← Daring Creativity
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- [00:01]
Host
Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. On a regular week, I use these episodes to look back at a conversation that get published on a Monday and often choose four moments to have a particular importance to our conversation. This week was a bit different. I published an episode recorded live in front of an audience at Off Festival in Barcelona, and it was an excellent conversation with my friend PJ Richardson, who is an executive creative director and co founder of Laundry Studios. And this is a result of an ongoing conversation with PJ as he was working on the main titles for this year's event. The work and the process naturally lend themselves to a new interview format and what I wanted to do something different for off. Do the off first. Even though there's been conversations on the stage before, I don't think anyone's actually recorded a live podcast before. And if you've been to off or any other conference, you would know that some of the most amazing creatives create titles for the festival, and then they would spend 45 to 50 minutes in their speaking slot to showcase all the clever trickery that goes into making each of these masterpieces. It's often very, very technical conversation. It holds the audience. But I thought, how do we change this? How do we do something different? BJ's manifestos for the title was challenging the status quo with joy. And it was a perfect lead into making this into a conversation, an interview, an exchange that reveals a lot more that goes behind the scenes of making such titles. And as you might know, for my regular guests, and I'm very open about it, I often show up purposely unprepared. I only like to know a little bit about my guests and then find the dots and join them as we speak. Sometimes I could know a lot more, and sometimes I wish I knew even less because I think there's this magical way of. I often look for just a word or two words in an answer and then find the whole next question in there. So in this instance with pj, we had a bit of a structure of the interview because we wanted to cover the process of the titles, but that was as much as I wanted to know about it. And we came deliberately unprepared for the details because I wanted to uncover the information as I was hearing it on the stage along with the audience, and it worked. It was magic. And for pj, who's a fearless creator, he the public speaking doesn't come to him naturally, but he did so amazingly and dropped so many standout moments that it was quite hard to pick only four the full interview is now available as an audio episode across all platforms and we also have a video episode across Spotify and YouTube. So as I would normally say, I'm here to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation. I'll pull out those moments that deserve a second look. I'm going to dig deeper on what makes them special.
- [02:52]
PJ Richardson
Oh man, so many things. I mean like it's the, the, the key to staying inspired and to keep going creatively is because, you know, creativity stays the same. We get older, but I think the temptation is to, to, you know, sometimes, especially in this day and age, to give up and to just, just sort of call it and, and fall on our heels, especially with AI and uncertainty. Right. Like, but like ultimately the reason we got into this was the, the, the courage and the risk taking and, and kind of all the crazy chaos of being creative. And so I think it's just the mindset of just keep, keep being that 17 year old self that I think, you know, got all of us into being creative in some form.
- [03:34]
Host
Right. BJ's been working for 25 years, but he still talks about creativity like someone who just discovered doesn't feel like an accident, it feels like he's making this choice repeatedly. This moment stood out to me because it really nails something that we all feel. But how often do we say out loud the experience makes the doubt disappear, if anything, the temptation to coast, to play it safe, to trade curiosity for comfort grows stronger as the years stack up. PJ's antidote isn't a productivity hack or a morning routine. It's a simpler and harder than that. It's staying connected to the restless, risk taking energy of younger self. Not out of nostalgia, but out of a genuine commitment to why you started in the first place that 17 year old didn't know the rules, but turns out that there were superpowers all along.
- [04:30]
PJ Richardson
I think one of the biggest things that, thinking about the audience here and ignoring a second like the style of what we make, I think the commonality between all of us here at OFF is that we challenge the status quo of creativity in some way or another. And you can call it a rebel, you can call it whatever you want, it's, it's not about being rebellious necessarily. But we're, we're here because like this question we ask, what if we, we all pull like the amount of people you meet every single year that, that come here that are like I, I couldn't afford this or I'm from a far away place or I was in a different place and I maxed out my credit cards to go to off to get inspired. And I did the same thing early on, like, and I was like, man, that's, that's, that's what this is all about. That's where we all are at some point and start and certainly begin at because of this passion to get. We want to go because it's just such a cool, privileged, awesome, humbling experience to be able to be as creative as we all get to be and be around each other. And so that theme of challenging the status quo, and then I think that the one little check mark I added to it was with Joy. Because, look, creativity is so subjective and it is so hard. And especially in this day and age, there's so much pressure with world chaos. There's this whole AI thing. Like, it's like. And so it was just like, okay, how do we challenge all of that with joy? And that was that, that was the theme that came out of this. To try to put something on this idea of community that the Uncommon team had formulated so well with this identity.
- [06:09]
Host
When BJ told me that's what he was planning to do with the titles, it took me a while to actually work out what he really meant because it was a beautiful statement that tied entire title's project together, his manifesto, his through line, his golden thread. It was not talking about disruption or about breaking rules, about challenging. It's what we would normally expect when you think about it, joy as a deliberate choice. Often joy comes to us as a result of something coming together. Like we grit our teeth and, you know, clench our bad cheeks working on something and then in the end we can enjoy the part. It's because creativity carries a real weight. It's the pressure, the self doubt, the technical chaos, the opinions of peers watching from the crowd. None of this goes away. But choosing to bring joy into the process changes the texture of everything. It becomes the thing that makes the hard part survivable and the good part genuinely electricity. What BJ made for off wasn't just a visually bold, incredible piece. It was emotionally generous. He wanted the audience to feel something warm and alive. And you can't fake that. It has to start from the inside.
- [07:28]
PJ Richardson
So here's the big challenge that I ran into with this, with this beautiful mold idea. And even this challenging the status quo with Joy is like, what do you do for at least four to five minutes of titles? And how do you add any rationale or any meaning or any purpose or any like, literally, how do you make something and like. And give it a reason. And so I asked this big question is, what is creativity? And where I got to with it is, you know, even the next slide is what is community? And ultimately I broke that down and took this really postmodern approach to this, where the process and the journey is the art. Like, that is the. That is the. In this case, that is the titles is. And. And so what is the. What is the journey? And that. But. But the journey is us coming here, is us doing work, is us doing work to get to the end. It's the same way that it is us coming here from wherever we're coming from, for whatever we're going through to. To become the community together at one place, which is off.
- [08:31]
Host
I didn't pick up on this moment until I've seen the recording. And how flipping profound is this? The process and the journey is the art makes you a little bit emotional, right? Because when you think about it again, it's about feeling something warm and alive from the inside. BJ didn't set out to make a perfect piece. He set out to document what he actually feels, what it feels like to make something. The thousand failed experiments, the afternoons where everything looked like garbage, the small accumulation of small discoveries, all of it came together as a subject matter, not just a backstory. What makes this so worth holding onto is how he completely removes the pressure of perfection. If the journey is the art, then nothing is wasted. Every wrong turn is a load bearing. Every scrapped idea was actually part of the piece. That's not a consolation price for not getting it right first time. It's more honest and more generous understanding how creative work actually unfolds. The mess isn't a problem. The mess is the point. Did you celebrate when you finished it? Did you. Did you have a sigh of relief going? It's done.
- [09:46]
PJ Richardson
I celebrated.
- [09:47]
Host
Is it done? Could you still go? Could you still work on it?
- [09:51]
PJ Richardson
Yeah, no, it's done. When it plays, there's some technical stuff that just has kept sort of, you know, when it was done in my heart was when I stood outside with everybody else last night and kind of watched this play and just sort of felt the moment, which I think is what this all is. And all this comes to, like, we're still tweaking stuff because there's, you know, there's always something. But, yeah, that was the moment of, like, standing with everybody last night and again tonight. That's when it sort of.
- [10:19]
Host
So this moment was quite something, because if you're not familiar with what I might be talking about here. PJ's titles got projected on the side of a building at off and I've been going to off for 11 years now. They always come up with something new, but last year they started a projection and it adds such a different element to the festival. The add on is like nothing else. Imagine the gigantic side of a building which is really oddly shaped. I'm not a big fan of a modern architecture, but this canvas kind of makes it worthwhile and it's magical. And then imagine watching a 9 and a half minute piece which is the titles that it's not just there for the audience, it's actually for anyone passing by. People in a tram passing through Barcelona, cycling past can get to see this beautiful theater of creativity that's like nothing else. So when I asked PJ like is your work finished? Is it done? And he said, well, actually standing outside and watching it with everybody else, it actually made it complete. And thinking about it, it speaks to something so fundamental about why creative people push themselves as hard as they do. PJ told me in a conversation that it pushed him to the limit. He's emotional creative, but he never doubted what he was doing. He created moment for everybody else and for himself to feel it, to be moved by it, to be carried, to carry it home. BJ said it more than once in our conversation. It was the moment of intention that became real and the whole idea. And let's be honest, the OFF titles, it's a pro bono piece. You do it because you care, you do it because you want to do it and because you want to give something back. And I think what PJ did with an intention became real, shared and permanent. The work became finished and done when it belonged to everyone. Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. I hope you check out a full conversation with PJ because it's full of incredible moments, more than just these four. And I'll see you next week on the next one. 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 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.