"To be really curious, you have to let it all in." (Dora Drimalas bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to this 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 Dora Drimalas, who is the co-founder of Hybrid Design, who are based in San Francisco. In our conversation, we explored what it takes to keep creativity alive across decades of real client work, why curiosity has to be a studio-wide practice, and the monumental effort behind Hybrid's debut monograph titled Curiosity in All Things. The episode published a few days ago was, well, as you can guess, titled Dare to Find Curiosity in All Things, based on the title of the book.

0:44Radim Malinic:and it was a conversation about creating without fear and asking all possible questions. If you haven't checked out a full episode, let me start with these four standout moments. I think to be really curious, you have to let it all in and you have to follow the inspiration. And the beauty of being, I've worked in-house and I've worked at an agency on the outside. And the beauty of being on the outside is your clients are different. Different clients are going to come in through the door. and we've never wanted to specialize. I feel like our lives would have been a lot easier as business people if we focused on one thing, if we were a branding shop only, if we were a web studio.

1:27But our clients have more complicated problems. Our clients have campaigns with multiple touch points and our interests are varied. So as a creative person, I can't understand why I would just wanna do one thing. It just seems like a great way to kill creativity.

1:45Radim Malinic:Curiosity is actually one of the chapters in my upcoming book, Daring Forever. I've spent a whole chapter about curiosity. And this topic, it gets me excited. Talking about curiosity is curiosity itself. Because when we think about it, this quote, to be curious, you have to let it all in. It sounds very simple. It sounds like, yeah, of course, I know we should do this. But then you realize that most of us do the opposite. At some point we start filtering that will be allowed in, either by protecting our signature style or aesthetic, or the brand or the colours, or protecting even our lane. Dora's whole career was built on refusing that impulse.

2:26Radim Malinic:Hybrid never specialised, because specialising would have meant closing doors. And closed doors are where curiosity goes to die. What she's really saying is that curiosity isn't passive, it's a daily act of openness. You don't stumble into great, unexpected world by staying comfortable. You get there by letting the glider pile a training kit and the Italian vase and the vintage toys sit next to each other until something sparks. Keeping that door open for 24 years isn't accidental. It's a choice made over and over again. I really shudder and I hate people that sound overconfident. confident and there's one way to do things.

3:10And we're the experts. Anyone who comes across that way to me, and I hate it because in business, this is how you do things. But in a creative business, it's really important that you listen and that you ask a lot of questions. And that's a different way to approach work. It's a softer way to approach work. It's a curious way to approach work. and only really confident business people appreciate that. You can't do what we do with fear because the work won't be good. You have to approach it with curiosity and you have to ask a lot of questions and you have to bring your client along the journey with you.

3:55And the clients that do this with us together are the clients that we've had for 20 years, for the many years, right? These are relationships that we build and that we have together. But I felt like there was a need for a voice that was softer and weirder.

4:12Radim Malinic:Once upon a time, I wanted to do a poster that says, the fear is the fuel. Fear as fuel. But is it really or is it just adrenaline? Because Doris, you can't do creative work with fear. lands hard in our conversation. It's her lived-in experience. It's not a motivational poster. Unlike mine, fear is the fuel. There are her sudden rooms with brilliant clients, brilliant budgets and brilliant briefs and watched fear quietly ruin the outcome. Fear of asking the wrong question. Fear of pushing too hard. Fear of looking like you don't already know the answer. What she's proposing is just a simple creative vulnerability.

4:56Radim Malinic:Being willing to say, I don't know yet, but let's find out together. That's not weakness. That's the whole job. And clients who get it, they stay for 20 years. The ones who want the certainty up front tend to get exactly what they already imagined, which as Dora would say, is a good way to guarantee you never surprise anyone, including yourself.

5:21We've all seen people spend a ton of money on terrible work, right? You can do that. You can spend a ton of money on terrible work. And I tell people all the time that you can make beautiful things with small budgets. And here's proof. It's nice to have a mixture of budgets. I'm not courting all the small budgets in the world, but you can make beautiful work with small budgets. It absolutely costs the same to print ugly and to print beautiful, right? When you're putting, just say, four-color ink on paper, running it, taking the time to run it through a press or build a website or whatever. It's time, right?

5:56You're paying for time. So if you think about it and if you've done all the homework and the years of learning, right, you're carrying all that, all those experiences with you, it shows up, right? All of that curiosity and weird facts and beautiful sci-fi films and posters and all the things that you learned along the way.

6:18Radim Malinic:During the episode, Dora mentioned that she's a student of books. And one of the reasons why we had our conversation was to celebrate their debut monograph titled Curiosity on All Things. And it's always an amazing moment when you get a fellow book lover talking, waxing lyrically about the medium, because it's magical. And in this case, you know, what Dora believes in, what they do, it just lands throughout the episode and in this instance it costs the same to print ugly as it does to print beautiful is dismantling the excuses that great work requires great money it doesn't it requires great thinking great curiosity and the accumulated weight of everything you've learned along the way a press run costs what it costs regardless when you put it on the paper the difference is entirely in the case of knowledge brought to the table before it even gets there For anyone who's ever heard, we don't have the budget for something special and accepted it.

7:17Radim Malinic:This is a reframe. The investment isn't financial. Sometimes it's just a willingness to care more than the belief demands. It's these weird moments of working with Lego and reminding them, this was when Lego was first getting into licensing. And you think, oh, they've always been doing licensed kits, right? Not the case. So when they were first partnering with Star Wars, we worked with them to imagine how do we launch this collaboration with Lego and Star Wars? And my husband, who's got an amazing imagination and is a big kid, said, you just need to make a life-size X-Wing and let's fly it into Times Square.

7:59And that's that. Life-size X-Wing. That's the answer. and they lego said you know what yeah that is the answer let's make a website that swing so that's how they launched the announcement so it's these projects where you say what if at the beginning of a project i like to ask a client if you didn't have your constraints money i'm if there were no constraints what would success look like and it doesn't have to be a concrete answer it could be an emotional reaction to a campaign? What would it do for the business? How would we all feel personally? And when you remove the constraints, you can dream for a while and then you put back in all the constraints, right?

8:46Time, money, etc. And you get the project done, right? I love a deadline. I love to beat pencils down. I love to say we're finished. But it's also good to teach the client how to dream bigger than maybe people lock down their abilities.

9:04Radim Malinic:This moment perfectly links to the previous one when we talked about sometimes investment isn't financial, sometimes just a willingness to care more. And in their story, they talked about a Lego project, which was a perfect illustration of what happens when you actually ask this question and hold a space for the answer. Dora uses it as a tool to unlock the version of the client that isn't yet hampered by budget anxiety or internal sign of change. And the version is almost always more interesting. The real insight here is that it isn't about dreaming big for its own sake. It's about sequencing.

9:40Radim Malinic:You ask the unconstrained questions first, capture that energy and intention, and then bring the real world limits back in. That order matters enormously. Most briefs start with a constraint, which means the creative thinking never fully escapes them. Dora flips it though. The difference between a Lego press release and the life-size Starfighter and the Times Square is exactly that flip. If you haven't checked out a full episode with Dora Dramanas I encourage you to do so. It's a beautiful eloquent conversation with someone who's really pursuing curiosity in all things and looking around the corners and asking all the questions.

10:21Radim Malinic:So yeah, please do check it out and thank you for being here. I'll catch you next week with a first live episode from a festival recorded with PJ Richardson. 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 ebook an audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do to get 10 percent of your order visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast have a look around and start living daringly