"Sitting with work produces better outcomes and trust." (Elana Rudick bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. This week I spoke to Elana Rudick, the founder and creative director of Design is Yummy, a Montreal-based studio that spent two decades doing purpose-driven creative work for non-profits, education and arts and culture clients. In our conversation, we talked about what it means to slow down in the world speeding up, why thinking is becoming more valuable than making, and how a chocolate bar wrapper once got her job of her dreams.

0:37Radim Malinic:The episode, published a few days ago, was titled Dare to Shift Back to Human, and we unpacked 20 years of building something rare, a studio with genuine soul. If you haven't checked out the full episode, let me share with you four standout moments from our conversation. Yeah, I don't think it's counterproductive necessarily to 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.

1:20And 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 it

1:38Radim Malinic:was a nice reframe from elana at the time when everyone's talking about ai speeding up production elana was reframing the entire debate by separating the act of making from the act of thinking i'm a big fan of thinking, if I can say myself. I think there is something about magical about the process when you have time to think about what you're trying to make rather than spending 27 tries to unlock a problem. So in Ilana's case, obviously she's highlighted that thinking and making is not the same skill. I mean, you don't need to be more than five years old to know that. But what AI has done is widened the gap dramatically between thinking and making, which means the value of genuine, unhurried thinking hasn't decreased, it's skyrocketed.

2:22Radim Malinic:Her point is that direct challenge to anyone who's been treating ideation and execution as one continuous workflow, dare not. She wants you to slow down on the idea, be as fast as you like on the making. Alana has been applying this to her studio for years, and it shows the quality of relationships and outcomes she describes throughout the episode. i think back to when i got my first job i got it because i had a different business card and i tried something new and different that was memorable there was a lot of people that were vying for this job and at the time i don't know if i mentioned this to you before but i had made my cv as a chocolate bar wrapper so i was walking around with chocolate bars that and that was my cv that i'd put on their desk of the hiring managers and that's the first kind of time i did something I would say like a little gimmicky like that, which is why I hesitate towards sense of business cards, because I know what that actually looks like when you're on a bus to an interview and it's hot and you're trying not to get your chocolate bar CV to melt.

3:22I once showed up to an interview. Thank God I had a spare copy because it was just like a melted chocolate in my bag. It was awful. But that's how I got my first job because the hiring manager was hungry. She was doing a day of interviews and then she ate my CV and called me and she said, listen, I feel bad for not hiring you. I just ate your CV. That's how I was different then. And I think that's always how I've gotten jobs is by stepping outside my comfort zone to just try something different and not be afraid to do that. So yeah, I think daring, anytime you're daring something, for me, it implies trying something different or at least different for you, something outside of your comfort zone.

4:00Radim Malinic:This was a great moment of looking back of what got Alana, one of her first jobs, a cv printed on a chocolate bar wrapper she carried around with her to various job interviews what made it really funny she lives in montreal but the story was that the chocolates were actually melting so couldn't have been the middle of winter we talked about creative ideas and how to be seen and how to stand out and be different and in this case the medium was the message long before she had a portfolio worth showing she understood that being memorable is a strategic act not a personality quirk. And the detail that made it perfect, as you heard, the hiring manager ate the CV and called her to apologize.

4:42Radim Malinic:That's not luck, as we know. That's the result. This moment beautifully connects to everything, to what Alana says later about standing out, being human-centric and making people feel something. She's been living her own philosophy since before she had the language for it. 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.

5:17So 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? How's 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.

5:47And 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. 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.

6:15Radim Malinic:This moment almost sneaks past you during the episode. Talking about a pandemic, whilst some of the rest of the world was retreating and waiting, she made a decision to lean in not to pitch not to sell just to genuinely check in no agenda and what happened people broke down in tears they talked about everything except work and those relationship built in vulnerability and honesty became some of her strongest professional partnerships i would say this is a master class in relationship building and a reminder that soft skills aren't soft at all they are the infrastructure the design work is downstream of trust In an industry obsessed with output, Alana was building something more long time, genuine human connection at scale.

7:01There'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. That's 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? 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.

7:35We'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.

7:42Radim Malinic:this moment created an interesting conversation where even though we agreed we bounded around the idea that do people know what they're doing should they know what they're doing or is it okay not to know because elana refused to let the expertise become a barrier that separates a seasoned creative from everyone else her argument was that the uncertainty is the great equalizer and that's especially true right now when ai has put every established workflow up for question nobody has figured this out the designer on stage saying i don't know what i'm doing isn't being self-deprecating they're being honest about something universal what matter isn't certainty is being confident with what you do know while staying open to everything you don't that combination solid footing plus genuine curiosity is exactly what elana describes as her approach to leadership client work and the future of the industry it's humble and powerful at the same time.

8:43Radim Malinic:If you haven't checked out a full episode with Alain and Raddick, I would love to encourage you to do so because it very much stands to the title of the episode, Shifting Back to Human. It was a really good reminder of how we can work with clients and build relationships. And I thank you for being here and I'll see you on the next one next week. 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. 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.

9:26Radim Malinic:To get 10 % of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code PODCAST. Have a look around and start living daringly.

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