THE BRAND NEW BRAND NEW with: Armin Vit

27:15I just priced it low. And I did more than I was getting paid for. And I'm sure it's the same for you. You do it because you love it. Of course. Absolutely. If you could survive on free, you would still decide. We don't even get paid for our client work. I just pay everyone out of the goodness of my heart because I'm generationally wealthy. Yeah. That's right. So the blog obviously starts picking up. When did you realize that your community had a certain vibe or energy? Yeah. I think, again, like the gap from the gap years. After that, it was clear. And it wasn't the right. Now, look, at the time, we're like, oh, it's a place where you go to shit on bad work.

28:01And at the time, we're like, okay, this is cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can monetize this. We can monetize. It wasn't so much that, hey, we can monetize the evil in people's hearts. I'm kidding. No, but it was like, it was getting traction and it was fine. Like, people enjoyed it. And people that tell you now, like, oh, I wouldn't lower myself to such low standards. They're the ones thinking, like, this is bullshit. Or, like, this work is shit. So there was a little bit of a time when the vibe was, like, this is where you go shit on bad work or even good work. Yeah. And then we sort of matured. My writing early on was very catty.

28:40Like it was very bitchy, very much after Corker at the time. Sure, yeah. The Corker of graphic design. Yeah. Like I'm not proud of it, but that attracted people. Yeah, page views, baby. Yeah. That's how you get them. You don't get them by being nice. Exactly. But now we do. Like even if it's bad work, I'll try to find what is the nicest thing I can say about this so that someone else doesn't do the same thing by mistake. Nice. That's a growth. Yeah, exactly. maturation do you have favorite commenters do you have people in your sort of uh brand new community that you know and you're like that guy brings it yeah and there's people that have come and gone over the years some luckily are not there anymore that were just like really really negative and yeah you know you're they were sort of entertaining and they fuel the fire and again that generates traffic uh but then eventually you realize especially nowadays like in the last two three years you just cannot have that kind of energy yes online yeah online it's just like it's not a good look.

29:41Yeah, it's tired. It doesn't feel right. Exactly, it's tired. Like it was funny for a while, but now it's just like, it does come across as mean-spirited, unnecessary. No, but I think when it changed was in 2010, when we decided to do the brand new conference, I think that's when we realized, okay, so there's actual people reading this that will show up to an offshoot experiment of brand new, and the energy is just great. Yeah. People really enjoy the focus on brand. So 2010, you decide to move into conferences, take that community, put them in a room together. Where was the first one? New York.

30:17New York. Yeah. It was at the SBA Theater on 23rd Street. And from day one, you designed every single piece of material, logo, sort of experience. Yeah. I mean, part of it was we're designers. So it's easy to do. We don't have to spend money on that. At the beginning, we didn't pay as much attention as we do now. which are like, hey, let's choose a funny font and call it a day. Then eventually it evolves into what it is. It's gotten out of control. A little bit, yeah. This is an intervention, actually. Because for those listeners that maybe don't know about Brand New Conference, it's been now going on for 15 years, it sounds like.

30:56Yeah, I mean, 15 years minus the pandemic. For sure. And the thing that makes it great is not just the speakers and just the overall conference itself, But the work that Armin and Bryony do to make it its own brand every year, that sort of pays homage to wherever it is, the materials, the stage, the website, everything is completely custom every year. No repeats and no corners cut. Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of manual labor involved. and we do everything, just me and Brian, and we figure out what would be a production line of 10 people. How can we optimize it for two? And how long can we endure this process before we go crazy?

31:41You seem to like to torture yourself a little bit. I think there's a little bit of that in it where you're like, well, I could cut all these pieces out. I can get them cut by someone else. But I'm going to cut 500 pieces every day. hey, I'll cut 10 of them or something over the course of months. Yeah. There's something. I mean, it's what we do. It's just like you go the extra mile for your clients or whatever it is that you're passionate about. For us, people enjoy it, and it's what makes it unique. It's a great conference, and I've been there a couple times over the years, and yeah, every single time, it's just my jaw is on the ground as you guys go through the process because as part of the conference itself, we talk about the creation of the identity.

32:30And every time it is just astonishing. Yeah, now it's like we document, just like you have here, the multiple setup with the cameras. We have multiple, it's like a multi-cam sitcom. Yeah. We just have different cameras pointing at different things. We have a thing now that you can put your phone here so you can see how we're working. You got a GoPro? No, we don't have a GoPro, actually. You should get the head mount. Yeah, get the head mount. Yeah, it's quite a scene. And this year it's in Salt Lake City, so we can do a little promo right here. Nice. Salt Lake City, first time going and doing the competition.

33:03Yeah, first time there. Yeah. October 10 and 11. What kind of elaborate scheme do you have cooking up for the promo materials? Yeah, I want to break some news here. What have you been cutting out here? Yeah, you want to tease anything? We've been dipping a lot of stuff in... Snow? Snow, yeah. Yeah. That's how we do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the secret. That's the real secret. For the listeners, I just tapped my nose and winked at Alex and Kevin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how they put in those hours. We're trying to recreate the mountains and the sky that are inherent to Salt Lake City because you're surrounded by mountains.

33:42So we're trying to make that kind of like a groovy, sand-like feel. We have a custom typeface that we created with XYZ type. and yeah, we're still in the process of figuring out what exactly is the crazy thing that we're going to do. Sounds cool? Yeah, I can picture it. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. And which Real Housewife of Salt Lake City is going to be speaking there? All of them. All of them. Yeah, we're giving one session to each and then one designer to open and close just to keep it within the theme. Okay, well, my ticket is just booked. I just booked it. Yeah, no, it's a great place And you guys do pick great locations.

34:22It's another thing that I think you guys do well, which is you have them in New York and Chicago, but Austin and Salt Lake City and different places that are fun places to visit. Yeah. Yeah. We try to make it accessible for people to fly to. Yeah. And also to be interesting, like we did Nashville. That was the first time that we went to a smaller market and like a thousand people showed up. We're like, oh, cool. People will travel to an interesting location. So, yeah. So that's why we ended up in Salt Lake City. We just figured it's interesting. The nature is amazing. Sure. Yeah. And the venue is pretty amazing.

34:57One of our designers from Salt Lake City already got her ticket. And I'll probably be there because you do an amazing thing, which is if you speak a brand new, you get to come for life. For life. Yep. When did that start? From the first one. Wow. We were just like... Lifers. Yeah. And there's people like Mateo Bologna. He's come to pretty much every conference. That is so sick and so amazing. And I'm going to take you up on that. I think this year because I've never been to Salt Lake City. Let's talk about first round because first round was yesterday in New York, an amazing conference. When did that idea kind of come through your brain?

35:29Where did it come from or did Bryony come up with it? How did you guys? That one came because we were working with someone else on coming up with a more theoretical design conference. That didn't work for different reasons. but we had already booked the venue. We had paid the money. We put it back down. And we were maybe two months out from the dates of the event. And we're like, okay, this option A is not working. We need option B quick. And like many years ago, we had thought about the idea of first round publishing, first round presentations in a book form. Like what if you did a book based on that?

36:13And a few designers that we talked to were like, We're never going to put this in printed format for anyone to use for posterity. They're like, okay, fine. And then I had an idea. All right, so not in book form, but what if it just happens in a room, 500 people, that's it. No one else gets to see it. We don't talk about this. So it was in New York. We emailed all the people that we had sort of a personal relationship so that it would be harder for them to say no. and then yeah people you know 12 people said yes and like it was the first time was in 2018 the audience was freaking out yeah it was just like I've never seen this live yeah I've never seen process I've never seen first round decks how people do it Matteo was like this feels dangerous yeah I was there and it was there was an energy that you could feel that it was like this is on this has not been done before yeah And it does feel like we're sort of breaking down the walls a little bit and showing people a little bit of things they shouldn't see.

37:16And I think it was really made for a special day. And it just immediately struck me as exciting, I think, for a couple of reasons. One was I just started Center. And so I had no idea how to do first rounds. I've never worked at a design agency before. And so to get to go to a conference and see people showing off how you do it was really quite helpful for me. And at the time we were presenting like five directions for clients. And I had a designer that we worked with and she was like, you can't do this. This is like unsustainable. This is not how you do it. And I was like, this is my company. Like, this is how we do it.

37:53We don't care how anyone else does it. And so going to that conference really was eye opening because I actually saw many different ways in which people do it. And I was like, OK, I see what's going on here. And Bobby Martin presented like 12 identities and ZZ did one. And, you know, it's just like I remember the sort of variety, but also some of the consistencies. And I just thought it was so exciting and fun and educational in a way that design conferences are sometimes dry. Right. You see people come and they present their case studies and their work and they're like, look how amazing I am.

38:23And they just kind of sit there and you're like, cool, you're really great. And I feel shittier. Yeah. And that is, you know, that's kind of how it used to be in design. And Bryony actually had this conversation yesterday as we were walking from the venue to the drinks after. And she said something really interesting, which first round probably wouldn't have worked 15 years ago because people weren't open to sharing. And I was like, you know what? I think you're right. Because at that time, designers were like, we're geniuses. We don't, you know, we're in competition with everyone else. So why would we give away our trade secrets?

39:02Yes. Even having been in New York in the 2000s, designers wouldn't share their typefaces or where they got them from or what print methods they were using or the printers that they were using because they didn't want to have that others doing the same thing that they could. Of course. Yeah. No, it wouldn't have worked. And I think it's funny because, you know, now six years later, people are submitting like, hey, can we speak at first round? Can we share our secrets too? Yeah. And that's amazing. And I think for me, I am from the sort of generation after that generation, the one that was like close the door, lock everything and don't tell a single soul.

39:46And I've always felt like let's knock down that wall. let's let people in and let's let people feel empower them and make them believe that they can do it too which is always the thing that I think about all the time that's why this podcast even exists in a lot of ways because we're like how can we talk about design take the pinkies and break them how can we take the turtlenecks off and talk about design that's real and fun and not just sort of this prestigious elitist thing that only a select few can do well correct And I think that has always been something that I've thought about in my career.

40:23And I think that's ultimately why first round to me is so exciting because I think it has that kind of energy of like, yeah, let's just share. And let's not have that sort of guard up and say, you can do it too. Yeah. I think what's great is it puts the speakers in a vulnerable spot because as you experienced yesterday, you're showing the shitty part and the mistakes, the things that you look back like, I wish I hadn't done that or why did I do that? So it shows the humanity of designers. It's not just a super polished case study, but how you get to it, which as we all know, it's not an easy thing.

41:04Yeah, there's months and months and sometimes years of work before you show the perfectly polished thing on brand new. And then it's like, well, how did you get here? It's not like you didn't just create this thing. It took a lot of mistakes and a lot of things that were bad and probably a lot of things that you had to make that were bad to get there. I think, yeah, yesterday when I was doing my presentation, I was thinking about sort of exactly that feeling of looking at work from a couple of years ago and being like, oh, man. And we all experience that. That's it. That's so human. And that's like, you know, if you find me a designer who looks at their work and is just like, I nailed it.

41:38I wouldn't make any changes because I'm so great. I'm like, that designer does not exist. We all want to take another crack at that thing from a couple of years ago. Even if it came out great. Even if we're incredibly proud of it. Yeah, even like the conference materials that we've done. Like every year we think like, oh, this is the best. Of course. And then you look back like, eh. Like, why do you do that? Exactly. So speaking of, we can talk about brand news branding. We talked about it on the show here. Brand new brand. Brand new brand for brand new. And we talked about it a little bit. And I gave a scathing review.

42:16I haven't. Is that episode out? It episode is out. Okay. I haven't listened to it. But we didn't really talk about it because we knew you were coming on so we could talk about it. And my review is not scathing. My review was very, very positive. And I felt like, for me, what I love about it, just to quickly, you know, sort of, you know, sort of paint with the broadest brush possible. in my opinion it now has the personality and character that the blog has always had which is fun and not just so serious and i think the letter forms really bring the character and the wit and the sort of uh feeling that i think the blog has through the writing yeah and i think that to me is just it feels right well i like the ligatures yeah that's it kevin also was really into the e form he went really deep on that you know but so uh talk about the branding you had the original branding from 2006 2017 i have in front of me and then 2017 to 2024 and uh i guess started this branding project years ago yeah last year uh yeah no i think what the main thing that happened was as you said, that it now looks the way it feels.

43:27Correct. And we realized we're not presenting brand new the way that we think it should or that people are... The experience doesn't match what we're putting out there in terms of branding. And part of it is just that it's not that I didn't care before. It's just like it wasn't what it is now. Like it's not back then, even in 2017, the main business was the conferences. Sure. Then when we turned it into the subscription model, then Brand New had more importance in our business. And it's like, oh, now we need to take it a little bit more seriously. Interesting. So yeah, so we just felt like the product visually, the product we're putting out did not match our intention.

44:14The subscription model for websites is now, in the last like two years, has become the sort of the model. You guys were on it pretty early. Yeah, I mean, and I think we're even late by general... Blog standards? Not blog standards, but just like newspapers with subscription much earlier. But yeah, I think for us, it was just a matter of survival at the time, during the pandemic, when we saw the conferences going away, not knowing what to do. And like the other problem at the time was that we had doubled down on conferences and we had literally like seven venues contracted for 2000. Oh, man. 2020, yeah.

44:55Yeah, 2020. 2020, yeah. And so for a moment, we literally freaked out. Like, you know, if the conferences don't come back, we're not going to get the money back because venues are horrible. Yeah. So that's when we did the subscription model, kind of like a Hail Mary. And like we did some math and we figured, we can get 10 ,000 subscribers in the first year. We'll be fine. We can live with this. We're up to like 32 ,000 subscribers. Yeah. And it's$2 a month? How does it work? $2 a month,$20 a year. Okay. I mean, this is pretty - That's basically free. Yeah, that's free. That's free. You ever think about upping those prices in this new economy?

45:38I think next year we might. After five years. What are we thinking? Netflix and Spotify, they seem to have no problem. Just send out a little email, be like, hey, by the way, it's now$20 million. Yeah, I know. We're literally, we discuss, is it 50 cents that we go up a month? Is it$1? Like, does$1 make us look greedy? And it's crazy to think like that. I think you can go up a dollar. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I'm just giving some financial. Okay, so this clearly further establishes how bad I am with money. And we do fine. But again, like, it's just like, for me, it's such a pleasure to do this. Of course.

46:16No, and I think the reason why is because of the reputation. I mean, I think, you know, as someone who obviously cares a lot about design more than I should. And, you know, I think as you run a design blog and, you know, like Kevin said, content, making content about content, like people need to get it from somewhere. And you're absolutely the best. Cut that out. But no, you guys are one of the main sources for design criticism and even just organize, like you said in I think your piece, which is like just organizing it neatly for people so that if you're like, okay, you know, sort of who rebranded?

46:55Pepsi rebranded. Like truly on the internet, there is no better place to go and just look at it organized and dissected. You got the nice PR quotes pulled. Yeah. You got the CMO quotes, which we love. It's all about, because for me, I see so many case studies and I get so many assets, folders of assets. I'll open it in Bridge just to see what's what. I'm like, what the hell is this doing at the beginning? Why do I need to see a picture of the sun at the beginning? So for me, it's like, how do I parse it so that it seems like a story? A story. And the way that I think about it is like it's like a food, like a dish recipe.

47:39Okay. Like here are the ingredients. Here's how you put it together. Here's the finished dish. And it looks amazing. But it's just like without a lot of this case studies, like here's what it looks like amazing. And then there's no understanding of what makes it come together. Are there any trends in like case studies that you're seeing these days since you see so many? Are there any trends that you're like, I need this to stop? Or like, you know, you're maybe a little bit tired of seeing? Yeah, I think everything animated is just like not, I mean, color palettes are animated. Icon sets are animated.

48:11They look fun. It's amazing. But just like there's an animation fatigue for me at least. And it used to be that everything was static. But now everything is animated. Like, okay, we get it. You can all use after effects. It's fun, but it's unnecessary to a degree. But at the same time, everything is in motion nowadays. So it's understandable. That's great to hear for the designers out there. Yeah, just keep it simple. Yeah, you don't have to try so hard. Don't make, maybe make like one or two animations. Yeah. We're so sick of making things move. It's, you know, because what most agencies are doing is like, or, you know, they're the top of the top agencies that like are presenting to clients with all sorts of animation like we saw yesterday.

48:50But then there's like the 85 % of practitioners of design that are presenting work, still fairly static, maybe a logo animation, if that. And then when they make their case study, long after the project is over, then they are sort of doing all the motion just to sort of be able to send it to brand new so that someone can, you know, sort of shit all over it. Yeah. But again, you know, it makes sense because like even on Instagram, like one of the reasons why one of the, not the reasons, but one of the things that we're going to do with a rebrand is so that on social media, we could post more videos and more motion stuff.

49:28Yeah. Even though I just chat on motion stuff. Your case study has a ton of motion stuff. Because that's what drives the, not traffic, but keeping people engaged nowadays requires motion. And the algorithm favors motion. Interesting. And you gathered a Marvel movie of characters to help you guys. What made you want to bring in so many different types of agencies and not just have one main partner? we did look at one main partner at the beginning and that didn't work out. Not going to name names, but it wasn't that it didn't work out, which is like, it made us realize that was not the right approach.

50:13Sure. I think just like handing someone else, like, hey, do everything. And us standing back, like Brian and I had this conversation, like that's not what got us to the point where we're now. What got us to this point is like being hands-on. Cutting out all the books. Yeah, exactly. But then we also acknowledge to do it right and do it at the best level, we know our limitations. Got it. We can cut a hundred things a thousand times, but get the writing right to convince people to subscribe to brand new, to make it engaging, to do a logo that just blows people's minds. And if it didn't work out, I could say like, hey, blame Rob Clark.

50:55I gave him good direction, but he fucked it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. those are his ligatures yeah yeah he's the problem yeah and then also because flash you know can you even get it installed on a new computer i don't know if you could if you wanted to make a move yourself i read that you've gone from flash to keynote animations yeah is all yours is all this stuff on the new case study animated in keynote a lot of it is a lot of it is wow all the social media posts that we're putting everything goes to keynote okay so you must be pretty good at I'm very good. Wow. Yeah. That's a real skill. Yeah.

51:26I can make things appear one by one. If you saw on my deck yesterday, they just kind of layer up on top of each other. That's the extent of it. Yeah. The only limitation is that you have to go, you can only do one thing at a time. Yes. Two things cannot happen at the same time. That's the only bad thing, but I've learned to work around it. I don't know. That's kind of a good limiter, though. Like, you know, I find that simple animations are sometimes a little bit more compelling on something where everything's moving around and makes your head spin. The best design has constraints. Exactly. If you have too much freedom, you do too much.

51:56So everything that is on social, like when you have all those kind of like story animations, those are all in Keynote? Yeah, we build templates. Jesus. Kind of like the build order animations. Like they're very tight. We have guidelines for how, you know, the timing, the settings. Whoa, so you just kind of plug and play. Yep, yeah. That's amazing. And to be honest, I'd like to have access to those. We do all of our decks and keynotes. And we find that Keynote has been, since COVID, really changed our studio because we can collaborate. And so we're all working in the same Keynote at the same time.

52:31And so it's just like live happening. People use Figma for the same reason. But we like Keynote because then we can just kind of go and directly to the presentation and just kind of hide all the notes, hide all the slides, and be like, all right, we're ready. How's it going? We're presenting now. So we love Keynote. Shout out to Keynote. And so logo, merch, buy the merch. The reception I saw was pretty good. Yeah, nobody was mean in the comments. Yeah, people were nice. I think there were literally like maybe three comments of people like, oh, I can't like it. The ligatures don't read right. But it was overwhelmingly positive.

53:04I think we have the ability to favorite brand new. I think we're up to like 400, which is pretty high. Nice. Like 200 comments, mostly positive. Even Rob Clark, he posted it on his Instagram. And before that, he had done the Cadbury script logo. And that was his most liked post. Within three days, brand new. Yeah, so I take credit for the idea. But the execution is what really sells it. And he nailed it. Did anyone in the comments, I looked through some of them. But I don't think I got through all the comments. But did you see anybody doing the classic move where they take a crack at it themselves?

53:44and then they zoom in on the ligature. They show the bumps. Yeah. No, luckily there was none of that. That's why you got Rob Clark. I mean, your comment section, it's great. They love and respect you. That's one of my favorite things is when people take out, they take the logo and they do their own version of it and then post it. And I've done it myself on some logos. It's hard to receive. Like, hey, this is part of that blog. Do you have a burner account on Brand New that you comment from? I should. Not Armin. Yeah. 35. Wow. Armin's doing such a good job on these reviews. What a guy. Yeah. I think we all need to take a sec to appreciate how much work he puts in.

54:28But to show that the audience can turn on us when we did the under consideration logo in 2016, I think that we had this really condensed typeface. And it's hard to read. I remember this. Yeah, it's tough to read. We got blasted on that one. So they will let you know. Yeah. That's what I like, that if we didn't do it right, people would let us know. And if we did it right, they did. That's why I'm scared of your website. And Armin, you've given me a hard time at times. You're like, why don't you send me your stuff? And it's only because of fear. It's not because I don't want to. It's just because I am too thin-skinned and I'm afraid of commenters.

55:14That's it. But I should try to get it. No, but what's funny is that, and I'm sure you can get 100 positive comments and one negative comment. And that's the thing that you're obsessed about. You lose sleepover. But that's what drives at least me. It's just like, of course, it's good to be. The haters. The haters. If you don't have haters, you're not popping. Yeah. How can I, if not shut them up, what can I, because there's some truth in that. Like, it's easy to dismiss it. Like, oh, they don't know what they're talking about. But if one or two people say something, they're like, yeah, there's an ounce of truth to this.

55:50Man in the arena. That's what I say. Just like LeBron. He writes that on his shoes. If you want to be the man in the arena, you're going to get some commenters breaking out their illustrator and doing their own versions of it. I actually just remembered when we were talking about the rebrand on our episode, I said I had an idea for you guys. And so now that you're here, I can tell you in person, why don't you rebrand every year? And just like the conference, roll out a new brand new every year. And it seems like a very easy thing for you guys. It's too easy to blow. It's right there. Obviously, the conference doesn't take much time, but kind of going through this process.

56:29Yeah, it seems sustainable. Exactly. And then you'd always have a first round to present. That's right. Yeah. And at each conference, you could talk about the branding for the conference and also the branding for brand new. That's meta. Yeah. Are you going to talk about that at the brand new conferences? We'll mention it, but yeah. Yeah, probably. It's more of a – we don't want to make it about us. We'll mention it. Got it. I mean, I would have been interested to see the round one on the brand new. I mean, the round one is literally there. It's in the blog. It's that bad sketch at the beginning.

57:02It was round. I wouldn't even call it round one. It was literally two minutes of taking a screenshot. Like, this is the idea. And I showed it to Brian. Like, what do you think? Like, maybe it has possibility. And I said, like, what if we get Rob Clark on it? Like, okay. Yeah. Now it's going to be something. I like that you put that in, though. Because I think most designers might not do that or show that. And I think showing that is like, yeah, this was a sketch of an idea. And then bring in the experts. Yeah, bring in the big guns. Yeah. And then working with Rob, I think that's the first round.

57:34Like seeing Rob's interpretation of that bad idea and how you bring it to life in different ways. You know, he's had like maybe 12 or 15 options. And you're all like, I mean, they're all good. And then some of you have to be like, okay, which one is the less good? just because he's so good at making letter yeah shout out to robin you know we were talking before the mics were on about uh us as studio working with alak tier and it's just like you see these guys and what they can do in their letter forms and they're they're artists and they can do things that uh you and i and kevin cannot yeah and uh i can confidently say that and it's just but it's also like and it's just i'm astonished i'm just like wow like what talent and knowledge about type that I can never truly understand.

58:21And just, yeah, it's amazing to work with those people. So it's cool that you brought them in. Before we get out of here, what's next? Like anything on the horizon? Obviously you got the conference, first round's done. Anything else kind of planned just to, you know, sort of before we get you out of here. Yeah. Like we're launching a new conference, the in-house, in focus, in person in 2025. So we started this blog. In-house, in-focus, in-person. In 2025. Okay. So that's going to be the naming basis. So it's always going to change in 2026. Okay. Got it. But yeah, we started this blog called In-House in Focus maybe last year or two years ago.

59:05And it's been slow to grow because we tried to get in-depth features about different in-house teams. Okay. But it takes a lot of work to put them together. So then we thought, all right, just kind of like with the first round, like, all right, what if we take that focus, no pun intended, I guess, and put it in, make it in person. so yeah we're doing a two-day conference in Dallas Texas next year with we don't have the speakers yet but it is just to have people from representing in-house brand teams in-house communications teams from all sorts of companies large small medium teams that are 30 people teams that are just one person you know trying to do everything and just showcase that experience of working in-house, which I'm sure you're well aware of.

59:55Of course. The trials and tribulations. No, I'm so great. I'm so grateful. I'm so great. I'm so great. Just going to drop that in there like one hour into the podcast. I'm just so amazing, guys. Sorry. It's been a long week. It's hard. It's also Saturday. Yeah. No, I'm so grateful that you're doing this and that I didn't know that it had its own website and its own Instagram and sort of its own focus. So now I'm following all those sort of sites and channels now. And yeah, I'm pumped that you guys are doing this because I think In-House teams have grown so much. I was on one and it always felt like we were underserved in the community.

1:00:36No one was doing conferences about in-house. And it was looked down upon. Oh, wow. Like if you went to work in-house, it meant that you had given up on working for a design firm or that you were not good enough to work for a design firm. Facts. Yep. And then that has shifted dramatically in the past five years where more of the talent in branding and design is in-house. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I mean, you look at a brand like Cash app. Yeah. They have amazing merch. Yeah, they're killing it. Yeah. They rule. Yeah. They just figure out they can attract talent based on the benefits of working for a large corporation and then they can do amazing work because they're in the brand and they're living it every day so yeah i think that it has changed a lot and also how much designers and design firms have to collaborate with in-house groups um to do redesign and rebrandings couldn't agree more yeah no it's it's true and there's so much talent being hired by these companies like half of the talented designers i know work at apple right now yeah and uh chobani also we talked about them yesterday Like Giovanni created a full in-house team that was as good as any agency is and they are responsible for that beautiful rebrand.

1:01:51So it's cool that there's a site for it. And as a former in-house guy, I always say always an in-house guy. And still, it still, you know, kind of makes me proud that there's a change of the sort of perspective. Because you're right, like people used to look down on me and look down on in-house designers as like, you know, yeah, lesser. And to be honest, also like it was a place where you go at the end of your career, maybe like you work. to cash out. And you're like, I'm going to go work for this big corporate, you know, work for the man. Yeah, yeah. Put on my suit and my slacks and go to work.

1:02:21And it's just, you know, it's not like that. Like these, Cash App is like, you know, perfect example. Yeah. They have really cool design coming out of that place and it's done by really amazing talent. Yeah, museums that have to put out materials on a constant basis. You know, the New York Botanical Garden they just redesigned. They have a team. Yeah, so it's a great place to do design in a different way that is now lesser or different or less valuable than what most designers do. And just to your point earlier about having people on the side of the client that are managing or leading the work is also critical because you could be the best agency in the world or do the best work in the world.

1:03:02You do it for a client that doesn't know what to do with it or can't take it or doesn't know how to manage it or doesn't know how to lead it or brief it or any of those things it typically is not going to work very well so i think that also is super important yeah so we have that coming up next year and right now we have to get back announce the speakers for salt lake city for the brand new conference uh we're taking a little break going to zion national park nice biking that'll be sweet have you been yeah yeah you got to do the um you got to go through the i can't remember yeah you got to go through the narrows yeah i think it's uh because we're We're going...

1:03:37Getting an early jump. It's May, so I think there's a lot of snow melt. So far, right now, it's closed, so I'm keeping an eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm playing meteorologist and keeping an eye on the snow caps melting. That's right. Yeah. Well, I think you could at least do... I think you could at least get in a little bit. I don't know how far you can go in the narrows, but I'm sure you could probably get into that gorge area. Yeah. That's sweet. Yeah, so we're doing that, going to Bryce Canyon as well, and then... Good moves. Yeah, after we get back, focusing on the brand new conference materials, doing all that crazy stuff for the next three months.

1:04:10And then, yeah, it's just keeping on with the brand new, which is a full-time job in itself. I got another job for you if you want. You can take it or leave it. Maybe 2026 initiative. Hear me out. Brand old. All right. So we talk about old brands and legacy brands, like throwback brands that maybe the UPS logo from… The originals. from RuPaul or whoever designed it. We could do a whole line of merch. It would be a hit. Yeah. The old United logo, the tulip. This is good. And then we can bring in old designers. Designers in their 80s and 90s. We can do a science and bring in Paul Rand. Yeah, all these young people can learn from their elders.

1:04:57It's kind of a fire idea. I'm going to need 20%. You got it. We'll sign contract and i'm gonna need to speak at it in like 30 years thank you uh armin thank you so much for coming in a long time overdue appreciate you coming in on a saturday thank you kevin and uh go to brand new yeah i appreciate it check out the work want to chat with you guys absolutely later

1:05:53Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity, Seize everything you ever wanted. One moment. That you capture. Just let it slip. Yo. His palms are sweaty. Knees weak. Arms are heavy. There's vomit on his sweater already. Mom's spaghetti. He's nervous. But on the surface he looks calm and ready to drop palms. But he keeps on forgetting what he wrote down. The whole crowd goes so loud. He opens his mouth. But the words won't come out. He's choking how? Everybody's choking now. The clocks run out, time's up, over, plow Snap back to reality, oh, there goes gravity Oh, there goes rabbit, he choke He's so mad, but he won't give up that Is he no, he won't have it, he knows His whole back city's ropes, it don't matter He's dope, he knows that, but he's broke He's so stagnant, he knows when he goes back To this mobile home, that's when it's Back to the lab again, yo This old Rhapsody, better go capture this moment And hope it don't prove at it Lose itself in the music, the moment you own it You better never let it go You only get one shot Do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime You better lose yourself in the music The moment you own it You better never let it go You only get one shot Do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime You better lose yourself in the music This world is mine for the taking Make me king as we move toward a new world order Our normal life is boring But superstardom's close to post-mortem It only grows harder, homie grows hotter He blows us all over, these hoes is all on him Coast to coast shows he's known as the globe trotter Lonely roads, God only knows he's grown farther From home he's no father He goes home and barely knows his own daughter But hold your nose cause here goes the cold water These hoes don't want him no more, he's co-product And they moved on to the next smote who flows He knows, dove and sold not her So this old piper is told, it unfolds, I suppose it's old partner, but the beat goes on.

1:08:03You better lose yourself in the music the moment you own it, you better never let it go. If you only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime. You better lose yourself in the music the moment you own it, you better never let it go. You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime No more games, I'ma change what you call rage Tear this motherfucking roof off like two dogs caged I was playing in the beginning, the mood all changed I've been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage But I kept rhyming and stepped right in the next cypher Best believe somebody's paying a pod piper All the pain inside amplified by the fact that I can't get by with my 9 to 5 And I can't provide the right type of life for my family Because man, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers.

1:08:56And there's no movie, there's no Mekhi Pfeiffer. This is my life and these times are so hard. And it's getting even harder trying to feed the water my seed. Plus, see the thought I caught up between being a father and a prima donna. Baby mama drama screaming on her. Too much for me to want to stand one spot. Another damn monogony's gotten me to the point I'm like a snail. I've got to formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot. Success is my only motherfucking option. Failure's not, mom I love you but this trail has got to go I cannot grow old in Salem's lot So here I go, it's my shot, feet fail me not This may be the only opportunity that I got You better lose yourself in the music The moment you own it, you better never let it go You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime You better lose yourself in the music The moment you own it, you better never let it go You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, you better You can do anything you set your mind to, man

1:10:19Thank you.