Dare to redefine success - Pablo Honey

0:12Success is such a tricky concept and you're right and agree that it means different things to different people. The more I talk with friends and family even, whatever it means for them, it changes over time. So at any given time of my career, maybe having or creating a project for my portfolio, that was success. So the creative endeavor was success. Some other times was certain financial special ones. Other times is really connecting to people or reconnecting with friends and family. It really changes. For me, it has changed. And it keeps changing every maybe season.

1:11Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast. A 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?

1:57Today I'm talking to Pablo Honey. He's a designer, creative director and educator. Born in Galicia, raised in Switzerland, he's also resided in Barcelona and now New York City. For over two decades, he's been working for Fortune 100 companies and startups, from traditional media to emerging technologies in constant flux. In our conversation, he talks about his award-winning short stories about escapism, about early pursuits of Adobe Flash, how he spent three years working in restaurants while building his design career, which ultimately led him to prestigious roles and campaigns. Pablo also reflects on his multicultural background, sensitivity to overwhelm and philosophy of ruthless hospitality that shaped his creative leadership.

2:44It's my pleasure to welcome Pablo Honey.

2:53Hey Pablo, how are you doing? How are you? Excited to be here. So, for those who have never heard of Pablo Honey, how would you describe yourself? My name is Pablo Honey, and if we go through the traditional professional roles, I suppose, I'm a designer, creative director, and currently head of design at Automatic, the makers of WordPress and other creative tools to be on the web. I work in between multiple disciplines of design, from technology to branding and other things in between. though I'm not sure I'm all of those things. It's just what I do. I'm just a human like everyone full of fears and curiosities.

3:42What defines more who I am, I guess, is traveling in between those roles and concepts. So sometimes I'm more of a designer. Some other times I'm more a creative. Others a manager, an artist, and so on. I love the way that you say I'm a human, full of fears and curiosity, because you're already setting the bar in the place where I love these conversations to be, you know, human conversations, because, as you said, like, whatever you do defines you at the time when you do it. But after all, we're human trying to sort of make these dots join and make some sort of sense of it and make a journey. Where did it all start?

4:23Because you were born in Galicia, but you were raised in Switzerland. Whenever I see your output, whenever I see what you do, I feel like Switzerland has had a very big impact on what you become creatively. Am I ever got it right? Very much. So I was born in this region in the northwest of Spain that historically has been quite poor. So people migrated out. They were migrating out before the Second War, mainly to the Americas. And after the Second War, they were moving up to rebuilding Europe. And my parents migrated in the last wave of that migration, in this case to Switzerland, and that's where I grew up.

5:08It was 10 years of happy childhood and so on, surrounded by things that I only recognized much later in my career. When looking back, even traveling back to Switzerland, I was recognizing a lot of things that I loved. Architecture, typography, general design and books and signage and so on. And I did realize much later how much of an impact that childhood surrounded by all good design, how that affected my understanding of the profession later on. What you describe is very much formative years, like you are at that time a sponge, like as you said, almost like a subconscious sponge, you know, you picked up on all the things that made sense a lot later.

6:05So what was the age and how was the surrounding? I moved as a baby when I was a few months in and was in Bern, the capital of Switzerland, until I was 10, a little bit above 10. So it was 10 years of being the sponge of design and design culture. Again, you're not aware when you're a kid, but then when you're older and follow this path and this profession, you start to self-identify with certain approach and certain sensibility for creativity and design I'm just trying to find a concoction of these influences because obviously you've got your roots you've got your Spanish roots you're in Switzerland and you are on the trajectory to become a creative curious human designer creative director so I'm trying to find the ideas of what was the initials of the creator spark you know this has been a theme for my entire life there's this concept that maybe you've heard of called third culture kit which is basically this state of mind of people who were born in one place but were raised in a different culture and they leave in between those and there's almost like a limbo space where like they develop their own which is a mix of both.

7:32In my case, it's even a little bit more drastic because beyond that duality of Spain or Galicia and Switzerland, then I moved into different places. I lived in Barcelona many years before moving to New York City, where I've been 12 years. New York City has been actually the longest I've been in a place. So there's all these tensions in between cultures that ultimately have formed my own profile, my own way of thinking, and my own way of being. But it has, to be honest with you, been always a challenge too, because I was too Spanish to be a Swiss, and I was too Swiss to be a Spanish, and I was too Galician to be in Barcelona, and I'm too Spanish to be in New York City.

8:24Translated to disciplines, and perhaps we get to it, but I also understand the profession of design in less of boxes and more in between. So I find also myself too interactive for the graphic designers, too graphic designer for interactive folks, and it's quite funny how I enjoy being in between, but also has been a challenge belonging to groups, cultures, and concepts.

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9:53I love how this is all making sense now. You and I have met a couple of times, we have conversations, but I've never heard of the term third culture kit. Would you describe being too Spanish to be Swiss, being too Swiss to be Spanish, to be too Galician to be in Barcelona? To a certain degree it matters to some people and to a certain degree it's a benefit, it's a gift of life because some people are just too Catalan to be Catalan. They don't want to stay Catalan. Some people are just basically hardcore New York. They're always too hardcore New York. But I think the way you describe yourself, like the curious human that is hovering over these different disciplines, it makes sense because I feel that what you're describing here is definitely a gift of life.

10:38It's not always a smooth sailing, thinking where is home, where is my friends, where is my tribe, where do I belong, or where do I fit in. but in a way has given you what I'm sensing so far, this incredible gift of actually being a curious human being that transcends these disciplines into something that other people wouldn't potentially have done in. I love to do this for that and to do this for that because I don't think you feel that anymore, do you? Because you're not 10, 20, 25 anymore because it doesn't really matter what people think, right? I appreciate you. You say it. elegantly that I'm not like so young anymore.

11:20And I'm not really. So it doesn't matter too much now. And I do agree with you fully that I appreciate these life experiences as something that are part of me. And it allows me to have perhaps a diverse set of perspectives or a little bit of richness and the thinking and making. I do embrace it and so on, but it hasn't been smooth. And especially when you are looking for your own identity and forming who you are, what you want to do, and so on, it's challenging to not fully belong to anything, any group, but it is something that I appreciate today. I'm going to try to trace the creativity in your life because there's a sort of cultural mixture of all sorts of influences, dissonances and conflicts and frictions.

12:20Where does creativity come into this? I don't know really. It's been a strange experience and case, I suppose. I come from a very humble background. They had to migrate one generation back. They were very poor. So there were no references for me to hold on to for this creative career or develop these creative curiosities. There were no books at my parents' house. Fast forward, I'm obsessed with books now, to an extreme case. I love reading. I love being surrounded by books and so on. No one in my family went to higher education. So I was the first one going to college in my entire lineage, which was a little bit dizzy, to be honest with you.

13:20And not having these These references invite me today to actually speak up a little bit more and being a little bit more public to see if there's someone out there, maybe in a very small village like the one that I come from, that can maybe hear us talking and relate to and just have a little bit of a push forward for them to pursue their curiosities. I really don't know where mine comes from, really. I was a writer as a teenager. I would write a lot. I would read a lot. I was interested in books and magazines. I was back in Galicia. We were living in a very small village. Maybe there are 50 people living there.

14:10There are more cows than people. And I was subscribing to magazines from New York City, mainly design and creative magazines one from the school of visual arts how magazine and so on and now i laugh about it because someone was sending these magazines to this little village in galicia so i had this curiosities all the time about film films and stories and that i'm not sure where they come from really because i didn't have that those references at home that's really interesting that in a village where there's more cows than people you find your way of escapism and started looking for what might be out there in the world because sometimes we hope that there's a sort of societal influence or there's someone who will show us the path or you will try to emulate someone trying to be as good as someone like to show us the ways but you talk about school of visual arts and the loop mostly the full circle is there what no you actually ended up working for school of visual arts later which is a beautiful full circle but when you said you were the first person from your lineage to go into college did you have a pushback or did you have a support or how did that feel because the reason why i asked is because there's often people on this on the show talking about almost come go going against the tide like people are not always happy for someone to say, hey, don't do this thing.

15:41Because people come up with their own life problems at this situation. Hey, you're going to do this? Are you sure? Because to them security looked a lot different to the unknown as presented. So how was it for you? Did you have that support? For support, I was very lucky to have the parents and the family I have because they had this vision without knowing to support me in this journey. So they were fully supportive of me going to college and doing what I've done later, even just quitting my job in Galicia and moving to Barcelona without a job. And they were super, super supportive, despite the pain of them seeing, again, someone in their lineage moving out, migrating out.

16:36That was a little bit painful, especially for my dad, because that generation was dreaming of coming back home and developing a life there without their kids needing to move out. But I had a lot of support from my family beyond their understanding. And I, again, I celebrate this duality I've experienced and I have from this esoteric, rural context to this modernist, fast city of New York City. and I try to embrace both and both were formative and are part of who I am and how I understand the world and even the profession You said you were a writer in your teenage years Do you remember what stories you were writing?

17:34What was the narrative that you were putting together? Was it escapism? Was it projections? What did you write about? Both were about escaping actually So I had And I say both because I wrote a lot of things, but specifically two short stories were published when I was a teenager. They were part of a contest and they made it to be finalists and then they were published in subsequent books, which I was very happy about and that inspired me to perhaps pursue a writer career. I realize as you speak that both stories are about escapism just being discomfort with staying boxed I think what have you described so far it all makes perfect sense that those stories were reflection potentially of the subconscious trying to come out and go there's something else waiting and again you were award winning from a very young age now being chosen to have your stories published is remarkable when you think about it just because the longing is pushing out it started something so i have to ask you from creative side of things do you remember the very first thing that you ever designed was that first breadcrumb that you picked up and go you know what this is quite interesting i want to do more of this it's funny that you ask this because i've been in a recent journey of, it's almost like an archeologic journey of compiling all my work over 25 years.

19:12And as I'm compiling all that work and archiving all that work, I found this very first logo that I designed ages ago. And I see today so many mistakes made, but I still like it. There's something fresh about it. There's something unapologetic about it. And, you know, without knowing even, there's a lot of that connection with Switzerland. There's a bit of Wien Cruvel in it and so on. So I look at it, I might actually fix it a little bit just for self-indulgence i suppose but i was very surprised to to see it and still like it today love it absolutely love it i mean i'm very impressed that you've got the very first logo still somewhere because i'm somehow personally quite happy to have got rid of all the evidence that i used to suck or maybe i was a genius you know who knows but let's talk about the first logo a little bit more because how did you get to do that logo somebody has to somebody must have asked you to do this and to do this you must have told someone i can do this for you so on the concept of daring creativity step one how did you get your first logo commission?

20:37I think I was perhaps like first year of college and I was a little bit of a weird guy back then and I was doing a lot of video experiments and I was starting to play around video performances and things of that nature. So you can see that I was like getting into strange places even with no awareness and understanding of the medium. But in that context, and as well connected to the short stories I had written, someone who became a dear friend and we were friends for so long, found those stories in a library, in a local library, and realized that he needed to meet this kid that was writing these strange stories and was doing these strange things with video.

21:44And he was involved in... I guess, I don't know what the translation exactly is, but it's an association of vets in Galicia, specifically for cows and larger animals. and they were creating this association and he asked me to create some branding for it I guess before we understood what branding was or I understood what branding was so that there I go I create this logo fast forward I create this flash presentation for the whole association which I do have a video of and I'm a little bit embarrassed by, but it's still like pretty fantastic to be able to have less constraints and be a little bit free with the medium back then when I suppose the web and digital were a little bit more fun.

22:46I mean, what a story. And I mean, what an assignment. Association for Vets, now specializing in livestock, obviously in a place where there's more cows than people on average. that makes all perfect sense but flash i mean it almost feels like a sort of this twilight zone that flash could have came caused chaos riot let everyone rip loose i mean flash was basically i think invented so designers can show other designers what can you do with flash in a way of showing them flash skills confusing everyone everybody else but flash is i think it's a perfect segue because you move to barcelona because of certain festival and it was only the other day i found out that of stands for offline flash fest where was it offline film offline film flash festival something like that i think that's the actual definition of off because i'm thinking what a cool name i'm like what does it stand for and i literally just a few days ago was like oh that's what it is which reminds me fitc was flash in a can there was a lot of flash festivals there are still festivals where flashes nowhere need to be found so a complicated silly segue into you moving to barcelona because of festival called off right that's pretty much it yes before finishing college i already had a job at a small graphic studio graphic design studio you know i had a regular life i had a job i had you know family clothes car home whatnot but I was still involved with this video experimentation, VJ-ing, doing video installations, interactive installations, and so forth, and decided to visit Barcelona to attend this crazy event called HOF that a friend of us founded, Hector Ayuso, and now it's continued by Pep.

24:46and I attend this festival and suddenly I see this Japanese guy on stage, Yugo Nakamura, known as Yugo, presenting these visual poems created in flash, interactive pieces of graphic design that were moving and reacting to input. And it just blew my mind for some reason. You know, sometimes like something just triggers your mind. And it kind of made me move to Barcelona. So I quit my job, quit my life in Galicia and moved to Barcelona, knowing that I had to pursue something similar to what UGOP was doing. How did that go? Pretty good, I think. I moved to Barcelona without knowing anybody, and so some fears hitting there.

25:53But I had a very raw and different profile and portfolio even, because I was not coming from traditional graphic design school. And started to show my portfolio around, really, while I was working at a restaurant. to survive. So I worked at a restaurant for about three years. Even when I got a job and I had a job, I had a job in an agency and I was still working at the restaurant. So I worked for three years. I worked every day of the week, basically going between the agency and the restaurants and the weekends until a point where I got an offer to teach at the Institute of European Design. and then I had to choose.

26:42I had to choose a career and I chose design and creativity and I was teaching and also at the agency and an agency that was very pioneering back then with flash and interactivity called W. So in general, it was pretty scary to move into Barcelona without knowing anyone and so on. But then after working hard, being in the right place, having a little bit of luck, I developed my career in that agency. And the work that I developed there got the attention of RGA New York. And at the peak of the agency, they made me an offer to come to this fantastic city to work for Nike, which I couldn't refuse.

27:29So overall, that experience and off triggered a step forward and emotion forward that brought me to this day so thank you to off thank you to your family thank you to flash i mean flash was the enabler flash i mean flash produced something you saw on a screen or on a stage i fell in love with it okay i'm moving here this is what i'm gonna do and i'm a big advocate of moving to places where you don't know anyone because you can start the story afresh and you can actually focus on what you want to do because you don't have that stability, that security. It makes you, I think, work twice as hard.

28:09I mean, in your case, I mean, you were working in a restaurant for three years and it gives you that foundation. I think it would be wrong to say that it makes you be more hungry. Actually, it makes you more determined to make it happen because you can't almost take it easy. What I really want to know is what have you learned in those three years of being in a restaurant? because you come into sort of favorably, you come into contact with the public every single day. What was your role and what have you learned that you actually still use today? First of all, I feel a little bit old as we talk about flash.

28:41Moving from it and without nostalgia, what I learned at the working at the restaurant, which is still my family, actually I call them my Catalan family and every time I go to Barcelona, And of course, the whole neighborhood is appreciative of me being there and vice versa. So I have a love story with that restaurant still today. The restaurant, by the way, is called Cinco Hermanos, Five Brothers. It's in one of the larger neighborhoods in Barcelona in the north of the city. And the two things perhaps that I learned is, first of all, hospitality. being welcoming nice to people comforting and it quite connects to the work i do in design and we should be thinking about design and how to how you guide someone through experiences how you make someone understand communication and so on so walking and working with people to have wonderful experiences.

29:51So I think ruthless hospitality, almost, that's one learning. The other learning is that you gotta work hard. And perhaps that's something I'm still inheriting from my parents as a mental program where you have this survival mechanism that makes you propel forward constantly. And we have to check on that, right? Because it can be also risky to only move with that survival mechanism. But I think one thing I learned as well is that you got to work hard. And I never believed that I had something more special than others. In fact, joining RGA from a small village, from not fancy cop schools, and it was an adventure.

30:50But one thing I had is the hardworking spirit. And that, you know, I inherited, as I said, that from my parents and my family, as well as from experiences like working in a restaurant. I love that you use the words ruthless hospitality which makes me believe that you haven't heard of the book about hospitality which is called unreasonable hospitality right because you're ruthless and what was really interesting because the day you were doing a talk at Mucho just a few weeks ago I was walking to Mucho a few hours earlier to have a lunch with Pablo another Pablo and I was trying to decipher I was I wanted to announce my new book I wanted to talk about on this podcast when it's announced it and I had this idea of a complicated cover like sort of moving words and that kind of stuff and I saw a Spanish copy of Unreasonable Hospitality looking at me from some bookshop on my walk and I'm like yeah it's time to keep it simple it's time to keep it simple this cover can just do with the words being written you don't have to do any nonsense like just keep it simple and Unreasonable Hospitality which I've read not that long ago it's a fantastic book about just like how you do just that one thing so much better than anybody else what you get known for and what you do so the way you said ruthless i quite like it because that kind of takes it another step and i'm like step forward yes it's meant to be ruthless i love how all of this is sort of beautifully taking us into you know your new chapter with rga because that's a step up like we're going from someone who again i love the fact that there's more cows than people i know this is the last time i'm gonna say it but we're going through that setting which you would not see yourself being in that position potentially thinking i'm sure you might attest to it like potentially thinking all of that work that's amazing is done by some other people it's not done by people like me or by a lot of people like us or people from this place only to find yourself getting an offer going yeah we're going to new york saying i'm not that special whereas there is something special about everyone who gets the offer like this because it wouldn't it would employ a fool someone who's not into ruthless hospitality or into working hard kind of thinking i'm coming to here actually do really good work so we are now in new york RGA offers accepted, there's a Nike account.

33:13What happens? I don't know. Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm just, like, moving forward. It was quite a journey. RGA has been formative as well. And I moved really quickly with my broken English and my naive view of the city and business and so on. But again, I think being curious, being hardworking, being open as well to learn and being a sponge constantly is something that I continue doing at RGA. And I was there for about six years and moved quite quickly through it, launching and making really good work with other people and learning from others and also helping a lot of young designers to develop their own paths.

34:14You said moving forward. Moving forward is one of the titles, one of the working titles for the book, moving forward, because this is what we do. i'm trying to sort of sort of think about it out there right now but if you're not thinking about the next step you are almost falling behind if that makes sense i mean i've learned to be careful about the word sometimes when you see other people and thinking why don't you want to do this some people are just happy to be the thing they are now and they're happy to be doing the thing for next 20 years because we need people like them but i think we are aligned on this philosophy as moving forward and doing it with the way that like there is something else that's another thing there's something about moving forward that is undeniably positive and there's also a dangerous side of it i think you and i alongside stefan tagmeister we talked at Paradiso not so long ago about chasing the next and why we are so obsessed of it.

35:18And I do find myself relating to that dichotomy of moving forward and as well like questioning yourself why we are yet again thinking about what's next. I had a lot of next already and I need to check myself when I'm propelling my mind forward too much and thinking about the next ambition versus also enjoying the present. And so I don't have a lesson to give, but it's still like a good discussion to continue because we are in today's society, we are a bit obsessed with next. you said you don't have a lesson about this but you said it's undeniably positive i think that is the lesson i mean yes we are obsessed with the next if we are sort of impatient about it now but having that something about the next like seeing the two steps forward of seeing and i call it like a driving in the dark versus you know seeing ahead for a mile like moving forward could feel like driving in the dark but when you know that there's a destination you're getting to actually looks after that happiness because i think looks after the satisfaction it looks after our definition of success because if you don't know where you're getting this is almost like an example of like short-term projects now people who have 50 short-term projects will dream about one long-term project and there's a person with a long-term project are longing for 50 small projects because they don't have that dopamine head about finishing something whereas the people with the 50 like this is chaos i need some order to this you know so it's just again we're on those scales of life never really been happy with one or the other because you always want the other thing whereas on that mission of moving forward and thinking actually being accountable to yourself and saying i'm thinking well there's another thing that makes me excited and what is the price for to pay or the price to give for not doing so because you said i need to check myself if I'm thinking too much ahead and I'm like okay if it stops you from enjoying the present maybe but I see it as a gift it could be a gift it's also fun and entertaining to project yourself somehow but I do try to force myself into enjoying more today and the present and what I already achieved or what I did or the people I inspired, perhaps, and try to appreciate both the present and also still entertaining myself with projecting into the future.

38:11The panel that you mentioned between you, me, and Stefan was titled, Are We Afraid to Be Happy? Are we bending the flatline of our own success? And success is such a diverse, multifaceted word when you think about it. Like, to success should mean just one thing, but success to everybody means a totally different thing. In your case, what is your definition of success? Wow. You go all the time you want. Do we have another hour? We can a couple if we want. success is such a tricky concept and you're right and agree that it means different things to different people the more i talk with friends and family even whatever it means for them it changes over time so at any given time of my career maybe having or creating a project for my portfolio that was success or the creative endeavor was success.

39:21Some other times was certain financial threshold. Other times it's really connecting to people or reconnecting with friends and family. It really changes. For me, it has changed and it keeps changing every maybe season. And I'm currently in a phase where I'm appreciating a lot, connecting and reconnecting with friends, people that share certain fears and curiosities, and also people that don't agree with me. So I'm in this process of maybe coming out of my cave a little bit because I've been quite shy and focused on my own work that I forgot that there's a world out there that I can be part of and share a story as I said maybe inspire someone who is in a small village I love how you're thinking about it I love how you go through the stages because success initially could be very selfish and then you can be a a little bit generous with like how you perceive success and then you realize that success is totally unreliant on other people totally unreliant on anything else because again you've said it beautifully so success changes like now there's a different sort of definition to it because we look for that extent of validation so much at the beginning and you mentioned success would be like creating something in my portfolio and like how much we obsessed about portfolio so so so much and then you're like have you got portfolio it doesn't really matter anymore because i believe my current definition of success outside of family life is actually being able to speak to people actually share the philosophies and make sense and work on storytelling and actually do more with just sharing of our ideas and sharing our experiences because that's gonna give someone a lot more inspiration or potentially take someone even further beyond just a pretty piece of work that might look obsolete in 5, 10, 15 years.

41:38So I think what we do currently as an industry, especially with the circles that we are connected with, I think that is a success. I think we are really opening doors to that sort of emotional sharing sort of economy, if that makes sense, by inspiring people actually going and doing something for their benefit. because in your work and and every time i see i have to ask you like you really manage people no you really manage 80 designers especially when i found out there in 23 countries working in 25 languages i'm like right you just called yourself shy or used to be shy how would you do all of this because that's a hell of a lot of people to do to manage and keep inspired keep in check keep them motivated of course i'm sure you don't speak to every single one of them every day but like you and I are a design leader and I want to know how you do it well first of all probably not excelling at it I'm still a craft person at heart so there's always that tension between the management and being a craft person at a given moment you can find me designing an icon or you know what what not and that might take time from managing i'm also lucky enough that there are like other people around that are better at it and also share the responsibility of guiding such a large team on top of it is fully remote so it it's quite hard at times because we we or I miss a lot that life connection and that life creativity that sparks when we are together and so on.

43:23And we still try to do that, like flying a lot over to places where we can meet and work together. So I think, how do I do it or how do we do it? We probably need to document it at some point. But I think the key of it is probably shared by many others that you interviewed. so far is having great people. And I'm lucky that there are great people at Automatic, not just skilled and talented, but also gracious and super kind. It's probably like the kindest group of humans I've ever worked with. So that makes it quite easy. I think it's sometimes hard because there are a lot of silences in a remote culture and I'm also shy myself and so on but it's much easier when you choose or they choose you but you choose the right people and the kindest people it's a beautiful thing that you said no it's the kindness that people that you are surrounded by kind people that makes everything half as difficult as it should be which you know that's already a definition of success you said you shy quite a few times but i've met you when you did talk just you know in the earlier slot at off barcelona in front of a few thousand people we all get nerves we don't want to be on the stage we dream to be on the stage but something makes something helps you to break from that barrier so would you say that your definition of shyness is connected to that galician kid in switzerland swiss like kid in galicia would you say there's some sort of way of being perceived by others that makes you think that way because the more i think about shyness is there's something else behind it there's more vulnerabilities and more potentially shame but you've made it far enough that you've broke through that, you know, brought for a seal.