Aaron Draplin: Field Notes co-founder on what skate culture taught him about design

0:00Aaron Draplin:Hey folks, just a quick disclaimer for this episode. It starts off a little bit of explicit language, so if you have kids around, now might be a good time to throw on some headphones. What skateboarding directly taught me, who gives a fuck who's the best or number one, who cares, who has the mostest, who has the bestest, it was okay just to be together. There was a community there, the artistic license that came from that. It wasn't just how to make your grip tape. You got to make your own decisions at your own peril. I'm just really thankful for that world because in design, it was the same way.

0:36A larger-than-life figure in the creative world, Aaron Draplin has been designing everything from logos to posters since 1995. Few designers are quite as prolific as Aaron. He's the founder of Draplin Design Company, also known as DDC. priding himself on craftsmanship and quality, the DDC has made stuff for Field Notes, Esquire, Nike, Red Wing, Burton Snowboards, Ford, and he's even designed a U.S. stamp. We caught up with Aaron in person at the James Brand Studio in Portland, Oregon, where he walked us through an origin story that begins with a meteor in Navajo country and winds through the skate parks of Michigan in the 1980s.

1:21the snowboard culture of the 90s, and eventually to one of the most recognizable voices in American graphic design.

1:29Aaron Draplin:But this isn't just a conversation about making cool stuff, though there is plenty of that. Aaron opens up about the work ethic he learned from his parents and why being prolific isn't about perfection. It's about experimentation and loving your work enough to show up every single day. We talk about collecting, organizing thousands of ideas and what it means to run a design practice where you can still work on your own terms. Throughout it all, Aaron brings the humor, heart, and hard-won wisdom of someone who's never forgotten what it's like to work a crappy job. It reminds himself every day just how cool a life in graphic design really is.

2:02Aaron Draplin:This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Wilder. And I'm Aaron Walter. If you're hearing this, you're not currently on our premium subscriber feed. Design Better premium subscribers enjoy weekly episodes. That's four episodes per month rather than just two. and all of them are ad-free. Plus, you'll get an invitation to our monthly AMAs with the smartest folks in design and tech. And if you subscribe at the annual level, you'll also get our toolkit, a collection of our favorite design and productivity tools like Perplexity, Miro, Read AI, and more.

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3:10We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.

3:20and now back to the show

3:27aaron welcome to design better thank you for having me thank you nice to meet you guys tell us about your dad oh i don't want to cry right away but you know you come to learn as

3:38Aaron Draplin:you get older i'm 52 now and there were some dads that when you parked in their driveway and you go inside to your buddy's house, the dad would say, did you park in the driveway? You know, he's got the paper and he, you park in the driveway, go put it back out in the street. That kind of, I understand. They worked all day. Their kids are horrific people, my buddies. And then they're being disrespected and they have to work and pay taxes and things like that. I knew how to handle that and be respectful, you know, with that kind of dad. My dad was not that kind of dad. My dad would have greeted you, asked where you're from, who wants a beer, who wants a sandwich, telling you jokes.

4:13If he was making soup, each bean, you cut each bean in half, so you get two farts per bean. This is what I grew up.

4:21Aaron Draplin:That's cool. You know, the humor, the levity, the care for us. My dad was one of my best buds. And it's sad to me that that is a weird privilege and kind of an improbable thing sometimes. Because after my dad died in 2013, you hear what your other buddies might be going through. or you hear my buddies who said, Aaron, I don't know how your dad did it, but he got to me. Is he some kind of therapist? And I went and saw my dad after your dad. You know, my dad was asking him questions. Where are you from? What do you do? What do your mom and dad do? Oh, what do you mean you haven't talked to your dad in this long?

4:55Aaron Draplin:You got to go talk to your dad. I lost my dad when I was 15. He'd tell me the same things. As a kid, my dad went to bat for me and I was getting picked on in high school, you know, and he went to bat for me. If I broke his heart because I didn't want to be a football player, that it was okay, but a couple weeks later, he was helping us build skateboard ramps at the YMCA. That was my dad. And yet, you know, there are sides of him that I continue to learn from my uncles because when I'm around them, I'm just like a little garden variety, a little archivist. Yeah, I want to see everybody. I want to make sure everyone's alive and upright and the whole bit.

5:28But I also want to hear these stories about my dad because the ship has left the dock 13 years ago now and it's going away and it's like, well, when do these guys pass? this living history, for instance. I'm not supposed to tell this story in a large podcast, but, you know, we might as well just get right down to it, you know. My dad being, you know, this benevolent, funny, loved babies, had jokes for everybody around him, good time guy. You know, there are also some things that were just kind of weird. Like, as a young kid, they kind of did some house flipping, my Uncle Tom and my dad, you know, his older brother.

6:02And when we would go out to this thing, like, I remember those guys stealing shit from, like, the hardware store. It's an old school kind of thing. And I could have been ward of the state, but it's an old school, just kind of get away with it. We're in Detroit. You know, it's 1978. I'm five years old. I knew right from wrong. But, you know, I also saw these sides of these guys where it was like things were expensive, and they were just trying to raise a bunch of kids and families and stuff. And there's a side of my dad that's like, it's an old school kind of thing that I've come to cherish. Didn't ever hurt anyone or anything weird, you know.

6:34He would stand up for the little people. I can say that much. And then if it was a big corporation, you know, I saw some things. It was just like, Dad, you know, I can't really, what if we get in trouble? Well, my Uncle Tom was running screen with the hardware shop owner. You know, he was up there asking questions. And Dad and I are, you know, you know the price of nails these days? And I was six. So all these years later, I just will say there is still larceny in my life. And as a tribute to my Polish pack rat dad, When I go to an estate sale now and if they're mean when you walk in I steal one thing per estate Just something that finds its way into my pocket because listen I used to go with my dad and for years He would just do this thing where he'd go.

7:14Hey, you see the sign and I go We got to get back dad. I just flew into Detroit We're trying to get back home up to Northern Michigan to see mom. I got to get back. I'm seeing my buddies tonight Aaron, you never know. At garage sale, this could be... Aaron, a kid in West Branch, Michigan, look it up on your Google, he moved to California. He was a skateboarder, and then he died, and they sent all his stuff back to West Branch. And if we don't take that turn, you might miss these skateboard decks. Whatever I was into at this time, and I never found any of this shit, and we'd go see this. Now, there's a great story of my dad to illustrate this kind of sketchy side and lovable sign where he's with my grandmother one time and they're driving from Detroit back to Traverse City where we were from.

8:00They get off I-75 and he sees the garage sale sign and it says a couple miles this way into the countryside. And my dad, to my grandma Josie, Josie, you know, this could be the one, whatever. The same racket to us. So they go down whatever road, they go down another country road, they get to a dirt road and there's a sign and there's a sign. They get to this little cul-de-sac somewhere and they pull up in front of the thing and it's baby clothes. God damn it. It puts her reverse and goes back out. So he gets to the first sign, the third sign that they saw to get him to this thing. Stops, runs out, grabs a sign, whips that sonbitch out into the muck.

8:36Killed each sign all the way back to I-75 just to save the populace from baby clothes. So the things he taught me were things like be careful with the more colorful a spread is. It could be one thing,

8:47Aaron Draplin:oh, baby clothes, be careful. They won't tell you that. Yeah, that was my dad. Lovable, funny, always down for bullshitting, always down for yucking it up, always down to make you a sandwich or have a joke about it. Like he had an extra refrigerator and it was filled with beer. He wasn't that big of a drinker, but it was Aaron, Wisconsin might get tired of the jokes if they ever invade over Lake Michigan. At least I have enough beer in just in case to get us through. And these are, I do the same bits in my own life now. and that directly comes from my dad and the way that he can make you guys, just getting to know you guys, super comfortable, he starts to text.

9:25Aaron Draplin:I read your bio a little bit this morning and you and I share something in common, which rewinding back to the, before the beginning of your life, you had a story about how you were conceived in Arizona. There was a meteorite coming in and I was actually born on a Nauvah reservation, possibly near where your event happened. And so I have a special tie there. My folks were working as doctors on the reservation there. What year was this? This was in 1976. How much 73 you were? Yeah. Okay, yeah. And I feel a similar tie to that place. And my parents have Nauvoo friends that we still stay in touch with.

9:59Aaron Draplin:But just curious how that's impacted your trajectory over the years. When you're lucky to go west as a family, you know, I remember going to Colorado when I was maybe 10 or 11, 15, going all the way to San Francisco. There were just little quips that my dad might say or mom might say about, not necessarily harsh things about stolen land, but let's just say it was recognized. Where we were from in northern Michigan, there were certain bands and there were politics and they never got the upper hand on anything. So to go there wasn't this America bullshit, which is just a fart in a stiff wind sometimes.

10:35It was a little more like be respectful of where we're from and where they're from and who was here. We came over from Poland. They cut our tails off, you know, in the late 1800s, and we landed in Detroit. But those little bits of DNA from my mom and dad were just an awareness of having some empathy for Detroit, which had rough sections. My mom and dad weren't the kind of people to be like, they weren't. You know, we learned about it. And then you learn to be thankful and be gentle when you're in these situations. So when I go out west at 19 and we bust ass across America like people did 150 years before us, that privilege, that weirdness, every time I went near a res, you just have to be gentle about it.

11:22And I got to know people from the design community, and I've helped some stuff. And you have to be careful with how you do that, but you can share knowledge and you can share tactics and maybe help someone along the way. Someone did that for me 30 years ago. Someone came with something big somewhere and gave something to someone from something small, right? It was, you know, that kind of transaction. It was interesting. And, you know, it directly comes from my dad. So, like, the story of, well, I know you were conceived out there because after that the numbers don't work. But somewhere in that January, you were born in October, we were on our way back from Disneyland out in Los Angeles.

11:59My dad was a big Mickey Mouse fan, and my mom and dad traveled a lot before I was around. They were working people, and it was a different time. And my dad worked at a steel plant, raised an electrician, made really, really good money. So they would go and enjoy themselves all over. And, you know, when I heard that, well, that night, you know, it's a romantic stretch. But I did run it past some folks that I know that are from there. Because I said, I've always wanted a piece of turquoise, but I don't want a bear claw. I don't want some bolo tie. I did finally get one. I left it at the house today, but I did it the most appropriate way, which is I went through a buddy and said, well, where would I start getting that?

12:35You can get it from the roadside, folks. Sure, there's that. But no, I found this artist, and I went to the thing, and I paid the money, and I'll have it the rest of both of my days. But it's just a little tiny reminder of the beauty of that nation, not to mention, it's not a whole nation, but like time and space in the Grand Canyon in your backyard. Come on, you know, to go there and be humbled. It had nothing to do with being some dipshit white guy coming from whatever. It's more going there and just thinking about time, space, being a little speck of sand for one blip of time and being reminded that looking over not even the big Grand Canyon, you know, some little canyon on the way in, you know, and stopping and sleeping in my van when I was probably 20 years old, 19 years old.

13:15I did that. You know, that adventure comes from my dad and mom where they were driving across the nation doing road trips. This origin story shit, who knows? But it wasn't conceived in Detroit, which is a whole different thing. you know then you have to wear some sort of like hungry howies if you guys that's a local regional pizza champ now i have a weird affinity for it it's a thousand miles between reality and really what that means but if that's where that little seed found purchase you know in some flea bit flop house in the desert somewhere that night well it's just something to think about when i go down there you know and have a little fun with and then uh bump elbows with some guys who are from there for generations we're from generations in poland i think but yeah that's where that comes from I find that most creative people, they have some battle with their origin story.

14:04Usually it is, this is my origin story. I know it. I feel confined by it and I need to escape that. You strike me as you've got a different relationship with your origin story, that you're present with it. You are introspective, retrospective. there's a sense of nostalgia in your work and your sensibilities. Did you ever have a point where you felt like I need to distance myself from my origins to make the errand that I want to be? Or was it always like you're amplifying that origin? I got to go to a Tiger game in 1983, the year before they took it in 84. And my dad caught me a ball that night and I have the ticket stub and someone had to lay out that ticket stub.

14:52and that was effective in one color for 1983 for us to get us in the door. It didn't have holograms and things and Ticketmaster and all these things. I love the fact that someone pushed that type around to photostatic camera that thing. Whatever my version of that was in 1995 when I started to do my first freelance jobs, I'm going to embrace it and go for it. But I didn't need to detach from something to get to the next better thing. I got to go back to school in Minneapolis in 1998 after five winters out West shredding and being a snowboarder down in Bend, Oregon. And when we could afford it, which was rare, Jackson Holes and Mount Baker's and other places and things, we'd just go hike and just hit big jumps.

15:33It was dangerous, and that was the West. Like, I got that experience. In the summers, I was going up to Alaska and making money up there because that's how I got my first computer. When I got to go back to school in Minneapolis, like, it was such a weird privilege because that was some high-society shit, even for goofy-ass Minnesota, you know, like, Midwest nice. I would go there tomorrow. You know it. I know you know it. No one can make a decision when you're, you know, leaving. You know, everyone says thank you over and over again. I mean, I grew up in that funny, charming, nice Minnesota. So I was back there.

16:06I'm in this high society art school, and it's fine. And I'm seeing these kids shed whatever little Lake of the Woods, Wisconsin bullshit they just came from, and they were held down by. They're shedding that, and they're coming to the city and this is their first chance to wear all black be an art designer student kind of you know eccentric or seeing kids who were held down for their sexuality and now they could be out that's really cool to be around all that you know because i'd already come up to come from portland and the west where it was non-issue yeah so to go back there and earn that degree and then towards the end they do all these checks and things and it's what are you going to with this talent you have?" And it's called a junior review.

16:45And this is where you run into reality, and you run into, what am I doing here? And I remember it was too pedestrian for me. What am I gonna do when I get out? I'm gonna start paying off my loans, and I want to get a job. What kind of job? Oh, man, I heard this kid was working at Cabela's down in Nebraska. I'll go to Hall Mall for a couple years, get a goddamn bucket of 803, 804 fluorescent. Welcome, Hunter's Orange. I've never shot a gun once. We weren't hunters. My dad's only job at deer camp, beer camp in Northern Michigan was to keep the beer cold. That's all he had to do, you know, at deer camp when he would go.

17:21So we weren't big hunters or any of this stuff. We came from a subsistence culture where people shot that thing and lived off it for the winter in Northern Michigan. We weren't that family. So in this moment where I get dressed down because that's too pedestrian to see you can go work for Cabela's, what's wrong with that? You kind of go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You've never had a job. You just went right to academics. No wonder you talk to people like this. Worked six months up in Alaska washing dishes to get my computer. Don't cry for me. It's just more like, I'm proud of that. But my mom and dad couldn't cut me a check.

17:54What they had for me was support, advice, checklists. Aaron, what are you going to do this next winter? Okay, I want to do this, dad. Okay, well, we wanted to go back to school. But if you're going to go, you know, do it right, you know, whatever. Every year was progression, a little bit. I got the computer. I didn't have to have a pizza job. The next year, I worked freelance. That's when I met Ryan Coulters and things and stuff from that community. We'd get these little piecemeal jobs that would carry me through all winter long. But in that moment, I was just taught, like, I know they want you to reach for the stars, but let's be realistic.

18:25Out of the hundred kids that were in my classes or whatever, in that wave at MCAD, one went to the hot shit thing in Los Angeles, which was called Imaginary Forces, if you guys remember that. Scritchy, scratchy, seven, and all the neat things. all this neat stuff. It was for the era, 1998. We're getting out of that post-post-postmodern riffraff. It was just superfluous. Just kind of sprinkle on a page and, you know, have some big grad degree behind it. And it was just froth and frizzle and bullshit. Fashion. I wanted to go into function. You need to make newspapers. You had to go make Cabela's catalog for guys to buy big elephant guns and shit.

19:00And that's a vital job. I remember being dressed down for that and just being like, you know, man, I'm so glad I got to go here and learn these neat things, but also learn what the fuck to avoid because I don't want to be caught in this. And that directly affected when I got out of there and went down to that first agency job that offered me a way in. Everyone's tucked in. I've tucked my shirt in once when my grandma died in 2001, just out of respect. But that's just once. Even in court, I didn't know. Last year in jury duty, everyone was dressed to the nines. I was sitting there like someone left the doors open and that thing got in, cut them a deal.

19:33One of those for 11 days. But where I'm from, there's not a lot of design jobs. And those who get them, they work them a lot of years. And I was excited to maybe be one of those. I have far exceeded some of that weirdness, but I don't forget where I come from. I embrace it. I just got some goodies for Halloween from Chuck Anderson, my design hero in Minneapolis. Now, people don't even know the Chuck Anderson that I grew up loving. CSA Design Archive, the CSA Design Empire, They ruled the 90s into the 2000s, and I just will be a fan forever. I got to be an intern there. But what I loved so much about that era of all the sprinkle riff and raff, but my dad could enjoy the design I was looking at.

20:15House industries. My buddies could enjoy the house industries. My buddies could enjoy Chuck Anderson's, some of these type foundries that just weren't catering to Yale and above, which is just a tiny little zim-zam. I don't want to say it's like, you know, I'm gonna go try to like knock on doors in some field and say hey Where can I, you know help out but any kind of design for a lot of years. There's only a hobby for me You get to get a job in this stuff, but don't you have to go to school? So I went to school and then they kind of beat you up just that one little afternoon There were other people I got done with it, you know, and I'll share it openly like well That was weird.

20:51They're like draplin. Keep going. You're gonna do something. We love you. Don't worry whatever cal arch mal arts think about the source of where that shit's coming from all right i was just a kid following rules you know and it's like uh you get beat up by someone you look up to these things sting that taught me a lot of lessons that day of like you guys i've been in a weird privileged position to go to a lot of these conferences and have lines of people who want to go nose to nose selfies with me and so we do this special selfie we go nose tip to tip in the age of COVID my girl gets a little freaked out because we're breathing on each other but you know listen so the next big design celebrity down the way they're not doing that shit what does that even mean you know I'll listen to these kids and then the kid comes up to me and I've told this story many times too but he says what's your happen what do you do man where are you from I work for Subway it's corporate hey man you ought to see me get a foot long a couple times a year destroy that fucking thing and I eat the paper I eat the stickers I do the thing whatever like your design is vital to going to get a subway a couple times a year what about people who do it three times a week construction guys or something don't forget that they are relying on and i pumped them up i didn't beat them up because it's not the coolest thing that directly comes from feeling like an underdog and these couple big situations which are minimal that directly comes from being a snowboarder up at a ski hill where the they make fun of you for being a shitty little snowboarder That directly comes from being a chunky little skateboarder who listened to cooler bands than some of my contemporaries did back in 1988.

22:25Fugazi. Thank God I got to Fugazi. Because it taught you about things like equality and women's rights and not othering people. And you don't say the word gay the way these kids are saying it. You protect your buddy who's afraid to be that. That came from that world. That wasn't five summers ago in some wave of accountability. No, no, no. That was 1989. I was 15. I'm glad I got to that. You know, I love to just go and disparage some of those dipshits I went to high school with. That one's fun. Because there's the same forgettable taxpaying motherfuckers they were then as they are now. But at least along the way, I had the butthole surfers and Dinosaur Jr.