Everything in Order with: Jesse Reed

33:31But at some point you had an idea for a standards manual. So when does that come into the picture? That was while you're at. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, 2014 is when that initial project happened and we didn't even think of the idea. I mean, well, it sort of happened naturally. So yeah, myself and our team, Michael's team, we were in the basement of Pentagram looking for a tarp. This is like an old story, but if you haven't heard it, this is the story looking for a tarp to cover a foosball table that was on the roof of Pentagram that we put up there for a party. So that was like how this started.

34:06And then we're like digging through old lockers and like piles of not like garbage, garbage, but just piles of design junk in the basement. And then we found the, you know, MTA or NYCTA manual and like freaked out, brought it upstairs, all sort of out for a good day of just looking at every page. And then, yeah, me and Hamish really just naturally and like, I don't know, casually were like, let's just photograph this thing and like make a website so that other people can see what we had just uncovered. And so that was 2014. We made the website. It did get a lot of traffic, but then we sat on it for about a year.

34:42And then the MTA was our clients. And then we pitched the idea about doing a Kickstarter to republish the book. And And they sort of didn't really believe in us too much. Like, yeah, sure. Go like give it a shot. And then so we just wanted to make like a reissue of that manual. We did a Kickstarter for it. And yeah, that was the birth of the company. But we weren't like, let's start a publishing company. It was like, let's just make this one book. Honestly, it's such a good story. It sounds almost like a fictitious story. Like I was walking through the basement. Yeah, but you can fact check me.

35:12I tell the same story every time when I'm being interrogated. It just sounds like a movie where you had headsets on and we were looking with our with our headlamps. Yeah, headlamps. Thank you. And we found this menu. It started glowing. And you're just like, this is gold. We need to do this. I know. I got to get down in that basement. Yeah, that basement sounds sick. Well, like RIP because they moved buildings. So it was at the old pentagram, which was, yeah, it was an old bank. I mean, it was like there was a vault down there. We did not find this in the vault. That's like where the IT department and like sample library was.

35:44But it more or less, yeah, was in a bank basement almost as if it were hidden treasure. It was in a gym locker. That's where we found it. That's insane. And so I looked it up this morning that Kickstarter raised$802 ,812. Damn, precise. With 6 ,718 backers. Yeah. What were your expectations for that? Maybe 1 ,000 books. Like maybe 1 ,000 backers because that was our goal. Yeah. So the goal is like 100 ,000? Yeah, yeah. 108 ,000 was the goal. So I think that was just the most, what was it? Like the, uh, basically the quantity of books, it was like a thousand books. And so we're like, okay, if we can just do that, this won't, we can sell it for under a hundred dollars and it will be like, maybe we'll break even and be able to produce this if we just meet that goal.

36:36But it was sort of like the, um, highest amount we were willing to pay, uh, and like the, the least amount of books that we needed to sell and able to just break even. So that was the goal is a thousand books, um, a hundred thousand dollars. And by noon we had reached that goal. Shit. So it was one of those, like you look at your phone and you can't do anything on it because there are sales coming in and it was the most anxious I've ever felt. Were you like fucking we're rich? No, no, no. It was a million dollars essentially. So it does sound impressive and it is, but that's not like we made profit.

37:14it was just we printed 7 000 books but for a second were you just like we just we're rich we made a million dollars i don't know honestly it was more scary than it was exciting because i think we're like fuck like we are on the hook to do this yeah now we have to make these books because you can't down the books 7 000 books yeah like maybe you could refund people but at that point once you reach the goal it's like money's unlocked and so like you get it because if you don't reach your goal on kickstarter you don't get any money that's right but you reach the goal and like you're gonna get this money and now you have to fulfill your promise and you people probably have a million horror stories of uh kickstarter campaigns that they backed and never got the thing my dad has a bunch he's like you guys better do this because i have like four kickstarter projects that i've never gotten the thing from and wow so we we wanted to just not mess this up i think my my like mo is that i just don't want to like get fired or fuck something up so that i uh yeah just want to fulfill the promise that I have set out on.

38:11So that it was honestly not like, man, we're rich. It was just now we are like on the hook to make this happen. So yes. And then a year later, we did NASA. I was going to say, so the next one is NASA. Did you find that one in the basement? Yeah. Where do you find that? No, we went straight to the source. So yeah, like basically, you know, within we did meet our expectations. We sent all the books, we printed it. We didn't totally drop the ball. and then we were honest we went to the bank and we're like we need to open an account to put eight hundred thousand dollars in but like we're just going to shut this in like three months like we're just going to put it in deplete it and then shut this account like that's honestly what i said to the bank yeah yeah they're like you guys are great business they're like what drugs are you selling like why are you doing this and then people uh on twitter kept on sort of you know mentioning like there's this nasa manual you should do this for the next book and we sort of not like push it aside, but we basically just had the expectation that this wasn't going to become a company.

39:09But then we looked into it and we found Richard Dainey. He's one of the two partners of the firm that did the NASA identity, Danny and Blackburn. He has a website up with his email address. And so we just sent him an email saying, Richard, we published this Vignelli manual on Kickstarter. It was successful. We would like to do the same thing for your manual. Are you interested? And within hours, he emailed us back saying, absolutely, I'm going to be in New York next week for an AIGA conference. I'll bring you my copy of the manual. Wow. So Richard Daney came to Pentagram because that's where we were working still at the time and brought us a bubble wrapped copy of his manual.

39:51And then we just essentially replicated the same formula of doing the kicks. We made a video, we did a Kickstarter campaign. for that one i think we we wanted a higher uh sort of goal amounts maybe set it at 150 yeah so so maybe that was like 2 000 books or something if we could like sell that and then that one truly almost got to a million yeah 941 966 so close man yeah i should have just put in the i didn't have any money but yeah so that one i think we printed 10 or 12 000 copies for the first edition. And then that's when it became like a company. It's like, wow, okay, there's a market for this.

40:30And then we kept on doing sort of, you know, manual reissues. But then eventually it sort of switched to just design history books of various, you know, interests. How many books have you guys done at this point? I think we're on 11. Wow. Yeah, Classified was the 11th one. We have another one coming out this week or next. And so that'll be 12. But yeah, and it's been 10 years. So 2014 was when we started as 2024. Wow. So like flew by dumb legal question. Feel free to cut this out, Kevin. No. Do you, do you have to talk to the brands? Like, do you have to talk to the MTA? Do you have to talk to NASA?

41:05Like, how does that part work? Great question. And you don't have to cut this out. I will not. Yeah. The MTA gave us permission for the first one and just said, you can only do like the Kickstarter campaign for 30 days. Like that's the cutoff and you can't sell this book after the 30th. days because it was a new concept like kick crowdfunding so we're just like what what is this what they what are the legal implications so they did give us permission but then we um have published a smaller we call it a compact edition of the book that was more affordable and smaller same content just like a little bit more of a economical version so we pay them a royalty uh sort of we have a license through the mta for that nasa mr wonderful works there and I mean, it's like from Shark Tank.

41:51Totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, I'll take it. It's all every book. More or less. Yeah. I love Shark Tank. Which one is it? Is it more or less? It's an agreeable amount. Okay. Oh, that's good. That's fair. Yeah. But NASA, the National Park Service for the parks book we did, you know, the American Revolution Bicentennial, EPA, essentially all the books that we have done that are a federal program are all in public domain because us as Americans, we have paid for them. Our good business moves. Exactly. There you go. There's the business side. So, I mean, I'm, I'm not even secretive about this information.

42:29Anyone can commercially use NASA or any federal programs, IP and commercially profit from it. Sweet. Sick. All right. Get out the t-shirts going. Yeah. That's why the NASA logo is now like on everything. Yeah. So we, our lawyers advised us of this stipulation and we essentially just had to give them a letter of intent saying we are going to publish this book with your trademark. We're not, what's the word, trying to not replicate, but to impersonate a federal agency. So that's what you can't do. You can't pretend like you are working at NASA, but this is an archival historical object that we are reproducing for archival means, which was true.

43:13so we pay no royalties to nasa however we do pay royalties um to danny and blackburn and they have made more money from this book than they initially got paid for the nasa project itself that's beautiful so anyways yeah no that's amazing because i imagine there when when did they do that original branding oh man sorry a long time ago yeah and so there i think it says it on the or 1970 i think it's 1970 i should know this i was not let me caveat i was not prepped for this interview so we don't send our interview i don't have my data sometimes maybe every now and then sorry jesse but uh so at that point standards manual is going and so you decide to start a very real company to do standards manual and then order at the same time is that sort of the idea to sort of do a studio and the books or the books first and then the studio how did that like so yeah the books were first i mean 2014 was the start of this technically and then even had the job at pentagram yeah me and hamish were working at pentagram uh we did and yeah mta nasa i think the bicentennial the compact edition and i think even objects if i'm getting i think that was like 2015 um that's another book so we didn't want to quit our day jobs like we liked working for michael we liked pentagram we didn't want to leave and but so we did it nights and weekends and you know, Michael was very supportive of this.

44:38Most people at Pentagram were supportive of it. And then eventually just, you know, Hamish brought up the idea of him wanting to leave. And he had just finished the MasterCard project. He's like, once that launches, I'm going to, you know, put in my notice. And then I was like, you know what? I've been here for five and a half years. We've learned a lot. Standards manual is getting pretty intense in terms of like time consumption. And so So it's like, okay, if you're going to leave in the summer, let me stay for another six more months and then I'll leave at the end of 2016. So that was sort of the plan.

45:14And then in 2017, we started order and that was basically doing standards manual full time and then starting order also as a full time agency sort of practice that essentially was doing the same work that we were doing at Pentagram, sort of focusing on identities and brand work. Where'd the name order come from? Great story. uh me and hamish were in atlanta speaking of uh we were talking about atlanta earlier what's the park that they built where you can it's like a public it's sort of like their version of the high line and i'm sorry magic city no but yeah so there's like a public park it's like a big long trail that you can we were speaking at the how conference which was in atlanta that year and uh we were just walking like after breakfast and i think we just tried to think of what what what was the quality of design that we really practiced the most or found the most interesting?

46:05And so it's, you know, sort of like putting things in grids and organizing information, like a lot of like very boring ways to describe design. But then eventually we thought about like everything in order. Like we put everything in order. So we thought, first, could we call this everything? So that we didn't limit ourselves to just design logos or books or packaging or all the things that we wanted to do. It's like, let's just design everything. And it's like, well, wait, we can't design everything. So that's a ridiculous name. And then the line, everything is in order came about. And then it's like, let's just shorten it to order.

46:40And then I think like literally as we are walking on this trail in Atlanta, Georgia, we Googled domain names, we bought order.design and then registered for email addresses within like an hour of this plan being cracked. So we did it extremely quickly. and then sort of just like let it sit until you know 2017 where we could actually officially start but we had sort of purchased the domain made email addresses and then went to a bar and just sketched the logo which literally is the logo we have today so we did not overthink this plan at all right on yeah yeah um do people call you guys order design yes like they do and it's a big pet peeve yeah um i'm gonna admit something to you okay i started my studio about a year after you guys yeah and i couldn't get center.com and i was like looking at all the permutations as you do like we are center the sumter center da da da da and you guys had order.design i was like that's pretty clean and i got and center.design was available that's great and i went with it and uh people call center yeah exactly so it sucks so you have regrets of taking our lead yeah yeah yeah you influenced me and i gotta say it's not great no we don't like it i don't blame anyone i'm not mad but i just want you to blame yeah exactly i just we just have to clarify when we can clarify that it's just order but you know i get it it's like you know what order that if you put that in a sentence everyone's gonna be like what order like that it's you know too common of a word yeah like center it's the same problem we have and everyone's like center design the center oh yeah the order i love actually the order i'm actually pro the order more than I'm more on Pro the Center.

48:17Yeah, it sounds pretty cool. But I just am always like, Center. It's very simple. Also, it's my last name. So I'm just like, it's my last name. And people still are struggling with it. So it's a branding problem that we both have. So it makes me feel better that you have that same problem. Yeah. You guys do a lot of stuff at Order outside of the design work. You have the books. You guys have a type foundry. We do. You guys have a service order. Is that what it's called? change or change or sorry about but trust me we have a whole list of order names and service orders for sure on there so we have similar we have uh center we have front center uh we uh why not have a podcast ready for the name out of order have you thought about it that is the name of our bi-weekly thursday meetings where we share work that is not it was actually intended to not be order work but it is now or it was sort of this is the uh yeah so we have we have out of order we have working order we have uh yeah change order which is the pro bono sort of side of uh the uh the office but yeah so like center you can think of a lot of jesse you know we we have a lot more in common than i ever realized yeah we both have these studios in greenpoint we both uh like a pun with our names yeah we have a community center there you go front center yeah uh i have a list of things that i'm not gonna say on the pod that I'm planning on using for other things that involve center, you know, what, you know, we're just, we're just out here.

49:46I feel like I'm going to say this on the pod so that I can like coin it now, but we have a thought for either a naming or copywriting arm of order called alphabetical order. Come on. That's really good. I flew into our Slack like one morning. I was like, guys, brace yourselves. I have it. It just writes itself. Yeah. Do you guys do naming? We do. Yeah. Yeah. So, and Megan on our team, she's been taking some copywriting classes and we sort of had a naming project that we were talking about at the time. That's why this came to me. And I was like, oh my gosh. So it's brilliant. Yeah, there you go.

50:19So we have to use it. And the Type Foundry, what's the name of Type Foundry? That's super boring, but also then translated into something amazing, which is order Type Foundry, which is OTF. Ah, so that was credit to our, you know, we had a designer key on. because Order Type Foundry was the placeholder name. It's like, let's come up with a really cool name for the Type Foundry. For now, it's just Order Type Foundry. And he's like, you know, that's OTF. I'm like, holy shit. So that was it. I really like Plaza, grotesque. Thank you. Yeah, I have dabbled. That's actually not an order. That's my typeface that I just did in a type class.

50:58That's how we learned how to design a typeface, which I will never do again because I'm not talented enough. But that was the one I came out of it with. I have tried to use it on a couple of projects. I will let you know that. And the clients always shoot it down, right? And part of why I like it so much is your sort of representations of what it could look like were all package design. Yeah. Because I want to do package design. I mean, someone should just take this. I'm looking at it right now. Someone should just roll with this. It's perfect. It's so brilliant. Someone did do like a grocery store.

51:27I'm just blanking. I'm sorry on your name. You know who you are. But like somewhere in the south. And they basically did a version of that. They ran with that? And it was awesome. Yeah. No. I have thought about sort of, not thought about it. I've tried to use this typeface, and I do think someone should just take this and run. It's an identity for sale. You can just buy it or just, I don't know, just make it. It should exist. So, yeah, that sort of predates the Type Foundry. But now, yeah, Emily Klaby on our team, she runs the Type Foundry, and she just put out a typeface called Stringer. So that's sort of a unique one.

52:00It's the second time it's happened where an order employee has also released a typeface. So Emily Atwood, she was also a designer on our team. And at the time, she released Etude. So that's also part of the foundry. But most of the other ones are designers outside of order. Our thing for designers who do things that are not in the center, off center. Yeah, perfect. Really. Everything's organized, order. What's the beef with mess? You know, like, are you a secretly, like, a very organized person at home? Yeah. Yeah, you are. I am. people come to my apartment and they're like did you do this for me like is it always like this this is like how I live I mean I have like wooden shelves I don't have V2 because I need some warmth into my home everything at 45 degree angle is that true to that that's a rumor about me about order well we definitely follow the and again like when we were working at Pentagram Michael would tell us he's like in the Vignelli office we couldn't leave our desks unless all the lamps were at 90 degree angles and i was sort of like fuck yeah i love that so no i am you were like that's awesome i'm not like a total monster about it okay but i do suggest that in our office things are you know nulled if people know that term it's just it's my like you know minor ocd yeah exactly it's like sort of comes out and i think uh it just it just puts me at ease i'm i should i really do try to pull back and like don't tell that person to put the bag in the place that i want it to be but yeah it's it's in me if you're not familiar with orders work go to the website or that design yeah really small type that you probably can't read but it's it's the work is incredible i will always say that like you guys thank you are genuinely brilliant at you know sort of system architecture everything that you guys do is perfect case studies are so good thank you and so long they are and they make me as someone who kind of like hates case studies because they're just so hard to put together when i see your case studies i'm like jesus how long did this take to make yeah how long do they take to make their project in and of itself so i mean any design studio that makes case studies like you understand I think I'm pretty like Collins.

54:17They like have like a whole team dedicated to this. So I feel for our designers because they after they've just gone through like making guidelines this whole project, then it's like, yeah, should we make the case study now? But it's like it's a closing of the chapter and it feels really good when it's out. But yeah, they are very time consuming. And I mean, they can take sometimes fast. Like, you know, if you do like a quick, smaller identity, you know, you have all of the assets. So now we have sort of a system down where, you know, you could sort of smash one out in a few weeks or like, you know, quickly.

54:48A couple years. A couple years. But yeah, I mean, Garrett's been working on some now that have been, or and Emily, like months in the making. I do think they're also unique in the fact that they do tell a story about the project in a way. And you do all that work and no one's going to see it. So we're like, let's just show people all that stuff we did. It's kind of similar to first round in that way. Totally. Where it's like you're showing how you got to the work. You're maybe not showing like options. How the softs are just made. But like you're really letting people in, which is really brilliant.

55:10Yeah. And I think like, you know, image wise count number, I think when we do our case studies, we're like, okay, we're trying to aim for like 10 to 15 pieces of content, whether it's video or photography or something. I think you guys, I once counted once and I, or I think I lost count. I was just like trying to count how many images. I think Gage and Tolner takes the cake. So Gage and Tolner is the project that I think I was trying to count because I was like, how many images are in this project, which is a brilliant project, by the way. It's so beautiful. And that whole story is so rich. Yeah.

55:39And how you, you know, that place existed for a long time. And they knocked down the walls and it was still there. So, want to tell that story about Gage and Tolner? Yeah, I mean, you know. How that project? So, this one, Hamish Smythe, he led that project. So, that was sort of his baby. So, I was sort of, I'm not even that involved in the project. But, yeah, the original Gage and Tolner, what she'll have to like fact check me on the date in which it was originally established. I'm sure it's on there somewhere. I got it. I got it. They built it. I believe it became landmarks. And so then when there were other businesses in there, which it was an Arby's, they built fake walls over the original fixtures and walls and wallpaper.

56:24So that when eventually Arby's left and it became up for sale, now the owners of it just took down all the fake ceiling and walls and everything was sort of intact. Still there. So they just renovated it essentially to the original, you know, state in which it was in. And so, yeah, that's why. 1879. There you go. And so. It's Brooklyn's oldest restaurant. And it looks incredible. And what you guys did is you kind of went back to the original signage. Yeah, revived like the menus. And so, yeah, we just did sort of, I don't know, sort of a service, we hope, to the original intention of the restaurants.

57:02and then sort of added a few other contemporary typefaces to sort of have some clarity and sort of legibility. But yeah, I mean, so that was the most fun case study to make because we went there and we just ordered everything on the menu and we shot everything with film. So me and Hamish are big film buff photographers. And he shot medium format. I shot 35 millimeter and we just ordered everything. And we said, okay, everyone just like start eating and we're just going to photograph like, and Garrett's just like tearing into a steak and like a bone and we're just digging into food. what a dream just you know ate food and took photos i haven't been yet but it's very good it's extremely good yeah how many steaks you guys eating there a lot or you know yeah i mean i saw like i eat there all the time i think i've been only like three times but it's you know a full like steak martini um they have what is the baked alaska is like the dessert which is like an old school sort of literal mountain of cool whip that is then baked and then you crack into it and it's you know it's extremely sweet um for research did you guys have to go there a bunch and you know eat a bunch of steaks so i think hamish went there like more than i did and like went to the kitchen as they were doing like the test kitchen and like sort of cooking stuff so you know i went on a few signage visits and we did um sort of like specking out of what the signage was going to be but um yeah jesse reagan he redrew sort of the the word mark and look we sort of did like a rough version of it and then he took it and uh redrew it um from xyz type and so yeah fun project yeah that case study was just like there's so many good photos that we got it's just like let's just like exhaust people as they're going through this case study and why not it's exhausting but in the best way possible that's good and i the original logo was so funky yeah which is very unlike anything we do which i'm like happy about i sort of that's a project where i really pride ourselves on the diversity of our work i think you know me specifically and the work that i do can get very lumped into the do everything in helvetica category which you know all sort of own but i think like that project and if you know a lot of other projects that we do actually i think are what how we show the range and we actually don't just come into a project and know that we're gonna you know slap vinnelli on it and there's so there's you know more to us than just that you like what you like yeah that's what i'm not i'm not gonna deny it but um i like bold and colorful you know sometimes you just you like i'm more of a franklin gothic extra condenser that's right Right, exactly.

59:26Another project I really love from you guys is JustWorks. And part of it is because of the amazing brand system that you guys did. And the other part is just how much I love JustWorks. If anyone out there is listening to this interview, 100%. Us too, yeah. And if you want to start a studio, my number one piece of advice is sign up for JustWorks. It is the only reason that this studio exists. Yeah, benefits, insurance, payroll. They do it all. So yeah, we were customers first. And I think their head of product reached out to us first. That's how sort of the initial contact was made. And then, yeah, I mean, we, you know, not pitched work, but we sort of, you know, submitted a proposal and were probably up against many other people.

1:00:12And we were so thrilled that we could, you know, do work for this service that we were already customers of. and yeah for that one we worked with Colophon Type Foundry and did the custom typeface sort of right out of the gate and that was the first time where we pitched the idea of a custom typeface sort of before not retroactively or not like while you're into the process because you know they deal with information and data and compliance and we said you know a typeface is way more useful to you than a sort of custom photo shoot art direction sort of thing I mean, the work is amazing. And yeah, your type work that you guys do when you sort of bring these typefaces.

1:00:51And then how you show them off, I think, is also another piece where it's like, JustWorks, you know, they should run these posters. Like, they should, you know, they should make all this stuff. They did a good job on rollout. And now it's sort of like morphing and evolving. Yeah, there's some cool illustration stuff, too, happening around Greenpoint where I see. So, yeah, now that's like not even where, you know, that job is, that project is pretty old. I can't remember what year that came out. I mean, like 2019, I think it was pre-pandemic. But in any case, now they're sort of, you know, building on top of it, doing their own stuff.

1:01:23They have campaigns and other, you know, pieces that they need to sort of, yeah, invest into. So, yeah, illustration. This segment was brought to you by JustWorks. Yeah, 100. It's brought to you by, so, Taco Bell, JustWorks, Liquid Death. Yep, exactly. Let's just add it on. Gage and Tolner, mistakes with promo code Friends Center. No, JustWorks, honestly, is the best. Yeah. It just makes running a company. so, so much easier than I could ever imagine it could be. And I think people, sometimes my friends of mine, they're like, you have all these employees. How do you do it? I'm just like, JustWorks.

1:01:52It's really just as simple as that. I just kind of like, I just plug it in and they do the work. And like their support team is so responsive. You can call them. Honestly, the most, this is rare. The best customer service I have ever experienced is JustWorks where genuinely I call them and I'm like, I have a question about that. They're like, hey, cool. Let's talk about it. I'm like, what? like a real person yeah that just actually helps like Vanessa thank you yeah it's like they are like what do you do and I'm like I run a design suit they're like cool like how can I like help you yeah you know Kevin it's like yeah and they're not a small company they're very large yeah if every company had customer service like just works now that really sounds like I know like genuinely I think the world would be a better place right and so I mean they ran me through like the insurance options yeah no they really know explain it all yeah they will crazy employees just as much as founder so it's really it's it's it's yeah like when i onboard people i'm like i forget which category you go in but if you just call just works they'll tell you and then like just get on the phone it's like it sounds like a great question but if you call just works i'm sure they will understand 100 of the time yeah you're right so so great client great project i just call them defense sometimes yeah yeah me too yeah you ever just having a bad day alex is really laying into you how yeah you just a therapy is yeah i mean you're a therapist they are like hr they are essentially our hr yeah i was like what do you think kevin should get for bonus for christmas they're like how's he been doing you know like i'm just like ah he's good but you know yeah room for bourbon like okay let's let's talk this out yeah no seriously they genuinely are that good and i think um i if you know if they contact uh you know me for work i'll do it for free i'm just like as as wow this is on the record yeah you know kind of just saying i'm such a fan that i'm trying to do enough to go free i just yeah i owe them that's the way i'm with you and taco bell i will do it for free or like a trade i owe them no free work guys yeah sorry okay you're right yeah before we get out of here herman miller yeah uh is the latest project uh the uh the order crew uh i gotta imagine that's an absolute dream come true yeah for someone like you uh that likes to put things in order and yes uh you know kind of talk to us about sort of how that came through when did you start working with them and sort of how uh how have you gone to their archives like Like what's the experience like?

1:04:06We did the whole deal. And I mean, credit goes to Kelsey Keith. She is sort of the one that ran the project and who was our sort of point there. And we knew her from, you know, she has a journalism background and she had written about standards manual books. And I think when this project came up, just the sort of systematic intention that she knew this project needed to have. um you know so she got in touch i think from that perspective and yeah i mean it was one of those uh were tweaking not changing projects evolution not a revolution yeah exactly um and we had done a similar project for moma which like circle back to my first job we did a design system project for them with rob gianpetro leading it and that was a do not touch our logo sort of brief but you know everything else needs a system to it so it was more like brand architecture guidelines so herman miller is pretty similar it was obviously we built up equity and brand recognition and but we are becoming a little bit more of a different company or an evolved company than we were for the past 20 years um let's take an audit of what are good things and what are bad things what do we want to leave behind what do we want to sort of fix and introduce so yeah we went to the archives in zealand michigan uh incredible archives we saw hand written letters from charles and ray eames of like you know critiques of the ads and sort of specs and like things that were being done so really to see um a lot of the materials in their archives was a jaw-dropping designer's dream come true um so yeah we went out there did that process and basically just audited the entire company from a visual perspective and um you know the the m symbol uh that irving harper drew in 1946 garrett's gonna be proud that i knew that fact because he always thinks i'm gonna get that wrong and i mess with him to be like yeah masama vengeli designed it like 2004 uh obviously not true so you know that that symbol was the one piece that was on everything from the very beginning of him designing it.

1:06:19And so that's what we kept. And then we just evolved a lot of the things like the color palette typography, and basically just went back to the era of John Massey, which was highly systematic, but allowed a lot more fun and expression to sort of be had in the in the system sort of in the 70s. And so, you know, and then Steve Frickholm, he was Herman Miller's first in-house graphic designer and he's credited to do all of the picnic posters that if you're exactly if you're a herman miller fan you know about the picnic posters um i went into a store once and it was like right before a big meeting and we were trying to like get more furniture for the studio and i was like i'll take that chair and that couch and that poster yeah they're just like that's not how it works yeah they are sought after um so yeah they herman miller just re-released the hot dog poster uh this week really um yeah so like the corn one that's my yeah i mean there's there's too many good ones to choose from but so yeah it was about you know an eight month project and we did you know the audit the brand architecture work and really got to the core of what needed to evolve in the system to allow them to become a little bit more of a bold expressive company than they had been for the past 20 years which was much more you know red black gray and white corporate Herman Miller.

1:07:38And it was like, you know, you really saw it in the office place and sort of they have a healthcare sort of segments and, but now they're getting into gaming and really focusing again, more on the residential sort of side of things. So it's, you know, the classics in your home, as well as the new products, really being able to pick and choose how you create your space. And that's sort of like the underlying tone that we wanted to evoke with the identity and give them the materials to, uh, to do that. What do you mean gaming? Uh, like literal, like video games, so they're making chairs for gamers whoa that's next level Twitch streamers for Twitch streamers yes yeah I mean it's a whole huge industry and market I guess it makes sense you are sitting in the chair the entire time so yeah they have a gaming department and chairs for the ergonomics of your body damn that rocks that's crazy a Twitch game will forever be changed totally you should look at the chairs it looks like basically an exoskeleton of a chair oh yeah you can buy it oh what's it called embody i mean those are like the most ergonomic chairs you can get yeah so uh meant for marathon sitters totally and we so the gaming almost like division has not its own identity but it has its own it's kind of cool vibe to it yeah exactly so we didn't even do that specifically but the system that we developed sort of influences the way that that was going to and you know there was another team which i don't know if i can mention but you know another team was working on gaming a new another agency and so we were sort of doing this work in parallel it's like how do these things do they line up are they different so there was a lot of like architectural work which again is the sort of order philosophies they were just sort of like organizing the information here and then let's like see where we can push out you know rainbow cans and also you know black and white and anything else that needs to go so you know we introduce all these colors that are not just red that you know herman miller can just be green and you can still recognize that it's herman miller or purple you know it's actually it's like the palette of you know things in this office yeah um what was the event this week i saw a hot dog so that was the re uh issue of the hot dog poster oh hence the hot dog truck okay and then also the launch of the magazine or so again like the the relaunch of ideas magazines of the herman miller magazine which kelsey keith uh led and she um sort of uh She did a little interview with us on the brand process in that issue.

1:10:03I spoke on the panel with the designer and with Kelsey and Diana Budd. She led it. It was really fun. They had a hot dog cart, which was the best application I've ever seen of something that we did. Yeah, that's the dream is to try to get a logo or something on a hot dog cart. Did they actually have hot dogs there? 100%. Of course. They better have hot dogs. What style were they? Well, you want to know, they were Chicago dogs. in New York? in New York look out of here look out of here Chicago dogs are better than New York dogs no Chicago dog is not a hot dog it was a great dog what do you talk about?

1:10:38I know that's trash trash hot dog get that out of my city I love all the fixings get a pickle on a hot dog yeah it was the pepper the pickle the green relish tomato name one thing no a pickle doesn't make better Alex no no not on my hot dog come on not in New York City I'm walking here full case study coming soon on the website how many images we go for a couple hundred you know what do we think we should probably go for a thousand yeah yeah just thousands of small images yeah uh but yeah no we're waiting for them to switch over the website and then yeah they're you know swapping out all the boxes all the signage the storefronts everything it's like every little thing that they make it's just the it's like you know christmas and hanukkah all over again um so yeah we're gonna wait until they we have a little bit more to put in there.

1:11:26But yeah, we're going to show the archival study that we did, the audit. I mean, just brace yourselves. Yeah, no, I know. We're basically going to make an entire new website just for this case. I know that this case study is going to go pretty damn hard. I think you guys need to start doing like documentary style studies. We might make a film. Yeah, you should. Yeah, the MoMo one is particularly amazing as well. And I love that system. Every time I go there, it really shines in person. Yeah, thank you. And the wayfinding is really brilliant. And you guys do such great work. And we could talk about it all day before we get out of here because I'm getting beat down.

1:11:53Yeah, we're sweating in here. Yeah, yeah, it's getting hot. If you get the listening what's the one thing coming out in the future that you want to get people to uh you know sort of pay attention to yeah so by the time this airs uh we will have released a new standards manual book for dc comics so it's the 1982 dc comics style guide um which was intended for licensees to reproduce the artwork on ephemeral merchandising you know objects um and so yeah we're re-releasing this guidelines and if you're a comics person this is uh something not to be missed even if you're not like if you you know it's it's the heavy hitters of dc so um yeah i will enjoy guidelines for pretty much anything you know yeah and this is a different it's not like you know typeface specifications there is a whole sheet of pantone colors that goes to you know wonder woman's you know outfit and superman's hair and batman and everything it's it's a Pantone sort of specification sheet.

1:12:54That's like the most graphic design sheet in there. But then there is all this custom drawn typography for essentially the identities of all the other characters that if you're not, you know, deep into the world, you probably maybe haven't seen, but they're incredible. Cool. And then it's the Milton Glaser DC comics logo. That's on the front. So shout out Milton. Amazing. Jesse, thank you so much for coming. honestly so much fun to talk to you about everything and we should probably hang out more considering we're sort of Greenpoint. Let's do it. Sort of neighbors. That's just okay. So that's the beginning of the show.

1:13:32You ready for the real show? Three, two, one. Kevin. How are you, man? Good. How are you? Good. How do you like the new format? The new format's good. I'll, I'll, you know, it's great. All right, cool. Thanks, man. Peace.

1:13:56Thank you.

1:14:27You give yourself away Every single day Just a passing fate Pull you under Then you down

1:14:58Calling like a ghost A different kind of joke To scare away your hopes Said you loved her But it's different now You're spinning out Watched you fall in and crawling through Every line may be feeding you Watched you fall in and crawling through Every line may be feeding you

1:16:06A carousel of mirrors Peeling all the times Different sides of you Make them wonder Spin them out You're better now Watch you fall in, crawl in through Every line they've been feeding you Watch you fall in, crawl in through Every line may be feeding you

1:17:00Feeding you

1:17:33I'll see you next time.

1:17:48Thank you.