Triboro State of Mind: with David Heasty

0:00Kevin, we got a special guest in the building. David Hastie is the co-founder of Triborow, a design studio I've been a fan of since they started in 2008. Together with his wife Stephanie, they create design solutions. for clients in publishing, art, fashion, music, lifestyle, and for cultural institutions. Originally from Texas, David studied graphic design at Penn State University. In 2002, David was named one of the top 20 designers under the age of 30 by Print Magazine. In 2005, he was named an ADC Young Gun, and his work has been featured in numerous design publications. He has received awards from AIGA Art Directors Club, the Society of Publication Designers, and many others.

0:35Welcome to the show, David.

0:42I think for this show, we might just kind of go right into it. So I think I just kind of want to keep it just flowing. And I just kind of want to just like roll and kind of like, we'll keep it loosey goosey. Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. How do I pronounce your last name? It's pronounced hasty. Hasty. Okay. But there's an E in there. Yeah. Everybody makes that mistake. Even close friends sometimes get it wrong and it's fine. Hasty. It's hasty. No, that's good. That's a good like design sort of principle, you know, to try to do things. That's actually why I don't mind when people mispronounce it because I feel like it might.

1:16Yeah, because it has that sort of connotation. But I also feel like people don't use that word in common conversations much anymore. So it's kind of. Yeah, it's like an outdated kind of term. But I kind of like that about it. That's why I kind of like it. Yeah. Hasty. It's kind of unique. The spelling is unique. So we were able to get hasty.com and stuff like that. Oh, really? Did you consider naming the agency Hasty at any point? No, never. We actually, both my partner and wife, Stephanie, and I were not really fans of our names. Oh, really? In that respect, thinking about for a studio name. So we don't all have the name Center.

1:55I think you're selling yourself short. I think, you know, sort of - Hasty design. Hasty design. We're done with urgency and speed. I don't know if you necessarily want to pay for hasty design. No. Well, it's ironic because a lot of your work, I imagine, is very slow, meticulously handcrafted. I always think we're kind of fast, but I guess, yeah. I guess there's something there. No, actually, it was never considered. So we came like too long ago to this name of Triborough, which has, you know, if I were to come up with a name now, I probably wouldn't have picked. Really? Where did it come from?

2:28Where did Triborough? There's multiple stories, and I'm not going to bore you with multiple stories. Pick the best one. I think it had to do with just seeing that name around the neighborhood. Okay. Because I had settled, when I first moved here 25 years ago, I settled right away in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Oh, wow. Greenpoint. I've been in a little bit too. And there were all these businesses that were tri-bro. So, tri-bro shelves and tri-bro carpets and things like that. And I think that as I saw these businesses kind of leaving, it just seemed like kind of a cool thing to maintain some connection to the recent past by absorbing that name as like a creative studio.

3:04That's pretty cool. Yeah. Talk to us about Lindsberg 25 years ago. They had pickleball courts? I'm sorry. No, no. They had literally nothing. I usually tell people there was one sort of decent restaurant called Osnacht's Dish where you would maybe bring, if your parents came to visit, you would bring them there because the food was good there. But there wasn't really much else other than maybe bagel places and things here and there. Wasn't there a rule that you couldn't open up a chain store restaurant in Williamsburg? I don't know if it was a rule. I think there was definitely when Starbucks or other places came in, it was kind of frowned upon by people.

3:40But I really shouldn't be the one to answer these questions about those rules about Williamsburg. The commercial rules in Williamsburg, Alex. Listen, I'm curious about Williamsburg. I moved to Williamsburg in like 2008, I think. Yeah, it was a good time. And it was definitely different. But 25, 2000 is like, even by the time I got here, it was changing already. It was dramatic. And you also think about things like the waterfront wasn't even developed at all. So you could barely access it. And so it was just completely different. But I'm actually not one of these people that kind of harkens for the old days.

4:19Like I actually feel like it's cool now in just a different way. Yeah. I think if I had to pick my favorite time, it was probably around 2008. Okay. It was, there was, there was a kind of, you know, there were cool stores like Future Perfect and like all kinds of like kind of special little places. And it was not so expensive at that time. And then, you know, now we're kind of in the world of chains and, you know, her big Hermes stores and stuff. And I mean, Future Perfect was in what is going to be the big Hermes store. So it's like, it's for me bizarre to see, but, um, Remember that farm and that like bike path that used to have on like Kent Avenue.

4:57Yeah. I was looking at some old pictures. Oh, uh, so let's get back to, so you graduated, you went to Penn state. And so that's, so directly after school you moved to Williamsburg. Yeah. I just came here. And that's when you started a design studio with your wife. No, I started that in two. So this was 2001. I moved to Williamsburg and then 2008 was when we started the studio because I, I tried starting one earlier, but it just really was not a smart idea. I was making zero money, although there were some interesting projects. And then 2008 was like a good time, although it was an awful time. Actually, when we started, the economy was looking fairly good.

5:34We were working for a lot of cultural clients, doing a lot of galleries and things like that. Also bands like Blonde Redhead. And then the bottom fell out and we kind of lost all of our gallery and cultural work. And that was like when the Lifesaver came in where we got kind of our first big client, which was Justin Timberlake, had a fashion label. And we ended up doing like everything for him for like three years. William Rast? William Rast, yeah. William Rast. That's a name. Yeah, you know, I'm a pop culture enthusiast. William Rast. Yeah, denim, right? Yeah, it was denim with some tailoring and some suit stuff.

6:13And it was supposed to be, the concept was biker culture meets Rat Pack or something like that. Interesting. Okay. So it was sort of Frank Sinatra mixed with like the Hells Angels. This is early in the sort of celebrity brand extension too. I think so. And it was his brand. It wasn't like that he was just kind of coming in and being, you know, an established brand and then being sort of the salesman or whatever. It was really his brand that he started with like a friend, a longtime childhood friend. That's right. I remember this. Yeah. So, yeah. And that was interesting. So that kind of kept us afloat for the first couple of years as we started to kind of get the studio a little more notoriety.

6:52And then things were better with the economy. And then everything was good after that. How skinny were the jeans in the right? Both that you were wearing and that you were working on. Well, I always wear skinny jeans. So I'm wearing them now. William Rastman. And even if the change happens where we all go back to baggy, which I guess has happened. Yeah. I think we're on our way back to skinny now. I'm not going away from skinny jeans. I think you're ahead of trend because I think the baggy pants are sort of on the way out. Are they? Yeah. So you're going to be, yeah. I only base my knowledge on walking around a few blocks of Williamsburg.

7:24So I am glad that mustaches are back. So I've got one of those on my roof right now. That's exciting. And so you formed this with your wife. I did, yeah. And are you both designers? We're both designers, yeah. Okay. And so how did the vision of labor go? Is it sort of like someone does the business, someone is more the sort of the creative lead? How does it sort of? There isn't too much division. I think we have a fair amount of overlap in terms of our talent. I think she's probably the better like kind of painter type person. So certain fine art aspects she'll take over. But we just sort of split the clients.

8:02And I think it usually depends kind of on the personal relationships with them or who seems to get along better with one or the other. and then maybe she has her clients, I have my clients. That's kind of the only way that it sort of splits. Do you guys have a freaky Friday swap? No. It's kind of a fun idea. No, but we do like have, occasionally we kind of look over each other's shoulders and because we're husband and wife, like there's no holding back, so she'll really tell me if it looks like shit and that's great, you know? It's really like kind of nice to have that's brutal honesty. Yeah. Yeah.

8:42I always marvel in sort of marriage couples, people that are with their significant other, both in life and business. Cause to me that seems impossible or insane, or just feels like it would never leave. Like it would just be all encompassing in life at home, in work. But I do like the idea that, that you split up a little bit. There's yeah. I think otherwise we would go nuts if we were. constantly like tripping over each other or stepping on each other's toes do other people do that did you learn that from someone else or just well it does seem like there are a lot of husband and wife design teams out there and there certainly were like when we were starting it was there seemed to be enough that it felt like um something you could do um but it wasn't like that we did it in a way like this is our this is the way we want to do it it was just kind of like it worked out that way.

9:35We were both kind of dissatisfied with our jobs or whatever at that moment. And then it just seemed to make sense to combine forces and work together because we loved each other. It worked pretty well. Yeah. And so William Rast is the first, you know, sort of client and sort of the thing that got the business kind of moving. Yeah. Did more NSYNC members or boy band people start coming looking for denim brands? Sadly, sadly not, I guess. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was definitely an interesting moment and client to have at that moment because it was kind of like the, I don't, you know, hopefully he doesn't take offense at this, but it was sort of like the peak of his career.

10:16You know, he had just done the Timberland. I think that's fair. I mean, I think that's very fair. You know, he was huge. He was absolutely huge at that time. Oh my God, he was massive. So to be involved in working with him was great. It was fantastic. Yeah. It wasn't Man of the Woods. That wasn't the highlight. So that was that album, I think. I never listened to that. Or even the last one. I never did listen to that one. Yeah, it's been top of him. But yeah, what were the projects outside of sort of that came next? It's kind of a blur. It's a bit back there. So we've been around 17 years now.

10:47So we're kind of, that was sort of ancient history. But I think, you know, we got started getting calls from places like Nike and Google. We've kind of worked with for many years as well. So there were those things that were happening. You know, when we started the studio, we had a clear sort of desire to always have the kind of mix of projects in the studio. So like even after we had completed some of the William Rast stuff, we started to get calls from sort of denim brands. Sure. And we were like, this is not what we want to do. Like for as a kind of strategy, like we want we anyway don't want to specialize in one thing, but we certainly don't want to just do denim brands.

11:25so I think for us it's always been this kind of challenge and tension for us to kind of try to maintain a diverse client list which I think we've done really well definitely you know so things like even recently we did this Japan Airlines rebrand and you know MoMA and Mark Jacobs kind of a rebrand and repackaging of them so I think the studio you know we don't really have a new, any sort of new business strategy. It's just like things come to us. And, um, I guess the only sort of area where we've really done a lot of work is maybe restaurants where the first thing we did was for Andre Belas and the standard.

12:05And then that kind of led to like quite a lot of restaurants. Cool. And we just enjoy that process so much that we never sort of got tired of it. We never got tired of it. Yeah. It's really fun. No, I think it's really important. And I think, uh, we talk about this sometimes on the show, founders, because people get known for doing something. And that is in a lot of times what clients then come to you for. And in our case, it's CPG and sort of beverages. And then you start to try to tell people and try to sort of convince them that you could do more things. You could do others. And I think that's something that I wasn't aware of or something that maybe I didn't know until I started the studio.

12:46And I think you're right. the work that you have done is really diverse. I think it is like a challenge. It's one of the main challenges in our industry and it's really hard to fight against it. And we've had to sort of fight against it too. But even things like one of the early projects was like we did the branding for Everlane and which on the one hand, we were super proud to be involved in something like that. But then we literally started to get emails from like all of the graduating class from the Harvard Business School who wants to start their own businesses. And it's kind of like, it was like a mixed bag because it's like some of them are probably going to do some amazing companies and some of them did.

13:27And then some of them are going to maybe not, you know, they're not going to be the next Everlane. So you have to sort of learn to like, you know, talk to founders about their brand concept and kind of, you know, figure out which places you really want to work with. Yeah, one of the things that I read was that you guys are small by design. Yeah. And so talk to me about that and sort of that philosophy. The small thing came from a couple of things. One, that desire to try to maintain the sort of diverse range of projects. We felt like if things started to pile up, they were kind of similar, like let's say the denim brands, we could just literally say no to them if we were small enough, which is sort of sounds like a luxury, I guess, but it was something that we felt was kind of important.

14:16and then I think the other thing was just kind of listening to the designers that we really admired like the sort of Tibor Sagmeisters or whatever who kept talking about being small you know and not that I can compare myself in any way to those people but like it just seemed like okay well why don't we try that you know because they're they're sort of advocating for it so there must be a reason for that and it seemed like a lot of people that I liked or even somebody like a Peter Saville like They worked with a couple of assistants or whatever. So it felt like, why not keep it small? Yeah, there's that great quote that's like, the hardest part about growing a design studio is not growing.

14:56Yeah, but I can see how it's like a real challenge because then, you know, size matters. And we have been in situations kind of even in recent years where like with RFPs and stuff, where we're competing against much, much bigger firms And, you know, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe even a lot of times it doesn't if they're looking for a large studio, you know. But I think there's been kind of a sea change in like even you get those RFPs, you know. I think there's an interest from various brands for whatever reason that they kind of have this wide range of types of studios that they're talking to.

15:38Totally. Do you find that? Yeah, 100%. I think that's happening way more now. But also, I think, you know, again, like you mentioned, Nike came to you guys in the sort of early days. And I imagine the studio wasn't massive at that time, right? No, no, no. No, it was, you know, it was also small. But and the first one we did was this Nike NYC project. I really want to talk about that. Okay. Yeah. That was fairly early on. So it's probably makes sense. Like if we are going chronologically, like we could talk about that. Yeah, it was. What do you feel like? So my first introduction to Triborough as a young designer was when I went to a store and I saw a Nike neon sign that switched between Nike and NYC.

16:29And my young design brain just exploded. did. And then I was like, wait a minute, it's an NYC inside of the Nike. And then I looked it up and then I saw that you guys had done it and there was sort of this whiteout version of it. Were you the one that created that? And what did that feeling feel like to discover that? I imagine that's the best drug on planet earth to find a solution like that inside of a Nike. Yeah. It's interesting that you say that because it really is the, for me, I think my favorite moment of the studio. It was that moment and maybe it's telling that it's so transparent to an outsider that that would be the case.

17:10It was a dream project. It started as a dream project because they also came to us with this brief that they wanted to find a logo for the city of New York for Nike. And I think the feeling was that we would explore different typographic kind of alternatives and like you know can and we actually did we showed up like lots of different versions of you know it could be this kind of a typeface it can be this and that and we we hit on one of the directions that we showed them was this idea of well the name is hidden right in your name right there and the argument for was there's in the landscape of new york city there's so many versions of nyc in new york city done typographically in different ways that if you would do nike NYC in this way that fuses these things together it's going to be way more powerful and they didn't really need any convincing like if they they were like kind of floored and I think what was actually super surprising to us was there was a lot of red tape internally to actually kind of get it approved the creative team was like 100 for it and supporting it but there were some pushback from lawyers and things like that for sort of obvious yeah yeah For sure.

18:23Because we were sort of manipulating the logo. So there were some real hurdles that the creative team really pushed through and made it a reality. And the project for us was then kind of coming up with a lot of different concepts around that concept. So first we identified it and designed it. And then we showed them like, I don't know what it was, maybe like 20 different like, here's what you can do with it. You can do a neon sign that goes back and forth. You can do the whiteout. Like you said, it was like a T-shirt that was painted over. Hats where we like ripped out the stitching. And the whole concept where we were going with it was this idea of like the DIY aspect of it.

19:02Like not only is it that you are reappropriating or whatever the Nike logo to become New York City, but it's also that you yourself can do it. You can take your own T-shirt, the old Nike logo T-shirt, and you can kind of make it your own. And then what they did was they also went to their apparel teams and did things like that. They tried to make that apparent even from the stuff that they produced. And they did an amazing job. And then a lot of agencies came along who also did other things with this concept. So it remains probably my favorite project, I would say. Absolutely incredible and certainly something to be proud of.

19:41And I think, honestly, that high of feeling when you nail something or you see it and you're like, wait a minute, that's the answer. It's inside of the logo. I imagine that feeling, the only second best feeling is for them to actually go with it because I could totally see a world where they're like, you're kind of messing with the sort of iconic mark and having worked for an iconic brand. And especially back then, people were more precious, I think, with icons and marks and less, more so today where things are a little bit, you can have more fun with Wilkerson brands. Yeah, totally. I think we were shocked that the whole thing happened the way it did and it went very smoothly and they were great working.

20:19They were great to work with. So yeah, it was fantastic. Do you have a hat? Do you have 20 hats? Do you have all the merch? I think we have three hats or four maybe. um we have a fair amount of merch yeah yeah i would wear it on sign we never get merch you know it's it's so funny that um you know even like when we were doing william raston all this kind of things like because we were so naive at that time we were like well we just we want like every t-shirt that we did because we were like designing whole collections oh wow yeah like we're like we won't want every t-shirt and they like were like never and i found over the years i get no swag Like if somebody puts my logo on a tote bag, they like give it away at a event.

21:00And I'm like, where's my tote? Yeah. Can I get one? And they're like, oh no, we gave them away for free. And I'm like, but I made that logo. This is a really important lesson for young designers. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have bought more merch from our, that we did than have received it for free. A hundred percent. And people and designers are like, wait, like why? You have to pay for that? I'm like, yeah, I don't know. It's just a weird thing. that don't always give it to us for free. It is weird. Yeah. What do you think it is? I don't know. It's funny because I haven't talked about this with anybody.

21:34Okay. Yeah, no, I definitely feel this. There's boxes of merch in this closet over here for brands that we did that we definitely came out of pocket for. And it's fine. It's not a big deal. Yeah. It's a good investment, obviously, to buy it. It's just... You just assume that you would get it. Well, actually, the thing is I usually don't get them because the thing is they're not necessarily for sale. So like they'll, they'll make, they'll do an event and they'll have some, um, some logo that I love. It's on a, on a tote bag or something. And I'm like, well, where's my tote bag? And then it's not, there is nothing.

22:02So, um, yeah. So you got to mock it up, you know? And just, yeah. Well, I try not to mock it up, but I was going to say, you guys don't do mock-ups. We don't do mock-ups. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought this. When, when, when, when, when did this? I don't know. We never, we never, well, we do mock-ups. I had to qualify. I always have to qualify because we do mock-ups in terms of showing the client the concept. So like, obviously, even like with Nike NYC, we showed them all of the things that are on our website kind of mocked up initially. So we did like a fake neon sign, et cetera.

22:34But no, when it comes to the portfolio, we always like to use the real thing because we feel like it's just better to do so. And I guess we've been lucky enough that, you know, the clients like it's surprising. like a lot of these restaurants um i did a kind of a recent talk at cooper and i was talking about one of the restaurants and noted that like you know we did about 25 different physical pieces for what is effectively a single location restaurant which is actually kind of a lot i think um and considering like if i compare it to some of the bigger brands we work with a lot of them they just want like a business card like believe it or not you've probably experienced that too like they want their website of course or whatever but then it's like they don't want to produce anything you know or watch and um so i don't know anyway so so we have this philosophy of like we you know we've been doing like these street poster campaigns for a long time like for various clients like and and whenever i see them kind of faked online i'm just sort of like those are expensive those are hard to those are hard to put up they're hard to keep them up and like um you know so it's like this thing where i feel like we like to do it just when it's real Well, kudos to you.

23:47I think maybe we're in the minority on this, but I – Definitely. I mean, the current case of case studies in the design world is just fake as hell. It's gotten so far out of hand in the AI. It's like Instagram model fake. Yeah, it's insane. And it's something that I actually sort of feel – I have strong feelings about because – Oh, yeah. Tell me what you think. I just think that like – I mean, most of the case study work that you see on design studios' websites is not real. It's not real. It's not real. And for awards as well, the submissions, 90 % of those submissions are based on fake applications made either now with AI, but even before that through comps and mockups.

24:26Yeah, I think it's for me, I think it's weird that there's not more of a broader discussion about it, because obviously that dynamic you just described, it changes the whole industry. And then what I've been calling is it's like a arms race, because basically, if this person has 75 images in their case study, and 74 of them are real, then suddenly I'm competing against that with my real stuff. So, you know, what I've decided to do is probably not the right business move in some ways, but it's just something that we've kind of gotten used to. But, yeah, it did kind of stem a little bit. I was talking to somebody, I'm not going to name who this is or even the agency, but I was talking to somebody who did a project that was one of my favorite projects of all time.

25:09And I said, wow, it's amazing. I love it. And they said, you know, it's like 98 % fake. Yeah. You know? Not that the client didn't go with it. But like in terms of just what you saw and and I was like, I was kind of speechless because I felt like it's it seems strange to me, although the work was gorgeous. So, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like the work that we do. And again, like, I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I do find it like it's just not common knowledge to everybody. And I think a thing I do sometimes because I mentor students and one of the things that I do is I'll show them websites and I'll show them some agency stuff and sometimes our stuff and I'll be like fake, fake, fake, real, real, fake.

25:55How do you know? I mean, I just, I know what was in the world and what wasn't. There's some people who run on the same mock-ups for the same, for different projects. Right. Running them over and over again. I mean, listen, we use mock-ups. I'm not saying that we're, but that's why I really admire what you're doing because it's like the work that you're doing is for real people with, in the real world with this, this is capturing what happened. And I agree with you completely that making something to show someone the future to get it approved, to make it in real life, that's what we do as designers.