The Difference Between Design & Art— How To Find Your Worth

karley since you have the mic and we are live hello everybody we're usually broadcasting a lot earlier in the day so we're probably welcoming people from the opposite side of the world it's their morning and so hello everybody probably from Indonesia we have some Indonesian fans and we're here with Loyola Marymount students here you guys all seniors and I'm happy to see you so let's kick it off what would you like to know I mean maybe from you personally I this is a personal question yes I'm dealing with this dilemma of being an artist but also being a designer and maybe my question is do you think an artist can be a designer do you think a designer is an artist yeah so it's C so I don't know Carly Simon is a ly or ie okay yes and so you're you're struggling with this idea of artist and a designer and how do you self-identify okay and do you have definitions in your mind about what one is versus the other I think one's a creator I think one's a creator artists artists is the creator and then a designer would be more of a visual communicator the visual communicator but I think both are problem-solvers okay so they have that in common though their creative problem solver yes will hide it yeah for sure and I'm agreeing with you so far I think both are creative okay what else and you guys feel free to like jump in on this okay I've struggled with the definition of artist for a really long time I've always defined myself as a designer and more specifically a graphic designer I've come to realize that the labels that we assigned to ourselves can liberate us or it can imprison us in our own mind and it's a really strange thing to think that a word can be so powerful right it can be really powerful I'm watching this video of a hypnotic from the UK I don't know her name right now so I'm not gonna say it but she says that the words you choose you guys have heard this before the words you choose shape your reality I don't know if you guys know this and the more I'm learning about mindset stuff and psychotherapy words a really really powerful stuff so she says if you don't like your reality all you have to do is change your words and so words can can anchor us it could lift us up and I was thinking about this because when I was seeing my therapist she asked me this question she likes to ask all her patients this question she asks what's the earliest memory that you have then I told her and she asked me how old were you and I said I think I was 3 and she goes I like to ask everybody this do you want to know what the answers are usually people have the earliest memory around 2 to 3 years old and she told me then like why she thought this was true because it's not that we don't know and have experiences between 1 & 3 it's that around 3 is when we develop words and enough words to describe the world and so that's it because the other parts are like they're soft their feelings their impressions but once we have words we can describe this and there are a lot of people and in the world that start to think and when you talk about neuro linguistic programming when you talk about cognitive behavioral therapy that these words are very powerful and they're linked to how we react we behave our moods whether or not we're happy or we're sad so I'm only gonna take this tangent for a little bit I'm gonna get right back to your question the second look words really are very powerful stuff and so we want to be more careful and more mindful and intentional in the words that we choose to describe things because the words shape how we feel shape our memory and then our emotions we're all attached to that ok so the word artists I'm an artist I'm a designer I'm a graphic designer all those things mean something now I've struggled with the meaning of artists when I was in college I always thought what these two types of people create on the outside look very similar especially today the lines have blurred so much so that an illustrator is now a fine artist a graphic designer is an artist because of the whole street art thing that's happened right the acceptance of what is art has changed so what they do is they look similar the output looks similar so then what do we have to do we have to look at the intention then maybe and in school I was struggling with this so I thought that an artist makes things to solve their own problem whereas designers solve somebody else's problem the one has commerce attached to it is a bit transactional like I have a client whereas one asked the questions and then answers so then people get into then a designer answers and our artists ask questions maybe and then I was at a screening with Wachowskis the writers and directors of the matrix one of my favorite films and I forget which which house key said this but she said that art is an invitation to share a person's point of view that's all it is so whether art is performance sculptural or painted or photography if you're inviting them to share your point of view in the world I think it becomes art and the ones that do a great job are very successful somebody else also said that art is I have a feeling about something whatever that feeling is and by the creation of this thing I hope that you have a similar feeling so we're sharing that and I don't think I would describe that for designers necessarily designers like I have a problem here's the brief we're very pragmatic we look at things through variables we test ideas and so that's where I see the boundaries of these two the end product output to me feels very similar ok now I notice why I was talking Carly you had a couple of different expressions on your face things you may or may not agree with so I would love to hear your thoughts as this is meant to be a dialogue yeah I think riff off of what you're saying artists maybe I don't always want to say always but create things for themselves or from themselves and I think that's where I struggle with when it's designed it's like I'm doing it for someone else yes and it's like where's that like passion and truth in that work not necessarily that I don't enjoy that but I'm just like I think I'm identifying more as an artist right now in my life because it's for me yeah okay no I'd like to say this for everybody whether you're watching us or here with us live which is I wish for every person here to have some point in their life where they feel like they are an artist and into me it's still very different these words are very powerful and I'm gonna explain a little bit why it's because part of it is the motivation like where does the motivation to create come from for the designer I think the designer I'm not I'm saying this in very broad strokes er so I'm gonna offend people already that most designers I imagine sit in a room they're waiting for their next gig that they're not necessarily just sitting there creating tons of logos or brochures randomly because who wants that maybe they're doing drawings or experimenting on their own and that's a separate thing but they do that mostly to prepare for when the moment happens when the phone rings and then they solve some of these problems so the motivation is I solve other people's problem whereas the artist is like you you can't stop them from creating this is all they want to do all day long the dilemma for the artists is how do I make some money and that's usually where the conflict comes in and traditionally I think there have been far fewer successful commercially successful artists and there were artists in the world I'm hoping that this is going to change because I think more so now we crave and desire beauty and art in all its form that we in this age of abundance and we have more than we have ever had we were living longer that we want to have transcendent experiences and the artists in the world are the ones who create this and when I say artists I also include in that group artisans like people who shaped buildings lay down bricks carve things out of stone and marble because that's where the art lives it's not just an idea right yeah and I think there's art in everything like not only framed things on the wall but in your hat in your glasses like everything is created with a purpose and for a reason and if you look at the little things you can see the beauty in it but I think I mean to go back to this and why I'm struggling is because we're at a liberal arts school it's not necessarily did you where did you go to center yeah so I'm in this position where not everyone is just here to create beautiful maybe not so beautiful whatever but it's more money driven so I think I mean I'm a graphic design major you know I chose that for a reason because it sounds like I'm gonna make some money but I'm still struggling because as an artist like I don't need to make money but I think well yeah so there's some level of like existing and we need that otherwise it's gonna be very difficult for us to continue down our path right so we all need to make some level of money I think there's a little bit more perceived security and being a designer then there is probably being an artist just for that same reason like if you grew up thinking I'm going to be a professional fill in the blank basketball player or football person or play in the NFL or an NBA there's a very small percentage of the population that's gonna be able to do that so the artists that are commercially successful they're living the life maybe that's we have far fewer examples of that and so there's some assigned security and being a designer versus an artist but those times are changing and they're changing really really fast so that's good news for all of you you don't have to be dead to be a famous artist anymore not to be dead but I'm talking about even more recently like what's happening is the barriers to entry the ability to connect with an audience the removal of curators to decide I call them king or queen makers right because they get to decide karlie you're the artist to look after and then the whole machine the apparatus of the artwork come together and they put you into a gallery that's super hard to get into then might super fancy rich people to come in there they buy your art and then they just make you and so they held the keys so that opportunity for you but today with the proliferation of social platforms whatever platform you're on you now can have a direct relationship with your audience and what's even cooler is that when you create something you can find out really fast if they share the same emotion that you share and that may or may not inform what it is that you do in the next iteration of your art and you may make something that you think is terrible and they're like wow that really touched me and you inspired me and then you have to sit back and reflect on that like what are they seeing that I'm not quite saying and I think that's the wonderful time that we live in and that's why I say like it used to be this way it may not be this way much longer and these two separate spheres may be overlapping more and more so every single day and I think that's really cool one of the beautiful things that I get to do as a person who makes content I get to meet old people young people people from all over the world some self-taught some highly trained and they are building an audience and a community around the things that they do that they exist mostly because of their connection to their audience and it's a beautiful thing to see and I'm really really excited about that so somebody can sit there and paint painstakingly something that they like and an audience shows up for that and then they can say look by four of these and I have my rent for this month and that's what happens so I think that's really cool okay so getting back to this thing what words should we use to describe ourself stuff Godin talked about this and our interview with him and he's said this many more times and he's like when it's work we ask ourselves like when are we done but when it's art it's like can I get more and that's why I wish for all of you at some point in your life that you get to look at yourself like this that whether it looks artistic whether it's beautiful or not is irrelevant but you have that freedom to be able to make something that people care about that you touch that hopefully then you are able to also receive some kind of compensation for that that beauty that thing that you bring into the world okay thank you is that okay all right cool well wolf let's just start off real easy like that okay who's up next and if you guys have follow-ups or you want to challenge something I invite you to come into the pool it's safe and what do you want to add something to I'd love to hear your voices you are after all the educated one you really are I don't say that to pander or it's a self deprecated mostly I studied type fonts and got super nerdy with that kind of stuff yeah somebody else want to take it and and Jonah you're monitoring the comments and all that's at yeah Joanne I forgot to say this before we went live it's like you don't have to stress out over like cutting on all the cameras you can just leave it on whatever and read comments and go to the bathroom do whatever you need to do don't worry okay no stress it's a low-key live stream okay who's next can you tell me your name and then and then hit me with your question yeah my name is Christian Christian traditional spelling Christian yes great my question was being like someone who acts is like accepting the digital world and kind of like taking it with stride what would you say like your opinion on the effect of technology like in the little bit far future is like oversaturation or like AI in the creative world okay let's see if I understand this are you asking me for my take on how technology and ultimately things like AI are going to impact the world the world of art and design or just the world I think specifically the world of art and design and are you seeing and reading about things that are giving you some concern I mean I've seen some interesting articles really based around like creation of assets and like art and visuals just from algorithms or deep learning or neural networks and it's very it's amazing that we've gotten to that point but it's also scary because the quality of the work is reaching somewhere that like it's reaching a human potential okay and how do you feel about time are you excited by it are you scared about that I think that it's it opens a world for like accessibility in creation however it's also it also takes away some of the expressiveness of like being an artist so that I think that really scares me okay so let's take it one at a time so that's a complex answer and a question all rolled into one so let's let's try to figure out a couple things one is the progress of AI is happening whether you like it or not and one of the words the serenity serenity prayer is like to know what you can change know the difference and then the courage to do whatever I totally butchered that somebody helped me out of that but so if I can't just st. change something I try not to focus too much of my energy in that and then I realize there's very little I can change right if you think about it and I get asked this question quite often is how long does it take for you to learn a new thing or to think a new idea I said for as long as you want to hold on to the old idea and how quickly you're ready to embrace the new idea so for me sometimes changes 24 hours I wake up I think about I don't want to do that anymore and that's the moment and for some people it takes 24 years so I know I can't change this because I'm not in a space and a place where I can influence this maybe people like Elon Musk am and will and and the CEO of or the founder of Alibaba maybe they're they're kidding it's a I don't know so let's just take this as extreme sometimes it helps us to think about things in the extreme so if AI does exactly do what it is that we are afraid of doing which is replacing humans what is the human job then what function do we have and I think I like that idea a lot because if robots do all the work of humans it gives us a lot of time to think what is it that we want from our lives so we don't spend a lot of time I think thinking about how much automation that already exists that we benefit from right it's so like when you when you pick up your phone and you punch in a few things and you swipe on your phone you don't even punch anymore you just touch something it connects it to some satellite I think or and reroutes you there's like computers working all the time and when you charge something with your credit card at the gas station it knows within like two seconds if it's you because it spots behaviors that are inconsistent with you and are flags you right away sometimes I travel abroad and I forget to tell the credit card company I'm traveling they stopped the payment and then they call me it's like how do they know these things it's incredible and they're doing this a billion times a second I think because of all the transactions that are happening in the world so there's a lot of benefit from that but I think what's really cool is if you don't have to work anymore if you don't have to do anything to live like all your needs are taken care of what would you focus on yeah I mean I agree with you in that automation like of the practical things in life like opens up creative opportunities and ways to fulfill your human I guess what life is you'll be able to focus on that more and I really love the idea of that that's like truly beautiful yeah but and you're gonna say but yeah but just I guess in the in the space between creation and automation is what I'm trying to get at like will image making even be I guess not I'm not saying like useful but will it be something that is unique to a human and I think that that's an interesting thought like to think that AI may sometime may someday have the possibility of creating something that like we can't even comprehend or that is you need to only that beam well I think there's a couple things here is that if the AI technology gets so good and it probably will get really good in some point maybe before I die I don't know and then it leaves you to question your existence meaning of life and purpose and love and beauty that allows you to think a lot about this I think so what's really cool is we already human in this room right we're all human I think maybe not me but we're all human and that means that are you afraid of what it is that I'm going to do probably not because we have uniquely different points of view different experiences cultural backgrounds all the kind of stuff right and if you were to give a brief to every single person in this room the exact same brief with super rigid parameters and give everybody the exact same tools we would come up with 14 different pieces of design or art so I'm already competing with you today for your job you don't feel threatened by me so these deep learning neural networks that are artificially intelligent driving things it lets say that they do achieve that human status are we afraid of another human I don't think so because you get this beautiful opportunity to share your very unique voice with the world and now free of the mundane the monotonous free of just trying to make a dollar to say alive I think I'm looking forward to that time now here's the really cool part okay I use Photoshop when I was version 1.0 I think I'm there okay pretty close to it and we're in creative cloud territory right now and there's things that creative cloud can do that we never dreamt possible so I'm going to just date myself here there was one undo and there was one layer I know it's archaic it's crazy and that was it there wasn't called a lair because it was just it that was it so if you didn't like it you're screwed one undo and on top of that and I was there with a I not not artificial intelligence but Adobe Illustrator probably 1.0 or 2.0 somewhere really you know we had to like work in the wire mode that the preview mode or the outline mode and then you'd hit command Y and it would draw it so when the computers got fast enough then tools got fast enough when we could see it while we're working on it that was a revelation okay I know you guys like oh my god and I was also like rubbing two rocks together make fire but okay so now we jump forward to CC and there's a thing where you select the magic wand masking tool and you just hit cut this out it starts to think and it cuts it out and it's not great but it's pretty good could you imagine that and is that the task of a human to do to cut out things right or I give it an image as they match these colors and it just matches them so I now become the artistic director of this versus the person who's literally trying to figure out do I do through huse a - I do it through levels or curves or cut channel mixer I don't know I just wanted to do that thing let's keep going with that the next thing I do is I don't even touch the keyboard I just say cut it out match this color that I saw in this movie in this this moment and it brings up 35 images this is where Adobe sensei is going by the way this excites me you guys see those tech demos that they do it's so exciting where does this going now they do these demos on stage on the stage and it's it's scary crazy like how good it's gonna be so you do something like this they show this demo it's crazy and they draw like something like that right and so Adobe sensei is that that's a rocket those are clouds and it starts to build this from your library it'll melt your mind have you seen this demo no I oh my god so it's looking through your image libraries he puts it together it shapes it any figures out from a drawing almost as bad as mine it knows it's been learning that excites me that does not scare me because who used to do this job okay you're the art director some young intern it was like a bus is that's a rocket and you want clouds what time of day is it and that they go through and it's like days before you see something like that's what I want right it would it would try to guess it what you want and then there's a slider somewhere they pull it up because it's still in beta you slides like night day discs and more clouds less clouds and it's crazy cycling and it's cutting it out for you automatically that means your ability to think and create the gap between those two are getting closer and closer and closer that's very exciting so who came up with this sketch then now is the computer with all this AI learning is gonna look at a brief and figure it out maybe but it's gonna be a long time from now so here's what I say to you this we cannot control and how we look at AI right now they're tools and I'm excited about more powerful tools that allow me to concentrate on thinking more than finding images and cutting them out right I don't know about you but I have thousands of the images on my drive legally of course thousands of images and I have to go through and I have two boys one of them is 13 the other one 16 I paid my 13 year old to go through my files and name them for me he'd rather play video games this is not the job of the human Adobe sensei's renaming all your files for you it's meta tagging every single thing so you just say face left woman 40 and it will just pull it up you know show you the best ones and it's crazy where this is gonna be in a few short years so literally like my son's like I don't know what that is I'm not going to internet figure it out if I have to tell you waste my time so he's going through and naming these things and then after working for me all of one day he quit even a 13 year old is tired of roadwork like that we don't want to do that okay you guys understand that right so I look at the tools and I say well there's two feelings we're gonna have about it right now if there's probably more about I'd like to think in a binary way being that I'm a robot so we could be happy about it or we can be miserable about it and every time I start to feel miserable about it I start to rethink what words I want to assign to these tools I say it's empowering it's saving time allows me to think I move it to the happy place and that's what I try to do with almost everything in my life I tried to change the words so that my reality is different yeah I really respect that mindset is very very powerful and like how you perceive reality and what you experience I think the core of what I was trying to get at yeah that I'm like I know you're shaping it okay perfect is the expressive like the the human touch like I I love that like I've I've actually seen something very very similar so I think it might have been connected in some way yeah I feel that the tools and their accuracy and perfection will take away like like Barbara said a happy little accidents yeah I don't know do you think so the fidelity of the finished product still in your control because you could say like computer or mother changed it to be rough change the time of day and make it like a kid drew it not with the crown but with a pencil so these are all just tools you are the director of this these are just instruments you get to compose the song you can make it's like hard rock or you can make it metal or you can make it punk or classical in no point in this equation does the computer tell you what to do I mean maybe they will one day that's a different story the t 3000 and that's what we have to live with but not not right now I mean one day you'll show up and talk to a computer and I'll tell you what to do I suppose and then the world is upside down that's when Skynet has taken over right but until then it's like we still get to control how how clean how dirty how how crude help refined make the rocket metal no I mean rusty metal and I want to see the rivets and I wanted you to age at 10 years I mean wouldn't would that be a wonderful tool I agree like the freedom that it allows us is like on a matter the mole right now or it well we're imagining it very fashionable yeah but I think it's just like the the room for mistake for mistakes from your own being are like kind of deleted so to speak the mistakes the happy accidents yeah I feel like yeah well as humans we are flawed like this the mistakes that we would make in creating that image specifically how we want it could just fall away okay let me ask you something cuz I actually do a lot of work and overtime it's giving me more exposure and that saying I'm any smarter than you I just have more exposure than you right look at this word happy accident you see that that's a change in words accident most of us don't like when you get into an accident they're not favorable so so Bob would talk about as a happy accident meaning I discovered something I didn't intend to do it's a discovery so he changed the word accident to mean discovery that there was something called chance right and there enters a randomness to it that I think we like okay and that there's some kind of exploration that you don't always end up at the same spot now I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this where you go and look for an image on the internet because you're trying to finish up an assignment the night before let's just say you were there and you're like looking through an image and then you see another image that you didn't intend to look for and then you go down that rabbit hole and if you're on Pinterest this happens every second and you're like this and you're like lost in the exploration of chance I don't and we I find great pleasure in this and I look for a word and I find an artist and I find a video and then a review of something else and the dangers actually we get lost in the chance and the randomness of it all right it's a black folk what does the brief say what do we need to do how much time to have left and you get it done so in this example of the AI taking over maybe they misinterpreted your drawing maybe this was meant to be a crown with some scribbles around it but they instead showed you a rocket which then spawned a new idea for you and I know this working in solitude is actually a really hard way to work because we need feedback we need to know is this idea communicating to you because art it's a transmission of a signal so the receiver has to to get that same signal but what if the computer were our partners a collaborator that you tell it an idea it tells you something back and then it's as dialogue that you have with it that would be very exciting don't you think yeah I I really think that that's a beautiful idea like the infinite infinitesimal like possibilities that's yeah I think you've changed things yeah and I'll tell you something if I didn't like it I would just change it in my mind to then like it because there's not much I can do about it really I'm just being totally serious with you okay and I've shared you know different live streams like very personal stories where I'm like oh that sucks that really really does suck and I have to work really hard to choose new words and I'll give you an example I'd like to do this because it's not me I'll just embarrass my wife I have been driving I've never had a moving violation in my life I've had a few like one or two parking tickets so I'm a pretty good driver despite the stereotype I'm a good agent driver okay and then my wife who's also aging she gets a ticket and it's an expensive one and then I look at him like honey you know you're just throwing money it's like let's say it's $350 I'm like can you and she goes no she just stops me there because I'm about to nag her a little bit I'm not to say let's be prudent let's just be more careful she goes now I love the city that we live in I'm like what's the got to do with your ticket it's a donation so she stopped the conversation I don't know who she learned this stuff from this is BS you know I'm like what okay let's watch Breaking Bad then I don't know what to do so she just moved it from a penalty - somebody has to contribute to the city to maintain the city it's a donation that's it and we have to support this not fine okay that's fair that works for me you see how it's like I could be upset she could be upset you just move the words new reality same exact situation that's how powerful this stuff is yeah thank you so so we haven't talked about design at all but this is cool I like these kind of conversations you're welcome Christian hi hello what's your name my name is Alyssa Alyssa yes with Annie that's a ly SSA thank you for spelling that for me thank you so I think something that a lot of us are talking about a lot and thinking about a lot and trying to make decisions about is pertaining to this idea of how to determine your value or worth as a designer or artist and like I personally think there's some overlap in the definitions of being an artist and a designer and I don't think yeah I just think it's definitely a difficult thing to try to determine your worth especially as you're starting out in the industry and so I just want to know your thoughts and opinions on that when you're starting out can you frame the question I've followed you but I couldn't find the question in there yeah so I think a lot of us are struggling with that because um well I think as we live like you said in such an age where we're living with more stuff everywhere than we ever have before and there's so many I don't know visual graphics and photographs and there's just art everywhere and so I think people tend to expect that artists freer just art is just guaranteed and same thing with design it's just everywhere on every screen we look at and every billboard especially in a place like LA mm-hmm and so I think the only people that are gonna advocate for us starting out as designers and artists are ourselves and I think that's kind of a difficult thing to be able to determine what your worth is when you're looking for jobs or freelancing so what is your advice on that okay there's a lot there Alyssa so first I want to throw this out okay and in and guide the ship back on the rails if I jump off the rails here okay so first you say art and designs everywhere and okay I accept that this is why I like people don't like me at LMU because I'm like well I don't know if I agree with that but okay art designs everywhere we could say that yeah we can agree yeah everybody yeah yeah but good art and design is almost nowhere can we say that all you have to do is go to the store sure yeah alright like look at what a bad design and bad art yeah yeah if we were to say the tipping skill you know the scale of justice or whatever of art in design of good and that design and good and bad art in my mind and this is probably one time I'm gonna get it kind of dark and negative on you I think it's like that like that's the floor a bad right and there's like good and I look at this is a good news because if you're a maker of good things there's a lot of opportunity for you to like put another pebble on that side how did you think like all you have to do is go to the store now it's odd I find this quite odd and maybe I shouldn't be surprised but when you go to a supermarket when you go to the Von's or a Ralph's I don't know what the other kind of normal supermarkets are and then you go to Whole Foods already going to Erewhon it's like everything looks more beautiful it's like the packages look better and everything looks refreshing and amazing and why is that what happened there so like do do rich people deserve better design does good design cost more money these are questions that I look at like I stare at the seltzer water I all or I'm just looking at like this I never even seen these bands before him but every single one of them is beautiful you go back to rouse and bonds and almost everything is ugly right everything and I'm not talking about just the packaging I'm talking about what's inside of it is ugly processed foods made in the cheapest possible way versus some and and in made with all kinds of preservatives like I guess I will pay more so I think the world is full of bad design and I would say the and I'm being mean here it's like probably 99% bad this is why we celebrate good design because it's so exceptional right this is why we remark on good design go to the book store if it still exists go to the book store look at the jackets which ones appeal to you which ones draw you in which ones are crappy and I think there's a correlation not causation yet of the bargain bins almost all those books are ugly cheaply made poorly written and when I say ugly all the way through very rarely do I walk into the bargain bin and I find an amazing book but it does happen it was so good that nobody bought it and I mean that you know seriousness and that the general population couldn't understand that this was beautiful and I picked up this Chris Ware box said I'm like why is this 40% off I'm taking this this is a steal okay so I think there's a lot of bad design in the world this is the opportunity for you guys if you're good and if you know how to make good things good art and good design now you're talking about self-worth and value like when you're first starting out how how do you communicate that to somebody well this is the challenge I guess want to get business e and everybody now all right the challenge is how do you communicate your Worth and value that's a good question it's not the question that you want to know yeah I guess just how the two are related was I was just saying I think like people just have an expectation that they deserve good design or just that they really know there's it seems to be yeah I think in working especially freelance I think working with clients and stuff like it seems like a lot of people kind of just have expectations that design is free I think maybe more so related to what Christian was saying like because there are so many like websites and online programs and things that like you can design your own stuff for free or there's just like a bunch of free graphics that people kind of expect that stuff is free or that like okay our cadet is like oh let's collaborator you do this and like let's you know do it together and it's like it's just an expectation that you're going to do what you do for work for free cuz yeah okay we're gonna get into some some business principles here in a second excuse me how many clients have you worked with as a freelancer total roughly nobody can tell I don't know 10 to 20 perfect I'll take the high number of 20 okay so you've had 20 different clients beautiful you're doing well by the way person still in school you do fantastic you're making a lot of people self-conscious I done one and it was my mom and they didn't even account cuz she she made me pay her you know that was rough so you worked with 20 clients damn I don't know if I work with 20 clients first she out of school so you're doing well everybody needs to take a look mark unless one for a listen or networking class later today okay so 20 clients of the 20 what percentage expected good design for free well if we're going with the high number of 20 I think we are just not that's the reality okay once it's on the board is real um-hmm well there's some clients that I like recently had to stop working with for that reason of like sure um what percentage help me out oh man just get me to the finish line come on maybe maybe like 30 40 percent what okay maybe she's not that good at marketing because her clients I'm gonna take the high number right guys never mind everybody canceling out that class right now they were just auditing they just dropped okay so 40% of the clients know I have to use right wanted done for free or two for next to no money right well okay can we say that a free client is not a client that the definition our client is a trade of money if for services yes because otherwise is charity I call that charity right yeah and are these charitable organizations are they no so that's usually is usually when I give them the one-finger salute you know I mean I'm not gonna do it right just like take a long walk off a short bridge or go swimming in a hold a big rock that's what I usually feel about those people right like I don't need you in my life because we have to distinguish charity right from clients big difference they have a cause and they truly are broke they really are broke most of them they have no cause their cause is capital okay and they're not broke they're just broken no really they are because they're willing to take advantage of people who are in the greatest need of opportunity they never take advantage of the big firms I shouldn't say never they rarely take advantage of the big firms so I think that's terrible okay so we need to distinguish the two so somebody who has money who can pay who's in commerce should pay a fair market price for the creative services that you do this is wonderful now so now we've established you have not 20 clients right right how many clients do you have you have 12 40 % we're bad we dumped so now we have my math okay you math majors come on is a long time okay we're not math majors either okay so we have 12 out of 20 that are legitimate clients okay because 40% were bad now of those 12 now we'll focus on this so you've had I would say a total of 8 bad clients and we're going to label them mad clients because that's what they are okay you have eight bad clients and you're struggling with this and one of their excuses to you is well is it it really easy and don't you have all these tools and you know I could just call Fiverr and do this that's usually what they say that's the crap that comes out of their mouth right how many you have had that experience okay a couple of you well it sucks kinda well I think a more calm experience for for people working I think with peers specifically is like people our age don't have like a super large budget to spend on design slash they have those expectations people your age really how old are these people like early 20s like 24 well yeah I mean like 20 to 24 mm I'm not sure so we're gonna make another broad statement people that are 20 or 24 just broke is that right yeah each other yeah we know what that feels like yes and they're starting businesses some of all different types of clients I guess like are you talking about classmates that our clients necessarily but like musicians or people starting like clothing lines or like though okay all right okay so let's just talk about this okay all right you may say that musicians are in the charity case you may that's for you to decide I wouldn't I'll tell the story later maybe that will help to see how fair about this okay with the one of the world's biggest bands who said that we have no money I'm like really I saw your Christmas special are you sure you have no money looks like you spent a lot of money in fact I think your catering budget is bigger than what we're talking about so you know so you may consider artists musicians that are your charity case do you consider them your charity case or not put them in one of two categories charity or clients I want them to be able to be clean cuz you want the cheddar yeah really so it's like forget about them then no more charity maybe your new rule has to be I'm gonna do ten clients before I give one away okay maybe cuz you got loans don't you you got bills to pay yeah okay you're saying that you don't have loans oh yeah the scholarship yeah okay here we go so there's gotta be some ratio that you're happy with some people do I have a friend he does 50% charity 50% client but he's very careful there's a whole auditing process about who's gonna be considered for charity right yes very nice that's it no that's his company this is comedy yeah you know I was complimenting luck we'll play Jim beautiful very nice no he is very nice he is he gives 50% of his business away for free yeah wow that's good business model it's also part of his marketing and his platform it's really cool now if a musician can't pay you you have some choices now I want you guys to just remember this okay it's you're not a prisoner of this you have choice and choice is a powerful thing you have freedom and free will to make these choices so we don't do something and then later complain like why did they force me to do this right my business coach would say to me for a number of years he would say Chris there are no victims just volunteers because I'm like I would complain to him and every time I complained him you look right back at me are you victim I volunteer my employees are driving me crazy care who's wise person who hired them me who allowed the boundaries to slip for them to be able to do this me who allows this behavior to persist me who hasn't fired them yet me are you a victim or you volunteer see the words are kind of crazy I was playing the victim but I was in control if you accept a job you've accept the terms of the job if you don't like it just say no there's only a couple instances where you have to take the job design client points a gun at your head do this logo for me now then you can say I'm a victim and that's okay all right until then No so if they don't have money we have to go back to ancient times people didn't trade with money before they traded with other with other things that they had services they have things of value that are not based on currency what could a band give you that you think would be valuable well I think that ties in a lot is like I think a place that all of us are in is like portfolio building and publicity and so I think that's a big thing with like jobs that you're not paid for is I think a lot of people believe in this idea of like paying with exposure which is very frustrating I have some exposure box at home I'll give you later I do somebody made them send them to me exposure box yeah literally okay let's say that you're gonna do something for a fan right what market value would you place on whatever it is you do we don't need the specifics just give me a number what sorry what would you charge the musician to do this thing if you could just charge them the fair market value for what it is that you're doing just say a number it doesn't matter you kitty we are you watching our Channel are you watching our Channel no okay that's why not a hundred dollars try again you get three guesses see this is why I'm asking this question is they have no idea what my family food your first guest is a friend you have three more you have two more guesses now what should you charge come on they'll never come back again dude it's like fresh batch of seniors and after that it's like a year later let's say $4,000 okay perfect okay so that was strike two you only get one more strike okay let's say what you want to charge them for what you're doing now I'm starting to question your hold twelve clients now okay four thousand how's it okay okay $4,000 you say musician you want something done it's gonna cost you 4,000 they say to you woohoo we're broke you know saps story we don't have any money we're just musicians is all we know how to do right yeah okay fine what are you gonna give me what do you give me that's worth $4,000 it can't be exposure because they came and give you exposure yeah you can get your self exposure you can get yourself the portfolio piece but that's on you that doesn't count against this $4,000 debt they have what could they give you let's get really creative you guys are creative people let's try and figure out what can they give you yes concert tickets right yes you like your music yeah look at this so fake okay that's really yeah so you didn't like this band you're working with this is truly not charity then concert tickets okay so what are concert tickets caught what do they cost I don't know I mean did you bucks I mean well if it's a good yeah they say cover charge yeah so it's $15 that's gonna be a lot of concerts you're gonna be going too what else can they give you that's valuable don't bands have merch yeah yeah Birds okay so there's the value on the merch put a dollar sign on that somewhere yes a guitar because they do that right they can't give you the tools they need cuz they'll be like air guitaring the rest of the time right okay so they can't give you the guitar what it's gonna give you how yeah is there a second mic no just one okay they could give you connections like referring you to other bands or other people in yeah okay yes they can refer you that's the minimum they can do so they'll tell all their band friends that have no money that paid nothing you're gonna be in debt forever this is the problem it's true referrals are valuable from valuable people this is the problem it's like I got four homeless friends you guys want to help them cool all right so a referral okay yes that might be valuable if you can trade those in for money so anything else they can do I think so there's more come on guys get unstuck on this don't get fixated with the number it's just a trade what can I do for you what can you do for me yes you can invite his band that you don't like to play at your birthday right that's gonna be wonderful yes lessons okay what are lessons worth you're very creative 150 bucks whoo they're doing all right now they're moving up in the world 150 an hour this is awesome okay they can probably literally make post on their social media on your behalf so when we say give me exposure this isn't an act that they have to participate in right so if they have a decent following they can say you know when I really think Alissa for doing this work for us and she's amazing and here's her Instagram handle and you guys should definitely hire her boom right that's worth something if small audience is fourth class big audience is little worth it's a little more and then you can ask them for metrics and just measure all this stuff so you get really creative okay now we've established a few things we've established that mmm that they you don't like their music you may or may not like their merch so definitely you don't take lessons from them but you can trade this to somebody else you can give these away to your favorite nephew or niece instead of sending them 150 bucks for their birthday yeah guess what guess what auntie did for you you're gonna love this band they're amazing check out this shirt I got you you can trade it all we live in we can we're just bartering that's all you got to get your value though so all this stuff has to add up to this if not more than this because it's hard to change this this requires work so I would not do an even trade here maybe maybe you think they got potential and you can say I don't want to guarantee on something I want a percentage of this or that and I'll do you all your design and branding for you it's that cool and some bands will do that does that make sense yeah you got to just get really creative on how to get paid and you have to learn how to charge more in value your work more than 100 bucks you're charging ok ok on a different day in a different hour we'll talk about why you gave up the number 100 we'll have to figure this out ok so what you want to do I hope I'm gonna give you some advice even though you didn't ask me is this is my model in life it really is I want to do the least amount of work for the fuze number of people to get paid the most amount of money I don't want the opposite I don't want to do the most amount of work for the most amount of people to get paid the least amount of money we have to invert that equation for you so a lot of people hear this and say well oh you can't tell the kids that that's bad advice it's like no you're gonna create a bunch of monsters that are you gotta circle and arrogant run around eager work so much money maybe but I'd rather create those kind of monsters than the ones who sell themselves short and windup broke living check to check not having anything for themselves and getting into either some kind of real accident and then not being able to take care of themselves that would be a bigger sin for me the other thing that I think of is when I say that then you have to start to ask yourself this question what can I do that would be valuable to whom for doing what and then acquire those skills that's the critical part of this equation I want to do something that's worth a lot of money and I know that there's a gap between where I am and where I want to be and then I work really hard to get to that other spot tell you a little Side Story here I heard from a friend of mine that he hired a coach and the coaches got a very specific way of working this coach flies in to town which you pay for and the hotel and he charges $10,000 to meet with you for one day the end of the day he gets back on the plane he goes home he writes up a summary he sends it to you and that's it 10,000 bucks and I thought to myself wow that's amazing I want that but I just sit there and start saying like I won 10,000 bucks for a day's worth the work I started to thinking sort of thinking about like what can I do that somebody would then also feel equally satisfied with me doing that work for 10,000 bucks Blair ends calls this like the double thank you where I genuinely thank you for paying me and you genuinely think me for doing this wonderful work for you I thank you you thank me that's a relationship on top I'm not talking about cheating people okay so then I worked for a couple of years to develop the skills the positioning of my own brand and what it is that I do that I started to get paid $10,000 for a day then I got paid more and more and more and I just kept learning what those skills were necessary so that the clients would feel that and they do genuinely thank you afterwards so I want to plant that seed in your brain right now do something that's valuable for someone you won't be there today let's start working to acquire those skills there are things that you can learn okay all right I will okay listen yeah fun with a spin all right Jonah you have any questions from the audience okay thanks you said that's so like nobody's watching I got it okay 285 285 hello okay yes hi hi what's your name Annika Annika I'm gonna need help a and n ika oh okay all right okay okay not as hot yeah okay it's more intuitive okay what's your question so we've been talking about how there's design everywhere and there's technology advancing so with this technology advancing we have access to a larger library of information than ever before how do we go about creating content that hasn't been seen before and isn't sampling from other work when we're exposed to it on a daily basis because sometimes we can even do it subconsciously like we create something and we're like oh this looks like this how do we avoid making something repetitive and create new and interesting content okay that's a very valid question you want to create new never-before-seen Wow okay that's super ambitious okay it's a noble thing to try to strive for this and I think especially people in school tend to want to do this and then you get old and jaded like me you know maybe not possible I don't know so nasty this question all seriousness and and I'll do respect when's the last time you saw something new and never before seen or never seen before you're gonna search your mind a really long time I know okay now I have had this debate since I was like 20 years old with my classmates okay let's talk about new okay the word new is awesome new okay what is new okay so if you this is you and you look at something and you say wow that's new because why why is it new okay you see that you're like that's new why is it new because you've not seen it it's new to you but then somebody like me comes along and says new know I've seen this already so is it still new [Music] maybe it's mi new really so this is now called semi new you guys and your language skills okay tell me why you say something new well I mean especially because we are people who study design we're probably gonna have more exposure like you said you have more exposure than we do okay to certain elements of design yeah so it depends on who your audience is okay it's just new to the audience okay that's fair is that what you're looking for when you say never-before-seen there's a big asterisk there the asterisk is to you it's not okay yeah thanks okay so I share new ideas with you today that you've not seen before you're like that guy comes up new ideas when I'm like no everything I know is from a book or a thing I read or watched or somebody else coached me on and most of my new ideas are terrible all I'm doing is presenting to you information that you believe to be new and so this is a much more realistic goal to hit I like this so new to you so how do you create work that's new to the audience you have to first understand who the audience is okay this is this is looking to lead us somewhere here I think there's gonna be good I think okay so the target the bull's eye is much clearer now versus creating just new like never before seen because I think there's very few things that are never-before-seen because everything just gets remixed it really does and technology allows us to remix more creatively now right and so we're like that's a new application of an old idea that's new enough okay so new to this audience so you have to say like what is this audience looking at all the time so this is a bunch of little people okay I hope you can see this there's a bunch of people okay so this is we'll call this the creative watering hole so they all come in here and like Mama's own ooh okay now it's all where the old stuff it really is so all you have to do is go over here and say hey guys there's just thing and you bring it over there and you're like hey what about this thing and then they'll say it's new so here's the thing if you're in fashion look at architecture if you're in photography look at cinema if you're in cinema look at musicals or plays all you do is go outside so I think there's a quote that I don't know who who said this but the secret to originality is to hide your sources that's all it is so I remember back in the day the pre-internet age designers classmates online literally had a secret stash they'd have like weird obscure magazines and catalogs you know these people and they would hoard their secret sauce if they had a font that not everybody had and there's bustin out this design everybody else is using Helvetica for Torah and you look like you know you so commercially made fun you won't tell me I see so they're very protective of those sources right and so that's how they held onto their value by hiding their sources and so there's a degree to that that if you don't show people your secret sauce so to speak you'll be more malleable and a lot of creatives think that do you guys know of any creative person that hides through all their secrets do you know I do what's that yeah but do you ever go to one of your friends so how'd you do that oh you know you figure it out you know how'd you create that texture yeah yeah under the rug that's what they do you guys maybe live in a different era where everybody shares everything but I know people my age right they're amazing what's that hyper-competitive and yeah and so they look at me like I'm this charlatan because I just share everything is there anything you want to know if I know what I'll share with you I don't hide anything and then they're like Chris you just like what are you doing you're creating a lot of animals out there what are you doing why would you do that and I invite them come on this show and hey I love how you did that when you tell us how to do that no no I don't want a lot of competitors I don't want a clone and then sometimes I talk to them like how's business and I don't have any work so any surprise you're like the best-kept secret in the meantime Here I am really it's what's happening they don't share Jack because they think like we can't figure it out but I'm not that stupid I can figure out just about anything so here we are we share and we openly expose every single thing even like how much money we make or whatever we share it all and yet we're turning down so we live in this new society now where sharing is powerful hoarding is selfish sharing is more powerful than hoarding because when you share it people invite you go and speak at things and then you onboard fans and then they have bosses and those bosses need people and then they get referred and they get work you can roll people into your art and you aren't making process so if you want to do something new go where nobody's looking bring it back to this world they get excited and then tell him exactly what you did that's powerful stuff okay there's also this idea of new and I'm talking tomorrow about this so if you like this and you want to go deeper I'm going to talk about this in tomorrow's live stream is about new he's just showing me old it really is show me something old in a new way that's all it is man and that's what technology allows us to do because there's very little new and if you think about it how many times have you seen a story about a guy who loves a girl but they can't get together because like he's a jock and she's an artist right or he's poor and she's rich we see the same story over and over and over again yet you are so happy you give money to people to make these stories it's because we figured out what ideas work and we figured out what ideas do not work and so we like to repeat the ideas that work and that's why the story of Romeo and Juliet is just told over and over again it really is they just changed the variables oh guy once girl can't get the girl she's not interesting guys okay guy once girl can't get the girl why because his business is that war with her business just goes on and on so we're not really looking for new we're looking for familiar but presented differently okay so I'll give you one trick just one trick one trick is the big small have you guys heard of the big small it's exactly what it sounds like the big small okay all you have to do is make something big small it's really that it that's simple okay have you seen these sculptures on a grain of rice something big small have you seen people build miniature sets of like real places and then they zoom out and it's like the size of their hand that's fascinating cuz I've never looked at it like that so what we're doing is we're reintroducing an old idea as new and we could do the opposite we can make the small big have you seen that have you seen sculptures that look like this and this is the size of a person we made something small big and it forces us to look at something in a way that we've never seen before because here's the truth you and I we walk around the world to differing degrees oblivious to the world we really are and then one day you stop to notice a crack in the sidewalk and you look at it you stare at it looks like the face of Jesus or something and that's the revelation for you that one moment obviously I know this one was happening but you know you see that you know guys guys it's the ground and then you and then people it blows up and I kept fine so Jesus on the street of LA that's what it is so you're just showing them something that they miss and there's a good reason why we we we ignore all these things and the reason why we ignore these things is because it's too taxing on our brain to process every single thing that's happening just the whole time you would just fall over in fatigue and burn all the calories so this is all you need to do so one of the assignments I would give my students is I would tell them to go and get a macro lens and shoot something and show me something that we never pay attention to the backside of a keyboard the cracks in between something or the printing on the bottom side of a show me something that I don't think about and that's how you discover the new in the old that's all it is okay you have a follow-up you okay yeah I'm listening oh cool all right excellent I have tuck my shirt in here it is popping out I shouldn't have had that chicken okay somebody else okay finally to the front row so um which name Diego Diego likes in so sorry like Sam yeah okay so I was really preparing to go into the workforce I personally feel this pressure to specialize or like instead of saying I'm a visual artist go to say Europe after design or even especially is even more and say you're a typographer yeah and I feel I feel like I have all these interests all these passions that as subside society goes on it's like we're trying to make these just specialized humans instead of having this well-roundedness and even going to a liberal arts school like so fearless pressures so I can't even imagine if you're like really not in art school yeah so yeah my question is like do you believe like society should prefer like the specialization or a more well-rounded miss okay I will tell you I've answered this question many times before and I'm prepared because I don't know the exact location is that okay guys okay it's the specialist first as the generalists debate and you may think you're specializing now at LMU but you're not not even close I promise you that I promise you okay versus the generalist and even at at a school like art center they're still pretty generalists they teach them a lot of different skills okay so I'm gonna help you answer this question in a number of different ways I'm not going to tell you the answer but I'm gonna make hopefully an argument or present some data for you to consider okay okay the generalist knows many things right and the specialist tends to focus on the one thing they just go deep and we go wide okay when you want to hire somebody to solve a problem do you want to hire somebody that has surface level experience on many things or the person has great depth in one thing what do you think you have a problem Diego has a problem Diego tell me what a problem might be it could be any kind of problem anytime anything that you need help with any job you trying to get done with math problem not that kind of problem you find the one problem like okay fine fine I'll War birth at you rat okay math math problem okay try and derail me right here you've got a math problem you suck at math let's just assume you're gonna hire a tutor this tutor knows English history philosophy math political science art design typography or the men's on math genius who do you want a tutor you genius okay you have to hold it call the math genius the math genius and why is that because they know more about the topic they know it inside out upside down they do in their sleep right yeah they've seen this problem probably 1,000 times right they've seen it a thousand times how many times is the general seen it one time okay there's another way to look at this Allen dip in his book the one-page marketing plan the one-page marketing plan it looks like pimp but it's not it's a one-page marketing plan Allen did he says look it like this let's say you have ten thousand dollars you have ten thousand dollars for marketing budget okay yeah ten thousand dollars if you had to acquire or market to ten thousand clients what's your budget per client one dollar you're pretty good at math one dollar so it's a thousand same thing how much is it a dollar or what do you mean Oh $10 sir yeah $10 good okay otherwise I'd have to get a refund on the LMU okay you got a hundred what would it be 100 okay let's say you had to get ten clients yeah okay so this is the power of focus and it works both ways one is we have to hire and then we have to spend it works both ways so if you had to market to 10 people and you had the budget of $1,000 per client I bet you could come up with a lot of creative ideas and I bet if you had to market to 10,000 clients and your budget was $1 you would say dude what I'm going to do with a dollar what can that buy me per client and unfortunately he said Alyssa are you Alyssa yes with Alyssa she's like yeah I have his client says $100 I can't do anything my hands are tied man I could barely like get out of bed for that so this is the power focus so if you focus on a few things you'll have much better results so it's just potency the same thing if you've seen a problem of thousand times and kind of almost know the answer already the generalist versus the specialist now I can tell because I read faces for a living you're not convinced Diego tell me why you're not convinced do you think that maybe that focus could cloud you to new ideas or like new efficient ways to achieving something yeah so this is all that's new right here and that's new that's new that's new that's new I love this oh my god this is so what's this over here we call that shiny object syndrome right it's still shiny over there and I'm bored of this so guess what if you ever try to get good at anything that you don't know it's like what composing composing music yeah great you tried it one time mayor I'm done I'm as good as I need to be and then whether you like his music or not maybe Hans Zimmer you know he's worked on it for a while it's the same thing it's like we get distracted so Blair ends talks about this you guys know who Blair ends is I'll write his name here for you guys player ends he says that creative people have an addiction we do I mean not just the drugs but did a new the dable we tired of doing the same thing over and over and over again right so this addiction to the new and the novel actually work against our ability to market ourselves to develop expertise and command the greatest value for our efforts it really does now there are some places where the generalist is the preferred way to go but they're only a few versus the many and now I'll ask you this question okay you guys are hungry you guys go to the food court at the mall right and you go to the food court and you're you're really hungry and you're feeling like you want to have a great barbecue rib let's just say that's what you want so chances are you're gonna go to the smokehouse that does the barbecue ribs but what happened this amazing new food court vendor they have a little Chinese food a couple of ribs they've got Korean they've got Mexican that got Indian they've got middle-eastern food they've got an all-american it's like how often do you go to that person versus the person who's focused on this like do you want your hot dog vendor to make you sushi and do you want your sushi vendor to give you hot dogs I don't know I don't think so the only time you go to the all-you-can-eat people right the Hometown buffets it's when you're either super hungry and you're super indecisive and no offense the Hometown Buffet I've never even been there anybody home time buffet fans yeah there goes our sponsor and you just don't care about the quality of food you eat that's it it's harsh you guys so watch that film the Netflix and documentary ain't none efflux it's the documentary it's called jiro Dreams of Sushi some of you have seen it it's amazing I didn't think I would like a movie like that but I'll watch on my ding this is amazing I went from like I don't like you to like I respect you master okay in 90 minutes jiro Dreams of Sushi okay zero is regarded as the world's greatest sushi chef he lives in Japan he's got a tiny sushi place I think there's nine people's by appointment only six-month wait life time it's incredible and Jiro is meticulous about the amount of preparation that he puts into everything like he has people hand massaging squid or octopus for like hours and that's all they do you have to work for him for seven years before you're allowed to even cut a piece of fish it's intense and his son works for him and there's this conflict that unfolds in the narrative and he's just sitting there and they're just doing this and their hands or just beat up massaging the octopus and Shiro has those philosophies like people like eating octopus because it's really chewy it's because they haven't eaten the octopus the way it's been prepared properly it's you break down all the muscles in the tendon or whatever and then it just melts in your mouth he said that his greatest dream and what he is legacy is he wants to be do the same thing the same way forever and he knows it's not possible because they're so meticulous they mix seven kinds of grains of rice together they toast all the the nori paper like moments before I eat it and everything is done and he pays for the most expensive thing he tries to do everything the same way and when I first heard him to say it I'm like oh my god just kill me now but what he was saying was he has such an impossibly high standard of food prep and delivery his greatest goal in life is to make sure he maintains that level quality and that really blew me away you know before you eat there he asks you questions I'll tall are you are you left-handed are you right-handed how much do you weigh yeah it's crazy right like why would you need to know that because when he served you to the fish if you're left-handed he puts it on your left hand side he ranges the plate differently depending on who you are and how big you are changes the proportion of the fish and the rice he gives you it is incredible attention to detail so to be the greatest at something I have to start to think you gotta do it a lot of times to a very high degree so we have to get rid of this desire to do so much because it works again says Jordan Peterson talks about to see is like creative people are amazing create immeasurable value in the world and he talks about the Sistine Chapel and how much commerce that's made and their studies about how much revenue the Eiffel Tower is made for France and in merch and souvenirs not even just tourists it's crazy it's like a over a billion dollars that's what the powerful art is but he said that we are by nature divergent thinkers versus convergent thinking and this works against our like success in the in the world of finance and business because we're scatterbrains so if we exercise a little discipline we pick a lane we can probably do really well for ourselves so I'm going to tell you something that hopefully won't make you want to jump off a bridge after this which is this is that you probably should specialize externally okay while you remain a generalist internally this is the critical difference like I said I've prepared this argument many times before okay what is what I mean by this to the world you are the greatest math problem solver whiz kid graphic designer that's what they know you for inside your composing music you're studying photography you're writing poetry we don't even care we don't need to know here's the cool part here's a really cool part when you get so much work and opportunities from this this is one form of bias okay if you do you guys know the halo bias I started looking into cognitive bias have you heard of the halo bias it's pretty cool so there are hundreds of kinds of bias prejudice that we all have shortcuts that we make about things to explain the world because mostly it takes up too much energy to think about things the halo bias is if you're good at one thing you must be good at everything it really is true and let me show you how this works you guys are young you're still good-looking you walk into an interview like damn Diego's fine I bet you he's really good at logo design and you just get by because you're good-looking you ever noticed that okay if you're good at doing logos they're like I bet you he could design websites he's really that good this happens all the time okay you see somebody who is smart at one thing you just assume they're smart at everything this works the opposite God sucks that logo design he must suck at web design too gaudy is ugly he must be terrible at everything this is what happens so when you show the world just one thing that you're really good at they just assume you're good at everything and I have examples too and I'll talk about that in a second okay so what happens is you got so good at this they're like do you know we're working a new movie can you write the music for us so other opportunities open up over here once you've established the superstar status and to remind your all-star okay once you achieve this level of fame or expertise credibility then they started asking for all kinds of stuff so people hire me for all kinds of things I'm not qualified to do I don't know if you know that so I was working with a client and I was designing their identity system started talking about their brand a little bit next thing I know the client hires me to design their facade the signage which is still close to what we do then they're like Chris can you designed inside and I'm remodeling this building and these properties can you also design that and I tell him and I say to him you know I'm not an architect he goes to I know I know I'll hire an architect you just do the concepts so I get to do the best part of being an architect without the tedious work it would suck to be that architect in that's exactly what happens I design these things in Illustrator I render them in cinema 4d when I say I somebody here who knows how to use it renders in cinema 4d the client approves it it's wonderful later on he shows me a picture I never have to deal with like oh yeah move that over there and like try these things they just worked I got paid to do that is that wonderful I got paid to be a consultant for virtual reality experience I don't even know what that is then I told him I don't want to do that deck but you got to tell a story I'm like yeah okay I'll do it just pay me it I'll do it no problem internally I'm studying philosophy I'm looking at psychotherapy I'm looking at typography I'm looking at lots of different things I don't put that out there all the time this makes me richer internally this makes me rich externally meaning money in the bank okay that makes sense yeah so don't throw yourself off a bridge you can still love all those things that you like to do you can't just pick a lane and go deep on that and put that face into the world because the halo bias works for you it also works against you now here's the rule many of you guys are going to get out of school in a few months when you put out your portfolio edit out all the garbage and right now because your program is not that focus there's a little bit of garbage in there just take it out don't get this idea that you have to have 14 pieces you need three I said you need three I got my first job in advertising by sending four pieces in a FedEx box I was offered a job I did it because my portfolio was not advertising base so I picked four pieces that might feel like advertising that was conceptual that's it it's not hard because of that so some of the things that you think are true or not true it's not the quantity because what they do is they look at the worst piece and they imagine the rest of your work like that if you could put that piece in your portfolio I wonder what you're gonna do to us so don't put anything that you're not super proud of and be merciless be vigilant in what you keep if you walk into an art gallery and you see three amazing pieces on the wall that's all you need to know you walk in the gallery a couple of crappy pieces like what are they thinking the whole credibility of the gallery goes down okay you know yeah all right what time is in how many more questions do we have a57 okay so one more and we're done or was that the last one one more you got it take us home there's a lot of pressure okay my name is Jane Jane Jane okay perfect Jane so my question actually comes from a comment you were making at the start of this where you said you make a lot of videos but people don't care unless the audio is good yeah and I'm wondering if you apply that to design at all if there's an element in design that you notice that if that's the weakest link everything just comes crashing down okay that's an excellent question okay so we know that this is and I feel like I must have put this in the wrong spot cuz I can't get over here that video is an audio-visual experience right that most of us are visual people were in the design space so we tend to focus on the visual a lot what I learned years ago was an interview no audio delay hello hello yeah I'm back alright alright we're back alright thank you it's a live show these things happen okay it's an audio-visual experience and when I heard George Lucas say this he's like when the audience comes to the screen all they care about is what it sounds like you guys know thx that's George Lucas's technology you know that not that he invented it but the people scientists the engineers and the wizards and you when you go to watch Star Wars film it is on a new level or on another level than most films today films have caught up to that but there was a time in which you would listen to the way that the bikes would race past you it was incredible so he's like don't show for the picture they show for the sound so here's what we make if this is the part that people care about this little pit in the olive we focus on that olive and make sure that that's fine because without that they don't care about this at all so when you make a piece of design you have to figure out what does my audience for my client care about and hopefully they're the same things what is the client the audience care about what's going to move the needle what's going to make an impact and then solve for that problem because everything else is not not important to solving this once you nailed that part everything that's fine so in your classes your professors might say concept that's what people care about you know and I think that's true that I would rather have something that looks ugly but really be powerful and conceptual it's something that's beautiful and empty although I like both ideally those two things are right here so you have the beauty and you on the concept and it's right there that's a sweet spot that's the stuff that people take notice of so I would tell you or advised you just to look at what people care about and they're not always what you care about some clients don't even care about the quality of the work they don't some just want to make sure you hit the deadline that's all that's their status like get the deadline you're good some clients might care because of cost and you want to make sure you're on the same page or do we care about the same things if you don't and that bothers you don't take the job but once you understand that you have to prioritize that as you get more experience become more well known you get to decide then what you care about and they hire you because you care about that thing it's not always the case at the beginning sometimes it is when you get out and you're already a superstar it can happen is anybody here a superstar already because it does happen any better get a giant social following okay I'll tell you a little story I think seven eight years ago I had an intern here and she had a pretty big social following on Instagram and she was interning for me made me feel very insecure I'm gonna tell you my damn my intern has more followers than me not by a little bit but a lot a check recently I'm okay now but for a while I was like just weird and so sometimes especially I'm gonna call them kids but like 15 year-olds already starting to do design work now so by the time they get into college they already have a lot of experience and they've already built up a following which is incredible to me it's like what's happening in the poker world you know where these old-timers are getting displaced by internet stars and what is happening because they play online so they play hundreds or thousands of hands versus like in the real table it takes time to play a hand and they have six seven eight tables playing at the same time they're good so they put in the mileage and so when they show up on the scene people are like blown away how good they are and how fast they got there because they've been able to experience that did I answer your question Jane yeah 100% hundreds and that's really good that's not gonna a okay well if I did hundred percent I'm gonna end it on a high note before something else breaks so I want to thank you guys for coming out here for asking the questions I know we only hit I think four or five people if you want to know more about what it is that we do I would strongly encourage you to check out our channel it's the future and you can find us on YouTube we have created over a thousand videos believe it or not and we're just getting started so if you want to know more about pricing and value-based pricing tons of content there if you want to know how to deal with those really nasty clients we do a lot of live role plays and we address those so those are some of the most popular videos okay and we also produce like how to design stuff but it's not really what we spend a lot of time thinking about how was this for you guys we're still rolling so it's okay how is this for you it's not okay you guys gonna see me in the street that mother mother trucker it's okay last class they're like yeah whatever and then enough and they told Dave I sucked and that was it you could tell me to my face that my sucked I appreciate that okay all right great okay well that's it then you guys thanks for tuning in live and we will see you guys tomorrow live at 4:00 p.m. we're going to talk about how to grow your Instagram following this is the follow-up we're going to level two so if you enjoy that one make sure you tune in tomorrow 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time and that's it and Jordan take us out of here

Channel: The Futur

Views: 113,613

Rating: 4.9571185 out of 5

Keywords: chris do, the futur, students, ama, questions, how to, university, college, visit, live facilitation, portfolio, goal setting, critique, worst critic, art, art school, advice, art portfolio, student, art college, art school portfolio, school, artist, design school, design, art portfolio critique, mistakes, learning from mistakes, whiteboard, whiteboard sessions, education, whiteboard session, after hours, ai, artificial intelligence, adobe sensei, photoshop, lmu, loyola marymount, fiverr

Id: QOoRdbPdi0E

Length: 96min 57sec (5817 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020