"It needs to come from inside you." (Alex Center bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to another episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. I'm here to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and digging deeper into what makes them special. It's about the ideas that just hit differently. and this week i sat down with alex center and i really enjoyed getting to know the man behind so many brands of now the work that he does with his studio is making waves across product shelves as well as award shows if you haven't checked out a full conversation i really encourage you to do so but in the meantime i've chosen four moments that stood out from our conversation the first one being this one.

0:42I was scared to leave my job. I had a great position at the Coca-Cola company and any party I went to or any dinner I was ever at, I said, I'm the design director for Coca-Cola. Oh man, going back to our first part of this conversation, like it made me feel valuable. And so to throw all that away was scary, is so scary. And so I needed someone like Brian to tell me that I should do it. And it was a great idea. And he didn't. And I was upset at first. And I really wanted him to tell me, yes, go do this. I wanted the sort of green light and thumbs up. And the story goes that he left that dinner and I chased him down in the rain and he rolled down the window of his car and he said, it needs to come from inside you.

1:27Radim Malinic:and he was right i simply love this story because i know both alex and brian and seeing them in this sort of imaginary run-com scenario where alex is looking for advice and the advice is not coming and the room is getting awkward and the silence is getting even weirder you can imagine how that failed because in Alex's case he was ready to make the jump he had a really good job with the Coca-Cola company he was on top of the world but he's also realized that the he's run out of the runway so having someone like Brian Collins as a collaborator in recent past at that time and then having potentially Brian validate that decision that Alex decided to start on his own can you just imagine when you ask your one of your heroes to say hey i think this is what i wanted to do and they simply don't say anything so i love when the story unraveled by alex chasing brian outside the restaurant and brian winding down the window shouting it needs to come from inside you simple seven word sentence whilst alex was asking to be encouraged on his biggest career decision it was actually best advice he never really asked for because how many times have you done something that come from inside you and that went well how many times you did things that didn't come from inside you you didn't make those decisions for yourself with yourself because of the bank balance because of the market conditions because of the client because of the brand association because somebody decided no somebody twisted your arm and it just didn't go well because the light that guides us from inside us makes special decisions even better and the situation between alex and brian has brought us the beginning of center design and what a story and has been ever since which kind of relates me nicely to the second moment of this conversation.

3:42It's the only superpower I have. It's the only thing that I do more than other people that I can confidently say I am better than them or have more of anything than anyone else. I care more. I think that's it. And I think if you can go to every table in every room and be the one that cares the most, good things will come. good things will happen because people are inspired by people that care people are listened to people that care people want to work for people that care people want to work alongside people that care and that's all you know i decided to name the episode there to care more than anybody else

4:25Radim Malinic:because you don't have to listen for too long to this conversation with alex to really understand that he does really care more than anybody else. I watched this talk of Barcelona, and the work that he does with his studio is simply remarkable. It stands out. And in this conversation, we talked about the fact that Alex somehow mentioned at the beginning that he wanted to work for bigger brands and do things on a bigger scale, but I did pull him up on it, saying he's creating brands of the now and he's creating brands of the future. He's creating the big brands that people want, aspire to work with.

5:12Radim Malinic:And it was a nice little sort of turn of events because to care more than anybody else already sets a platform for anyone to create the work that is potentially the work of their dreams. because if you put your heart and soul and when you live and breathe what you want to do you become indispensable the clients will remember you the team will want to work with you your work reflects an attention to detail and it's your emotional investment and sometimes you can't match it if you don't care so in a world where it's increasingly full of automation and ai and shortcuts care is incredibly human advantage so when you think about caring it attracts people who also care it creates culture alex's studio doesn't just make good work it makes world and matters because everyone in the room is competing to care most and that's just a business strategy that you can copy in values-driven ecosystems that compound over time.

6:29Radim Malinic:And that leads me quite nicely to the third quote. Yeah. I mean, every brand is a reflection of both the people that make it and the people that love it. And I think that is so true about everything that I've ever worked on. It's like people make these brands, they put them out into the world, and then they have a life of their own once people take them and run with them and create something that is their own, or they identify with it, or they use it as a signal to others that's where they belong or who they are as people. And I think all of that is just a part of what we are doing every single day.

7:08And I think it's a reflection of culture ultimately, and both the people, like I said, that are internally a part of the building, but then also where we are as people and society and how it all impacts the outside world.

7:23Radim Malinic:It was quite refreshing to hear him talk about the fact that you create brands for people and the product is just a carrier. Because, yeah, how many times we get to hear the boardroom, three-letter acronyms about this and about that, and God knows what else. Because it's just a marketing speak. It's a boardroom chat. But ultimately, creating work for other people is what makes the difference. He acknowledges that once a brand enters the world, it no longer belongs solely to its creator. The consumers adopt it, they remix it, they make it mean something the founders may have never intended. it.

8:14Radim Malinic:Great brands facilitate co-creation rather than controlling it. They're platforms for identity expression, not dictatorships. And his philosophy that brand is for people and not just for product explains Alex's trajectory from working with established brands to build new ones. When he worked at the Coca-Cola company, that brand was already defined. And let's say some of the work was just the maintenance but creating brands from scratch lets him embed human centricity you see what i did there from day one building communities rather than customer bases and the awards he's won aren't just for beautiful design they're for brands that genuinely help people feel less lonely more confident and part of something bigger and the last quote is the quote that everybody designer needs to hear?

9:08I actually, if I recall correctly, and this is, you just dragged the memory I haven't thought about a long time. I actually remember trying to rebrand the Rangers because it's the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. They're both owned by the same company. And I remember like actually trying to change some of the logo marks. I guess I was just a brash kid. And I was thinking like, oh yeah, I'm a designer for the team. I can start messing with some of their identity and proposing new solutions. And they're like, yeah, that's so far out of the possibility of what you're brought here to do. Like, why are you messing with the iconic logo of the New York Rangers and trying to simplify it or change it or make any adjustments whatsoever?

9:55You're literally an intern and that is not your job.

9:59Radim Malinic:I was very happy that Alex managed to remember the story and get it into our conversation because we talked about his internship at New York Knicks when he was 22 years old and he also worked for New York Rangers the conversation was quite an eye-opener even though we're talking about sports backroom design studio some 20 years ago I don't know how many how much has changed ever since but it was an infront refreshing story about the fact that when we are young and naive we often decide to do things that are not always by the book and how many of you have potentially identified with the story because i remember changing brown fonts logo colors because i thought that was a thing to do but having alex to talk about the fact that he was trying to change the New York Rangers logo because why not it's quite I mean it's incredible because we are all equal in this game we are all equal in this life we do the same things in a most similar way because we all brought this creative beast from every angle try to see what we can find out what we can do and you know what sometimes the magic happens but I don't think that anyone has ever succeeded to change an established sports franchise logo just because the internship started just a few weeks ago this story with alex is one i really cherish i'm very lucky that some of the most incredible people are spending time to talk to me at the moment and every of these 80 plus conversations so far has been ones to cherish so yeah if you haven't checked out a full conversation with alex i hope that i encouraged you especially at the moment of him chasing brian collins or him changing the new york rangers logo thank you so much for being here and i'll see you on the next one