James Martin - Award-Winning Designer, Author and Founder of the Studio Made By James.

0:04Claire:Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency, Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around, and how they got to where they are today. this week i'm here with the designer author educator and speaker james martin james runs mbj studio and you might know him but it's made by james he's a partner in vancouver's lincoln design company or lincoln design co yeah lincoln design co so i wasn't too sure if i was supposed to be interrupting yeah that's correct correct tick yeah he's a partner in vancouver's Lincoln Design Co.

0:51Tick.

0:51Claire:His first book, The Honest Guide to Creativity and Logo Design, was released in 2021. Tick. His second, No Bullshit Branding, is due out in September 2026. Tick. He's spoken around the world at conferences such as D &AD, RGD in Toronto, Canva Create in LA, many more. He's on the Design Advisory Board at Canva, and he's got an advisory role at Affinity. Lincoln works on brands such as Nike, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Paramount, Polaris, Tony Hawk, Fortnite, Universal, Adidas, Affinity. James, welcome to the podcast. Welcome. That is wonderful. Welcome. That's a good intro. Thank you so much and thank you for letting me play shuffleboard.

1:36Claire:Ah, yeah. You're the first person that actually loves the shuffleboard. I'm very excited by that. It's because it's brilliant. It's so good. you should just get rid of all of your staff and just hire me yeah exactly we can just play we get nothing done yeah right okay let's start at the very beginning of when did you realize design was something you could face a career around that's i'm still trying to figure that out now okay i love that that's a good answer no i think um you know for me very so we probably have to go back can we just let's start right at the beginning shall we so um at school i was always very much more on the creative side than i was the clever side yeah so math it's ridiculous word clever isn't it yeah but like yes but like the more academic subjects like math and english and the sciences and the languages weren't really my bag um it's what in school a lot of people think of as being clever but yes well that's what you're marked against especially like we're talking like 30 35 years ago now when i was at school you know where it was art and design was still very much like a hobby yeah if you want a proper job you go and do these things so um so i was always quite creative then then i ended up getting kicked out of school and kicked out of home at 17 because i was a bit of a twit bit of a titty can i ask you more about that of course yeah please do yeah please do yeah what happened what's that if you're happy to talk about it yeah of course i am i'm i'm very much an open book so i think it goes back to the age of 11 um i was sexually abused by my teacher at school uh so yeah you were at boarding school i was at boarding school yeah sexually abused by my male math teacher wow and did anything The captain had they been kicked out?

3:31Yes, yes. So eventually I basically went back to go and teach at that same school. He wasn't there anymore when I went into teaching to go and have a little play. And I brought it up to one of the teachers who was also a teacher when I was still teaching there. And he said, is this true? And I was like, yes, this is true. And then the next day the police were over at my house. and we i found out that there were you know upteen other people as well that he'd gone through um and also abused and then yeah he we went to court and he admitted it all and now he can't teach anymore and all the rest of it so but that was uh that was a weird moment so jail or is he just not i don't i don't really know i don't know if he ever went to jail he was just stopped from teaching again which is probably yeah which is probably not enough but I think it's also because of the 20 years between the moments yeah and because he pleaded guilty to it um there are things that I don't know the fucking law's a mess isn't it but it is what it is so I think that was when the start of my so that that gave me a real issue with authority um not just my teachers but but also my parents and anybody who was supposed to be able, because he was a person of authority at the school and took advantage of, of me.

4:59And then obviously anybody after that who, you know, was there was hierarchy. I was like, fuck you. I mean, and I think going through adolescence and teenage years and obviously drugs and booze, you know, it kind of escalated quite quickly to the point where I just started stealing shit do you know what I mean I was I was a pretty poor kid at a very pretty rich school um and I would um just steal laptops and sell them to drug dealers and for in exchange for drugs yeah not a good thing um not a good thing do not do drugs or and do not steal but that was I was just I was just that kid do you know what I mean 16 17 lots of smoked lots of weed did a lot of ease yeah listened to a lot of drum and bass and stole shit off rich people to feel my drug habit very entrepreneurial I like to think about it so but anyway it got me kicked out of home and

5:57Claire:kicked out of school I did all the drum and bass and the raving side of it possibly without the stealing yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean yeah a little nixie pooch is uh is okay uh it's not okay but yeah so that was the kind of so they started then big rebellion kicked out of school kicked out home again continued to do lots of drugs um for about two years and worked factory jobs and wow so that was what you were doing you were just yeah i was just bumming around manually factory jobs um working a lot of bars and restaurants um for a couple of years and then literally like i was doing drugs every single day drinking most days um god that must have been a mess of i mean i was a mess yeah i wasn't i hadn't i didn't really speak to my i spoke to my mom a bit but i didn't speak to my dad for almost two years because yeah it got quite fractious like mainly my fault john i mean but i look back at it now as a 42 year old man i'm looking at you know i'm i tried to be a little bit kinder to that 80 like 17 18 year old now because he was going through a lot and nobody really knew about it needed guidance yeah needed yeah needed guidance but was also very embarrassed by the whole thing do you know what I mean it wasn't something that you know you kind of blame yourself for a lot of it you're like did I kind of instigate it like it's just such a weird scenario to go through so but anyway like after you know I grew up like a captain of my sports teams I was a very sporty and very creative person I was county cricket county rugby county hockey wow that was very very sporty so you know then to go into like the deep deep dives of where I was at like 17 18 just a bit of a loser child I mean though there was you know people talk about these moments where you like see the light and you know I mean I'm not a a godly man at all but like there was a there was definitely a moment after you know another kind of crazy night like late nights early mornings still high going to work just thinking about what on earth am I doing with my life and the next day I enrolled at um Salisbury College so when was this how old were you this I must have been so I would have been close to 21 2021 so i thought something's gonna change so i'm gonna end up dead yeah in jail or those are probably my options the way i was going yeah i mean i was hanging around with some pretty crazy people i had some good friends but like the the situations i look back on and i look at myself and now i go golly i wouldn't want to be in them now wow yeah so uh but that's all good So, yeah, I did an art foundation at Salisbury College.

8:52Claire:So what made you do that? Why art foundation? Because it was the only, I had no, no, I had GCSEs, but I didn't have any A-levels or I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But art and creativity were always a place that, always an environment that I found quite energising and there was no right or wrong answer. And it was also for me at that point, it was just a matter of direction. Like I need something to stop me smoking weed all day. I need something to keep me out of the pub at 11am. And it just happened to be that this art foundation was an opportunity. I don't know if they do art foundations anymore, but it was like one of the best years of my life.

9:39Claire:You still do them. Yeah. But there's talk about phasing them out. Oh, is that right? Yeah, which I think is really sad. I was visiting the one in Brighton a few couple of months ago and it's amazing. Yeah, I loved it. It was perfect for me because I knew I wanted to do something creative. Yeah. But I didn't know what it was. I thought I wanted to draw and be an artist, but I wasn't very good at that. But essentially what happened was the person who took us through the Art Foundation, he said to me, because graphic design was one of the modules. Yeah. He said to me, you should try graphic design.

10:12and I was like, oh, I don't really want to do that, but okay. And now 20 odd years later, 25 years later, I'm sitting here with you.

10:24Claire:So can you remember? Still a designer. Still a designer. Yeah, fuck it, twat. What am I doing? But can you remember what your perception was of why? Why didn't you think, why didn't you jump on graphic design at the time? What's the perception around? I didn't know what it was. Yeah, I just, I wasn't too, I think for me it was like, oh you want me to be controlled and i'm not really a designer i'm more of an artist yeah i wanted to continue to smoke weave do you know what i mean and wear my duffel coat do you know what i mean sit in the park with all my mates and like play the didgeridoo whatever we were doing at the time and like drums wild artists yeah we were those wankers on a saturday playing drums in the park and annoying everybody else you know what I mean stupid um but yeah so um so true though isn't it there's always one wanker with a drum in a park you know what I mean get a grip mate um I've never met one before so this is no it was me um so yeah so that was um so that was kind of it so it wasn't necessarily that I was rebelling against um being a designer just I didn't really know enough about but I ended up saying yes yeah and then I went and did like a two-year HND high national diploma I think it is um in graphic design where I explored it a little bit more and started to learn more about typography and layout and you know composition and all of these kind of standard um principles um that we know of now and um yeah from there it just escalated and got out of control that's fantastic that's exactly what you want to get out of control yeah I think so I think so it's like um I was quite easily led at that stage because I needed to be it was just like okay well from here I'm going to go to here and it's going to be another distraction and then from here you know I went I did actually end up going because I did an HND it allowed me to kind of continue my education because again I really didn't know what I wanted to do so I ended up getting I could skip the first year of uni at Southampton Solent and go straight on to the second year of like um I think they called it communication design I think it wasn't it again it was just an extra level up on top of the kind of HND um so is that where you were doing the HND at Solent or was that that's when you went to university and did more of that yeah so the foundation and the hnd were both at our salisbury right and then as i started to sort my life out i got into a better relationship with my parents again and then i moved back home and one of the not necessarily the caveats but one of the kind of conditions was you know we'd love for you to kind of continue trying to better yourself yeah so i went into um southampton uni i didn't really learn a lot do you know what I mean but no I know I think I do you know what the one the one thing I did learn was timelines do you know what I mean like having to yeah very important in the real world you know like having to hand in a brief pass or fail you know I obviously did learn a lot but I I didn't socialize I didn't stay on campus I stayed at home I went in for three hours a week or whatever it was and then didn't go out and socialize with anybody because I had my own friendship group back at home so um didn't really get involved in any of that just went in handed my work came out which i mean i ended up with nothing i think i got a two two in the end didn't really put a lot of effort in just kind of got through it but while i was at uni i managed to land a job which was brilliant wow so that was like during the course yeah so in my final year and i think this is probably why i only ended up with a two two because i was like i'm already getting paid i don't really give a fucking shit so yeah i ended up with um yeah so my final year i was working while i was at uni i was working like little cafes and things and there was a little cafe in my local village i was working at called lilies um it's not called lilies anymore unfortunately um and there was a guy who used to come in quite a lot and you know being uh i was there pretty much three or four times a week you know working just below full time um to get some money in the bank for alcohol and probably more drugs so i didn't stop doing drugs okay i didn't stop doing drugs and alcohol so i'm four years sober now so yeah that's good that is good now so but yeah i continued like i didn't just stop doing drugs when i got kicked out of school i continued to do them quite a lot tapered off very yeah well it took kind of escalated and then kind of went dry it went on to harder things do you know what i mean um but yeah four years ago when went totally sober and i actually had a drink or done any drugs since that moment yeah this feels good but yeah so while i was at that cafe i was speaking to one of the locals there and he was like oh my friend funnily enough has just started a little media company it was called i relish media funnily enough um they were the names are so cool back then were they i relish media um so um kind of when just kind of managed to obviously through you through who you know and what you know and all the rest of it just took my like portfolio a free portfolio of like sheets of my drawings yeah because all my design work was shit and I just kind of turned up I was invited in one night afternoon for half an hour just to have a chat and just randomly they were like you know we can't pay you full time but we can pay you a little bit and you can come and learn and stuff and I was like, sweet.

15:59That's brilliant. I'll do that. Yeah, I think it was like 100 quid a week or whatever it was. It wasn't anything crazy in the beginning for like two days.

16:08Claire:Yeah, but also for like some dude who doesn't have a fucking clue who he is or what he's doing. Learning from some pretty cool people, you know, was a blessing really. And it was like one of those things like, okay, I'm now in the industry and I'm just going to learn. And, you know, again, it just continued to get carried away in Malamia. Did you go full time there? Yeah, so I ended up going full time there and stayed there for about, I think it was just under four years, probably started about 2014. No, 2004 probably was when I started there. And then when I went to, because I remember it was 2008, that they went bust, which was the economic crisis.

17:00That was when it all kicked off, wasn't it? They had just basically just landed a big Coca-Cola job. They signed up for like a five-year lease at this bigger studio to bring more people in. And then Coca-Cola said no.

17:13Claire:Wow. Yeah, it's like I learned a lot of what not to do in business. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, so they kind of unfortunately kind of ended up making the business kind of end up closing down and the business partners kind of ended up splitting and having to go and work up the jobs while they were still paying for this lease and all the rest of it I mean it must have been an absolute nightmare for them so have a little bit of empathy for them although at the time it I probably didn't have as much as I should have done I was like it's hard to know what yeah at that age yeah especially like you're not getting paid in time and all of these kind of things you know something's not right but you're also like you're still paying me to be here and do the rest of it but that's all by the by but anyway so after that when that was kind of tapering off i decided like okay what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go and try and find a new job and i was looking at jobs down towards bournemouth there's a lot more kind of creative jobs down towards that way than i was from where i was anyway so i had a recruiter um who was finding me jobs and finding me interviews and everybody was like no no no but again like I was I was pretty shit back then do you know what I mean like I mean I'm still pretty sure I'm just getting a little less shit um but like I think it's like you know you kind of go for jobs that you probably can't get but if you do great yeah you'll figure it out as you go kind of thing and um none of nothing ended up happening so I just started my own agency you know I was yeah I started my own agency baby giant with a friend of mine called ad and the whole idea was I didn't have a wife I didn't have a mortgage I was still kind of living at home and it was like well this is the best time to try and if it doesn't work out I can always go and try and get a job and luckily it worked out and now again like I said I'm sitting here chatting to you which is great that's pretty cool that's that so baby giant how long was that's a good name by the way yeah but you know what you know how long it took me to pick it about three and a half minutes did it i was like oh do you know i really like oxymorons yeah and i went on to a list of oxymorons on the internet and got down to be baby jones like that'll do that's actually work do you know that's how much effort i put into it so i like oxymorons got down to be there might have been some ones underneath that but baby jones do that and i was like you know what because it was the other thing is like working at a company called irelish media it's quite corporate yeah you know it was that had that kind of energy and it was like well i have the opportunity to create whatever i want and the fact of the matter is i get to choose the name it was like the most i can just it can be anything yeah we wanted to be yeah i think that was quite liberating for the first time it was like well i can create an agency and call it whatever i want so i did i just put no effort into it do you know what i mean but you hear some people oh it took us three years to pick our name and i'm like that's three minutes took me months for the red setter did it yeah ages coming up with so many different was that because you're trying to make sure something was protected or you're just trying to just get a cool name trying to find something i like is it was a dog is it yeah it's a red setter dog yeah it was a do you like a friend of i love dogs yeah and a friend of mine his wife suggested it a friend that i set the company up with he was say of the first little bit yeah um paul his wife katie suggested just loads of different words and i actually quite like that yeah that's after a long time of thinking about it and it's yet stuck what were you thinking before red sitter oh god i was thinking my favorite one was wiley bison exactly wiley as a dyslexic idiot that is really difficult to say every time i said it to someone what wiley what what i don't understand basically it's a map in france called the cart to something and this is like pre-google maps yeah well cart means map yeah so it's it's a way of getting from a to b by if all the main highways are shut it's the way the road less traveled sort of way of getting there so i love the theory behind it and i like it's the french version of wiley bison that's what their map is called oh i see so it's just like that's amazing wiley bison i love it is there a company called wiley bison there isn't a company still no still Still no one's jumping.

21:37Hey, if you want to start up a side hustle,

21:40Claire:Wiley Bison is it, isn't it? But yeah, this is in the days where people would call and you'd need to answer the phone. And I thought if anyone's calling you and you're saying, hello, Wiley Bison. And then everyone's going, what? Wiley who? How'd you spell that? I thought Red Setter. It's easy, isn't it? It's good. It sticks in your mind. It's fine. There's a classic gap between that is what Red Setter. It's the D helps, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. Wiley Bison. Better than Wiley Bison. But back to baby giants. Yeah. So how long did you do that for? And did you win clients? Did you get business?

22:13Yeah, yeah. I mean, we did. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. But not in the beginning. You know, it took a lot of time, a lot of doing free work. I'm a big advocate for, especially in the beginning, when you're just starting out. I think free work has to be your choice. Yeah. And we made the choice that it was better to try and do free work to build a portfolio than it was to sit around and twiddle our thumbs. But we also realized that our own identity and our own website, we had the opportunity to make that really good or as good as it could be on the experience and the expertise we had at the time as well.

22:50So, you know, something that I've taken through and something I loved about Lincoln as well before I became a kind of partner in that company was like something I've done with May by James a lot as well as I've always worked incredibly hard at my own identity. yeah it's incredibly hard at building my own ecosystem like my own website my illustrations my own like logo suite yeah you see that always developing it always trying to whenever i'm creating any sort of content or linkedin post or substack post or whatever it is now there's always a sense of illustration that comes with it because yeah it just for me elevates a little bit more rather than just having like a logo like there's a lot of people who would argue that well as a design studio or as a designer your clients should be at the forefront of everything and your brand should probably sit in the background whereas I'm just not the opposite yeah so yeah I like to I think the best project I ever get to work on is one that I'm full control of and that's my own brand or my own identity so put a lot of effort into that so that was kind of how Baby giant did quite well we put a lot of our own work out there we created like i mean we created a load of stuff that failed like t-shirt companies but again it was just always moving we created we created like um like rather than doing like online portfolios we created like little kind of like book based portfolios with really nice gf smith paper and like gold foil and silver foil and like UV matte black kind of stuff.

24:27And we would give those away to clients to get them to give them to their friends. And we sent a load to PR agencies and media agencies. And that slowly started to pick stuff up. But again, it took a lot of time and it wasn't something that happened immediately.

24:45Claire:Yeah, starting from scratch is really hard, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, we were lucky. We had computers and we had an internet. I mean, that's probably the beautiful thing about our industry still is that I can work just as hard here as I can in front of my computer as long as I've got an internet connection, as long as I've got my software, a pen and paper, a phone now as well. You can do a lot of it there. Not as well, obviously, but there's so much you can do. And I think that's something I've always quite liked about the industry is the freedom of the fact, it's not the nomadic styling of it. It's just that I can, as long as I have an internet connection, be pretty efficient.

25:29Anywhere, yeah, definitely. Although I am a creature comfort kind of guy. I like my desk with my seat and my trinkets and my coffee.

25:39Claire:Yeah, me too. I like having that stuff around me. Yeah, it's good. So what was next? how long did baby giant last for so baby giant um lasted up until fairly recently actually um probably the last three or four years um and over the last three or four years i've definitely transitioned more into made by james my business partner at baby giant he now has baby giant and i've fully focused on made by james so he yeah baby giant ended up doing a is now doing a lot more kind of web-based stuff um okay that i don't i never really was that excited about yeah and made by james or the studio that i now own which is kind of like a subsidiary of like link and design co i i do a lot of kind of identity work and logo that's kind of where my where my bang happens yeah but then again made budget there's so many facets to made by james now within the ecosystem like you mentioned there's the the books the speaking there's obviously all those different lines of how you got into that thing yeah I mean I think yeah for me it's um I as you can tell like I'm got I'm a fidget and I can't sit still my brain my brain fires quite weirdly as like an ADHD dyslexic kind of dude that's brilliant there that's yeah it is yeah is it I don't know it kind of I think it sometimes slows me down more than speeds me up but like for me yeah for me I've always wanted to have like different things kind of going on you know I do have what I would consider I wouldn't say a master I don't think you ever become a master or anything but I've been doing like brand building and identity work for a long time and I feel like I'm pretty competent in that kind of world and that has allowed me to build a pretty good reputation and that reputation has obviously opened up opportunities and bits and pieces for me.

27:39And I'm a big believer in saying yes to things. If it doesn't work out, okay. As long as it's in my wheelhouse, I teach identity. I write books on brand. I speak about branding. I like to think about IP and frameworks in branding. Do you know what I mean? The content I put out is branding. Do you know what I mean? So it's all somewhat about the same thing. but I get to dabble, you know, I get to like kind of scratch that itch of like going back to that old person who wanted to be a teacher and teach about design and try and help the kind of new generation come through. I also get to work with a lot of cool clients.

28:19I also get to travel the world and do a bit of speaking, which sounds super bougie, but it isn't as, I mean, you'll know, isn't as glamorous as everybody makes out. You sit on a plane, you then sit in a hotel, you then go to a conference then you go home do you know what I mean which is yeah which is great

28:35Claire:so um yeah you still see a little bit yeah yeah of course I mean I'm underselling it but you know it does it's not the kind of like oh he's a jet setter which is true I spent a lot of time on a plane yeah but that isn't as exciting as it might be it's not as exciting so but again like for me it's like I get to I'm very very motivated by the things that I do John I absolutely love them I I love teaching it I love sharing this I've never been a big gatekeeper because I was very lucky enough to grow up in an agency where people would share their information with me so it allowed me to kind of maybe take that on and also as like a captain of sports teams and bits like bits of I've always liked to see myself as a little bit of a leader of people.

29:23Yeah. Because I was always the captain of a lot of my teams as well. So I try and take that energy and try and motivate, because we all need motivation every now and again. Absolutely. Especially in today's world, which is a little bit fluffy. Yeah.

29:39Claire:I don't know. I was trying to say a lot more swearier word there, but fluffy came out. Fluffy will cover everything. Fluffy comes a lot. Fluffy, everybody knows what fluffy means, don't they? So, yeah, just trying to be good energy, I think, is something that I've always tried to do. And there's no right way to make it. I mean, I have a very different upbringing. You have a very different upbringing. We've all got a very different set of circumstances. We talk about our friend Radim, who didn't go through the traditional path either. And there's so many different ways to make it within this world and within this industry.

30:18Claire:You don't need to go through a traditional... No, and anybody who says there is one way to do things, especially to a creative person, is probably not that creative, I would essentially think so. Completely agree. So tell me about teaching. How did you get into doing that? How did that start? Yeah, so when I was kind of at uni, sorry, so when I did my art foundation, my HND, I also did a, I think it's called a PGCE. Yeah. Yeah, so I did a PGCE as well when I was in Salisbury because I thought it was something I wanted to go and be an art teacher and do all that. And obviously that's when I went back to the school to go and teach for a year because that was a part of the thing that you had to do.

31:03Claire:Yeah, so that's what you thought that you'd end up doing. Yeah, I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but when I first started getting into teaching, I was still a mess. Do you know what I mean? Still trying to figure stuff out. and I was teaching people who were 12, 13 and I was only early 20s and it was like, oh, this is just, I'm just not that person yet. So I kind of just left it and just, I said, like stumbled into design more and more and then teaching kind of got left a little bit. But then now it's being revisited. Yeah, no, I think it's definitely being revisited, but also like as a designer, know like my job is to educate my clients i would suggest as well so it's always been something that's been quite like i've always tried to find different ways to explain like i think in our world we can use a lot of words that don't mean fuck all i don't mean fuck all to me and designers let alone our clients so like yeah as a pr yeah like nobody needs to know about fucking omni channel fucking strategy strategic experiences that are immersive it's all fucking cock isn't it sorry if that's on the red center website as work we work with yeah design agencies globally and we spend a lot of time just going well that that doesn't what does that actually mean what does it resonate yeah how does that form an image in someone's head yeah and that's it for me like i think like especially in this social media world that we're in now it's like a lot of it's a lot a lot of designers just showing off to other designers, isn't it?

32:33Yeah. Whereas I've always tried to show off to my clients. Do you know what I mean? The only way to show off to my clients is to make sure they understand what I do.

32:42Claire:Yeah. And also I'm not that clever. So it's much easier for me to explain stuff in a way that makes sense. And that's something I've always tried to do. But I also think that's probably what has helped the kind of community growth online. like I've never tried to overly fluff things I've always tried to make it as accessible as understandable as possible um and it's also something I challenge myself with now like I'm a big reader and I'm a big writer once I have an idea I try and challenge the idea continuously as well to see if I can have a different perspective on things and I do I'm I'm weirder.

33:25I'll actively follow people that I don't like online just so they give me a different perspective.

33:31Claire:I think that's a really good idea if you just... Well, it is, apart from it makes me really fucking angry sometimes. But they do the same thing. I read stuff. Yeah. I'll read the right-wing press because I feel like I need to educate myself. If you just stay in your own little box and that... Yeah, I think it's dangerous, isn't it? It's really dangerous. I think there is this very much like... It even happens in the creative industry, doesn't it? Like you're either blue or red politically or you're either Adobe or Canva or you're either like this or that, educated or not educated. It's like, I mean, we're creative people.

34:07I mean, the room for like good discourse now has been shrunk so much because it's like people just everybody thinks they're right or think somebody else is wrong. Of course.

34:19Claire:And then you've got that reaffirmed around you because of all the algorithms. Yeah, it's the echo chambers as well, isn't it? You can go and find whatever shithole you want and sit in there long enough and start to come out thinking like you smell like roses, don't you? But it doesn't, you know, if all these other wankers think the same thing as me as a wanker, then I must be all right. Sorry, no, that's not, you know, it's probably over-generalizing, which I don't like to do. But, you know, it's easy to go and find somebody who can, like, reinforce your point of view. Yeah. It's very easy to do that now.

34:52But like, I've always liked to challenge the things that I know, you know, I've grown up in a creative world that I don't necessarily think has evolved as quickly as it's needed to in the world that we're in now, especially with like, you know, tech and you think of what Canva have done. I know it's obviously, you know, because I'm on the board there, but, you know it might seem like i'm pro canva but i'm not because i was yeah i'm not necessarily pro i'm definitely pro access yeah but you know canva for example there was a solution to a problem that was fixed like people wanted to be creative but they weren't able to um yeah exactly there's that but there's also like i think even now like all of these tools and bits and pieces they've allowed us to move so much quicker yeah it's seemingly that designers and agencies want to take longer and charge more money and then I think well it's no wonder that

35:49Claire:it's not going so well do you know what I mean so yeah I think it's really interesting that everything else has moved quite quickly which breaks stuff John I mean I don't think you should just move fast and break things like that like a Mark Zuckerberg do you know what I mean he's another wanker we can talk about if you want that don't get me don't get me blocked yeah but you know like I don't believe in that but I do believe that you know I think creative people are creatures of comfort like I've talked about and like our process has always worked so we know it works and we should keep it you know if it takes six weeks we should say it takes six weeks but like everything else has allowed us to move so much quicker so I always look at it from a client's perspective and you know that's important yeah they're like well why if everything is taking why is it costing more and why is it taking just as long when everything else I understand like good work takes time and stuff but maybe we creative process your thought process is still going to take yeah yeah of course it does but maybe the execution can be done a little bit quicker yeah um or maybe you know that yeah yeah i mean like i said i'm not going to be here and tell people how they should run their agency or what they should do but maybe there's an opportunity to bring other options or other offers into a an agency that allows them to cater to a a lesser budget or a quicker turnaround doesn't say they have to get rid of the things they do and the things they're known for but i think i personally i think we're in a world where it's better to get a client into your ecosystem and nurture them in any way you can to hopefully continue to work with them long long in the future because i think the big i think the budgets are going to drop yeah continue to drop you've seen big agencies shrink down yeah so you know i think i think i don't think we should rest on our i don't think anyone can now can they i don't i don't i don't know i mean like i said i don't want to say i don't want anybody to change um what they're doing because i've said that it's probably worth changing but i do believe that we have to evolve and that's not necessarily about having to use tech and all the bits and pieces all the time but i i think we should be open as creatives to just maybe like reframing or changing the lens okay like yeah is what we're doing right now the same thing as what we did five years ago yes it is okay do we need to change that do you know what i mean even just asking the question yeah like is there something that we can do is there a new offer we can create is there a new way of working that we can create that caters to this new world that isn't going away yeah and that's that i find that quite liberating quite exciting but also like me too i'm a very well i'm quite a fat dude but i was going to say small dude but my point is is like i have the ability to be quite nimble and quite flexible because i've got a very small team so i can test stuff and i can iterate stuff really quickly which is good for my crazy like brain that i have to should be able to do that i mean we're always thinking of yeah but when you're in a big you can't rest on your life yeah yeah when you're in a pentagram or uh you you know, JKR or a big agency.

39:04Like it's - Has to do things quickly. Like that's a big cultural shift, isn't it? And that generally, like I obviously work in like Affinity and Canva and it's such a, like to get stuff, like they move quick, but to get stuff done, that you have to ask seven people. And I'm like, I wake up in the morning and go, do I want to do that? Okay, I'll do it. You know what I mean? But in these bigger beasts, it's like there is a protocol and there's a structure of like, you know, And there's obviously things that we said we're going to do this quarter and we're going to do them and execute them, which is great.

39:36But when you're in a big beast like that, especially an agency with a certain process and certain teams, it's a lot more difficult to change that, I would say. Because you end up having to change everything, which is probably why many don't.