and people said yeah I can just dip in and do my thing that was the secret sauce which I didn't know but it's nice to be there because doing books for creative crowd I found that most of our creative friends do not read as much as we would like them to do because from my colleague research or findings or data points people appreciate when something's broken down when there's a respite when there's what I called the peaks and tropes in that sort of excitement do you have a bit of a time to rest and digest what you just read and is there something else that you can take your curiosity with because heavy books are for other times therefore for other shelves for something else how do you make that book interesting it's a whole different story but with yours i think the balance is fantastic and you mentioned earlier how do you keep proofreading 640 odd pages i'm sure that you spotted after printing everything there's still mistakes because it's impossible to somehow catch these typos because it looks all fine everyone checks it you print it how do you make a typo on page two i've told friends i said if you see anything don't tell me just don't tell me it's okay i don't need to know i want to go to the thing you said just a while ago you said we knew we wanted to do a book there is a statement of intent so in the world of all of the books possible obviously you stand tall and proud said we are hybrid and we know we want to do a book.

30:04What was that intent? Was it to inspire and educate, inform? It was absolutely a statement of intent. And, you know, it feels good to have proof, right? A printed book is proof. And in the past, we have print as ephemera, right? It wasn't going to last. But as it turns out, in our digital age, printed things last. They last a whole lot longer than digital things. So first and foremost, it's proof. It's proof of many years of effort, many years of learning. And that's a good feeling as a design studio. And the work that we did was good and it holds up. But the other part of that is that we have a unique way of getting there.

30:49And that's important as well. Of course, we have a process depending on the kind of work that we're doing and who we're working with. But I really shudder and I hate people that sound overconfident. And there's one way to do things. And we're the experts. Anyone who comes across that way to me, and I hate it because in business, this is how you do things. But in a creative business, it's really important that you listen and that you ask a lot of questions. And that's a different way to approach work. It's a softer way to approach work. It's a curious way to approach work. And only really confident business people appreciate that.

31:36You can't do what we do with fear because the work won't be good. You have to approach it with curiosity and you have to ask a lot of questions and you have to bring your client along the journey with you. And the clients that do this with us together are the clients that we've had for 20 years, for the many years, right? These are relationships that we build and that we have together. But I felt like there was a need for a voice that was softer and weirder. I think you very much accomplished that because you just hit on something which I had to make a note of. You said you can't do your work with fear.

32:15That's a very lived-in experience statement. it's really easy to do your work Caleb who's one of our creative directors who's been at the studio for over 20 years he likes to talk about a factory system of design and that's how we internally think about the very rigid this is our phase we don't change our phases a client get on board this is how we have to work together you almost get to check out and not engage as a creative if everything is so rigid and that's the worst thing that you can do as a creative but to explore to even be brave enough to ask questions of really brilliant minds that are sitting in these rooms across tables from you sometimes that you get to meet there can't be fear you have to say i'm going to be the vulnerable one and i'm going to ask all these questions these are the right questions to ask and we'll all get further, but you can't do good work if you're afraid.

33:17No, I can only agree with you. I think it can be a part of the process because some people love the uncomfortable. Some people potentially have to accept the uncomfortable, but it's a good point. Anyone say, yeah, look, we did this, but we were scared, but we did this because there is a breakthrough, isn't it? You can start in the unknown, but you get to the other side, which kind of brings me on the curationist. Speaking of the unknown and the other side, Because from the hundreds and hundreds of images and the dozens and dozens of projects, how did you even start picking the ones to use, picking the ones to choose and the ones that you have well documented and said, okay, this is the process, how we can showcase it?

33:58Because that's a mum of tasks. And you mentioned obviously earlier that sometimes you wanted to do the work, but then the clients come in and the work needs to be paid. The client does need to be paid client work. So who was in charge? Was it a democratic process of choosing the work? who was in charge of curation, who was in charge of looking up all the design assets, because there's literally thousands of pieces in there. The process is pretty democratic, I would say. And there were many, so many rounds of design that we did. But when we got to the end of the process, it was clear that some projects had too much love, too many pages, and other projects hadn't even made the book yet.