A Series of Decisions: with Justin Thomas Kay

0:00Justin Thomas Kay is our guest today. He's a creative director and graphic designer based in Brooklyn here in Greenpoint, a neighbor originally from Milwaukee. He's worked at pretty much every cool magazine that's ever existed, Complex, Fader, New York Times Magazine, Mass Appeal, Victory Journal, and a couple of companies you've heard of Apple, Red Bull, RGA, and has a career over 20 years in design and at this really fun intersection of music and sports and culture. Early 2024, he opened up his own studio. And one of the things I'm most excited to talk to him about today is his new GQ sports show that's on YouTube called Rebranded, where he's doing rebrands of sports teams, the Clippers, the Chiefs.

0:38And I think it's really fucking awesome. And I think it'll be it's the new hot ones for me. Oh, yeah. We're going to start the show now and talk to Justin.

0:54Let's go right into it. So the show is called Rebranded. Yes. It's GQ Sports. Yes. And you're the star. You're the Sean Evans. Apparently. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah. Maybe somewhat begrudgingly. So how did that happen? Or let's take us back. I mean, somewhat related, I guess, to just my CV, just to get that out of the way, is I started my career in editorial. So I did that for about a decade. And the last magazine that I had worked for was The Fader. I was the creative director of The Fader for two and a half years. Shout out The Fader. And an alumni of the fader before my time, Will Welch, is now the editorial mastermind behind the modern version of GQ.

1:33Someone on his team had pitched the idea of this rebranded thing. And Will just mentioned, hey, you should hit up Justin, which was awesome. Yeah, they got in touch with me. And, you know, once I kind of like was able to have that initial conversation of, you know, like, what kind of show do you want to do? Like, OK, GQ talking about logos. When they hit me up initially, I was like, oh, is this going to be a fashion spin on the rebrand thing? Which, to be totally honest, I'm glad it's not. Because I think fashion, there's stories in those logos. But obviously, sports is so rich and is so tied to just culture in general.

2:12It's just there's a lot more to talk about and a lot more to investigate there. And so the general concept they came to you, which was each episode, you're going to take a sports team. Yeah. And sort of do a bit of a history lesson, which I really like, is sort of going back and looking at the old logos and some of the old memorabilia and just pieces that you would do as a designer going into a project. We'll get into the bucks in some of the projects you've done, but, you know, that is part of the show as well. It's a bit of an education. And then you rebrand it in sort of under 20 minutes. Yeah.

2:45And, you know, rebrand in whatever version that means. You know, like the first episode with the Clippers, that was topical because that logo had just launched. It was the beginning of the NBA season. And that's part of the goal, too, is to make it so that each episode is tied to a relevant moment. Oh, really? You know, and that was part of the reason behind Kansas City for the second episode, which was very tough. You know, we were we were talking NFL, trying to figure out what team to do. much different challenge than an NBA team and NFL teams generally like rebrand with with much less frequency than NBA teams you know a lot of NBA teams they they rebrand on a semi-regular basis or there's a lot of new teams in the mix sure that need new brands so that was hard also just like Kansas City's golden goose like what do you do with that so I enjoyed the challenge of that when they brought that to me it's a collaborative process of trying to figure out like what sport we're going to do, what team we're going to do.

3:47And so once we settled on Kansas City, and that sort of like hit me, you know, it took a minute to figure out like, okay, well, like, what do you do with that? Like, there's, there's a pretty like cool history behind why the team looks the way they do, which I got into in the episode. And with that, you know, it's I started to sort of tease out it was more about these inconsistencies and and how I would approach that as opposed to just like, oh, let's just scrap this so I can put my stamp on it, which is, to be honest, for me personally, it's my like least favorite form of design that anyone can do.

4:19Yeah. You respect what's there and the culture and the connection that people have. And I think that's the most important part of sports. Branding is it's, you can't just burn it down and start fresh. You have, you know, decades and people that have tattoos all over their bodies and it's like, they are not looking for change. Yeah. I mean, and look like the third one, I'm kind of laughing I don't want to I don't want to mention what it's going to be because I don't know when this is going to come out but um you know that one is going to be a little bit more of a uh provocation wow more than the chiefs more than the chiefs because the chiefs you know at the end of the day it was more about like how do you how do you kind of like tighten some things that had gotten loose over time because that identity was built pre like really like pre photo stat even And it was like put together so long ago.

5:09So part of this next one was just to like, you know, self-brief. Okay. A more borderline, how can I say this, like untouchable sports institution. And what would you do with that if you were given that brief? Oh, that's going to get the people going. Yeah. That comment section is going to be hot. It's going to be blown up. I mean, whatever. Kansas City, one blew up. It also just gave me a reminder based on my old editorial background of how many people hate follow these editorial platforms. And I told everyone at GQ, I was like, you guys must just ignore your comment section as hard as you can.

5:48Because it was crazy. They did a share post and just people saying the craziest stuff in their own therapy session in the comment section. like there was there was one person um who i'm just gonna blow them up right now where they were like they were like i can't even get a job as an art director you know blah blah blah you know and they were like using like my video as a vehicle to like do therapy for themselves oh my gosh like do your thing yeah chill out man like yeah i mean i i watch a video and i loved it right this is like right down center lane for me as a person who loves sports who loves design and i just i ate up the content and I love the history and I love this sort of rebrand of it all.

6:33I just am so glad that a show like this exists and that there's a, there, there's a platform and also an audience for it. Yeah. And then I went to the comment section because as soon as I'm done, I'm like, I want to see what people think of this. And then my favorite one, which I'll read to you, um, is from a guy named Rumbi KCC, which, um, I'm going to warn you, he has the Kansas City Chiefs logo in his. Also, uh, I just want to, I want to hop out in front of this. chiefs fans are some of the biggest babies some of the biggest babies on the internet oh yeah kevin's bangles second second to bears fans i'm required to say that as a packer shareholder yeah yeah and uh yeah so and sports fans just hate change like they just do not want you cannot win yeah it's a lose-lose i'm clear i what i'm getting into with this whole thing yeah you know like do you have thick skin yeah generally you know thick enough that to be honest like when the Kansas City thing launched, I haven't read the comments on YouTube at all.

7:29I read the comments on Clippers for a minute at the beginning because it was more out of curiosity. I just wanted to see how it was received generally. And that one went well. I knew Kansas City was going to be a lot more contentious. And so I just kind of like I let it rock. Because that one, the Clippers one is new. So people don't have a connection to it. I think people hated that one. And we actually talked about it a lot on the show because you know as two sports fans doing a design podcast when we get a story like that clippers rebrands it's got chips and the nautical everything in it we're like let's talk about this is a good topic for us to talk about yeah you know the chiefs people not looking for it and you know um but yeah we don't need to read them but yeah mostly they're just like was someone drunk trying to draw a logo you know it's like justin is right here in the video not drunk uh very clearly uh beautifully expressing and designing and teaching you and and showing you why he made the decisions that he made which yeah i mean and look like if i can just hop in there i mean like the the thing that like overall i don't care like like whether people like it or not like also like for me it's sort of like the beauty and the and the difficulty of doing branding specifically outside of like design as like a broader challenge because you know like i do a lot of marketing work i do some like formal advertising work i my work spans different things but the thing with branding is like you are just making a a series of decisions at specific moments and then at a certain point that shit just has to go live on its own and you have to feel confident that you're making the right decisions for the moment that you made them.

9:11And anyone else who wants to, uh, you know, or, or, or would get that same job, they can make their own decisions that are right for them in that moment. And like, honestly, for me, it's like, that's like part of the beauty of this whole thing is it's all like this, like very participatory thing. And anyone at any moment can have a good idea for a brand. Um, and I, I don't even like, I don't, I can't even stand behind everything I've done. I've been like, yeah, that's the be all end all answer for all this stuff it's like no like i just made a decision i'm glad to hear you say that because i do say that quite a bit where i'm like it's is it perfect no but it's done and it's done for now and that doesn't mean it can't change in six months a year two years from now but it at some point we made a hundred thousand decisions yes over the course the past few six months ten months whatever and this is where we got to and uh this is where it is today and i think that's exciting i think again just like i mean the internet plus sports design like you're just you're there's a no win scenario which i think in some ways if you go in or at least are like starting from a place of like this is gonna get torn apart no matter what i do then i think it alleviates some of the potential feeling bad about it at all you shouldn't it's awesome it's so fucking cool like yeah the show is like i think that that's also just the nature of being a creative person and putting something artful out into the world, whatever form that's in, whether it's like music or branding or advertising or whatever it is, your output, theater, you know, like anything like that.

10:46It's, there's all like a kind of like a man in the arena aspect to all of this stuff where it's like, I mean, performative also another layer when I'm like literally on camera talking to people about this stuff. How do you find that part of it? Do you enjoy that? You seem very natural. I'll just say credit where it's due to the team at GQ that's doing it, you know, like, like Cole Evlev, who is the in-house GQ, like video maestro, he directs all the stuff. Um, he and I collaborate very closely throughout kind of like the pre pro process. Um, we, we are working on a deck today for the next episode.

11:23Um, and you know, in the room, he understands design. he understands like the visual world that all this stuff comes from and it was his idea for the show so it's a very like kind of like me and him one-on-one process and it makes it really really natural I mean and you know in a past life I was a teacher I taught at the Cooper Union for a little bit um and I I wish I could still do that I wish I still had time for it but it's just it's a gnarly commitment and I've got two kids at home outside of running the studio and it's just you know I don't have the time for it so this is sort of like my my way of I guess like leaning into that.

11:58I love it. And YouTube University, baby. And now that's teach the kids. Exactly. And I will say the top comment says, even if not everyone agrees on the rebrand in the comments, I love the style of video. Keep them coming. So shout out to that guy. Absolutely. That's my feeling as well. It's like, whether you like it or not, it does not matter. But this is content for people like me. Yeah. It's just an awesome breakdown of how you make these decisions and why you would make them. Yeah. Exactly. And it's so smart. And I think what I want to do on your behalf is send them the Milwaukee Bucks rebrands to every person that hates and be like, this was done very quickly for a show.

12:36Like if given at least three times this amount of time, look what Justin can do. Look at this amazing branding product. Yeah. Did that have any haters or is that the most well-received sports rebrand of all time? Well, I mean, to be totally clear, the Milwaukee Bucks project, I'm from Milwaukee. I have like a million close ties to a lot of different ways that that project came to life. That actually came through the studio at Double Day and Cartwright through one of the partners, Kimu Meyer. um shout out to Kimu Kimu one of the all-time greats um huge friend of mine outside of me having worked for him he had one degree of separation from the son of the guy who bought the books wow who is this like Milwaukee or not Milwaukee a New York hedge fund billionaire what ended up happening is once that came through um and there was this idea of like oh we can like pitch on you know what initially was just going to be a jersey design project um the studio just went whole hog totally and was just like yeah but like what if you what if you rebrand and then we we we do this new logo and they were like all right cool let's do it however it's due in two weeks because we have to hit jersey deadlines so the bucks project really was like uh probably about like a month top to bottom outside of like the guideline build but um it was to hit the jersey deadlines it was you know again like that was directed by kimu and then my role in that i was a managing creative director of Doubleday at the time is I was, you know, more or less like, aside from doing some design overseeing the team and trying to like help like steer the ship as like the Sherpa of Milwaukee.

14:14Yeah, for sure. You know, so like when that came through, I was like, all right, so first thing off the bat, we can, we can definitely redraw the deer, which had gotten like totally messed up over time. Yeah. Let's please not go retro with the purple. Let's like, you know, I could like help steer people in a couple interesting directions. And then we were blessed that we had like at the time that collection of people at Doubleday it was like there was like a crazy pile of talent and we had like devoted basically the whole studio on it because we knew it was going to hit um and then me being able to steer the Milwaukee angle um that really like I think helped to make sure that that thing just like landed right it's a perfect storm of the right people in the right place and yeah I worked at coke around this time and I I remember uh meeting Chris and Kimu and I brought them in uh for Powerade which is a support check that I was working on.

15:02That's right, yeah, yeah. And just insanely jealous of Milwaukee Bucks work and just being a sports fan that's like top dream goal is to do a major core four sports team. Yeah, especially the hometown. Yeah, it was crazy. So for you though, was that a dream job? Were you a sports fan or? I mean, it was unbelievable. I mean, we were going back to Milwaukee for in-person meetings and then we go back for the launch and I'm getting interviewed on local news by like a sportscaster I had been watching since I was like seven years old. But it probably included one of my like all time like bag fumbles that shows my complete lack of like press training, which was we're in the press conference.

15:46There's like all of these people that are also like flying in for the reveal, you know, like people from ESPN and like national news outside of just like local Milwaukee stuff. and um you know like someone you know kicks a question to me of like um you know like like my family's history of like bucks fandom and i just like this is just short circuit and like i'm like i'm like well yeah my my family we weren't really like bucks fans we were more of a packer household oh my god i was like it was like immediately knew i was like terrible answer and like everyone in the room though like definitely gave me grace like i think they could tell i was like nervous who invited this graphic designer to this luckily chris chris swooped in and saved the day on that one he had a pretty good follow-up um yeah thank god and yeah as kevin said like these projects are universally hated day one yeah doesn't matter who the team is it doesn't matter what the you know if the rebrand is a perfect job you know they're just people are gonna say no like just instinctually hate it yeah i don't think that happened with the bucks i i I genuinely believe that as far as where I can see, it was something that people were excited.

16:59I think they were in pretty rough shape, right? Like the, just visually that those, the end of that era was pretty bad. Yeah. It had gotten like really, really messed up. And also like, you know, one thing you have to remember at that time, that was sort of like the end of the Adidas era of, of, of the NBA. Oh yeah. And so I think, you know, what you realize very quickly, like for how much like people want to like slag on Nike now, which to me is just like so tired. It's just like whatever, like a bunch of like armchair, like financial, like LinkedIn, whatever, like specialists on like why Nike's failing.

17:32It's like Nike isn't failing. Like Nike came into the NBA and like immediately upgraded it. And it looks sick. Like the jerseys are dope. Like they know exactly what they're doing with this stuff. And like, but we hit this weird sweet spot. So again, I think why that job hit the way it did and why it was so successful is we were in that in-between. Adidas is wrapping. Nike hadn't picked up yet. So all we had to do was just get all of our ideas approved by the ownership. It was almost like you were redesigning the bodega at the end of the street. Really? It was that easy? It was so easy. It was just like, do you like the logo?

18:08Cool. NBA is like, we don't care. If ownership's down, let's do it. I'll also say, too, 2015, which is now a decade ago, I do think graphic design and branding, sort of a more modern approach being brought to sports, wasn't totally happening quite yet. And Double Day and Car Rate, obviously an agency that does work with Red Bull and Nike and really understands branding, also really understands sport, is bringing an edge that a lot of sports branding still doesn't have. You talk about the Chiefs or these brands that just like they were created a million years ago. They don't touch them. Everything looks exactly as it was.

18:45100%. And no one will ever change it because the fans will murder. But I do think there is a sensibility. And I think that still like when I talk about sports branding, I talk about the Bucks and I talk about the Jazz as teams that are bringing sort of a new freshness that like agencies and, you know, in our world would love to bring to all teams. 100%. 100%. I mean, and look, like I think a lot of decisions are made in in sports. I mean, and this is just like a broad categorical generalization. So apologies in advance to anyone who works in sports creatives that might be listening to this. But like, honestly, for me, it's like I look at a lot of this stuff, what the teams are doing.

19:25It's like it's almost like fear based. There's like an idea of like, oh, we can't change or if we do, we need to move the needle in this way or like. so what happens is you end up with these sort of like half steps where like a lot of times like people will make changes that are like either too big and it's a little like stumbly or or you just end up like what happened with the box where it just kind of like slowly evolved over time but what really happened is it just got like more and more broken until we were just like let's just like wipe the slate clean we know we need to have a buck but beyond that like what else can we do you know so yeah also it didn't hurt that they won the championship right like five years after that or i don't know that probably felt pretty good too to see like definitely championship yes team playing because of course uh i i was an intern back in the day for the new york knicks and i remember back then being like this is very fun obviously a dream job but the truth of the matter is if the Knicks suck, the fandom is going to be upset.

20:32And no graphic design is going to save that. And I think with the Bucks, new branding, but also new energy, it sort of comes together in a really fun way. Also, all due respect to Michael Duray, the designer of the original Knicks logo legend. I was going to ask you where you stand on it because he is a legend and that logo is legendary. I very controversially said that I think it's time to maybe. Might be. It just feels dated to me, and I'm a super fan of the team. Yeah. We blew the game last night to the fucking Warriors. Curry put us to sleep. But it just, again, that's me as a dreamer being like, that's the Mount Rushmore project.

21:22Yeah. And I think it could be done. Yeah. Do you agree? Yeah, I agree. I mean, they can all be done. You know, like I said, like this next episode of GQ, I think is going to be a good example of that. Does it scale? Does it feel modern? 100%. It could. Yeah. I don't know. It feels very. When I talk about like all due respect to like Michael DeRay, the legend who made it, it's like, I also might be butchering the way you say his name, But the idea that he conceptualized and drew that out by hand and the thought process that went into... When you see the work, the book that was put together by the Letterform Archive of all his work is gorgeous.

22:03And it goes in depth on the Knicks stuff. And it's awesome to see that. But again, all this stuff is touchable. It's all up for grabs. I don't care. Every logo is up for grabs. Even the Packers? Even the Packers? Even the Packers. Now, let's update that boring-ass G. too long yeah that's i mean we had talked about some other teams when we were talking nfl i mean also because to be clear at the time we had no idea what the super bowl was going to look like obviously so you know we were like oh do we do like do we do the steelers do we do like who do who do we do and it was it was really hard it was really hard because so many nfl teams are also based in this in these like visuals that are so connected to the birth of the team yeah as opposed to NBA where like the whole NBA has gone through all these like crazy eras of reinvention.

22:49Should pitch the Bengals. They could use a, that B is pretty atrocious. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, don't touch the helmet though. The helmet stays. Uh, is there a team that's on your sort of, uh, you know, Mount Rushmore or like, uh, that you would like, you think needs it that like you would love to get your hands on. Obviously you're thinking about this now with the show, I imagine. Uh, I mean, at this point, to be honest, like, I don't know that I maybe the show's ruined that for me a little bit like I don't have like a Mount Rushmore of like what I want to do also actually maybe is like getting to work on the books kind of like nullified that a little bit it's hard to really think about what else I would want to do but like what's more interesting to me actually is working with the GQ team to really figure out like with this next episode like what is a different way to have this conversation and that for me is interesting and also like I mean whatever like the beauty of that show is it's all like self-briefed i don't have a client client yeah exactly and uh what you decide is the answer is the answer exactly which is the dream opportunity and project i mean is there a world where you're thinking in the back of your head like maybe there's a world where the team will see this and be like interested in engaging in brand new to kind of like reveal behind the curtain a little bit on like the rebrands of these teams the thing that like is hard to really kind of like i don't know like like really expresses that the budgets that these teams have to rebrand is basically non-existent yeah so like at the core of basically every pro sports team is a is a is a small mom and pop operation that doesn't look much different than like a family restaurant in any random town.

24:32And where they get their money is marketing and partnerships with brands like Nike or whoever. But at the core, it's such an interesting world because that brand, that initial brand that gets built, they don't have Nike budgets for that stuff. So I think that's also why a lot of times these teams either can make weird missteps or they don't change even when they should. Yeah. So it makes it kind of like an interesting thing where it's like you're like you're never even going to have like a single Nike seasonal campaign level budget to rebrand a sports team like that just doesn't exist. And I think that's part of the kind of not appeal, but I feel like that's part of the fun part about in my mind sports branding where it's like it isn't like this high gloss sort of fast moving sort of industry.

25:27It still feels nascent in like that the same, like you go to Expo West and like all these brands are so, you know, so much design has been infused into every startup and every sort of product. Yeah. You know, you look at these kind of like sort of, yeah, slow moving ancient sort of brands that they have what everyone wants, which is a deep, deep connection with their consumer and audience. Yeah. So why chase great, perfect design when they have a meaningful audience? Yeah. I mean, it's like the... I'm trying to think of how I can say this without having an opinion that makes people not want to hire me.

26:11Welcome to the show. It's sort of like the opposite of the kind of like the Silicon Valley effect on the design world. the way the sports world operates is like the opposite of that. Like it's like, I feel like what happened is like over the course of my career, like the tech industry and startup culture and all this stuff that like it, it hit the design world. All of these like crazy monopoly money budgets went into rebrands. They all got like thrown onto salaries and all of this stuff that just kind of like into my mind, I think we're kind of like witnessing a little bit of like the deflating of that.

26:48Sure. where it was just like it was all clearly like fake and we were all like participating to it in it to to a certain degree but like what's interesting about sports is it's been this like evergreen very like grassroots like person to person way of like communicating with the community that like that's just I mean yeah that's what makes it so fun yeah and the season ticket holders are like legitimately like you know those are like the closest biggest you know fans and they have like real human relationships that's what i one of the things i was shocked by when i worked at the knicks was like they do so many events for these season ticket holders and like you think like oh my god in new york city how many people it's like no it's really you know not that many people and they actually have a relationship with them it is very much like a family run business really is and it's it's i think that's what's beautiful about that no it's cool i mean like look like i i ended up connecting with the the in-house creative director for the for the chiefs and we exchanged some like nice messages back and forth and like you know he's like he's a cool dude he's doing some great stuff like if you look at kind of like all the creative around what that team is doing it's awesome and he was you know and it seemed like things were generally well received on his end so nobody there was like nobody there was like greatly offended by anything that i had i had pointed out he's more offended by patrick um super bowl performance yeah yeah But no, that's cool.

28:12And I think it's cool also that like, obviously, there are some teams that are investing much more in design and content because all these brands, we talk a lot about sports on the show. So finally, we can talk about it with a good reason. But it's like, you know, I'm a big documentary guy. So I watch Hard Knocks and I watch like Full Swing and I watch all these like Netflix-y sports docs and 30 for 30s all these things. And now each team is like making their own documentary content. They have a team of designers making Instagram posts for like, you know, game stuff. So it is, you know, slowly they are investing or at least prioritizing design.

28:48Yeah. I don't know if that necessarily means like full scale rebrands, but. But there's interesting stuff, you know, like I would say Major League Baseball is doing a ton of great work in general. Like a lot of the teams are really like pumping out some cool stuff like what you're talking about. And there are certain teams like the Twins, for example, that have invested in interesting creative for a long time. There's definitely a priority that's put on that stuff. But there is that interesting bifurcation of the brand side versus a marketing side. And I think I've always struggled with that in my career because I always just view that as the same conversation.

29:25I know there's distinct challenges there, but I think you have to look at marketing is brand, brand is marketing. This stuff all feeds into each other. And I think that as much as you can close that loop, that's like when the stuff is successful. Totally. And you mentioned before, you like I worked at some magazines. I think you've worked at every cool company that's ever made a magazine. Complex Fader, New York Times Magazine, Mass Appeal, Victory Journal. I'm sure I'm missing some others. There's a bunch of other ones from like that are a little more like I freelanced or I was in and out. I was at Teen Vogue for a little while.

29:58Shout out to Teen Vogue. Um, and, uh, man, like what else? I did a couple issues of in-style weddings randomly. Um, one of my first gigs in New York city, and this was actually probably like one of the more like instructive things where I like, I really learned to the foundation of design as I, I worked for a small studio called helicopter. This was in 2004. Um, I started working with helicopter and they did magazine redesigns. So the founders of helicopter had come up with the idea for Domino magazine, which, you know, now seems super dated, but like once upon a time was a pretty like revolutionary way of like constructing an editorial experience.

30:38They brought in like the voice of the writers through handwriting and whatever. It was just like a really like interesting approach to making a magazine. And so there, you know, I did like a rebrand of car driver and a rebrand of Jane magazine and we would build the templates and then I would go in house and we would work with the team to implement everything. And so a lot of the foundations of my career and the way that I think are still built on that idea of like magazine making and the editorial process, which is really just like, to my mind means like collaborating with and working with people who are like the best in their individual category and not feeling like I need to be the person who can do all of this stuff.

31:18Do you want to teach Kevin about Cork Express? he's very young he probably has never even opened it I'm not that young Kevin I have evacuated Cork Express from my brain oh you don't want to talk about it but yeah I mean magazine I remember when I went to college obviously studying design it's like you know editorial was like the thing obviously magazine culture and being a designer that was one of the main jobs you can get totally how many magazines were you like on deadline trying to like lay out a hundred pages my god I mean that was that was where I started you know i mean especially complex like at that time it was it was cool complex was like the perfect mix of like zine making with like people who actually understood magazines so it was this really interesting dichotomy where like on one hand it felt more like uh you know i'm making like ego trip or a graffiti magazine but then on the other hand it's like they were hiring all these interesting people who had kind of like a deep bench of editorial experience um so that was like a big place where like I cut my teeth and I really started getting into like expressive typography and they let me like do my thing with that.

32:25So I would just like vomit. Complex still has a pretty, you know, a really important place in culture, but back in that moment, they had the game and a chokehold and what was it like working? Uh, did you work with like Mark Echo and like, you know, in that sort of formative complex era, I imagine crazy. Yeah, it was, it was awesome i mean like you know for me as i grew up in milwaukee wisconsin i i remember like going to the graffiti shop in like 1996 and like getting like the first drop of echo gear and like so then being able to like fast forward like move to new york and like work with you know the whole team and i you know mark at that point was actually like a little less involved he gradually got like more involved as time went on um but it was i mean it was amazing just being around that environment And like still to this day, like most of my like best friends in the city were all like Echo Unlimited extended universe, which is very weird.