← Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
Dare to use your voice where it counts - Jessie McGuire
00:55:30
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- [00:10]
A
Yeah. Like, it's almost like, how do we re retool or rethink or redefine what success is? Right? Like, be famous because you got more people to vote. You got more people to participate in the world around them. Be famous because you better change the local school district. You rebranded the Department of Education. Like, there are things that I feel like we all have in common that we want to be a part of. Like, we want our families to feel secure. We want people to feel safe. We want to feel like we are giving back. Like I always say, history is going to look back at us whether we. Whether we like it or not. And so that's what I'm really interested in.
- [01:00]
B
Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, the show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinich. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create? Today, I'm speaking with Jesse Maguire, a designer, educator, and managing partner at Full Lord Mata, who transformed from an adopted Salvadorian child searching for belonging in upstate New York to becoming a powerful voice in the 21st century creative industry. In this conversation, Jessie discusses how it took her until her 40s confidently call herself a designer because she realized design is about creating conditions for creativity. She talked about how creatives who haven't seen themselves in the mainstream narrative must get off the benches to stop building its unicorn startup and aim to create businesses that care for communities through creative economies. Beyond extraction. This is episode 100 of this podcast, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate than presenting you with my conversation with Jesse Maguire. Hey, Jesse, it's great to see you. How are you doing?
- [02:48]
A
Very good. It's so nice to be with you today.
- [02:51]
B
So, for those who may have not heard of Jesse McGuire and your studio thought matter, how would you introduce yourself? What do you do? Who are you?
- [02:58]
A
I would introduce myself as a designer. You know, it's taken me. What am I, mid-40s? It's taken me this long to be like, you know what? I'm gonna start with designer. So I am a designer. I'm an educator, and I'm A managing partner. I run a design studio called Thought Matter. We are over 10 years old and I've almost been with our founder for just as long, which is great. And for the last 10 years we have experimented with what is the role of design? What is the role of a design studio? What is civic imagination? How do you design participation? How do you get people excited about the world they're living in? And for me personally, and I think I started by saying I'm confident now to introduce myself as a designer because it's taken me that long to realize that it's not necessarily just moving pixels on a computer, but it really is designing conditions for creativity. And that's what I get excited about. I wake up every day through our conversation, you'll probably see, I talk fast, I get excited, I get animated. And it is really, for me all about, what does it mean to be a creative living in, what are we in the third decade of the 21st century?
- [04:08]
B
A designer is something that we grow into because we are good at giving ourselves labels, especially at the beginning of our careers, going, hey, I'm a designer. I feel empowered. But is there one day when you grow into the title and realize, yeah, I feel it now.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah, actually I loved when you just said it because you almost said whisper, I'm a designer. Like, you know when your like voice gets a little low and then you get like, wait, why am I, why am I not screaming it from the rooftops? I think sometimes it's almost like there's a sense of insecurity of like, am I actually a designer? Do people think I'm a designer? Am I validated in some way that someone has told me that I can take on that role? But I think what I've realized, and I've was told this my whole career, I'm still told this, that I need patience, that sometimes you need to just take time. And I always hated that, especially when I was a young merging designer at the turn of the century. My kids love when I say that. So when I was emerging designer at the turn of the century, I wanted that validation immediately. And I feel like now, a few decades later, I realize you have to find it for yourself. You have to realize that the work that you're doing is validated with your own values and your own self intrinsic motivation. And when you see something and you're really pleased with how it came out, like, tell yourself that, right? Be like, yeah, I really, I nailed that. Or I really worked well with a group of people to come up with something that's like absolutely tremendous. And there's a little bit of confidence in that and I don't know, I think there is a little bit of, you need some time to, I don't know, let it marinate, let it like come, to come to a, a place where. Yeah. You feel confident in that.
- [05:41]
B
Would you say there's different stages in your career, in your life, in your creative life that you find so far that you know, when you said earlier, like, I want it to be validated, we send the signals out there and go like, hey, this is my work, what do you think? And then, and hope for the best that people will say, yeah, of course I like it, but let's say the mid stage of our careers, does it really matter what people think? Because it's about how you feel about the work, right?
- [06:05]
A
Yeah, I mean that's what I have now learned. But if you had told me that in my, in my, yeah. In my 20s, I would have been like, I don't know what you're talking like, no, I need someone to help me understand that this is what I'm meant to do and that I'm good at it and that I can get a paycheck from it and that like my family will know what I'm doing. And I don't have to describe it 14 different times about what it is. But no. Yeah. I do believe that there has to be a self fulfilling prophecy for designers. To be honest, if I could think back to my younger, younger self or even my like high school self, I would just continue to find the people who, you can absorb that energy so that over time you can generate it for yourself.
- [06:46]
B
So what did get you excited about creative work and where did it all come from?
- [06:49]
A
I always like to start with the truth about myself. I am an only child and I hate to be alone. People know this about me. I love to be around people. I love, I love noise at all times. I actually think silence gives me anxiety. I was just talking to my mother in law about it because she's like, why is there always music and TV shows on? I have two kids and they're always just talking loud and I was like, I think the silence makes me anxious. Noise, whether it's good or bad, shows me something's happening. So I am an only child. I was also adopted. So I think that there has always been a sense of the concept of belonging. I'm tremendously lucky. I always tell people I never play the lotto, I never gamble because I myself feel I've. I'VE won the lotto at the age of 20 months, so you can't do it twice. So I was born in El Salvador, so I'm Salvadorian. And my mother is a single mother. She is Italian, Ukrainian. She raised me upstate New York. Came over when I was almost two years old. And it's been a wild ride ever since, trying to figure out how do I. How do I make sense of who I am, why I'm here and what I'm meant to, what I'm meant to do? And it's been, yeah, I guess, a wild ride. So growing up in upstate New York, I got sort of put into the arts. I feel like I was, again, a single. My mom was single. She's never been married. So when I was younger, I was in Catholic school, and they didn't know what to do with me because it was like, are your parents divorced? Should you be in the Banana Splits club because you should be supported? Should you be in the, like, foster care kids club? Like, I was like, I don't need to be in no clubs. Just, like, let me be who I am. But I was always trying to. Everyone always tried to place me in a box, and I never could be placed in a box. But I was pushed into the arts very young because I. I think it was something that I was drawn to. I had a neighbor named Florence who was a creative soul. She watched me every day after school, and so she would give me paper and pens, and we would just be drawing. So kind of knew that that was going to be a place where I would spend a lot of time. And when I went into high school, you know, there was. So that was in the late 90s. There was a lot of conversation about, can you really make a career in the arts? And I remember my mother, who's a schoolteacher for 40 years, she was like, jesse, don't worry about that. Like, if you want to be an artist and you want to go to art school, like, I'm going to support that dream. And for me, I was like, if my mom is telling me I can do this, I can do this. So I was very, very lucky to go to Pratt Institute for. Actually, I was a painter. I came in as a painting major.
- [09:20]
B
I don't know.
- [09:20]
A
I thought I was gonna do with painting, but then I realized that communications design. I can talk about design. I've said this before to so many people. But I actually think why I didn't pursue painting is because my advisor at the time said I would be sitting alone in a studio And I was, like, sitting alone in a studio. That sounds terrible. What is. Where are the majors with people? And so communications design was the. Was the. Was the area that I went into. So I was there for four years. I was at Pratt. It was the, you know, changed my life. I've written about this, but it really is true that I joined a national sorority interest group, again, looking for just a place to belong, getting people together. So there were 10 of us. And I realized that I was not white. So I grew up in predominantly white spaces in upstate New York, have amazing friends, but there was never a conversation about culture or a conversation or. I should say, there's never a conversation about my culture. Where are you from, Jesse? What does that look like? Who are you? Who are you? But when I went to Pratt, there was a lot of conversations about identity and who are you? What do you. What do you see for yourself? What is the. So, and I've told this story, but it's still one of my favorite stories, is I was invited to a potluck. You know, you bring your food and ever. And so now my bestest friend, Darcy Till, came up to me and said, we need you to bring rice and beans. So, you know, I'm like, okay. Like, why? That seems like an odd combination for me. I just never, never had rice or beans together. And that just seems weird. So I went to the grocery store on Myrtle Avenue, and I bought Uncle Ben's white rice, and I bought Campbell's pork and beans, because those are the two things my mom would serve me when she would either said rice with chicken or, you know, beans with. Actually was pork and beans was usually how we had it. Any who brought it to the potluck for this national sorority interest group. And I got laughed out. I got laughed out. And I was like, what are you all talking about? And I found out that rice and beans is a very Latin American, South American dish where, like, that is not how you make it. So we now all laugh about it because they thought they saw me. Short brown girl, husky voice. They assumed I was maybe Puerto Rican, Dominican, Salvador, you know, whatever I was. And so they just assumed that's what I'd be excited to make. And so we. We all had a really. I would say just a laugh as well as just a real cultural moment for us all to realize that our identities are just shaped by the way that we move through the world as well as how we see ourselves in the world. So that's my get to Pratt. I'm not white. I want to be a communications designer. And yeah, I've spent the last 20, 25 years trying to make that all true. How do I. How do I design a world so that I can belong and that people can really find themselves and how they see themselves?
- [12:03]
B
We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Company. The first creative specialty coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lux Coffee Co offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. You can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel. @luxcoffee.co.uk you can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order. You've really taken me on a journey here because I just made so many notes about, like, how they tried to put you in a box and how you were struggling with the concept of belonging. And then I'm realizing, okay, is the creativity giving you the sense of belonging? Like, how is this all sort of added up together? Because ultimately there's a difference between fitting in and belonging. And fitting is done, but harder than belonging. It's just. It's how we feel. Like, are we actually accepted? Are we accepting ourselves in those spaces?
- [13:17]
A
Absolutely. I mean, I think something I've really sat with over the years is, I think, and I think you were asking the question about where does design fit into this? I've always seen design as our opportunity to ask really great questions. You know, it's like, something needs problem solving. Design can really help do that. And so I'd always, like, over the years, I'd be like, let's ask great questions. Let's be uncomfortable. Let's be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Like, ask the question. But I think as I'm now where I am sit now as a managing partner running a studio, seeing a lot of different facets of design, I actually have realized that we have to ask great questions, but we have to sit and actually wait to hear the answers. So I do. I loved when you said about the world being so colorful and it's so much, almost easier not to just sort of, you know, if you are, if you're coming from a place of privilege or you're coming from a place where you've always been a dominant narrative, it is actually much easier to just be like, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing. If you're somebody who I think comes at the margins or isn't necessarily, you know, you're trying to figure out how to fit in. I actually think your belonging has to come from a sense of knowing who you are and again, asking those questions, being patient to give people answers and just waiting for them to hear who you really are so that together you can have a really rich, amazing conversation. So I say that all the time to designers in my studio I teach at Pratt. My young people in the classroom is really work on asking questions, but really work harder on waiting to hear the answer to then decide how you want to approach the challenge or how you want to approach your practice. And that, to me is, I think, been really important for me. Like the potluck, right? They said bring rice and beads, but no one ever asked me. No one ever asked me anything about it. And maybe together we would have learned something and I would have learned how to make, you know, a proper, maybe Dominican rice and beans or, you know, whatever it may be. But instead it was a lot of really quick assumptions being made. And again, it's a great, great story. And now, you know, now I think in many ways people would be really offended. Where we weren't offended, it was more just like we all learned together. Assumptions, you know, sometimes just don't help people feel like they are part of the group. And so I'm happy to say we did form a national sorority and we always put at the front of it, make sure you understand who somebody is not who you think they are.
- [15:40]
B
So with you being as someone who's scared of silence, you said, obviously you always have, you know, noise in your life. Everything what you described so far, I don't think there was even a chance for silence. There was. It's, it's. It's a non stop story. I absolutely adore it. So are you scared of silence? Did you ever find. Do you ever look out for the moments of peace and quiet or is it just nonstop go?
- [16:05]
A
You know, over the years, people have told me, chess, you should just like, slow down. You should, you know, maybe wait for some silence. I don't. I just. It's just not in me. I mean, I know that there are moments where, like, I need to give people space. I've definitely learned that. I actually always talk about teams, and I am definitely an extrovert's extrovert. I get my energy from other people and all these things, and so I know that I have team members who are not that. So I have to give them space. But for me personally, I just, that's where I, I get really excited by big ideas. I get excited by people who have energy. I get excited by the possibilities that, that are out there. And so, yeah, no, I still am afraid of silence. So maybe come back to me when I'm in my 50s. Maybe I'll have a. I'll have a new thought.
- [16:48]
B
I don't have to come back to you in your 50s because I think you will just keep going as you are. And to be honest, it could be to a detriment that finding silence can be. Healing the noise is helpful because as we, as we discover in here, like, it's given us extra knowledge, it's given us extra ways of understanding one another. Because the times that you describe it were not as noisy, but potentially not as full of compassion and empathy, like understanding, like who. Who someone might be, like why things that are not just black and white, you know, by things that are not just from what you would expect them to be. So I think, yeah, I don't have to come back in, in 10 years time and ask you if you find your silence, because I think you should be doing exactly what you're doing. So coming to questions, you work with students at Pratt. You teach students at Pratt. How much of a artistry do is it to instill the curiosity in getting them to ask questions? Have you got a good cohort? Are they curious? Or do you need to show them what you've learned in, you know, being able to ask good questions?
- [17:49]
A
Yeah. So I love this because I. So as I mentioned, I went to Pratt, I did my master's at sva, so I also am big fan of the School of Visual Arts. But Pratt really, I feel like, is where my heart's at, if I were to be honest. Cause I feel like it was a pivotal moment in my entire life being a young person in Brooklyn. And so when I had the opportunity, whenever actually over the years I've had an opportunity to go back to Pratt, I'm always like, what do you guys want me to do? Like, I've gone back for the sorority. The sorority, the national sorority we brought into the campus. Ended up being on campus for 20 years, which was actually pretty incredible. Like, even we always think like, what a. What a. What a legacy. But so I've been back for that. And then there's a couple times where they asked me to come for a lecture, which was great. And then I think it was last year, year before I came and did a presentation about our work at Thought Matter. It was called hear you me now is a little all about nonsense. That they're through the age of AI, everything is linear and makes a lot of sense and thought matter, which I always say over the last 10 years we've actually made not a lot of sense. Like there's times where we've done work and everyone's like, why are you doing that work? So I did this whole presentation about nonsense and I was like, I was on the edge of like, okay, I'm going into an educational space to tell these students to just like, try not to make any sense. And I knew some professors would be there and they'd probably be like, this is not what we're trying to teach our students. But it was a great talk and I got some really great questions from the students. And afterwards I got approached by the assistant dean, who was it, do you want to teach? And I was like, me? I was like, after I just gave you that whole, like, you know, and so, and I, and this is what I think is so funny. I was like, maybe they're going to, maybe it's going to be this like, I don't know, like foundation. I don't know what class I thought it would be, but it turns out one of my good friends is, started the entrepreneurship minor at Pratt and Peter Raganetti. And so Peter had said, yes, Jesse would be such a great professor in our entrepreneurial mindset course. And I was like, I'm digging this, I'm digging this. And I had sat in a couple of his classes for their pitch panel. It's sort of a little like Shark Tank meets art school. It's a semester long course where students really think through a creative entrepreneurial venture and they learn how to develop the idea, they learn how to think about funding the idea. And then at the end of the course, they pitch it, they pitch it to a panel. And so I had sat on the, the panels and I realized that even when you watch Shark Tank, but I realized that a lot of, even myself, you think of funders as usually being men, usually being white, usually tall. But I digress. But you don't typically think of a, like I said, a short, short brown woman who would have a conversation about money. And so I'd always have fun. So I was like, wait, that could be a really fun class to teach. Like it would really be a class. I, you know, I could take my 10 years of working at the matter, my 10 years of interviewing students, interviewing clients, like having it, I have a, you know, I have a, I've been very fortunate to get a pretty good understanding of how Creative businesses get funded, raise capital. You know, how a creative studio drives revenue. So I was like, this could be a lot of fun. So my first day. So. So I got the job, so it's great. Yay. But my first day, I get into the classroom, and it's a very awkward classroom. Like, it had all these. It was more like a. It was like a studio classroom. Like a. Like a fashion kind of studio classroom. So I. I'm used to being in, like, a boardroom or an office or these students are like, everywhere. And I was like, oh, no. I was like, they're like fashion designers, interior designers, architects, com d. Like, they were not. They didn't have business ideas. They were just, like. They signed up for the course because they wanted to get the minor. And it's a foundational course, so. So they had to. They had to be there. But I re. I realized on day one that I was going to really need to put some work into how to get them to even sit near me. Like, okay, we're all going to need to come close and have a conversation. And so over the course of that first semester, I really learned each day I stood in front of them, like, I was very nervous, but I feel like they also didn't have an expectation. So it was almost like we learned together how best to really nurture a creative idea. And then it's usually halfway through the semester when you have to start talking about money, and a lot of the students tend to start to get absent. And I was saying this to you earlier, that when we're uncomfortable, something we tend to whisper. So whenever anyone would be like, I think I need 10,000, and you'd be like, what? Can you say that a little louder? Like. And so I now have learned. I start day one class, and I'm like, this is an entrepreneurial class, but really it's a public speaking class that's going to get you really comfortable talking about money. And so I think that that now has kind of allowed me. And I now I know to ask for a better classroom as well. And so I now sort of. I treat that class like it is going to be the first foundational class. These students, these creative students, these artists, these, you know, people who are putting their hearts on their sleeve and their talents in the world, and they're paying a lot of money to be there, and they don't even really recognize that when they graduate, like, they have to get comfortable figuring out how do they fund their creative idea, how do they get the job and ask for the Salary that, you know, really does deliver the value that they're bringing. And so I love it. So there's no, there's no. We're not. Again, we're not pushing pixels. We are having conversations about creatively funding ideas.
- [23:04]
B
Wow. I wrote down the word fearlessness. Then you were talking. I was like, that's what, who you are, that's how I perceive what you're telling me so far. But also like what you instill into your students. Because I really want to know what, where the. Yes. The question of do you want to teach here? Where did yes come from? And what was the motivation?
- [23:27]
A
Yeah, no, that's good. I like that you keep asking the like, why or the like, where did it come from? You know, to be honest with you, when I did the talk and again it was hear you me now is all about creative nonsense. And I really do believe that that is how we all, as designers or creatives are going to get through this new. You know, every era has like a villain. This new era of, I mean, I pick the villain right now, but it's going to be what the imagination that is in our minds. Like that to me. And that does sometimes doesn't make any sense. Creative people shouldn't make sense. What it should, I feel like where we should come back down to is where does our creative ideas and the, the dots that we're connecting, where does that bring value and what places does that bring value to? So that was really my talk and what I actually absolutely loved after the talk and going back to validation. You want validation? Like, I really wanted a professor to be like, wow, like, you look how far you've come. None of the professors necessarily did that. But I had a line of students waiting to ask me questions. And I've been there. You see somebody on stage and you're like, let me ask em a question. And you don't even care what question it is. You just wanna like get up there. And that's just who I am as well. But what I loved was that there was a line of women or female presenting individuals that were all like different shades of brown and beige. And I was like looking like, man, this is what I want. Like, I want to be able to have the conversations with maybe the students who wouldn't necessarily go and ask the question or wouldn't necessarily go and stand. And I had one young woman say, I actually don't have a question about any of the content in your presentation. But I just loved that, like you're here talking about this and like I see myself in you, and I wanted to be like, you got better skin than me. But I love that, you know? And so. But that was actually a lot of the. They weren't necessarily questions or actually, I had another woman ask me, like, can you give me good interviewing tips? Like, you seem like you would know how to interview. And I was like, I love interviewing. So. So it was. I think when then I was presented with the opportunity from Peter and the assistant dean, I realized, even if it makes me uncomfortable, like you were saying, like, even I knew this, I knew it was going to be uncomfortable. I knew I was going to have to, like, go into a classroom of young people who were going to, like, stare at me and know my kids are. I have a middle schooler who, you know, he'll show me his TikTok where they're making fun of the teacher. I'm like, I'm gonna be on social media. Like, this is crazy. But regardless, I was like, you know what? I owe it to my younger self to go in front of a classroom and not necessarily look like the teacher who's supposed to teach entrepreneurial mindset or the person who's supposed to be talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. I think I owe that to my younger self to have those conversations. So that's where the yes came from. The yes came from the opportunity to deliver something that I don't see out there.
- [26:10]
B
It's really interesting what you just said. You said, I'm not someone who's supposed to teach or I'm not supposed to. There is the template. We just go back to the tall white men populating the faces. And you said, I don't look like someone who's supposed to teach. But times are changing. This is it. It's a changing narrative. Like, even just having. No, you. Having a queue of people asking you questions is like, they feel validated. They feel somebody that the narrative and the color makeup is changing. And I think that that to them is the way going. Look, there are people like me doing the thing I want to do. And therefore, you're giving them the hope and chance to be seen and to actually have a feeling that they can progress. You know, even as late as you can see it now. Like, I mean, this should have been happening 50 years ago.
- [26:57]
A
You. You touch on something. Because I think this is really true, that things are changing. We want things to change, but they only change if those that haven't seen themselves change that narrative. Like, if I had said, you know what? I don't Think this is really, for me. It feels too. You know, I don't want to end up on social media as, like, the bad professor. I think I should sit this one out. I'm not saying that they wouldn't have found somebody else who has a similar maybe background to me, but they wouldn't have found somebody who's had the same opportunities as me. Right. If I had sat it out, if I had said exactly what you said earlier, if I was. If fear had taken over my opportunity to say yes, or if I said, oh, this just seems like it's too uncomfortable for me, then the narrative doesn't change. So I actually think that more. Yeah, more creatives who have not seen themselves in the mainstream narrative have to get off the benches. We have to get off the. Not off the bench. But I guess we. We. We have to be ready to play the game and push back on exactly what you're saying, which is how to be less fearful, more confident, but find it intrinsically in ourselves.
- [28:06]
B
How did you get to. To where you are now when you have worked out what your voice is and what you want to achieve with it?
- [28:13]
A
I feel like it's in. In many ways met. It feels like my life's work, even though I feel like I'm still figuring out what that is. But if I could take one step back to my master's, because I think it's important how I got to thought matter. So, again, I continue to be tremendously lucky. It's like the harder I work, the luckier I get. I had a chance in 2009 to actually 2010. I applied. In 2009, I applied to Debbie Millman's master's in branding Broker. It was the first. It was the first year. It was the first masters of its kind. I knew that I wanted to go back to school. I didn't know exactly what it was gonna be. But as soon as I heard Debbie Millman was coming up with this program, I was a fan girl. She knows this. I know that I was probably. I like to think I was the biggest fan girl of Design Matters. When she first started, when it was on, when she was recording in the Empire State Building and she had her monologues like, it's still some of my most favorite podcast experiences. I know she has since moved on to, you know, huge national, international guests and everything. Anyway, so I was obsessed. Design Matters. Debbie Millman was doing a branding program. I was like, I absolutely have to be in this program. I don't care what happens. It's gonna Happen. I luckily got in. So I think I had actually read all of the professor's books and like, I feel like I took the course before I even got there. Cause I was so obsessed. But I got in and I was the first, I was in the first class, I was in the first cohort, which is one of the most tremendous. I actually love being in a first of anything because you don't know what you don't know and you just figure it out together. So I was with 22 student, 23 students. We, we had no, we really didn't know what we were doing. Neither did the founding professors, which shout out to all of them, tremendous. They're still there at the program 16 years later. So I was there for nine months on the 11th floor SVA. That was the only thing that I thought was important. And it was all about the practice of branding. And now we all know, I mean it's again, 16 years later, branding is so ubiquitous. Everyone, a lot of people enter, I think the design world through the door of branding. But this really was like, what is the practice of branding? And it definitely came out of a, I would say a consumer packaged good, a commercialization of design. What is branding? And you know, Debbie and many of the professors had built their careers on, yeah, mass commercialization of great design. Like she, she talks about making the grocery store beautiful. And so I believed that and I was like, that's what I want to do. And so really convinced myself that that's what was my life's work at the time. And right out of grad school, I was very lucky. Had a wonderful mentor, Christine, who I got to work with at Kimberly Clark, at Kimberly Clark, moved to Wisconsin and got to work on. This is why I said toilet paper in a 99.9% saturated category of toilet paper, which is, you know, people talk about, oh, you want market share, you want more consumers, but you don't need to make the market bigger. Most people in the US use toilet paper. So anyway, so I got to understand branding in its most fundamental way. I dreamt of working on the Kleenex brand. Like again, most ubiquitous brand there is. Kleenex being a billion dollar brand, got the chance to work on Kleenex. And so it was, it was really wonderful. I was in Wisconsin for three years, had my first baby and then was like, I need to come back to New York because I just wanted to be around family and I really wanted to raise my children in New York City. So came back to New York, worked at a London based packaging Design studio had an amazing opportunity to work with Jonathan Sands at Elmwood. And it was, I was in the New York office and I learned a lot about, he would say, leads. It was a Leeds based studio, but they had a London studio. But I had a chance to get to know packaging from an international perspective. And Jonathan and the team in New York really helped me understand how to build a culture of design, how to bring people together and, and really believe that you're part of something bigger than yourself as part of an agency. So really lucky, lucky for that. But I did get a. I started to get a little. What's the right word? Restless because I felt like maybe, maybe mass commercialization of design, you know, another violator on another, you know, consumer packaged good at a grocery store. Maybe there was like other ways to think about what I knew, which was how to influence people's buying decisions. So I started to put my feelers out and say, is there another way in which I could utilize my skills? So I had a chance to work or I got hired at Thought Matter for six months. It was a six month contract to help me get them off the ground. They were just starting out. And when I started, I realized the founder named Tom. Tom had a very unique perspective on building an agency. He wanted to build an agency all based out of curiosity. And I was like, well, okay, let's be more curious. What are some things we could be doing? And so we started to stretch where we could build brands. So we first started in public arts. Then we worked in, we started looking at business improvement districts and working on like the flags and the trash cans and the flags in, you know, Union Square, Times Square, Long Island City, and really thinking about design in our own city. So we, we did that for a little bit and then we worked with cultural institutions. We worked on what I call bottom up design. It was working with communities and it was really getting into how you could bring the outside into a institution like the Met or the Rubin Museum of Art. And so we started to build the studio that way. And I realized that that's what I was meant to do. I was meant to really stretch. What are the possibilities of design and branding in what we now and again, this is, in. I didn't know this was not the words I used then, but was civic imagination. How do you get people to really feel like they can participate in the world around them and design can really help influence that. And so one of our first internal projects that we did was to redesign the United States Constitution, which is still one of My favorite, most favorite projects. But the 2016 election happened. We were ready to celebrate our first female president. That did not happen here in the US and so we were all a little shell shocked that we had our first Trump presidency. And so as designers, we were like, do we. Do we put our heads in the sand? Kind of what you were saying earlier, like, do we let the fear overtake our ability to actually do something? And so I remember sitting around the conference room being like, what can we do to participate? And we did some posters for the Women's March, and then we said, what if we actually started to design some of the elements that are always in the news? And something that was happening at the time was a question about whether or not President Trump actually read the Constitution? And we were like, you know, and then it was like, can you read? And what all this silly thing. But we were like, have we read the Constitution? So we ordered 15 copies of the Constitution around, you know, different places, and they were all terribly designed. Like, they were small print or terrible fonts, no picture. Like, it was really terrible. And we were like, okay, so this is why no one's looking at this. And so we recognize we are not going to have a. A partisan debate about politics, about the amendments in the Constitution. But what we could do is actually not touch the content, but just choose a font that's more accessible, choose paper that's more interesting, print it in a way that makes it feel like an artifact. I mean, how many of us designers are obsessed? If you walk by a. A zine making, you know, fair or like, just anything physical, like, you want to touch it and you want to have it. I have so many different random things on my bookshelf that I just bought because they look good, you know, so we were like, let's do that. So we spend the summer, we did a Kickstarter. We raised thousands of dollars to be able to print the U.S. constitution designed in our way. We used open source fonts, we used images from the Library of Congress, and we printed these at risograph, because who doesn't love a good Rizzograph? And we printed them, and it kind of took off, and we ended up. I think at this point, we've donated about 5,000 copies to schools here in New York. So that's my best story of the work that we do. And we've been spending again this last 10 years continuing to figure out how to prove that imagination is meant to be expansive and that we should all be thinking about that as designers. How do we redefine the thought that the value of designs, not necessarily always commercial success, but the value of design can truly be our ability to participate in the world around us in a way that makes us feel like it's meant for us.
- [36:42]
B
I like when you said civic imagination. I would like to believe that goes to how you redesign a constitution. It's just like, how do you make it accessible to people of now, and how do you make it in line with what we used to see? Because, let's be honest, most of the brand work that gets done and most of the retooling and rebranding and refreshes are done because the world is moving. The world is not standing still. Therefore, the elements are changing. The landscape is changing. Therefore, we are just fine tuning all of the elements just to make sure that people don't get bored. People get excited. People actually. Not the things that didn't work before or the things that stop working, actually now working a bit better. So when I see what you did with the constitution, I was like, oh, that makes a lot more sense. Because it looks appealing, like. No, it does, in my opinion. It definitely embodies the civic imagination because you can actually make something of importance, make it accessible, it brings it to people. And actually, it goes back to the beginning of our conversation. It encourages people to know more about what's actually happening in their lives and to have more accountability and more power of their daily decisions. I would say that.
- [37:50]
A
And I definitely, you know, early in my career, even before, I'm gonna say, the pandemic, there was so much conversation about designers getting a seat at the table. Right. I grew up in the era of, like, your first chief design officer, and, like, design should just have a seat at the table. And, like, just imagine if design could prove its roi. Like, all these big conversations, and we're here, and it is so apparent how powerful design is. We not only have a seat at the table, but over the last few decades, designers and designers I know or I've read about or I've, you know, slightly worship, they've designed the world that we live in. They've designed the algorithms. They've designed the interfaces that we don't even notice. They've designed the way that we are, you know, socializing or not socializing with people they've designed. You know, everyone's on a phone. I got my phone. That has all been designed. And so I think we're all now realizing is, wait a second. Is this actually how we want to interact with each other? Is this how we want to participate in our lives every day. And so I'm actually really excited for, like, the next. I'm hoping it's a renaissance of designers who realize that we have the seat at the table. But now, what do we want to do with that? What do we want to do with that power? How do we actually want to be thinking about the local democratic principles in our. Whatever countries we're in or wherever we're, like, sitting? How do we look at our local. Local elections, our local. You know, we both have kids. Our. The schools that our kids go to. Like, as designers, like, we should all be really excited to figure out how to make all of that better for our children. We should be thinking about how do we actually create the infrastructure that comes from imagination? And so that's what I'm like, how do we do more of that? How do we help people? Like, yeah, I don't know, redefine design to design the world we want to live in? I don't know. It just. That, to me, is what I'm really eager for. And I keep trying to talk to our designers in the studio, the young people at Pratt. It's like, you know, honestly, we don't need more businesses that have to scale. We just need businesses that are really caring for each other, caring for the community. And if you're a creative soul or a creative individual and you want to create a practice, like, figure out how you can do that work, get paid, support your family, like, you don't need to be next Amazon. I'm sorry. Like, I just feel like we are. We've been sold this, I don't know, a little bit faulty bill of goods, that it should be the Amazons, the Googles, the.
- [40:27]
B
The next unicorn.
- [40:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. Like, no, I didn't want a unicorn.
- [40:32]
B
I think when you. When you speak to people who are rich or trying to make themselves rich, it's always the void they're trying to fill in a fulfillment of something that they're missing inside. Of course, some people happen to work on successful products. They create successful companies, and some people deserve to have all of the accolades and all of the money, and they are very good with that. But then you meet people who want to build that next Amazon or the next Facebook, or if they're thinking, like, around the dinner table, like, yeah, I'm gonna invent a new Facebook. Why? Because I want to be famous. I want to have lots of money. It doesn't. Like, they are detached even from the problem solving because it's about them. When you talk about Small companies that comes from the soul. Because I love when you said we don't need more businesses to scale because we've got plenty of those.
- [41:17]
A
Yeah. It's almost like, how do we retool or rethink or redefine what success is? Right. Be famous because you got more people to vote. You got more people to participate in the world around them. Be famous because you, I don't know, changed local school districts, you rebranded the Department of Education. Like, there are things that I feel like we all have in common that we want to be a part of. Like we want our families to feel secure, we want people to feel safe. We want to feel like we are giving back. Like I always say, history always going to look back at us, whether we. Whether we like it or not. And so that's what I'm really interested in. And again, yes. Are you. Can you. Do people want more money? You said rich, right? Like, I get. We are in. People need capital. But I think that there's other ways for us to be talking about how to get capital. I'm the first person to say, get your paycheck, make sure you are getting paid for the value that you're bringing, but how do you redefine that value that you're bringing so that we are really generating, I don't know, a community and even for designers, a world that we feel really proud that we designed. So, yeah, to get paid, get the money, but make sure that it is still delivering your own intrinsic values of what you are going to look back at your own legacy.
- [42:42]
B
Those are very important things to do. When you see it from your side and you see it from your student side, sometimes it's a life work to actually discover what you stand for. What do you mean? How do you get paid? What to do this? But the journey, with the help of people like you, teaching people, not teaching your students, they're going to get there faster. That's the most exciting part. I can see in the world right now that we can teach people how to be ahead by 10, 20 years in their careers, rather than us going, hey, we walked on this path, we stumbled a lot, we found ourselves, we picked ourselves up and then we worked out as a door that can take me to the other side. Whereas I'm sure you see it in the world of your children and my children like they have got a rocket ship already available to them in terms of information. More empathetic parents, more compassionate parents. We are creating a new generation. And I'm excited because those will be the People who will be changing the future. But I think this is our realization because, as you said earlier, we need to get off the benches. And I'm very much behind that statement. We need to get off the benches and actually do what we believe we can actually volunteer in the best possible way to the benefit of the future. Because it's easy to get a paycheck. It's easy to then hide away with that paycheck and say, the life keeps happening to me. And then something derails your career, derails your life, and you're like, oh, you know, I don't feel like I had an active part in my life. And I think this is where that radical accountability comes into place and say, you know what? Everyone's got a voice. Why don't you use it?
- [44:14]
A
No. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I love that you're talking about the. The future in the future. And I tell my kids then all the time they're, like, sick and tired of hearing me talk about design, but I learned so much from them. But something that I think is exciting that I just started actually, this semester, I have a really talented graduate assistant named Jura, and they are working with me on exploring what we're calling creative economies in the margins. And it's something that I really do think about, which is, like, in the future, how can we be thinking about different ways of creative economies? Like, right now, we're very much in an extraction mode. Like, all we want to do to get. We talked about scale or, like, people want to create the next Facebook or whatever the next thing you think you want to create, it's all about extraction. It's all about taking something from people to prove that you've created this value. Right? And then you're going to get paid for it. But I think that there's something more interesting about how does creativity actually generate more for more people? Like, as opposed to pulling out things from, like, data or personal information to prove that you can make money, how do we actually generate more for our, like I said, our communities, our people, our families, our loved ones, our chosen families. And so I'm really interested in what that looks like. I don't know what, honestly. We just started the research. But that, to me, is really exciting. And I think, you know, even so, an institution like Pratt is, like, excited to put money behind that kind of expansive thinking. So, yeah, I like to think that there are people who are creative and talented and excited who can help us see new ways to create creative economies, to fund them, to create more but not through extraction. I don't. That word just came to me. But like, yeah, it's just like we keep pulling away, but how do we push in?
- [46:03]
B
When you look at everything that we do because of society, humanity, it's an extraction. We're still trying to make sense of it, so we're still pulling it apart and just realizing what's in it. But I just hope that at one point this might sound weird, but at some point that humanity will slow down and say, hey, we've got plenty of everything. Now how do you make sense of it? You know, how do we actually make sense of it? Because I'm going to circle back to the design has conceded the table now. Which there are people who are flying the flag very well for design to be, you know, having a seat at a table. But the general underbelly, middle section of design. When something happens in the world creatively, non. Creatively, the design people should want to speak up, especially in like LinkedIn and Volunteer. And this is going to be a bit of a bashing, but volunteer opinions that no one asked for because that gets them engagement, you know, rage baiting is. Is very good popular hobby for some creatives on the margins. And I'm thinking who are you doing it for? Because you're not really helping anyone. You're not helping yourself. You help in LinkedIn show more advertising. Thank you for them. Who are you helping? Because we need to be careful how we conduct ourselves and how we carry ourselves and how we use our voices and use our experience. Because I sometimes feel like this could be used for so much of a better good than just rage baiting and hoping that you get thousand likes and go viral on LinkedIn and everyone will forget about you the next day. Because in my opinion it makes us look stupid, all of us, because we are part of this group. But I just wish how do we get that to be pushed a bit more?
- [47:44]
A
Yeah, you know, I think about that all the time because yeah, I go on LinkedIn, I always get, I get rage baited just being on LinkedIn and I mean I'm on it, right? And I know it's important and there's. It gives you access and, and whatnot. But, but even Instagram or anything that has a way in which for us to comment. I always say to myself, because I do read the, read the comments against new logo comes out or a new brand, you know, someone's got my hot take and it's like great, let's all have a good interesting debate and dialogue. But I Can't help think when somebody has a hot take on a logo brand that they never saw the brief, they didn't understand the clients, they didn't know the context that I just wish they would go take their common walk down to their public library and help that library, like get more people to come in. Like, if you have such a hot take on how you can design something better, go design something in your community. Because if you're that eager to create something to your point to get somebody to notice you, go do it in a space that actually is generative. That's really like helping. Like I said, I like to think that some of the people who have hot takes are really talented designers. Great. Go use those talents and like I said, get more people to vote. Pick a, pick a passion or something that like brought you joy when you were. I have a, I'm a 12 year old, 12. 13 year old. When you were 13. And go design that to bring that, that feeling back. Because having a hot take on like a Jaguar logo or a logo or American eagle or, you know, this was a bad year for brands anyway. Name a brand that everyone's had a hot take on or a logo next time. Take that energy and put it someplace that you. Then they can go back to LinkedIn and be like, look at the sign I made for my public library to get, you know, more funding for more computers for the kids that don't have it. I would, let's like that, you know, as opposed to like thinking about, you know, better kerning. Yeah, okay, maybe it could have been better kerning, but go current something that's, you know, going to get people to participate.
- [49:39]
B
You said it was a bad year for brands, but I think it was a good year for brands. It's just a really, not a really bad year for stupidity. I mean, it's just like, it just, it makes you realize like how ridiculous is the age of algorithm where people follow templates, people generate nonsensical AI posts and it's like what the age of the guru. I mean, actually what you said earlier is that every era has got a villain and I think the villain is the self certified thought leader on LinkedIn. That we are just destroying resources and talking utter fucking nonsense just because, hey, look at me. Whereas what I love what you guys do and what you were telling me is like, you live and breathe movement, you live and breathe change. You want to have change in the world because it's ultimately it's going to change someone's life.
- [50:27]
A
I think that the tools that we have can be really amazing. We just worked with a tremendous organization here in the city called the Street Vendor Project. Now, the Street Vendor Project is one. There is a very small team. And so their ability to use Canva or their ability to use ChatGPT to come up with some messaging is like, tremendous because they can get more resources to street vendors here in New York City who are, you know, some of the most hardworking small businesses that there are. That is a great use of those tools. I also get worked up when I hear again, yeah, thought leaders start talking about like, AI is terrible. All these things are so terrible. And it's like, yeah, if you're using it to, you know, come up with fake thought leadership ideas or you're using it in a way that extent is very extractive. That. Yeah, I agree. But let's not forget that these tools can also be used for positive engagement for brands or small businesses that otherwise wouldn't have those kinds of resources. So, so again, it's almost like we're, I mean, you said this and now it's getting late or later in the morning and my coffee's kicking in, but you said this like, it just feels like we're, we're tackling the wrong conversations online when we could be tackling real conversations in real life to change what we're. Ultimately, I feel like unhappy about, like, I think some of us are really lonely or, you know, really, maybe people should just admit that they like a lot of noise and they like to be around people. But yeah, it's like, how do we take that energy and put it into a place that's going to feel when we wake up the next day? We feel better, not worse about ourselves.
- [52:01]
B
Jesse, everything that you just said is exactly what you do. I can see it from your work, I can see from what you're saying because you care, you care about the future, you care about now, you care about people, you care about a future. And the way two words I'm taking from this is civic imagination. It's just like, how do you get actually, how do you encourage people to look to the future with positive outlook? You know, like, how do we bring people together? Because all of the nonsense, all of the rage, baiting all of the algorithms, you know, the dark corners of the web, pushing right wing agenda on behalf of billionaires. It's like we aren't the same humans. You know, we, we, we do have this hardwired instinct to us that we fight over resources when there's a lack of resources. That's where people get angry and scared and fighty, but we are still the same humans. Because if you were to line up all the people of the all. All the colors and all the racists and all the, you know, atheists and stuff, most of us want exactly the same thing from life. It's like, how do we get that to instill them? So thank you for this conversation because, yeah, I love what you do and it's exciting to see how much you are excited about where the future can take you. So thank you so much.
- [53:11]
A
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I said this was such a fun conversation. Now all day I'm gonna be like, now why did I do that? What's the why behind that? What made me think about it, but tremendous. And thank you for all of the conversations you're having because again, it's getting us off the algorithm. You're hearing from real people talking about real things. So I love it. Thank you.
- [53:30]
B
And it was fun when you said, no, Debbie, you were in Debbie's class. Because I feel like my podcast is turning into Debbie's alumni.
- [53:35]
A
You know, she would love that. Oh, man. That's all Debbie wanted.
- [53:40]
B
We've had. We've had Danny Gossett and all the others like Amelia Nash, who works with Debbie right now. It's just that it's such a nice accolade and testament to what Debbie's achieved by getting all these amazing people together, teaching them, giving them this view on life that changing lives already. So, yeah, it's great to see. Thank you.
- [53:58]
A
That anything's possible. Thank you.
- [54:10]
B
Thank you for listening to this episode of Daring Creativity Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions and suggestions, so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinage. The audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Banks podcast. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode.
- [54:46]
A
Foreign.
- [54:53]
B
If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.