Michael Johnson - Founder of Brand Design Consultancy Johnson Banks

20:37Claire:Yeah, I was never a massive fan of working for other people, so I was kind of as much better as I am at the moment. Well, why is that? You're very bad at taking orders or something. Yeah, completely. When delegated to, you say, why? Yeah, absolutely. You push back on everything. All right, so you can understand. I love working in a team now, and I think I've changed a lot since then, but at the time was always... She says that. Yeah, that's true. My team might be listening to this. Yeah, sure. Yeah, your team are thinking, that's complete bullshit. Absolutely rubbish. But anyway, this is about you.

21:07Claire:So you started Johnson Banks in 1992? 92, yes. It's three plus decades ago, yeah. Yeah. And obviously, it's going pretty well. It's like the work that you've done and what you've built, I'm a massive fan of. I think it's fantastic. But tell me about how it started. Tell me about where did you get your first clients from? How did you win your business? And that kind of... Well, at first, I actually started freelancing 30-whatever it was years ago. Yeah. Because I couldn't stand. Smith & Milton had threatened me with the sack if I didn't do a soap powder pack. Wow. Literally, not joking. And so I thought, oh, I'm just not ready to leave just yet.

21:48So I did the soap powder pack, but thought that's it, I'm out.

21:51Claire:Okay. Can't do soap powder packs again. Yeah, fair enough. I've never done a soap powder pack since. Although someone listened to this would probably ring up and say, do you want to do a soap powder pack? I do not want to do a soap powder pack. Anyway, so I'm sort of basically freelanced by that summer. My then client, who was an ex-client at that point, who worked for Legal & General, who Smith & Milton were working for, left Legal & General with some of their corporate work, and that was Tom Banks. and we became, for a few short years, a kind of quite short-lived partnership and he was the suit.

22:23Claire:I see, so that's where the banks came from. That's where the banks came from. Uh-huh. It's just that it didn't last very long. We had, what did they say, musical differences. That's interesting. But there was enough work to establish the company. Yes. We worked out fairly soon, within like two and a half, three years, that it wasn't really right for him or for me and parted ways, but I kept the name because I like the name. It made it sound good. I like the name. I think it's a good name. This is just for reference why you should never do research on ChatGPT. Ask ChatGPT where the bank comes from and it says it was made up and the banks never existed.

22:59Tom did it.

23:01Claire:So Tom Bank is a person. But weirdly, I think a few years later he ended up at Wolf Erlands. Anyway, there you go. Circularity. So three years in. But that was enough to get us started. But really, essentially, the first decade of Johnson Banks, I tend to split it into three chapters. Yeah, okay. The first chapter was really about trying to do the best work we possibly could. Yeah. Getting our name out there. So this is pre-internet. Yeah. Quite hard because you only had a few. Yeah, how did you do it? A design magazine and this and the other. Design week. Design week, incredible review. And awards meant something.

23:41Claire:Yes. Because that would get you a little bit more publicity. So there's that. Just trying to get your foot on the ground, trying to do something within the first three or four years that differentiated us as an entity from our peers, which is really tough, of course. People don't realise this. It's definitely tough. Lots and lots of companies start up, and basically they're their ex-employer but cheaper. Yeah. Yeah? Absolutely. It's literally what we do, how to differentiate and how to stand out. Yeah. The usual people often say the difference between us is we're really creative and we've got really high levels of service.

24:18Claire:We're really good with our clients. That's what you'd expect an agency to do. That's the zero, isn't it? Yeah. So it's really, I call it the honeymoon period. I think that the honeymoon period is tricky for design companies, certainly back then, because you had to establish yourself. Something had to happen that made people, either your peers or your potential clients and or both think, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So clever ideas within design and that kind of stuff that gets your attention. I think it took us, I used to call it three years the honeymoon rule. I think I slightly broke my own rule.

24:56We did a project for the V &A for an exhibition on William Morris that was just different.

25:01Claire:Yeah. And then we did a lot of work with the British Council that, again, was different. and I think that those two, I think, kind of started to put us on the map in the sense of, oh, there's something different about Johnson Banks. You know, different to the 90s design landscape as was in London, which was a very different world. But really that first decade was just trying to do good work, get known, get out there. But we were effectively graphic designers. Yeah. We're just learning how to be a graphic designer. It's doing tons of print, doing hundreds of posters, doing pretty much everything or anything that people would ask us to do.

25:42Claire:Yeah, interesting. So that's the first decade, really. And then what changed? Second decade, we started to do more branding projects. This is early 2000s. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that's – I was talking about the shift from graphic design to brand. Do you think that also is a timely thing that people stopped wanting graphic design so much and wanting more of a brand consultancy? I think, personally, I think that when you're a very, very young design company, and I was still pretty young, mid-30s, it's very hard to get a big branding project. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. Then it was very hard.

26:21You know, hair down to my shoulders, fancy suit, nice bits of graphic design. I love that you throw a suit in everything.

26:28Claire:Yeah, yeah. Different time. Yeah, different time. Exactly. Huge short book. But, I mean, you can't, you can do the creative, amazing creative work. Okay, great. Super lovely. And I'm not saying it was all amazing, but bits of it was good. But you can't take a stamp project or, I don't know, a die cut paper alphabet or a beautiful brochure into a branding meeting. Yes. Because that's not the craft they're looking for. No, absolutely not. They're looking for someone who's done a museum before. Yeah. Or done a university before. And it just takes a while or a lucky break to get on that ladder. Yeah.

27:09And I think it took us a while to get on that ladder, really. We had a break. We did Shelter in 2003.

27:15Claire:Was that 2003? I think so. Something like that. Wow, I remember. But it was a lucky break. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. Because an ad agency that I knew rang me and said, do you know any freelancers? And I said, yes, why? and they said, well, we're doing some work for Shelter and we need someone to do the logo. And I said, well, I'd like to do the logo. And they went, oh, we didn't think you'd want to do it. That's interesting, the perception of we need a freelancer just to do the logo while we get on with the serious advertising stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yes, well done. Well perceived. Yes, tick. You're a good interviewer, yes.

27:49But there was another thing at the time. It was thought that proper designers didn't do charity logos.

27:55Claire:Interesting. It's all changed. now yeah yeah the landscape stage completely as you know now people are scrabbling to do yeah not for profits cultural um charities yeah it looks good in portfolios but that looks good in portfolios make people feel better about themselves yeah then nobody did it or they did it on the kitchen table for 20 quid yeah and i thought no i'd like to do this but i'd like to do it properly we did it properly people really liked it um shortest design presentation ever actually i just turned the board over with the shelter with the h with that looked like a roof and the board went yeah wow that's that one didn't really realize at the time quite how we i thought oh well that's how all identity presentations um but what that did was that opened doors for us yeah you know i'm sure you hear this again and again on these talks a door opens yes with a particular project exactly so you just get a bit more famous for that and and a bit more and you meet different people and it's yeah so throughout the noughties we did a series of big charity projects save the children christian aid then we did unicef so we did a whole series of those um we'd started to do cultural projects we were doing what i would call social social impact projects which is more of a north american thing but we did a really famous social impact kind of philanthropy i think so we were starting to broaden we were still doing blue chip projects we did virgin atlantic at this time in the second decade to creating the brand for them yes wow that's a quite a big deal yeah massive deal yes how did you get into that what's the um well at the time we were working with a really good uh strategic agency called circus lovely team and we loved working with them um we didn't always have the budget to work together especially on my charity clinics but with Virgin Virgin liked Circus and Johnson Banks as a team as a strategy yeah so that the fit was good we don't get to work together much anymore which is a shame but I really enjoyed that and so that was interesting doing a doing a hairline yeah yeah so yeah that's quite a step out so the 20s were the broad of all sorts of what do they call it verticals i.e.

30:10different And cultural work, public sector work, not-for-profit work, still some blue chip work. And most of it is branding at this point.

30:20Claire:Yeah, okay. Yeah. So what's the third age? The third chapter is where we realised that actually the blue chips were awful people. Yeah. Awful, awful people. So it's just not fun to work on. Just not fun. Not nice people. Don't feel like you're doing good in the world. Yeah. I mean, we're taping this in our boardroom, hence the echo, in case you're wondering about the reverb. But I had a few trigger points. One trigger point was a man who arrived three quarters of an hour late for a project about insurance. This room that we're sitting in is full of metal walls, covered with work for this meeting.

30:58He arrives three quarters of an hour late, drinks an entire cafeteria of coffee, all the biscuits, and then slags everything off.

31:04Claire:Oh, my God. So, A, I'm thinking, winker. Yeah. And I'm beginning to think, why am I working for these people? Yeah. Then another trigger point was, oh, at the end of the Virgin Atlantic project, the launch party, chief executive turns to me and said, are you still here? Really? Really. That actually happened? That actually happened. Oh, my good God. Which went two years on that project. Wow. Doing, you know, one of the world's most famous airlines. Yeah. Turns to me, are you still here? You think, Ian, this isn't really the recognition. I'm looking for. Well, I mean, yeah. And not recognition sounds like an ego-led, but that's really sort of bloody rude.

31:42But you're sort of thinking, you know, that's not the...

31:46Claire:Appreciation? I think what we'd realised with our charity clients at this point is if you can build a kind of rapport with your client, you can work forever. Yeah. You know, we worked, say, with children for seven years. Yeah. We're about to start our second decade with Cambridge. Yeah, absolutely. And just being kind of picked up and tossed aside, I thought, well, this is not what I signed up for. So did you not work with them at all after that launch, is it? Yeah, basically, no. And then I think the third, I think these things always come in threes, don't they? The next tipping point was the Fukushima.

32:19The final tipping point was the Fukushima earthquake. Do you remember the tsunami that hit the eastern sea border in Japan? And I, having lived in Japan for a while, and been back a lot, a lot, we were doing work there and all that. I kind of loved Japan, still do. And I was just appalled that the design community's response to this was to design posters, endless posters with Japanese red circles fractured in two and, you know, torn paper and things like that. And they thought they were, you know, getting their feelings out and one of them, Widen and Ken Energy designed one that raised a few thousand pounds.

33:01And I remember thinking, you've got to be kidding me. What are we doing? We're doing nothing here. What's the alternative? They were bragging about the fact that we raised£20 ,000 with this poster. And I'm thinking, Japan is a rich nation. They don't need£20 ,000. Maybe£20 billion.

33:20Claire:Yes, to rebuild. £2 billion, maybe. But£20 ,000. And I just was incensed by this. And that was a kind of fine straw, really. So what did you do about it? Did you? Well, we had already begun to pivot quite hard. Yeah. And then eventually I said, look, we're just going to tell people this is what we do. Yeah. You know, we work for culturals and lots of profits. We do good. We want to do design that makes a difference. It's a brave move, though, isn't it? Because it means saying no to people. It does. And no to money. It does. Yeah. Yes. And one makes less money than one did. Yeah. do you think it's hard i always think maybe at first but it kind of comes into itself as people start to know and trust you for what you do and how good you are at it yeah then well i'm saying yes that sounds i don't mean it's hard to know isn't it it's like sliding doors moment type thing but if you do i think having that sort of focus helps you stand apart a bit but i suppose it is true that we do we still work in lots of different places we still were trying to do working culture You're starting to do lots of work in education.

34:28Claire:Yeah, absolutely. Lots of work in charity, lots of work in philanthropy. Oh, yeah. Duolingo and stuff like that. Duolingo, yeah. Which we were umming about. You talk about, we were umming and ahhing about Duolingo. Were you? A bit, because to some people it's just an app, yeah? Yeah. But the first day in Pittsburgh where they're based, all of the staff talked about they were there because people could learn the language for free. It's what they call a freemium app, yeah? You don't have to pay for it. Yeah. If you don't pay for it, you get some little ad at the end of each lesson. Yeah. And then by the end of the day and end of the first day I was in, I realised that they actually viewed themselves as social impact.

35:06Interesting, yeah, of course. They would tell me stories about the fact that, you know, refugees in Sweden, Syrian refugees in Sweden, were using the Swedish app to learn Swedish. Wow. Because they only knew this because they had this huge spike of people downloading Swedish in Sweden, which they thought was weird.

35:24Claire:Yeah, why is that? And then they realised why. And they would tell me these stories. And I thought, okay, no, I'm only telling you that because there are occasions. It's not just pure tech apps. It's, yeah, it goes beyond. But the line about what's acceptable, what's unacceptable. We're having regular conversations here about should we work for this client? Sure, it's just got to be a group decision, hasn't it? Because there isn't a black or white. Yeah. Yeah. One of our longstanding clients is actually just started doing a new project in law and we just didn't feel it was on brand. So we said part of me would have loved to have done it because he's a disruptor.

36:03He likes to disrupt sectors. We did the this.

36:07Claire:Oh, yeah, OK. Meat substitute for it. Yeah. But we just couldn't find a way to square the circle of why making money in law out of AI was on brand for us. Yeah, yeah. So we said no. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I think it must affect the type of people that work here. Is it part of your interview process? Yes, it did. I mean, most people know now. Yeah. I don't need to tell them. I mean, it's self-evident. you look at the website you go oh okay yeah yeah you actually do stand by it you haven't got it's still relatively rare and actually there are very few companies who actually say this lots of people pretending obviously lots of performative social impact projects yes and then they go back to their crypto yeah fintech and their their you know property brochures yeah yes definitely yeah There's nothing like that here, which I like.

37:01No, we don't do that.

37:03Claire:How has your role today changed? Do you still design? Yeah, I design all the time, much to the chagrin of the design team. It looks like you do. I can't help it. I suppose, is that another thing that's appealed to you about not becoming a huge design agency or a pentagram? I think so. Or that kind of, like, you can still, the pentagram part is still design. They do. I mean, the Pentagram system is a series of little pyramids. It is, isn't it? With a partner at the top. And I guess in a way we're just one of those pyramids. Yeah. We're very rarely more than about seven or eight people. Yeah. It means I can remember everyone's name, which is important.

37:43Claire:Yes, definitely. And I used to say, I mean, most of our competitors are 77 or 147 strong. Yeah. Yeah. Because we do paradoxically do these huge projects with a relatively small team, which is an interesting conundrum sometimes. Yeah, is that ever a problem for you? Do people ever think, well, how can you do this? Because UCL is a massive project, a massive brand. You obviously do it very well. Well, I mean, that was a very challenging project for us. Was it? Yeah, because we did the master brand. Well, we did the brand strategy, and then we did the master brand, and at the same time, in parallel, we did the campaign and the bicentenary.

38:22Claire:Wow, okay. So we did what I started calling the treble. Treble has basically not been done in education before. And I now know why. Good knowledge, yeah. I mean, you know, wow. I mean, it's quantum doing a project like that. I can imagine. How long did it take? How long have you been working? I think start to finish was just over 18 months. But our projects can take a really long time. The Reba project that we're just about to start talking about took seven years. Wow. Oh, that's a really long time. It's a really long time, yes. Some of the projects might be in gestation forever. But to return to the question, last but one but one.

39:03Claire:Yes. Yes, we now get people who want to work. I mean, I think it's a prerequisite that for people to work here, they must have to want to work on these kind of projects. Yeah. Which bring their own level of kind of teeth gritting in a way because some of them are tricky. You know, our clients don't have massive budgets. Yeah. One of the designers who just recently left and served at a company where the budgets are in the millions. Wow. We don't have clients like that. Yeah. I mean, occasionally we have projects in six figures, but not that often, you know. Yeah, interesting. But the benefit of being seven, of course, is we only need a couple of six-figure projects and we're fine.

39:42Claire:Yeah. Yeah, which is probably self-evident. But, you know, if you're listening to this and wondering how do people set up design companies, you do need you need projects yeah you can't you need work going through you know even seven miles is quite a lot to feed yeah it really is and i used to say i didn't want to be 77 people but i'm now thinking i don't even want to be 17 because i think it's a tricky area once you get into that yeah when you move out of boutique or whatever we are you start to need management layers and things like that that just tip into it yeah there are a few people that we know who have had a tricky time once they get into uh into the teens or in their 20s because by definition you need more work to pay for the people definitely and then you start needing a new business person yeah yeah yeah absolutely slippery slope i can't really say my s's very well i have to concentrate really hard when i say that it's a kind of a whirlpool isn't it yeah what about can i ask about how do you still have ways of thought of inspiring you or does just creatively or does the work you do just inspire you anyway well most of the time our projects are fascinating yeah that's kind of what i was wondering whether you still have sort of things you do to get your creative i mean i i do i do we have very very few what i call donkey projects yeah i mean what do you mean by that a donkey project is like we just got to get it out yeah yeah so so london's full of design companies who are working to what I call the Pareto's Law 80-20.

41:16Claire:Yeah. 80 % of their work you never see. Yes. Because it's paying the bills. Yeah. It's the 20 that you see. So the 80-20 rule holds across the world. About to see it, actually. It's the time of the year when people put their D &AD entries in and you're about to see the 20. Yeah. Yeah. And you look at these projects and say, oh, I've never seen that project. Oh, that's nice. Oh, never heard of that festival. Yeah. Or that symphony orchestra. That's because they're the 20. Are you doing anything in D &D this year? Are you judging, Gores? Yeah, actually. Are you? Brilliant. Yeah, I have lost count how many times I've judged.

41:51Claire:Yeah, I was going to say, what are you heading up? Is it official identity? I'm not heading up. They seem to invite me as the difficult older guy these days. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not. I did identity a couple of years ago with Brian Collins. Yeah, I remember. Yes, I'd love to have been in that room. Yeah, it was quite something. Luckily, Brian and I get on very well. Yeah, he's great. He's great. Great, but opinionated and fiery and sort of idolative. Yeah. Every now and again, he'd come to me and say, was that okay? I might not be if I said the wrong thing. Have I offended someone?

42:29That's a good Brian impression. I can't do his voice. Sorry, Brian. It's actually good. Oh, my God, I said something I shouldn't have. Anyway, now I'm doing writing, which I haven't done before, but we do a lot of writing. here. I'm as much a writer as I am a designer now.

42:44Claire:Yeah, that's interesting in itself, isn't it? Yes, unusual. The verbal identity shift of, yeah. Yeah, well, that's been part of what we do for decades, actually. In fact, a lot of people, when they talk, if they talk about Johnson Banks' differentials, what do they talk about? They talk about the fact that we do lots of strategy, you know, that ugly word that no one ever talks about, yet lies behind every big brand. Absolutely. We don't talk about that. It sort of happens by accident or comes up out of the ether. Out of the floorboards comes the strategy. How did that happen? I love it. I get really excited about that.

43:22Yeah, well, no one talks about it. The other thing, what do they talk about? Oh, they talk about the fact that we think hard.

43:28Claire:Yeah. They talk about the fact that the projects could have shelf life. Shelter lasted for 18 years. and they also talk about this interplay between word and picture. Yes. Which is unusual. Yeah. Really unusual. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't realise it first, but then I started to learn that it was unusual. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, yeah. The graphic designers are trained with Laura Mipson, yeah? Yes. The Greek letters. Yeah, yeah, completely. And still, graphic designers tend to see the words as the awkward bits between the pictures. Yeah, so you just sort of fill that in with some text there, Yeah, but it's not your responsibility.

44:07Claire:It's a black and green text, not my book. Yeah. It doesn't matter what that says. Yeah. I'm worried about the picture or the logo. Or I'll put the, oh, God, I could use the words, well, I'll put it in six point at the bottom so no one can read it. And that's anathema here. I'm forever saying, no, it's got to be bigger than that. No, it's got to be bigger than that. Yeah, that's quite unusual. It's a running gag here, but I'd love to do an entire project in aerial and the smallest size would be 18 point. No, I'm serious. Yeah, I like it. I'd really like to do that. So people can actually read it.

44:39So people can actually read it.

44:41Claire:Interesting. I mean, designers look at me when I say that, like, oh, my God, he's off on one again. What is he talking about? But it's the essence of what it's all about, isn't it? It's about visually communicating with someone, and if you're making something that might look beautiful but no one can read or understand. Absolutely. Well, the words and the pictures, for me, are umbilically linked, and I can't undo that link. Yeah. I don't know where it started. I think it may have started in the 70s, weirdly, because now I look back at it, there was a magazine, Sunday Times used to have a magazine.

45:13Claire:Yeah. That was a leader in its field. And unbeknownst to me, all the ads, the double page spreads in that magazine were all done by the best advertising agencies. of C.D.P., BBH, all of these amazing companies did these incredible double-page spreads written by some of the best copywriters in the world. David Abbott would write those same piece of ads. And so weirdly, I'm reading, on a Sunday, I'm reading Mum and Dad's newspaper magazine and I'm taking in the layout of the magazine, which was also very good, but also I'm taking in the ads. So my hunch is that I'm starting to fuse word and picture.

45:54Yeah. And I've always had this interest in advertising, especially classic advertising, the kind of glory days, you know, the BBH, no, sorry, the DDB, Volkswagen, you know, that kind of.

46:06Claire:Wow, yeah, okay. The Hertz ads. Yeah, amazing stuff. Love stuff. Always have loved it. Still love it. So that interplay between the word and the picture, I can't let that go. Well, look, you know, we're sitting in a room of work and there's many words on these layouts. Definitely, absolutely. We can't talk about the projects, actually. Yeah, yeah. We haven't mentioned the project, but it's very good stuff. It's super confidential. Definitely. Can we talk about the design industry? What do you think about the design industry? What do you think the challenges are? Do you feel part of it? I kind of come in and out a bit.

46:39Claire:Yeah, okay. I mean, there have been times when I've been very, very involved. When I was D &AD president, I was kind of over-involved, really. Yeah. But then chief executive resigned halfway through my term, and so I was kind of running D &AD whilst trying to run Johnson Banks whilst writing books. Wow, that's big. Wow, yeah. I'm an accountant. Did you feel that as a president at D &AD you could create more of a community? Tried. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. But you only, I mean, I was on the committee for a few years and then I was president. And I tried to do lots of things which had dialogue and this kind of things, but that's, you're only doing it.

47:15You can do, I did the, I co-curated and basically, set up the exhibition at V &A called Rewind, which was looking back at 40 years.

47:24Claire:I remember that, yeah. That was kind of the first time, really, that advertising and design had been celebrated at the V &A. Oh, I didn't know that was you. Yeah, I love that. Well, we were on an away day and someone said, anyone got any ideas? And I said, well, you're going to be 40 soon. Why don't we do an exhibition? And they all went, you can do it. So I shared that task with Jeremy Myerson. But that was, yeah, you can. So I was really involved then. I kind of come in and out. I'm trying to get a bit more involved at the moment. I'm trying to judge things a bit more. Yeah. Doing a series of interviews with legendary design figures.

48:03I'm not quite sure why I'm doing that because I've really got quite a lot on.

48:07Claire:It's interesting stuff, though. I like what you're doing. Yeah. I'd love to have seen the one in New York recently. Oh, with Tom Geismar. Tom Geismar, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It just struck me last year that I had lunch with an old friend who's older than me. a designer, I'm not going to name him or her. But I came away from my lunch thinking there's a certain generation of designer, half a generation or a whole generation older than me, who are slightly forgotten. Yeah. And I wanted to kind of… And then kill Rebecca. And by doing the interviews in person, that forced me to do a huge amount of research.

48:46Claire:Not on ChatGPT. Not on ChatGPT. And, I mean, what do I think? I think the industry is in a strange moment where, you know, the top 15 or 20 branding agencies, all their work looks the same. Yeah. It's really hard to differentiate the projects from another. Yeah. I think that's true, actually. There's a kind of commonality to everything at the moment. The bar is high. Yeah. Just a weird moment, I think. People have kind of maybe forgotten or don't care about projects that could last a long time. Yeah. I'm kind of really fascinated in design that's got legs. Oh, my God, yeah. Longevity of how it can...

49:29Nobody talks about that at the moment, though.

49:30Claire:Yeah. It's all about choosing the grievous typeface or the funkiest colour. Yeah. Or the whizziest animation. So we're in an interesting phase. What's going to last for 15 or 20 years? I think things maybe feel a bit transitory at the moment. Do you think it's because AI introduction and people aren't quite sure where it's going to end up yet? It may be, but this started before AI. Yeah, okay. I think it started actually when Jonathan and Steve Jobs sadly passed away and about a month later, no, I'm joking, but not much. Very soon afterwards, Jonathan and I dumped, I think it was iOS 7, he dumped the skeuomorphic buttons in the Apple system and replaced it all with flat graphics.

50:10Claire:Oh, okay. Remember? Skeuomorphic. Skeuomorphic. Skeuomorphic. Yeah. What does that mean? Well, skeuomorphic is when you have a button that's shaped like a button, but it's on a phone. So it looks. It makes you feel like it's a button. Yeah, okay. It's got a drop shadow. And it all looked flat. Yeah. Do you remember when websites first became a thing and there was a donate button and it always had to have a bit of a gradient on it and a drop shadow? Yeah, drop shadow definitely, yeah. Skeuomorphism. Right, I see. So when Johnny and I have done skeuomorphic interfaces, the whole world went, oh, my God, and all these people who've got gradients, drop shadows, had to dump them overnight, otherwise they'd look old-fashioned.

50:48Claire:Yeah, okay. Ever since that happened, everything's gone very flat and very kind of flat and very vector. And we've done some things ourselves, which would fall into that category. Yeah. So I think we're in an interesting moment. I think there's a lot of performative... people seem to spend more time talking about themselves than they do about their work at the moment, which I find odd. Interesting. You know, their approach to work and why we're different, who we are and what we do. And you get through a podcast, not naming any names, but you go, what about the work? What difference does it make?

51:23Yeah, what's the work doing? That's what we're trying to uncover.

51:26Claire:What's the point? What's the difference? What's the methods and stuff like that are interesting? But at the end of the day, people need to know what difference it makes. Yes. and I think if you're in this business to do design that is remembered, who gives a shit about how many followers you've got? Yeah. You know, what you do on your TikTok, sorry, but what's the work? Yeah. Is it good? Is it different? Is it unique? Yeah. Will it make a mark? Will it make a difference? Definitely. Has it moved the bar? Will it raise$2 billion or$3 billion in a Cambridge project? Did it? Yeah. Wow. Nearly$3 billion, you know, to come back to my Fukushima example.

52:07Yeah. That's what I'm interested in. So there's some talk about impact at the moment, but it's really cursory. It's really, yeah, yeah, anyway, here's our new Fintech project. It's like, oh, save me. Save me from crypto. Please, God.

52:25Claire:Johnson Bank's crypto arm is yet to. No, absolutely no. The only way we'd do crypto is if it gave all of their money and all of their profit to a not-for-profit. Of course, they'd never do that because crypto is all about. Well, yeah. Maybe one day there must be. It's effectively a Ponzi scheme, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, of course. And so why would a graphic designer want to be branding a Ponzi scheme? We ask ourselves. Well, yeah, important question. Sorry. A little bit of a rant. Sorry. I'm not normally as ranty as this. I do apologize. can i ask you a final question on tips for genius starting out today oh like above above sort of um design skills basically yes kind of assume they're the best designers how do you stand out i mean i would you say it's design skills well i think i mean skills are useful i i always feel that we can teach the skills but we can't teach the ideas yeah so someone who gets a job here has but have some great ideas in their portfolio.

53:29Claire:Yes. A lot of great ideas. So you can make things look good, but you can't teach the ideas in the first place. It seems to be very, very hard once people get to work. If they haven't either taught themselves how to ideas or been in an environment where ideas were valued, it seems to be really hard retrospectively to undo, you know, to put the Pinterest boards away. Yeah. Yeah? Yes, definitely. You'd be amazed how many designers work with their Pinterest board next to them. Really? Still? Yes, still. I would have thought, I've heard so many people say that, because if you want to look the same as everyone else, pull up the Pinterest board.

54:05Yeah, it drives me crazy.

54:07Claire:Yeah. But so, yeah, the skills can be learned. Yes. I mean, sometimes more slowly than others. But the ideas are hard to get through. There's no doubt that people's skills are useful. Yeah. Being a grumpy, F-U-C-K-E-R. Yeah. Not making tea and all those kind of things. It doesn't stand you in great stead. It's helpful to be nice. Yeah, people like to work with nice people. Don't be like I was, you know. It's good that you can say that. Don't be a C word for the whole of your 20s. Yes. I simply don't think I would have employed myself. Yeah. Anyway, what else? I think there needs to be something in the portfolio that is not of the time.

54:49I understand why when one's at college. you might look at the designs of the day and what's in.

54:56Claire:Yeah. And work like that and emulate that. We all did that, you know. Yeah. I mean, half of my portfolio looked like Neville Brody had done it when I graduated. Yeah. Mind you, I didn't do a proper degree. So I think you can learn by copying. Yeah. Yes. But if there's no sense of your own voice or your own way of doing it, then that's not great. and so it would be very unusual for someone to get a job here if all that they did were ahead of their project, all of their projects just looked like they'd copy who's hip and groovy at the moment. Yeah. Once they're in, I mean, ideas, ideas, ideas. Yeah.

55:36You know, I've had an idea, I'm going to work this up, doesn't work, doesn't fly here. The walls are covered. All the walls here, not all the walls, but the vast majority of the walls here are magnetic because we stick all the work up.

55:48Claire:There's nowhere to hide. here so it's like a rolling crit so you don't want verbal ideas of just you want to say what about this and show you a worked up thing yeah no none of that here none of that you've got to meet him with the credit director on friday but work up your idea for them yeah okay none of that it's all well if you've had an interesting idea to stick it on the wall this is partly because i do believe in the kind of hive mind way of working yeah you know that someone and it's happened countless times here where someone's had half an idea done it quite badly yeah myself included but then someone was coming the next day and said how have you thought could we do it like this you know yeah you know so uh we did a project for cystic fibrosis ages ago that was an idea using the is of fibrosis so cystic fibrosis is a challenge i can compete is a battle i will win yeah it is and i had done it i suppose i'd initiated the idea in slightly anal type way yeah And one of the team came in and said, can we do it with handwriting?

56:53And my first reaction was, fuck off, that'll look awful. But then I thought, actually, and so that's what I mean.

57:01Claire:Yeah. The idea is, if you can get people to work in a collaborative way like that, it's so much better. You know, the Gestalt is so much greater. Yes. It has the sum of the parts. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry. Museum, school, German, theory. it does work it does happen i mean the converse sometimes applies which would sometimes people are so scared of the wall they won't put anything up so i had at least one designer who never put anything on the wall wow really yeah she left in about a year i was gonna say did they last very long you've got you've got to be able to share yeah she she came up to me every evening not every evening every now and again and said can i show you what i've been working on i said yeah yeah but i'm a bit busy stick it out stick you know print it out stick it on the wall yeah She was nervous about her work, and I should have been much more nurturing, of course.

57:53You know, HR would have had a huge go at me at that point. Of course, we had no HR.

57:58Claire:Sometimes people do just need to create their own, just do it, and put yourself out there and accept the criticism. Yes, and those types of people get on here. Yeah. If you're a protector, if you're hoarding your work. And the drag of course is at the college you're trained to sort of protect it and only show you the crit. Yeah, okay. That's the most operandos, most design courses. Crits on Friday, everyone do work all night, stick it up, and people go, oh, that's nice. So the idea that it's not ready might be in people's heads when they're first. Yeah, okay. But here we have to undo all of that.

58:32Claire:Yeah. Almost immediately. And sometimes people can't undo that. The ideal used to be that people would start from college. Yeah. So there would be nothing to undo. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't always the way now because it's harder to take people straight from college now. Why? I think we have less time. We haven't necessarily got two years to nurture someone. Yeah, okay. There used to be more time to invest in someone because the honest truth is it might take two years for someone to hit the ground, to start producing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So where should they go? Would you say it almost could be better for someone to go to one of the the big network agencies and learn the ropes a bit.

59:14Maybe, possibly. I mean, we have just taken on a junior and she's doing really well and she's doing great, actually. But between degrees, a degree in Asia and a degree here, she did work in design for a couple of years.

59:28Claire:Right. So she's just that little further ahead than a normal graduate. Yes. I think, and you can tell. Yeah. And also... Which in itself could be really good advice, just to try and get a bit further ahead. Yeah, yeah. you know the courses that have sandwich what they used to call sandwich you know what I mean yeah take a year out and then a year out and then a day back those courses are really useful we've had a few people here yeah who've done that one Beth Johnson who worked here for a bit and is now uncommon in New York actually oh okay she did a sandwich she did the sandwich here and somehow got herself into Apple in California for a year wow and then came back and did her final year and she would have been transformed by that experience absolutely That transformative nature of the summer internship or the year out, I think, is not to be underestimated.

1:00:16Claire:Yeah. Because otherwise people come out of college really raw. Yes. You know, and, you know, you can do as many D &AD or whatever briefs as you like, but you're not ready. I would love to be able to take on more people straight from college, but when there are seven of you and if someone… Big proportion. Yeah, it's a kind of big proportion. You haven't spent a lot of time. I mean, I don't mean to come across like a bit of a hard arts, but it's just quite tricky. Yeah. You do a lot of mentoring anyway, don't you? And you do a lot of educational stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and that's tricky in itself. I'm trying to get students on the Glasgow course where I'm visiting PLOTH to think about branding before they graduate.

1:00:57Claire:Yeah, okay. And that's quite tricky. They don't teach branding on the graphic design courses. Really? They don't do it, really. They talk more about the craft of the visual art. Well, there's a kind of thing, I fear it might be to do with the tutors on the courses. I'm not naming any names. But a lot of them are graphic designers. They haven't been in branding. Or if they have been in branding, they maybe hated it. And so they don't teach it. Teaching someone how to do a poster or a hand-bound book, that's fine. But one of my favourite courses, they spend all their time doing that. Or yet another typeface, great.

1:01:35you know you can use everyone can teach them how to use glyphs but they don't seem to teach on the courses and i still haven't got to the bottom of this i don't know why yeah sometimes it's because there's a kind of fear there yeah about what is it really what is it what i don't like that word i don't know it's corporate identity that's what you mean isn't it you mean shall we do a logo project no i don't mean let's do a logo project i mean let's think about all of background between something and then work out what they should stand for and then we'll do the design really do we have to do all of that it's just a bizarre conversation interesting yeah

1:02:12Claire:surely there's a massive gap there isn't that huge huge education to to fill yeah but i think it's because of the people who find themselves teaching at college are almost anti-branders Right. Yeah? Yes. Yeah, okay. I'm watching my words. Yes. Carefully. But if that comes through, then you end up with, yeah, repeated over and over. Kind of. Some of the courses are changing a little bit, but it's slow. Yeah. Quite interesting. Anyway. Yeah, interesting. You clearly need the Michael Johnson School of Brand. God. Well, I'm hoping that the books do some of that. Yes, true. Because the books are like an open source.

1:02:57Claire:Yeah. Really? Yeah. A lot of people, when I was writing my red book, Branding and Five and a Half Steps, a few people that I spoke to, especially about the first half, which is all about strategy, a few people said, you're mad. Really? Yes. What, for sharing it all? Yes. Wow, okay, interesting. This is our black box. Yeah. We protect the black box. We charge bucket loads for the black box. Don't tell other people. Please, Michael, don't put it in the book. Yes, wow. Interesting. So part of me is thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't put it in the book. Yeah. Because for 30 quid, people can buy the whole process.

1:03:32And, of course, that's not…

1:03:33Claire:Obviously, that doesn't mean to either then go out and build their own brand worlds around it, but… Yeah. So that was interesting, wasn't it? Yeah. That if you open source the entire branding process, yeah, I did have a bit of a kickback there. Interesting. I'm glad you went ahead with it anyway. Yeah, because I thought it was a book that was needed. I mean, you could read a lot of books on strategy. a lot of books on logos and symbols. And in fact, there's a spread in there where I put piles of books side by side. Yeah, yeah. There's so few books that actually bridge the gap between the two. So that's what that book is about.

1:04:06And I guess I'm still thinking, I'm writing book four at the moment, and I'm still thinking very hard about how the process is linear. It doesn't stop once the strategists have presented their 160-page PowerPoint.

1:04:21Claire:Yes. you know and then hand it to the poor designers and the designers go i don't know yeah what's this all about you know purpose mission vision purpose yada yada yada yeah how do i turn this into how do i turn this into you know it's difficult yeah yeah that's why i think we should talk about it more and write more books on it and teach it more but so the next book is a follow-up to brandy and five and a half it's kind of another branding book it's 12 years since I wrote Branding of Five Nights it doesn't feel like but yes it is I look forward to that I'm trying to simplify the process even more I'd like to tell you about it let's talk again when it's out Michael thank you so much this has been a lot of fun to record lovely to be here and I hope that that was useful it was very useful really really good thank you

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