Nikita Prokhorov and the importance of self initiated design projects

Our very good friend Nikita Prokhorov stops back by to chat with us about all things design.

On the show, we discuss Nikita's "36 Days of Type" entries, the importance of doing self initiated projects and sharing (or not sharing) sketches with clients. We also get a peek into Kirk's 30 Day's of Type project.

See Nikita's work here: https://www.nikitaprokhorov.com/

Learn more about 36 Days of Type here: https://www.36daysoftype.com/2023-edition/

Transcript

Nikita Prokhorov and the importance of self initiated design projects

[00:00:00] 

kirk: Today we have a very guest, again a very guest. A very guest today, 

andy: a hairy guest. A very hairy 

kirk: guest. He's a very hairy guest. We've had him on before. This is Nikita Pro. For those who haven't, Heard Nikita's story, go back and listen, but here's a recap. Nikk was from Russia. He came over here when he was very young.

kirk: He started playing tennis and his grandfather was an architect. He then became very intrigued by creating and making things, and also became intrigued with type and typography and design, which he then learned and growed into, and he really got into ambi. Grahams was this thing that can be as reflective value when you view it, as far as lettering goes.

kirk: You can look at it upside down and forwards backwards. So there's some type of way where it reads two words, sometimes three words. And nikita's very good at that. Nikita also started his company Laser Originals. Not laser originals, but laser originals. Laser cut. Laser 

andy: [00:01:00] originals. 

kirk: Laser cut originals, laser originals.com.

kirk: You can go on there and buy these badass, awesome pieces of work that Nikita has put together with a 3D printer, 3D cutter, however in the fuck he does it. But they're these beautiful lamps, pin holders, ornaments, all kinds of very cool, everything designed neat, beautiful woodwork stuff that he's done. So that has a recap of Nikita Proov from its first podcast and his life in general.

kirk: So thank you Nikita again for coming on. How you doing, man? 

nikita: Ah, I'm doing good. Thank you for that super Bridge intro. I wish I wish I had that. I knew you when I was reading the Count Monte Christo in Russian because it was two volumes, a thousand columns. Oh, no. And you could have probably summed it up in one paragraph.

nikita: Thank you for the very short, very succinct and very well rounded introduction. That was great. Oh, you're welcome. That was 

kirk: more of a recap slash introduction because you've already been on and we don't need to rehash your history and [00:02:00] everything else, but I still really, yeah, I still really love the idea of your grandpa as an architect and seeing his stuff Yeah.

kirk: And doing things. But anywho, so Nikita is world renowned in his own mind, but Nikita, Andy and I are on a, we're on a text thread, so if something goes off tangent and we start talking about things that don't make sense, it makes sense to us and just. Just follow along. But Andy and I had the idea of bringing Nikita back on because we are always intrigued by the stuff that he just puts out.

kirk: Like it's, our text thread is like literally full of award-winning work. And recently with a 36 days of type Nikita's been, and I've been doing it too, but he's really been all in on everything as far as from A to Z and zero to nine. He's got it all figured out and put in just really great, and I know that [00:03:00] Andy was curious about this too, as far as self starting and things of that nature.

kirk: So Andy, if you want to pose, I wanted 

andy: to yeah. I wanted to pick your brain about, so first of all, I guess broadly, how, why do you do self-initiated projects? 

nikita: A couple answers to that. The first answer is, I don't have kids and a wife to take care of. So I think that gives me a lot of free time.

nikita: And also being a freelancer, not having a full-time job right now, that's another source of free time. So that's the first part of the answer. Uhhuh sarcastic slash humorous one the more serious answer, I guess the more fun answer is, all the work that we do, not all of it is glamorous.

nikita: And underneath the both of you dudes, you know that sometimes we do work. It doesn't go in the portfolio work that pays the bills, but it could be work. We may not necessarily like, or it could be good work. It's just [00:04:00] not work. That's up to our own standards and sometimes we get this void where, if we're doing a few projects in a row that are not, As glamorous that are just building.

nikita: You wanna do something that's a little bit more unique, something that's more creative, something that doesn't necessarily have the restrictions of a brief or something that has a very loose brief and also doesn't have the, the if you don't get this done, you're gonna lose your. You're gonna lose your voice in the design community.

nikita: You're gonna lose your credibility as a designer. You're gonna lose a client, so you don't have those handcuffs on you either. So it's basically just a way to get all your creative ideas out on paper while having just a hinge, just a iotta smidge of a brief. And in this case 36 exhibit type.

nikita: There's very specific and very broad brief where. I'll sum it up. I'll try to do as good a job as Kirk did about summarizing my whole life story and say this, in 36 days you get to design 26 letters, uppercase of [00:05:00] lowercase and 10 numerals. That's the whole brief. Wow. Now whether you want to do this and follow along and post exactly the time that they specify, because they're located, the couple that started this project worldwide has been around, I think for 10 years now.

nikita: They're located in Spain, so their posting time is usually on Spanish time, which is, six six hours ahead of of me. I'm on the East coast and yeah. Andy, you're on the East coast as well. We're in the better coast in Kirk. You're all the way on the West coast over there you're, you got the tail end of the deal, but you can follow the guidelines strictly or you can do anything you want.

nikita: And I've seen people do work, create letters out of wood, create letters and animation progress. Make them out of. Some, I think I've seen someone writing letters in the air and like a high speed camera set a shutter speed. Then after they turn the shutter speed off, you see the letters. So I've seen some absolutely ridiculous out of this world work, and [00:06:00] people have, they either have the time, their skillset set, or both do something really unusual.

nikita: And that's what kind of drew me into this project because I wanted to. Give myself the 36 days and actually get it done because we all started work before and never finished it. Especially self-initiated projects. I'm sure we have a whole stack of the lying around, oh, 

andy: I have a waste land wasteland of self-initiated projects that just never saw the light of day.

andy: I love that. And I love, I think that is a key to a self. And that's probably why a lot of my stuff didn't come into fruition because you have a framework that you're plugging into and that you have a bit of a guide, like you said, it's just enough of a format and a guide, guide rails to follow. And but beyond that, it's not too restrictive, so you don't feel like you can't infuse creativity into it. And spoiler alert, [00:07:00] the creativity that you infused into your 36 days of type we'll get to Kirks, but yours was creating metal logos, metal music that is logos of jazz musicians.

kirk: So you think of like Aaron Maiden, Metallica, Metall, 

andy: like just the most badass slayer. Yeah, applying that style 

andy: to jazz 

kirk: musicians, which amazing. It's beautiful. It's a, yep it's such a nice juxtaposition in style. It's so fun. It's really great. And it's like some of these, I just really wish they were shirts and like illustrations of the actual artists or something because they're so cool.

kirk: But. 

andy: I wanna see album art next. That's the next thing, like some kind of ridiculous, just airbrushed [00:08:00] something of these of famous jazz albums, but jazz metal. 

nikita: Andy 36, there's a type for 2024 is gonna be, it's a little under, under a year from now, so you're more than welcome to take that.

nikita: Start with this. That's all yours. Start now. Where did 

andy: the whole metal jazz musician Yeah. Idea come from? 

nikita: It's actually funny you asked that because I had an answer prepared for that, just in case you asked that question. It all goes back to actually that shameless plug, the lettering I did for the most recent Thor movie, oh, yeah. Tail the, and credits. And the way that's transpired is a company reached out to me, And they asked me, Hey, we found your work. I don't remember if it was Bhan or Instagram, and we're wondering, do, can you do any metal style, like seventies, eighties lettering? And I said gimme a couple hours and I'll have some samples for you.

nikita: And I had no samples at [00:09:00] all. So after I sent the email, I started thinking I had the usual tornado to the, oh shit. Oh shit, what do I do? How do I do this? How do I put this together so it's presentable? And I was listening to some jazz at the time, but I thought to myself why don't I take Billy Holiday and Art Taum and Izzy Gillespie and Nina Simone and make their names into metal logos.

nikita: So I took maybe four or five hours, and I took six and six excuse me, six jazz musicians to start with, and then created some metal logos and I sent it to them and they liked it enough to bring me on board and bring me to a whole Thor project. So that's how that's awesome. That's where that ended.

nikita: You know that graphic designers, creative people, they never do anything last minute. They always plan for something far in advance. And this is also a very sarcastic statement for those of you who don't know creative people. And literally the morning of when 36 [00:10:00] 80 type kicked off, I was racking my brain thinking and I gave myself like an hour to come up with an idea.

nikita: And I said to myself, I don't come up with an hour. I'm not doing it this year. And I was browsing my own Instagram, looking for, looking for a little speck of an idea that I could latch onto to, and blow out into 36 days. And I saw that post and it just click right away. And I thought to myself, nice.

nikita: Okay let me do that. And that's how that idea came about. That's awesome. Very 

kirk: cool. Yeah. I think it's, you glossed over the main cool part of that entire sentence was, When I did the lettering for the end of Thor Love and Thunder. So for those who don't know, there's stuff that he's done behind the scenes and one of those things that he did behind the scenes that came to fruition.

kirk: And two, the big screen was some Incr titles and Thor Love and Thunder. You can see there's a bunch of hand done or very different, differently handled type treatments for the people's [00:11:00] characters at the end. And Nikita did two of those. And although he submitted others, those were the two that were chosen.

kirk: And there's, it is just super cool. Like you have a entitle credit to your name. You can go on a resume and just. Be proud of that, but that's, 

nikita: it's perfect. It's pretty awesome. I'm super happy about that and yeah, absolutely proud. My only regret is that they didn't ask me to do the actual title of the movie, because that would've been just a pinnacle.

nikita: I would've just walked, I would've retired at 

andy: that point. Just mic drop. Yeah, I was, 

nikita: yeah. I would've been the ultimate designer. Mic drop. Yeah. Done. 

kirk: I was thinking about that. And they have the Super Bowl title, I'm sure. Super Bowl title, super Bowl logo and stuff done already. But I would just love one year to be able to do like an n b All Star game where Super Bowl low or some type of like nice movie credit or something that's like globally done.

kirk: And you came very close. You had it actually in [00:12:00] the film. So that's next phase, next step. The other thing you can start doing is just, is also side projects. To go along with 36 days of time. Just make up your own, make up your own titles for stuff and. And say here's a new title for this movie.

kirk: And see how many people will be like, oh wow, that's great. And then it gains traction. And then next thing you're designing titles for stuff. Cause that's how easy it is. How simple it works. 

nikita: Yeah. That's how simple. Oh, that's how easy. It's okay. That's good to know. I'm gonna, I think what I'm going to do, I'm gonna, I really like the movie Blade and I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try to design a few different random logos for the New Blade movie.

nikita: Put 'em online and just Steve, see what happens. I'll give it a shot. You never know. That's a really good idea. You should try that. Thanks Sabrina. Thank you for that idea, Kirk. That's fantastic. I love it. Take like 

kirk: the next five minutes and do that. So 

nikita: he's being sick. You sound like a creative director.

kirk: I come back to a hundred sketches in five minutes, right? It's [00:13:00] hey, so we have a logo that's due today. What do you mean due today? It's two o'clock. Yeah, it's due by five. You need to work on stuff. I've actually had that happen when I was working at a place where it was called Pure Red Creative, and they did a lot of work for Safeway, Vaughns Albertsons, which is a big, very big chain here in, on the West Coast.

kirk: And they came to us and said, yeah, we need logos for this. Can you give us some options? So you had a, and this was at five? At five o'clock and it was at two o'clock at that point. And that always happened. And when Nikita mentioned the procrastination and the planning ahead that creatives do, it's it sucks, but we almost thrive on that idea of being under pressure.

kirk: Yeah. It forces our brains to, to jump into gear. Oh yeah. So you may think that we're procrastinating, but [00:14:00] sometimes it requires that. That like sense of urgency to create the spark, to force us to get things going. But yeah. Yeah, I think it's 

nikita: absolutely true. One of my, when I went to grad school, one of my first teachers whom I butted heads with constantly for the first nine weeks of a 10 week semester, because she was very tough, very challenging.

nikita: She did not got corner, she did not sugarcoat anything and she was probably one of the hardest, not the hardest teachers I've had in grad school. And she said I think this is a direct quote. She said when I've handed in a few projects and really knocked them out of the ballpark last minute, at the wee hour of the morning and were out of this world, she'd say, I just need to light a fire under your ass and let you design.

nikita: And that was such a great quote because that's, that, that kind of turned the light on for me. It's like that eureka moment I realized. You know what? I work so well under pressure, maybe I should do it all the time. I, of course, I didn't do it all the time. I still did work ahead of time, but, [00:15:00] She actually summarized my, the first, my characteristics as a design student designer at that point, because I work, I do my best work when I'm under pressure, whether it's, like you mentioned Kirk Creative director comes to you and says, we need a logo in three hours.

nikita: Or you procrastinate a project for two weeks is due, three days from that, and you have nothing, and you start burning them in 9 0 1 and you realize, oh, this is fantastic. I'm actually getting to where I'm supposed to be. So I think you're right in a perverse way, we as creatives would thrive on deadlines and sometimes stress and.

nikita: What comes along with it and how we can get our creative thoughts flowing. Yeah, I think 

andy: that's just real quick. It's on one hand I think it's yes. I think like procrastinating and then like cr crunching, crunch time, that's when the genius strikes. On the other hand, I've found more often than not, it's when I spend.

andy: A lot of time on something and then I [00:16:00] eventually it feels like it's ne never gonna happen that, that like idea that I really like and I spend maybe like another day on it. And that's when it happens. And and I don't know, it's, I get worried when I think about something not having enough time to marinate and mature.

andy: Yeah. And what could have been, because I look at all the projects that I have done where I was like, gosh, if we didn't have that extra couple days or that extra week to really sit with the feedback and come up with that solution. You know what? We would've, I don't know, just yeah.

kirk: Yeah. No, that, that's, it's, that's exactly it. It's like a nice, it's a nice combination of the two, and I think that when people here are talking about procrastinating and doing stuff last minute designers need [00:17:00] parameters, but you need to allow them to be creative within those parameters. And so there's like always a thing like, oh, I think outside of the box.

kirk: So it's if you have to say that, that's probably not true, and it's just a fucking dumb saying I think outside the box, who gives a fuck? Like as long as your thought process works, you could think anywhere you want. You don't even need a box. And there's myriad solutions within the box. Stop fucking saying that.

kirk: The P, the point is that when you give someone who's creative, the freedom and space, To do something, but give them parameters. It, you'll get amazing results. You can't just say to someone, I want you to design something. It's like telling someone, telling a car, telling a carpenter or a contractor, Hey, I want you to build me a house.

kirk: Go build me a house. That's so true, right? What style what size, how many bedrooms? Where do you want to build? There's so many things in there. [00:18:00] Whereas if you tell a contractor, Hey, I want you to build me a 3,700 square foot house in the style of this and do whatever else you would like to do, I would like this many bathrooms, bedrooms, yada.

kirk: They can definitely have something to work with. And you can go from there, but you can't just tell someone to do something. And then that's the worst part is especially when you get better at this, do something and you do it like, okay, and then they can make changes because they always say, I don't know what, I don't know what I, until I see it.

kirk: Yeah, 

nikita: no, when I see it, 

andy: it's 

kirk: Here's something that I didn't know. Because it makes sense for these people. It's like when you guys think about something, or like when you see a word, do you vision it as a word or do you vision as a picture? So if I say like love, do you just see the letters l v E or are you like designing a shape or designing something for love?

nikita: That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know if I know the answer to that. I see a shape, [00:19:00] right? I see. I see letters more. Okay, but 

kirk: that's so reflective, but that's so super reflective of your design. Yeah, because you're seeing it as letters, whereas some people can't imagine pictures in their head, like they can't see.

kirk: But Nikita, you have the ability to see how something's gonna be finished when it looks like some people don't have that ability to have, like to think of how something's gonna look because they only see words they can't see, imagine pictures or imagine shapes or anything of that nature. So when, so I would tell Miriam all the time yeah, it looks like this and this.

kirk: And she's ah, I don't get it. And then I have to draw it for her. And I have to explain here it is. Oh, okay, I get it now. Because she had to see the visual cue because. It was in my head and if I explained it to one of my brothers or somebody else okay, I get you. Yeah, we'll do this, and this.

kirk: And they are able to go with it, but she couldn't. So I think a lot of clients now, and I think we need to start being more empathetic as designers to their inadequacies of not being [00:20:00] able to see things that the way we can see them, which is why they hired us in the first place, but then they don't give us the fucking court blanche to do our jobs.

kirk: Wow. Okay. Kirk. Anyway, tell us how you 

nikita: really feel about that. Or, sorry, 

kirk: Are you all good or are you Yeah, man. Any moments? It's like after, after the 12th cup of coffee, it just goes off the rails, but 36 days of type, I also started doing this and unlike Majida, yes, I am not as committed.

kirk: I'm still trying to finish mine up right now, but I will finish them. I will finish my projects because there's just a stack of. Unfinished projects in my head. Speaking of which I would like to be able to start talking about the avails of needing to get on a D H D meds is something I need to do because I think that I have some, I'm actually able to get some stuff done cuz like right now I have three or four ideas and projects I would like to do, but then I start them and they just don't get done.

kirk: So yes, but the 36 days of type will get done [00:21:00] in my 36 days of type for some reason. I don't know why. I just. Thought about things like how much I like, like things that I like. Yeah. And one of the things I like is booze. So I thought, ah, I could do 36 days of booze. 

andy: One of your, one 

nikita: of your muses.

kirk: Yes. And so I was looking at stuff and oh, this will work like a for absent B for bourbon. And you're going through, and then you get to like letters like y. Okay. So it's like Yukon Jack will be for Y because it's a brand of alcohol or a brand of booze. But my approach is, go ahead, Andy Nikita.

nikita: Thank you. No, I was gonna say, sorry. I was gonna say that's the beauty of some self-initiated projects where you have the flexibility, you have a rough theme. 36 type, that's the name. But you could do [00:22:00] alcohol, you can do buildings, you can do stamp collection, you could do animals, A to Z Kirk for yours. For example, there's no brands or alcohol starting with specific letter.

nikita: You can do an actual drink that uses that alcohol or the name of the country where the drink or something was sourced for 'em, so you, you have countless, almost countless possibilities. But I like where you're, I like where you're going with yours, by the way. No thank you and everything.

nikita: It's a good, I love the lettering that you've done so far that you've been sharing with us in our little disjointed text chat, which has everything and anything. 

andy: I like. How just seeing, it's so fun watching the two YouTube develop the ideas, like it's the same. Same, guides and a framework, but each one's doing it a different way and creating it in a different way.

andy: And that's what's so fun to see what you guys have been putting in, putting out. And [00:23:00] yeah, Kirk, I like how you have used you're a, you're a chameleon of different styles in the you're letting the I don't know, the alcohol or whatever guide the style. So like you had one that was like sleazy seventies style, and then you had another that what was the, I'm trying to think of the other styles.

andy: I don't know Western, I don't know. You're just, you're playing with a lot of different stylists because it seems like you're letting the subject. Give you inspiration to drive that style, which I mean, the metal, there's tons of variety in the metal jazz artist that Nikita's been doing.

andy: But there's a ton of variety in different treatments in yours. Some are more like really complicated and [00:24:00] complex, A lot of layers. Others are very simple and not a ton of style like stylized or whatever. That's what I've enjoyed seeing is all the variety. And seeing, just seeing how you interpret like a particular alcohol or whatever, booze through the lens of all these different styles.

kirk: Yeah. Thanks man. Yeah, and that's exactly what I was trying to do is just think about how the alcohol would. Want to be portrayed. I'm putting myself in the alcohol shoes of how I would like to be portrayed and whatever. Now 

andy: do you have a drink or two when you're creating those?

kirk: No, I don't. 

nikita: I don't, based on some of the sketches that I've seen, I think maybe he does have a drink or two before he starts sketching some of those. Thanks Nikita. I mean that 

kirk: from the hard [00:25:00] I know. I wouldn't I wouldn't get much done. That's why I'm realizing now. I was like, I can't have anything to drink if I'm gonna keep working unless it's like a glass of wine.

kirk: Or a beer and it has to be out. That's the bad part. Like it has to be out doing something, if I'm at home, it's like, all right Wow, that Manhattan was really good. I'm gonna have another one, and the next thing you know like, all right, I'm done working for the day. Yeah, that's it. It's 10 o'clock.

kirk: I'm done. 

nikita: It's funny you mentioned that though, because there was an urban legend going around for a while about, Pablo Picasso that he because of the greenish tint in some of his or a lot of his work actually, he used to drink a lot of absent and absent if you drink too much, but apparently gives you kinda almost like a green filter and it influences how literally the lens are, which you see the world.

nikita: I think it was an urban myth that it has been since debunked, but it would be funny to see if, aside from [00:26:00] the typical effect where bottom line alcohol gets you drunk, You become ae breeder, the end of story doesn't matter who you are. It would be interesting to see if specific alcohol affects your specific senses in different ways.

nikita: And when you draw something, it would kinda reflect the nature of the alcohol, 

kirk: like absence, for example. 

nikita: So that would be something interesting to to look 

kirk: into. Yeah. 

nikita: I'm not an expert alcohol, so I don't know, but that would be a great, I would think that would be a great idea, Kirk, for 

kirk: you, for your project.

kirk: Yeah. Now we're almost done. I can start over and then I can just drink and then say I'm doing it for, A work experiment, 

andy: research. I also like, so here's yet another Yeah, you've gotta, you've gotta do a follow up for sure. Where you whatever that is that you're designing, you're drinking as you're designing it.

andy: Oh. And we'll see what you come up with. Yeah. I think now the other cool thing, I think it could also real quick would be cool is if you used [00:27:00] the. Liquid as a medium and like you did like watercolors with or whatever. Cuz some of the stuff you talk about is I can't remember if you did a bitters, but some of it seemed more syrup than liquidy.

andy: But that could be cool to have really nice and you could do like a little pencil sketch, define, you know what, and then paint, use the whatever as paint. Like wine would make red wine Yeah. Would make really amazing. Yeah. And almost so you could like that would be, and then like they do 'em all in I don't know, eight by eight squares or something.

andy: And then four by four or something. And Oh, that would be so cool. Yeah. I could see a gallery show, Kirk. Yeah. Whatever art opening. That's 

kirk: cool. See that that req working title that requires too much [00:28:00] commitment. It's also gonna take 

andy: up a lot of space. Yeah. 

kirk: And a lot of my budget for booze.

kirk: I know. I wouldn't, I know I wouldn't do it. That's the problem. Too, think I was thinking about this Sarah, you're gonna say in Ike you think we should what? 

nikita: No, I was gonna say, I think we should get a side job at a alcohol dis distributor because then you get free samples and that takes care of the budget bit.

nikita: Kirk get on that you, you get, you got 

kirk: time. That on the list right here. Alcohol 

nikita: by, I know what you said before about adg. I know we're joking around a bit, but when I went to Italy, I went to the Leonardo da Vinci Museum and I saw a lot of his inventions, a lot of his sketches, and I'm already a huge fan of huge nut of Leonardo da Vinci.

nikita: Yeah. Especially consider he created the world's first functioning parachute, 500 years before it was actually built. But I saw. I was talking to my mom, who [00:29:00] happens to be a psychiatrist, and she 

kirk: Yeah, that explains a lot. 

nikita: Yeah. It doesn't explain a lot, but that's a story from another podcast, I think.

nikita: But she said that it's almost without hesitation that. Leonard had a incredible, incredibly strong case of ADHD because he had so many ideas that, oh, yeah, he finished and started and came to fruition. But then he had sketchbook and sketchbooks of ideas that he never finished, not because he didn't want to, but because his mind was so unique and so creative, and he jumped from so many ideas from one to the other that it was a curse and a blessing.

nikita: He was able to do so much because he did so much. If that makes any sense. Yeah, 

kirk: no, that makes Explain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah it's almost a detriment to have to do work on the computer to do our jobs. It makes it easier, but then like at the same time, it's easy to get distracted. Like I get distracted very easily and I [00:30:00] know if I put my phone away or just put it in the other room, I can get way more work done.

kirk: And the other thing that's pretty good and bad is that on my laptop, I don't have texting capabilities like my iMessage is broken, so I can't iMessage on my laptop, on the work laptop. I can iMessage so. When I'm working on my laptop, I don't have my phone. I see your texts come in. I can't respond.

kirk: Really? Yeah. So that means I have to keep working, whereas if I'm on my work laptops oh let's respond and stuff like that. So I'm thinking about the amount of distractions that he had back then too. Probably wasn't myriad like it is now. Of course. Oh no. Like he would have different distractions of different things he wanted to do as opposed to just not doing anything and scrolling through.

kirk: Instagram and everything else. So that might have been a thing too. [00:31:00] But back to the booze aspect of stuff. 

nikita: I love how you came full circle back to that. I love 

kirk: it. Yeah, I think that, and this is something that I just learned, your attitude, drinking booze, your attitude going into drinking booze affects the outcome of it.

kirk: If you're pissed and you start drinking, it's just gonna make things worse. And granted that there probably is different. Like people say, oh, I can't have gin, or It does this, or I can't have vodka, and it does this. It's possibly, but do you have the attitude going into it? It's going to do that, or does it really do that?

kirk: If someone made you a drink and said, oh, it's Jen. But it was vodka. And you say you have a reaction to vodka, but you act totally different. It's totally a psychological thing. And so I am not, I'm realizing that I'm not a mean person because there's people who are just mean and they shouldn't drink at all.

kirk: But [00:32:00] I'm realizing I'm not mean because when I drink, I get happy and I get relaxed and I get happy and I just want to be everybody's friend. And it's really good when that happens, but I know some people who drink and they just become belligerent assholes. Yeah it's really fucked.

nikita: Have you had anything to drink before we started the podcast or, because you sound really lovey dovey right now, I'm just curious if, 

kirk: Yeah, I told you I had those coffees. Those are actually, I didn't wanna admit it, but they were espresso. All those coffees es espresso martinis. Yeah. Yeah.

kirk: Yeah. I think that six is my limit for the day, 

nikita: That, I think that's quite limit for the week. 

Yes. Perfect. 

nikita: Andy actually had a question for you. I know we were talking about clients in Kirk, you brought up clients as well. How do you guys feel about. Actually including clients in the process, more in depth or scaling it back in the [00:33:00] sense of showing them some of the early stages, showing them sketches.

nikita: Are clients able to not understand but comprehend sketches or doodles and visualize how their vision, their product, their end result will look based on what you show them. How do you guys, I've been struggling with that a little bit lately in the last few projects. I'm wondering how you two can, or you, how you two feel about that.

andy: Yes. I think it's very case by case and you really need to know the, understand the client's, a, what their aptitude is for seeing something conceptual like that. Like some, and early on, like I was all about doing that where like I would show a sketch and I found myself.

andy: Having to explain how it's gonna actually look, and like really having to go and maybe it was just my, like [00:34:00] being self-conscious and like seeing their reaction to seeing the sketch and me just having to feel like I need to overexplain what they're looking at and not just letting it sit out there.

andy: But nowadays I will sometimes not even do a mood board with a client because I've found that mood boards. Throw people off. They get either hung up, they either don't really understand how to give feedback on them, or they get hung up on the actual examples and they're like I really like this one in particular.

andy: And it's yeah, but I'm not gonna copy that completely. This is just used for inspiration. I understand you really that logo, but we're gonna do something totally different. But it's in the, and it's like too hard to explain the nuances of. We're gonna do that, but it's gonna be d something like that.

andy: But it's gonna be different and it's gonna be the same. So it's just, I don't know. It just, yeah, it's all case by case. And some [00:35:00] clients need that like this other client I have where we do like weekly touch bases because they need that. Even though it's not like these like the milestones are just like, I moved, this, call out over here, this whatever, you know, that we talked about in the last call or I did this, versus oh, we're gonna look at round two this week and we're gonna look at round three next week, or whatever.

andy: She just likes to see movement on things and I like that too, because then it really can. Head some stuff off at the pass before I get too far down the road. If you do like touchpoints, two, three weeks in between, there's a danger that things get off the rail, but for me it's always case by case.

kirk: Yeah. Case by case is a great way to say it. For the most part I show what I show and if you don't like it, I can't do anything for you. Like I can gather all the information I [00:36:00] want, you can gimme all the information you need. Or I want, and I put something together based upon what I think works best for your situation.

kirk: And usually my digital sketches are black and white, like logo icons or whatever. And I always show stuff in black and white without color, cuz I know how much color influences. That's mainly for like branding and stuff. But then when it comes to packaging, even when I'm doing the packaging, I try to use the same colors for things just because I know how much that influences.

kirk: And so it's a lot of the stuff I do. I feel since I work so quickly in it, the digital form of a first round is basically a sketch. That's how I look at it. I don't ever show, yeah, I don't ever show sketches just because unless I'm working with someone or I'm doing something I, that I know.

kirk: Like really [00:37:00] well, and I have a good working relationship, I can just do a quick sketch like, Hey, here's what I'm gonna do. And they already know how it's going to look based upon previous work and how I do things. So I can actually just send out a quick layout like, Hey, here's how I was gonna lay it out and just sketch it out real quick, and they get it.

kirk: But if I'm working with someone for the first time, it's okay, it's great. Let me put something together for you and do it. The other thing that I know sells way more than anything else is presentations. And I didn't really get that. Oh yeah. Until I started working for other companies and seeing these B D O and all these other large companies put together their presentations and you see what the effort goes into it.

kirk: And a lot of times they're not even finished. They're not even finished ideas or concepts, they're just. Sketches or broad ideas of something, but it looks really good. And so people in their minds have to see it that way. So those are different areas like, do you [00:38:00] handle it like you would for a really big client or you do you handle it like for someone you've been working with for years and you just have a good rhythm with them?

kirk: Long story short, like Andy said, it depends. What about you, Nikita? What made you ask that question? 

nikita: I think it's something that Andy brought up earlier about getting the client involved that I was thinking how my work changed over time in the sense that. I used to not show clients any initial stages, like mood boards session.

nikita: A great point about the clients sometimes not be getting hung up on a certain logo and saying, Ooh, I want mine to look exactly like that. You can't have it look like that because it's already somebody else's design. But I've learned that a lot of clients they don't know or they've never worked with a graphic designers.

nikita: So while they have a better vision for their product than their business or whatever they're selling, We have a better understanding of the design process and just like we need to get educated by the client. If I'm designing [00:39:00] for packaging for a new marijuana company, I don't know anything about marijuana.

nikita: That's, I just, I never smoked it. I don't know much about it. So I would need to get educated in that field, but the client would need to get educated about how designers work. So sometimes what I do is I take the clients through somewhat in depth process, or I show 'em a discovery call. I sometimes show them a case study where I show 'em stages of a project behind the scenes, how everything happens, and the client knows what they're in for.

nikita: And then I actually ask, I give 'em the option. I say, do you. Would you like to see some of the five sketches where, and I show the difference between, doodles that I've done before for a logo and refined sketches, regardless of whether it's type or branding or packaging or anything. Now show the end result and see.

nikita: So here are the various stages if you would like, we can start, I can show you, keep you in the loop and some of the rougher work, or I can show you just the piece. And clients. I think they like the fact that they are. Educator about the process and they learn about it. And some of them say, thanks for now I know how the process works.

nikita: Six, or showing me, [00:40:00] I'd rather, but I'd rather see the final result because it's easier for me to understand. I say, okay, that's absolutely fine. And some say, oh, absolutely, let's roll up sleeve. Let's, I'd love to look at sketches. But I'm set of present. I say, if I show you a hundred sketches, we're not gonna go through each one, one by one.

nikita: Yeah. I'm gonna show you the overall sketches and then we'll have a broader discussion about them. But we're not gonna discuss every single one on a hundred or 200 sketches. 

kirk: Yeah. And that's the problem because what I don't, I think giving too many options plays a detriment to us because they don't see the ideas behind that.

kirk: They just think you just whipped them out real quick and which you may or may not have. But it doesn't matter. It's that they see it and they say, oh, what about that one? And what about this one? Can we try that one? Can we try that? And they just go down the rabbit hole. And I think there's a lot of miscommunication from the standpoint that we are the experts and you're the ones.

kirk: We're looking to us to do the job for you. You're the one entrusting us with whatever we're working on for you. So you have to trust us in regards to why we do things a certain way in the process. [00:41:00] We didn't use those designs because they didn't work, they weren't working. But I thought, I show you what I did, and you're just like, fuck 'em.

kirk: They don't need to see what you did. I love all your clients. I love all your clients, but they're, they don't always to see what you did. I think they just need to see the. The best results possible. That's what I feel. 

andy: Yeah. Cool. All 

kirk: right. Hey, that was a great conversation.

kirk: Anything else you'd like to add, Nikita? 

nikita: No, absolutely nothing. I'm all tapped on in good conversations and it's it's only Monday, so I think I'll be silent for the rest of the week. All done? No, I think it was. All, all done. I'll take a fork. I'm done. No, it was up a great conversation.

nikita: Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate you asking me to come on and come on the podcast and chat with you again. Yes.