Dare to shift back to human - Elana Rudick

14:35Elana Rudick:And it's really about that thing. How do you challenge your status quo and go into something that will be beneficial to your career, to your story, to your pivot? kind of stuff so daring is my word because i think in a sense like some people might understand it i need to do something really crazy and stupid but it can be as fun as a chocolate bar with a

14:55Radim K. V. K.:custom wrapper i think it's really personal of what daring is for you like i mentioned earlier like i'm somebody who really enjoys sameness i enjoy monotony i enjoy routine i'm a very just normal person like that i don't need to do crazy stuff but at the same time when i do things that I consider daring, it's just doesn't mean it's daring for anybody else. It's just daring for me. It's pushing myself out of my comfort zone. And I think that's what everybody should be doing is taking a step out of your comfort zone to push yourself a little further. And whatever that means, it doesn't have to be doing something that's a gimmick.

15:32Radim K. V. K.:It's really about what will push you to the next point in your career or in your life or in your journey. What are you going to do that's going to be a little outside that comfort zone? And every time you take a step, I feel like you go a little further, you go a little further. And then you look back and it makes sense in hindsight, but you never would have gotten that far if you didn't take that first step. For example, when I was on your first season, that was the first time I had been on a podcast and I was absolutely terrified and I didn't want to do it. And if it wasn't your friend, I would have been like, you know what, let me just not.

16:06Radim K. V. K.:But now coming back, I was super excited and just happy to have this conversation. And I felt really comfortable because I had done that first step but had i not done it you don't know if you don't know i seem to have amazing

16:19Elana Rudick:talent to actually have a lot of people for their first podcasting experience which i never knew of some of these people but what you're describing like moving far going to places that you haven't been i always say that if you're trying something for a certain amount of time not only you will make a new habit you will pick up a bunch of skills but you will also not come back as the same person you will come back as somebody new and i think that's the magic in this but i'm wondering like when you talk about and i think that was potentially the reason why i was challenging the daring to be different or you need to be a little bit daring to be different because it seems to me with the advent of ai we have leveled the thinking the level the output level the ideas because all of a sudden we spend more time chatting about taste and prompts and that kind of stuff and the most incredible ideas that used to be like the daily chat and i've been pushed aside because we see this chat about ai and this assistance creative assistance it seems to have taken over in a way that is it counterproductive to our general ideas and general sort of productivity or where are we yeah i don't think it's counterproductive necessarily to

17:30Radim K. V. K.:our creation of things. But to me, thinking and execution of ideas are two very different things. So I think that's what we need to spend more time as creatives doing. And that's what I'm going to be advocating for in my talk in Vancouver is that we need to be slowing down and spending that time thinking things through. And what are we making? Because it's so fast and easy now, and it's getting faster and easier to make things. So what's going to set us apart is how we think, how we express ourself, and really spending more time slowing down on the idea part because we're going to be expedited on the execution part.

18:10Elana Rudick:Let's talk about thinking before we execute.

18:14Radim K. V. K.:Such a harsh word, though, execute.

18:16Elana Rudick:I've never really got on with it. Yeah, let's execute the idea. It's just not knowing if it's dead, not actually made, right? Let's talk about the thinking part because I agree with you. We can make the stuff faster. Can we think about it faster? Do we need to? Do we ought to actually enjoy the part where we can think? So how has this slower approach to thinking and the ideation worked for you in the studio?

18:41Radim K. V. K.:out it's been working well for us i really think it's important to take a pause to to slow down and honestly that's we've always taken a pause in our work when we're working for example on brand identities and we're developing logos it's always been my philosophy that you have to sit with it we can do our sketches we can do but things take time so even if you think you have the best idea and you've sketched it out and you've made your design we're not presenting it to the client. We're waiting a few days. We're sitting with it. We're looking at it again. We're thinking about this because sometimes you need that distance from your work to make it the best as you can.

19:22Radim K. V. K.:So I think we still need those pauses. We still need to take a second and think about what we're doing, even actually take more than a second. We need more time now to slow down, to think about things before we even start any prompts, before we start to make anything, because I feel like it's so easy to get wrapped up in the new stuff and what spits out. Yesterday, my son was working on a presentation and he got so lost in Google Slides, just getting all this stock imagery and he got, went down a rabbit hole and I watched it happen in real time. And I was like, you need to stop, go away from the tools, sit down and think this through.

20:01Radim K. V. K.:What are you trying to make? What are you trying to say before you start making anything? no more pen to paper so i think that's even more important now because everything is so shiny and exciting and new so it's really important to sit and think through your thoughts before you make

20:18Elana Rudick:anything it's shiny new and it's also used by the same people almost in the same way so i've been browsing linkedin and i literally asked myself who speaks like this because you see people who were clearly very good at writing their posts four years ago five years ago they They were massed and following because they were doing groundwork, really good work. They actually have an opinion. And then you see them now using words. It's not who you are. Why are you doing this? Because you've taken the soul from someone who got known to have soul. And now it's peppered with these sort of awkward, clunky terms that Claude and GPT can spit out for everyone.

21:01Elana Rudick:And I'm like, isn't that a bit of a shame? because yes, as you said, we've got a lot more volume to execute posts, projects, whatever. But these little crutches, those little helpers, these assistance, the means of assistance actually is making content more homogenized visually and verbally. So when you said we need to sit with it, how do you convince the other side that you need time to sit with it?

21:29Radim K. V. K.:They're the other side. They're also on our side. That's one difference. I really try and see clients as part of our team, as on our team. And that's also a shift that I've done in recent years in my headspace is trying to work, like swim in the same direction with them. So I think by building up a trust with our clients and showing them over and over that we're with them on this, we're their partner next to them, that naturally leads to being okay with us taking a bit more time. because sometimes we'll go forward with something and I'll call a client and be like, listen, I know we're rushing this through, there's a deadline, but I'd really like one more day with it.

22:08Radim K. V. K.:Not because we can't finish it today, we can. But if there's any way, sometimes clients have real deadlines, like real hard deadlines, and sometimes they make up these deadlines in their head, but really, it could wait a few days, they're just nervous. So I'm not shy to call the clients and say, listen guys, can we have another day? I really feel it will benefit the work. Even if it ends up being exactly what we gave you today, I just want to sit with it. I want to think it through a little more. And sometimes we'll make adjustments and they're generally happy. Working really together.

22:35Elana Rudick:I'm trying to think how many times I've ever seen a real deadline being actually a real deadline. It was magazines, editorial, some of that stuff. But whenever it comes to even advertising, I remember working endless hours on something which was meant to be launched a week later and in two months it still hasn't been out. You're like, oh, okay. Not a real deadline, is it? But I like when you said we swim in the same direction. I like that because you were a support. You can be that little navigation ship that helps the cruise ship and get out of the dogs.

23:05Radim K. V. K.:I feel like it works with your water analogies.

23:08Elana Rudick:I mean, we are staying in the water for now, for sure. Absolutely. We are staying there.

23:11Radim K. V. K.:As long as we're not drowning.

23:13Elana Rudick:Well, this is your job because you're swimming in the same direction, but I need to make sure that everyone's afloat. So let's talk about the fact that what you do, you believe in design that is most effective when it serves people first. Let's talk about that.

23:28Radim K. V. K.:I think design should always be human-centric and focused on people, whether it's who is using this in the end. We're always trying to put ourselves in the shoes of whoever is receiving this material or using our design at the end. I think that's always been true, but especially today with AI and everything else, I feel like it's so important to feel the humanity in it, to feel that there's a human touch, to feel that you're being considered as a person. Like, how would a person interpret this work? How would a person use this work? And for us, our studio does a lot of purpose-driven work. So we are dealing with a lot of non-profits and a lot of causes where it's very important to keep the humanity in the heart imprinted all over that work to tug at the heartstrings.

24:22Radim K. V. K.:That's our job in a lot of situations.

24:25Elana Rudick:I always get curious when people say it's human-centric. What do you mean with that?

24:31Radim K. V. K.:I guess for me that comes down to engaging the human side of things so senses like we talked about before connecting that but you have to feel something for me I want people to feel something and for me design that makes you feel even if you hate it if you feel angry if you feel sad whatever those feelings are I want people to feel something when they look at our work if they see it and huh and then toss it aside then that's not a job well done to me I want people to have a reaction.

25:00Elana Rudick:I like him because you said you want to feel humanity. You talked about feeling humanity. Why is the approach from the craft perspective? We talked about the ideation part of you got more time, but now with the execution stuff, like where do you guys go when you want to make people feel something? How far do you go in the ideation stage and almost engineer those feelings that making people angry sounds quite fun for a while but yeah how would you put this together like where do you go for the tactile nature and that kind of stuff what planning goes in and again i'm adding extra questions to the question but is it sometimes budget restrictive or do you manage to push things through that actually are more beneficial to push things further for the

25:45Radim K. V. K.:client's benefit yeah i think sometimes when we talk about budgets with clients it almost feels like the designers always advocating for you're always looking for more budget to do something bigger and grander and I try and look at things from a different lens especially when we're working with non-profits where they're very tight on budgets so how do we maximize what they have and that's something that I look at what is the most we can do with the least and that's how I approach it so sometimes it's how we execute it doesn't necessarily matter it's what are we trying to achieve? What is the end goal here?

26:23Radim K. V. K.:And how can we do something that's going to help get there? And sometimes it's not even designed. I've had clients call me about a project and I convince them out of it. Maybe that's a bad business practice. If I don't feel it's something that will actually benefit what they're trying, their goal or what they're trying to achieve, why are we doing this? What is the point of making another flyer, another brochure, another piece unless it's moving the needle forward so i think the way we see that is lots of conversations lots of talking to people lots of being supporting our clients being in their spaces understanding who they're trying to reach and how they're trying to reach them

27:05Elana Rudick:it's interesting you said that you're thinking that saying sometimes no to a client makes might be about for business but it's the element of speaking up is the element of care is the element of saying hey actually you don't need this because you and i are from the same generation of designers and you said and something that really reminded you some of my philosophies when you said we tried to make the most with the least that was a sign of times it was just what do you want everything what you got nothing what should we do everything and what with nothing okay let's go and make it this would be the most most fascinating sign of times because do you have budget no when you need it soon okay all right how do we do this but it was that drive and that energy of let's do this so i like that philosophy leads into working with clients now because having learned through all those data puts for those past lived in experiences and crazy client budgets and also the crazy client projects it makes you more equipped to this era when you say people are looking for more budget and i always ask myself like if you ask for more money how much more money is enough money because you see people with massive budgets they're like oh this wasn't enough i'm thinking but where is the measure because how often have you had people who would say yeah we had just good amount of budget it almost never happens because you're always fine it's a bit more like with life you get millionaires people who make million dollars money whatever potatoes a year and they're still skinned because they spend it So it's just like, how do you almost inbuilt the element of curiosity, gratitude, observation that obviously works?

28:40Radim K. V. K.:You're talking about what's enough. What is your definition of enough? What is your definition of success? When is enough? Is there ever such thing as enough budget? And usually when we're working, there could always be more budget. I would love if our clients had more budget to throw at us for things. But realistically, I think also in today's time where a lot of clients are trying to do things themselves. Even we saw things like Vistaprint came and took over the business card printing industry. There were so many things that keep happening and clients, okay, I'll just make this with ChatGPD.

29:13Radim K. V. K.:I don't need a designer. I'll use Canva. I don't need a designer. There's so many places where we're being cut out of the conversation that I don't think it works the same way. You can't bloat budgets. You can't pad things the same way I think you could maybe 10, 15 years ago. It's just not the same. I don't know. The industry is changing. I don't see the same big budgets, at least not as a small studio and at least not with the nonprofit clients we're working with.

29:38Elana Rudick:That's a very specific sliver of the global industry that was never going to be filled with big budgets. But you mentioned something which I had to write down, which was we've been cut out of the conversation because of accessible tools. On reflection, I am ecstatic that we have been cut out of those conversations because there were usually dross with people who wanted everything for nothing. And when you gave them everything for nothing, they were like, I don't want that. I don't like it. Being actually able to pass it over, I think that's a win, right?

30:10Radim K. V. K.:It is, but I don't think we're fully cut out of those types of conversations because what I'm seeing now is potential clients we haven't worked with. And they'll say, I have a great idea. I ran it through chat. I just need somebody to execute it. They'll say, I have the design. which is interesting. They'll say, I have a design and they'll send me something that like a PNG from ChatGPT of what they want for a mock-up of a package or something else. And they'll say, this is the design. I just need you to make it. It should be nothing for you to make it because I already have this design as a base, but really they have nothing.

30:41Radim K. V. K.:They have garbage. So it's almost like a false sense sometimes that they have a starting point. So I don't feel like it's fully weeded all of that type of work out yet. I hope it does because those are not the clients that I really want.

30:55Elana Rudick:Yeah, it's a really interesting one because I'm lucky that I've worked with legacy clients that I've worked with for many years and I hardly get any new clients. And that kind of gives me that warm glow because I don't have to start new conversations and convince people that good ideas and good design exist. But there is something in empowering people to actually have a go themselves, realizing the maximum limit, or the immediate limits and then go, actually, I need someone to solve it. Because when it came to butchering ideas, people used to use word art and word clip art or whatever, all of that stuff.

31:34Elana Rudick:The media has always been prevalent and around. But now, obviously, we've turbocharged it. And I think there's something poetically hilarious about the fact that people are trying to get a chat GPT to do something that they really think they can see. And a chat GPT goes, I can only do average, mate. What do you want?

31:52Radim K. V. K.:if they can see that it's average though some clients don't recognize that and they think they're coming to you with gold and that's where i'm like oh no there's no harm in trying i applaud a client especially if they don't have big budget or they're a startup or wherever they're coming from and they're trying something and they're trying to get their ideas on paper to help you get to a point faster in design that makes sense to me but when they come to you thinking like they this is it this is the idea this is the whole idea it's right here just copy this that's where i'm like peace out i mean i think it comes to education because i've been talking to

32:28Elana Rudick:people recently about the fact like how designers once upon a time would go up on a stage in front of a couple of thousand people and they would put a slide on the screen that says i don't know what i'm doing and everyone would be clapping like oh well done mate this is really good because what you're doing looks good but the person would say i don't know what i'm doing and i'm thinking that makes sense until you realize we would look a bit like mugs if you say i don't know what i'm doing but we'll see what happens so then you realize you need to know a little bit more because there is a growth there's movement in your career and you need to know what you're doing till you get to the point where you realize maybe i know too much and it'd be nice to try something different actually get to the position where you get back into that bit of unknown and the learning phase again so twisting that concept onto people who don't know what they're doing and they will never think that they need to know a bit more about the process we've definitely democratized the tools and give them access to everyone we're not necessarily i think moving the needle of the creativity per se to the level where we'll be okay yes this is incredible we've definitely covered a lot of bases for the humanity to be more creative because we find ourselves most of the time just talking about the fact that the tool exists is it good enough it potentially will never be.

33:44Elana Rudick:There's definitely, there's technical ability to upscaling and to do something with already existing idea. You can feed stuff into AI that will do something good with it. But the general usage, I think we just, what we've got is basically a word ad and clip ad on steroids, right?

33:57Radim K. V. K.:Pretty much. But I don't know. I think I disagree a little bit with some of the stuff you were saying in there of there's an illusion with clients that we are the experts, we know everything. And yes, it's not fully an illusion. Like we do know what we're doing, but I also think nobody knows what they're doing. I truly believe if a designer goes up on stage and says, I don't know what I'm doing, I feel like the audience is still going to sit there nodding desk because no matter what level you are, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Right now, everybody's exploring and experimenting with AI, but do they actually know what they're doing?

34:28Radim K. V. K.:Nobody knows what they're doing. Then you look at legalities after and copyright laws and these legal lawsuits that are going to come for these big agencies because we don't know what we're doing. We're trying new things and that's part of it and experimenting and pushing the needle, but nobody knows what they're doing. That's my growth mindset. Nobody knows what they're doing.

34:46Elana Rudick:I like it. I'm here to be disagreed with because we're working out as we speak about it because yes, you can know a little bit and then you realize there's still so much more to know anyway. Even if you claim, oh, I know what I'm doing. Of course you don't know. Unlike what you said, like nobody knows what they're doing. Obviously all you have to do is just to look at the world of politics and everywhere else. And it's astounding how hapless some of the stuff is. This is incredible. it reminded me of an instagram account of a guy who was pretending to be an honest builder literally like a trading and he would he would basically be saying everything that was true oh i just need more money because i just chopped through your pipes and i don't know the pipes were there so i need money to tell you that i need money for the flooring but actually i'm going to fix your pipe because i made a mistake there and doing this and all of his reels were just that and it was hilarious because imagine if you were in the studio what are you guys doing?

35:40Elana Rudick:Where do I start? We try to do that. That didn't work. So we don't try to do this. We're trying to do that. But could there be a comfort in not knowing? Because sometimes the unknown can make us feel a little bit scared. So how do you balance knowing and not knowing?

35:55Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, I think it's being confident with what you do know. So there's certain givens that you know, and then being open enough to say, I don't know this yet. I'm going to try this. I don't know if it's going to work, but I'm going to try it out. And sometimes just going into things uncertain, but with solid footing of what you do know is enough to try something new. I'm thinking about a situation recently where we were doing an event. So we were doing a conference for a client and we were providing creative services and they asked us for a lot of last minute asks. And I was coordinating this conference and the group of creatives and they had asked us for a live edit of the conference due in two hours.

36:44Radim K. V. K.:And had they asked the videographer or the editor, they would have absolutely said no, but they asked me. And I know enough about video to know what I was asking of the team, but I was still naive enough with the client to be like, you know what, this is a really great idea. I think we should do it. It's crazy, but let's do it. And when I approached the team, they were like, are you crazy? This is too much. And I said, I'm going to do everything to support you and make it happen. And in my head, I was confident because I'm like, we could do it. But really, did I know if I could do it? Not totally.

37:18Radim K. V. K.:But we pulled it off because I think sometimes there's a strength in naivety.

37:24Elana Rudick:Absolutely. There's definitely strength of naivety and I did say be confident with what you know because if you were to stand within the boundaries of what you know you would never push yourself and I wrote daring forever a book about literally just how do you make that one step just looking from a point of neuroscience how our bodies tell us something how our fears and don't come from a brain down but they actually they are from our bodies how we feel the untestorial fears that are still in us because we've been built for pursuit not for pleasure whereas now what we pursue is a lot more pleasure than a pursuit and it's more about how do we process this so when you push yourself into i don't want to sound like a firm neuroscientist but if you push yourself and actually create a new new pathway trying something new imagine a meadow in your head and then you got a desire path that your brain is used to go i'm coming from here today and this is a safe pathway to do something new you need to literally make a crop circle style pathway into your brain material as I'm trying to liken it to a meadow in a way to create something new and it's easier to go on that well-trodden path to go we've done this million times let's go back there whereas if you're going somewhere new you get that physical sensation of trying something new because your body will be going like okay do we need to worry about stuff are we in danger what's happening here are we having fun are we not and there's me noodling on about naivety how amazing is it to be confident with just the basic ideas going, maybe this could work, but maybe not.

38:52But I think

38:53Elana Rudick:from a history of my business and many that I don't know, especially happening in 2000s and 2010s and 2020s, the most amazing things happened because people had absolutely no idea what to do and how to do it. And then they got started.

39:06Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, exactly. You have to figure it out. When you say yes to something, all of a sudden you're like, oh, okay, now what am I doing? How am I doing this. And for me, I find that's something I've learned in the last year, which is it's fun to be in this business for 16 years and be learning new things. That's what keeps me excited about it and learning new things about myself, too. This is something I'm actually good at, which I didn't know I was good at, is finding solutions, not just design solutions that I've been doing a long time, but I didn't know that real world life situations where I could facilitate things in a way that I didn't know I could before.

39:44Radim K. V. K.:To see those skills transfer for me was a really exciting new thing that it's part terrifying, part exciting. And I think that's where every few months I want to find myself at least on the edge of one situation where I'm half terrified, but it's also excitement. Because if you're not doing that, then that's where you're stagnating and you're just on the same path over and over again. And I'm very comfortable in that path and I could stay there forever, but it's not good for me.

40:10Elana Rudick:Half terrified, half excited. That's just the definition of life, isn't it? But thinking about what you said about your life, Edith, it goes back to your previous answer when you said, I'm trying to do the most with the least. And I think it goes back to our generation or some people of our persuasion, which is, I'm going to work it out.

40:26Radim K. V. K.:We're scrappy.

40:28Elana Rudick:Scrappy, scrappy, trying to make things happen. You've got your new talk that you are I'm going to be a new talk debutant soon. And I want to know, what are you bringing to the stage that people need to hear from you?

40:41Radim K. V. K.:The title of my new talk is The Shift to Human, Reconnecting with What Matters. And in this time that we're living in with so much tech advancements and AI, it's about being designers that can still bring an element of humanity into our work and using our skills and what soft skills we really need to develop and leverage to keep being relevant in this industry and continue being creative.

41:06Elana Rudick:So this is really interesting because I feel like we've kind of filled the conversation about your talk with the little bits of here and there, which I think they lead into your talk title, Shift to Human, because how do you see the importance of soft skills and how would you say that people can actually work on those and identify what they need and work on it?

41:28Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, I don't even think you need to be in person to develop soft skills. So even just building trust with people, communicating with them, you can be doing that through every touchpoint, email, telephone. I know I feel like a dinosaur sometimes when I pick up the phone and call people because everybody's into texting and emailing, but it goes a long way to speak on the phone, get comfortable with that. talk to a person because you can hear if you're in person amazing it's easier but when you're on the phone with somebody you can really hear their voice you can hear if it's shaky you can hear what's going on and when you see them you can see their facial expressions and their body language and so much of what we say 90 of it is body language so even if their entire body is closed off to you and saying no this idea is not going to pass so for me i love whenever i can get in front of a client or speak on the phone with somebody, whether it's a client or a teammate or a supplier.

42:21And that's how you build relationships.

42:24Radim K. V. K.:And I think relationship building is a massive part of what we do or what you do in any industry. And those skills are what will carry over. So I think it's really important, even though we sit behind a computer all day, to develop relationship building skills. And that helps build trust and leads to so many opportunities.

42:43Elana Rudick:It's pretty interesting that you said that you don't necessarily need to be around other people to build your soft skill toolkit, right?

42:50Radim K. V. K.:No. So during the pandemic, that was something that I realized because I was so used to going to network events and all of a sudden that was cut off, no more client in-person meetings. So I still wanted to really maintain those relationships that I had been cultivating for so long and to keep growing as a person and as a designer. So I made it a point every day I called three people and I did this for a year. I would call three people and touch base with them, whether I'd worked with them once, whether they just reached out one time and the work never went through, just to say, hey, how are you doing?

43:25Radim K. V. K.:The pandemic was a huge talking point. It's very easy for somebody to have something to talk about because we were all going through this shitstorm together. So how are you navigating? How are you navigating this? What's going on in your world? And I would have people breaking down in tears on the phone and telling me about their lives. And usually we didn't talk about business at all. But a lot of those relationships that I worked on during that time are people that I still work with now. And it changed the type of relationships that I have with clients and suppliers where there's a huge trust.

43:53Radim K. V. K.:In that situation I was mentioning before where we were looking to do creative services and pivot and they looked at me like, are you crazy? And I said, I looked at them and I said, I know you can do this. And they trusted me because we had built that relationship up and that was leveraging the soft skills that I had developed.

44:07Elana Rudick:You're right about a pandemic sort of changing quite a few things because I think things became a bit more looser in the way of we don't have to come across too professional or pretend to be professional because what we do need to somehow align with the world of business. Of course, there's a lot of other tick boxes that we need to do, but it was a great time to actually, that's a stupid thing to say, the pandemic was a great time.

44:31Radim K. V. K.:Some people it was, they made bread and jewelry.

44:34Elana Rudick:yeah but it was a time when we can recalibrate what it means to be human at work because once upon a time before pandemic you couldn't really have kids on your on your zoom call causing riots in pandemic gone everyone chip in and afterwards yeah this is my children making noise because that's how we work and i think the soft skills key behavioral attributes of curiosity resilience empathy or even actually lowering our ego did play out did play the part because we realize how how equal we are after all in the face of a virus.

45:05Radim K. V. K.:Definitely levels the playing field. Nobody's immune, pun intended.

45:09Elana Rudick:Yeah, exactly that. So when it comes to those attributes, for example, like curiosity, resilience and empathy, how do you work with your team? I mean, you talk about shifting back to human. How do you put those in place? Because I know you are very good at keeping your client relationships and talking and obviously being a very good leader. But how do you trickle it down into your ecosystem to make sure that everyone feels seen, heard and enabled well to do that?

45:35Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, I think those are the exact same skills. So the same way that I'm checking in with clients, I was checking in with my team constantly and still am. So whether they're physically in the studio or they're working remotely, it's very important to me to everybody's entitled to their privacy. I'm not saying to pry into their business, but I try and create a safe landing space that if it's a team member or supplier or a client that has something to say or something going on, we're all people with other things going on outside of just your regular day-to-day work life. And those things that are going on around us naturally influence no matter how much you try to compartmentalize your personal life and your work life and all those things, they bleed together so often.

46:17Radim K. V. K.:I'm going to be a lot more patient, let's say, with a designer who's going through something personally if they share it than if all of a sudden they're just making a ton of mistakes that they know better. So I think it's important to check in with your team and know what's really going on with them personally. Obviously, again, if they're comfortable to share so that you can be more empathetic, you can be a better leader, you can support them better because sometimes the support they need, it can be something that's so minor from you where you can say, you know what, I know you have an appointment this afternoon.

46:46Radim K. V. K.:It's quiet. We don't have anything due today. Just take the day off. Deal with what you need to deal with. That goes a really long way with people where all of a sudden that stress of, oh, I'm not going to be fired for not doing a good job. That breathing room is something that I, and grace is, I think, something that we should be extending all people that we're working with, clients or especially your team.

47:06Elana Rudick:When you started talking about shifting back to human, I think you really now nailed the whole idea of what it's like to be in the leadership. when you've got human leadership. There was a reason why I asked you about a human-centric. What do you mean with that? Because this comes from a place of growth, care, and experience. Because what you're describing, I'm sensing that your studio works well. You don't have to worry too much about work. You don't have to much worry about margins. And that's where the magic happens. Because as you said, we need to make sure we don't drown and you're keeping your ship afloat.

47:45Elana Rudick:to think that it comes with time because we want so many things to go well and we want to do them well and we want everything poetically okay i want all the clients all the work all the money all the time all the resources all the budgets right and then you realize that it's impossible to us to balance because you need the cognitive space and the experience how to handle it how to digest it and metabolize it so i'm really feeling the way how we talk about shifting to human because that gives you that view that the creativity was always will be inherently human and whatever the tools and execution is it's almost the 15 percent of the process rather than 95 or some people might

48:27Radim K. V. K.:be thinking the way you make things is really important what your philosophy is and for me that is about people and i always assume that things are going to go wrong i try and be optimistic in a perfect world, everything goes right. But what is my plan B? What is my plan C? How am I going to adjust when things don't go well? And I think when you work in a way that prioritizes people, they have your back. I want to see anybody that I'm working with as a creative be at their best. So that's a question that I'm always asking is, what type of work do you want to do? What lights you up both inside and outside of the office?

49:01Radim K. V. K.:What matters to you? What do you care about? because that's what is important, I think, ultimately as a leader is to understand what makes people tick and how to work with them in the best that they feel their best to.

49:15Elana Rudick:It comes from a place of care experience because to see others, you need to stop seeing yourself first and you put your focus on the others.

49:22Radim K. V. K.:Yeah. And honestly, I think that also comes from a place of being on the other side. I have been treated horribly in some agencies and places where I've seen and known what that feels like to not feel seen as a person, to not feel heard, to not feel valued or respected. And then to be on the opposite side where I've worked in some amazing places and to see the difference of how people show up in those two situations is massive. And you're talking same pay, same work, same everything. So when you're comparing apples to apples like that and you see what a difference it means to just be normal, be human with the people that you work with, it changes everything.

50:03Elana Rudick:So let's finish on a more positive note. What get you excited about future? What is on Alana's view that, okay, this is the next step. This is the next destination.

50:11Radim K. V. K.:I think for me as a creative, I'm slowly entering some new spaces. And for me, that's felt exciting and optimistic. And I really don't know what the creative future holds for the industry. When people ask, what is the future of design? I have no idea. And that's, again, the precipice of terrifying and exciting. So I don't know what the future holds, but I know that whatever it's going to be, I'm going to show up with all the soft skills that I've learned over the years and bring all of that with me. So whatever it is and whatever I need to do, I will pivot and adjust and I know I'll be fine and I hope everybody else is going to be fine too because we're not starting everything fresh again.

50:52Radim K. V. K.:You're still coming with who you are and I think working on who you are is the most important part, not just necessarily what is your best piece of work out there. I think you need to show up as your best version of yourself and then the work and everything, whatever that looks like in the future, will come.

51:06Elana Rudick:I can't really take this any further because I think you've perfectly summarized this conversation. and shiving up as your best self. Sound like a radical accountability, knowing what you want, how much you want it, what it takes to get there, right?

51:19Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, I love that radical accountability.

51:21Elana Rudick:Yeah, I think this is something that I've realized that when you were talking about the both sides of a good deal and a bad deal, everything in the same payment, the same work, we've got options to choose what reality we want to have, what we want to be in. And we don't always know it right at the beginning, but we can actually decide what our future should be and then see what part we play in it, right? Because sometimes it's easy, as I've been saying on stages from my talks, it's easy to blame everything and everyone when something doesn't go well. But when you realize it all starts with you, you go, okay, all right.

51:56Elana Rudick:What could I have done differently? Because it's easy to think that at the early stage of our career when it's a very egocentric and for the right reason, if something doesn't go well, you hardly will ever blame yourself. You'll blame everything and everyone. but when you realize you've got some agency that you've got some ways of understanding of what all this happens then you really shift to the space of radical accountability going i could have done better and i could have handled this better i could have spoken i could have stand up and said this should be done this way because ultimately it's the collective voices that really change the narrative because being a sort of solo architect of everything is tiring and also limiting

52:35Radim K. V. K.:Yeah, and building up that resilience is huge. Every time you get a no or you get hammered down by something, I feel like how you pivot and how you reflect on that will build you up better for the next time around. I feel like that's important to just keep, no matter what's going on, or just to keep building that resilience and to keep being a good human.

52:55Elana Rudick:fantastic stuff Alana thank you very much for coming back it was great to talk to you I'm sure I've taken you to places you didn't expect but that's the nature of daring creativity so thanks for being here

53:06Radim K. V. K.:super fun thank you so much for having me back I loved it

53:09Elana Rudick:thank you thank you

53:20Elana Rudick:for listening to this episode of daring creativity podcast I'd love to know your thoughts questions and suggestions so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels this episode was produced and presented by me Radim Malinij the audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Bags Podcast thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode if you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design.

53:57Elana Rudick:Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10 % of your order visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.