0:05

This episode is brought to you by the Redline brought to you by BrandJitsu.

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Are you just talking about yourself by connecting with your customers on a more meaningful level?

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Also, you can go to Patreon.com/rebelrebelpod.

0:27

The RebelRebel is a show dedicated to creative rebels and entrepreneurs

0:30

all over the world. It's for those people who think audaciously

0:33

and act courageously in service of making the world

0:35

a better and more interesting place. In this episode, you'll meet Lou Maxon, a creative powerhouse, super nice guy,

0:40

and someone who loves to explore the intersections

0:42

of creativity, innovation, and storytelling.

0:45

His studio space also happens to be a custom built

0:48

railway car nestled in the forest of Washington state.

0:51

Discover how his unique journey and unconventional workspace fuels his passion for design and branding.

0:57

Oh, the video for this episode was lost to the digital tech gods.

1:00

So in its place, I offer you the backdrop of my motorcycle

1:03

trip from Ottawa, Ontario last summer in full color.

1:06

Welcome to the RebelRebel.

1:09

Somewhere across the world in a train car,

1:12

possibly in the United States Pacific Northwest.

1:15

I'm not sure I've got Lou, Maxon, Lou, how the heck are you?

1:20

I'm doing good. Made it to the afternoon.

1:22

So we're going to call that a win? Yeah. Hey. That's awesome.

1:27

So just just so that people can, you know, don't geo locate

1:30

you specifically, but what what part of the world are you in?

1:33

So I'm, up in the Pacific Northwest, Washington state

1:38

and specifically a very, very small town called Carnation,

1:43

which is about 2000 people and was named after a brand.

1:47

So I literally work in a town that was named after a brand.

1:51

How perfect is that? That was this. Is kind of like.

1:56

And, I mean, we'll get here, but it's kind of like you were meant

2:00

to be in branding. I think.

2:02

So if there's anybody in the world who is meant to do what you do,

2:07

it's probably you.

2:09

I. I believe me, I tried as hard as I could

2:11

to run the other way, but here we are. Yeah.

2:14

Yeah, they dragged you back in. So, if we could, why don't we.

2:19

Why don't we start here? Why don't we start with what it is that you're up to now

2:21

so that we can understand the shape of Lou's world and, then then we'll do some time travel.

2:27

Yeah. Sounds good.

2:30

so, what am I up to now is that I run,

2:33

I guess you can call it a boutique.

2:36

brand and design firm, up here in Washington state.

2:40

And I work primarily, brands hire me,

2:45

agencies hire me, and startups hire me,

2:48

which is sort of perfect because I spent the first sort of third of my career

2:52

working at agency, working at brands, and working with startups.

2:57

So a lot of the same. In fact, some of the same clients

3:01

that I worked with even 20 years ago,

3:04

I'm still working with today on those projects.

3:07

I would say a great new business strategy is to get a full time job,

3:11

do a good job, lead, and then have them hire you back.

3:16

That's that's a hell of a plan. Good work. If you can get it.

3:20

steady. So what? What is it?

3:23

What does the day to day look like for you? and I do want to talk about where your office is.

3:28

Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, sure.

3:31

So day to day, I have about two thirds of my work is,

3:38

or, you know, is or was month over months, like, retainer type projects.

3:43

So I pretty much know what I'm working on when I start the day.

3:48

I have a couple projects that are just literally project based,

3:52

which will come in, sort of, unplanned or,

3:56

you know, someone call someone refers and something pops up.

3:59

Some of those, some of those turned into long term projects,

4:03

some of them are just projects, you know, you do and move on.

4:08

so like in my mix of work right now,

4:12

I do a monthly magazine for, for a client,

4:15

for, yachting client, actually, in Seattle,

4:18

which is kind of funny because one of my first ever ad jobs

4:21

was, art director, creative director for Bay

4:24

liner and Maxim boats like that.

4:28

Right at a rate at of, literally almost like right out of school.

4:32

So I find myself working on boats, trains, cars,

4:38

Planes, trains and. Automobiles. Yeah.

4:40

So I have a, I have this magazine that I do once a month.

4:46

I think I'm almost approaching. I've been doing it for about four years, so almost 48 issues.

4:52

Wow. And, I started in magazines.

4:56

So to have a magazine this many years later and still be in

5:00

it is is pretty fun.

5:03

so that's I work on that and that's a that's,

5:06

I know, I know the year out when all those deadlines are

5:10

so my entire life in terms of, like, vacation

5:14

or traveling revolves around those ship dates.

5:18

That's amazing. So if I, if memory serves,

5:21

you started sort of an underground magazine in high school.

5:25

Yeah. And almost got yourself kicked out, I think.

5:27

Or was it high school? Yeah. High school. Yeah.

5:31

No. So that was really,

5:35

I was and so when I, when I was growing up, my, my dad worked in

5:40

sort of the post-production color separation business.

5:45

so I would go with him on press checks.

5:47

I would go with him on color checks.

5:50

We and I remember when people ask me like, kind of kind of how I got into it.

5:55

And I remember specifically this moment where he used to take me to the basement.

6:01

That's where all these guys worked in the dark on these huge CRT

6:05

monitors doing like color correction.

6:08

And I remember being so fascinated, like as, probably like, you know,

6:13

eight, nine, ten year old and say, well, like, what are they working?

6:16

I look like they were doing magic. Yeah. And I remember him as we were going back up the stairs because of the lights.

6:22

It was literally pure dark. And he said, you don't want to be down here.

6:28

You want to be working.

6:30

You want to be coming up with the things that these guys are correcting.

6:34

And and that stuck with me. You know, it was sort of like an offhand comment.

6:39

Yeah. That was like classic. Where does that mean? Like, there's more to this than, you know.

6:43

And so,

6:45

I learned sort of this old school production,

6:49

you know, color separation, how things were actually produced early.

6:55

And then it was sort of then as I grew up,

6:58

I learned how to actually make the thing that then gets produced, like, how do you

7:03

how do you make an idea, how do you come up with something? So,

7:07

when I, when I was in high school, I mean, I had this

7:10

this is back in the day when, like, this wasn't even Quark Express.

7:13

This was like, super paint on the Mac and,

7:19

so two of my friends, I went to high school with

7:22

pretty sort of on the fringe. It was a private, like a private Jesuit college preparatory school.

7:30

And I emphasized Jesuit because the Jesuits were actually super

7:34

cool and very,

7:36

forward thinking.

7:39

and so one of my friends came to me and said, hey, we're thinking about

7:42

starting this, this, this, like, alternative publication because the,

7:46

the high school didn't really have a newspaper.

7:50

And so we went to this school,

7:52

I don't remember who was going to like head of student affairs or someone.

7:55

And we said, hey, we want to start this thing could do like a science,

7:58

an advisor or and they were like, we want,

8:01

we want to have nothing to do with whatever you're doing.

8:04

And that was a critical moment because later when we got in trouble,

8:07

we went back to them and said, hey, we went to you ask for permission,

8:11

and you said no. And that led to them,

8:16

formalizing like,

8:18

not a journalism program, but, actual like more, student publication.

8:23

So. Wow.

8:25

but I was laying the thing out, like, page by page, because at the time there was no design program.

8:30

And, to do multi-page design to every page was like an original.

8:35

Oh my God. And I was doing in super pants.

8:37

You had a text box and and I had a hand.

8:41

I had a Logitech hand scanner so I could scan like, oh my god.

8:46

Yeah. And then we would just put, we would put it on the,

8:48

we would put it on and we would distribute it.

8:50

Actually we never distributed it at school.

8:53

We distributed it on the metro busses around school.

8:57

No kidding. Because it wasn't specifically about school.

8:59

But we did mention people that went to school and that's what got us in trouble.

9:03

Oh my God. This is like I mean, this is around the same, same time.

9:09

I want to say is, Richard Branson was starting a magazine that changed the world as well.

9:14

It seems like there's a lot of journalism changes things.

9:17

Magazines. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And and what's what's kind of funny is,

9:22

so I was there was, there was a two guys and a and then I was considered

9:25

like the other half because I would actually produce it.

9:29

And then, later,

9:32

when I moved to New York, I worked at the Village Voice

9:35

and it was sort of at the moment where publication, editorial

9:39

design, I guess desktop publishing was transitioning from paste.

9:42

And so even at when I was in college working on the university newspaper,

9:47

we designed it, printed it out, waxed it, rolled it onto the boards,

9:52

and then physically delivered this box with all the individual pages.

9:55

So it's sort of like, it's so cool, this small revolution.

9:59

Right? And then I actually after I left The Village Voice, I got a job at Time

10:05

Out in New York, which was just launching, and that was launched by Tony

10:08

Elliott, who started Time Out in London as kind of a zine.

10:12

Being to for of things to do. Yeah. And

10:17

then I was, I went from like doing this design in high school to doing I did another

10:21

I did my own magazine and college, which became my book

10:26

to get to move to New York to get a job. And,

10:30

and so that I was doing like a weekly,

10:32

you know, the Village Voice, you know, weekly newspaper.

10:36

It was I don't remember how many pages it was, but.

10:38

And then I went to Time Out, which was a weekly. So then we're doing like 200 page magazine a week.

10:43

They had a court in the art department, which is a sign

10:46

for anybody looking for a job if they have like hospitality

10:51

arrangements in the government.

10:54

I like, I like is I call them hospitality arrangements.

10:57

That's a yeah. You must be in marketing.

10:59

Yeah. That's so anyway that was my.

11:03

And if I think it's so much of what I did then

11:06

I'm, I'm still doing now

11:10

and I think a lot of storytelling I mean I literally got my degree in journalism

11:15

and there's a lot of creative directors I run into

11:18

who also got their start and,

11:21

and we were doing storytelling before it was cool in advertising or branding.

11:25

Yeah. and I remember

11:29

going when we moved back from New York to Seattle

11:32

and I worked at publicists, and I was running the Bay liner account.

11:36

So I worked at Bay liner at a small agency in Seattle.

11:39

Then we moved to New York and I moved back. Publicist has taken that account from the agency I worked with

11:44

before I moved, and then now I was running the whole thing.

11:47

And I remember on the on the first day, they were like, we need you to design.

11:52

You and your team designed six catalogs in a year.

11:55

And I was thinking a year like, we're doing 200 pages

11:58

a week, like, yeah, I'm gonna poke my eyes out.

12:01

This is going to be.

12:05

So. So did you did you turn them upside down?

12:08

Like. I mean, you must have kicked them out, like, way faster and.

12:11

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I,

12:15

I think the other thing was you don't. How about you do you do not have a lot of resources

12:19

on the editorial side that you have on the advertising and branding side.

12:23

So a lot of times you're, you're designing the article.

12:26

You're also sometimes you're writing the headline, sometimes you're

12:29

also doing like a little illustration or a photo collage.

12:34

and I was in fact, I was

12:38

I don't remember which issue it was, but early in my time out,

12:42

sometimes we would, the art director

12:45

I was like, senior designer and art director would bring in, like,

12:50

a special guest designer or artist to do.

12:53

And because the Time Out covers were famous,

12:56

some of them are really famous. So. So one week we would have the meeting on Monday,

13:02

and he brought in Barbara Kruger, who, like I did not go to

13:06

graphic design school, so I did not know who she was

13:10

like famous female, one of the most famous female graphic designers.

13:14

Who did I, you know, I shopped there for I am, which Supreme basically ripped off

13:20

future, medium bold, italic and red boxes in a way.

13:25

So we did a cover with her

13:28

and then every week we would also do a wild posting,

13:31

which is like a bigger version of the cover that then they would

13:35

they would put up all over New York ahead of the issue.

13:40

I didn't know who she was. I have I still have the original poster I did,

13:45

and the cover. And then years later when I figure it out, that's who it was.

13:51

I, I was able we were able to acquire one of the original,

13:55

screen printed, shopping driven shopping bags that she did that print on.

13:59

So I have that in the house. cool.

14:03

So there was a it was sort of like you're doing the work and then you're

14:07

getting kind of a little bit of a history of graphic design in real time.

14:12

Yeah. No.

14:14

that also that also,

14:17

also happened with David Carson

14:19

because they were doing an article on, and it wasn't the end of print.

14:23

I think it was his next book. And they

14:26

were like, can you go down to this studio? And,

14:31

I think, I think I interviewed either I interviewed him

14:34

or I photographed or something to get to, to meet.

14:37

I didn't know who it was, so they gave me an address I took,

14:41

I think I walked, I knocked on the door and there's David Carson answers the door.

14:47

And this is someone who, like, I was

14:51

following in like

14:53

late high school, college, seeing all this

14:57

and then kept up with over time and actually ran into him again

15:01

when I was the global creative director at Brooks, running an agency

15:05

we worked with had hired him to work on concepts.

15:09

And, so, yeah, we we've intersected a few times and that's so wild.

15:15

I want to talk about intersection for a second and maybe, maybe inception

15:19

would be the better word. Yeah. Because I think your your great grandfather

15:24

was one of the original madmen.

15:26

Yeah. and again, if memory serves, came up with some of the most memorable,

15:33

campaigns even, that exist today.

15:36

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about that and how that maybe is infused in your DNA?

15:41

Yeah. So I remember,

15:46

you know, growing up,

15:48

sometimes my dad would bring home or I would get,

15:52

So I don't know, I don't know how it happened, but sometimes I would get copies of Communication Arts.

15:58

As kids do, whether kids are like Sesame Street magazine Ranger read.

16:03

Right. Scholastic. You know. I'm looking at like the the the 1987 design annual

16:10

trying to like draw and recreate the ads.

16:15

I feel like honestly, it wasn't it wasn't until later on.

16:20

I mean, I think past even high school that I,

16:24

you know, I talked to my uncle, he went to this,

16:28

Art Institute of Chicago. He went to, like, Playboy magazine.

16:32

He was he knew about design. My my, my other uncle was like, an artist and screen printer.

16:37

My dad worked in, you know, post-production, but.

16:41

And then my grandmother,

16:44

she looked like 95. She would she would give between my uncle and her, and they would give me

16:49

things, little things, like a coffee mug or my, my uncle gave me like,

16:55

like a Walter, like a lander design manual.

16:58

And I'd be flipping through it and I'd be like, Heinz ketchup, Maxon.

17:02

And I'm like, what's this? And so, so I get the story goes that he was,

17:09

he was born in Ohio. His family moved to Onaway, Michigan, which is Northern Michigan.

17:14

Not that not the U.P., but northern Michigan.

17:19

and then, he he grew up.

17:23

He was actually serving he, he worked in the, I think the lunch wagon

17:27

at Ford, pitched Henry Ford on an idea

17:30

for Lincoln and started the agency at 28.

17:34

And he was doing a lot of direct mail type stuff.

17:36

So his way to get he sort of had a Trojan horse to get into the juicy stuff

17:41

by getting in through the non juicy stuff, which was the direct mail accounts,

17:46

and he would apparently he would write,

17:50

you know, he was sort of a Bo Jackson of advertising.

17:53

I don't think he was really a designer, but he would write and pitch

17:58

directly to the clients. Wow.

18:01

He won. Gelatt came up with the look sharp B sharp campaign, the Gillette Perrot,

18:07

and then convinced Gillette to sponsor Friday Night fights,

18:12

which I don't know if that was because I wasn't alive then, but, boxing,

18:15

basically boxing matches on the radio or TV and then convinced Gillette

18:20

to sponsor the World Series, which was the first advertising brand.

18:26

Sports.

18:28

Wow. I guess a co-branded collaboration that we would call today.

18:32

And then I think that that,

18:36

collaboration eventually evolved into what I had heard was it

18:40

evolved into what was ABC, why roll the sports year?

18:44

What the hell? Yeah.

18:47

So holy. Wow. And then and then he had c.

18:50

He had Heinz for 30 years.

18:53

Heinz Ketchup knew the family like pretty

18:56

you know obviously pretty well he had, high point JD

19:02

I have a,

19:04

I track down in Onaway.

19:06

I think towards the end of his run, they did a max and they in Onaway

19:11

and they all the advertisers took out a full page ad in this newspaper

19:15

and all the way. So I did get a copy of it. I have it in my studio and it's letters like handwritten and ads, basically,

19:22

that all these brands took out in the, in the local newspaper.

19:28

and I have his typewriter on my desk.

19:30

Oh, wow. and, and I have a handwritten client list and a lot like I over the years.

19:36

Like, sometimes I'll find stuff on eBay, like,

19:40

I found there was, like, an original print of one of their offices in Detroit,

19:44

and I've got old ads from Gillette, and he did a lot of,

19:48

storytelling ads, like a comic strips and cartoons to tell stories

19:52

about how people use the product, which, I mean, I've done

19:57

a lot of that in my work, so I don't like

20:01

even before I knew that that was happening,

20:04

it was sort of part of my thing. And so I was just sort of crazy and just sort of like,

20:09

been collecting stuff as I find it and then sharing it with my kids.

20:13

And when people, when people come over, you know, that's kind of part of

20:17

that's the tour they have to suffer through.

20:21

Oh, wow. What a what a legacy.

20:25

Yeah, it was pretty good. What the craziest thing is that they

20:29

how I kind of found out about it was, in, in northern in Michigan.

20:33

So he went back to Onaway.

20:35

There's a 700 acre piece of land they bought by Black Lake.

20:40

And that turned into kind of the max, a retreat

20:44

where they would clients could go up there, agency

20:48

folks and families could go up there during the spring and summer.

20:51

It was like Google before Google, right? Yeah.

20:54

Barber shop. They had all these amenities and you could be out sort of in nature.

20:58

Now that's the now a huge part of that is what is now the UAW.

21:03

No kidding. The UAW bought it from but a lot of the,

21:07

the original lodge and the wood from that, from that project

21:12

came from Oregon to Washington. So,

21:16

our little compound that we have out here on 41 acres in the Pacific Northwest

21:20

is like a little mini version,

21:24

of, like, working in nature.

21:27

Wow. Okay. And that I'm just going to jump on that segue.

21:31

Because I appreciate you, sir.

21:33

Train. Yeah, I appreciate you serving that up.

21:36

so, so eloquently. It is very unique, your studio.

21:40

And I'd like you to sort of walk us through it because it's like nothing I've ever seen before.

21:44

And it's got a story and life all of its own.

21:48

Yeah. For sure. So we were this was like 2000,

21:54

2000, like seven.

21:57

my wife and I, we at the time, our kids were little.

21:59

We have three and three sons. We were living,

22:04

in a small town called Snoqualmie, which is where Snoqualmie Falls is

22:08

and which is also where they filmed, Twin

22:11

Peaks, North Bend, Twin Peaks area.

22:15

So it's about it's it's about 20 minutes from where we are now in Carnation.

22:19

But, we were, you know, family was growing.

22:22

We were looking we were actually we were having another kid.

22:25

And so we were looking at just like upgrading and, and buying a new house.

22:30

But because the way that the lines and the boundaries were drawn for school,

22:34

if we if we moved, we might have to pull our kids out of school.

22:38

And so we were like, well, if we have to do that, like that, let's think bigger.

22:42

And I had spent, quite a bit of time in my, like, professional career.

22:49

I was, I was, at an agency called Story Worldwide.

22:53

And our big climb was Alexis. I had traveled around the world for 5 or 6 years seeing all the shooting,

22:59

these amazing car spots and stories for Alexis magazine

23:04

and other things, films at these amazing places around the world.

23:08

And then before that at Seattle Magazine, we were shooting in people's homes

23:12

by architects from around, you know, the Bay area here before.

23:16

Again, I knew who any of them were. And so we ended up hiring,

23:21

an architect in Seattle.

23:24

and, also including his architecture firm.

23:27

And Tom Kundu is architect, and they have their office in New York and

23:31

and Seattle at the time, just Seattle. But,

23:35

so we planned we actually found a property and Carnation.

23:39

We didn't really know Carnation before this.

23:42

but we found a property, and and my vision was at the time,

23:46

I had an office in the house, and the kids are little and running around,

23:50

and people are coming over, and I was like that.

23:52

What I did learn is that I need an office, but I do not want to work in the house.

23:56

I want to. So the my only brief to Tom was,

24:02

I need to be able to physically separate myself from the house,

24:07

you know, and, I give him a lot of credit

24:10

because he, he sort of took that and,

24:15

and sent it back to me and said, what if we do X?

24:19

You know what? What is like this, this brief ingredient

24:24

from me to him was, okay, you don't want to work in the house.

24:27

What if you work in a building detached from the house and they were working?

24:33

The famous story is they were working on a project for another client,

24:38

and they had investigated a concept about moving a building,

24:43

like a mother in law, building on a system of moving a series of buildings on rails

24:48

that could they could sort of dock with the mothership, and they said you could send people away, right?

24:54

If they're staying, if they're visiting for a long time

24:56

and they're like, you know, so they had they had actually done,

25:02

some of the engineering, they had a model of this

25:04

little like of a basically a base with wheels.

25:07

And it would take a if you horsepower motor to move

25:11

like a, you know, if you,

25:15

thousand square feet or something. The structure. But, but in that project didn't go forward.

25:19

So he said, you know, he said,

25:24

what if we put your office on rails and you could just sort of like,

25:27

go in and work, but if you wanted to, you could just take off and scoot out into the woods.

25:33

Right. And who does.

25:36

This, Lou? I remember, I remember like, thinking because we, they had

25:40

pitched us like on the master plan with the house and everything and,

25:44

and then I had gone back and and met with him, just me.

25:48

And I remember on the drive home thinking, I like, how do you like

25:51

this is going to be probably like the biggest non-advertising self-drive

25:55

I'm ever going to have to do, like at home.

25:57

Like, how am I going to convince my wife

26:00

that we're going to build this studio that's going to on rails?

26:03

It's going to, you know, oh my God.

26:06

And at that time, like he had sketched basically,

26:11

like a one story sort of box

26:13

that was the same height as the house and that was sort of the beginning.

26:18

And from that I sort of almost took the project on as,

26:22

like I would there was a client I went into, I volunteered for the,

26:27

I schmidty in town for a destination branding for Carnation,

26:30

because they were looking to get more people to come out to Carnation.

26:33

And through that, I met,

26:36

a few of the elders in town that had lived here forever

26:39

and, and started learning that there was actual railroad, that the town.

26:44

The reason it's called Carnation is because

26:47

the original dairy research farm is here in Carnation.

26:50

And the reason that's here is because someone at the farm

26:54

got tipped off that the Great Northern Railroad was coming

26:58

this way, and they wanted to be located geographically near

27:03

so that they could bring cows in, they could send their milk out. And,

27:09

so it turns out there's two major railroads,

27:12

the Great Northern and the Milwaukee Road.

27:16

they had a branch line through town and our house and our railway and our studio

27:21

set parallel to those where those railroads were in town.

27:25

And those railroads really put the town on the map.

27:29

our property is on a second growth warehouse.

27:33

Our tree farm.

27:36

And and there was logging rail.

27:38

There was log. There is, logging rail up here, operations

27:42

where they would just lay rail down, bring temporary rail cars, get the trees.

27:46

if they had, well, you know, locomotive, donkey locomotives, stuff like that.

27:50

And so there was like a real rich railroad history here that I had no clue about.

27:55

Like, so you weren't like a railway guy

27:57

that was looking for a railway life?

28:01

No, I was a guy looking to get away from some of the noise

28:06

and then I turned into, like, a train, basically.

28:11

Okay, so just so that people, I'm sure at this point people are like, what the hell?

28:16

Yeah. So in the, in the show notes, wherever we put them.

28:19

Yeah, I have links because there's been some really great coverage about this project.

28:23

Yeah. okay.

28:26

So how did how did the town of Carnation take to this idea of you building this thing?

28:30

Well, I mean, to be fair. So we're we're, we're literally like, we're geographically out of this.

28:37

This city limit. So we are the the tree farm.

28:41

The Weyerhaeuser farm sits about 430ft above town.

28:45

And the town, the town is a valley, so it floods, you know, if there's a

28:50

if there's sort of like there's the river. The,

28:54

river goes through town. and,

28:59

so we didn't we didn't have to deal with, like, the town of Carnation, say,

29:04

like some people in Carnation did know us, know it here,

29:08

but, like, we're we kind of look out over the valley

29:11

from from above, and we're really hitting it.

29:15

Our site is super forested, so,

29:17

like, right now, I mean, literally at the end of the line, like,

29:20

I was sitting in the train and I'm at the end of, of the line,

29:24

so it's it's pretty hidden in the trees and, exterior of the house.

29:28

And the train is, rolled steel, which patinas and looks like tree bark.

29:34

So it it's, it's architecture that's designed to

29:38

sort of seamlessly vanish.

29:41

It's not architecture that's,

29:44

like, you clear cut, and you're like, here I am.

29:47

Yeah. so it's it's it's a little it's a little different.

29:51

But we have had a lot of tours and we've,

29:56

you know, it's been featured on TV and, and literally I laugh because it's, it's

30:00

a little 110ft railway that has literally traveled

30:04

around the world through, you know, the New York Times, the Daily Mail.

30:08

Yeah. NBC and so,

30:12

and I think it's kind of a sign that people, whether you like trains or not, it doesn't really matter.

30:17

I think it's just sort of, it's a prod.

30:20

It's a project that turned into a much bigger thing than I ever expected.

30:24

But in many ways, the studio itself is a great calling card for my work

30:29

because I don't necessarily do things the way everybody else does, which,

30:33

you know, is, I guess, why I'm on this podcast.

30:38

Yeah. You're, you couldn't not be.

30:43

Outstanding. So, okay, so here's a here's a question for you.

30:48

and I'm assuming you get out and about, I mean, oh.

30:51

Yeah. Large acreage and stuff like that, but,

30:55

do you like, do you have sort of a pathway through the woods,

30:58

like the is that part of your ritual to just sort of ground yourself in nature

31:02

or are you missing the city? yeah.

31:05

So I have, well, my my middle son, Jack,

31:10

he actually, when he comes home from college, he would he started making trails through the woods,

31:15

and then I would be I remember when I even when I was, like, working at agencies

31:19

or working and startups, I'd always try to go.

31:22

I was a big fan of, like, walking meetings, like taking 1

31:26

or 2 people, and we would just go walk if there was a park.

31:29

And I always remember we'd come up with like great things.

31:31

So that was something I I'd go for walks and I would find these trails like that

31:36

the kids had made. There would be like two chairs out in the middle of the woods

31:40

and almost like, you know, and, and ad agencies

31:42

where they come up with funny names for conference

31:44

rooms like Mount Rainier or whatever, like we're literally have, like,

31:48

these little miniature moments throughout the property where there's,

31:53

like two plastic chair Adirondack chairs and like, different spots.

31:57

So when it's nice out, you can just go sit there and take a meeting or so I'm in, I'm in this, I'm in the studio.

32:02

I'm like, in every single day, you know, if I have meetings or, but,

32:08

and I'll come in here to do client work

32:10

and I also come in here to do non client work.

32:13

So downstairs where I'm sitting is my desk is sort of like the,

32:19

Starship enterprise, right? Like this is where everything is.

32:22

But upstairs,

32:25

there's, you can see behind me there's a ladder and there's a dumbwaiter

32:29

that goes up there so I can put my books or laptop drinks up there.

32:32

And upstairs is a full library.

32:35

And in the original,

32:38

in the caboose, which was the office of the railroad,

32:40

the crew worked from the caboose, but upstairs was the cupola.

32:44

And that's where you can kind of see.

32:46

You can see above the train. Yeah. And see sort of ahead.

32:50

And, and for me, conceptually, that's like where I go when clients come

32:54

or collaborators, we'll go upstairs and there's two

32:57

there's two chairs out there and the wall is,

33:02

rolled steel, but it's all magnetic. So we can pull things up that we're working on.

33:07

And, and then I can also change the view, like, if I like today, I'm at the end,

33:12

I might roll down to the middle of the railway to,

33:16

or I can go upstairs and be up higher and sort of work.

33:19

So, you know, creatives never like being in the same spot, right?

33:23

You always want to like, shift your perspective, your perspective, and,

33:30

so I'm always changing this wall,

33:32

this wall of, of,

33:35

like train stuff, advertising's design stuff.

33:38

It's always shifting. We did at we host shoots here sometimes for,

33:43

clients and or and or our brands will come and rent out,

33:47

the house or the studio. And so sometimes I have to take everything down for the shoot,

33:52

and then I'm like, oh, do I? And I never put it up the same way again.

33:57

Just. That's amazing.

33:59

So let me, let me, let me, let me get into your head for a second.

34:03

Yeah. And so you're, let's just say,

34:07

for the sake of argument, that you're,

34:10

I don't know, you roll back, you know, half, half way back to the house

34:15

and your you climb the ladder, you got yourself a drink.

34:18

Whatever it is that that happens to be Mountain Dew.

34:21

Mountain dew. You've got your, your view around you, and you're pondering the universe

34:29

as as I firmly believe that you do on a regular basis.

34:32

And what is the one thing that you wish the world knew.

34:37

About me, or in general?

34:40

Like you're just sitting there thinking about,

34:43

life, the universe and everything. And yeah, I'd be like, oh, if the world just knew this one thing that like.

34:49

Yeah, I think for me, and especially now, you know, with,

34:54

everything that's going on in the world in the creative world

34:58

and with AI, with, you know, as everything is that,

35:03

I have and I think I have this on my LinkedIn, it's like,

35:07

I really do. And I, when I like, work with other creatives,

35:12

especially younger creatives or mentoring,

35:15

to never lose caring about the work like it's easy to like for me.

35:20

I mean, I can be cynical, right? I can say, oh well, look, it's Canva or I all these things and, and I

35:26

and there's always this lament from creatives about like

35:30

losing the care

35:33

or the craft of the work, especially the digital work.

35:38

and what's funny is like when you coming here,

35:40

like 99.9% of the things in here are not digital.

35:44

They're like that. This the sign over there.

35:48

That's that's the, a movie prop off the train from The Darjeeling

35:52

Limited and most of the stuff, you know, some railroad stuff, some.

35:58

But it's physical, tangible things.

36:00

And so for me, I always, I always

36:06

want people to know that you can, whether it's a personal project

36:10

or you can sort of like slip it in like medicine

36:13

and the candy for a client project that they're, that

36:16

they don't give up because there's always opposing forces.

36:20

I remember when I was at Seattle Magazine and like PDF came out and I'm like,

36:26

Holy crap, we're screwed. Yeah.

36:28

You know, like, cuz

36:32

now I'm responsible for whatever PDF I send.

36:36

That's what's going to get printed or, or I'm not physically handling

36:40

mechanicals anymore or

36:44

you know, and, you know, it was listening to the episode

36:48

where they from a letter that was on their on.

36:51

And then I'm getting connected with him.

36:53

And, you know, I love the bed.

36:55

He talked about, like, everything about

36:57

I is so sort of like the world is ending and the robots are taking over.

37:02

But what if we create stories that aren't aren't that and and

37:07

I've, I've done quite a bit of work

37:10

in, in these new frontiers already and working with clients

37:14

that are doing work in those frontiers.

37:18

And I think the, the most

37:22

hopeful, positive thing is that as a client or as a,

37:26

I guess as an agency or as a creative, you still get to choose

37:29

at the end of the day, like we're casting for great clients, like great people.

37:34

Yeah, I used to be when I was starting out.

37:37

I'm like, I want to work on Coke. I want to work on this.

37:39

I want to work on Nathan work. But but what I learned over time was that it's really actually

37:44

more important that you find the right people to work with.

37:48

Because if you find the right people, though, the right projects come with it,

37:51

and then the right a potential for, for outcomes. And

37:57

so and I think I'm an overly optimistic person

38:00

because I think once a creative person is not optimistic, they that's when you really should think

38:05

about doing something else. Because we're we're here not to compete with other agencies.

38:11

We're here to help create work

38:14

and to see around the corner,

38:17

you know, and we couldn't get to this podcast without talking about hockey or Gretzky,

38:22

but I but I but I do think that, you know, part

38:26

of what we're here to do is just sort of figure out where, where things are going or,

38:31

or create a runway for our clients,

38:34

where they the investment in the work they do with us

38:37

and the work we do together is creating something for the future.

38:41

Right? And that hopefully that's a positive future, because why else would anybody

38:46

want to, like, wake up and stare at the, you know, blinking cursor on the way page?

38:51

Oh, you know, what a nightmare.

38:54

Yeah. I like one of the questions I like always comes to mind is like,

38:58

how do you how do you make things memorable?

39:00

Like, how do you take something from,

39:04

from obscurity to being ubiquitous with our, you know, our collective conscious?

39:09

And I think that you hit on it is this idea of, you know, finding stories

39:13

that matter, finding clients that you are willing to go there with you.

39:17

Yeah, yeah.

39:20

I think, you know, I have this discussion

39:23

with a couple of collaborators I work with,

39:27

and it's I think a lot of people think

39:29

the creative job is just sort of frost the cupcake,

39:33

you know, and,

39:36

and, and there's a lot of work out there

39:38

that is, is, is that like, some projects are just that.

39:43

But if you're there at the, at the moment when you're deciding,

39:48

like when the acclaim, when the ingredients are delivered in the breeze

39:52

and you actually get to figure out that you haven't actually figured out

39:55

if the ingredients make a cupcake or make something you know, then

39:59

if you can deliver like the the cake and the frosting together, integrate

40:05

like that's those are the projects that make it into the, the book.

40:11

but I think more importantly, I think those are the projects

40:14

that actually work for the client, like for the clients, because I think

40:17

the clients, they, they, they, the good ones don't

40:21

just want the frosting, the good ones realize that the frosting is nothing.

40:25

And without the cake. And I think that's I, I did a, I did a project

40:29

right before Covid,

40:33

in in London for dot com like an e-commerce, not not Amazon.

40:39

And it was like June and this, this

40:45

if I have time to tell this story is probably one of my favorite projects.

40:48

So I'm in. So, so I had I had

40:54

got, I interviewed for this project and interviewed with the CEO,

40:58

the head of marketing, and basically there this was like in like

41:02

June of 2000, 18 or 19 right before Covid.

41:08

and they were like, we need TV, we need a new TV, a new brand campaign and TV.

41:14

By Thanksgiving. And it's like June. Whoa.

41:17

And I was just my wife and I were actually just getting ready to take the

41:22

the Amtrak from Seattle to Chicago on the Empire Builder, which is named

41:26

after the which is basically the nickname

41:29

for James Hill, who, who started the,

41:34

the, the Great Northern. So we took we took Amtrak from Seattle to Chicago.

41:38

We went to,

41:40

Chicago, MSI to see that huge model railroad layout.

41:45

that that is like an H0 model railroad layout of that

41:49

dog that documents like the history of railroading from Seattle to Chicago

41:54

as Chicago is like a huge, you know, railroad hub of America and then Seattle

41:58

with the ports and then and then we went to, the Art Institute of Chicago.

42:03

And we were downstairs and, in the

42:06

basement, they have this thing called the Thorn Miniatures.

42:09

And it's basically this really wealthy woman from Chicago

42:13

commissioned all these miniature sets of all these rooms from around the world.

42:19

And you walk through this kind of maze and it's like, like

42:22

from Japan to the United States to Europe.

42:25

And, it's like these little windows into these miniature world.

42:29

So we're going we're going through there. I didn't even know that existed. So we're going that way.

42:33

And as we come out the end, there's a little plaque on the wall

42:37

and it's Wes Anderson and and he talking about

42:40

how he loves the thorn miniatures because he loves these,

42:43

you know, his fanatical love of these dioramas and miniature worlds.

42:49

So we're in Chicago for a few days and

42:51

and I knew I had this like to come up with this thing.

42:54

And so we get back on the train and head back and while while we're on

42:57

the I'm on the train for like, you know, 36 hours over,

43:04

one of the challenges of this brief was that we didn't have a lot of time.

43:08

And this company represented all these brands like kids

43:11

toys and women's, you know, clothes, accessories.

43:16

And in order to get permission, legal permission to photograph

43:20

all those things would take forever, right, to get the legal permission

43:24

to show products from those brands.

43:27

And so time was actually a great constraint of the brief.

43:32

The miniatures sparked this notion, which was what is

43:37

and this and the, the, the brand didn't exist in real life.

43:41

Like you couldn't go to a store and buy these things. You could only do it through your phone.

43:44

So the phone became this portal, like the the exhibit where you could go in

43:49

and build this miniature world where you could kind of virtually shop

43:55

in these different aisles and parts of this like virtual department store.

44:00

So I came back and I was like, totally psyched. So I went in and I talked to the marketing guy,

44:05

and I was like, I think I have this like idea.

44:09

And I was showing him some references.

44:12

And then he's like, okay, you need to go in and meet with the CEO.

44:15

So then I prepared like kind of a pitch,

44:18

and I went in and did this whole thing and was showing them

44:21

some things, and I was showing, some references from like Fantastic Mr.

44:24

Fox at the end when they're all in the, in the grocery store and he's like,

44:28

this is fine. He's like, oh, this sounds really cool.

44:31

What's, what's Wes Anderson like? And any, you know, any other person

44:38

might have just said, oh, we're screwed, you know? But I was like, okay.

44:41

So I came back, I prepared and I gave him some, homework

44:45

assignment to watch a couple of the movies to stop motion movies.

44:48

Yeah. So that, so they're like, look, we don't really care what you do or how you do it.

44:54

We just need TV by this time, right?

44:56

So, like, oh, so I'm like, okay. So then I went to,

45:00

a production company I work with, creative Group up in, Seattle, up on

45:05

Capitol Hill called Content Partners, who I had worked with before a lot.

45:08

We worked on like Star Trek Into Darkness.

45:11

And, I went up there and I was totally psyched, and I talked to them

45:14

and I was thinking at that point, right, at this point, it's probably like

45:19

we're we're probably going to like, talk to local stop motion people.

45:23

We're probably going to talk to someone at Laika in Portland

45:26

because that's a I mean, that's an epicenter of stop motion in the U.S.

45:29

is like, and so we were

45:32

they I had the I had like the pitch, I had the visuals, the references.

45:37

I had photos of people working on sets showing to

45:42

to explain what stop motion was, because I have this idea

45:46

that if we created this really cared for and crafted some like analog three

45:52

dimensional world, yeah, we sort of could,

45:56

humanize the digital, you know, realm.

46:00

So cross the barrier. So like, I gave it to them like a week later, they call

46:04

and I'm thinking like, okay, they're going to take some references, pull together some ideas and,

46:10

do like, well, actually like we showed it around and,

46:13

you know, there's people here that could do it. but,

46:17

someone on, producer that they worked

46:20

with had worked with, Mark Gustafson,

46:24

who actually just passed away, but he was he did the stop motion for,

46:29

you know, kill that won an Oscar. Oh my God. And,

46:33

so they knew of a group over in London.

46:39

animation production kind of animation rep called not to scale.

46:45

And there was a guy, there was a guy,

46:50

Anthony who had worked on fantastic Mr. Fox.

46:53

And I love dogs, and they're like,

46:55

they're like, why don't like, instead of using these as reference like.

46:59

And he was like, literally in one of the photos I had pulled for my like, sway for like, inspiration.

47:04

So they're like, why don't we just go to London and work with all these,

47:10

this build, this team that worked on the worked with Wes on these movies,

47:15

what the hell? And so,

47:18

we were there was a lot of pre-production.

47:21

We did storyboards,

47:24

and identify all the, like, color palettes per category, basically kind of build.

47:29

it's almost like a brand playbook for that campaign.

47:32

And then,

47:35

did like this, I guess.

47:37

Team escape this. I mean, this was before Covid, so some virtual, like, back

47:41

and forth with style treatments and then,

47:45

kind of like headed over to London for 2 to 2 long trips.

47:50

And we were in the, the studio that we were in, they shot the scene from,

47:55

Grand Budapest Hotel when they're, when they're skiing.

47:58

That was all stop motion. Okay. And,

48:02

it came I remember like it was it was we had not a lot of time.

48:07

I mean, there's like, we made it.

48:09

We got the things delivered. I remember the night we were at like, the pub and I had messaged

48:15

the marketing guy at the brand and then he was like, send the link to the CEO.

48:20

And then I get a text from the seat for an email from the CEO.

48:25

There was like, okay. There's like, okay, great, I love, I love, and everything is like,

48:29

what you say, well, when can I make, like, changes?

48:31

I mean, you can't make changes like, this is like stop motion.

48:34

It's like dominoes. You can't.

48:37

And, we had to, like, change.

48:39

Like, I think we. I kind of isolated for him things that we could, like in the

48:43

at the end, like the call to action, things that weren't physically like.

48:47

Right. Because we even if we even had, we went up to Birmingham

48:51

where, Yemen was and they did a lot of the physical.

48:55

They made over like 200 miniature props. And there's, like a, area

49:00

where fashion designers go to pick out materials for things.

49:04

And the, the miniature yellow couch, which I have on my desk here from the

49:08

from the shoe, the we use the leather, the extra leather from

49:12

that to make the time for the campaign was called the Joy of shopping.

49:16

So the actual joy of shopping tape was made out of the same.

49:19

So it to me like digital is a screen, right?

49:24

It's a frame, but I think people think everything

49:27

has to be,

49:31

pixel perfect for things. And I'm working on an app right now, a mobile app for a new startup.

49:36

And that's like pixel perfect, like in Figma.

49:38

Everything is like everything is like, perfect, right?

49:43

Yeah. And and that can be beautiful and work.

49:46

But that that project.

49:49

I then since worked with like three

49:52

I did three more animated projects with that with that group and oh my God.

49:56

And you know, it just it

50:01

like, you just need one of those projects to kind of propel

50:05

you forward and say, like people, people,

50:09

the projects can be in the rearview mirror,

50:13

but it's really the people that travel with you to the future projects, right?

50:18

Yeah. So for me, like on this train, there's some straight lines that I take and there

50:24

but there's a lot of branch branches off that eventually

50:27

you make it back on the main line. But these branches, these branch like excursions are

50:32

the ones that like, I think, give the day to day the mainline flavor.

50:36

And so that's kind of what for me, that's the exciting part. And

50:42

I just like I'm so mesmerized by the level of,

50:45

I mean, they're in there with, you know, that

50:48

it reminds me of being a kid and like, making models, you know?

50:53

Yeah, it's just obsessed.

50:55

Yeah. I okay, I'd be remiss because you did ask or you did mention this earlier,

51:02

and I would be, as a Canadian, remiss not asking.

51:06

And I have.

51:08

Okay, there's a picture of you and Wayne Gretzky hanging out.

51:12

What's that? Yeah. Tell me, tell me the.

51:15

Yes. Yeah. So,

51:18

this is like, rewind back to my time at, like, at Lexus.

51:21

So Lexus did this, quarterly magazine.

51:25

It was a lifestyle magazine. It was really beautiful.

51:30

I went from, like, having no money on my high school

51:38

Z to, like, working on Lexus,

51:40

which, you know, we had essentially three months

51:44

for every issue and, and would travel around the country and around the world

51:48

for every issue that, it was like doing, magazine on an advertising budget.

51:53

And this was this is like heyday.

51:56

So this is in terms of budgets, like we were flying around the world

52:02

and we were staying if we went to Singapore or staying at the Four Seasons

52:06

or Raffles or like, you lived the life of your audience

52:12

and like going and going to Japan, going.

52:16

So we went and we would do these meetings with the client.

52:21

and they're always in some great place. So this one was in this France, like we took a helicopter to the hotel

52:27

just to get into the hotel. And so we're sitting at this pool and we would

52:32

we would pitch the line up for the next issue.

52:35

Right. And there was a there was a section in the magazine called Quick Study

52:40

and it was basically and these writers were from, you know, like

52:46

like Denise, it was freelance writer is from the top publications

52:49

around the world writing for this and so I had seen this thing called,

52:55

the Wayne Gretzky fantasy camp.

52:57

And, I don't know where I saw it, but,

53:01

I thought, wow, this would be perfect for a quick study,

53:03

which is essentially a writer sort of immerses themselves

53:06

in a world for a short amount of time and gets to experience that world.

53:11

It's a two page spread in the magazine.

53:13

Yeah. And so this Gretzky camp was like $9,999, of course.

53:18

And and, the trouble was that Wayne was associated.

53:24

I don't know if he still is with Ford of Canada, like.

53:26

Oh, okay. And so Lexus, but I so I mean, the guy, like, we're sitting

53:32

with the client in the pool in the East, it's like hotter than shit.

53:36

I think there were like four there, like fires.

53:38

It was really hot, just like 2003.

53:43

and so we get around to like my part and I so I did buy,

53:46

like my spiel and talked about, Lexus was actually at the time,

53:51

they were sponsoring a lot of they were like, sponsoring,

53:54

like the Florida Panthers arena. And, I mean, hockey's not cheap, you know, and,

54:00

Lexus was a was a brand that was attached already to hockey.

54:05

like, if you drove a Lexus, you could get,

54:09

like VIP parking at these arenas.

54:12

And so they were like privileges, like Lexus Club.

54:15

And so they were like, wow, this sounds great.

54:17

And you play hockey. so it was a

54:20

week, and I this is when Wayne was,

54:23

attached to the coyotes and they were playing in Glendale.

54:28

so I flew from Seattle

54:31

and I spent a week at the fantasy camp.

54:34

So it was like him. It was basically a lot of the old Edmonton Oilers coffee and Paul Coffee.

54:41

Glen Anderson.

54:45

let's see. Wayne's dad.

54:49

so they took there was a lot of like LA celebrities

54:52

that, like, flew in like the like,

54:56

no, I don't think Cuba Gooding Junior was at that one, but like,

54:58

there's a kind of like, a little raft of LA

55:01

hockey celebrities.

55:04

and so they, we did like, a skate.

55:07

They basically drafted everybody into four teams for the week.

55:11

And our, Wayne's dad was our coach for the week.

55:15

Yeah, that was Mike with my coach.

55:18

And then you got to you got to play a certain number of games were guaranteed.

55:23

And then there was like a play a tournament to win the Gretzky Cup. And,

55:28

so you played against Wayne and you played with Wayne on your team,

55:33

and he didn't wear a helmet, you know, so nobody would hit him.

55:38

We had every every year they camp was a different team that he played on.

55:42

So that year it was the New York Rangers.

55:44

Yeah. And so they have like Masai they, you got treated like a pro athlete for the day.

55:51

So we played at the Coyotes practice facility.

55:53

Then the finals were at the where they, the Coyotes played.

55:58

And our team made it all the way to the final. And then we won and. Yeah.

56:02

And so where that night

56:06

they had like the award ceremony and I was hanging out,

56:10

I was hanging out outside because you could bring a friend.

56:12

So I brought my college roommate and, we were, like, hanging out

56:16

outside the room, and this car pulls up and this guy gets out,

56:20

and he goes and opens the trunk, and there's this big black case.

56:24

And I was like, looking at my friend Jeff. And I was like, I think that's the guy.

56:28

I think that's the Stanley Cup guy, the guy I fell on my bike

56:32

and, and Wayne had had the cups brought in.

56:36

And so our team that had won, we each got,

56:42

signed original Wayne Gretzky stick and he's a left handed,

56:47

the steering. And then they brought the cup in and we each got to, to raise the cup.

56:53

Oh, my. You know, it was insane.

56:56

And then I'm thinking, like, at one point, like, I look up like.

56:59

And I'm, like, supposed to guard Wayne. I'm going into the corner.

57:02

It was like Wayne Gretzky. And then. And then I'm on.

57:05

And then he's on our team. And like, you're standing up the ice and you see Paul Coffey

57:10

is like, laughing you as the defenseman on the left side.

57:13

So I wrote the article.

57:16

I wrote an article. We did a video for Lexus. And then,

57:20

after it came out, I sent a couple copies to Wayne's representatives.

57:25

And then, like, in the mail one day I got a package back, and he had

57:30

he took one of the copies and wrote like a handwritten

57:33

note on the article, like, you know, great.

57:36

You know, thanks for the article. Great. You know, Wayne.

57:40

And then, I have, like, signed score sheets in my house with me assisting,

57:44

you know, Wayne and and then and, and I mean, by that time, like

57:48

I was out of obviously out of college, out of playing like competitive hockey.

57:52

And I'm like, how do you go back to beer League after this?

57:56

Like, everything is a disappointment

57:59

year after year. Yeah. Oh no. Yeah. No.

58:02

It was like I mean, I grew up playing tennis with, on basketball courts

58:06

outside with tennis balls, trying to shoot between the fence posts.

58:10

And I kid from Seattle, you know, not not supposed to end up playing hockey with Wayne Gretzky.

58:15

So it was it was, it was pretty.

58:18

I still have, yeah, I have, I have a couple of pucks here and I have the sticks and,

58:24

has pretty magical.

58:26

well, so you're.

58:28

I think we can qualify you as a Canadian.

58:31

Yeah. Okay. That's it. You know, just just by virtue of that, that connection,

58:36

the one one degree of separation with Wayne Gretzky that, you know,

58:39

we all have as Canadians. So, yeah. Yeah.

58:41

Well, welcome. Welcome to Canada. Yeah. Thank you.

58:46

What a fascinating story. What a ride. You've had this. So cool.

58:50

I mean, I think, you know, the thing the thing is, like, I've got,

58:53

I mean, in design, you know, like David Curson and,

58:58

I, I've met a lot of people

59:01

that, you know, you, you hear of, like, icons.

59:04

Some great, some not great when you meet them.

59:07

Sure. but, Wayne is that is as advertised,

59:12

you know, super humble, great collaborator.

59:16

And, you know, I think I, I mean, I didn't I got to spend some like one on one time

59:21

because we did, we did a shoot and everything with him.

59:24

But where I could really tell

59:28

about who he was was,

59:31

by having his dad,

59:35

with us that week. Yeah. Because

59:40

you could tell the kind of person that Wayne turned out to be

59:44

by how his dad was around the

59:48

the guys and, he the funny part was, he,

59:52

he was sort of like, I don't have time to remember any of your names.

59:56

So he just basically would map every player to a player that Wayne played with.

1:00:02

So, like, he, he I remember in the finals,

1:00:04

like we were up by like one, but there was like a minute left or something.

1:00:08

And he's like he would call me Jeff Bookaboo who played for like the Rangers.

1:00:13

And he's like good.

1:00:16

Go into the corner and just do whatever you can to hold

1:00:19

the puck holder up against the corner so we can run out the clock.

1:00:23

He's like I don't care if it's dirty I don't care. It's like we need the win.

1:00:26

And I remember just going in the corner and I'm like,

1:00:29

you're not going to tell no to Wayne Gretzky.

1:00:33

And I have a copy of that.

1:00:35

it was the last cover that he was on for ESPN magazine,

1:00:40

and I have that in my hand in our in our house

1:00:44

with Wayne and Wayne's dad.

1:00:47

signed on it, so it pretty. It's pretty special.

1:00:50

Yeah. No kidding. What a that's a that's amazing.

1:00:54

Thank you for sharing that story that just, you know, makes me feel so good

1:00:58

knowing that connection exists.

1:01:01

okay, so I have a question for you. And it's one of my favorite parts of the show, and,

1:01:07

there's people out in the world that are

1:01:10

exploring and doing different things, whatever they happen to be.

1:01:12

Some people are like the, you know, their CEO is deciding to do a new venture.

1:01:16

Other people are maybe students in marketing who are just like, I want to,

1:01:20

I want to care about something. I want to do this.

1:01:22

Well, I'll call these people rebels in waiting because they haven't quite right yet.

1:01:26

What advice would you give to those rebels in waiting to

1:01:30

how to take that next step or how to take the plunge?

1:01:34

Yeah, I remember,

1:01:37

I remember at Lexus they had these different demographics for the customers, and one of them was called Maverick,

1:01:42

you know, and it's fun.

1:01:45

It's it was kind of funny because to, to think about working with a brand

1:01:48

that had a category to describe something or somebody that really didn't

1:01:54

fit in a category, like it felt almost

1:01:59

like they had like they have like this stretch family

1:02:02

who like it was a it was like a reach to own a Lexus.

1:02:06

They had. And then they had like the Maverick.

1:02:08

And I remember like reading it and going, oh, God.

1:02:11

Like and then and then, you know,

1:02:13

like when I moved over at BMW, they had a different word for it.

1:02:18

But I think for me,

1:02:22

and I think this is probably true, like outside of marketing our brand,

1:02:25

like this is a true thing about the just like life in general is that the

1:02:31

I was like one of those people that would, like,

1:02:33

write the letter to the editor or pitch the thing about Gretzky

1:02:37

or even like with the house, like reach out to Olson couldn't

1:02:41

dig and say, hey, we're going to do this or the train or the thing.

1:02:44

And I think, I don't think there's any accidents about rebels.

1:02:48

Like, I don't think rebel. I don't think I think people who, whether you call yourself or that

1:02:53

or a maverick, like they're people who act on their instinct, you know, and

1:02:58

and even if they know something else, they have like an instinct that they know.

1:03:03

Well, I couldn't do it this way. And I kind of know the outcome.

1:03:06

They always sort of pivot to the, to the, the, the dangerous thing.

1:03:11

And they're okay sort of operating without a safety net,

1:03:15

you know, because if you do try and mess,

1:03:21

it's still more exciting than if you didn't try.

1:03:24

Yeah. You know, and I think I think that's, you know, there was this great

1:03:28

I don't know if you ever thought it was a documentary called Hardened Copy.

1:03:32

No, it was just her advertising.

1:03:35

And George Lois was on there and he was talking about,

1:03:39

he was he was talking about, like, how he came up with that idea for,

1:03:43

Calvin Klein when he did the big billboard in Times Square, and he

1:03:47

it was like all the greats. It was like I fell on the blank.

1:03:50

And then he had Calvin Klein's name on there, and Calvin Klein's like, I was so nervous.

1:03:54

I was just like this shy fashion designer.

1:03:56

And he's like, look, you can either be brave and bold

1:03:59

and do something and then figure it out later, or you can spend a shit

1:04:03

ton of money in advertising to to try to get to the same place.

1:04:07

And he's like, he's like, people got to remember, like the water is not,

1:04:12

you know, 50ft deep and full of sharks.

1:04:15

A lot of times it's like two feet deep. Thank you.

1:04:18

And so it's really not that risky, right?

1:04:21

It's really not and I, I think

1:04:26

I the other thing I would say is, and I'm a big proponent of this because I had good

1:04:31

creative mentors tell me this is never stop doing personal work,

1:04:36

you know, like creatively, because I got to the point where I was

1:04:39

look at when I was looking at design portfolios or photography portfolios,

1:04:44

I always tell people,

1:04:47

students, whatever, kind of like

1:04:49

in your book, I'm looking for like a consistency of fundamentals.

1:04:53

Like, do you have the tools to get up to the mountain?

1:04:57

check. But what I really wanted to see was like, what are you doing when you're not doing

1:05:02

what you're doing? Because I think that area that's like the risk reward,

1:05:07

that's the fundamentals are just sort of like oxygen

1:05:10

that everybody is required to have to be in this industry.

1:05:14

But it's the stuff that you're sort of surrounding.

1:05:18

Like, and.

1:05:20

And that's, that's like for me, even like this,

1:05:23

the studio project or the house projects, they weren't like graphic design

1:05:28

or branding projects, but they were

1:05:31

they were, personal projects that like, now

1:05:34

actually out of this project, I,

1:05:38

I am working on two train related projects,

1:05:43

you know what I mean? So you just you don't and and you know, five years ago, I mean,

1:05:49

I had a model train growing out that five years ago, I wouldn't even like what?

1:05:52

Like, what are you talking about? Trains, you know,

1:05:55

and it's you you don't know where those personal projects are going to go.

1:05:59

And I think the personal projects, I always try to have a personal project.

1:06:04

So when I, when I, talk about like what's what's coming next

1:06:09

or whatever, like, analog of personal project

1:06:13

helps me get through some of those, you know,

1:06:17

some of those moments when I'm maybe doing, like the pixel perfect thing.

1:06:21

This is where it's more just like riding a bicycle.

1:06:24

Yeah. You know, like you're practicing the craft that you do.

1:06:28

You look down and you realize, like, you're still on

1:06:31

the peloton, you're not like, actually outside.

1:06:33

You're not like dodging a ball. Like you're not really taking a lot of risk, right?

1:06:37

Yeah. So I think that's

1:06:41

for me like the personal projects and just

1:06:45

the, the risks,

1:06:47

the risks concert like and baby steps.

1:06:50

I find that, like, now, for me, taking a risk is not a big deal.

1:06:55

I think it's because I've taken a lot.

1:06:58

Some of them I failed, some of them I have succeeded.

1:07:01

But I think you have to. It's like the 10,000 hours thing.

1:07:04

I think as you move through the risks, the risks seem less risky or and it's not.

1:07:10

I think the other thing is, I think people going back to that comment

1:07:14

about coming out, like you think you need to work for the big brands.

1:07:18

Yeah, I actually think like

1:07:21

I have clients now that I worked with like 25 years.

1:07:23

And some of those projects are not shoot, they're not huge brands,

1:07:28

but they're fantastic stories. And because of the trust and relationship that you get with a client like that,

1:07:36

you can then go tell that story to another client

1:07:40

that may be bigger, but you get to do so much more of that.

1:07:44

Like for for this client I'm working with on the app, like I'm, I'm

1:07:48

designing an app. I'm designing everything around building that world for this specific project,

1:07:54

things that like even my wife's like, why are you picking out, you know,

1:07:59

why are you designing uniforms? Why are you like and and and I think

1:08:04

it's kind of like if you state that these are

1:08:08

the only things that you do, then that's all you're going to get hired for it.

1:08:11

But if you solve bigger problems and if you can help take a client

1:08:15

like from the station out to the way, you know, then they're going to trust you

1:08:19

to solve those bigger things. And I think if you have a it's a fine line between

1:08:24

if you have the confidence which is backed up by the work,

1:08:28

then that shows and they're going to take that journey with you.

1:08:32

And I think those I've gone to work on the big stuff

1:08:35

and what I realize is the big stuff is really fun.

1:08:39

It's sort of like the frosting, right?

1:08:42

Like you get ahead of it and you're like, but it's not just in

1:08:47

the some of the bigger, bigger, bigger brands.

1:08:50

They're in the they're in a risk management stance.

1:08:54

Like they don't want to f things up totally.

1:08:57

And so you're going to do incremental

1:08:59

evolutions or elevations of existing things.

1:09:02

Yeah. It's not a playground for invention.

1:09:06

So yeah.

1:09:08

Holy St Louis, I could I could talk with you for hours

1:09:12

and I expect that we will I'm going to we're going to have to do this again.

1:09:16

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because I feel,

1:09:18

I feel like we're just sort of scratched the surface of all this stuff.

1:09:21

Oh, man, I have one. I have like one more super quick one.

1:09:25

Yeah. It's like super quick. So me if this, this was like,

1:09:31

this is like a year and a half ago. So I was working on

1:09:35

is. Right. Right. Right after McDonald's launched their,

1:09:39

that they're like world famous app, you know, the

1:09:42

where you can basically, you know, you can order.

1:09:44

You can order before you go. Yeah.

1:09:47

Wait curbside pick it up, so on and so forth.

1:09:49

So the app is just like a treasure trove of data, right?

1:09:53

Sure. They they can tell

1:09:56

you know, what you're eating, what you're ordering.

1:09:59

But if you step back almost like that, in this power of ten,

1:10:02

you can look at the whole map of the United States and say, well,

1:10:06

what are people ordering in Washington? What are people ordering?

1:10:10

So, we had a remit to create sort of,

1:10:15

a year in review of the data

1:10:18

from, from that app.

1:10:21

And that app went from like zero, you know,

1:10:25

followers or people that had downloaded like 20 million in like six months.

1:10:30

It was insane. And so,

1:10:33

I was working with, I was working with the art director,

1:10:38

I'll mention his name because I like this isn't

1:10:41

his name is Michael Lee. And,

1:10:44

you know, we our remote was actually not huge, but it was cool.

1:10:49

So we basically all we did was we came up with this idea of a for annual report,

1:10:54

and it's sort of like taking this sort of stodgy,

1:10:58

but I guess, or like in time, like annual reports were really cool

1:11:01

in the design world for a while before they then sort of died off.

1:11:05

But we sort of took this annual report,

1:11:08

married it with sort of like a yearbook type thing.

1:11:11

And we we looked at the data and we created this huge poster.

1:11:14

I mean, I think it was like 17 by 24 or 24 by 36.

1:11:20

He he is like a super talented,

1:11:24

graphic designer, but also illustrator.

1:11:26

And he, he was,

1:11:28

at the, at an agency and,

1:11:32

I was, I was a, from contractor,

1:11:34

that they had hired me to run this project for McDonald's.

1:11:39

And so we're like, what if we build this visual world,

1:11:43

McDonald's have this illustrative style that was actually,

1:11:46

I think, designed by Buck the, the company

1:11:49

that does like they do a lot of illustration and animation.

1:11:52

So we took all the data and we created basically this visual illustration of the data.

1:11:57

I love it. there was like,

1:12:01

Michael loves VW busses. So it was like a VW bus, kind of, generically going

1:12:06

through the drive through that was in grimace color, you know,

1:12:10

and there was some sort of like coins to denote,

1:12:15

the rewards that you get for using the app.

1:12:18

There were some of the old school classic McDonald's

1:12:21

characters hiding, you know.

1:12:24

right. Guys. Yeah. Fry guy having because nostalgia

1:12:29

and diving into the culture of McDonald's and,

1:12:32

and then we made versions we made like 24 versions of the poster.

1:12:36

So, so like, fans,

1:12:39

like influencers, fans of the brand received the poster.

1:12:44

And then it would also might have, like a tweet that they had tweeted

1:12:47

about their, like, love of something.

1:12:50

And then it had breakdown data of, like

1:12:54

fry, like fries are the most, chosen item in this state or whatever.

1:12:59

So it was like the it was, you can Google. I was like the I think it was the 2022 McDonald's annual report.

1:13:06

And it was like this, this is this.

1:13:08

It could have been it literally could have been a word cloud.

1:13:12

And I'm sure it would have been fine. Right. It could have been

1:13:16

you know. This is so much better.

1:13:19

It could have been vanilla, but it was in living color. And,

1:13:24

I just remember, I think

1:13:26

sometimes you get a brief and you can some

1:13:31

there's an instinct to sort of like close your box to really small.

1:13:36

Sure. And,

1:13:38

I think the rebels

1:13:41

start from sort of an infinite

1:13:44

ground. Right. And they, they actually start at the edges.

1:13:51

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

1:13:55

Oh okay. Well, I'm going to put all the links to the stuff in the show okay.

1:13:59

Yeah. Because I, I'm going to Google this right now as soon as.

1:14:02

Yeah I'll, I'll send you a link to you so you can see you can see it, but,

1:14:06

that's outstanding. Yeah. Lou,

1:14:08

thank you so much for spending so much time with me and sharing your story.

1:14:12

This has been an absolute treasure trove.

1:14:16

Awesome. Thanks for having me. And, you know, I don't quite fly the pirates flag outside

1:14:21

here, but, like, it's in my heart and my mind and,

1:14:26

and, it's definitely on my Instagram.

1:14:29

I have the little pirate flag, and I think you can

1:14:32

you can be a responsible but brave pirate today.

1:14:35

You know, whether you're operating in a, in a,

1:14:39

in different environments for more risk taking the word conservative.

1:14:44

I think if you care about the work, if you're

1:14:47

I think if you are a good collaborator and care for the people you work with,

1:14:53

you know, put the medicine in the candy.

1:14:57

Don't put the candy in the medicine.

1:15:00

Oh, I love it. Thank you. Live. Yeah. Thank you.

1:15:04

I've been your host, Michael Dargie and this has been the RebelRebel Podcast

1:15:07

a podcast for creative rebels and entrepreneurs all over the world.

1:15:10

And hey, if you're a rebel or, you know, a rebel, why don't you head on over

1:15:14

to TheRebelRebelPodcast.com and fill out our guest request form.

1:15:18

We'll get back to you within 24 hours, and maybe we can share your story

1:15:22

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