Wedge World: with Justin Lortie, Sarah Di Domenico, and Luca

0:28Listen, you guys are a serious crew. Can you rotate? You are the shirt expert. I literally. I was in a sweaty panic because I started setting him up. Don't break it. It's okay. Just take your time, honey.

0:49Damn, she just called you honey. You just got honeyed. You know what? Table's got to turn. Okay. Wedge is coming in here hot. How old are you guys? That's NBA.

1:04oh man this is good i like this he's feeling it out you know no you get yeah i mean we've hung out before but i uh you know i didn't know what kind of energy you guys are gonna come with no that's why it's a different flavor it's a contrast no i know you guys everything's a contrast okay right every that's the title of the episode everything is a contrast yes quote me on that yeah yeah yeah yes okay i hear it i hear it it's gone damn why is that arm so shaky mine's so rigid contrast oh he's doing his best yeah i think you really did a great setup i don't think so

1:53captain we're doing an intro this time we are live and in effect how are you good how are you Yeah, we got new shores. They look interesting. I don't know about that. I don't know. Oh, you're on an old school mic, though. Look at you. You got the old mic. Oh, no, I woke up. Should not have clapped, Alex. Sorry. First time ever baby on the pod. Yeah, we got a baby on the podcast because we got two special guests. Wedge is a brand and design studio from Montreal, Canada, and now LA and maybe Brooklyn that builds brands with distinct brand signatures for the world that we live in. guided by the core belief that everything can be special wedges earned global recognition winning studio the year the diamond two straight years congratulations accolades from dna d adc new york and many many more partnered with founders like maddie matheson and black lively and built iconic brands including vacations on screen one of my favorites paro and rebrands for icons like canada dry and moths there aren't many agencies that do work where i constantly feel instant jealousy and think god damn it i wish i had done that this is so damn good welcome to the show justin and sarah co-founders away thank you so much happy to be here welcome everyone yeah luca is uh is the baby um he's good breaking ground here the first baby on the podcast five months fresh that's a very fresh baby yeah kevin yeah luca yeah what do you have to say What do you have to say?

3:20Nothing. Well, not yet. Well, thank you for being here. It's great to have you. And yes, honestly, you guys do, yeah, just some of my absolute favorite work. And we're super glad to have you here. The first question I have you guys, you make everything look so easy. Is everything as easy as it looks? Simplexity is very hard to achieve, Alex. Simplicity or? Simplexity. Okay. What the hell is simplexity? It takes a lot of hard work to make something look so simple. You got a trademark on that? Yeah, yeah. I could call the lawyer. I could call the lawyer. You should. Where is it? We got a legal group.

3:56We should ask you to trademark lawyer. That's a good. It's in the pipeline. We have a few. We have a few. Yeah, you guys have a lot of things on your website that I just was kind of going through here talking about philosophy. Everything can be special. If everything is special, is nothing special? It's more about, I think, seeing the world with optimism. Oh, so I just saw it with pessimism. You saw it with pessimism. But that's okay. We can open your mind right here, right now. It's a state of mind. No, everything can be special. We're special. That's what my mom tells me. You can be a special snowflake if you think that about yourself.

4:34That's right. Yes. That's true. You guys are, we're millennials, right? Everyone can be special. Everyone deserves a trophy. Yes. And they have that in Canada too. Oh, it's a global phenomenon. But I think to work with Justin is sort of like, I always compare him to Mickey Mouse and Fantasia. Okay, yeah. It's like the guy with the wand, you know, brings the magic around him and can make a seemingly unsexy product or brand really exciting and motivating to the team. so really at the core of everything can be special is that sort of optimism and excitement that he's he's really great at pulling out of people but i would say something when i started like wedge almost a decade ago now yeah 2016 oh come on we're gonna do a party wow yeah you gotta have a party yeah yes yes we'll do a special 10 years i'll be waiting we'll be back we'll be back yeah um but i remember at the time like the the exciting thing was always to do like you know like the very cool museum sure uh just like always those very very edgy or cool or cultural projects I remember it was something I really aspired to do but I started just shifting the mindset and I was like oh what if I actually work with founders what if I actually look into things that people may not see exciting at first glance and and I think this is how even packaging or CPG entered our world like it was you know getting into a few first beers a few first products and And I was like, wow, that's actually so cool.

6:06It's almost untapped potential. I'm like, why are we not excited by that? And I think it happened to be the start of, I mean, this industry bloomed over the last couple of years. It's funny. I was talking to Debbie Millman once, and she, obviously, veteran legend, goat of the industry. She told me that once she was judging an award show for design, and they said, good design does not live in the supermarket. And that was sort of the philosophy back then of like, it's just not a place where good design ever exists. And obviously over the last 10, 15 years, that has dramatically changed. I think that's what our studios share is that sort of love of doing work that lives on shelves in bodegas and supermarkets and making it beautiful and making it aspirational and making it special.

6:53I love the everyday objects that live with people. There's an intimacy there. So, Justin, you said when I started Lynch. So you started Wedge 10 years ago. When did Sarah jump into the fray? We met in 2017. Okay. So you had started the studio. Yes. I was coming out of a studio I was a part of based in Copenhagen called Barkas. They're doing incredible work. Shout out to Barkas. Shout out to Barkas. Love you guys. And it was a time that I was actually thinking about leaving the city to move to New York. So Justin and I met. I was doing consulting at that time, mostly strategy. I needed really great design.

7:34So I brought Wedge on some of my projects and we just started working together. The first credit is Wedge plus Sarah. So take me back to that moment. Is Wedge, Justin, and one person, two people, three people? How did it start? It started with a project. I remember, I mean, I'm from Montreal originally. I grew up in the area. And I think, again, I was like, do I go to New York? Do I go to London? And I felt there was something special also in Montreal. It's such a creative city. And so I just thought to myself, there's no place I really want to work. So why don't I just actually try to build my own world?

8:22And so I had to pick a name. I was reading a book about Patagonia. he named it Patagonia after a trip so I was like oh actually my best trip was Wedge Mount a glacier on the west coast as a French Canadian I don't think even it was not strategic now people are like wow very strategic name I was like no no but it was a good name it's a mountain I knew it had to be memorable and I think that sounded really great and I think that was just the beginning you know we i started the company like that had a few folks and then we met we did a few projects and then we put the doing the projects on ice because the love thing happened you know we don't want to tell because you have a child yeah after you guys after you guys kicked off the love thing you stopped working together yeah we stopped working together we paused it Wow.

9:16And then when it was a real thing, we started the work thing back up again. And by January 2018, we were 50-50 partners running the studio together. So it was Justin's background in core design, my background in brand narrative, the two worlds kind of coming together to build what we know as much today. Powerhouse studio. That's really when it starts taking flight. I see what happened here. Sarah came in and she's like, all right, there's a lot. We can do it. Thank God Sarah joined too because we were very complimentary. Sarah was like, when's your next presentation? I'm like, when the design is good enough.

9:55That's a great strategy. If you can get away with that. I was like, we need a timeline, boo. You got to keep this shit running. How do the clients feel about this? But this is how I approached work when I started. I was like, well, I just really want to do great work at all costs. It was like the most important thing when we begin. Even like beyond financials, I was like, I think we have to take the space to experiment and get the work in a really special place. And obviously, the fire brought was great because you need it. But it was like this combination that happened very organically. You know, like we shared our mutual decks, like projects, presentation.

10:34Mine was just like 10 pages of design. And I was like, where's the story? Where's the storytelling? telling and then conversely he would look at mine and be like these are so fucking ugly i'm like it's strat it's just got the goods got to be there it ain't got to be pretty uh you guys describe the process as cultural foraging that's trademark that's trademark that's actually trademark wow wow that's so can you awesome that's it's a great term can we unpack it what uh now that you have a trademark the t-shirts and sweatshirts uh on the way what what is uh what is cultural forging Justin's a big hospitality guy.

11:10He's very inspired by chefs. And so cultural foraging was actually inspired by, or the idea, which he will explain to you, was inspired by René Redzepi, the founder of Noma. Justin, take it away. Well, I used to and still am obsessed with the world of restaurants. I don't know. Hospitality is impressive. and yeah like when I started the studio I was really into the stories of René Redzepi from Noma who literally challenged an entire cuisine like the Nordic cuisine he's known as the father of it and I think one thing that was so special and what he did was to literally forge ingredients that other countries also didn't have or just like bring novelty in how to do the Nordic cuisine and And I think when we start thinking of our work at Wedge and the research we would do and the inspiration we would pull, well, it was always like outside the category.

12:07And this is why we called it foraging, because we started seeing that great work was always emerging, not within, but outside the category. And so we started coining this term as cultural foraging because we took the time. and when i say time like to this day we still take like a solid like two weeks on research if not two two weeks i oh i saw your eyes we take the time and i i want to say that's double what we do two weeks we don't think you're one week we do some we do some research no we we've been out to do some research but but i think what's interesting is like you know of course when you work on any projects it's important to look at the immediate category the competitors blah blah all that stuff but it becomes really interesting when you look beyond to unlikely sources.

12:55Yes. And it's that cross-pollination that creates a really interesting tension to create from. Yeah. So in our works, we're always looking for like what is that tension to guide the work, but also rooted in like the strategy and the story that we're trying to express. So cultural foraging is sort of like, you know, Rene goes into the forest and he gets, you know, the mushroom and the herb and the this and the that and he puts it together and it's this extraordinary dish. It's sort of that idea. And we also very much encourage our team to look at the past as much as the present. We don't chase attention.

13:29We chase the attention. Yeah, we didn't even make that up either. Wow. We forged? We forged that from our podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jordan Pory is the great philosopher. I love this co-creation, guys. The great philosopher. You guys should do what Noma does. They should take half the year off and then do the other half of the year design, just forging. Oh, I like that. I would do that. You know, we're self-funded. We're self-made, you know, I don't got daddy war bucks. You guys don't have investors? Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. It couldn't be us. We have huge plenty of investors here at Center. No, it makes, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

14:03And certainly I agree with you, right? You have to, you know, get off the computer, go look at things, go find inspiration outside of looking at other package design. The first time I heard of you guys was for a project that I still love called DRAV. oh my gosh and that's when we met yeah and i remember when i saw it for the first time i was just like what is this i remember it was it won a dial-on award oh yeah and then i and then because i'd seen on the internet and you guys had a really good case study for it you had like some really cool photos of it being made in like the factory and then i went to the dial-on awards and i saw it in person oh yeah and i took a picture this is probably like 10 years ago yes like i took a picture and i was like from the internet you know that's how like to me as a cultural forger um no just i i loved it and then today as i was doing research for the show obviously we do tons of prep uh it said it was inspired by the simpsons is that true yeah well there's always this like cultural forging this idea of like creating something iconic and yeah like i think you look at the shape like the designer who brought that solution to life at the time was like also like really good at those things and i think it was like looking into things that are so simple but so impactful yeah and specifically homer simpson's favorite duff beer yeah where's drive man yeah where's drive man but i remember justin at the time was like it needs to be as iconic as duff and i think that's really good example of sometimes you look at tv and cinema you pick something up it makes it into the process yeah and it has such a funky shape that became sort of an iconic symbol it's still quite fresh to this day yeah it looks as modern and fresh today as it did 10 years ago genuinely it's crazy we got such a early it was the early days of like new breweries i remember we got a really good smaller medium run of cans we got the matte coating and then sarah was like let's call this amazing photographer alex he was just starting his career mostly doing fashion shout out alex bluand yeah he said grab your camera let's go and and then yeah we we went we showed up on location but i think that's another great example of sometimes you you know don't hire the photographer that only shoots drinks to do the drink to create a distinct signature for your client right that's another good example of tension so sometimes you know like for him it's like bring a fashion photographer in to shoot for beer which wasn't happening at the time it's more common now yeah but i think that adds to you know the world that we were building and yeah it felt very real and high flash and it felt very american apparel yeah no it had an energy to it and yeah i remember that project and yeah it's still like you said feels fresh and modern and so from there is that like the first like hit project that you guys have like is that the thing that kind of i think so that kind of went from there i mean with the same group we We jumped into industrial design and we did a very high-end spirits company.

17:09Okay, yes. But I don't know. It just sort of like, you know, you kind of organically get the ball rolling from there. Yeah. But I would say so. Because I think when we started, we gave ourselves the space to figure out what felt exciting. And experimenting the types of projects. I always say that also to younger designers. I'm like, there's so many things you got to try. and then at some point a few things feels right but yeah i remember seeing those cans like crushed in the street and being like well i love i love the unpretentiousness of the design that lives in the world yeah i'm the same way i always say i just like stuff i like making things and putting out into the world and if it's digital stuff i'm less connected to it i like being able to put it on the shelf i like being able to hold it i like seeing other people hold it and i think to me that's a I don't know that's something unique to the work that we do it's like you get to see people interact with it and they share or they post it or they bring it to a party and they live with it and then they throw it out which always makes me a little sad but it's that's the point right is it's to consume uh another project also that I really love swirl the ice cream brand I think that was like um like I've seen so many imitators oh my goodness swirl and ice cream.

18:24But yeah, talk to me about that project. That was also feels like probably what? That was one of the early ones. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it's a founder led plant-based ice cream company. Now there's a million of them, but it was sort of like one of five at the time, I guess you could say. And I think what was really interesting about the founders is that they're really inspired by streetwear culture. And so when you look at the design of Swirl, you can really feel that you know they were like wearing supreme and all of these brands that had like a very iconic logo so we were like ah we need to give it that same bold impact so borrowing from the category of streetwear street culture bringing it into plant-based ice cream where the strategy was very much it just so happens to be you know you're going to pay a little bit more it's an elevated experience so again that's another example where we maybe we treated it a little bit more like fashion yeah and they were doing drops because they were not in groceries yet um so basically we had the permission to do like the coolest tub yeah yeah yeah you know without too much regulatory and then we use those stickers on top and i was like oh let's push for black and white i remember that was a debate and then i was like no i think it's going to be even more cool to not be a flavor forward brand because they have the permission to do that sure and probably some limitations of like how many different containers they could do which is sometimes great right yeah like oh we have to figure out a solution here uh i always tell a story about united so it is like the box the first box we ever did uh for the multi-pack had a rainbow design on the on the top and it was pretty cool but they were like oh we can't print this many colors and so then the outer box became just black and white and made the whole packaging 10 times better just because you open it up and you get the sort of rainbow experience on the inside.

20:13So yes, we're all with those sort of individuals, ice cream flavors and sort of the not sort of needing to think about regulatory. Those were simpler days. I think back and I'm like, oh my God, I feel like that was 20 years ago. Yeah. But it wasn't time does this funny thing. Yeah. It's also interesting with those projects is you know swirl as a business did not necessarily scale like it was not like to compare it to a kratza success in terms of like what the founders decided to do with distribution so it's also interesting because like oh you could have if swirl had been distributed at a scale it would have been like a different but it's funny because i was getting emails from erwan yeah i was getting emails from buyers sure asking to you know oh my god sell this thing yeah and so then at some point I said to swirl we should be business partners and I will help you like scale this thing I was I was like I'll drop money into the company I'll do let's do it but it wasn't there and they should have taken you up on that yeah I sometimes get LinkedIn messages from people they're like oh we want to put bureau or like I'm not that guy like you got the wrong person here but no those two projects are you're right like they in my mind I think that was the first time I'd heard of you guys and seeing the work and I just remember feeling like it was so fresh and yeah now a lot has changed.

21:34You have a child, you have a house. Can we talk about Wedge House? Yeah. Is this, this so it looks beautiful. And how long have you been working out of this house? Wedge House. Almost two years. Yeah. Okay. A year and a half. Yeah. And so take me through the process. What made you want to get a home and make it an office? And do you guys sleep there? Does Luca have a room there? First answer, we do not live at Wedge House. Does anyone live at Wedge House? No, it's a studio. But essentially, as the story goes, COVID happened. Remember that? COVID-19? COVID-19. Okay, yeah. And I said to Justin, I was like, you know, we were in the same loft that Wedge had started in.

22:20But I felt like the company had just, it wasn't the same as when we started in the garage. so I said to him you guys started in a garage sorry it's a metaphor Steve Jobs you start in the garage and you have that energy I couldn't picture you guys in a garage I would say it was a similar corridor like here where numbers are not adding up from one door to another and the company was just evolving I was like it's just not the energy anymore I feel like the energy of this is maybe holding us back and so we started looking at different spaces and going checking stuff out and then you know Justin was like Sarah just take a piece of paper and draw what you imagine and I'm very pragmatic I'm like what's my budget and he's like don't think about anything just like take a pencil and draw so you know I had this piece of paper I drew a little house with an arch door with a yard with a tree and I was like oh it's Wedge House and one day Justin was scrolling through real estate listings as he really likes to do.

23:25And he found my drawing. It had the same arch door and there was only one picture of the front facade. So, you know, it was like probably a ship box inside. It was a smasheroo. But we went there, we saw it, we put in an offer, we got it. It all happened in the same day. That's how crazy we are. I called our agent at nine. At noon, we visited. At 4.30, it was ours. Wow. Yeah. once the yeah once you make pretty decisive yeah it was like it took us like maybe we should have thought about it more yeah no no i like it no no it felt right but it was a total gutter yeah yeah it was a total gutter okay and so justin and i we love to spend a lot of time in copenhagen we usually go once a year and so a lot of the spaces that we love there like apollo bar and you know cafeteria at the smk museum all these spaces we sort of you know embedded those inspirations into wedge house so yeah you have a garden and a kitchen with a 12 foot long table and we open the windows in the atelier and we hear the birds meetings what do you got going in that garden yeah yeah i planted a lot of native plants very nice i'm really into gardening guys yeah it's rewarding you plant the seed you see it grow you tend to the garden because one thing that i saw happening with every party at design studios i used to go to because we love hosting parties in our studios because we love our studios but i was like we're always drinking beer around the computers and i thought to myself we should host more events we should do more collaborations and parties and stuff but i think like doing it in the house context with the yard is gonna be and literally a door that's on the street um oh this is luca luca is joining the podcast i got excited about wedge house um so we divided the house into like we call it the atelier which is the working space similar to here on the second floor and then the ground floor has you know like some sort of a conference room meeting room um the library um and then there's this huge kitchen in the back backyard so it's nice because we can have life at wedge and then you can also work at wedge but they're also living separately wow it sounds really beautiful it's really nice uh do the designers just hang out like how do you get them to do work it sounds like such a lovely place just to live and you know check out you know drink beers and eat lunch and well you know plants like we love to we love our wine like i think we're more of a wine culture that's fair okay um i feel like you know every culture is different sometimes it's more like intense parties or more like a perro in the backyard and the space is designed with somatics so like you know if you think of a traditional design studio you walk in the very very white walls ours are slightly warmer there's fabric hanging everything feels really soft so these design decisions also are there to incite focus oh luca wants to talk Luca, come on the pod.

26:35Well, it sounds wonderful. And yeah, no, I mean, definitely seen a bit of a trend, a little bit in sort of America, more in LA, where companies like there's space for homes and offices that aren't just boxes in giant sort of retail buildings. But yeah, what a dream to be able to go to a space that is your own and your own world. talk about brand world right it's your own world wedge world wedge world yeah but we wanted it to feel like almost if we had a store what would it feel like at least that was our first iteration you're always glad we didn't do that no um but it also felt like after working from home yeah i we wanted a space that would feel so nice to be in like the floors the stars set the walls so So even the natural light or the dim light at night.

27:30How often are you guys in the office? Is this every day? Every day. Every day. We're there every day. I love being there. Me too. I'm a workaholic. I'll just say it. But no, I like having a space that you go to. And that is separated from my home. Yes. So yeah, it probably wouldn't be great to live there. That separation is important. But yeah, no, it's a beautiful space. and I think it's something, do you have an LA office? Or is that just the people that work in LA? We had people that worked in LA mostly doing like development over there. Okay. And then it sort of evolves over time. But we ended up, there's something about us in California.

28:11We have a lot of clients in California, especially San Diego. Okay. Brahmi's there. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Skin care companies, oral wellness companies, just, yeah, lots of different folks. for some reason it sort of sort of stuck yeah yeah question for you guys as uh lovers and co-workers how does you know do you guys have a sort of like how do you separate wedge and life such a great question because that i i i ask this of any founders that i meet that are real life couples yeah because to me that seems like the most impressive thing on planet earth is to turn it off because it's so hard to turn off.

28:57You know, I used to, if I'm being really honest, I used to struggle with answering that question because it's the word separate that I thought I had to do. Like, oh, I have to separate this. There has to be a very clear line. And I think over the years, I just really embraced the mentality of like water. It flows like water. and sometimes we talk about it more. Sometimes we talk about it less and this is just our life and our sort of lifestyle. And it's when I made that mental switch, the anxiety went away. So I think like just embracing it like water and it ebbs and flows. But sometimes, you know, you just say, hey, that can wait till tomorrow.

29:44Like everything, you guys make it look very easy. You're like, yeah, just be like water, you know. So you do the work to get there. I agree with you, though, because I have often pushed up against this idea of work-life balance because it does imply that there's separation or there's two sides to the coin and there's the work side and there's the life side. This, unfortunately, and fortunately is my life. And so I think you're right that like if you try to separate them and try to think of them as two sides of a coin, then maybe you're going to struggle to find that balance. It's just like how can we remove the friction?

30:16Yeah. So even sometimes like in the studio world, even with your team, you have to go a little harder sometimes. But then you just like take a Friday off, you know? We go hard every day here. Sorry. Oh my gosh. Got to meditate, Alex. Alex is not heading towards a four-day work week. I'm so sorry. You guys have a four-day work week? No, no. I aspire to that. It would make me happy to be able to give that to my team if we could crack the ops on that. We've tried Friday afternoons during the summer, summer Friday. That's what we do as well. That's already better. I'm glad they used to say yes, though, because Gander was here.

30:53They were flexing all over us about it. I was like, shut up. Don't tell that. My employees can hear you. They're right here. No, I would love to give that to my team as well, unfortunately. We've got to fucking crush it every goddamn day. I will say you talk about effortless, and it is really a lot. like things don't happen by magic and i think like sarah said you're a magician you know just yeah yeah me came out she's working hard she sold me on that um but i think that's that's the thing it's like it's actually so much hard work to get such like effortless work so many tests so many things and across the whole team you know like it is a sports team metaphor like it's a i think like as a group this is like literally a group effort towards those things and it looks so easy at the end but it's like it's a group effort between us between our client between you know like yeah and also like the unsung heroes which is like account teams yeah yeah i feel like designers get a lot of the celebration but like everyone plays a role you know so especially when these like complex systems get awarded or even see the light of day it's like wow there was a lot of management that went behind that oh i couldn't agree more i think process account management you know sort of the flow is yeah it's funny when you look at sort of agencies design studios and you sort of see that sometimes there are more people that work not on design or don't have design titles and and people are often confused by that it's because making projects go smoothly making things move is it's so complex so complex and we've i've always aspired to do the restaurant than before hospitality but the complexity of projects we run now they they last for i don't know months if not years now yeah for sure um so oh it's luca welcome luca welcome to the podcast luca is five and a half months old and you know got a great body of design work luca talk to us for a second baby on the pod baby oh i really reacted to your voice there so uh sorry i got distracted by a very cute baby uh so fast forward you know to today you guys have some obviously amazing projects we don't need to talk about all of them but i want to talk about maddie matheson yeah because matheson food co what a beautiful brand congratulations thank you awards um what was like working with maddie

33:30comments um you want to take it off maddie is i will say he's a vision guy like he knows what he likes but he is able to articulate it and that makes the difference so what i loved about working with maddie is that he was he's able to tell a story bring you on for the ride and then makes it our job to like just translate that through design. So it was really interesting like when we came around the table and he's like, oh, I have this idea for Matheson Food Company. And the obvious question to ask is like, oh, he's bringing the mic closer. Yeah, yeah, that's good. We're Kaluka. You know, smarter than mom.

34:15Yeah, we had to produce.

34:20you know the obvious question to ask is like do you want this brand associated with the man yeah and so he's like well i want it actually to outlive me yeah like i understand i i might have to be involved in like the launch of this thing but it's you know i'm not a caricature or like attached to it forever yeah and when he was a kid you know he grew up on the east coast of Canada, humble family. His mom always had Hereford corned beef in the pantry. It was something he ate all the time. And so I remember in our design workshop, we pulled it up and we were discussing it. And it was this like striped packaging.

34:56It's, if you know Maddie's world, it's very primary colored, very straightforward. And so, you know, it's just like he has a great eye, great taste, and we were able to work very, very closely together. So yeah, I think we just translated it and it went super, super smooth. And, you know, Maddie has a very distinct voice the way he speaks. Sure. So his voice became the brand voice, you know, which is fun and alive and playful. And, you know, sometimes he would take these presentations from the set of The Bear. He's like in the trailer in a car or something. But he made the time to like show up and not only send his people.

35:38And so I think it did make the difference for him to sit around the table with us and he would end every conversation with like a gratitude moment. Oh, I love that. You know, kind of like a coach. He's like, you're here and I'm here and isn't that great and I'm thankful and you work hard and I work hard and we work hard together and it's just a start and it's going to go into something greater and it's going to build and we're going to learn and we're going to test, we're going to learn and we might fail, but then we'll learn and then we'll do even greater. And it was this energy that was so fun to work around.

36:06and so it started with the sauces and dressings and then you know the mac came along and he and right away he's like i want it to be like this not like that here's a reference that i have in mind but he's also open to what we think yeah i would say like it's also one of those process where the flow you know like you can get caught in rounds of revisions sometimes never us never once never um one round knock it out done you know ship it i think like we really and i think that's something we i don't know what's the right word i don't think it's empathy i think it's just like hearing trying to understand yeah but we really worked this way with maddie like he had a vision he had something in mind but it's like how do you translate that and do it your way yeah but i think we did that so well in the sense that i don't know the team was his team was like okay it's not sometimes it can be like challenging some designers in the past and then sure i think the process we did was i was like i really want to understand and i would say like every single presentation we've presented work that was produced like 95 as presented the first time really 95 exploration presentation yeah final pack similar yeah because he was also so decisive He's just like, that's the one.

37:23Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it amazing when you work with people that have vision, good taste, you know, can be inspiring and also motivating. I think that's something that oftentimes, yeah, founders like, you know, they have to or, you know, the work we do is so much inspired by them and sort of bringing their vision and ideas to life. And I think the best work that we've done is when that person comes in with something really that inspires us and that we just, like you said, translate kind of where, what they want and bring our own ideas but it's it's it's not just hey you guys are the designers go make us a brand no and i think there's a misconception in our industry of that and i think clients don't get enough credit because i think more than half the projects we've done came from a vision that's also why people start a business in the first place and it might not be a visual vision yeah you know but words were sort of the feeling and they communicate that it always comes from the top there's always a nugget yeah but i we worked on recently on one where it was the opposite and it was like and it's interesting because it had been so much more challenging because it actually was like a empty box almost or it was harder so yeah it's interesting there's like really two camps of i agree yeah it's so hard when it's when they have an empty box right and i think those are the hardest projects like we we've worked with um i mean i enjoyed the process with Blake in many ways on her hair care line.

38:51Blake Lively had a very strong vision. Huh? She loved Justin. Really? But she was clear. Yeah. She was clear. It's okay. We're an anti-Ryan Reynolds podcast. We can get into it. He's Canadian. No, sorry. You can get blocked by every account. Yeah, I know. You need to work on your lovability. Have you collaborated with this ad agency? Yeah. Have you worked with Ryan? No. we work it was like basically i mean i think the they brought us in to work on the blake brown beauty okay yeah so the packaging was already done like had designed that with her team and she brought us in to help um work on the world around it the storytelling things of that nature which were under nda so i'm not going to go into it blake lively ndas um yeah no and that's another beautiful project and i guess now that you guys have done like a couple celeb brands are you guys Working on another one.