The Build: with Robyn Kanner

0:00Our guest today is Robin Canner. Robin is a creative director with a passion for telling urgent human stories. She was the creative director for Biden Harris 2020. She had her own studio where she worked with clients like Spotify, Showtime, and the Democratic National Convention. And she's also a professor at Cooper Union and a film lover, sports lover. And Kevin and I had a great conversation with her.

0:26How much reality TV do you watch? A healthy amount. This is like your thing. Yeah. Okay. Well, I love trashy reality shows. Okay. Got it. You know, started real world like when I was younger, like, you know, strangers living in a house. It's just been something I've been into. And then I've always enjoyed sports. I grew up on Long Island. Sure. I identify as bro. Great. And so when. Good time to be a bro. Huge. Yeah. Great time to be a bro. It's never been hotter. This moment of reality television and sports commingling. Sure. Is, you know, again, it used to be hard knocks. Yeah. And that would be it.

1:02Again, like, you know, four weeks in the summer. Yeah. Now, it's every day. There's a healthy amount of programming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not for you, Rob. It's not for me. It's for a lot of people in my life, though, and I can respect that and I'm good with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with the genre. I think the genre is really interesting. It's just not the thing that if I get an hour and a half, it's the thing that I'm going to do. It's bringing more fans into the sport. That's what it did for F1, and that's why everyone is like, ooh, we need a reality show about this sport.

1:34Yeah. Everyone needs to know about these, the drama. Yeah. Everyone needs to know about the drama. And that, that makes it interesting because like these points of tension, something like a decision has to be made. Like that's what makes stories really interesting to people. So that's why they get engaged with it. Do you find inspiration in your work through? Oh, for sure. How? It's a lot of how I think about managing people. That's, that's kind of like the thing, right? And I think when we think about like design, like it's, it's we can think of them as like these like individual singular pieces but the thing i love about sports is this idea of like especially in football like i have this team moving i need to get this piece right if i get this person here i know that they do this really great i can get that under budget i can shift this thing it's it's just running things like it's the same sort of like way of thinking and the kind of the the sort of interesting neurosis that my brain picks up um uh but that's how it really comes out i don't know if it comes out into like oh i i saw these things i'm going to pick this font like usually that will come from like cinema or something but running a thing figuring out how to get things in scope figuring out budgets of things that all comes out of sports do you have a coach or front office comp for yourself what a good question what a good question i want to be sean mcveigh yeah like if i ever want to be yeah sean mcveigh how do you feel about the beard uh transplants i have i have a hard time you gotta do what you gotta do live your life live your life it's a good moment for bros it's good moment for beards like whatever you need.

2:58A beard transplant. Listen, I'm not shaming transplants. Sure. If you see me coming back from Turkey. There's an evolution. There's an evolution to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But a beard transplant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks crazy. Good for him, though. I mean, if you win a Super Bowl, you can do whatever you want. I mean, you can do whatever you want anyways. But no, I mean, the way he thinks about building the Rams, I think is really fascinating that the people that he's brought on board is really interesting. And also just looking at his coaching tree. Like so many people have came out of like the Shanahan stuff and to McVay.

3:26Now you see the Mike McDonald. like there's all these things that come i think about that sometimes in design these sort of trees for sure that come from i was thinking about on the way over here yeah because i was thinking about your your role in collins and how like all these collins things i see yeah yeah i'm adjacent to the collins uh coaching tree yeah it's fascinating to me yeah yeah i'm an andy reed that's my that's my personality show yeah yeah i uh i i do find inspiration from the coaches for sure and especially hard docs where they give those they do decks oh yeah they're so many decks Yeah.

3:57Every job ever is making a deck and that's, that's fine. Cause what they really was trying to tell a story and that they're doing it in the way that they, they think that people can digest these stories. That's the thing I've learned about sports is through these reality shows is there was way more decks than I ever imagined. So many decks. Where there's like, oh, Ravens camp. And it's like, they just start with a big deck and some quote and then some video and some joke. So many decks, so little fonts. So many decks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You started your talk at Typographics, which I just watched, with an NBA Finals clip.

4:31Sure did. Sure did. Nick Anderson is at the line and misses four straight free throws. Yeah. So many rebounds, by the way. Like, rebound after rebound, then goes to the line, misses two, then grabs his own rebound, then goes to the line, misses two more. Yeah. I assume they lose that game? They did. They lost the game. They lost the series. And then that meant Shaq left Orlando. So many things cascaded from those missed free throws. Why start your talk with that? What's the, yeah. When I do a talk about design, I'm always trying to figure out like a more human story to talk about the work itself.

5:05Because I think that's kind of where design shakes itself out. It's in these human components. And I think the visuals can be really interesting, but people latch onto stories, right? So thinking about how I wanted to write that talk, it came down to, well, how do I talk about, you know, the way these moments in life have really impacted the way that I think about work and how it comes out into all these things that I touch and these people that I work with. And with Nick Anderson specifically, like, it was just such a pivotal moment for my youth. I remember watching that game with my dad when I was a kid.

5:34And, you know, we just sort of ruthlessly picked, you know, picked on Nick Anderson for not hitting those free throws. And then the next morning, he kind of checks me and he's like, we can't do that as a person before that. And it's just one of those things that gnaws at you and kind of shifts the way that you kind of think of things in the world and you know i see it now in stuff that i make anytime that i'm quick to be like i don't like this that doesn't mean that this isn't a person like those can be separate thoughts um and figuring out the delineation of those two i think are really important so you think designers should be thinking more about the people behind the design before they trash it in the comment section or they uh sort of rip it apart sure or just know it's like not for them Like, it's fine.

6:15Like, you know, I think about the amount of times I make work for things. And I'm really, I'm always considering the audience, but I'm never really worried about like what a designer is going to be trashing on Instagram or not. I'm mostly concerned about like what John in like Pittsburgh on Reddit thinks of things. Way more interested in that than like what whoever on Instagram is talking about. Yeah, that's one of the things I admire about you is that you seem to truly sort of find a way to say, this is, I don't give a fuck. This is me. This is the work that I make. These are the people that I fuck with.

6:48This is the stuff that I'm really into. Related, why should more people listen to Ed Sheeran? Why should people? Oh, man. Okay. So here's the thing about Ed Sheeran. Fascinating human. What he does with so little, I find to be so remarkable. Basically, every song Ed Sheeran writes has four chords, right? He plays these chords. He shows you how he can riff on these things. And that's it. He has perfected pop music and sort of all of its components. But then visually, he's the exact opposite. He's a huge maximalist. Like everything is super color driven. He does all these paintings. He's like has all these crazy watches that are like both really interesting, but also kind of cringe in a lot of way.

7:26Like everything that he kind of builds around himself is sort of the antithesis to how he approaches music. And I think that tension is really fascinating. Like there's something there really interesting. So that's kind of anything that makes something interesting. I think that's worth listening to. I think Ed Sheeran should get more respect. I'm with you. Castle on the Hill, one of the great all-time dams. Yeah. Also, great concept to do divide, multiply, album. Understands the brand from a total top-down approach. I've always appreciated that. I was like, damn, this is a good concept. Yeah. He's really, there's something really clean about his work.

8:00Also, he's kind of perfected the rollout of work in and of itself. I'm not a really big fan of these artists who just surprise drop albums. That's my next question. Where do we stand on swag? uh oh swag great totally fine i wish rick rubin like chopped 50 percent of off of it but i think it's really great um basically everything in the world is better if you just like chop off like 40 50 percent of it yeah famously he uh reduced yeezus for kanye which is i think about that all the time he didn't produce it he reduced it yeah that's what more people need rick rubin to do is just sit there without any uh shoes on and totally say not that song not that song not that song just not that sound like just removing things yeah yeah yeah components like yeah elements from songs too you're saying like actually yeah just scale it back down i i really don't need much to get in on something interesting yeah so you don't like the surprise drop album in the middle of the night like surprise no album i thought it was interesting 10 years ago when beyonce yeah i think it's lazy now but i thought it was interesting 10 years ago i wonder if it makes you respect it less or more like yeah one you know because i have that thought because it's like this album comes out oh i don't know where oh my god it's here and i didn't know and it's really good yeah do i care about it as much in a week or two or do i care about less i think about this in terms of like tv shows and rollouts as well where what do we think i just want time to digest the thing because you've you know if you've made the thing you've you've put a ton of thought on this you've built this world you've figured out these components you've built this thing that's really interesting when you give it to me just like hey here it is on Friday afternoon you didn't know it was coming there it is there's not a lot of time to get into the details of it because I'm so interested in listening to the thing really quickly and just being like okay here's track one through ten I've heard them now now I'm moving on and I didn't get time to develop your world I never got a moment to listen to a single 15 times understand oh actually it's this sound or this story that's going to make the whole album come together and I can think about that for a while I can spend time with that could develop a relationship with it and then by the time the album comes in three months like i'm excited for it and i i'm ready for it you've prepared my body for this the story surprise drop you you take all that away from me like i i lose that component what if you just hammer the single so hard that you're sick of them by the time the album drops i think that's okay too like i prefer that versus the the the surprise drop um yeah i like there's have you listened to geese that that new band yeah i i'm familiar with them i haven't listened to a ton yeah the the way i sort of i'm kind of picturing their work right now is you know they're sort of at this precipice where people really know what this band is what they're about and as an audience like we get really excited because they're young they're new they have a ton of references that are in their work that are really interesting um but they put out taxes which is the first single off this this new record getting killed and they'd let people have it for two weeks you listen to it for two weeks and it's like it's not enough to get super sick of it like there's a time period like if you just give me the single for three months yeah i'll get sick of that single um but you give me two weeks of a single just to listen to it 15 times you want an entry point you want to sort of start to just want a trailer see where you're going a trail yeah i just want a trailer you're a big movie buff i am how do how do we feel about happy gilmore 2 great question best film of the air question mark yeah good for him good for him good for these stories.

11:22I haven't seen it. Is it good? Oh, you haven't seen it? Kevin hasn't seen it either. This is such a bummer. I was expecting us to do these. I watched the Eminem cameo. Oh, good. Spoiler for Kevin. There's an Eminem cameo. It's great. It's a steaming pile of shit. Oh, man. Why is it not good? How many cameos do you think a movie should have? Oh, I don't know. It depends. Two to five, maybe? Sure. I'm guessing it's 15 to 20. 88. Great. 88? 88. Wow. Good for him. Yeah. I mean, it's it's too many yeah what's your favorite sandler film uh billy madison oh interesting i mean uh yeah uncut gems maybe yeah uncut gems great i mean i think click what click all-timer yeah clicks clicks fire i mean billy madison happy gilmore to me are just like you know those two sure stand they have a moment of time i like big daddy or i like the water boy or like but i think those progressively got worse and worse and worse as he uh sort of went what's your favorite?

12:21I like Sirius Sandler. I'm a big fan of Sirius Sandler. Yeah, really big fan of Rain Over Me. Adam Sandler did a 9-11 film. It's perfect. It's really, really well done. Punch Drunk Love, big fan of PTA. Yeah, I really like Sirius Sandler. It's great. Yeah, no, I guess I dropped off 20 years ago. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I think Uncut Gems is in the same pocket of Sirius Sandler. I will say Safdie in this Happy Gilmar 2 movie he's a main character I don't know what's going on with his face or just like his aura or look beard transplant it's weird and it's making me uncomfortable I think he's trying to play a like over the top Sandler character from the past you know like those characters that are just like wild and wacky and something is just not working the whole movie is really a bummer I can't wait to watch it.

13:17What did you expect? My problem is I went in with maybe expectations. Sure. That's crazy. Which is insane of me. Sure. Did you watch the trailer? Yeah. I don't like watching trailers. Okay. Because I, in some ways, want to sort of come in. Sure. I find that trailers give away too much. That's fair. That's my point of view. Yeah. By the end of most trailers, I'm like, why do I now need to go see this? I already saw it. Oh, interesting. I like the trailer. I like the build. Okay. I want another build. I feel like a trailer with some secrecy or something like, you know, again, like tease the film and maybe a little bit of what it's about.

13:52But when I'm in the theater and I'm not a huge movie guy, but like when I'm watching trailers before the movie, I'm like, I just saw that whole thing. Right. I now don't need to see that. There's an art to trailers. I mean, I know that there's whole studio houses that that's just the thing that they do is they produce trailers. But I mean, some indie films that don't ever produce like a trailer at all, they'll just release like a one minute scene. and that will be your in on whatever the film is. I kind of love that. Me too. I like going into a movie completely cold and just being like, oh, I had no fucking clue that this movie was about anything related to like a Nora.

14:27Like I never, I had no clue. I just went in and I was like, what is this about? And I was just like, oh. Yeah. Now I, great movie. Sure. Best movie. Yeah. Why does Jason Tatum have no aura? Why does Jason Tatum have no aura? Jason Tatum does have an aura. It's an aura. It's just like of an Xbox here. character like but there's an aura there he really is an xbox yeah that's a great way to put it an xbox character i think jason tatum's great uh i i think he's a great player um uh it's funny because like i'm from maine right so i'm like a like a default south of the stands but my dad's from chicago so i'm like a really big chicago bulls fan so it's like the hierarchy is like bulls celtics doing research for for this podcast the one of my biggest questions are who who are your teams?

15:14Who are my teams? Great question. I was really trying to figure it out and piece them together. This is how I know I'm on a broadcast. He's talking about who are my teams to the queer woman on the show. This is great. One of my goals of this podcast is to talk as little about design as possible. Great. Yeah. I hope that's okay with you. That's beautiful. Everything Chicago is number one. Chicago is always number one. Across the board? Bears, everything. Yeah. It's always Chicago number one. Wow. How do we feel about Caleb Williams? Great. second year bump yeah it's gonna be great it's gonna be great it'd be great yeah i really dig the bears um uh yeah big bulls fan white socks wow yeah why yeah dad's from south side chicago this is my end like great reason yeah i was so i was born in ohio and then uh yeah shout out to ohio uh shout out columbus ohio uh we moved to maine when i was two so my dad had grown up in Chicago so all of his references were Chicago based so as a kid you know this is 90s era with Jordan everything I just got into Chicago sports and it was like the thing that I latched on to and like everybody that I grew up with was like kind of mean and they were all Boston fans for everything so I just like kind of got out on a lot of Patriots stuff a lot of Red Sox stuff because the people who liked them were mean but I like the Celtics but I feel like that was a you made a the wrong decision in that no region has won more championships in that time frame than New England.

16:47I'd rather take the loss. Fair enough. Kevin and I talk about this a lot. Nothing is more fun than rooting for a team that always loses. In my opinion. As someone that roots for the Knicks and the Mets. Because once they win, not as exciting. When they lose, as our teams only do, to me, the dream is still alive. totally there's camaraderie and losing especially in a sports scene like it's connected like um yeah those are pieces hope yeah hope and then when you finally maybe get one someday it'll be the sweetest it'll be a nice moment it'll be a really nice moment i think i'm still on the nostalgia of michael jordan though like oh get the six wins i'm good yeah yeah i can literally live to 80 on those six wins i guess so yeah i mean so you're still riding high off of huge yeah huge Where do we stand on Michael Jordan, the person?

17:35Wow, what a great question. A genius. What else could you possibly say? He's a genius. Has a really fascinating style. Did you watch that documentary? Last Dance? Yes. Of course, yeah. I had to watch Last Dance. COVID. That was so good. Yeah. Apparently, he's really good at the iPad games in Sudoku. That makes sense. What's that jam one? what's that gem game on the iPad? Bejeweled? Yeah, he's really, really good at bejeweled apparently. He's a competitor, man. That's who Michael Jordan is. I mean, he's a bejeweled guy? Yeah. I didn't see that coming. He's the best. Yeah. So Chicago teams. Yeah.

18:16Chicago Sky? Because I know you're WNBA. That's an interesting one. I am. So my allegiance there is with New York Liberty, but I do respect Chicago Sky. I really like Angel Reese as a player. I like that organization. I think they're doing a lot of great things. But yeah, New York Liberty. I'm weighing on Sabrina Rocks. Yeah. You've been a WNBA fan for a while. Yeah. How do you feel about the WNBA, you know, sort of mixed feelings? Oh, it's great. It's great. It was nicer when people didn't care as much because the tickets were cheaper. I was going to say, one of my questions, are you more excited that there are more fans at the arena or bum because tickets are more expensive?

18:52Tickets are way more expensive. Tickets are way more expensive. It's still cool, but like, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I'm sure when you're releasing this podcast, but they're playing the wings tonight. And like, I would love to see that game. it's paid you know it should be cool yeah of course but missing that game because the game costs like way too much money how much are tickets going for these days like up in the rafters like 300s they're like 80 90 dollars oh my god yeah that's a lot it's just like a lot yeah no that's not a tuesday night i'm gonna that was a hundred like hundreds before the championship yeah you could get into games yeah pretty good price yeah pass but i mean it's good for the game it's great yeah it's exciting what they built is incredible as far as a brand they've done some of the most fascinating things like uh how they've gotten camaraderie and through um what they've done with the mascot like everything that they've done with liberty is really fascinating um but yeah i wish the tickets were cheaper no it makes sense i mean obviously like more fans great for the league great for the teams great for the energy yeah for sure bad for uh personal ticket sales bad for me who like lives like relatively close to barclays i was gonna say i feel like uh you know sort of uh through socials i feel like you're going to i'm around a lot you're around you're going a lot of I'm around a lot.

19:56Do you have season ticket pass or not? No. My partner and I have been considering it for next year. We haven't gotten all in on it yet, though. But yeah, we basically wait until a really bad team rolls through, and then we'll buy tickets to that game. Well, we should talk a little bit about design. Maybe fine. Why not? We are a design podcast. The people that are listening, all of them on all these YouTubes. Every single one of them. Literally, someone posted today, they were working designing with us in the background. That's great. And I was like, this is what we're designed to do. they maybe don't want to hear us go 45 minutes to an hour about sort of WNBA.

20:30Their loss. The sky. Their loss. I like that Angel Reese, I believe she trademarked She Bounds. She's cool. I thought it was Me Bounds. Oh, is it Me Bounds? Oh, you're right. Me Bounds. Better than She Bounds. She Bounds, Me Bounds? Yeah, Me Bounds. Me Bounds, right? Because she grabs her own Rebounds. How did you design the license plates of Pennsylvania? How did that happen? A lot of people worked on that one. This is a good Sean McVeigh example, right? There are so many components to what it takes to make a license plate, and all of these things got to be working in harmony, right? So it's a balance between talking to the governor's office, talking to the Department of Transportation, talking to your own team of designers, the Studio Mosaic, the studio that I'm at.

21:17You're trying to figure out all these pieces to get these things in place um and then you get to make all these fun decisions on like whether license plate is going to be stamped or not stamped what colors you get to play with in this space how you work with like different sort of offices to make this thing um uh be successful and then outside of all these like technical technical components that happen there's the story of of what the the the state wants to tell and that's a whole kind of fascinating component to it as well. License plate design is so fascinating to me as someone that has never even considered that as a potential opportunity.

21:52The unfortunate thing is it's been out for a month and I still haven't seen it live like on the road. Like I've been waiting for this moment to be like, I made your license plate. It still hasn't happened yet. I guess in terms of like license plates, like they don't change much, right? Or like how often the license plates change? Like, yeah, it's usually every couple of decades. Like PA had that one for two decades, It's the blue and yellow one. Yeah. Okay. And then what, like, what are the, what's the brief like? The creative brief is, is kind of a conversation of what you want that story to be.

22:21And for PA, that time is really through the Liberty Bell and thinking about Pennsylvania through that lens. I imagine people have strong opinions about license plate designs. People do have strong opinions. Has the reception been positive, negative, somewhere in between? And how do you wrestle with that? It's been great. Okay. It's, this is what I was talking about. And I was just like, there's whoever on Instagram who can probably make the, you know, the coolest 3d model of a thing and et cetera. Then there's John and on Reddit in Pittsburgh who has thought about something. And, uh, I'm, I'm stoked that, that John on Reddit seems for the most part to be really into them, which is exciting.

22:54And then you get to see it out in the world and be like, yeah, that's my license plate. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, before this, obviously, uh, Biden, yes. Joe Biden, think of 20, 28 is Joe Biden, 28, Joe Biden, 28. Is this, is this the podcast where we start the movement? to get the enthusiasm, to get the base sort of riled up for a comeback. We got to bring Biden back. That's the move. Bring Biden back. That's the move. So what I'm referring to is obviously you worked on the 2020 campaign. Yes. Talk to me sort of how does that come into your life? How do they reach out? Is it an email? Is it a friend? Is it a – Yeah.

23:37How does that come to be? It's funny. you think it could be like a it could be like a whole wild world but it is an email it's it's usually an email how this stuff gets started so uh yeah in 2019 i was uh working at jigsaw as a designer jigsaw was like an incubator of uh of google and um i was really following the the presidential cycle and i was very curious what the role it was going to be i was on contract at google so i was just like kind of killing time while i figure out what i was going to do next and there was a moment where I saw Beto O 'Rourke going to launch his campaign for El Paso and I really loved Beto and I really loved El Paso and I thought that was a really interesting campaign that the Senate campaign was really fascinating to me and it seemed like a really fun story to tell.

24:23So I got tea at my friend Victor, Victor Ng, who's a really great designer. Got tea at his place and he and I were talking about that campaign. He had worked with this guy, Rob Flaherty. uh rob flarity had um previously been on hillary's staff and uh uh had moved to el paso for betto too victor put rob and i on email i i send no to rock to rob and i'm just like hey man i'm basically ready to quit my job at google and move to el paso what do you think yeah yeah yeah uh down yeah yeah it was it was great and totally a smooth move and um yeah i left my job at google and moved to el paso texas wow um i was with uh betto for six months and betto was the first time you've done any political...

25:03But it was the first politics, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I generally, if I want to do something, I don't kind of build up to it. I just go to the highest ranking. Surprise drop. Yeah. Like there's, yeah. Like most people would do like a congressional campaign, then a Senate campaign, then work their way up. I just went straight to the presidential. I was like, I'm ready for the show. Well, it's six months out of Beto. Yeah. I imagine, what was that like time like learning what it's like to be a designer inside of a political campaign? Incredible. Because you're moving with the country, right? And the country is at like a really bizarre time.

25:332019, it was a really, really wild time for this country. So to be able to design something, it's, you know, as much as it was like making sure the product was cool and making sure everything worked, it was really about telling the story of America. Like, because that's basically all a presidential campaign is. It's, you know, a bunch of people present what they think that the country should be and then a bunch of people vote on that. And whoever tells that story the best generally wins a presidential election. So those six months in El Paso was a crash course and what that could be. And then when El Paso wrapped and Beto announced that he wasn't running for president anymore, there was like a weird three-week period that I was like crashing on a friend's couch in New York, just like trying to figure out.

26:15Did you think that he was going to run for president? For Beto? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, this is after the, yeah, this is after he had dropped out for president, yeah. I remember he had a lot of momentum. He did have a lot of momentum. What, what, this is the most political question on the history of Front Center. What happened to his political momentum? Vibes. Vibes? This is a critical answer to this question. Vibes control so much more than we think that they do. And it happens in corporate design. It happens with, I'm sure, in your work a lot. Vibes control so much of how we think about work. And for politics, things run on vibes.

26:50Vibes rule everything around me. If the vibes shift, it's really hard to move with that, right? It's the vibes shift. And so the vibes shifted away from Beto. Yeah. Well, if you think about the Senate race, it was really interesting because he was going against Ted Cruz and it was a polar opposite of everything that he stood for. So everything that he was saying magnetized, right? It just was electric to hear it. But in a primary, you're going against 15 people and you have like a 5 % difference of opinion on what that person is. It's a hard story to tell. It's a hard sort of narrative to crack because you're basically saying, I agree with this person on a debate stage.

27:24here's how I would shift it 5 % this way, which is very different than when you're talking about Ted Cruz and you're kind of in the sort of opposite of that. And I imagine people in Texas less open to his vibes generally, even though they were good. They were strong vibes. They were good vibes. To navigate Texas as a Democrat can be a little bit of a challenge. But from my experience, spending six months there, I mean, I love everything about Texas. I love Texans. I love that culture. I love everything about the energy. And one of the things that was really great about Beto's campaign is he basically said, I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican.

27:58I want to talk about what these issues are happening right in front of us. Right. And it's that same tone and tenor that I think we kind of can see through the landscape even right now. I can kind of see the threads of that from 2019. Super interesting. Yeah. We're not sort of getting down into the sort of where I stand on every single topic. You don't need to sort of resume. It's like, what's our vision for America? What are the vibes? What are the vibes? What are the vibes? How many people are designing for Beto at that time? Two. Two. I was going to say. It was me and Chelsea. Me and Chelsea, yeah.

28:33And content coming out of all places all the time. And so six months, you're like, this Joe Biden guy. Yeah. Politics has more sports than poetry. and learning that on Betta was really critical because it kind of helped me think about how I wanted to navigate the future. Because when we dropped out of that race, I still felt like I had gas in the tank. I was ready to go. So it was three weeks of just chilling on a couch in New York trying to figure out what I was going to do. And then pretty shortly thereafter, I saw a path and I was interested and it made a lot of sense to me. One thing that's so interesting to me about designing for politics is that just like sports, there's a winner and a loser.

29:21Totally. And that is something that I don't experience at all. Yeah. Award shows, maybe a little bit, but not really. Not like I'm building a brand. Sure. And that brand is going to war. Yeah. Like losing, how does that feel knowing that you just threw your heart into something? Sure. And again, you're building something. I know it's not just the vibes and the brand, even though a lot of it is vibes and brands. But how does it feel to lose, right? Because, you know, again, watching as many sports documentaries as I do, for sure. It's, you know, people lose. Yeah. It's part of it. It's part of the work, right?