Margo Chase: Creative InspirationIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:07 | Margo Chase: I will come up with something
that I like or an idea or a shape that I like,
| | 00:10 | and then that kind of idea will be in my mind
when I am working on something for a client.
| | 00:15 | I believe design can change people's minds.
| | 00:17 | You really after a while start to realize
that you are just being hired to decorate stuff.
| | 00:20 | It's like, oh, just make it pretty,
and as long as it looks pretty and cool,
| | 00:23 | they are really happy.
| | 00:25 | To me, that was really limiting, that
was just like sort of one side of my brain.
| | 00:29 | I love making things pretty and cool, but I feel
like they ought to be pretty and cool for a reason.
| | 00:34 | I am Goth.
| | 00:35 | Getting known as doing one thing is
kind of nice, because you get lots of
| | 00:40 | work in that one style, and it's kind
of horrible because people think you
| | 00:44 | can't do anything else.
| | 00:45 | I am a typophiliac.
| | 00:47 | We really only created just the word
envision for the poster, and then after a
| | 00:51 | while I was like, I really, really
like those letter forms, I want to make a
| | 00:53 | whole alphabet out of them.
| | 00:54 | So it became an entire font.
| | 01:00 | I love the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta.
| | 01:02 | This I find really inspiring, and I
think you will be able to see some
| | 01:05 | connections between the style
and some of the work that I do.
| | 01:08 | This is something I just love.
| | 01:19 | I draw on the sky.
| | 01:20 | I love the idea that there is this
goal of perfection that I am striving for,
| | 01:24 | because it keeps the challenge there, since
perfection is something you can really never achieve.
| | 01:28 | I have learned that it's really important
to surround yourself with talented people.
| | 01:32 | The reason we do this is really to
help clients solve a business problem, and
| | 01:36 | when they come back afterwards and say
that their sales increased 40% because of
| | 01:40 | the design we did, we think we did a good job.
| | 01:43 | I am Margo Chase.
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| Workspace| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:08 | Margo Chase: Welcome to Chase Design Group.
| | 00:10 | We are standing in Silver Lake,
Los Angeles, which is one of the --
| | 00:15 | a neighborhood I have
lived in for over 20 years.
| | 00:18 | We have been in this
building for only two years.
| | 00:20 | I think you can see why I like
the building, the sign is amazing.
| | 00:24 | The building was built in the 20s
originally, and it was a pest control
| | 00:28 | building, and then it was
an art gallery for a while.
| | 00:31 | Then it was another
design firm, and now it's ours.
| | 00:33 | This is the first space that people
see when they walk into my office.
| | 00:38 | There are some samples around, and
there are a series of work posters on the
| | 00:41 | wall behind me, that
represent about 20 years of our work;
| | 00:46 | logo work primarily, starting in
1986, and going all the way to now.
| | 00:52 | It's really important, I think, to have
the mood of the space reflect the work.
| | 00:56 | I think our work is a little unusual in
some ways, and its -- it can be eclectic.
| | 01:01 | It's always really functional.
| | 01:03 | So I think that's a little
bit what the space is like.
| | 01:05 | It's not too fancy, it's pretty
functional, and it's a little eclectic, it's got
| | 01:09 | things on the walls.
| | 01:10 | This is a mural that actually
represents the scene outside this wall.
| | 01:15 | So there's a big freeway intersection
out here with overpasses and things, and
| | 01:19 | it's very sort of classic LA scene.
| | 01:21 | Clark Goolsy: We just played
around with some different ideas.
| | 01:24 | We thought it would be fun to
kind of incorporate what's outside.
| | 01:28 | So we took some photos, kind of
panoramaed them outside, and then I brought them
| | 01:32 | back in, added a few character
that I thought were pretty fun.
| | 01:37 | But, yeah, it was cool, it's a cool project.
| | 01:39 | It's fun too, because we started
talking about it like on Monday, and by like
| | 01:46 | Thursday we were painting it, so we defiantly
moved fast and did it really quick, but it was fun.
| | 01:51 | Margo Chase: Well, when we first moved
into this space, it was completely white.
| | 01:56 | It also had some walls in
places that we didn't want.
| | 02:00 | So we spend a lot of time knocking down
walls, and we created some doorways to
| | 02:04 | open the space up, so that it was a
lot more open, and things -- people could
| | 02:09 | actually talk to each other
and work at the same time.
| | 02:11 | So the space where everyone works,
what I call the studio area, there are no
| | 02:16 | cubicles and no interior walls.
| | 02:19 | We did that on purpose.
| | 02:20 | I mean, it's easy for
everybody to hear what's going on.
| | 02:22 | So there's a lot of
collaboration and a lot of exchange of ideas.
| | 02:27 | I don't think the designers feel very
proprietary about their own work too often.
| | 02:31 | We asked people opinions like, here's
what I am doing, would you think about this?
| | 02:35 | It helps people to check out with each
other, make sure they are not stuck in
| | 02:39 | not doing something that doesn't work,
or that someone else wouldn't understand.
| | 02:43 | This is Elaine.
| | 02:45 | Elaine Suh: Hi!
| | 02:46 | Margo Chase: She is a designer, who is
-- do you want to talk a little bit about
| | 02:48 | Margo Chase: what you are working on?
Elaine Suh: Sure.
| | 02:50 | I was working on a Disney,
vintage holiday style guide.
| | 02:57 | We just had it finished and
delivered, so I was feeling really good.
| | 03:01 | Margo Chase: So this is a style guide that we
do for Disney, that helps them take there, sort
| | 03:06 | of, Disney characters and make them into
something that's a little more vintage,
| | 03:10 | and a little more high end and prestige looking.
| | 03:13 | They give these guides to their licensees,
who then manufacture product for the holidays.
| | 03:19 | I think in this case it's
going to be sold at Target.
| | 03:21 | So we create the color palette, the patterns.
| | 03:24 | We select the type styles.
| | 03:26 | We recommend the
treatments to the illustrations.
| | 03:30 | That creates a whole, sort of,
guidelines book then, that they use to create
| | 03:34 | things from tabletop, Christmas tree
ornaments, all kinds of holiday stuff.
| | 03:39 | When we started, it was much less
organized, and things were a little bit more
| | 03:45 | free form in terms of, who is
managing who, and who is the boss of who.
| | 03:50 | Usually, we setup a team, it's an
account person and a creative person, and they
| | 03:56 | work together on a particular project.
| | 03:59 | But it's not always the same two people.
| | 04:01 | For instance, Shannon is responsible
for lot of the style guide project.
| | 04:06 | So she may work with Clark on one
project, and she might work with Elaine on
| | 04:10 | a different project.
| | 04:11 | But then if Clark is working on
something else, he might work with me, or he
| | 04:13 | might work with Janet.
| | 04:15 | So depending on which client, and which
account, and which project the designers
| | 04:19 | are working on, the teams may change.
| | 04:20 | So it's pretty flexible.
| | 04:22 | My office up here, as you can see, I can
see down on everybody, and I can pretty
| | 04:25 | much hear what's going on down there.
| | 04:27 | But I also have enough privacy
that I can actually work without
| | 04:30 | getting interrupted.
| | 04:31 | They have to climb those stairs in
order to interrupt me if I am working,
| | 04:33 | which is a good thing.
| | 04:35 | The library was -- actually one of
the reasons that we chose this space was
| | 04:38 | that mezzanine, because when I walked in
I thought, oh, that's the perfect place
| | 04:40 | to put all the books.
| | 04:42 | They are really part of the process.
| | 04:44 | I mean, they get used a lot.
| | 04:45 | I mean, the Internet now is starting to
replace the need for traditional books,
| | 04:50 | because you can do so much visual
research on the Internet, but books still are
| | 04:54 | really important, especially some of
the older ones that I have, because those
| | 04:57 | things are -- you can't find
them anywhere but in books.
| | 05:00 | They are not reproduced even in other books,
some of the older -- really old things.
| | 05:04 | I just love books, I always have.
| | 05:06 | I mean, I have design books here, and I
have lot of books at my house as well.
| | 05:09 | I just collect them for -- I
think they are just beautiful objects;
| | 05:13 | both to read and to look at.
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| Library| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Margo Chase: Yeah, this is the library, and I
have been collecting these books since I first
| | 00:12 | started in graphic designs, so
some of these things are pretty old.
| | 00:16 | I think I started buying
design books when I was in college.
| | 00:19 | Then I also have a big collection of
antique books that I have collected
| | 00:22 | over the years.
| | 00:23 | Some of them are just literary stories,
and I collect books from -- called from
| | 00:30 | the Roycrofters, which are all handmade
and handmade paper, it was a communion
| | 00:34 | in Upstate New York.
| | 00:35 | Then I also have a lot of books on
typography, like old type specimen books,
| | 00:39 | like this one, which is kind of falling apart.
| | 00:42 | I don't even know if I can get it
out of the shelf for showing it.
| | 00:45 | But it has some amazing
type faces and old lettering.
| | 00:52 | I mean, these are things that you can't find
on the Internet these days, or not all of it.
| | 00:56 | So it's pretty great reference material.
| | 00:58 | I have a lot of these kinds of things,
and we still use them as reference
| | 01:02 | material, and those are just great objects.
| | 01:05 | We also have some other things that
I really love, which are old fashion
| | 01:08 | magazines, like these are issues of
FLAIR, and look at that, MAY 1950.
| | 01:12 | I mean, they are so great for
advertising and just the photography styles and
| | 01:17 | lettering, I mean really wonderful
objects, and they are unfortunately starting
| | 01:21 | to fall apart too, but they are great.
| | 01:23 | They are organized by categories, so
I can find them by subject I guess.
| | 01:28 | So things on architecture I try to collect
them in one area, so that I can find things.
| | 01:34 | Things on art are gathered together in a place.
| | 01:36 | Graphic designs in a section.
| | 01:38 | Then we also have a database of library,
database on the computer that we have
| | 01:43 | entered all the books into, so you can
do a search on a particular subject and
| | 01:46 | figure out if we have a book on it,
which shelf its on, because you will see all
| | 01:50 | the shelves are numbered.
| | 01:51 | So it's actually possible to
find things most of the times.
| | 01:54 | This is Maxfield Parrish, so it's
an original Maxfield Parrish story.
| | 02:02 | I mean, the books themselves are
just inspiring as objects, and then the
| | 02:05 | illustrations are fabulous.
| | 02:07 | Then this is the Rubaiyat, you can see that.
| | 02:11 | Even the typography in here is fabulous.
| | 02:13 | So there are a lot of things like this
that are not for any particular reason
| | 02:21 | other than just being inspiring.
| | 02:23 | This is called the Mira
Calligraphiae Monumenta, and it's actually a
| | 02:27 | reproduction, but it's some of the most
amazing calligraphy, and this is actual size.
| | 02:34 | The reproduction and the lettering artist who
did this work did all this stuff at this size.
| | 02:39 | I mean, it's like minute ant type.
| | 02:43 | It was kind of his demonstrating
his abilities in how amazing he was.
| | 02:49 | Then it was illustrated later,
after the calligrapher died, it was
| | 02:53 | illustrated by a man named Hoefnagel,
who came in and did all the paintings
| | 02:57 | on the same parchment.
| | 02:59 | So it's just amazing.
| | 03:01 | This I find really inspiring, and I
think you will be able to see some
| | 03:03 | connections between the style
and some of the work that I do.
| | 03:08 | This is something I just love.
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| Music career| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:08 | Margo Chase: So the first ten years of my
career as a designer I spent doing almost
| | 00:14 | exclusively work in the
music business, and it was great.
| | 00:17 | I mean, it was a great way
to start out as a designer.
| | 00:21 | I got into it kind of accidentally
though, it wasn't something intentional.
| | 00:24 | I was kind of couch surfing in Los
Angeles when I got out of graduate school,
| | 00:29 | and I ended up interviewing with
somebody who had friends who worked for Warner
| | 00:32 | Bros Records, and he said, you should
go over there to the music department and
| | 00:36 | interview, because they are always
looking for people who can do cool logos or
| | 00:40 | things for album covers.
| | 00:41 | I thought, oh, that sounds like
a great thing, I will go do that.
| | 00:44 | I did, and the first couple of
projects they gave me were really lame jobs.
| | 00:48 | I mean, for bands you have never heard
of, like Gospel covers and things for
| | 00:53 | really small distribution,
and nothing that cool.
| | 00:56 | But it didn't really matter at that
point, I was just really happy to get
| | 00:59 | projects and happy to get freelance work.
| | 01:02 | Warner Bros at that point
had a pretty amazing roster;
| | 01:04 | they had Madonna, they had Prince,
they had lots of really great bands.
| | 01:08 | So I got a chance to really work
with some pretty visible artists.
| | 01:12 | Then over the years you get sort of
even more well-known -- if you do a
| | 01:16 | project for somebody who is a visible
artist in the music business, your name
| | 01:20 | gets out there as a designer, and so
you get more work from other labels,
| | 01:24 | which is what happened.
| | 01:25 | I had friends in the music business
by then and they would all move to
| | 01:28 | different labels, so then I started
doing work for Giffen and for Virgin
| | 01:32 | Records and for Columbia, and Sony,
all the different labels, and it kept me
| | 01:37 | really busy for ten years.
| | 01:38 | But music business is a
challenge for a lot of reasons too.
| | 01:42 | I mean, it's great for a single or a
small studio, with a couple of people, but
| | 01:48 | the budgets are pretty small, and so
you really can't grow a business in a
| | 01:52 | serious way doing only music work,
it's pretty challenging to do.
| | 01:56 | When I first started I didn't know any
of that stuff, I hadn't really figured it
| | 01:58 | all out, and I was just
really happy to do cool work.
| | 02:01 | Because people just kept saying,
whatever you can do that's cool and different
| | 02:04 | and hasn't been done before, that's
what we want to see, and that's just a
| | 02:07 | great opportunity for a designer to be
in that position, to really get a chance
| | 02:11 | to try to figure out who you are and what you
are about, and find your voice as a designer.
| | 02:16 | That's something that, when you go to
work immediately in sort of a corporate
| | 02:19 | environment, you really don't
get an opportunity to do that.
| | 02:22 | So I am really, really happy that
I stumbled into that opportunity.
| | 02:26 | But after ten years I got kind of
tired of doing the same sort of five inch
| | 02:30 | square over and over again.
| | 02:33 | By then the music business was changing too.
| | 02:35 | It had become much more corporate, and
so the opportunities for doing really
| | 02:40 | unusual work were getting
to be fewer and far between.
| | 02:44 | So I had actually intentionally tried
to change the direction of the company,
| | 02:49 | and I really wanted to do consumer
packaging and explore other projects, like
| | 02:55 | interiors, retail, lots of the things
that we are doing now, and I really had no
| | 03:00 | experience in any design work much,
outside of the music business.
| | 03:05 | You are really not asked to be part of
a marketing conversation very often when
| | 03:08 | you do design in a music business,
it's really not -- they don't care.
| | 03:13 | That's kind of depressing, because you
really after a while start to realize
| | 03:16 | that you are just being hired to decorate stuff.
| | 03:18 | It's like, oh, just make it pretty,
and as long as it looks pretty and cool,
| | 03:21 | they are really happy, and to me that
was really limiting, that was just like
| | 03:24 | sort of one side of my brain.
| | 03:27 | I love making things pretty and cool,
but I feel like they ought to be pretty
| | 03:30 | and cool for a reason or in a
particular way, that helps somebody solve a
| | 03:34 | business problem, or sell a product,
or utilize some of the strengths.
| | 03:39 | Graphic designs are a really amazingly
powerful tool, and that tool was only
| | 03:43 | getting partially utilized, at least
in my opinion, in the music business.
| | 03:47 | So I spent actually quite a number of
years trying to sort of intentionally
| | 03:51 | change the direction of the business,
and move from just doing music and
| | 03:54 | entertainment based work.
| | 03:55 | Then we are doing projects now that
are really exciting to me for reasons
| | 03:59 | beyond just the design.
| | 04:00 | I mean, they are exciting because they
use a side of my brain that requires --
| | 04:04 | that I think strategically about;
| | 04:05 | how something is going to work, and who
it's going to interest, it's been great,
| | 04:11 | and I hope it continues for
another 20 years, if I live that long.
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| Music projects| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:10 | Margo Chase: One of them is
this project for Cher, Love Hurts.
| | 00:13 | So this is actually a limited edition box set.
| | 00:16 | So it was a CD, that was created as a special
limited edition and sent out as a promotion.
| | 00:22 | Primarily, these things went to press,
that kind of thing, so they would usually
| | 00:27 | print maybe a couple of hundred of them.
| | 00:29 | So they were really pretty hand-made in
a particular sense, and they always went
| | 00:32 | along with the release.
| | 00:34 | And if the label thought that the
release was going to be important enough and
| | 00:37 | that artist merited the money they
would produce a limited edition package.
| | 00:42 | So getting to do those projects as a
designer was a big clue because they
| | 00:45 | spent more money on production and was much
more interesting than just doing a little CD cover.
| | 00:50 | This project was funny too because this
was the very first project I did when I
| | 00:54 | got my first Macintosh.
| | 00:55 | And my first Mac was a Mac IIci, and
you could suddenly do all these things
| | 00:59 | easily that you couldn't do before,
and I don't think, I would have ever
| | 01:03 | endeavored to do a project like this if
I hadn't had Photoshop, and granted it
| | 01:06 | was kind of I sold my ability to do
this project, based on what I'd heard you
| | 01:11 | could do with Photoshop, not what I
actually knew I could do because I mean I
| | 01:15 | think my package was still
in shrink wrap of my software.
| | 01:16 | I don't think I haven't even installed it yet.
| | 01:19 | So it was a learning curve, and kind
of a learning curve, it shows expense,
| | 01:25 | but that was okay.
| | 01:27 | So this is the actual box,
it came in a wooden box.
| | 01:30 | Each of the cards went inside it
was related to one of the songs.
| | 01:36 | So there was a card for the cover that
has this kind of double C with flying
| | 01:39 | wings, monogram on it, and all the
elements that are in these collages are
| | 01:44 | scanned in on a little tiny Desktop
Scanner that I had, that went with my Mac
| | 01:48 | IIci, or photographed by a friend of
mine who is a Photographer and she shot all
| | 01:54 | the little elements for me.
| | 01:55 | It's like the bird wings are
actually a bird who tragically flew into the
| | 01:59 | windows of my studio, and so we took
him and put him in the freezer until we
| | 02:04 | got to the photo-shoot and then
photographed the wings, and then clipped them
| | 02:07 | out, put them in and scanned gold
leaf paper, scanned ribbon, that we had
| | 02:13 | curled up and twisted.
| | 02:15 | So all the elements that are in here
are either 2D or 3D objects that were
| | 02:18 | scanned and then reassembled in Photoshop.
| | 02:19 | We had a really hard time working
with her in terms of getting her to show
| | 02:23 | up for a photo-shoot.
| | 02:24 | She was too busy or had too many things going
on or didn't like how she looked that day.
| | 02:28 | So what we ended up doing was casting a
body-double which finding a body-double
| | 02:33 | for Cher is kind of challenging to start with.
| | 02:34 | So we had to find somebody who actually
kind of looked like, it could conceivably
| | 02:37 | be Cher's body, photographed her in the
outfits that we want because the concept
| | 02:41 | here with this tarot card theme was the
white queen and the dark queen and all
| | 02:45 | of the other tarot symbols that
were related to the song titles.
| | 02:50 | So then we basically went through the
approved photos that Cher's group gave
| | 02:56 | us and they were like three that would
work and one of them was from a workout
| | 02:59 | video, I think and that's the shot we
did of using, and stripped that head
| | 03:03 | onto the body and then did a lot of
retouching and stuff to try to make it look realistic.
| | 03:07 | And this is retouching, really, really slowly.
| | 03:11 | So most of you guys probably don't
even know how slow a Mac IIci look like, a
| | 03:16 | 100 meg hard drive could be.
| | 03:18 | But it was literally like you put,
paste up something and you go to rotate it
| | 03:22 | and you do a little rotation thing and
then the little Time Bar would come up
| | 03:26 | and kind of go (sound), you sit there forever.
| | 03:31 | Okay, great, it's in the right
position, oh, no that's not right.
| | 03:34 | I'd better move it back a little bit
and then (sound), so every single piece
| | 03:39 | that you would lay into this thing took forever.
| | 03:41 | So you didn't have all the layers,
you have now to flatten everything.
| | 03:45 | It's just incredibly excruciating, and
we would take these images over to Cher
| | 03:48 | and show them to her.
| | 03:49 | She'd go, I want more hair, and so I'd
have to go to back to the office and sit
| | 03:53 | there (sound) you go.
| | 03:55 | It took days, days to get these
things done, and she didn't know what she
| | 03:58 | was asking for.
| | 04:00 | She didn't realize I was trying to do
it on my desktop computer not some really
| | 04:03 | high-speed retouching, high-end thing.
| | 04:07 | But in the end it came out really well,
and I actually won a Grammy Award in
| | 04:11 | this package, so which was for me that
first time I ever won anything in the
| | 04:15 | music business, that was a pretty big deal.
| | 04:17 | We also got a chance to do some work
for Madonna, and Like A Prayer is here,
| | 04:22 | and I've done several other projects
for Madonna over the years including tour
| | 04:26 | books and things, and she is great
to work with, and really pretty much
| | 04:29 | responsible for me getting a chance to
do as much work as I did do in the music
| | 04:33 | business because working for her at
that point was that was kind of the
| | 04:36 | pinnacle of music work.
| | 04:39 | I think kind of she still is.
| | 04:41 | One of my favorite bands, I was
working with a band called Crowded House and
| | 04:46 | they were music I really liked, it was a
bunch of guys who were all really easy to
| | 04:50 | talk to and fun to meet with, and they
were artists themselves, a lot of them,
| | 04:54 | so we would sit in meetings and just
kind of toss around ideas about what to do
| | 04:58 | and they were visible enough, they
were on Capital Records at that point.
| | 05:01 | That they got not only their main
release, but then they also got a lot of
| | 05:04 | singles covers release, so they were
designed for the main album and then they
| | 05:07 | were all the designs for
these different singles.
| | 05:09 | So you've got a chance just kind of
do a bunch of different work that all
| | 05:12 | kind of related.
| | 05:13 | One of my favorite ones was for a
single called Fingers of Love, and it's kind
| | 05:18 | of a -- its hands clasped together with
a light-bulb inside, like a little fiber
| | 05:22 | optics light that makes your fingers
glow, and it's something that I knew
| | 05:27 | happened and I wanted to
try to get it photographed it.
| | 05:30 | A friend of mine named Sidney Cooper
who was a Photographer at that point
| | 05:33 | photographed it for me.
| | 05:35 | So that was an image I really loved.
| | 05:37 | And then another project we got to do
is for this band called Ten Inch Men, who
| | 05:40 | are kind of Heavy Metal Rock.
| | 05:43 | The album was titled Pretty Vultures
which is just sort of a great title.
| | 05:49 | So we cast this one woman, she showed
up when we did a casting and she had
| | 05:53 | long hair, long black dark hair down to her
waist, and I thought, oh, that's kind of cool.
| | 05:57 | And the actual date of shoot she
showed up and she would cut her hair off and
| | 06:00 | bleached it white and it was about an
eighth of an inch long and white, and I
| | 06:04 | was like, oh, my God, like it's going
to ruin the shot, and Marilyn said, oh,
| | 06:08 | no, I think it could be cool.
| | 06:09 | So we made her up, we kind of paint her
up body white and wrapped her in these
| | 06:13 | kind of bandages, and I'd already
created wings that are actually painted on
| | 06:20 | flat foamcore but in the shot they
actually look dimensional, I mean they are
| | 06:24 | painted enough so they sort
of do that trample effect.
| | 06:27 | We put them behind her body and the
shot is still like one of my favorite shots
| | 06:32 | that we did, just because it was sort
of one of those accidental, oh my god things
| | 06:35 | and it turned out even better than I
could have imagined it would have designed
| | 06:39 | it that way from beginning.
| | 06:40 | So music business was really fun,
and like I said before, it was a great
| | 06:46 | opportunity and a great chance as a
Designer to get a chance to sort of
| | 06:49 | explore my own voice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Logos and lettering| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Margo Chase: I got interested in lettering,
well, when I was pretty young actually, because
| | 00:12 | my mother is a professional musician,
but she was an amateur calligrapher.
| | 00:17 | She did that as a hobby.
| | 00:19 | I was kind of always watching her, do
invitations and things for the church and
| | 00:26 | she had the Crow Quill pens and
different colored inks and all the great paper.
| | 00:32 | She would talk about the people that
were influential to her, like Sheila Waters
| | 00:36 | and famous calligraphers.
| | 00:38 | So, it was kind of in my background, I guess,
in my environment when I was growing up.
| | 00:42 | But at that point, I really
thought I wanted to be a veterinarian.
| | 00:46 | So I went to college in biology, but I
did take some elective classes and one of
| | 00:54 | them was taught by a guy who
loved lettering, design class.
| | 00:58 | Guy named Pierre Rademaker and he took the
class on a tour of Disneyland at one point.
| | 01:03 | He didn't go on any of the rides, the
only thing he did was talk about all the
| | 01:06 | signage in the park the entire time
and all the lettering and where the
| | 01:11 | influences came from.
| | 01:12 | He was like a little kid;
| | 01:13 | he would get all excited and jump
up and down all about letter spacing.
| | 01:17 | So that was a big influence.
| | 01:19 | So later, when I decided that I
really wanted to be a designer, not a
| | 01:23 | veterinarian, lettering was one of
the things that really interested me and
| | 01:27 | I started doing that.
| | 01:28 | It was an easy thing to do as a
freelancer because it's sort of piece of a
| | 01:32 | project that somebody can give you as a
freelance job and you can decide to how
| | 01:39 | much to charge for this logo
or that piece of lettering.
| | 01:43 | So it's pretty easy thing to do
when you are right out of school.
| | 01:45 | So just to talk a little bit about how I
start, and it's kind of random, the process.
| | 01:51 | It's not like, there is one way that you do it.
| | 01:55 | But I have a lot of sketchbooks and I
tend to take these with me, places when I
| | 01:58 | travel, when I go to a lecture or something.
| | 02:02 | So these are some pages.
| | 02:03 | Some of them are really straightforward,
like they are the beginnings of maybe a
| | 02:06 | typeface, or an idea about a typeface.
| | 02:09 | Some of them are a little more illustrative.
| | 02:13 | Like this has started out
as being the letter, TW.
| | 02:17 | And then there are some letters in
here that get to be hard to read.
| | 02:21 | But the fun part about this is, I'm just
kind of stream of consciousness drawing
| | 02:25 | and thinking about shapes and not
really working on any one particular job.
| | 02:29 | But I'll come up with something that I
like, or an idea or a shape that I like
| | 02:32 | and then that kind of idea will be in
my mind when I'm working on something,
| | 02:36 | for a client.
| | 02:38 | So this is really I think where maybe
the sort of Gothic thing came up a lot
| | 02:44 | because for some reason the shapes
that I like and maybe because of the
| | 02:48 | calligraphy background that my mother had,
a lot of those forms, using the broad
| | 02:53 | pen really have that kind of
black letter feeling to them.
| | 02:56 | So I'm comfortable with those shape and
they recur naturally when I'm drawing.
| | 03:01 | So that kind of started, I think, my
interest in that direction and then things
| | 03:06 | kind of grew out of that.
| | 03:07 | So from here, I'll take them and
develop them into lots of drawings about each
| | 03:12 | letter and then those get scanned into
the computer and usually dropped into a
| | 03:16 | font development software.
| | 03:17 | Sometimes I'll go through a little bit
of development work in Illustrator first,
| | 03:22 | just trying to sort of get the shapes
worked out in my mind and how I want the
| | 03:26 | letter forms to relate to each other.
| | 03:28 | The inspiration for this stuff comes
from a variety of places whether it's the
| | 03:31 | problem, the assignment I get in the
first place or whether it's something I saw
| | 03:35 | in a book or a sketch
that I did in the sketchbook.
| | 03:39 | It's kind of, that there
is not really one process.
| | 03:43 | So often, it's framing, there is
something that I'm trying to actually
| | 03:47 | achieve with the lettering.
| | 03:49 | This was a T-shirt for Virgin Records.
| | 03:51 | So you can see the work that used
to go into trying to make something.
| | 03:55 | Color separated like this
pasted up in bunch of different ways.
| | 03:58 | This is a stat under there that's then
been whited out and retouched and then
| | 04:02 | there are layers of corrections.
| | 04:04 | Then Rubylith, which is a lost art, was
on there to tell them where to put the
| | 04:11 | second color when they print it.
| | 04:12 | So there, it was meant to be a
copper ink there where the Rubylith is.
| | 04:16 | That's how the final thing would print.
| | 04:21 | When I'm doing a sketch, usually, there
is particular problem to solve, like a
| | 04:24 | client has asked for something.
| | 04:26 | So if it's a logo for - well, say,
actually this example, Illustration.
| | 04:30 | This is a word, earliest part of
something that we did for, there is a directory
| | 04:37 | of creative services
called the Alternative Pick.
| | 04:41 | I don't know if they are still around,
but at that point, this was their
| | 04:44 | inaugural issue and the
whole theme was tattoo artwork.
| | 04:49 | So it was perfect for me
from a stylistic standpoint.
| | 04:53 | But there had to be a title for
each of the different sections.
| | 04:56 | So there was a directory title
for illustrators, there was one for
| | 04:59 | photographers, one for designers.
| | 05:04 | So we did a version like
a logo style for each one.
| | 05:07 | So I kind of knew framework wise what
I really needed to do and I wanted the
| | 05:12 | illustration, one, ended up being --
the inspiration was mehndi tattoos,
| | 05:18 | which are those, the Indians sort of
dyed tattoo decorations that happen on
| | 05:22 | women's hands.
| | 05:23 | So we wanted to do a kind of mehndi-
inspired illustration thing that was
| | 05:27 | actually going to get
tattooed on to somebody's hand.
| | 05:29 | In that case, it's an artificial
tattoo that was for the photograph.
| | 05:33 | But this was the sketch of the actual
lettering and then in the actual tattoo,
| | 05:38 | it has a lot more illustration
stems and things that come out of it.
| | 05:42 | A kind of depending on where I thing the
style should be, like if it needs to be
| | 05:46 | very regular and very clean and
mathematical, working in the computer is ideal.
| | 05:52 | There is really no reason to do it by hand.
| | 05:55 | But if it's meant to be more free form
and more gestural and organic, drawing,
| | 06:00 | for me, I think because I started by drawing,
is that's my natural thing I start with.
| | 06:07 | So, it varies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tools| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Margo Chase: When I first started doing this,
it was 1982 and there were no desktop computers.
| | 00:15 | So everything I did for the first,
till 1991, which is when I first got my
| | 00:20 | computer, was done by hand.
| | 00:23 | So there are some great tools that you
can use and that I've used for a long
| | 00:27 | time to do hand-lettering with.
| | 00:29 | Some of the basic ones are
calligraphy tools like Crow Quill pens, and the
| | 00:37 | Crow Quill is a really skinny, very
flexible steel nib usually, or it can be a
| | 00:42 | real Crow Quill which is where the name comes
from, which is actually from the wing of a bird.
| | 00:48 | If you get really into it, good
calligraphers will actually prepare a Crow Quill
| | 00:52 | and cut the shape that they want, and
make sure the nib work the way that they
| | 00:57 | feel comfortable for their hands.
| | 01:01 | I'm not that -- I don't have that much patience.
| | 01:04 | So I buy the little steel ones.
| | 01:06 | There are a couple of companies that make them.
| | 01:08 | Notably, Gillott is the one that I
generally use, and these days, you have to
| | 01:13 | order them online because they don't
have them in art supply stores anymore, or
| | 01:16 | at least not the cool ones.
| | 01:19 | You can see, these are
seen a little wear and tear.
| | 01:22 | But the beauty of a Crow Quill is it
kind of gives this varied weight line.
| | 01:26 | It can be really blobby, and something of that I
really like, and you can make happen on purpose.
| | 01:32 | So some of the lettering examples of
things that you could with Crow Quills are
| | 01:35 | like, this toon stat for
Paula Abdul and the logos for her.
| | 01:40 | You can see where the pen gets really
blobby, and thick and this is an enlargement.
| | 01:45 | This actually original is by the half
of the size, and then where the lines are
| | 01:49 | really skinny and you make that
happen by the change in pressure.
| | 01:52 | So the more of weight you add to the
Crow Quill the fatter the line gets.
| | 01:54 | Somebody who is very talented can make
these transitions look really, really
| | 02:00 | smooth, and I have never been talented, so
that's why everything looks kind of blobby.
| | 02:04 | But I kind of like the blobby.
| | 02:06 | So, there's also some other types
of Crow Quill of calligraphy nibs.
| | 02:12 | Some of them are wider, and give you
different effects, and then there's
| | 02:15 | something called a broad nib that
actually gives you a thick and thin line,
| | 02:19 | depending on how you draw with it.
| | 02:21 | So this is an example of one of those.
| | 02:23 | You can deep it in ink
and it gives you the line.
| | 02:27 | You can also make your own broad nib pens.
| | 02:29 | These bamboo pens are some that I have made.
| | 02:31 | You've got little pieces of beer can,
metal cut in there are to create a
| | 02:36 | reservoir for the ink, so that when
you deep it in, it actually gives you a
| | 02:40 | little bit of some time, so you can
get a longer line and a longer stroke.
| | 02:46 | So these are some of those.
| | 02:48 | And then also, there are brushes and
brushes, the Japanese brushes and things
| | 02:52 | give you great effects.
| | 02:54 | Then there are the sort of quick and
dirty Japanese brushes, which are these
| | 02:58 | little pointed nib pens that gives you a
thick and thin line too and this is the
| | 03:06 | tool I used to create some of these shapes.
| | 03:08 | So often, I'll start with a pen like this,
and get a thick and thin gestural and
| | 03:12 | then draw over it again to refine
the shapes, and then scan that into the
| | 03:15 | computer and do it again in Illustrator.
| | 03:18 | So it can be a fairly elaborate process.
| | 03:21 | Then sometimes I draw the stuff like
this and that's what the final artwork is,
| | 03:26 | and this Skeleton logo was
done with a pen like this.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gothic design| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:08 | Margo Chase: For a long time, a lot of the
work I did was called Gothic by lots of people.
| | 00:14 | I guess including myself, and it's a
little bit hard to figure out what the
| | 00:17 | label is for the style.
| | 00:19 | But it sort of evolved for a number
of reasons, primarily just because of
| | 00:23 | something I really love and still do.
| | 00:25 | But I also think it was really
influenced by the period of time.
| | 00:28 | When I first started working, it was
mid 80s, and really there was a lot of
| | 00:32 | Gothic-style going on in the world.
| | 00:35 | I mean, in furniture, and in fashion
, and lots of influences out there.
| | 00:39 | So those were the things kind of
pushing me I think to develop something I
| | 00:43 | already really liked.
| | 00:44 | And then I was doing a lot of work in
the music business for which there is lots
| | 00:48 | of places you can do Gothic.
| | 00:50 | So I had a lot of fun with it, and it
started out with me, mostly with letter
| | 00:56 | forms and various types
of typographic expression.
| | 01:01 | Some of them developed into fonts,
some of them just into album cover logos,
| | 01:05 | some of them into posters like this one here.
| | 01:07 | So I think because a lot of the stuff
evolved in the 80s, it was really -- it
| | 01:11 | was a lot of license to explore
different styles of Gothic, and one of the
| | 01:16 | projects I like the most is this,
which was done for this magazine called
| | 01:19 | Letter Arts Review.
| | 01:21 | Which originally was titled
Calligraphy Review and it's published out of
| | 01:25 | Oklahoma by a woman named Karyn Gilman
who is really a sort of global expert on
| | 01:32 | calligraphy, and she has really talked
to calligraphers all over the world and
| | 01:35 | would always feature different
calligraphers in every issue.
| | 01:38 | So I felt really honored when she
asked to do an article on me and let me do
| | 01:42 | the cover for it.
| | 01:44 | So I kind of stressed out over that,
and just because I am thinking I am not
| | 01:47 | really a Calligrapher, I am a
Designer, a Graphic Designer.
| | 01:50 | So I don't really do calligraphy per se,
so I wanted to do something that was
| | 01:53 | clearly not calligraphy so people
wouldn't think I was trying to do something
| | 01:57 | I don't know how to do.
| | 01:58 | But I do do a lot of typography.
| | 01:59 | So I really wanted to do a Gothic
typeface that had its roots in some of the
| | 02:04 | idea of how calligraphy was built.
| | 02:07 | So I designed a font for this project
specifically, and I called the thing
| | 02:12 | vitriol and it's actually comes from a
Latin quote about the idea of finding gold.
| | 02:17 | The alchemists used to think that
they could basically turn lead into gold,
| | 02:23 | it's kind of a myth, but it's one of
those things that sort of as an allegory,
| | 02:27 | I really liked the idea that as
designers we are turning raw materials into
| | 02:32 | this really precious thing this
beautiful object, whether it's a book cover or
| | 02:36 | a package or a logo.
| | 02:39 | That's our process.
| | 02:40 | So using that as an analogy, I took the
Latin and created this atrial piece of
| | 02:47 | -- this is the magazine cover.
| | 02:48 | So that's the front and the back.
| | 02:51 | And this was obviously done in the
computer, but the original letter forms
| | 02:54 | were all drawn by hand.
| | 02:56 | So that's the full character set.
| | 02:58 | Those are the caps, and the lowercase, and as
you can see, it's definitely a headline font.
| | 03:03 | That's something you never want to set in text.
| | 03:05 | And it's a little bit hard to read, but
it was a blast to do, and it really was
| | 03:10 | done just really for this one single project.
| | 03:13 | And then a lot of these other -- these
are fonts that I have done over the years
| | 03:17 | in our company that sells fonts, it's
called Gravy, which is sort of a little
| | 03:22 | joke on making the extra gravy.
| | 03:24 | It's like you do the font for some
reason whether it's for a client or for
| | 03:27 | yourself, and then selling it
as kind of the gravy on the side.
| | 03:31 | This is actually the font called
Kruella that we developed and as part of the
| | 03:35 | Buffy the Vampire Slayer logo
and is now for font called Kruella.
| | 03:40 | And this is another one that
I really like called envision.
| | 03:43 | That was developed as part of a poster
for a design conference up in Sacramento
| | 03:49 | called the envision Conference.
| | 03:51 | And we really only created just the word
envision for the poster, and then after
| | 03:55 | a while, I was like I really, really
like those letter forms I want to make a
| | 03:57 | whole alphabet out of them in caps.
| | 04:00 | So it became an entire font.
| | 04:02 | And that's actually the way most of
these fonts have started this one is called
| | 04:06 | Shiraz, it's really decorative.
| | 04:07 | We did a project -- that was about
Marco Polo's tour, I created his journey
| | 04:13 | and so I wanted something with a lot of kind
of Asian and Middle-Eastern influences in it.
| | 04:17 | So that's where this came from.
| | 04:19 | So there are lots of different alphabets
here and fonts that I have created over
| | 04:24 | the years, and most of them
have kind of a Gothic feel to them.
| | 04:27 | Probably the most famous Gothic
thing I have done is the poster for Bram
| | 04:33 | Stoker's Dracula, the movie, and the
original carving is done on surfboard foam
| | 04:40 | based on drawings, I did.
| | 04:41 | I didn't do the carving, but we found a
woman who works for Disneyland and she
| | 04:44 | carved all kinds of things for the park,
like dancing hippos, and all that kind
| | 04:48 | of stuff, and so she was able to take
my drawing of the sort of gargoyle head,
| | 04:53 | and turn it into a three-dimensional sculpture.
| | 04:55 | That we then painted and mounted to a
background and photographed for the final poster.
| | 05:00 | And then the logo of course was done
with a brush and ink to simulate blood and
| | 05:06 | the drippy quality of it.
| | 05:07 | So the whole project was really pretty
fun thing to do from the view poster.
| | 05:11 | And I think that started to be
one of the reasons that we got.
| | 05:14 | I got a little pigeonholed as a
Graphic Designer who did Gothic style, and
| | 05:19 | getting known as doing one thing is
kind of nice because you get lots of work
| | 05:25 | in that one style, and it's kind of horrible
because people think you can't do anything else.
| | 05:30 | And so going in to present projects and
try to pitch work for new business with
| | 05:34 | other clients, we'd have to show this
portfolio that had a lots of music, lots
| | 05:38 | of Gothic, and people would be afraid
that that's all they were going to get
| | 05:41 | from us, and that they would never
get anything that was really relevant or
| | 05:45 | really appropriate for their own company.
| | 05:47 | And that was really frustrating for me,
because I know I can redo, and now you
| | 05:51 | can see the work is quite -- a bit
broader, but they were definitely some years
| | 05:56 | where it was a challenge for me to
convince people that we could do something
| | 05:59 | that wasn't scary, or dark, or pointy,
or going to make them uncomfortable, or
| | 06:04 | make their customers uncomfortable.
| | 06:06 | In recent years, I have been able to
prove that and here is -- this is about a
| | 06:10 | painting girly and stuff as you can get.
| | 06:13 | These are style guides for Polly Pocket, so
they are definitely not Polly the Vampire Slayer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Branding| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Margo Chase: As we're started working with
different bigger companies we realize that they
| | 00:12 | really needed a way to understand why
we were making recommendations that we
| | 00:16 | were making and the more sort of
quantitative and repeatable and sort of
| | 00:23 | mathematical the process could be, more
comfortable they were with it, because
| | 00:26 | the idea of sort of the black art of
creativity makes a lot of marketing people
| | 00:31 | really uncomfortable.
| | 00:33 | And so they like knowing that there is
a process that makes sense that they can
| | 00:36 | understand and repeat.
| | 00:37 | Chris Lowery: So one of the things that we
realized along the way is that when we are
| | 00:41 | bringing really well thought out and
good creative ideas to the table that we
| | 00:45 | were being perceived as not having
really understood the business problem,
| | 00:49 | understood the marketing objectives,
understood all the things that our clients
| | 00:53 | were grappling with.
| | 00:54 | So it was important to us to be able
to express to them the process that we
| | 00:58 | go through before we ever get to
creative, before we really are able to put
| | 01:03 | anything on paper and make something,
we really try to understand what we're
| | 01:07 | trying to achieve, what the business
goal is and really who we're speaking
| | 01:11 | to, because often we're not the audience,
in fact, most times we are not the audience.
| | 01:16 | We are not speaking to designers, we
are not speaking to other businesses, we
| | 01:19 | are speaking to consumers in most cases
and we've got to really connect to them
| | 01:23 | on a specific level.
| | 01:24 | Margo Chase: And we have to convince our
clients that we can do that because a lot of the
| | 01:28 | time we are walking in with maybe a
design solution that is really a stretch for
| | 01:32 | them or it's really a change from
where they were, and we understand that,
| | 01:37 | that's necessary for them to achieve the
goals that they have told us they have,
| | 01:41 | but for them to just sort of see
it out of the blue, it's scary.
| | 01:45 | So a lot of the strategies, our
process of kind of gradually opening their
| | 01:49 | eyes to why a big change is necessary and why
this particular change is a good recommendation.
| | 01:56 | Chris Lowery: The next thing we do after we
really feel like we understand the client, their
| | 02:00 | challenges, their competition and how
their consumers are thinking about them is
| | 02:04 | to really get a better idea of
what the consumer's mindset is like.
| | 02:08 | Who they are, what they feel about
their lives, what they aspire to, what they
| | 02:12 | love, what they hate, so that we can
know them as people and the first step for
| | 02:17 | us to do that is to really take the
brand and the aspiration of the brand and
| | 02:22 | look at it in the realm of just
generally how people are in society.
| | 02:28 | So we use a tool called a psychographic
map, which is for us to be able to take
| | 02:33 | the aspiration of the brand, what
Chinese Laundry in this case wanted to be,
| | 02:37 | which is to be represented as a
fashion forward brand that was affordable and
| | 02:42 | match it up with the consumer aspiration.
| | 02:44 | So that using this, what we are trying
to do is find the sweet spot where the
| | 02:48 | aspiration of the brand and the
aspiration of the consumer line up, which leads
| | 02:51 | into the next thing that we do.
| | 02:52 | So once we've got this psychographic
mapping and we kind of know where the
| | 02:55 | aspirations line up, we really develop
actual personas as we start to design,
| | 03:00 | as we start to make decisions and
then also as the company and their brand
| | 03:03 | starts to make decisions.
| | 03:05 | We want to have a specific person in
mind, not a general person, not a woman
| | 03:09 | from 26-32, a specific woman who has
got a name, who has got a job, who has got
| | 03:14 | a history, she lives somewhere, she
does certain things, she reads certain
| | 03:18 | magazines, watches certain shows,
we want to know her inside and out.
| | 03:22 | If we convince her about what
Chinese Laundry represents, it is the right
| | 03:26 | message and it will work for
everyone else in the group.
| | 03:28 | Margo Chase: Yeah, and this is a perfect
example of trying to make myself relevant as a
| | 03:33 | designer because this is pretty close.
| | 03:35 | I mean I am a woman, I
like to wear high heel shoes.
| | 03:38 | So I could actually really confuse
myself with the woman that we're designing
| | 03:42 | for and creating persona helps me to
identify that we're designing for this
| | 03:46 | one particular person.
| | 03:47 | In this case, we created a persona
of woman named Stephanie and she has a
| | 03:52 | lifestyle and she likes really girly
pink things and that's not what I like.
| | 03:56 | I mean that's not the way I dress.
| | 03:58 | So if we hadn't created her, it
would have been much easier for me to be
| | 04:01 | confused about what we were -- who
we were designing for and maybe create
| | 04:05 | packaging that really appealed to me which
would be probably a lot more simple and
| | 04:10 | maybe black, instead of designing
something that was really right for the brand
| | 04:14 | and then in this case right for Stephanie.
| | 04:15 | Chris Lowery: So the next step we do is try to
develop what's called a brand board or a design
| | 04:20 | theme, there is different terms for it
that really summarizes what the brand's
| | 04:25 | visual language is across many
different touch points, whether it's photography
| | 04:30 | or typography or color, any application.
| | 04:33 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 04:34 | So we have an emotional target process
that we also go through that helps to
| | 04:39 | identify a particular word,
in this case it was sexy.
| | 04:42 | Emotional expression of the brand
actually needs to have a focus as well.
| | 04:46 | So once we get our sort of persona and
we get our psychographic map and then
| | 04:51 | we've got our sort of word, our
emotional word, then we can create these visual
| | 04:55 | boards and we bring in a range of visual
boards and we talk to the clients about
| | 05:00 | how each of them manifests itself and
what it might mean to Stephanie if she saw
| | 05:05 | something that look like that.
| | 05:06 | Out of that presentation, we come up
with a sort of one visual direction
| | 05:10 | that everybody can agree on and all of that
happens before we really create any design.
| | 05:14 | So in the case of this one, we kind of
agreed on this feminine and decorative
| | 05:19 | direction because it help to
differentiate the brand from all of their
| | 05:22 | competitors and it help to actually
appeal to Stephanie because we had already
| | 05:27 | recognized from our research and from
our persona development that, that was
| | 05:31 | something that was going to appeal to her.
| | 05:32 | So we already knew exactly where we
wanted to go from a design standpoint before
| | 05:36 | we ever put any pencils on the paper.
| | 05:38 | There were a couple of really
important issues or limitations that we had to
| | 05:43 | take into consideration when
we went into the design process.
| | 05:46 | One of them is that the logo primarily
appears inside what's called the sock
| | 05:49 | or the insole of the shoe and the production
process for creating that is really limited.
| | 05:54 | So they can do basically what amounts
to kind of deboss or a rubber stamp or
| | 05:59 | they can do an embroidered label
that sits inside, both of which require,
| | 06:03 | that they are not be very much detail in
lettering that it'd be pretty clean and simple.
| | 06:07 | So I knew that it had to be -- it
couldn't be very detailed and very ornate.
| | 06:11 | So that was one limitation going in.
| | 06:14 | It also needs to be something that can
be read really easily from a distance and
| | 06:17 | something that can be used in a
variety of different ways from actually the
| | 06:21 | insole of the shoe all the way into
their print collateral and their trade show.
| | 06:26 | So it was really needed something that
had to be very, very multifunctional.
| | 06:29 | Chris Lowery: And this part maybe goes
with that same that it also had to be ownable.
| | 06:34 | Their previous identity was so
forgettable and/or derivative of existing work,
| | 06:39 | that it really wasn't ownable for them
and that's a key thing for any brand is
| | 06:43 | you have to be able to stand, your
logo has to be able to stand by itself and
| | 06:47 | portray the character of the brand.
| | 06:49 | So we really started to
achieve that at a base level.
| | 06:51 | Margo Chase: Yeah and that's something that
we do whenever we can which is create custom
| | 06:56 | letter forms and as part of an identity
system for our clients instead of using
| | 07:01 | an existing typeface and just sort of
spelling it out which makes it possible
| | 07:05 | for sort of anybody to emulate them.
| | 07:07 | We create something that's custom that
no one else can copy and that they own.
| | 07:12 | So in this case, the Chinese Laundry
logo is all hand lettered and it also has
| | 07:16 | an icon that we created which is a
humming bird and that came out of a couple
| | 07:20 | of conversations that we had with the
clients about imagery that evoke the idea
| | 07:24 | of sort of femininity but also lightness and
then the icon it helped to unify the system.
| | 07:29 | So when we created the logo for Chinese
Laundry, it has a humming bird, and then
| | 07:32 | when they used their other band names,
they were able to use the humming bird as
| | 07:35 | a link visually, so that unifies and
also the type style unifies since the whole
| | 07:40 | entire family uses the
same type style and create it.
| | 07:42 | So from there, we went into packaging
and started working on the shoe box.
| | 07:46 | Chris Lowery: What a lot of the research
pointed to is that women have a lot of shoes
| | 07:52 | especially women in the category who
buy Chinese Laundry shoes, in many cases,
| | 07:56 | they store them in the shoe boxes at
home as an organizational piece because
| | 08:00 | they don't necessarily have
all the shelving to do it.
| | 08:02 | So the shoe box was actually living in
people's houses and brought the brand to
| | 08:06 | all of these different places since it
was the strongest opportunity they had.
| | 08:08 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 08:09 | So this is just the shoe box or one of
the sizes that we ended up creating for
| | 08:14 | them and you can see it's really strong
color, it's pink, it's really feminine,
| | 08:18 | and appeals to Stephanie and there are
a couple of things about it structurally
| | 08:23 | that make it really workable.
| | 08:25 | First of all, it has this handle, so
when you buy the shoes, you can actually
| | 08:28 | carry this around the mall.
| | 08:29 | You don't need the shopping bags, so it
becomes like a little billboard when you
| | 08:32 | walk around the mall.
| | 08:33 | So that client like Chinese Laundry who
can't afford a lot of advertising kind
| | 08:39 | of has this instead.
| | 08:41 | The other thing is actually it has a
drawer which makes it great for -- I keep
| | 08:46 | them when they go in my closet at home.
| | 08:49 | So you can put things in it, your shoes
or other things too and it's made out of
| | 08:53 | much heavier weight cardboard than the
original one was, so it's not going to
| | 08:57 | fall on the sales associates head
when he pulls it out of the shelf.
| | 09:00 | So from structural standpoint, a
little bit more expensive in terms of
| | 09:03 | production but absolutely worth it for
all of the reasons that we just said.
| | 09:08 | The other thing that was really
important about creating this identity for them
| | 09:12 | was this illustration, we call it brand artwork.
| | 09:16 | When we gave them that and on discs as
part of the style guide that we created,
| | 09:20 | we allowed them to change
things and move things around.
| | 09:22 | So we gave them this artwork as layers,
so they can take it apart and they
| | 09:25 | can use the background separately,
they can take the illustration separately,
| | 09:29 | they can take the logo out, the humming bird
and they can reorganize and recreate things.
| | 09:33 | And they need to be able to change
things seasonally, so things stay fresh and
| | 09:37 | they feel fashion forward for them.
| | 09:39 | So we can walk them into one way
this is how it always has to be.
| | 09:42 | Their launch of the new
brand was really successful.
| | 09:46 | They did it at -- there is a big shoes
trade fair that happens in Las Vegas every year.
| | 09:52 | They had done their own booth using our
style guide and it was really dramatic.
| | 09:56 | We suggested that they wrapped MINI
coopers with the brand artwork so there were
| | 10:01 | these like flowery pink MINI
coopers driving around Las Vegas.
| | 10:03 | So they got a lot of press and it was a
big splash for them, big and really helpful.
| | 10:08 | But, the thing that was even more
important than that was that it helped their
| | 10:11 | sales and that made us feel great that
it was successful because as we said in
| | 10:16 | the beginning, the reason we do this is
really to help client solve a business
| | 10:20 | problem and when they come back
afterwards and say that their sales increased
| | 10:24 | 40% because of the design we did
and we think we did a good job.
| | 10:27 | Chris Lowery: And by proving all the upfront
work and the foundation and then all the tools in
| | 10:32 | the brand guide, we really allow them
to own it in a larger way and be able to
| | 10:36 | keep living the brand as they go
forward even when we are not involved which is
| | 10:41 | really, our goal is to make them self-sufficient
in managing their brand and we
| | 10:44 | give them what they need to go forward
and really understand it and love it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Style guides| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Chris Lowery: OK, so we're going to talk a
little bit about consumer product style guides.
| | 00:11 | I think, this differs from the other
work that we've talked about before,
| | 00:14 | because before we have been working on
branding and working on packaging that is
| | 00:19 | actually going to be the final product.
| | 00:22 | In this case, what a consumer product
style guide is, is a guide for other
| | 00:25 | people to produce product that really is
a toolkit and asset for them to be able
| | 00:30 | to produce product that fits with
the brand, that fits with the logo.
| | 00:32 | Margo Chase: So, a big part of creating
style guide is trying to define what the brand
| | 00:36 | actually stands for in the first place
and Starbucks is a really good example of
| | 00:41 | a project where we did that
from beginning to end with them.
| | 00:44 | Of course, Starbucks already knows who they are.
| | 00:46 | They've known who they are for a long
time, which is why they're so successful.
| | 00:48 | In our project, what they asked us to
do was create a style guide that would
| | 00:52 | help take the actual essence of the
Starbuck brand and the logo and create,
| | 00:57 | what they're calling a signature
program of product that they can sell in their stores,
| | 01:01 | which says Starbucks without actually
having to necessarily have the green logo on it.
| | 01:06 | So, really our job in the beginning was
to try to sort of dissect the essence of
| | 01:12 | the Starbucks brand and try to
determine what the brand was actually made up of
| | 01:17 | and how we could define that.
| | 01:19 | Chris Lowery: In terms of how this works,
as Margo said, Starbucks knows very well who they are
| | 01:25 | in their core business, but then what
is it when they branch out into other
| | 01:28 | types of product than
is their core business.
| | 01:30 | How do the Starbucks brands still come through?
| | 01:32 | Where are the brand
promises still reflected in that?
| | 01:35 | So, really to start out, we need to
know who they are at their core and what we
| | 01:39 | can extract from them.
| | 01:40 | They may not know that.
| | 01:41 | Starbucks has a pretty clear view of
themselves; others don't necessarily.
| | 01:44 | You'll notice that in terms of what we
talked about in branding section,
| | 01:49 | it really kind of goes in reverse, where
in the branding section, we're starting
| | 01:52 | out with the attributes and they are
boiling down to really concise visual
| | 01:55 | statement, that was the identity.
| | 01:57 | In this case, we're taking the
identity and we're reversing that.
| | 02:00 | We're figuring out what can we pull
out of this, what motifs, what colors,
| | 02:03 | what are the things that are Starbucks
that we can put on a broader sense to
| | 02:06 | bring a consumer product.
| | 02:07 | Margo Chase: Here's another little diagram,
it's taking the logo and saying, what are the
| | 02:10 | parts of the logo that we could work
with and then, if we were going to work
| | 02:14 | with those, what kind of
styles could we explore?
| | 02:17 | So, can we take something that's part of the
core logo and re-express it in a different style.
| | 02:22 | These are all examples that helped us
to sort of take their temperature, like,
| | 02:27 | is this okay if we do this?
| | 02:29 | In some cases they said yes and then in
a lot of cases they said no, we're not
| | 02:32 | comfortable, that's too far away from
our brand equity. We don't want to take
| | 02:35 | the mermaid and redraw her.
| | 02:36 | Then we went into a section
that's a style exploration where we said,
| | 02:39 | all right, given all this conversation
that we've now had about who you are and
| | 02:43 | what manifests your equity. Here are some
visual stories about what we could do for you.
| | 02:49 | So, here's one, we called it Rock
Paper Scissors. It's all about through cut paper,
| | 02:53 | very Matisse inspired,
there is a color palette down here.
| | 02:56 | So, we have kind of showed them this
and we say how does this make you feel?
| | 02:59 | Is this something that you're comfortable with?
| | 03:01 | If the product kind of had this
feeling, would that be good for you?
| | 03:05 | Here's another story.
| | 03:07 | This one's called Organic Doodles.
| | 03:09 | Same thing, okay, you can do this.
| | 03:11 | It's hand painted, it's more organic,
it uses a lot more greens, so it's lot more
| | 03:16 | about growth, how do you feel about that.
| | 03:18 | Chris Lowery: In the case of these,
we may not be asking them to pick one?
| | 03:22 | What we're really saying is, these are
all possible expressions of your brand
| | 03:25 | that you may express in one
season or one year of consumer product.
| | 03:29 | And you could use all of them, because
they all go to the core of the brand.
| | 03:32 | Margo Chase: We got into some things that we
knew were safe territory, because these are very
| | 03:36 | much like what they do now.
| | 03:37 | This one's called narrative collage and
I'm sure everyone is familiar with Starbucks.
| | 03:42 | So, when you walk into their stores,
this is a lot of what you see, which is
| | 03:45 | sort of this montage of a lots of
different imagery and things that look sort
| | 03:48 | of like, might be coffee bags or coffee
crates or imported stamps and that kind of thing.
| | 03:53 | So, we knew we could do that.
| | 03:54 | And the interesting thing was when
we showed them this they thought,
| | 03:57 | they didn't want to do any more of that.
| | 03:58 | Like they really wanted something fresh,
so this was a good way for us to say,
| | 04:02 | here's something we know you
could do. Do you want to do that?
| | 04:05 | Because we weren't sure and here's
something even, sort of a little bit off in
| | 04:10 | the more sort of craft and really
sort of distressed category, things that
| | 04:15 | are lot more monochromatic in terms of
the color palette, a lot more woodcut,
| | 04:19 | a lot more texture to it.
| | 04:22 | Chris Lowery: You'll see some of that
throughout. I mean one of the pieces that's really core
| | 04:25 | to them is hand-crafted.
| | 04:27 | The hand-crafted cup of coffee is kind
of the philosophy of the core of that and
| | 04:31 | so each of these has a hand-crafted element.
| | 04:33 | Margo Chase: Then, here's another one.
| | 04:35 | This one was called Logo
Deconstructions which was going back and saying,
| | 04:39 | all right, maybe it's not necessarily
so much about a feeling or style.
| | 04:42 | It's actually about shade and deconstructing
the elements of the logo and what would
| | 04:45 | the patterns and prints that did that
look like and would that be interesting
| | 04:49 | or enough equity for you.
| | 04:51 | So, we presented lots of different
concepts to them, of different directions
| | 04:55 | they could take the signature program.
| | 04:57 | They gave us direction and chose a couple.
| | 04:58 | I think we ended up with three we developed.
| | 05:01 | Chris Lowery: Right and again, at this
point in the development, we don't know what
| | 05:04 | they're going to make.
| | 05:05 | They may be deciding to make
bedding and home decor down the line or they
| | 05:09 | may be doing something closer in like
some of the beverage things that you see
| | 05:12 | in front of you and a little bit in
between like the notebooks and things that are
| | 05:15 | related to the coffee culture.
| | 05:17 | But we don't know that at this point.
| | 05:19 | So we're proposing something that can be
used on a broad range of consumer product.
| | 05:23 | Margo Chase: As designers, we're kind of
used to being able to make the final thing, like
| | 05:26 | okay, yes, I made this coffee cup.
| | 05:28 | But in this case, we didn't.
| | 05:30 | Chris Lowery: And on that same note too.
| | 05:31 | We talked a lot in the packaging section
about knowing what your final medium is.
| | 05:35 | What's the substrate, how is it
getting printed, how is it getting produced,
| | 05:38 | we know none of that.
| | 05:39 | So, in some ways we're producing
art and assets that can be used in many
| | 05:43 | mediums and applied many different
ways and we have to know that they're
| | 05:46 | versatile enough to do that.
| | 05:47 | Margo Chase: So, what we are making is
essentially a style guide that includes a lot of
| | 05:52 | assets that are prints and patterns
and icons and sort of some rules for how
| | 05:57 | to use those things.
| | 05:59 | These are some of the assets that we created.
| | 06:01 | So, this guide actually got delivered to
them as a PDF with a CD attached to it.
| | 06:06 | That was just the disc that
had a bunch of files, asset files.
| | 06:10 | The PDF shows them what's included and how to
use it and what the colors we recommend are.
| | 06:15 | Then we're trusting them and they
have a great in-house art department.
| | 06:17 | So the trust is not unfounded that
they could take our work and actually make
| | 06:22 | great things with it.
| | 06:25 | All of this stuff that's in front of here
is things that they made and we did not make.
| | 06:29 | So they took our graphic art and our
prints and applied them in a variety of
| | 06:36 | ways to all kinds of things.
| | 06:38 | So there are a lots of things in here
that they haven't used yet and that may
| | 06:41 | appear in the future and there is
something about this for us is we don't
| | 06:44 | actually know when they're making things.
| | 06:45 | So I go into Starbucks and I'm like, oh look!
| | 06:47 | There is a new one.
| | 06:49 | So, it's fun.
| | 06:50 | So they've been really -- I mean, the way they've
applied it, it actually makes the work really good too.
| | 06:54 | Chris Lowery: They do a great job
of manufacturing their own goods.
| | 06:58 | So they manage all their own
manufacturers to do this now.
| | 07:02 | With the Polly guides that you see in front of
you here, it's a really very similar thing.
| | 07:06 | It's a consumer product style
guide but it's for licensing.
| | 07:09 | So it's a little bit of a different animal.
| | 07:11 | The definition of it, the best way to
define it is just think of a character
| | 07:16 | property like say Dora the Explorer,
it existed, it became a popular cartoon.
| | 07:20 | Now we want to make consumer product.
| | 07:22 | So, what happens is they need to know
what that product is going to look like.
| | 07:26 | Then they take it out and they get
licensees who are manufacturers to sign on to
| | 07:30 | manufacture Dora product and sell it
to Target and they get a percentage.
| | 07:34 | So at that point, we've got to
convince the licensee, who takes the most risk,
| | 07:37 | that this is a good property and that
it does translate to consumer product and
| | 07:41 | that's what these guides are about.
| | 07:43 | Margo Chase: In the case of Polly Pocket,
it's a little tiny doll, about this tall.
| | 07:47 | So, in terms of turning it into a
licensed property, we've had some challenges
| | 07:54 | and one of the big things was trying
to figure out how to turn it into a
| | 07:57 | character brand because the way
Mattel manages Barbie, they actually
| | 08:00 | photograph the doll and
the dolls are very photogenic.
| | 08:03 | They're bigger and their faces are pretty.
| | 08:05 | So, they can actually photograph
the doll and that becomes the image.
| | 08:09 | But in the case of Polly Pocket,
they couldn't really do that because the
| | 08:11 | photography of that little
doll doesn't really work.
| | 08:13 | So, we ended up recommending that
they create this animated character
| | 08:18 | illustration and she's based on--
she's redrawn quite a bit-- but she's based on
| | 08:22 | some of the illustrations that came
from the original development of the toy
| | 08:25 | and were on some of the original toy packaging.
| | 08:27 | So it's really fun.
| | 08:29 | It's very collaborative.
| | 08:30 | I feel like this kind of consumer
style guide stuff is kind of risk in a way
| | 08:34 | because as a designer we have to kind of
give up control, make all these things,
| | 08:38 | you spend all this time making them as
perfect as you can, and then you give
| | 08:40 | them away and you hope that that will
make you look good and not embarrass you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Packaging| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:08 | Margo Chase: One of the things that we focus
on at Chase Design Group is consumer packaging
| | 00:12 | and I think the focus really came out
of my roots in the music business because
| | 00:16 | I did a lot of packaging then and
it's kind of an extension of that.
| | 00:20 | But it also comes from a love that
I've of making objects and putting ink on
| | 00:24 | paper or leather or wood or building
things and actually making something
| | 00:29 | tactile that you can touch and feel or
that you can actually drop on your toe as
| | 00:34 | opposed to something just purely digital.
| | 00:36 | But one of the things I want to talk
about with Chris today is that sort of
| | 00:41 | translation of digital artwork
into actually manufacturing things.
| | 00:45 | So how you actually conceive of putting ink
on paper and the challenges involved in that?
| | 00:51 | Chris: Which is -- it's an interesting
thing for us because Margo and I both crossed
| | 00:58 | over the cusp between when things
were conventional and everything became
| | 01:03 | digital to now where all
your Prepress is digital.
| | 01:05 | And so we really understood how things
happened conventionally from actually
| | 01:09 | creating the artwork to making the
plates to getting it on the paper.
| | 01:13 | And it's been interesting for
us to see as things have evolved.
| | 01:17 | How many people forget that when
they're creating this that the digital file
| | 01:23 | they're creating actually has to get
translated into something that can end up
| | 01:26 | on this medium and if you don't
understand that upfront when you're designing,
| | 01:31 | it's very easy to get yourself into a
corner where you sold someone on something
| | 01:35 | that you can't execute.
| | 01:37 | I think that we really work hard to
train our internal staff, even people who
| | 01:42 | are great esthetically to really
understand this process, really understand
| | 01:46 | Offset and Flexo and all the
different processes that they're going to
| | 01:50 | ultimately end up producing the work in,
so that they can do their best design
| | 01:54 | and make sure that it's
producible in the way they intended it.
| | 01:55 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 01:56 | I mean one of the -- a great example
is and this is a Chai Cream Liqueur,
| | 02:02 | a product called Voyant and this is
actually silk-screen, how it's manufactured.
| | 02:07 | And there are couple of reasons that it
had to be produces why primarily because
| | 02:10 | it's a cream liqueur, it can't be a in
a clear glass container because the UV
| | 02:14 | light destroys the product after a time.
| | 02:16 | So it needs to be in something opaque.
| | 02:18 | So we've a couple of choices about
how to solve design in terms of putting
| | 02:21 | something in an opaque container and
we really wanted to create something
| | 02:24 | dramatic with different looking
than a lot of things that are out there
| | 02:27 | because this is a brand new start up company,
they don't have a lot of money for advertising.
| | 02:30 | So, they really needed to have
a dramatic object on the shelf.
| | 02:34 | This is basically a spray coating that
allows this sort of gradient and color
| | 02:38 | from dark to light and then over
the top of this spray coating is
| | 02:41 | silk-screen, translucent color.
| | 02:44 | But we were limited in
terms of the number of colors.
| | 02:46 | They could only do three colors in silk-screen,
once they pay for the coating.
| | 02:50 | And we wanted this sort of idea of
flames and sort of warmth and sort of exotic
| | 02:55 | feeling in the design.
| | 02:56 | So we wanted to feel like it
had more colors than just three.
| | 02:59 | And the designer that -- one of the
designers that worked on this when we were
| | 03:02 | in the early development was sort of
young designer who didn't have a lot of
| | 03:06 | experience in production and she
ended up creating some designs that were
| | 03:09 | absolutely unprintable.
| | 03:10 | Chris: Beautiful! Beautiful, but unprintable.
| | 03:13 | Margo Chase: Beautiful!
Beautiful but not printable.
| | 03:14 | Really just would never work,
we would had way too many colors.
| | 03:17 | And for me, it was a really
conversation because I ended up having to talk to
| | 03:21 | her and say, you've to understand how
the screens are going to relate to each
| | 03:24 | other and what could happen and it has to be
the file actually has to be built this way.
| | 03:29 | Chris: And I think it's an example.
| | 03:30 | As we look at the packaging world,
it's an example of how in many cases bad
| | 03:35 | things get to market, because what
happens often times as if people on the
| | 03:40 | design side, don't really understand
the process clearly than what happens is
| | 03:45 | their designs get to whoever is going
to produce the final product and that
| | 03:49 | person comes back and says, we can't do this.
| | 03:51 | All you can do is make this black
or make this white or take this out.
| | 03:56 | And without knowledge of the process,
you can't come back and say, well, wait a
| | 04:01 | minute, can you do this.
| | 04:02 | If I work these two colors together,
can you achieve this or what can you
| | 04:06 | achieve and then try to work your design
to get the desired effect that you want.
| | 04:10 | But without that, you're at the mercy of
the person who is producing at the end.
| | 04:12 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 04:14 | In another example, I mean in cosmetics
this happens a lot which is you really
| | 04:17 | want the actual package to communicate
a lot about the prestige of the product
| | 04:22 | inside and to really feel like
sort of the glamorous object.
| | 04:24 | So in order to do that you really need
to be able to use materials beyond just
| | 04:28 | sort of white paper and four-color process.
| | 04:31 | And this is actually printed on foil
board and so as the designers work through
| | 04:36 | this process, they've to kind of
understand what the limitations of printing on
| | 04:38 | that substrate are going to be and
what kinds of things can actually be done.
| | 04:42 | And I don't know if you can see this
very well in the camera but there is
| | 04:44 | actually a gradient of pink ink that
reverses out and shows clear or the
| | 04:50 | silver leaves through it.
| | 04:51 | There is embossing that happens,
there is an overprint of black.
| | 04:54 | So there's a lots of different sort
of technologies involved in actually
| | 04:58 | creating this final thing.
| | 04:59 | So you can make something visual in
the computer, that kind of looks like
| | 05:02 | this, but you have to have, actually
have to understand how to explain to the
| | 05:05 | printer what ink they're going to
put on the paper and where in order to
| | 05:09 | achieve your final goal.
| | 05:10 | This is another compact for Stila that
happened that we did for holiday and this
| | 05:17 | is all actually based on paper.
| | 05:19 | So in spite of the fact that this looks
like sort of a three-dimensional object,
| | 05:22 | it's actually paper-wrapped board compact.
| | 05:26 | But this is actually printed with flocking,
so it's fuzzy and then it's got foil stamping.
| | 05:31 | So there is nothing like four-color
processing or nothing that would actually
| | 05:33 | comes straight out of
Illustrator involved in this.
| | 05:36 | So the artwork is created digitally or
in this case, it was drawn by hand for
| | 05:39 | scanned in and then digitize.
| | 05:41 | But the designers involved have to
actually understand what to do with that file
| | 05:45 | in order to create this
effect when it's printed.
| | 05:48 | And then the same with this, which
is actually sort of foil embossing.
| | 05:52 | It's a heat and varnish that
actually gives it a texture.
| | 05:54 | This is another thing that I love to do
whenever we do something that's actually
| | 05:57 | printed is try to create something
that you can actually feel the texture.
| | 06:02 | So both of these things do that.
| | 06:03 | And then in addition, we also in
terms of the Stila step, we are trying to
| | 06:07 | create an aesthetic that's
unifying their brand for them.
| | 06:10 | So this kind of hand drawn sketchy quality
is something that's part of their equity.
| | 06:14 | And so you can see how that gets
used in lots of different products.
| | 06:17 | And this is another one where there is a
lot of design of what goes on inside in
| | 06:21 | terms of all the products here.
| | 06:22 | So there are things printed in
plastic, there is stuff silk-screened.
| | 06:26 | There are lots of different kinds
of manufacturing processes that go
| | 06:29 | into creating cosmetics.
| | 06:30 | Chris: But the beautiful thing is that
when this is done, it will be out there in the
| | 06:34 | marketplace and it's something that
somebody can pick up and take home and keep
| | 06:38 | for a very long time and that's much more gratifying than
something that's going to be up for a week and then gone.
| | 06:41 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 06:43 | I love that about packaging that it's
really an object that's and sometimes
| | 06:47 | it's even collectible.
| | 06:49 | It's definitely something that will be
around for a while and lots of people
| | 06:52 | will see hopefully if it's a product
that successful, it could be out there for
| | 06:56 | several years, and if it's beautiful,
it's something that you keep and take
| | 06:59 | home with you and like a perfume bottle, it
could be on your shelf for couple decades.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Flying| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:13 | Margo Chase: This is my
airplane, it's an Extra 300.
| | 00:16 | It's an aerobatic airplane.
| | 00:18 | My father is a pilot.
| | 00:21 | He started flying, probably,
when I was in high school, I think.
| | 00:23 | He started flying sailplanes.
| | 00:25 | And I loved it!
| | 00:26 | I loved the experience of being in the air,
of being able to see what's on the ground.
| | 00:31 | The experience of flying, it's just,
I mean, visually amazing and exciting.
| | 00:35 | I was talking to my father, and I said,
I'm kind of like, don't know what to do
| | 00:38 | next with my flying.
| | 00:40 | And he said, well you should go to
Santa Paula and take this thing called
| | 00:43 | emergency maneuvers training.
| | 00:44 | I took that a couple of years ago.
| | 00:45 | It's really fun, teaches to you how to
recover from spins and unusual attitudes,
| | 00:49 | and it's just a really
good safety course to take.
| | 00:54 | They give you ground school first and
they tell you all the stuff that you're
| | 00:56 | going to go out there and do.
| | 00:58 | Then you get in the airplane and you do it.
| | 01:00 | They say, okay, here, do it, put
the airplane in a spin, and you do it.
| | 01:04 | And I mean, I was just terrified!
| | 01:09 | But I did all the stuff you're supposed
to do, and then I did all the recovery
| | 01:12 | things and it worked.
| | 01:14 | It was like amazing!
| | 01:15 | And then we did it again
and it worked the second time.
| | 01:17 | Pretty soon I was like, yeah!
| | 01:20 | This is great!
| | 01:21 | It was like the most empowering
feeling, because here's this thing you're
| | 01:26 | terrified of, and you suddenly realize, wow!
| | 01:28 | This isn't that scary.
| | 01:29 | This is it, this is that all
that happens, I can do this.
| | 01:33 | The competition process has really
been interesting, because it's in someways
| | 01:37 | really different than the design processes.
| | 01:40 | In someways, it's kind of similar,
like some of the parallels are the sort of
| | 01:44 | idea of perfection that you're striving for.
| | 01:46 | I mean, in terms of competition
aerobatics, your flying figures for judges on
| | 01:50 | the ground, who are looking to make
sure that everything that you do with the
| | 01:54 | airplane is as perfect as possible.
| | 01:56 | So when you fly horizontally,
it should be exactly level.
| | 01:59 | When you fly vertically, the attitude of
the airplane needs to be exactly vertical.
| | 02:03 | When you fly a loop, it
needs to be perfectly round.
| | 02:06 | All of those things are -- they're
subjective judgments made by experts on the ground.
| | 02:11 | But that's your goal as a pilot, is
to try to make these things that are
| | 02:15 | like drawing in the sky.
| | 02:16 | It's like doing calligraphy with your airplane,
but it's trying to create these perfect shapes.
| | 02:21 | I love that!
| | 02:22 | I love the idea that there is this
goal of perfection that I'm striving for,
| | 02:25 | because it keeps the challenge there, since
perfection is something you can really never achieve.
| | 02:30 | And even people who practice this
stuff for years and years and years, really
| | 02:34 | rarely achieve a ten in
performance, which is the best you can do.
| | 02:38 | Competition is really a performance and
you have this 1000 meter square box in
| | 02:42 | the sky that you fly in during a
competition, and you have the time from when
| | 02:47 | you enter the box to when you
leave it to do that thing perfectly,
| | 02:50 | that sequence perfectly.
| | 02:51 | And that's it.
| | 02:52 | I mean, they're on the ground waiting,
you enter, if you screw up, you screw up,
| | 02:57 | you don't get to go back and do it again.
| | 02:58 | So you spend as much time as you
possibly can practicing first so that when you
| | 03:02 | do that thing, it goes well.
| | 03:04 | But it's really different than design.
| | 03:06 | In design you get a chance to kind of
think something through, and then you get
| | 03:08 | to try stuff, and then you get to
tweak on it, then you get to edit it some
| | 03:12 | more, then talk to the clients and
then you get to revise it, and then like
| | 03:16 | pretty soon, you hope it's ready and it's done.
| | 03:18 | But there has been all this sort of
tweaking and refinement that happens in a
| | 03:21 | very, sort of, relatively calm
environment compared to having to fly.
| | 03:27 | This is really a performance, I mean,
it really is, it's like you're on, you do
| | 03:31 | it, and then you're done, and that was it.
| | 03:33 | It's basically a non-gendered sport,
like women and men fly against each other,
| | 03:37 | there's not a women's team and a men's team.
| | 03:39 | So currently, our national champion is
a woman and our second place national
| | 03:45 | champion is a woman and our third place
national champion is a woman, which is awesome!
| | 03:50 | We've had Patty Wagstaff who's famous,
who was national champion three times
| | 03:54 | three years in a row.
| | 03:55 | So it's really inspiring to me to do
something like that where we're not, sort
| | 04:00 | of, ghettoized in a separate
category, because we're girls.
| | 04:03 | If I can fly as well or better than a man,
I'm going to win, which is great for me.
| | 04:10 | I mean, it's a challenge.
| | 04:11 | One of the fabulous things about doing
this kind of thing is, that it's, it is
| | 04:15 | a little scary and kind of pushing
yourself to do something that you're not
| | 04:19 | sure you know how to do.
| | 04:21 | I kind of have that feeling, every
time I go to practice something I haven't
| | 04:23 | done before, it's like, I get
butterflies in my stomach, and I'm like, I'm not
| | 04:26 | sure what the airplane is actually
going to do when I try something and -- it
| | 04:30 | makes me nervous in kind of a good way,
like I can't -- I really like that!
| | 04:33 | I think, it really helps my work,
like I really feel like I get back from a
| | 04:38 | weekend of having flown and I go to work
on Monday and I'm like, not only just
| | 04:43 | charged up, because I love flying and
it inspires me, but I also think I'm
| | 04:47 | learning some perspective and some
sort of, I don't know, courage about just
| | 04:52 | trying things in my design business
that maybe I wouldn't have tried before.
| | 04:56 | I mean, I've always, kind of, believed
that jumping into things that you're not
| | 04:59 | sure you can do is sort of a good philosophy,
in general, for all things in your life.
| | 05:03 | I'm not a very particularly
cautious person that way, I think.
| | 05:09 | I think, that's helped me over the
years to be both a better designer, and I'm
| | 05:13 | hoping, a better pilot.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Interview with Lynda| 00:00 | (Music Playing)
| | 00:09 | Lynda Weinman: Hi! I'm so excited to
interview Margo Chase who's a fantastic designer and
| | 00:15 | we've just enjoyed profiling you so much
in this series, so thank you so much for
| | 00:19 | agreeing to be part of it.
| | 00:20 | Margo Chase: Thanks for
having me, it's been great!
| | 00:21 | Lynda Weinman: Well, you've made a transition
from an individual designer and an individual
| | 00:26 | contributor to now owning a company.
| | 00:28 | Can you talk a little bit about that?
| | 00:29 | Margo Chase: In the beginning, working in the
music business, I was really hoping somebody
| | 00:33 | would hire me that I get a great job as an
art director for Warner Brothers or something.
| | 00:37 | That really just didn't happen.
| | 00:39 | I got a few offers and they really
just didn't seem -- by the time I got the
| | 00:42 | offers, they just didn't really
seem like what I wanted to do.
| | 00:45 | They started to seem kind of confining,
because by then, doing my own business
| | 00:50 | was -- I was a freelance, really,
with a couple of assistants.
| | 00:53 | But the freedom of that was
really clear to me at that point.
| | 00:57 | So I got attached to that idea that I
could make my own decisions and work for
| | 01:02 | who I wanted to work for.
| | 01:03 | So I started to consider that what I was
really doing was a business, but I knew
| | 01:09 | nothing about running a business.
| | 01:12 | That became really clear after
a few years of trying to do it.
| | 01:15 | I sort of had the idea that if we
were busy, then we were probably okay
| | 01:17 | financially and that became obvious
that after a while that wasn't true.
| | 01:22 | So it's much more about making sure that
you charge enough to cover the time you
| | 01:26 | spend and the music business made
that pretty difficult, because that very
| | 01:30 | specifically set budgets for lots of work.
| | 01:33 | I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I
would tend to spend way more time than we
| | 01:36 | could really afford, trying
to make the thing look better.
| | 01:40 | So I ended up having to hire some
consultants to come in and teach me how to run
| | 01:44 | a company and how to manage
bookkeeping and do all that kind of stuff.
| | 01:48 | Eventually, I realized, I'm really bad
at that stuff and I really don't like it.
| | 01:53 | So it became really clear to me, what
I needed to do is hire other people who
| | 01:56 | are really good at the
stuff that I'm not good at.
| | 01:58 | That's really been kind of what I've
tried to do for the last 20 years and
| | 02:02 | I've been doing it now.
| | 02:03 | If I find somebody who, I think, is
fantastic, I try to hire them to help
| | 02:07 | me with that thing.
| | 02:08 | Lynda Weinman: Do you also hire other creatives?
| | 02:09 | Margo Chase: Oh! Absolutely, yeah.
| | 02:12 | I mean, absolutely, I have some really
talented designers, and then, I depend on them.
| | 02:17 | I mean, to be honest, I don't do as
much design now as I used to, spend a lot
| | 02:20 | of time in meetings with clients and a
lot of time selling the design work we
| | 02:24 | do, I mean, in a literal sense,
really, I mean, walking in, doing a
| | 02:28 | presentation about who we are as a
company and what we do to try to win the
| | 02:32 | business and then talking to them
strategically about the project and what kind
| | 02:36 | of work we should do.
| | 02:36 | So I do a lot of the upfront work
along with Chris, sort of, positioning the
| | 02:40 | project, the research, the strategy and
then a lot of the preliminary concept work.
| | 02:47 | Sometimes, the concept stuff happens in
collaboration with one of the art directors.
| | 02:51 | Then, once that, sort of, gets approved
and often it gets handed off, so often
| | 02:57 | the work is completely done by someone else.
| | 02:59 | I tend to try to hang on to the logo
pieces still, because I love doing that part.
| | 03:03 | Lynda Weinman: It seems like you have a lot of
confidence in your gut, when you love something,
| | 03:09 | you know to go in that direction,
does that still guides you today?
| | 03:12 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 03:13 | Most of the time that's a good
indication, sometimes not, but I had to learn a
| | 03:19 | lot about what the design business
is really about and the music business
| | 03:22 | doesn't really teach you that.
| | 03:23 | I mean, it was really fun to do design
in the music business, because it's very
| | 03:28 | much about how cool can you make it,
it's about self-expression and you get a
| | 03:33 | chance to really explore your own voice
as a designer, like who am I about, what
| | 03:38 | do I think is important.
| | 03:40 | In someways, that's great to have as
an opportunity when you're young, but in
| | 03:44 | someways that's really not what we're up to.
| | 03:46 | What we're really up to is design its
commercial art, its design as in the
| | 03:51 | service of someone else's problem.
| | 03:53 | I think, if the better you can be at
understanding that problem and adapting
| | 03:58 | your abilities to that problem, the
more successful you are and the better
| | 04:02 | you're doing your job, I think.
| | 04:03 | Lynda Weinman: Well, in someways, when you're
at the part of your career where you're working
| | 04:07 | for other people, you're
learning to please them.
| | 04:09 | And then when you make the transition
to working directly with clients, you're
| | 04:12 | learning to please your clients.
| | 04:13 | Margo Chase: Yeah.
| | 04:15 | Lynda Weinman: And so how have you refined
your own ability to understand what a client wants
| | 04:20 | and needs and how does that
drive the kind of work that you do?
| | 04:22 | Margo Chase: Well, yeah!
| | 04:26 | I don't think I'm a basically kind
of a stubborn and opinionative person,
| | 04:29 | which helps a lot.
| | 04:30 | I mean, I think, that certainly you can
end up with one of those jobs where you
| | 04:34 | don't have very much power and
those can be really frustrating.
| | 04:38 | I think, the beauty of running your own
business is that you actually do get to
| | 04:42 | make decisions about who you work for
and you can choose clients who actually do
| | 04:46 | trust you and will allow you
to do what you know is right.
| | 04:50 | I've been in situations where I have
to just bite my tongue, where I know
| | 04:53 | that what they are suggesting we do, just
doesn't make sense, but it's not my decision.
| | 05:00 | So the best thing I can do is just say,
you hired me to tell you what I think
| | 05:05 | and you hired me to give you my best work
and here it is, and if you don't like it,
| | 05:09 | then it's your money.
| | 05:11 | After a certain point, you just have to
go, sorry, it's your money, and we'll do
| | 05:15 | what you're paying us to do.
| | 05:17 | And I hate doing that, but we do it.
| | 05:19 | Lynda Weinman: When you're interviewing young
designers, what are you looking for in a portfolio?
| | 05:26 | Margo Chase: I look for somebody who has a
broad interest and that can be demonstrated
| | 05:31 | in their portfolio.
| | 05:32 | So that might be graphic design plus
cine-photography or graphic design and
| | 05:36 | paintings or some other collage
work that they do or something.
| | 05:43 | I love it when I see a portfolio that
is clearly not a formulaic, okay, we did
| | 05:50 | the design project and here's the
logo and then here's the sketches that
| | 05:53 | develop it and here's something it
turned into and then here's that again,
| | 05:56 | which is the way that some of the
schools actually require, suggest that you
| | 06:02 | present your portfolio.
| | 06:03 | So I always tend to ask people, well,
what you do on the side, do you do anything
| | 06:08 | for yourself, like do you do anything
that interests you, and hopefully finding
| | 06:13 | out that they do something else.
| | 06:18 | One really good example is, one of the
art directors that works for me now, when
| | 06:24 | he brought his portfolio and he
actually had worked for a couple of other
| | 06:27 | companies and he had done sort of
this wide spectrum of kind of work.
| | 06:31 | So he had like posters
from Texas for like rodeos.
| | 06:34 | Then he had some animated After
Effects things that he had done for an
| | 06:41 | entertainment client here.
| | 06:42 | He does painting, so he
had some of that in his book.
| | 06:44 | It was just a really interesting -- a
collecting mix of work and all of it was good.
| | 06:49 | It was all really clever, it didn't look
like all the same kind of style, it was
| | 06:54 | very unique and fresh.
| | 06:57 | I thought, okay, he cares me, he's smart,
they're thinking about the work, they
| | 07:00 | are not hindered by media.
| | 07:04 | He can use the computer,
but he can also use his hands.
| | 07:07 | So I found that to be really a great
example of something I'm looking for.
| | 07:13 | I just saw that in an intern -- I had
an intern coming in interview, couple of
| | 07:16 | weeks ago he decided to take
another job, which made me sad.
| | 07:20 | But he had a really nice portfolio.
| | 07:22 | He'd been doing a lot of
print work as a student.
| | 07:25 | So he actually had solved some real
world problems, which I thought was really
| | 07:30 | good for someone coming right out of school.
| | 07:32 | So he could tell me, oh, yeah, we had
a $2,000 budget to print this thing.
| | 07:36 | So I knew I could only do it in two
colors, but I chose one of them to be a
| | 07:39 | fluorescent, and I thought, Oh! That's great!
| | 07:42 | He's really thinking about, okay,
here's the end result and how can I use
| | 07:45 | that creatively.
| | 07:47 | So that is another really good example.
| | 07:50 | Things that are a bad portfolio would
be one that I saw, kind of, recently
| | 07:54 | too, where they had put together a
bound book of their work, but the
| | 07:59 | pagination was wrong.
| | 08:00 | So you saw two pages of a project and
then you saw the other page of something
| | 08:04 | else and then there was that project
again, and they said, oh, yeah, the
| | 08:07 | pagination didn't work out right.
| | 08:09 | And I am thinking, so why didn't you fix it?
| | 08:12 | Why would you walk in an interview
with a book that's put together wrong?
| | 08:14 | Lynda Weinman: Well, those are great insights.
| | 08:18 | We want to thank you so
much for spending time with us.
| | 08:21 | It's been very inspiring to hear
your stories and see your work.
| | 08:24 | Thank you again so much!
| | 08:24 | Margo Chase: Yeah, thanks!
| | 08:26 | You're welcome! It's been really
fun, it was great to meet you too.
| | 08:28 | Lynda Weinman: You too.
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