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Today we’re talking to Bob Hower who was the past president of the DFW Interactive Marketing Association as well as Manager - Strategic Planning at JCPenney. Today he puts on workshops for people on doing presentation skills. Bob, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your workshops?

Bob Hower: I appreciate the interview. I put together a 10-hour workshop for small business owners that we do over 5 consecutive sessions. So it’s 2 hours a morning. We focus on the small business person, so specifically in this workshop, among other things, we work on 30-second commercial because that’s a presentation of small business owners at giving every place in networking meetings.

And then we’re also focusing on 5-minute spotlight presentation because 5-minute or 10-minutes gives small business owners a real chance to get up in front of people and tell them what the benefits are in the business and what types of clients they’re looking for.

Listen to the interview

TDc: When you have your presentation seminar, what are some of the topics that you discuss? Just an overview of those topics beyond the 30-second and the 5-minute.

Bob Hower: Certainly. At the beginning, we let everybody introduce themselves and tell us what their specific objectives are because I always want to get an idea of what that specific person is looking for. We have everybody in that first week bring in an exhibit or an achievement because that’s where an easy presentation to start with will get a chance to hold up something that you feel pretty proud of and give us 90-second or 2-minute story about that.

Where you got it, how you achieved it, how hard you worked for that. And then, besides the 30-sec and the 5-minute, another major presentation which really helps people out, is we have a “talk to get action.”

Because all of us are constantly trying to get clients, associates, employees acting on one action. So we have a real formal structure on how to deliver the talk to get action and everybody comes in with a solid example on how they tried to get somebody at that meeting in particular to act on what we do. So those are really the major ones that we do spend time on within the 5-weeks class.

TDc: How would this benefit like a graphic designer? I know whenever I go in and pitch new business, showing my portfolio. And then you mentioned getting action. How would this tie into something like that?

Bob Hower: That’s a great question. Working on this for 5 weeks, we also have some little exercises that we do to build confidence of everybody in front of the room. And really when you’re dealing with clients or you’re dealing at a networking group, it’s really important that you have a message that is pretty focused and we’ll do that in both the 30-second commercial or elevator pitch. And even in a larger scale, the 5-minute presentation.

And then the second important thing is you have to deliver it with excitement and passion and enthusiasm because it’s your business. And really, people are obviously going to buy something from you if they believe that you can deliver that. So what we’re working on in this class is to really help you to organize that message.

But as importantly, to deliver it with conviction and enthusiasm and confidence throughout the 5 weeks. And that’s why we do it over a 5-week period so you get a chance to deliver your message in the workshop. And then go out there in the week and practice, practice it in your networking meetings and your client meetings. And as you’re learning it and doing it in the class, and then practicing it during the week, we really start changing your habits in building presentation skills. And that’s what this workshop is all about. It’s developing presentation skills so that you can deliver an effective message.

TDc: And then refining those skills..

Bob Hower: And then refining those skills by practicing it, coming in next week, changing of some of the ways that you do it. We’re constantly coaching you in the class.

You’re watching the other people strengthen their skills. So the whole thing works together as a real important mix to build your confidence and get you stronger in front of people.

TDc: When somebody’s thinking of doing a 30-second commercial which also could be like an elevator pitch. How is that different than a 5-minute? Do you have the same goals or do you take the same approach? Or is there two different approaches for two different timelines?

Bob Hower: There are two different approaches. Something I guess I knew intuitively. But really it’s strengthened in my mind as I’ve done this workshop. The hardest presentation to make is the 30-second commercial. People will sometimes come in and immediately they’re afraid of the 5-minute. And they think “Gee ’cause that only takes 5 minutes. I’m up there in front of the group for a long period of time.

That’s a lot more intimidating, a lot hard. So certainly, you’re up there longer for the 5 minutes. But what I’ve found is that the most important presentation that small business owners make is the 30-second commercial. ‘Cause that really makes you come to grips with couple of things. Number 1 is , “What differentiates you as a business?” And that really sets the foundation for your whole marketing strategy business strategy as a business is to differentiate it. By crystallizing down to 30 seconds, it really forces our members and focuses our members on thinking about what makes them different from other people and what benefits, what one real benefit can they bring to clients?

And we do give guidelines in the class. You put that into an outline and then get up in front of the group and deliver it with passion and clarity on what differentiates your business and what makes people want to buy you.

TDc: Do you find that sometimes that people put in too much on a 30-second commercial? Or should they focus just on one thing?

Bob Hower: I find 2 things. And then again, it’s an interesting question. I find it in a lot of meetings I go to. People can’t get it into 30 seconds. So they tend to either come up way short and then come up with a 15-second commercial that doesn’t make any sense at all. Or they’ll talk to 40 or 50 seconds because they really can’t crystallize the thoughts.

With this guideline and formula, we work out un-delimitation of thirty seconds. It really does focus and make people structure on what are the most important things they want to say to again promote their business, market their business differentiate them as a business.

TDc: And then moving to the 5-minute, when you’re doing a presentation like that. Is that a different format? You’re squeezing everything into 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes. How is it different to approach that type of presentation?

Bob Hower: Yes. I think the hardest one is the 30-seconds. I think once we give developing thing, that really is the one that is most thought-provoking to the small business people.

I think once you get your 30-second commercial down, then a 5-minute, a 10-minute, a 30-minute. And we do give you a formal outline for the 5-minute. You tell a little bit about yourself and your business and how you get into this. But the real thing that a 5-minute does is to give you a chance to give some specific examples. And even testimonials of success stories that you’ve had with your business.

And really that bridges back to this “Talk to get action”. Because what we learned in the “talk to get action” is that the example that you use is the most important things. People are sold through examples, examples of testimony, So really, once we get 30-second down, we think of we differentiated that we have.

What are the one most important product that we sell?

The 5-minute gives you a chance to spend a little bit more time on describing products that you do sell, which you can’t do with a 30-second. You have to be crystal clear on that. But then more importantly, it gives you sometime to give one or two clear examples of where you helped the clients, do whatever it is that you’re doing in your business supply them with products or the service.

And really the example, if you can bring in somebody, and we ask people in the workshop to do this. If you can bring a testimonial in and then you hold that up as an exhibit, that really is the best-selling of all.

Because you’re really describing them. People being successful with your products and willing to write something down and tell all the people that you served them. And then, we don’t do it in the workshop. But once you have 10 minutes, you have the chance two or three examples in.

That pretty much follows the same outline.

TDc: So you just extrapolate that?

Bob Hower: We really do. The 30-second is completely different. But then, once you get to 2 minutes, 5 mins. And that’s why I say , People think that those are the harder ones, more in front of the group. But once you’ve developed the confidence to speak in front of people, a 5-minute, 10-minute and 30-minute pleasures.

Because they really do give you the time to drive the point home and use the examples which really sells. Where as the 30-second, you really don’t have the luxury of putting wrong words in it. Because you don’t have the time for that.

TDc: Right, Cause you’re crystallizing everything.

Bob Hower: Exactly.

TDc: On a 5-minute, is there a pattern like you build up to a point? And then we talked about taking action. Is there a way that you build up to that and then take action or present that?

Bob Hower: In the class, we really don’t do that. We concentrate most of the presentations, I think, 3 of the weeks, we’re really up there giving 90-second or 2-minute presentations. And then in the 4th week, we do the 30-second commercial. So that obviously only gives you 30 seconds to do it. But we do, give people a chance to do that a couple of times. So you’re up there but you only have a 30-second time frame.

Then we get to the 5 minute. And that’s really the first time you’re doing that. But once you have the outline of the 30-second commercial, and you learn the format of the example of the “talk to get action”, then really a 5-minute talk is a just putting 2 or 3, 90-second talks together.

So although we haven’t given you a chance to do 4-minutes before you do 5-minutes, just by doing the 90 second and 2-minute when you get to the 5th week with the outline, you’re ready to do that. And as I said, we don’t do it, but we could do it. We could get to that, f5th week and give you a 30 minute assignment you’re ready to do that with the right outline because it is just a series of examples and flow. And once you get the confidence, you can be up there 10- 30 minutes without a problem.

TDc: Typically what is the size of your seminars?

Bob Hower: We really do like to keep the number between 10 and 15. 15 because if I go bigger than that, it’s really going to be difficult to do it in the 2 hours. And they are 2 hours.

We know small business owners target will target busy people, so we do this first thing in the morning at 7:45-9:45. And we do it in 5-7 at night. So we do want to keep it to 2 hours so 15 is really what I like to think is my max. And then I do like to have 10 in a class. Because 10 gets you to be a large group. And once you’re doing something in front of 10 people, it gets you doing it to a larger group. It helps you start to build your confidence. It gives you chance to start reading different people in the audience. So it really is a good minimum number. So again, we try to keep it between 10 and 15.

TDc: You mentioned presenting something you’re doing eye contact and you’re getting feedback and you’re feeling the emotion of the room. That’s something else that you practice on too.

Bob Hower: Yes. We certainly make comments to that. But I did mention this at the beginning, probably a little bit. We also have some formal warm up exercises where we get everybody to get up and play through this warmup exercises with gestures and different speech patterns so you get a chance to use higher modulation and low modulation. You’re really in these exercises and get them a chance to do that.

And then of course we ask you in the assignment that we give you, to try to figure out ways to not only prepare the words for the presentation but to try to build in different ways that you can use some of the things that we use in the warmup exercises to make the presentation come alive, to make it more interesting, to make you more confident.

TDc: Okay. You’ve mentioned confidence several times. How would you rank that in the presentation skill hierarchy?

Bob Hower: I think confidence, we didn’t mention this but I also have the privilege and it was a privilege to teach in the Dale Carnegie School for 20 years as a certified instructor. And we learned pretty strictly in that class. I certainly believe that confidence is one of the most important things to deliver an effective presentation.

No matter where you go to listen to people speak, whether it be in your church or at a formal presentation or at a workshop that you’re paying money for, you know that there’s just some speakers that get up in front of the room and you look at them and say “That person has it. They are good! ” We give them an A+ right away because they just come across.

And really when you take a step back and take a look at it, it really is the passion and enthusiasm they have their topic, it’s the topic itself. But really, the foundation of all that is the confidence that they exude as they’re talking. Because that really is to me, probably the most important of all in delivering an effective presentation is looking like you believe in what you’re talking about.

TDc: And when you’re doing portfolio presentation, if you don’t believe in the work that you’ve created, you’re not going to win over anybody.

Bob Hower: Absolutely not. That’s really why I’m delighted about this workshop. Because I really did develop this myself for the small business person because I’d go to so many meetings at the Chamber or networking meeting the way the other person speaking about them that you know they feel very strongly about would look like they don’t want to be up the room because of whatever it is, fear or lack of skill in public speaking.

And yet, here they’re talking about something that obviously is critically important which is their business. I said “Let me see if I can develop a class that really is focused to them. ” And that is what this presentation skills workshop is all about.

TDc: Well Bob I really appreciate you talking with us today. Thank you very much.

Bob Hower: Dan it’s a pleasure, and I appreciate the offer.

This is the second part of the interview with Jennifer Champberlain of WebMD. You ca read the first part of the HOW Design Conference Wrap up here.

TDc: Was there an overall theme that you’ve kind of gotten a vibe from for the overall conference not just his. Was there, any kind, of you walked away thinking, “Well, this was really about x.”

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what, I didn’t. I didn’t get into any real theme because they did this year. I think they usually do it. There is creativity and inspiration, list of seminars you can take, design disciplines, business and management, in-house issues. I think I like the creativity and inspiration the most.

For me, I went to a lot of the in-house issues because I lead our in-house group at Web MD. They had good speakers. They had this guy from MTV. His name is Scott Wadler. He was really nice. He addressed a lot of things. I think he really spoke to my co-workers who were there, my team was there and they really enjoyed.

I kind of felt like I heard it all before. They had the woman that leads the Xbox in-house design team for Microsoft. I didn’t find them motivating. I felt like I was kind of mislead because her speech was titled. “Was it Staying Creative?” Yeah, it was called Staying Creative. Her name was Shelley Armstrong. Super smart woman.

They’re doing great work over there but, I don’t know, it wasn’t really about staying creative. I think it was more like, how to be the best in-house designer you can be and I feel like we’ve all heard it. Maybe I’ve just been to too many of these things and there’s nothing left to say.

I don’t know but even this woman that works for me turned to me and said, “You know we tried all that stuff or we do all that stuff. I haven’t really heard anything new.” So I don’t know if there’s nothing left to do in in-house. [Laughs].

TDc: Well, you do have different problems than working at it as an outsider with an agency. Let’s talk about, well, one thing people talk about how busy they are. You work at an agency you think, “Wow, we’re really busy.” You work at an in-house well you think, “Wow, we’re really busy.”

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah.

TDc: How busy is busy?

Jennifer Chamberlain: That is all I try and figure out because we work in a super busy company where everyday is like things are due and every time you get a time line — no timeline is ever a realistic timeline but somehow you make it happen. Do you know what I mean?

Every speaker was like, “You know, we’re all busy but you got to blah, blah, blah.” Or, “Things have gotten so busy.” And I want to be like, “How busy is your busy?” Because my busy is 10 hours a day and you’re constantly nervous, you sit down — you can’t really think.

Everybody thinks they have ADD because we’re doing so much. You know, that kind of thing? I couldn’t really figure it out. Like some people are like, “Yeah, we’re really busy.” Then they tell you all the cool things they have time to do and I’m like, “There’s not a way they could really be that busy.”

TDc: Yeah, if your busy, you don’t have time for that.

Jennifer Chamberlain: And the only thing I could think of is, I guess we are all busy but if you love what you do at least 50% of the time you’re happy with the work you’re making and the people you work for appreciate you then it’s okay. I like being busy as long I get the pay back.

TDc: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: I guess that’s part of design these days. I guess if you’re not busy you can’t afford to go to the conference, I don’t know. [Laughs].

TDc: Or you’re in trouble.

Jennifer Chamberlain: [Laughs] Exactly!

TDc: Well, how would you relate or equate the How conference versus let’s say, an AIGA conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what? I feel really stupid because I belong to AIGA. I’m very involved in the AIGA in Atlanta. We’ve got a great group and we get great speakers. We even had Chip Kidd come and speak so seeing him at the How conference was a second time that I’ve seen him but I’ve never been to the big AIGA conference.

TDc: Okay.

Jennifer Chamberlain: However, I talked to a lot of people and the word on the streets and the people I talked to at the How conference is they felt that AIGA got better speakers. That’s just what I’d heard and I’m curious to go the AIGA conference now but that’s what they felt. That was the word on the street.

TDc: The How conferences, you know, it’s big. There’s a lot of, I would guess, is bigger than the AIGA conference and I wonder if there is an intimacy issue there. There’s so many people that go to the How versus possibly go to the AIGA. If that plays into it.

Jennifer Chamberlain: I think it probably does. When I was at the big seminars, I couldn’t get over how big the rooms are and they had like 7 giant screens and you can even see where the speaker was which made like question and answer really difficult. Lucky, the Gary Baseman was in a really smaller venue and I was kind of like, “I cannot believe that more people are here.” Like, “This guys is amazing!”

I personally do prefer the intimate conferences. Next year if I’ve the opportunity I think I would try the AIGA conference.

TDc: And then what about the individual seminar titles themselves and descriptions had. You mentioned that you walked out of one but was that because it was mislabeled or were there others were pretty well-labeled? “I quite,” you thought when you got there. You know, this is what it is.

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what, for the most of them, I thought they were mislabeled. I feel like the most interesting descriptions were the boring ones and the boring descriptions were the most amazing. [Laughs] Like Shelley Armstrong’s Staying Creative, I think she gave two tips on how to be creative out of her whole seminar.

It was really just like how to be the best in-house designer, how to be a successful in-house designer. That would be a more accurate description. I’m trying to think there was also one reinvent yourself strategies to having the career you want. I went to that and it might just be that I see what I want to see when I look at this quickly and decide where I’m going.

But, that one particularly, I stayed. I was a little disappointed because it could be at any conference. It could be at a conference for accountants. The woman was really smart and she’s a great speaker but there was nothing specific about design.

I think there’s a big opportunity for somebody who’s more focused on design to be like, well , if you are in print and you want to go into web or if you’ve always been interested in illustration, how to parlay your skill. That kind of thing is what I thought it was going to be.

TDc: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So I was kind of disappointed in that. I’m just looking around at other things. Like, one was called English For Me is Greek. Like, what does that mean? I don’t know. [Laughter] So, it’s kind of hard sometimes where you want to go but I’ve become a big proponent of — I give them 5 minutes and if I don’t like it I go. I move on to the next on.

TDc: Well, how about accessibility. You mentioned several of the sessions where in the big rooms and then there were the small rooms. How was the accessibility to the speakers, not only while they were speaking, but throughout the conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know after I saw Chip Kidd walk by but it wasn’t like he had mail, he was, like, off. He had somewhere to go kind-of-thing. I didn’t really see accessibility to them. I have to say, the guy from MTV, Scott Walder, was super nice and stayed forever answering people’s questions. But I didn’t see other people sticking around, making themselves available or approachable.

Gary Baseman, he was an exception. He came out before they were really to get going asking questions but, otherwise, I didn’t really see them around. Although, I have to say, a lot of times when I was in a conference there would be like, “Well, if you saw so-and-so speak yesterday, they mentioned blah, blah, blah.” So, I guess they were going to different seminars but I didn’t really see them around.

Maybe they have like an invisibility cloak. I don’t know. [Laughter]

TDc: Well, I’ve been to some conferences where they’ll sit in the back waiting, they’re in the next session. Then, all of a sudden after it’s gone, they’re out of there. Other people have this entourage around and you can never go over and say anything to them. So, interesting.

So, what did you find now that you’re away from the conference? What are you going to take with you? What is going to inspire you from this point on that was a result of the conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: I think for the most part, it was remembering to look at other people’s work. I have a whole list of new people I didn’t realize that were out there that I want to go and constantly check what they are doing, to get inspired for myself. I think from seeing the Logo Notions speaker, how he was talking about with print identity to always keep it simple and to think about how you can really play with forms and keep them simple so they can evolve with time and be something that’s very trendy.

He showed, was it the Museum of Toledo, I think. A fantastic logo and he showed it’s evolved overtime. Really interesting. So that’s something. Because a lot of times, people, myself included, I’ll design a logo and you’re afraid to touch it or how it can be used. [Laughter] Do you know what I mean?

TDc: Right, yeah.

Jennifer Chamberlain: It’s like, we need to let our children grow, evolve but still be themselves. You know?

TDc: Yeah. Well good! Well, Jennifer, I think this has been incredible and really want to say thank you for telling us about the whole How conference and thank you very much.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Thank you! I love talking so I appreciate the opportunity. [Laughs] Talk to you soon, Dan.

TDc: Alright. Thank you. Bye.

Part 1 of 2 (to read part 2 of the How Design Conference Wrap Up click here)

Today we are talking to Jennifer Chamberlain from Web MD. She just recently went to the HowDesign conference in Atlanta. Here is a re-cap on the HOW Design web site. Let’s see how that went for her. How are you doing today, Jennifer?

Jennifer Chamberlain: The conference was great. I’m a little partial because I live in Atlanta. So, it was nice to have it in my own town and very convenient.

Dan: That’s good.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah, it was great but the only thing I have to say about the location is I know Atlanta well and it was held in downtown Atlanta at the Hyatt. Downtown Atlanta is not the place to be in Atlanta. Like, there is so much going on in Atlanta, so much buildings, so many great shopping and restaurants and cool places to go for artists and that’s really midtown. Downtown is only about 2 miles or a mile away but it seems like eons away.

It’s kind of dark like when you go to a city where there’s not much going on. There’s nobody really around, that’s downtown Atlanta, sadly. I think, eventually the regentrification and all the life coming into Atlanta City will make Atlanta downtown cool again but right now it’s kind of like the dead spot for conferences. So it kind of felt like, to all those people that came to the “How” conference in Atlanta, like “this isn’t really Atlanta.” [Laughs]

Dan: You’d rather show off your city with some other venue.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Exactly, exactly. I think though last night they kind of got a good glimpse of Atlanta where they went to the aquarium. That’s a fantastic spot. We love to show that off, but, hopefully, the people that went to the conference got to get out a little bit. Unfortunately, the other downside of Atlanta is public transportation is really poor. It doesn’t go to very many places so, I was like,”Oh God, I hope these people rented cars.” [Laughs]

Dan: It’s like in Dallas. You have to have a car. The train system’s great but it doesn’t take you to where you want to go.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Exactly! We’ve the same problem. So, that’s the one thing about the location.

Dan: Tell me a little bit. What did you think about the speakers? What were some of the speakers that really stood out for you?

Jennifer Chamberlain: They had some fantastic speakers. They really did and when I go to a conference I kind of have my own personal rating system. The top being you are in awe the whole time and it’s just like, “Wow!” and when it comes to the question and answer, you should stay the whole time and you don’t want to leave when it’s over.

Dan: You wish it went on longer?

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yes. Completely! And then, there’s like, “Oh, it’s pretty good. I’ve learned a lot.” But by the end you’re ready for a snack or lunch or something. Then there is, “I should stay but you keep checking your watch.” [Laughs] Then, finally, “Forget it. I’m leaving.” And you actually walk out.

So, you know, I have to say, during the conference it ran the whole gamut. There was one I actually walked out on. It was on Copyrights and Trademarks on the Internet which I went to and I was like, “This will be really fantastic.” Because sometimes I put things on the web and we always have to be so careful of WebMD. It’s a huge web site and we have to be super careful legally. So I felt this will be fantastic for me to listen to and it was super technical and the speaker who is very smart and I think she even does a column for How Magazine but as a speaker she wasn’t resonating with me and got caught up with the technology and had trouble downloading a PDF and wanted to walk us through a PDF document. I was like, “I don’t want to.”

So I actually left and went and saw Gary Baseman. He is an illustrator most famous for — he did the design for the game Cranium. If you’re familiar with that and he does a lot paintings. He was amazing! He was like the opposite end of the spectrum. Had so much energy. Before he spoke he was outside with the people while they were waiting to get the room set up. “Does anybody have a question for me?” He had his dolls out there and he was showing people his dolls. He had beautiful post cards of his work, super glossy, perfectly printed, handing them out to people, samples of his work. He was amazing. So much fun.

Dan: Let’s talk about that a little bit. The criticism for one of the sessions you just mentioned was it was very technical and, I guess you could say it was very dry. Whereas this guy had a lot of energy. Is there a place at a conference like that where people do need to get exposed to, you know, you can’t get that excited about copyright law.

Jennifer Chamberlain: [Laughter] I agree! There’s definitely a space and I was talking to a co-worker afterwards and she we were like, “She wanted to go through that document which is really important. Have it printed out beforehand as a handout and people could follow along. I can’t see in a huge conference room each type and box. Do you know what I mean? That they’re projecting on a page.

Dan: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So, I think there’s other ways to do it to make it a little more interesting. And for copyrights and trademarks, I wish she would have said, “If you want a copyright these kinds of things and this is why you would do it and this is why you wouldn’t do it.” And give some interesting examples.

Dan: Right. And things you might not think about immediately. There’s some quirky things about those issues. It’s always good to hear an antidote that ties that in and then talk about why that was important.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Absolutely. I even came with questions that I wanted to ask and I was like, “Forget it. I can’t even go there.” But it was, like, I remember talking to one designer who worked and did print for lingerie businesses. She was telling me, you could, sometimes if their rights with the model had ended, they will trim the model’s face at like the nose.

Then you can’t recognize who that person is. I wanted to be like, “Hey, is that really true? Can you really do that?” Where are our loopholes? How creative can you be? You know how some people are always like, “If you take a photo you change x % of the photo, then you can use that photo without paying for it.” Is that really true? I wanted to know all these kind of things.

So, I think, there were some things that, I don’t know, maybe I got her on a bad day.

Dan: Maybe. Let’s talk about some exciting people. Gary Baseman sounded like he was excited. Got the room going. Who else did you see that you really thought was a highlight.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah, he was great. I’m going to hatch at these names. So, forgive me but Matteo Bologna? And Roberto… I can’t even say his name. Have you ever seen Bembo’s Zoo?

Jennifer Chamberlain: If you google Bembo’s Zoo there are these two guys. They’re phenomenal. Mateo is Italian and Roberto is Portuguese. I can send you the links to their work. They were phenomenal .They’ve been doing …they’re all obsessed…Oh, you found it! I can hear it.

[Laughs] They’re amazing at how they take typographic forms and really play with them. Bembo’s Zoo’s been around for a while and they did this short room book and if you Google Bamboo Zoo you’ll find their web site. It’s amazing how they just change these, just using these letter forms to create animals.

They just put out a new book called Words At Play and it’s wordsatplay.com and they use letter forms to create literary figures. Portraits of literary figures like William Shakespeare and it looks like him. It’s amazing! So, they were super inspiring. They also do a lot of restaurant design for big restaurants in New York like Balthazar and Pravda and Pastis. They were talking about all those projects and showcased those. So that was really interesting.

They were also just really entertaining people as well. I went and saw one conference, seminar, rather called Logo Notions. This guy is a real ID master. His name is Steff Geissbuhler. I don’t know how to say it. But his company is called C&G Partners and his web site is cgpartnersllc.com. Amazing logos and ID’s that they’ve done over the year.

Like the NBC peacock, Turner Cable. He showed us a logo study of a radio for Europe. Another amazing one they did for the national parks of New York Harbor which featured its own alphabet that they created. It’s amazing and it’s on their site. You can totally see that. I highly recommend it and he started his seminar with a 9 minute animation of the logos that they’ve created over the years.

Each logo would morph into the next logo by focusing on, maybe it was the letter E in the logo would turn and morph into the NBC peacock or something. It was just really interesting how they did that. He was really great. Something I took away from his speech was how he was talking about — when he creates logos, he does not show the client the logo on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece on paper or on a board.

He says he always shows it in an environment that he thinks is going to be used or that’s most important to the client. Here’s the example. If he is creating a logo for a lawyer, he would present it to them on their letterhead. Or, if he was doing a logo for an airline, he would show it superimposed on the tail of a plane and a mock-up so they can see how it would be used.

So I thought that was interesting. I usually don’t do that. For me these conferences are about just getting inspired and seeing what other people are doing, for the most part.

Dan: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So, I’m torn that way. Then there was one final, really great conference that I really enjoyed and that was Chip Kidd. Heard a lot of people talking about him just as I would walk along the hallway. “Oh Chip Kidd, he was so funny. Blah, blah, blah.” Another guy who’s really super talented and just an amazing performer and entertainer in addition to what he was showing us and telling us.

So, Chip Kidd for people listening and don’t know is a big book cover designer and he works for Harper Collins, I want to say. I might be totally wrong. He showed lots of examples of his work and he is one of the most popular book designers.

Right now, today, he’s also done some movie posters. He did Paul Simon’s surprise CD that came out maybe 2 year ago. So he brought through that and he told us the whole experience working with Paul Simon which was really interesting. He was really great.

The other thing I really liked about his talk was he was also very human, in that, he talked about things like every designer worries about or concerns themselves about. Chip Kidd is dealing with this like he was talking about a poster he did for Adobe. They do a student competition each year and they asked him to design the poster for it.

The woman kept saying, “Blue sky, blue sky.” He was like, “What are you talking about?” She’s like, “You can do whatever you want.” He was like, “I became a graphic designer because I like an assignment. I read the book. I create something about the book.” He’s like, “Blue sky! I can’t do anything. I’m not a fine artist. I can’t think like immediately. I get artist block.”

So he explained how he dealt with this artist block and he just pulled out some random design that was horrible and he totally admitted it. I mean, everybody could relate to that because he has to made it sound fine. He said 2006, people think that I’m super successful and I do this work and everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s fantastic. Approved! Go to print.” But he is like …”2006 was a particularly difficult year for me. I thought I did a lot of good work. Here’s all the stuff that I did that got refused. And playing out that they went with someone else, like never got approved or whatever and went through and showed us so that was really fun.

He also talked about for designers, he really thinks it’s for designers he think it’s really important for inspiration and to keep our minds really sharp to do crossword puzzles, and just a way to think of words in different unexpected ways. That was kind of a theme through his wholes speech. That was really interesting. He had a really good way of working the crowd. He was just really entertaining and funny.

We will be posting part to soon…

Today we are talking to Cameron Foote from Creative Business. If you are not familiar with Creative Business, this is the business resource created for firm principles and free lancers. The newsletter has been published since 1989 and it is chalked full of great advice. And today, we have Cameron Foote who is the principal and editor of Creative Business. How you doing today, Cameron?

Cameron Foote: I’m just fine, Dan. Thank you.

TDc: You’ve been publishing the newsletter since 1989. Over that time, what has changed the most for running a successful Creative Business?

Cameron Foote: I think if I would to kind of summarize things, I would say that the business is tougher today than it has been at anytime since either I started in the business which was back in the sort of 60’s, long time ago or since I started Creative Business in1989. And the reason for that is that as time has gone on, there’s been more competition; there are more graduates from design schools today. And well, there is more business out there; it hasn’t keep up with the number of new people in the business. Also there are certain concerns today, business concerns that have gotten worse over a period of time.

For example, the amount of capital one needs in order to run a business successfully, the type of business skills that one needs to run the business successfully. And then, things like constant upgrades of software, new computers and so forth. So today, it’s a much tougher business than it used to be back again, or looking back 30 years or what ever. It was possible to set up a business with essentially some marks-a-lot pens and you know, a drawing board.

Today, you need computers, you need technical skills, you need bank accounts, you need to face competition, and you have to justify what you do to clients in a way you never had to before. So I think, it’s a much tougher business today than it has been in the past and I don’t see any lessening of that I think it’s gonna increase the toughness of you will, will get tougher as we go along.

TDc: Do you feel like, the creatives are wearing too many hats because they have to know the technology, they have to know the business side of things as well as being talented and motivated?

Cameron Foote: No, I don’t think so. Actually, I think that’s a good thing. I mean, certainly, in those two sides of this, no one likes more competition and certainly, I don’t like it more than anyone else does, but I think there’s another very positive side to that. It’s a process which necessitates that we be sharper.

Again decades ago if you were talented, you have artistic talents you could sort of make it on your own. Today, you got to know a little about why things work. Why things work in a certain situations? What the clients should be expecting from you and then meet those needs. So I think it’s a tougher environment certainly, but I think it’s a better environment. It forces us to not be be the sort of flaky artist, if you will. It forces us to be sort of responsive to clients needs and I think that’s good. I think its good for society and I think its good for us in a discipline type way.

TDc: Most creative firms are started by individuals that they decide they want to go out in their own. What is the one thing that they need to have in place to be a successful business?

Cameron Foote: I would say, it’s attitude and by that, I mean they have to think of what they’re doing as a business first and foremost is a great, I think, tendency for creative people who… Let’s say, are working for someone else in the agency or maybe for a design shop to go out on their own because essentially they want to make a living doing what they do. They want to make a living off their talent. That’s wonderful!

But they don’t often think about the ramifications of the business world; what they have to do in order to be successful. So, if there’s one thing that I would say, that, you know creative kid starting in business has to do, they have to think of what they are doing as business, not just as a way of making money off their talent. It’s a business and they have to be responsive to the competitiveness of the market or clients need and so forth. It’s not, in other words all about them, its about their clients and what they have to do in order to be successful with these talents. A talent is no longer enough.

TDc: In this month’s newsletter, you have advised on should employees know job cost, if employees, you know, before they left and then as they’re out. Obviously if you’re running your own firm, knowing your cost, how do you feel employees knowing the cost of certain projects and how the economics work in all that?

Cameron Foote: Well, I think it’s a little bit of a judgment call in the part of principles and I can talk about both sides of it. Personally, I think that employees should be told pretty much what is going on. I think that it makes a better employee and I think that therefore, they are more productive. Now, there are principles. Let’s say, well, if I tell an employee too much then what I’m doing is basically educating them and then they gonna go out and work for somebody else or work for themselves.

You I know I don’t really subscribe to that. I can see in some cases where there might be some confidential material that you wouldn’t want to share with an employee but I think, by and large, I think Its good for employee’s to know what goes on to be involved in the business part of the activities. In other words, not just to be doers; they’re also be thinkers, to be strategizers; to be involved in the business aspect of the created product that they are involved with.

TDc: Why do some Creative Businesses succeed while others fail?

Cameron Foote: Well again , I go back to whether or not they think of it as a business, or they think of it as a sort of their talent or their obligation that they’re getting paid for. In other words, within our business alike, if you look above why most Creative Businesses fail over a period of several decades of seeing a great deal of these and I can tell you that most creative businesses fail because they have too few clients.

And the reason I have too few clients is they don’t do enough marketing. So, they’re really not thinking of it as a business. Basically, they’re thinking of it as a talent, and making money off their talent. If you gonna be successful, essentially, you have to have to have clients, you have to have a steady stream of clients. Clients come and go and quite often what happens, when someone gets into the business, they typically start off with one or two clients, with maybe friends, maybe acquaintances, maybe clients that they brought with them from where they’ve worked from before. Because they have these clients and because they are very busy, they do not put any time or any thought or in terms of the long term which is marketing, which is building a steady stream of clients.

So, sooner or later these clients that they’ve had for one reason or another leave and then, all of a sudden they find out that basically no there’s no work coming down the pipeline, so then they scramble around and try to get some new business and often it’s too late. So, essentially they really haven’t a look to the future; they haven’t business like, they haven’t done any marketing and essentially, they put too many eggs in one basket and you know that its almost a sure feel safe way to fail if you will.

TDc: Right. What would you think would be, I know this is a very broad, wide open but what percentage of any, should a client take up of any body’s overall billings?

Cameron Foote: Yeah I do have very strong feelings about that and a lot by the way, depends upon how lucrative any particular client is and that sort of things. So there are some, you know, some little nuances here but I would say basically, no one client, and by the way, when I talk about one client, I’m talking about all divisions, let’s say, of a particular company and not just necessarily Division A or Division B

TDc: Or Person 1 or Person 2 as an account.

Cameron Foote: I’m talking about, if you know IBM as a client for example, if you have 15 divisions of IBM, that’s not 15 clients, just 1 client. So, again I don’t think more that 25% of any firm’s business should come from more that one client and I don’t think more 50% should come from 2 clients. And a few can kind of keep to that ratio. I think, you’ll be pretty safe because you have advantage.

If a client leaves, and by the way they always leave, whoever thinks that you know that the world is set and that clients will never leave is fooling themselves, because they all do sooner or later. And if you have that sort of in the back of your mind that you shouldn’t have more than 25% of your income tied up with any one client, you’re pretty safe.

Now again, I know firms that have been very successful, they have 75% of their work tied up with one client but yeah, that client is so profitable. They put so much money in the bank that if the client left, they’ve got sort of recovery time so if a client is profitable enough and you’ve got money in the bank to allow you to recover so your business wont go down to the tomb, then that’s okay but most people don’t do that. Most people don’t have those kind of resources, and essentially, they’re relying on the income from that particular client. They haven’t saved or you know put any sort of cushion if you will aside. So therefore if a client leaves, there are lacks.

TDc: Standing still with nothing to do.

Cameron Foote: That’s right. Yeah, and again we’ve all run into these. In this life, I’m no different in other people. I’ve had clients that, you know I’ve had for four, five, six or seven years and all of sudden…. You know, I can give you one personal anecdote here. Clients that I had for literally, I think for 7 years. They love me I love them and I get bought out by an international conglomerate and new people decided they’re going to have their own staff come in and do things.

And suddenly, I was out of work. So you know, this like happened within two weeks with no notice so that can happen to anybody and I would certainly encourage your listeners to be very careful having too many eggs in one basket.

TDc: I agree. So along that line, just kind of a formula for 25% and not to more than 50% . What other formulas, can you, would you advise on, for instance how does somebody figure if they’re self employed, single, you know free lancer. What, how would you recommend that they set their billing, their hourly billing rate ?

Cameron Foote: Well at the you know, a lot of depends here on talent and competitiveness. You can’t over charged for the market nonetheless you could be someone who’s very talented and be underpriced. You can also be someone who is not so talented but overly priced. You have to look a little bit of what your talent level is.

But, I would say for someone getting started in the business, the first thing they should look at is what other people, successful people charge for work of their comparable level. That doesn’t necessarily mean someone who’s sort of a wannabe or you know, who’s freelancing at night or whatever . I’m talking about serious people who have been in the business for a while.

Usually you can, by asking around you could get a pretty good feel for that, not always , but you can get a pretty good feel for then if some of your talent and experiences is charging $100 in a quarter of an hour, you should be charging more or less around that rate so that’s one way to do it .

The other way, and really, the more, the better one, which is a little bit more difficult is to figure out what’s your cause of doing business are and for a single individual, I would say, what, how much money do you need to live on and you could take then, you can divide that into the number of hours over the year. And what you’re gonna then come up with is a dollar figure. And the dollar figure is if you work every hour during working hour during that year, you’d have to charge so much an hour in order to get to the point that you are in today.

But then you have to look out and say, well, okay whatever that figure is,, I’m not going to work every hour, you know of every work day . Essentially, if I’m lucky I will probably work around 50% of the time maybe 60% of the time. So then you have to take that figure and you probably double it. So, if you lay out all of your expenses that you know you’re gonna incur an what kind of salary you need to make and you divide that into the number of hours an then you further, you know multiply that by two, let’s say. Then you’ll gonna come out with essentially, what is an hourly rate.

Now this is the rate that you have to use when you go out and estimate the job. It’s the rate that will tell you whether you are making money on work or you are not making money on work. It’s not necessarily the rate you charge, although usually it’s related. What I mean by that, is you may come into a particular client and you look around.

And obviously work with other people of, you know, very sophisticated suppliers.

You know that they work with the agencies or whatever and they asked you to do a certain job, you go back and you estimate it. Then, let’s say it’s 10 hours of a $100 an hour, for you know it’s just an example so this is a thousand dollars. But then you look around and say wow, these people can share can pay a lot more than a thousand of dollars.

So then you can look that, you know that you’ve got to charge a thousand of dollars in order to make any money on these but on the other hand maybe these people can afford $1500 and there’ll be no sweat off their back to pay us. So then you come in and say “ Well, okay, my fee for these will be $1500 knowing that you’re gonna make a $500 profit on it.

On the other hand you don’t want to go into a situation like that and have the client say, “Well, you know our budget for this particular project is $900.” And you’ve done this calculation and you say, “Well, you know, I’m gonna lose money anything under a thousand and that should be certainly a red flag and unless there’s some promotional benefit for doing work with these client, you should turn down the work.

TDc: So that you meant ….

Cameron Foote: You have this hourly rate, I mean again, people often criticize hourly wage. And I say, we should go by the hour, we should go by the value, we should go by what client can afford. And my answer to that is that you should have an hourly rate, you should have an hourly rate so you should know what you should be charging and then you could charge more or less than that as the circumstances dictate, but at least you know what you should, what you have to charge for that job.

TDc: Right, where you are standing in that. What other image of the red flag like if they say, “You know its gonna cost you a thousand of dollars, they have a $900″. But you know, are there other any red flags, other than just a financial aspect that you would look for when you go in and future project or creative like that?

Cameron Foote: You know, a lot of these, I suppose is experience but once again you can usually get a pretty good feel for one when you go to a client. You know how sophisticated they are, you can see what kinds of work they’ve done with either other agencies or other suppliers, you can look around. I mean is it a you know, everything, just look like everything was purchased at Wal-Mart or does it look like you know, they’ve got a little you know, capital behind on that sort of thing.

So there are certain clues that you can use and the other thing is when you sit down and talk to someone, the client contact if you will, are they reasonably sophisticated people? Do they know good from bad? Are they business like people? Do they know what things cost, for example? Do they really think that you as a professional are gonna charged a fraction of what a, what a lawyer or what ever we charged? Do they look at you in that level? Or do they do look at you as a professional that should be more or less that league?

And what kind of questions do they ask? Are they focused on price? You know, do they gonna beat you up in prize? I mean, I can tell you that any client who is very concerned about price going into a project is probably gonna be trouble some later. Not only on price, but they’re gonna beat you up in all kinds of changes and trend and won a lot for nothing . In other words, they are people who are trying to squeeze blood from the stone so to speak.

TDc: Right, and the situation rarely gets better.

Cameron Foote: That’s right. Exactly. Yeah, so you can, you know. Most of this is experience. I mean there’s a lot of trial and error here and you learn through, basically taking a lot of fretfulls, but sooner or later you’ve got the feelings that when you walk into the clients, that these people or this person that I have to deal with is gonna be a good client.

They’ve got money and they’re gonna be respectful of my talent or they’re none of the above, in which case, the hardest thing to do in a situation like these is to walk away because there is a little voice from the back of our heads that always says, well maybe I can overcome this. Maybe, they will be different or whatever and they never are .

TDc: Yeah, and the voice can get louder and louder.
Cameron Foote: You cannot change someone personality overnight and firms don’t change their way of doing business for you. It just does not happen.

TDc: Right, let’s say you ignore all those red flags and signals and things like that and you’ve done a couple of projects with them and now you’re just fed up . What’s the best way to fire a client?

Cameron Foote: I guess the answer to that is always, always very tactfully. You never know who your client your is going to talk to so you never want a bad mouth from a client. And no matter how bad the experience is, you know you need a little crow if necessary. Say basically “whatever this difficulty that we have is my fault it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I don’t, I guess frankly, I don’t get. I know that you’re the client and been trying to tell me what you want. I can’s seem to get straight what ever.

What I’m suggesting is let’s part company. Let me, you know, cut my bills by some portions, you’re not, you know paying for things you didn’t get. Let me, maybe give up some files or whatever so you can work with someone else more conveniently. I’ll try to find someone else to work with you”, whatever. Make sure that you talk about it not in a way, a judgmental way like somehow its them. Eat some crow and you walk out of there in many cases, with someone who will respect you even though you no longer work with them.

They won’t bad mouth you and that’s any money that’s due you, chances are, they’ll pay you as opposed to the other situation which is sort of you know answer your dark side which is to tell the SOB’s the way things really are. And you kind of educate them on how bad a client they’ve been. If you do that they are just going to dig in their heels, and once again if they owe you any money it’s going to be a fight. So be as tactful and diplomatic, and if necessary eat crow but walk out of there.And you know, just kiss them goodbye and let it go. Don’t even think anymore about it.

TDc: And find the next client and go from there.

Cameron Foote: That’s right .Exactly. You know the point is that I think, there are lot of people getting into the business, maybe naively think that you know they’re all good clients out there and I’m gonna work with only people that I want to work with and it will never happen.

There are all types of clients, there’s good ones and there’s bad ones. Then, you gonna occasionally get hitched with the bad ones. You’re gonna get stacked and you have to when that happens and you have to say “This isn’t personal its business, you know I’m gonna write this off and go on to the next thing and not let it bother me”.
TDc: Although, I think with a lot of creatives, I know my self that shaking it off and saying “this is a business decision and I’ve made this decision and now I’m breaking ties” There’s always that lingering effect.

Cameron Foote: Oh, I know, in fact, it is one of the hardest things to do because you know in your heart of hearts that everything you’re saying to this person is biased frankly. I mean they’re at fault; its not you. But yet, on the other hand, if you are going to be successful in the business, you don’t, you want them to pay their bills on time.

And you want them to not bad mouth you to whoever their friends are.

So you want to walk away from there, with as much dignity as possible. And you basically, the way to do that is to give them what they want and then walk away and not let it bother you anymore. It’s tough, I grant you but it’s really the only way to do it.

TDc: Right. Those kind of switch gears a little bit. We talked, you mentioned earlier a little bit about technology and how we have to know the latest you know, version of Photoshop and those etc, etc. How have business tools changed overtime you know, having the computer come in and basically you can’t run a business with out that, but as far as the business tools that come along with that, how have they changed? How we do billing? How we could do with tracking? How we manage things?
Cameron Foote: Well, you know obviously when we say change and everything is different today. You can’t run a firm without computers. You cannot do bookkeeping without, you know, a good software and so forth. So, certainly it’s a sea of change. Everything is change now. Having said that, let me say that, in terms of the implication there, I don’t see any fundamental difference in the end result.

In other words, things are done much faster, but you know, the phase of life is much faster, so we need all the stuff because we have to keep with the phase of life. But in the terms of , do they allow us necessarily to do bookkeeping faster? Do they allow us necessarily to design better? Do they allow us to do all the sudden stuff? I would say no. I frankly, maybe I’m a little bit stacked in the past on these but essentially that’s my view point. Things have changed certainly, but I don’t think necessarily it made anything any better. It’s just made things different, that’s all.
TDc: Okay, I know for myself, I see it’s made easier to track time just its right there because its right there. It’s all in one place .

Cameron Foote: Oh it is. But let me just play the devil’s advocate. That’s absolutely true, but on the other hand, the people, many people never tracked time before. Now you can track time down to the tenth of them, second or minute or what ever. But you know there’s also in the past and certainly me and I know other people who’ve worked for me kept time sheets and they just basically wrote it down on a piece of paper.

Now, I recognize that some employees didn’t do that. You had to keep after them, and so forth. But the degree of precision in all which is available today with computers isn’t always necessary.

TDc: Right

Cameron Foote: In fact, many people, I think people use it as a crutch. You know, it’s not absolutely necessary. You can do without that, in fact once again I would say that there’s a certain discipline on not relying those crutches. So, you know different viewpoints on these but maybe again it looks you are talking to someone who’s had experience in the old way. And I found out that that worked perfectly adequately so the new stuff makes things faster and easier and so forth, but don’t necessarily change the foundation of what I need to do.

TDc: The business principles are all still there.

Cameron Foote: That’s right, exactly. Its just different ways of doing it.

TDc: All right, well, Cameron and I really appreciate you joining us for this podcast today. And everybody should go to creativebusiness.com and take a look at the newsletters, as well as the books that they offer and the advice that comes along with the subscriber being with the newsletter. And I want to thank you for your time today, Cameron.

Cameron Foote: Well, thank you TDc. And just one thing I would add to that and also on the website there are number of free forms, business forms which are available there for downloading. It’s totally free, and there are also articles with that address on number of different routine business subjects that others might want you know download as they need or necessitate

TDc: Right, so the website is a great resource.

Cameron Foote: So well, let me thank you for interviewing me and you know I’m looking forward to more productive years in the business. and if I I could help anyone else be a little bit more productive, that’ll make it all much better for me.

TDc: And everybody else too. All right great. Thank you very much.

Today, we’re talking to Fian Arroyo, who is an illustrator out of Miami, but went to school at Southwest Texas State, graduated with an advertising degree there, and is now an illustrator working out of Miami. And he’s represented by Tom Maloney in the Midwest, and Dick Washington everywhere else.

How are you doing today, Fian?

Fian Arroyo: I’m doing great, doing great, Dan.

TDc: And how is the weather there in south Florida?

Fian Arroyo: Well, anytime there’s no hurricanes coming in the forecast, it’s great. But it’s beautiful here today.

TDc: And you work for yourself, of course. You’re an illustrator. And do you have a studio in the house, or a studio outside, away from the home?

Fian Arroyo: Well, it’s behind my garage. It’s a studio. It used to be like an in-laws quarters or a maid’s quarters that I converted into my studio. So I guess you could say it’s part of the house, but separate. I can’t hear anything that goes on in my house, so I’m kind of secluded in a way.

But I guess it is out of my home.

TDc: And how is that? Is that something that you need, this privacy where you can think about what you’re doing and work in that? Or is it just a matter of convenience, that it’s just right there?

Fian Arroyo: No, privacy is a big deal. I don’t want to be hearing what’s going on in my house, with my kids and my family and everything while I’m trying to get this stuff done. But at the same time, it’s just next door. I could just walk in the house and hang out with my family, or eat dinner.

I guess, to me, it’s the best of both worlds, because I’m still separate from the house, but I’m close enough to be part of it in a couple of minutes, or a minute or whatever.

TDc: Nice commute.

Fian Arroyo: And I don’t have to drive through rush hour any way.

TDc: Yeah, that may be nice.

Fian Arroyo: Oh, my gosh, because traffic here! Miami sucks. Oh, it’s terrible!

TDc: Yeah. Tell me, when did you first think, “Hey, I could make a living doing this!”

Fian Arroyo: Oh, when I was in college. When I was at SWT, I was freelancing. I was working for Commercial Image, where you were working at. Then I started doing freelancing for other agencies around, before I even graduated. I had a nice little client base set up. And I was thinking, “Hey, this would be the way it’s going to be for me.”

And when I graduated, one of my clients who was an art director, I believe, at Atkins Advertising, came here to Miami, and was looking for a big agency here. And he had called me on an assignment then they flew me down for a week down here.

And I looking around at the palm trees and blue skies and all the hot women on South Beach. And I said, “I’ve got to move down here.” And just a month later, I had moved down. And pretty much, that’s all I’ve ever done. I came down and so I showed my book around, and got work immediately.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: So that’s all I ever had to do. So I’m pretty blessed with that, that I haven’t had to supplement my income with anything else. So it’s been great.

TDc: Yeah, that sounds great. What is your process? How do you go from thumbnail to the finished piece?

Fian Arroyo: Well, it depends. I used to do more pencil sketches on paper and scan them. But now everything is done from start to finish on the computer, because with Painter you can make it look like a pencil sketch, draw it directly into the computer.

But the way I go about doing it is, I just start doing rough ideas, sketching on the computer and trying to come up with an idea, probably several ideas. And I present those to the art director, and we’ll go over which ones we like, if we have any favorites. And we’ll pick the one that we want to work on and go from there, sometimes.

But most of the time, for me, I’ve been pretty lucky where I’d do a couple of sketches — but obviously, there’d be one that I really like, the direction that I really want to go to. And it’s usually the one that they pick. And there’s usually not much of a change after that. And rarely, after it’s done, is there ever any changes.

TDc: Your work has a lot of humor in it. How do you come about that?

Fian Arroyo: I actually don’t know. I’m just a fun person. I like to see things in a more fun way.

And I like to come up with ideas that can make light of a certain situation. Sometimes, it could be a story, something that’s a little heavy or serious, but you can shine a little positive outlook or humor into it, and show it in a different light.

Sometimes it makes a difference. That’s just the direction I like to go. I like to make things fun.

Life is fun. I guess that just carried off in my work.

TDc: So when the art director comes to you, you don’t get a lot of input from them? I guess the editor, when you’re working for a magazine, they tell you what the story’s about, and then it’s up to you to illustrate that in the way you see fit?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. Well, sometimes, I’ll get a story and I won’t even have a story. Sometimes they’ll just have, “Oh, this is what the story’s going to be about. And we don’t even know if we have a headline for this yet. But you know, it’s going to be about such and such a thing. And just.. whatever you..”

What I like to do at that point is, I go, “Well, is there any key words that are going to be in the headline? Anything?” I like to get as much out of them as possible, not idea-wise, but what they want to convey in the story. And they’ll pretty much have an idea what they want, and I just put my twist to it. Or sometimes, they’ll tell me what they want and I’ll come up with a better idea, and they’re like, “Yeah, we like that better.”

Or sometimes, they’ll just give me complete free rein. Some clients, I don’t even have to do a pencil sketch. They trust me. And I’ll just go right to the finish, and it’s golden.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, I’m lucky sometimes. I have some pretty good clients that I’ve been workin gwith for a while. And they pretty much give me a lot of leeway, when it comes to the creation, the creativity process of the illustration.

TDc: You mentioned earlier that you use thumbnails, or you do everything on the computer. So you used to start in natural, or used to work in natural media. Now you do everything on the computer?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, it’s amazing, because I got on the computer in `94. And it was like people were starting to get into it.

I remember Newsweek called me, because they had an article they were going to do on how illustration was going digital. And I don’t know if it ever came out, because they never pursued it after that. It was just a phone call and a couple of conversations we had afterwards.

But when everything went digital like that, I saw it coming. And I just thought that because I knew that you didn’t have to send in original artwork to get scanned. You can send everything via email or FTP site. You can do corrections immediately, digitally. And it was faster, I can work faster digitally than I could traditionally. And you can control a lot more the colors and what the final outlook was going to be.

And I think it’s great, that that happened. But of course, there’s a down side. You don’t have original artwork. And even for sketches, I don’t even have sketches much anymore, because I would do my sketches digitally.

TDc: Do you use a tablet?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. It’s great. Wacom tablet is the best invention since sliced bread. It’s wonderful. You can do programs like Painter. Painter’s probably the best when it comes to using artists’ mediums, because you can simulate chalk or pencil sketches, you can do watercolor stuff. The pen and ink is great. The pen and inks are amazing in that program. And airbrush, whatever you want, oil paint.

But it’s not like you just click and it’d paint it for you. You have to be able to paint.

TDc: Talent has to be there first.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, you have to have talent to do it. And I picked it up real fast. Because once I started, it just came naturally. I just enjoy doing it.

TDc: You mentioned FTP and instant and things like that. How has that changed the speed of how things happen for you? Back in the old days, before the computer, there was a time lapse where you could think about them for a while, and you knew that worked. But now it’s so instant.

How does that changed how you work?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. Back then, you would do you sketch, and you fax it over. And you still had to FedEx it over, and it wasn’t overnight. Now, I think, everybody on the client end has gotten spoiled, where things could be pretty much done overnight, and have it the next morning, because you just email or FTP it over.

The Internet is really more reliable now with broadband. Back when it was just still dial-up, it was a little harder to send stuff. You couldn’t really send anything in email, because the files couldn’t get too big.

But now, even with email, I can send stuff like a 5 MB file to the client. And if it’s anything bigger than that, or there’s multiple images, I just pop it on my FTP site, and they can get it pretty much instantly when it’s done. Which is amazing, because there’s an extra day. Although it’s an extra day that I don’t have to calculate into sending it, but actually, it gets swallowed up, because everything’s done faster now.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: It’s kind of .. You’d think that it would facilitate, the technology would facilitate and make it easier, but sometimes, it just makes it a little crazier, everyone wants it even faster.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: But you know, the plus side is, any changes you can deal with a lot easier than going back in and retaining something, and oh my gosh. It’s just like going into Photoshop, or Painter and just redoing what you did with what they want changed, and voila, they’re done.

There it is.

TDc: And who negotiates the usage rights, is that you, or your rep, or a combination?

Fian Arroyo: We both do. We both do, because my reps will call me and we’ll discuss it. And sometimes we have a different idea of what we want.. He’d have a certain number and I’d have a certain number, and then we’ll talk about the amount and take it from there. And all things considered, what justifies the price that we want to get for the particular project.

But it all comes down to usage, and what it’s going to be used for. And that’s some. And when it comes to editorial and magazine stuff, I don’t think it matters either, because it’s the same, whether you want personal North American rights for an image for a magazine.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: Because pretty much, magazines will hire you for your mind as well as your hand, because they want your vision. They just don’t want a wrist, they want a wrist with a vision.

They’re hiring you for how you see things, and how you interpret that certain story that they want you to illustrate to them.

TDc: What’s your favorite project been so far?

Fian Arroyo: Oh, quite a few. I did something a couple of years ago, a few years ago, a bug book series for a publisher.

And it was a really fun project that entailed a kind of fantasy, come up with bug-type characters that.. Not really bugs, but characters of our own. And it was a publisher called PCI. And the writer was Stephen Cosgrove, who was well known in the late seventies for the Serendipity series. He really did great with those. And we came out with them.

But I don’t know what happened with the publisher. The publisher just dropped the ball pretty much on that. But it was a great series, there were 18 books in there. Hopefully, we get another publisher to pick it up. But it was crazy, being there. I had to do 13 illustrations in three weeks, and it was fully involved.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: And it was like, oh my gosh. I had to do pretty much one illustration a day.

TDc: Did you have to develop a personality for each of these?

Fian Arroyo: Well, no, the writer had all that. And he would tell me the personality, then I would create the character. Then we’d go over them and all that. Pretty much everything, there was a map to the world, and it was like a whole world we developed. And that was so fun. It was crazy, but it was fun.

And I’m doing a project right now for a business venture that is kind of similar, kind of fantasy orientated. And I think this is more like the trading card industry, but it’s totally different. And I can’t really talk much about it. But I can say that is going to be amazing. That’s another really fun project.

But through the years, there’ve been quite a few that I loved and had been fun doing. Anytime it’s creating some kind of creature or animal, or something really fun, it’s a joy for me to work on.

Especially animals, animals are fun to draw, especially when you come up with something that’s really exaggerated or fun, or any ideas that are really cool.

Those are a couple of the things.

You can hear your voice, you get excited when you talk about these projects and your things.

What keeps you motivated? How do you get that passion everyday? Keep that passion, I should say.

Fian Arroyo: I love drawing. And sometimes, I feel blessed that this is how I make a living. I just draw pictures. And it’s always fun, because I’m a kid at heart. And I always think that I’m just drawing pictures until I figure out what I want to do when I grow up. [Laughs]

But at this point, I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. It’s fun. Sometimes, you’re doing something, and you stop in the middle of creating an illustration, and you’re seeing it come to life, and it just gives you goosebumps.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: It’s so cool. And it’s hard to describe it. You can almost say – I don’t want to sound hokey, or something – but sometimes, if it’s something really cool that I’m working on, and I’m really into it, it’s almost spiritual. I can almost feel God’s joy when I’m drawing something, and it’s something that’s really coming out.

It’s not what happens every time. It’s like there’s some project, there’re some things I do that sometimes, you get that feeling. You know?

TDc: Yeah.

Fian Arroyo: And that feeling, sometimes, it keeps you going. “Hey, this could be a project where I can create something that’s going to really be cool.” I love it. I don’t think there could be anything else except be a rock star. [Laughs]

TDc: And you’re working on that, right?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. I’m still not very good on the guitar, but I can dream.

TDc: Yeah. Hey, you have to have the dream.

Fian Arroyo: Anything else?

TDc: No, I think that’s it. I think this has been great. I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to do this. And I want everybody to take a look at Fian’s work at fian.com. And again, he’s repped by Dick Washington down at San Antonio, as well as Tom Maloney in the Midwest. Again, thanks a lot, Fian.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, no problem, Dan. Anytime.

Have you ever heard this: “We don’t pay until we see the final design” or “Can you do this project cheap, and we will make up for it with a bigger project later.” Would you ever see a doctor and tell him/her that you will pay him/her only if the results are good? No, as design professionals we bring value to a project by creating a unique solution to the problem, and therefore, we should be compensated fairly.

More and more the design profession is being damaged by organizations that do not understand the value we bring. Additionally, with the proliferation of “design contests” we are being pulled into giving away work under guise of “great exposure.”

Today we will be discussing the topic of speculative work in the graphic design profession with Catherine (cat) Morley, founding member and editor of NO!SPEC (www.no-spec.com). NO!SPEC was created to not only inform and educate clients but to also educate designers. All too often what might look like a good opportunity to get exposure is just another way for an organization to get free work.

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