Peter Yates, Creative Director

0:00Tessa: Welcome to The Business of Modelling, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on the modelling and fashion world. I'm Tessa Dewing, the Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year in business.

0:19Tessa: Today on The Business of Modelling, we're stepping behind the lens and into the world of visual storytelling with a guest whose creative vision has helped shape some of the most recognisable brands on the planet. Peter Yates is an award-winning creative director with a career that spans Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, ESPN, Victoria's Secret Beauty, Bloomingdale's, Kiehl's and many more. Peter, hi, welcome to the hot seat. Thank you so much. Let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? I'm from Australia, so I grew up in the Mornington Peninsula, which is just outside of Melbourne.

1:01It's a semi-rural area.

1:04Tessa: What first inspired you to pursue a career in design? Was that always your plan? I think it was really with school. I went to a fantastic school that was creatively biased, I guess. It was really about bringing out self-motivation and creativity. So we kind of identified with my teachers that I was just excelling in the graphic design sort of part. Not art, but graphic design, which is more sort of the commercial side. So I think that's where it sort of started, yeah. Were you good at school? No, I was terrible at school. I did not like school at all. Did you behave? No, I behaved. I'm just not a very good student, I guess.

1:54But like I say, I really love the art part of it. We had a great, I mean, we had a great education. And I think one of the things I thought that was interesting that I remember that learnings of financial well-being as a kid, like at about 11, learning how to take care of yourself financially, like for the future and all that business. And that sort of all played into like this sort of commercial artist route that I wanted to go in because I wasn't doing it to be like an arty painter or something. It was a direction of being commercial and going and working in advertising was the goal. Right.

2:31Tessa: OK. And did that start in Australia? Did you go to college and obviously pursued graphics and things there? Where was your first job? My first job actually was in Toronto. So after school in Australia, I went on one of these sort of exchange, it wasn't exchange, but it was a working abroad program. And so I thought, well, everyone goes to the UK. Like, let me try to, let me think about doing something different. So yeah, I landed up in Canada and just by happenstance, I took my portfolio and got a fantastic job at a fantastic advertising agency. And so I decided to stay on there. And what kind of work were you doing in Toronto?

3:11I was working at an advertising agency that specialised in concert promotions. so we ended up we were doing all the sort of advertising for the big stadium concert tours happening in the those years which was you know in the late 80s I guess it was so it would be you know stadium tours with Bowie and Madonna and Whitney Houston and Tina Turner and I got to do I loved it I was so obsessed with music and the music business then that I just got to do all the advertising for all these concerts for across Canada and then of course we went we got to go to all the concerts you know so that was fantastic to be just you know private boxing and all that business as a kid you know what I mean as a young first job yeah amazing and then how did your New

3:59Tessa: York move come because you went from Toronto to New York yeah well I had a couple of different jobs in Toronto and I moved into from concert promotion advertising work into record packaging back then. So it was the advertising and packaging for music for albums. And because I sort of went focused into music there with advertising agencies, then I moved down to New York with this background as a sort of a music packaging designer. Okay. Oh, so you were kind of designing album covers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Who for? When we were in Canada, it was a lot of these sort of compilation albums.

4:38So it'd be, you know, just like that's what we call music. Was that that line in the UK, right? So I did a lot of those. We would shoot covers using models and it would be, we'd pump them out. There was a lot. So I don't think it was, I cannot remember. Apart from Barbara Mandrell, I remember doing her, which is some country, an American country artist, was one of my first ones.

5:05When I moved down to the US, I started working on, you know, Gypsy Kings. I remember Pet Shop Boys, we were doing, we would re-sort of package the UK album material for the US. And it wasn't just the covers, it would be, there'd be all this other packaging around it. So CDs used to be these long, tall CD boxes where the CD was in. And so it was all this beautiful packaging in those times. So it was just like a mainstream, you know, I worked on Polygram and EMI and...

5:33Tessa: So whoever their artists were at that time, You were working on. And you then, when you went to New York, you stayed in music and you were design director at Guitar World. That's right. Was New York always a dream for you or did it come unexpectedly? I think it was always the dream. The goal was to end up in New York, live in New York from when I was a kid. I had this mood board as a kid growing up and like on my desk there and just at the skyline of New York and little other things, you know, music. people that I like to follow and stuff. And I think it was just one of these, it's like a vision board, right?

6:09It was like making something happen. So I knew Canada maybe wasn't, you know, the end game there. It was like a stepping to get into this sort of, expose myself into international sort of a bigger market, right? Than what we'd find in Australia. It's very, you know, separate, smaller market there. So yeah, to get to New York and just to work with the A-list was the dream to just work with the photographers and other artists and the type of work that would have so much exposure. And then, you know, as you come to find out, it's about budgets and you have bigger budgets and the reach is so wonderful.

6:46So that was why I ended up in New York. And then just back to Guitar World, that was sort of my first sort of foray into the magazine business. So I'd done the CD work, But I think that I got into guitar world, which was, it's got a real history to it. I can't even tell you. It's probably like 100 years old or something now. It's been around forever. It's still around. And it's just like this Bible that has a huge following of the people who love guitar music and they follow the artists, which are the guitar players in the bands, and they learn music from it. So it's actually this American institution.

7:28Tessa: And is it independent or which publishers? It was, it's now been sold off to someone else. It was Harris Publications was the name of it. And they had, you know, a good 50 other magazines.

7:43Tessa: Can you remember the first piece of work, you know, when you were sort of in New York that you saw and you just thought, wow, I'm really proud of that? I won an award with Guitar World basically for the best magazine design in USA. So it's basically the largest magazine design competition that there is. And it was by Society of Publication Designers as the organization. There's ASME and the Society of Publication SPDs. So as an unknown, I remember we shot, it was Smashing Pumpkins was the band. that were on the cover of it. And I just did this, you know, amazing special issue, I guess, of this magazine.

8:29And, yeah, it just won, like, this Best Magazine thing. So it took me to another level of the industry knowing who this person was because we'd have a giant, you know, the SPD would have giant galas at, you know, Cipriani, I think, or sometimes at Grand Central. There's a big event space up there. You know, it was just like to go off the stage and get your awards and just be recognized. I think that was something that made me so proud that I'm actually getting recognized for something. You know what I mean? It was pretty special. From Guitar World, I stayed there for a little while. I was there for four years, I think, and we won some other awards.

9:10I think I was approached by ESPN, which was launching a magazine. It was a new sort of lifestyle, well, sports as entertainment or sports as lifestyle magazine. And that was a good gigantic deal because it was, you know, a good 20 million they put into like launching the thing back then, which was mega budgets. And so, yeah, I went over there as art director. I think I was there a year and then they promoted me to the top, the number one design director at that magazine. And ESPN was just amazing. I had the most amazing editor in chief. Boss was fantastic. Our publisher was amazing. And they just really encouraged and wanted.

9:57I think that's why they brought me in and I brought a lot of other people in with me. They wanted to break the mould of what a magazine is and what you would expect, particularly from a sports magazine.

10:09Tessa: Right. And I knew nothing about sports. No, I was going to say, coming from music to sports, I guess they wanted that. They didn't want someone that was just doing the same as everyone else in sports. 100%. It's exactly right. And I have to tell you, I knew nothing about rock music either. so I knew now I've built a whole career on being an outsider of the topic that I'm working on and I think that's been the genius of my career though because you really can bring a different perspective different point of view and that's what I got hired for like that's my my uh the my brand really I think you know from there you then went to Condé Nast so how did you then handle the transition from a sports magazine to Condé Nast, which is obviously one of the most kind of glamorous magazine houses in the world.

10:59Yeah, right. I mean, that was the end game, right, to get into Condé Nast, because that was the real dream, right, to work at fashion brands or on fashion, you know, magazines, and the like, and Vanity Fair, all that stuff. At ESPN, they let me do what I knew how to do best. And that's just really sort of create a magazine that wasn't like anything else. We ended up winning every award for that. We won editorial excellence. We won the ASMEs for it. We won the design of best magazines, everything. So that was, again, put my recognition up there. So with ConNAS, they approached me to come over to launch another new magazine because I was then known as like the sort of relaunch guy or the launching of new...

11:45Tessa: And you knew nothing about fashion, so that's a big tick. Well, I want to think that I knew a lot about it. But come to find out, you get there and just like, wow, do I not know a lot about fashion? You know, you think you're stylish. But there's just so much to every market. There's just so much information that you don't know until you get there. And just like you're overwhelmed by it all. But, you know, this is why we've got amazing teams at all these magazines I've worked for. There were so many like it was just the A-list, you know. Our fashion director was amazing and our editor was brilliant.

12:18And so we put together these, you know, the fantastic teams.

12:22Tessa: Which magazine did you start on there? Well, that was Cargo. So it was Cargo. It was a men's, I think we called it a men's shopping magazine. It was a little bit before its time. James Truman was the editorial director overseeing the company back in those days. And he was a big fan of mine. And I think that's why I got in there, frankly. So this was the man's fashion lifestyle. So it had, you know, cars and grooming. And it was really sort of ahead of its time because it was in that period. It was sort of about the sort of I think we branded it as like the society had branded it as the metrosexual period.

13:03Right. Where men are just coming into slowly buying their own clothes and caring about grooming, caring about fitness. It was more dressing, not the fashion guy. It was the regular guy. Right. So it was everyone's husband, you know what I mean? And everyone's boyfriend. It was just those guys were just starting to get fit and get into their own, you know, into their own self in that time. You know, it's a whole different group of market they were trying to tap into.

13:32Tessa: Yeah. And it was before really internet shopping. It was the early days of internet shopping. So we know that the guys weren't actually there doing the shopping online as much. I mean, now everybody does everything, right? So I think it was a huge, Cargo was like a huge launch. There was another 20 million at least on that one to launch it. We only lasted, I think it lasted two years because it just was a little bit before its time. If it had been maybe two years later, it would have just hit the wave perfectly. But with these kind of budgets, Shukant and what we know about finance is everything with all of the creative work that we work on.

14:14It's such a main factor that you can't just carry on until wait for the market to catch up. You've got to hit the wave and go with it and get all the amazing advertisers and make everyone happy from the moment it launches off, right? They launched Men's Vogue right next to us as well, which is Condé 2. So we had multiple magazines all launching for this new men's market. Yeah, so there's a lot of competition within Condé. For like the best models, the best photographers, we're working all games. You'd think it wouldn't work that way. But at that point, there was just, Condé, we owned everything, right?

14:51We just owned all the biggest titles. So you were all just like monsters trying to like make the most amazing magazines.

15:01Tessa: And then you went from there to Hearst, which is obviously rival really of Condé Nast. How did that happen? You went there as executive creative director of international branding, which is a massive title. That's right. Yeah. So what happened after Cargo is I actually launched my own design company, my own studio. I had a space down in Soho for a number of years, just named after me, Peter Yates Design. and during that time I'd worked with a huge array of different brands and I became so specialized in understanding and launching magazines and doing advertising for such an array of different types of brands, you know, American Express, Bloomingdale's, Victoria's Secret, and Ritz Carlton, like hotel groups, and we covered like wedding and travel and resort and finance.

15:59And running that business or that design show got me really specialized in understanding what brands were about and how every brand was different, how they talked to their audience, who their audience was. So it gave me this great background of just understanding different brands, right, which wasn't really, and the whole business side of it. And it wasn't really a typical experience or typical volume of knowledge, for lack of a better word, of a graphic designer or of an art director, right? So it made me really different. So why I got asked into Hearst was because they had a department at International which oversaw all the brands.

16:37So there was, you know, there was a good, you know, maybe 10 different brands with Cosmo Powell and Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, all the Cosmo Girl, Car and Driver, you know, so many different brands. And International.

16:55Tessa: 280 magazines, I think. Yeah, 200 different magazine in different countries, right? I think there was maybe, I can't remember how many brands totaled, maybe 14 different brands, but they had 200 editions of them all around the world. And so the role at Hearst was directing creative for all the different brands from my office on the 37th floor at the Hearst Tower, looking out over the beautiful Manhattan skyline. But really every day talking to every country, and I think it was maybe 64 different countries we dealt with, where every day I would get the covers from all the different countries and we would sort of give them our feedback about or train them in the message of what this brand meant.

17:43And so that goes back to the brand work that I'd done. I had to define what is Harper's Bazaar? What is Esquire? We have it in the U.S., but what does it mean in every different country? Just being able to really differentiate between what that same brand is in all the different countries is fascinating.

18:04Tessa: Yeah, absolutely. To just balance that, you know, make sure it's got local relevance in wherever it's being sold. How do you do that? We ended up making brand books and style guidelines for each of the brands because they just didn't exist, right? We had what the U.S. one did, and I did not have any purview over the American brands. I did the rest of the world. But I spoke with and was friends with all the American editions, so I'd go and see them all the time, and we'd talk about what are they doing with their magazines and with editors and creative directors. Because it all had to align, I guess, in every country.

18:41Well, yeah, they did what they wanted in the U.S. for their market. But my job was to align the rest of the world with what's going to work in their market, which wasn't necessarily the same. And it was quite different in some aspects.

18:58Tessa: Yeah, with the cultural differences and things. Yeah, and just what people were, what type of advertising it was. So say for Cosmopolitan would be completely different in America than it is in the UK, very different in France, very different in Germany, and that's just Europe. But then you go over to Asia and like Hong Kong, Cosmo is a beauty Bible. It's literally a telephone book at the time. It would be two editions that come out every two weeks with 400 pages each. So that's 800 pages every two weeks of Cosmo, Cosmo Beauty in Hong Kong because they had, it was so popular with the advertising and the readerships and beauty was everything for what Cosmo was in that country.

19:42Tessa: So it was much more beauty heavy in that country than it maybe was in Germany or something. Exactly. And I mean, American one was more about sex and relationships, and that didn't sell or wasn't appropriate in a lot of the other countries. And we would have it in Arab countries. We would just have our meetings with the owners of the titles or the partners of our titles in the different countries and really work out what was going to work for them, what the DNA was. We would train. I would have boot camps. I'd bring together like 30 different countries, and we'd host them in different parts of the world where I'd bring in all the art directors.

20:20And we would have these boot camps where we'd really review what everybody's doing and share best practices and what is a Hupp's Bizarre cover? What is the woman? Who are we talking to for her? Same with Esquire. We would have the same sort of training sessions. I think I called them, we, as a joke, we would call them brand washing. So it's just like so that everyone in the different countries and the different languages, because all are different languages, and I'm not reading all the stuff, but I'm like just in charge of what the creative looks like. So what does the model look like in all the shoots?

20:54What's the Cosmo model? What is the, for the fashion shoots? What does the Harper's Bazaar model look like? What does the guy look like in the Esquire photo shoots for the men's fashion in their market? And how does that all, it has to relate so that to each other across the globe. So that when you're going through the airport, for instance, in every country, you know this iconic. Yeah, you know, you've got to keep the iconic nature of each of the brands.

21:21Tessa: That sounds mind-blowing, Peter. It's fascinating. I loved it. It's a tough task to keep on top of, you know, that many magazines in that many countries. Yeah. So you produced a style guide in the end, did you, for each country, for each? Yeah. Yeah, it was sort of best practices and style guides. And we wouldn't necessarily hold anyone to it exactly, but it was just like a dictionary in a sense, right? You can, a guide and, you know, a sense in guiding. New people coming in and things, I guess it's helpful to have something like that. And it'd be very visual about the topography and the type of transition that would go, how you transition from one story to the next story and the flow of the magazine, right?

22:03I remember going to Australia, which is my home country, and working with the editor of Hopp is Bizarre there. We were sort of relaunching it and just like, okay, well, we really prefer that, you know, the sequence of the type of stories goes like this rather than like this. and we prefer these. We'd have to be sensitive with the way we would speak to everybody so that it's relevant in their market and they're part of the conversation. But yeah, it was a fascinating time. It's really about people management too. It's all about personalities because your personality when you're creative is creating what the product is, right?

22:45So to manage all those personalities around the world, it was like this is what our editor in this country in Asia is really passionate about for the type of fashion brands that they are bringing to the market there that they can get exclusively in Bangkok or in Singapore or Hong Kong or Tokyo. We launched the bazaar in Tokyo in my run there. yeah it was just really important just to to have these personal relationships with all the different people in the different countries and understand what their goals were, what the owner of the companies were, what the ad sales were, it's really like it's just, it's as a creative director it's not really about the creative direction solely it's about it's so much more you know it's a wide palette that we cover

23:44Tessa: what do you think would have been the common thread in your work across all of those different magazines and yeah like team building and people management obviously i'd say is one of those um that you've just talked about what else do you think yeah i think you're so right team building because a team makes everything right like and i really believed and one of my ESPN boss said this, she's like, you are the specialist in what you do. I don't want to tell you how to do something. And I have an opinion about something, but that's my opinion, but you're the specialist. You've had the whole career.

24:18So that works for every makeup artist, every stylist, every art director, every, you know, word guy or girl person. They have to be given the ability to use their judgment as the expert in that team. And so our role as a creative director, executive creative director type, is to sort of, and it's been my passion, is just being that team builder, having great connections, knowing what photographers you love working with, knowing what, you know, well, I would say knowing what models you want to work with or what the look of the model is that you want to work with, and being able to pull on those and nurture them, really.

25:06You know what I mean? It's just about nurturing and growing teams so that we're all successful.

25:10Tessa: Can you share a campaign or magazine redesign that you're especially proud of and walk us through the creative process? I've launched so many magazines and relaunched so many magazines or reinvented so many brands. I think one fantastic one was working with Tatla Asia, which was as my own design under the Peter Yates Design Company, not under Hearst or another company. Tatler is in UK, but there's also this larger group of magazines for Tatler Asia and their gigantic circulation, beautiful, thick publication. So I was invited to help them relaunch that magazine in all the different countries. I think there was maybe 12 different countries in Asia for that.

25:59So that one, they flew me out a couple of times. They were based in Hong Kong. And we'd present the look of the redesign for the magazine. But first off, which I thought was so smart on the companies bringing me out there, was we want to take you around and meet everybody first, as in go to a couple of different countries, meet the teams, and really identify who the market is, right? So whenever I'm designing a magazine, we work out who are we speaking to, and that was part of the DNA with her too. She's like, who is that woman that's buying Harper's Bazaar? Who's buying Tatler? And so really pinpointing who that person was and then building on what is her lifestyle, if it's for a woman, right?

26:48What is her lifestyle? What is she interested in? What kind of demographic? What kind of budget is she? Because it's all about spending money with advertising, right? So we want to know what she's spending her money on. Is she into the beauty and the fashion?

27:02So with Tatler, then after we got all that information, I'd present like this is who I think we're aiming towards. So now let's start with creative direction of the magazine and the type of photography and how we're going to shoot fashion in that country or food or car, whatever it is that is part of the magazine. So I think Tatlow is very proud of. And then with Hearst, there was another one we were invited to launch a domestic magazine in USA called Cosmo for Latinas, which was under our international brand title. and that one was really interesting because it was different from Cosmo USA in that it was talking to Latina market.

27:49It was in English, written in English, but it was for Latina market, which is a massive market here. And so we wanted to, first off again, we identified who that reader is and fascinating again, what is the point of difference between a Cosmo magazine reader and a Latina cosmo reader. How is that woman different? And she's very different, right? She's much more family-centric, I guess. Orientated, yeah. Yeah, oriented within the family, a little bit more conservative, particularly with relationships, right? They're a more conservative market in a sense. But she's vivacious, she's colorful, she's energetic, a little different.

28:36So once we know who that person is, then we create content and a look around what that is. And our photo shoots will be different and our type of models are different, you know. So I think that one launched really fantastically. It did really well. And so I was really proud of that, too. There's just been so many. It's endless.

28:55Tessa: And have you had any Devil Wears Prada experiences? Oh, my God. Is it like Devil Wears Prada? I was reading, I think I was reading the book right when I got offered the job to go to Condé Nast. Were you? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to like... Who was editor of Vogue when you went to Condé Nast? It was always been Anna. Anna Wintour was the editor-in-chief of Vogue. I think what was funny with reading that book, it was before the movie, right? It was just like, oh, and the stories within the building was just like, you can't be in the elevator with Anna and you've got to literally, she comes in, you've got to step out of the elevator and I'd come in at a level where I was invited to be in at that level at sort of like a higher level so I was so confident and so just part of sort of the feel of the management team right so I would just be in the elevator with Anna because like hi Anna like hi James Trubon oh James hi Anna like because I was just now I had arrived and And from this little kid from, you know, a little farm in Australia, to be just so confident because of the, you know, hard work that you've done to get there was just sort of, it's just like a wonderful, you know, just a wonderful feeling.

30:13And then like trying to make that message of inclusion and as part of my team, so that that was our sort of corporate language within that company. Right.

30:22Tessa: So she didn't have a hissy fit and push you out.

30:34Tessa: Models and creatives often work together but from opposite ends of the process. In your experience, what makes a model stand out? Well, I think, again, going back into being a team player, because it's all about, you know, you're part of a team. Model is a part of the team. So she's got to come in there with the confidence and the energy and the connectability, if that's even a word, you know, connect, you know, eye contact and all that business with the camera. A model needs to be able to sort of deal with the feedback, right, as well. Say she's on set, right, she's got to be able to give, I give direction, a photographer gives direction, we have other people around, you know, with the voices, which is the, with which, you know, makeup, hair, whatever, these people who are part of this community and have got such great experience working on the photo shoots.

31:22So I think the model needs to sort of be confident enough to just understand that she's there doing a job. And I think every country to maybe, you know, some beliefs, models are just fantastic people. They're smart. They're not obnoxious. They come in wanting to work. They want to, you know, do a great job. They want to please people. it's great that we you know when we we're working with them that this got it's a it's a two-way street right of being able to deliver the product yeah absolutely is often her or the product is often not her but she is holding or being living breathing the product if you know what i mean

32:03Tessa: it's like fashion or jewelry what role does collaboration with you know photographers stylists writers models play in your process i mean i guess there are times when your vision hasn't been the same as other people's. How do you navigate that? Yeah, it's sensitively, I guess, because you don't like to come up against, you know, barriers of people's opinions about how they think something should be versus how you think something should be. So, you know, it goes back to being like a great, you know, great part of a team. Familiarity with people on your team is fantastic. so that you know who the hair person does know the model from working from in the industry and all that business.

32:52So those connections help make a smoother set. But yeah, we do come into those instances where photographers doing their creative vision. We always mood board everything out and discuss what the shoots are and try to explain what the brand is with the photographers. and same with the model, so she knows who she's talking or acting for. It's really my role is sort of just to sort of guide, and I do it, you know, you can do it abruptly, but it's just going to shut the shoot down, right? And everyone's going to get a hissy fit and, like, leave. And we almost get there a lot of times, but luckily we don't because of, you know, being able to talk smoothly around some things.

33:43but yeah you get there in the end it's just you know some finessing egos and making people understand why we're doing this we're not you know this is not art for the sake of art this is a commercial venture we're all there to well A we're being paid so that should be one thing but we're there to create a product as an end result for a magazine or a client or an advertiser. So we've got to put the big picture into...

34:18Tessa: Sometimes that might not be what you personally would do, but that's what's going to work for the brief, for the brand. And all through, like my creator, I've always said, this is not about me, this is not about you. Because every designer, everybody on our team is like, well, I think it should be like this. It's like, well, it's not about your personal taste. It's understanding what the end result is meant to be. And I think that's always my role on shoots, for instance, that it's going to be this way because this is where we need it to be. And I have to have the confidence and experience to know that this is going to be the correct way to do it, even though it could be beautifully done 50 ,000 different ways.

35:04Tessa: you've worked with brands from harper's bazaar to ritz carlton what makes a brand timeless in your view keeping integrity if every brand has to keep their integrity just creating quality you know what i mean it's just we're there to produce something that is beautiful that people want that people want to be that they want to have they want to look like so we're going to do it at and I'm really proud this is what I've been doing and what my magazine sort of business does. It's like we want to produce something that is so beautiful that you want to attain that, you know, in whatever it is. You know what I mean?

35:43It could be a car, a piece of jewellery. You want to produce something that just looks stunning that would be a piece of art on your wall, but we know it's also selling. It's selling a message or a vision or a brand.

35:56Tessa: And what do you think emerging creatives might misunderstand about the fashion and publishing industries? I don't know, misunderstand, but I guess it is just having an understanding that it's a business. It's a money business in a sense. So, you know, budgets are super important and just keeping within budgets just to keep, you know, the message focused on what you're working, whatever the product is you're working on. just to keep the messages succinct. And it's, you know, you try to be iconic with everything you do so that you can't be confused with a competitor or anything else.

36:42Tessa: You've obviously seen the rise in digital through your career. Tell me how that's affected publishing, magazine publishing. And then obviously we're now looking at AI coming in as a sort of industry disruptor. Talk to me about your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, I don't think AI has really affected us so much, the magazine business so much yet. It's definitely coming and coming fast. I think what we can't forget is that humans and we, you know, we as people, we create an idea and have a vision and have a dream. We dream up these fantasies of what a product or a brand or a look or a piece of clothing can look like.

37:31So I just don't think we'll get away. Maybe for a mass, you know, basic something, the AI will be like, this is the way to make a shoe or something or other, maybe. A sports shoe or something or other. But, well, it'll affect everything, of course. But I just don't think we can forget how important the human element and the sense of dream and the ability to dream up creative visions, that can't be forgotten. And we're going to be very lost if we don't have that because dreaming is everything, right? It's this evolution of self and imagination.

38:06Tessa: And what about print versus digital? Do you think digital has sort of taken over? Will it completely take over? Will we always be able to have a magazine that we can pick up? I like to think that print will always have a beautiful, important space in our human existence, right? Because it is something physical we can pick up and hold and spend more time with. And I think that's what's beautiful about print at the moment, that life is, you know, scroll, scroll, scroll. Nothing is more than two seconds, right? Or a fraction of a quarter of a second, right, that we're looking at for visuals. But print, you have it there and you can go back to it again.

38:46You get to sort of decompress by consuming it, by looking at it and by, you know, reading and dreaming through it. So I just don't think it's I don't think it'll ever go away. It's just going to be more important for the important things of our life. It's the way you put a photo up of a in a frame of your your baby on the wall. I mean, you can put it on your phone and look at your phone when you pick it up. But just to have it in the room just makes you feel better. You're sort of feeling it. It's something bigger, I think, because it's really printed there and it sits there.

39:21Tessa: Has the distribution changed between print and digital like now? Has there been a lull? Because I guess to start with, all of a sudden you did get a decrease in print and an uptake in digital subscriptions. Has that kind of leveled off? Yeah, I don't know where the leveling off or where anything ever levels at the stock market. It just changes all the time, right? But, I mean, obviously it took a big hit that the readership went, the physical readership of magazines went over to digital, right? With the magazines, I think it's become more about a higher-end product now, too. So it's not really the throwaway things that they used to be with, like, the TV, those kind of things, the celebrities.

40:01Tessa: Take a break and those kind of things. But I think it's the more special, specialized, high-end, dream-worthy. Oh, they're all like little coffee table books, really, because they're beautiful, aren't they? They are. But magazines have become the new coffee table book, really. I think that is right, because you want to keep them. They produce at such a high standard. And I think it's just going to be important for us to fight this battle of understanding that they have a real value to produce real photo shoots, like I say, with real models, with their amazing makeup artists, with beautiful hair teams and manicurists, everybody.

40:38that you're producing something so valuable to just keep and look at that AI is just not going to be able to do that for a really long time. Or even if it is, it's just still not real.

40:55Tessa: What is PTA Design doing now, working on now? I'm really lucky. We've got a wonderful portfolio of clients. JCK is one of my largest and most fun clients that we work with. JCK is the world's largest jewelry trade organization. We create a magazine for them which is oversized, and it's just filled with millions and millions of dollars worth of jewelry that we shoot. We'll have security guards at our shoots, at our fashion shoots, where we work with models, and we do amazing work for them with still-life photography as well. And it's just fascinating just to have the security guards and the craziness that goes around these kind of shoots.

41:37And then JCK is like known really for this massive takeover in Las Vegas. We do a trade show, or they do the trade show, and it's at one of the largest casino and convention centers there where it's like football field after football field full of jewelry. Like the designers and the jewelry designers and the buyers. It's an international convention, and it's just booths full of the most glamorous products. And everything from the raw jewelry, the raw stones, precious stones, to the finished product. So it's all the buyers from around the world come in to Vegas and take over there. And then we even create a newspaper, a daily newspaper that we design for them from Vegas that goes out every night during the spectacular of this Las Vegas event.

42:34And then I've sort of become known for our high-end jewelry design. So we have another client which is called Gem and Jewel. And so we produce another magazine for them where we shoot a lot of material. And these ones are in conjunction with Condé Nast as well. But my studio is the creative force behind it all. I have a wonderful team we work with. We've just completed, actually, some other magazines in conjunction with Condé Nast as well, or the parent company of Condé Nast, I should rather say, which was a home interiors magazine. We work with Paramount CBS on their TV network programming work with all the big CBS Paramount stars for that one.

43:16We do a lot of, actually, integrated marketing programs for hotels, airlines, wineries in France and in Italy. We have so much great stuff. I'm so proud that my company does this. We've rebranded a media company with multiple radio stations that will rebrand them and work with their digital platforms. We've just branded, actually, this super posh beach club and restaurant in the Cayman Islands. And then they actually have an umbrella fashion brand, all Italian-made fashion label, under their parent company. So we've worked with those guys as well, branding that. And we've even created, you know, everything from wine labels, champagne labels.

43:59But really my focus is and my true love is the magazine design world and producing these. You know, as we said earlier, like the coffee table, you know, the quality is just like a coffee table book of the magazines and print work that we produce.

44:13Tessa: So when you're booking models for jewellery brands, is there anything that you specifically look for or think of? you know do they have to have nice hands is there a certain sort of jawline strong jawline anything like that yeah well we because with jck for instance we always have a fashion of a model face on the cover right so we've got eye connection so there's this beautiful connection and she's she's going to be probably from the sort of waist up is our crop right so we do mood boards and we decide ahead of time what kind of look we're going for this season or with this particular story, you know, so whether that's just generic stuff like being blonde or African-American.

44:51You know, we edit down. I work with a fantastic photo producer who casts the models and gives me the short list, and we agree as a team on who it is we're going to work with. You know, when they come in, and they're wonderful, of course, and they've got, you know, they've all got, they're, we're on set. There is this challenge, or no, it's not just a challenge, it's just like a beauty model is a beauty model and a parts model is a parts model. So we've done it before where, and so going back to the, if it's a beauty model and she's got, you know, she's got her hair, makeup done, she's looking great on set.

45:26And then we have to have, you know, rings and bangles and things on her hands and arms. So because of the close crop, our formula for that title, the hands are up sort of by the face a lot in these poses, you know, around like the face, right just because we want to get the jewelry up but you know the the hands might not be which is quite common the hands might not be perfection hands or the sizing isn't as elegant as how the faces right so we do kind of have we do sort of tricks a little bit where we'll intertwine if the hands aren't spectacular we might put the hands you know poses where it's like sort of partially covered with her hair, you know what I mean?

46:08Like have loose hair down, and so she's playing, hiding or camouflaging her hands a little bit. But in other instances, we will do a parts model, which will be the whole full, I mean, a parts model is a full body model for us where we will shoot a full beautiful body, but we may not show the face, even though, I mean, all these models are beautiful, right?

46:28Tessa: Yeah. So it's not like, but yeah, particularly the body might be much more toned or the hands might be just more precious and they work really well with less veins. You can have thin skin. Yeah, but it's a real specialism, being a hand model. Yeah, because you can be thin-skinned or whatnot with a regular face and body parts model, for instance.

46:53Tessa: Any names of models that you've worked with over your years? I've been lucky enough to work with, or be in the room with a lot of fantastic models. Sometimes I'm producing shoes. sometimes I'm just there as the corporate director of a shoot that another country might be producing, but we're helping produce them in L.A. So, you know, one day we shot in L.A. with Cindy Crawford one time and she was just absolutely lovely. And she just drives herself up in her own car because she lives locally. And she's was, you know, Cindy's been around. She's a pro, right? But, you know, she just like is like sort of mum like on set, you know, because she's been, She's more experienced than literally every photographer, every hair person.

47:36She knows everything. But she's just so lovely and cool and just effortless. So friendly. I mean, all these models, you want to just go and hang out with them just because they're just regular people. They just show up and do their job.

47:49Tessa: And your home is now New York. You met your husband here. Yep, that's right. I've 25 years with my partner, Shulk. and yeah I think I've been I've probably been in New York twice as long as I've been in Australia growing up but I go back all the time my mum's like there I love my mum so much we were just there last month visiting her and my family and stuff so it's you know I love I just love travelling around you know travel and people and experiencing things and so I think that was the reason why I came over to the United States and why I moved to London at one point and Toronto too. It's just like this love of travel, working with amazing, you know, the A-list of talented professionals and having such a, you know, gigantic market to share your work with.

48:45I mean, it's pretty special.

48:48Tessa: Yeah. And finally, if you could go back to the beginning of your career and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? I think it's really just about keeping the dream, keeping a focus on what you want to do. I mean, you want to learn who you are and experience, you know, life. I work so hard focusing on a career and friendships and a sense of home and place and community. So I think it's just really just, you know, defining what and learning what it is you want to do in life and just following that trail and keep growing and learning and working really hard and you'll get there.

49:39Tessa: Thank you very much, Peter. It's been really lovely speaking to you. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful being here. What a fascinating journey through the creative industries. If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to follow, subscribe and leave a review. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Business of Modelling. Until then, I'm Tessa Dewing. Thank you for listening.