August 5, 2024 • 41 mins
Jocelyne talks about her career, from the early days of pure graphics design all the way to the current world of AI.
Joss is the multi- Emmy award winning owner of Big Studios Inc. directing the design and production process from initial concept to final product, specializing in network brand launches, re-brands, and graphics for a variety of media, including commercials, news, sports, and lifestyle content. Their work emphasizes the development of brand narratives and visual identities, market strategy, and enhancing viewer experiences.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is Design Voices with Daniel Trainer.
(00:04):
We're going to hear from industry professionals
and leaders in the field of design.
Today, we're joined by.
Jocelyn Minert.
I've been in design of some sort or another.
I graduated in the early 80s
at the beginning of the computer graphics movement
for visual creation.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
And I guess to get right into it,
(00:27):
could you tell us a little bit about your journey
into the world of design?
What initially drew you into this field?
My university education was pure graphic design,
but then I got the bug for computer graphics.
And luckily it was at a time were computer graphics
really needed interested artists.
(00:47):
My career path tracked along with the growth
of the use of computers for image creation,
which as we know now is pretty much the people
who sketched by hand,
truly sketched by hand and designed by hand,
other than sort of initial cocktail napkin sketches
(01:07):
for logos and things like that.
Almost everybody is using a computer in one way or another
to start the creative process or create finished results.
So my background, I start, I mean, I think personally,
I sort of made a decision in high school about whether
I wanted to follow the path of the arts
(01:30):
or the path of medicine.
Somehow I think they're related,
but I think I chose the arts.
Well, I chose the arts because I felt
that the world needed more communicators
and people who could art bring something to a culture,
not that medicine isn't incredibly important,
(01:50):
but art brings something to a culture
that is sort of hard to define,
but really I think critical.
And some cultures embrace the arts much more
enthusiastically than the West.
We value business and work ethic and things like that,
(02:11):
but yeah, that was my personal decision.
So studied graphic design and then fell into
computer graphics as a tool really.
And that's really been the growth path
moving from pure graphic design into motion graphics.
(02:33):
And then the evolution of motion graphics has been,
I usually use the term quadratic, but it's been massive.
I remember being at a SIGGRAPH conference in the mid 80s.
This is back when John Lasseter first showed up
and Chris Wedge who did Ice Age.
(02:54):
We all know John Lasseter, the creative director of Pixar.
And all these people who were interested
in making pictures with computers
are communicating by using,
making visuals with computers.
And the excitement was very palpable.
You know, we were, you know,
(03:19):
things were happening as we were talking.
And I remember one fellow, and this would be now 15,
like 35, almost 40 years ago, saying one day
we will have synthetic humans
that are completely believable, completely photo real.
If I remember correctly, he got laughed off the stage,
(03:41):
but I remember thinking things are moving so fast
with computers.
I know that there's a Ray Kurzweil prediction
having to do with the, oh my gosh, what's it called?
Where we can't keep up with ourselves essentially
in terms of technology and AI is one aspect of that.
(04:05):
But, oh my God, it's gonna drive me crazy now.
But anyway, so things have just,
the growth has been exponential
and it's been really, really fun to be part of that.
So yeah, yeah.
And the work that we do has grown so much
from what I learned at university
in terms of typography, you know, page composition,
(04:27):
color space, you know, symmetry, asymmetry,
the use of white space, all of the graphic design basics,
you know, what's the point of tension?
What makes a design look relaxed?
All of that stuff, all those tenets really hold true.
But the world in which all of those tenets are expressed
(04:49):
and how they're expressed has just exploded.
It's just exploded.
It's been amazing.
Now, when we look at design philosophy and process,
how would you describe your design philosophy?
What core principles guide your work?
The number one thing that we always talk about
is storytelling.
(05:10):
Whether you're designing a logo
or whether you're doing a campaign,
whether you're doing a branding, a rebrand,
or launching a brand, whether we're creating literally,
you know, a Netflix show with walking, talking characters,
it's all storytelling.
We ask ourselves, if you're doing a logo design,
(05:33):
who is this person and what is their story?
And how do we express that story typographically
or symbolically?
So I think we're in the middle of a branding project
right now with a very, very interesting individual
that is an elite athlete.
(05:56):
And the questions, you know, the brand exercises
that we go through always relate to,
what are your core values?
What makes you different from your, you know,
people who you might be in competition with?
What are your goals?
But these are all stories that this person will tell
(06:18):
about what's important to them.
So I think that our job is really fundamentally storytelling,
but then you add in, so we need to understand
your personality, we need to understand your values,
we need to understand your goals.
What is it you want to accomplish from hiring us
(06:39):
to do A, B, C, or D?
For instance, like who's, and that's where it becomes
very practical, which is, I want to increase my viewership,
I want to bring in a younger demographic.
We've completely changed the way we look at it.
We've completely changed our product.
We, you know, we completely, we're relaunching everything.
(07:03):
So there's a lot of times there's very specific tangibles,
but then it's our job to tell that story.
So, and how do we tell that story in a way that meets
their goals, like, you know, that is memorable,
is eye-catching, that does the job, and more.
(07:26):
We don't, we never sort of say,
hey, we just want to get this done.
We always say, we want to knock their socks off.
So it starts with story, but I think always challenging
yourself to be brilliant, to be innovative.
I think I do a lot of judging for the Emmys.
I judge the kids Emmys, the sports Emmys,
(07:47):
the news and documentary Emmys.
And the thing that I look for most is innovation,
not just design excellence, but something that is like,
whoa, that is just remarkable.
I've never seen anything like that.
That's so cool how they thought about this
and how they approached this.
So I think that the fundamental of storytelling,
(08:11):
but, you know, ultimately the goal is to tell the story
in a compelling way, in a memorable way,
and something that impresses you as an artist.
It's like, wow, I'm really, really excited
about what we're doing here.
You know, you're onto something
and you want to stay up late to finish it, you know.
Is it possible for you to describe this process,
(08:33):
typical from concept to final execution?
How does that work?
Absolutely.
So because we work in many different forms of design
and visualization and visual content creation,
I'll just sort of be kind of general.
The first thing is, or the first two things
(08:55):
that are kind of intertwined is reference gathering
and understanding the landscape.
So reference gathering is kind of like, okay,
we've been hired or maybe we're pitching.
We have to understand the landscape
upon which we are designing.
Who else exists on this landscape?
(09:17):
You know, good, bad, or ugly?
And who's the most successful?
Who do we feel is the closest competitor?
And what are they doing in this space
and what makes them successful or not successful?
Then from the, and reference gathering,
we call those mood boards or care sheets.
And this is something that we usually share with the client,
(09:38):
which is us gathering visuals
and sometimes there's some of our initial thoughts as well,
but usually it's visuals from anywhere and everywhere.
And we put them together on, you know, in some kind of deck
and then we walk through these with the client
and we talk about what strikes them.
(09:59):
And that, and this is a process,
some of the process of elimination.
Oh, we really don't want anything like that.
We, this is something that's very attractive to us.
What kind of color space do they gravitate towards?
We even get into audio.
Like what is the soundtrack of this initiative?
Is it rock and roll?
Is it rap?
(10:19):
Is it classical?
Is it a lot of, you know, a lot of brass?
You know, is it, so, so then we move into original Look Dev
and that is, you know, we try and keep that
as interactive as possible.
Discussing all the reference, discussing their competitors,
discussing, you know, the tear sheets helps us sort of
(10:44):
narrow our focus or like bring our focus in.
And then we can start original work.
But if we're working with somebody new,
we usually try and present a half a dozen to a dozen pages
of initial thinking.
And this is actually when we're actively working.
(11:05):
It's not a pitch.
This is when we're actively working on a project.
So then, and then we get more feedback
and then we can move into actual production
of what we call primary elements.
Usually when we have a project, motion graphics project,
there are a list of deliverables, the things,
the items that we have to create as part of our contract.
(11:28):
So we divide those into primary elements,
the elements that are the most important
that will be seen the most.
You know, this could be, it could be social.
It could be out of home elements,
but generally it's what is going to start off a program.
And that would be the title sequence.
But we have to support that title sequence
(11:50):
with interstitials, with promo pages,
sometimes with information graphics known as insert graphics,
especially in sports and news.
So they were the, they have little information bars
that come up with people's names
and stats and things like that.
So that form, you know, that aspect of motion graphics
(12:13):
or anything that appears on, that's not static,
you know, you want to, that's a really, really big part of it.
So we start working on, we divide,
we usually divide a project up into tiers,
which is primary tier elements that really define
that they're the pillars of the project.
And then the secondary ones sort of peel off from those.
(12:37):
They're distinct, they're different, but we're fault.
We now have the DNA that we can follow.
And then the third level are usually things
that are iterative that don't require much original thinking,
but they're variations.
It might be, for instance, say we have an interstitial
(12:57):
that is, that has a sponsor graphic
that includes the sponsor graphic
and there might be seven sponsors.
So we use the same template and just swap the sponsors.
So that's not, that's not necessarily original
unless the sponsor logo requires some alteration
(13:19):
to the template.
And that would be, again, usually in our case,
an After Effects project that we can sort of,
what we call version out.
So those are usually the three tiers.
We tend not to do like other,
a lot of other studios, design studios,
we do not do storyboards or style frames.
(13:39):
Normally we jump right into motion testing
and finish style frames.
Once we have a pretty good handle on our Look Dev,
we don't, yeah, we find that we can work,
the time that it takes for us to do
a really beautiful storyboard,
(14:01):
we might as well be working in motion.
So that's generally how we get around the bases
pretty quickly.
So then the process again for us in motion graphics
is after we have our pipeline established,
then we do boards and our style frames
and our motion tests for the primary elements.
(14:24):
Then we do render tests
and then we do compositing and finishing.
And then we use it multiple 3D and 2D apps.
We, Houdini, Harmony, which is, sorry, a 2D animation.
We use Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max,
more and more Unreal,
which we've been pushing for a very long time,
(14:45):
which we'll talk about later.
Arnold for rendering, V-Ray for rendering,
Redshift for rendering.
The other thing that's really important
that started I think about 20 years ago was file sharing.
Generally speaking, our work product
(15:06):
is not the finished design, our work product.
We actually, our clients expect to get our working files.
They just don't want the cake, they want the cookbook.
So we give them our recipes.
And the reason we have no issue,
that used to be a big no-no.
(15:27):
You can have the cake, but you don't get the recipe.
That's not what you paid for.
But now that's not the way it is.
We have to really be embedded
with our clients' internal design group.
We have to be their allies
and we have to understand how they're going to work
(15:48):
with this project internally,
everything from naming conventions to folder structure,
to typography licenses will suggest fonts,
but they have to buy the fonts
and license the fonts for their use, et cetera,
because we have to be very careful
with the same thing with imagery.
If we're not shooting original footage,
(16:12):
all footage licenses have to go through the client
because they're the ones that own it.
We can buy a studio license to work with images,
but ultimately all of that needs to be owned
and licensed by the client for their use.
So yeah, and music of course always comes
into the process as well.
Working with the composers is a lot of fun.
(16:33):
What's your framework for approaching new design briefs?
How do you interpret and then translate them
into a creative concept?
Design briefs are coming in many shapes and sizes.
So it really, really depends
on what we see when we read a brief,
(16:55):
how many questions we have,
but the first thing to do with the new design brief
is find out what's missing
and sort of identify what's missing, identify what's there.
What meat is on the bone
and what can we really sink our teeth into
and what questions do we have that we feel are important?
(17:19):
And one of those quite often is music
and other ones could be, what do we stay away from?
But we just actually got an RFP from a client
we haven't worked with before.
And we have a ton of questions about their goals.
(17:41):
What are their goals?
And so what are their goals?
Like, I don't know, personality wise,
how do they see themselves?
You can say things like, if you were a superhero,
what superhero would you be?
Or who are the product designers out there that you like?
(18:06):
What commercial have you seen?
Or what movie have you seen?
What music video have you seen recently
that you thought was just kick ass
and you felt was relatable?
So the big thing about RFPs is really understanding
what information is there that is important for you
to be paying attention to, like in terms of weight,
(18:30):
like how weighty is this seems like the most important thing.
This is the lightning rod
or this is the North Star of this RFP,
sorry, request for a design brief.
And here's some ancillary information,
but if we feel like we don't have a clear grasp
(18:50):
of the North Star,
then that's when we need a meaningful conversation.
And the other thing about briefs
is connecting with the people.
It's a very, design is a very human undertaking
and listening to them speak,
understanding their ethos.
(19:15):
And then the movies start
and the pictures start appearing in your mind.
As a designer almost instantly,
when you start talking, ideas start popping up
and I'm always writing things down
in our first meeting,
well actually in all our meetings,
but there's things.
(19:36):
And as you see your design group
start to get traction,
more and more ideas come,
ideas generate ideas, generate ideas.
So for us, as far as design briefs go,
it's really, again, understanding their North Star,
understanding, if they can speak visually,
(20:00):
descriptively, that's great.
Sometimes we work with people who can't visualize
their way out of a wet paper bag.
And then that's hard because they won't know
what they like until they see it.
But if we have a really good tear sheet
or mood board session,
that will really help us and help them understand
(20:26):
where we're going, what our direction is.
So I'm gonna have to ask,
who or what are your major influences
when it comes to design?
Is there anything in particular
that comes straight to mind when you look at concepts?
The only thing I would really say about that is,
I don't have, I mean, there are designers that I like,
of course, and admire and appreciate.
(20:47):
So everything from how car lights
shine through a picket fence at night
as they swing around in the shadows that they throw.
It's like, I pull from theater,
I pull from opera, set design I'm referring to,
album covers, what I see on a concert stage.
(21:09):
And again, that you just look at people
that are really beautiful visualists,
and it's just being open to everything.
The world is where your ideas come from.
Now, as we move into the visual media
and visual communications topic,
we know visual media plays a crucial role
(21:31):
in brand identity and viewer engagement.
How do you approach the creation of visual media
to ensure that they're both memorable,
but also that they're effective?
I think I would say categorically that our goal,
our individual goals as designers
and top designers in our field
(21:51):
is always to be memorable and always to be effective.
That, first of all,
comes from understanding desired outcomes.
Also understanding thresholds for innovation.
I think that the idea of being memorable
(22:13):
often is related to innovation.
Like in other words, I've not seen that before,
or I'm gonna remember that.
But it also can be relate,
it's also very strongly related,
gosh, I'm gonna get into the weeds here.
Brands, we always sort of say that people can get,
(22:34):
their eyes can roll back into their head
when you start talking about brand exercises.
But if you talk about brand as a person or as a relationship,
or even you use the word love,
like the way, I love this brand so much,
I'm going to wear it on my body.
Like I'm going to wear that t-shirt.
(22:54):
I'm going to wear the Nike hat.
I'm going to only ever buy Adidas.
It's kind of like, I'm only ever going to drink this pop,
or whatever it is, whatever brand it is
that you connect with.
I think it's emotional.
(23:17):
I think in the end, and this goes back to storytelling,
that you sort of say,
I want to do something different,
but it can't be different for the sake of being different.
It has to be really on point
for what the desired outcomes are.
So understanding the thresholds,
(23:39):
for instance, a lot of times people say,
I want something really new,
really like that's just going to be wild.
And there's very few people who really mean that,
especially for large corporations,
because they have a board of directors to answer to.
They have marketing people and marketing analysts.
(24:01):
They have research.
They have all kinds of things
that will be brought into the equation.
But we would generally,
we would prefer to be dialed back than nudged forward.
So we can come out swinging with some really,
really over the top,
(24:23):
or really, really big ideas.
And then they'll say, it's too much.
But again, we'll usually find that out
when we do the mood board exercise.
So, you sort of say, take risks,
go too far, get dialed back.
(24:44):
But getting dialed back is not a setback.
It's something,
it's just bringing your focus where it needs to be.
The one thing that is difficult
is there's not many metrics for success in motion graphics.
(25:05):
Like you look at, for instance, the opening,
the new opening for House of the Dragons,
something that's not necessarily commercial.
What did they pay for that?
And what does it bring to the show?
How does it,
it's certainly a memorable opening.
(25:25):
I've heard a lot of people say,
we really like this opening.
We like it more than the first season's opening.
But it's one of those things,
what has it brought to the game?
How does it justify its cost?
Is it something that's going to translate
(25:47):
into something that's marketable like T-shirts
or other merch that can be sold
as part of the fan base of House of Dragons
and Game of Thrones?
So, the metrics for success in design,
the only metrics that we can really, really count on
(26:10):
is in commercial sales.
And that has to do with selling a product.
But there's so much design out there
that is not related to selling a product
that the measure of success lies,
sometimes it's not quantifiable.
(26:31):
And sometimes, say for instance,
a perfect example actually for great design
or memorable design or getting the word out
is a presidential election.
How do they do their messaging?
And how do they make sure that what they're saying
and what they're doing is really, really disseminated
(26:53):
and really well understood?
So, I think for instance, the get out the vote movement,
the get out the vote posters,
the get out the vote, how do you grab people's attention?
How do you motivate them?
You'll know right away when the vote happens
whether more people showed up at the polls
(27:13):
than the previous election,
and you say, oh, we did a really good job.
But again, there's a lot of factors that go into that,
into how many people vote
and how many people are cynical about voting, et cetera.
So, I think that being memorable and being effective,
measuring that can be challenging.
(27:36):
But generally for anybody with experience, especially,
me having been in the business for almost 40 years,
you kind of know it when you see it.
And it's not in Emmy awards or design awards,
although those are always very flattering and rewarding.
(27:58):
And it's a fantastic acknowledgement.
It's really what has happened to your design
out in the world and how is it being received?
There's a lot more data now, again,
Instagram, all the different social media platforms
tell us a lot about engagement.
But in the end, the ability to be memorable and effective,
(28:25):
just starts with, again, really fantastic storytelling,
really fantastic visuals.
And ones that the client is really excited by
and you're really excited by.
It's almost like gut.
It's very entrepreneurial.
What would you say are some of the most significant changes
(28:47):
that you've seen in the field of visual media design
over the last few years?
I think, again, going back to what I learned in university
versus what we're doing now,
it's the inclusion of so many different media
in your final product.
(29:08):
For instance, you could be using photography,
you could be building practical elements
and then shooting them or incorporating them again,
depending on what your design is.
Is it physical or is it a page?
Is it moving content like animated
(29:28):
or a commercial?
So you can have practical elements,
photographic elements.
You can be out doing a shoot on set
with a production designer and a lighting designer.
It can be pure typography.
You can be using various 3D and 2D design applications.
(29:53):
There's just so much right now out there in terms of,
like before I would say,
because my design career really sort of coincided
with the beginning of computer graphics,
everything that I produced came out of a computer.
And now that's not the case.
Like, we'll be out on the street shooting stuff,
(30:15):
we'll be making things that are not in the video,
we'll be making things or having things made
that we can then shoot or using motion capture, lidar.
And again, on the technological side,
the creative technologies that are in the world today
(30:38):
are just really, really, really remarkable.
We have not gotten into AI very much.
There's a lot of arguing about the use of AI
in the visual fields.
So, the dust will settle and we'll find our way
through that particular wormhole.
(30:59):
Now we get to the interesting topic
of the role of technology.
What's something that you've seen
in this advent of digital technology
and all these new media platforms,
how has it influenced your design work,
particularly in the realm of visual media?
I would say like since the mid 80s
and that famous, whoever he was,
(31:21):
saying we're going to have photo real, believable,
synthetic actors in movies,
I think that as someone who's been using a computer
to make pictures for a very, very long time,
we have been waiting for real-time rendering,
which basically means as soon as you have created your image,
(31:46):
you see your image.
And the speed of computing of course is the,
oh, the singularity, that was the word of Raker as well,
where we kind of can't keep up with ourselves technologically.
It had to do with the CPU,
but it's one of those things where I don't know
if people are paralyzed by the number of options
(32:07):
that they have now when they're faced with a blank canvas
or whether it's just incredibly exciting
just how many things can be brought into a production.
What would you say your thoughts are
on the use of emerging technologies like AI,
augmented reality in the world of design?
Do you see them as a tool that enhances creativity
(32:28):
or as a potential challenge?
With the exception of AI, they're all tools.
They're all doors that you can walk through
into bright, shiny rooms with different colors
and different opportunities and different outcomes.
I think that sometimes it's very practical.
(32:52):
It's easier to shoot in a volume or mixed reality studio,
like the Mandalorian was the breakout article.
Mixed reality walls had existed before the Mandalorian
came to public awareness,
but that really, everybody pretty much understands
what volumes are now.
It's because we don't have the money to go to Morocco
(33:14):
and shoot on a train in the desert,
but we can create that world in Unreal
and have our actors in a big volume studio,
and we have the Moroccan desert behind them
and a train running through the scene.
So that's a lot more cost-effective
(33:34):
than actually flying the entire crew and cast to Morocco
and suffering the heat and stuff.
So there is a practical component to some of this.
I think that the AI is the one that is dynamite
or that's more explosive where we draw the line
(33:57):
and how this helps us and then evolve around it.
AI is not going away. It's definitely not going away,
and it's going to change so many aspects of our life.
I don't think we really, truly understand
what's been unleashed or what will be unleashed
(34:19):
and how this will change our world.
When it comes to creative challenges and aspirations,
what would you say are some of the biggest challenges
that you've encountered with the industry or in the industry,
and how did you navigate through them?
Super easy. Economics.
Things that are out of your control,
like the housing crisis, like 9-11.
(34:40):
Right now, the two, the WAG strike, sorry,
WGA, Writers Guild of America and SAG strike
put a lot of our world out of business for a year,
and there's been this big backwash.
So the biggest challenge for us is not new technologies,
(35:02):
not scary AI. It's been things that are beyond your control.
Those are the things that cause massive layoffs.
Besides poor management, there's a few studios
that have gone under just because the people that read
that were not very good at it or downright crooks.
(35:23):
But generally speaking, for me, my experiences
is things that happen outside your control
that really truly affect your bottom line
and your business and your artists.
Looking ahead, what are some of the goals or projects
that you aspire to achieve in the next few years?
I think we'd like to create,
(35:45):
well, I would like to create one of our own original shows
or features.
I think that it's kind of like writing a book.
It's going to exist for posterity.
Motion graphics, because it's on television,
is kind of disposable.
We only expect our work to be seen for about three or four
years before, like Monday Night Football is a perfect example.
(36:07):
They upgrade, they change out the visualization
of that particular program every three or four years,
depending on how much equity and interest people have
in the visuals and if it's created
(36:28):
at any kind of critical mass.
So yeah, so our work is relatively disposable.
This is kind of like a concert event, right?
Unless you buy the t-shirt, the concert
was something that came and went.
You have your photos.
(36:49):
So I think creating something that lasts, like a band,
will create an album.
And a writer will create a novel and a designer will create,
I don't know, a movie or a...
I mean, people still talk about some advertising commercials
that they remember as a kid.
(37:10):
And you can still probably find on YouTube.
But creating something that has some permanence
and that hopefully makes the world a better place.
You know, you look at people like, oh my gosh,
Saul Bass, just as exciting a designer in his 80s
as he was when he was in his 20s.
Now we come to universal themes in design.
In your opinion, what unites designers
(37:32):
across different cultures and disciplines
in the universal quest to create something simple, functional,
and beautiful?
I think, again, going back to what we started off with,
storytelling is human and storytelling unites the same way
that even though the stories were dark stories,
that series that we did with Netflix was a global hit.
(37:58):
There's something unifying in laughter.
There's something unifying in stories
that are essentially human.
You know, you look at brands like Nike,
how successful they are globally.
You kind of go, how is it, how is, let's do it,
or just, sorry, just do it.
(38:18):
How, Nike's brand is so successfully globally.
And I haven't looked into this.
How does it translate into French or into Icelandic
or, you know, Aboriginal languages?
How do they, how do they translate their slogan,
(38:43):
their identity, their culture around the world?
But I think that the key always with successful brands
is creating that emotional connection
that people identify and fall in love or relate.
And that's a human thing.
(39:05):
You know, the emotions and human condition
in all its forms are universal.
Again, I'd like to thank you.
This has been absolutely wonderful hearing your insights
and just to end, I guess, if you could give
one piece of advice out to aspiring designers,
what would it be?
First of all, willpower.
(39:25):
Don't give up.
I think don't give up.
Unless you're getting a lot of feedback
from people that are saying what you want to do
doesn't line up with the work that you're doing,
but only from people that you trust
and only from people that are experts
(39:45):
that can assess your work and how it lines up
with your goals, your professional goals.
Networking is really critical.
Use your connections, talk to your professors,
anybody who comes in and talks at your school,
meet with them afterwards,
ask them if they're open to mentoring.
(40:05):
You might not be, you know, a shining meteor
streaking across the sky,
but you will be designing for a living.
It could be working with a very large organization
in-house, making sure that all the newsletters
and, you know, in-house communication,
the advertising agency that you're working with
(40:28):
is being properly supplied and everything is being,
you know, it could be,
there's so many different places for everybody,
but basically it's willpower.
Don't give up.
Network as much as you possibly can.
Follow your heroes and work ethic.
Who you are as a person doesn't end at 5 p.m.
You're constantly thinking about your visual ideas.
(40:51):
And I think that by that kind of commitment
and showing up and being super engaged,
it's patience and perseverance and being ready for,
you know, people not responding to your emails ever
and getting a lot of that
and really making sure you've got people to support you.
This is Design Voices with Daniel Trainer.
(00:04):
We're going to hear from industry professionals
and leaders in the field of design.
Today, we're joined by.
Jocelyn Minert.
I've been in design of some sort or another.
I graduated in the early 80s
at the beginning of the computer graphics movement
for visual creation.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
And I guess to get right into it,
(00:27):
could you tell us a little bit about your journey
into the world of design?
What initially drew you into this field?
My university education was pure graphic design,
but then I got the bug for computer graphics.
And luckily it was at a time were computer graphics
really needed interested artists.
(00:47):
My career path tracked along with the growth
of the use of computers for image creation,
which as we know now is pretty much the people
who sketched by hand,
truly sketched by hand and designed by hand,
other than sort of initial cocktail napkin sketches
(01:07):
for logos and things like that.
Almost everybody is using a computer in one way or another
to start the creative process or create finished results.
So my background, I start, I mean, I think personally,
I sort of made a decision in high school about whether
I wanted to follow the path of the arts
(01:30):
or the path of medicine.
Somehow I think they're related,
but I think I chose the arts.
Well, I chose the arts because I felt
that the world needed more communicators
and people who could art bring something to a culture,
not that medicine isn't incredibly important,
(01:50):
but art brings something to a culture
that is sort of hard to define,
but really I think critical.
And some cultures embrace the arts much more
enthusiastically than the West.
We value business and work ethic and things like that,
(02:11):
but yeah, that was my personal decision.
So studied graphic design and then fell into
computer graphics as a tool really.
And that's really been the growth path
moving from pure graphic design into motion graphics.
(02:33):
And then the evolution of motion graphics has been,
I usually use the term quadratic, but it's been massive.
I remember being at a SIGGRAPH conference in the mid 80s.
This is back when John Lasseter first showed up
and Chris Wedge who did Ice Age.
(02:54):
We all know John Lasseter, the creative director of Pixar.
And all these people who were interested
in making pictures with computers
are communicating by using,
making visuals with computers.
And the excitement was very palpable.
You know, we were, you know,
(03:19):
things were happening as we were talking.
And I remember one fellow, and this would be now 15,
like 35, almost 40 years ago, saying one day
we will have synthetic humans
that are completely believable, completely photo real.
If I remember correctly, he got laughed off the stage,
(03:41):
but I remember thinking things are moving so fast
with computers.
I know that there's a Ray Kurzweil prediction
having to do with the, oh my gosh, what's it called?
Where we can't keep up with ourselves essentially
in terms of technology and AI is one aspect of that.
(04:05):
But, oh my God, it's gonna drive me crazy now.
But anyway, so things have just,
the growth has been exponential
and it's been really, really fun to be part of that.
So yeah, yeah.
And the work that we do has grown so much
from what I learned at university
in terms of typography, you know, page composition,
(04:27):
color space, you know, symmetry, asymmetry,
the use of white space, all of the graphic design basics,
you know, what's the point of tension?
What makes a design look relaxed?
All of that stuff, all those tenets really hold true.
But the world in which all of those tenets are expressed
(04:49):
and how they're expressed has just exploded.
It's just exploded.
It's been amazing.
Now, when we look at design philosophy and process,
how would you describe your design philosophy?
What core principles guide your work?
The number one thing that we always talk about
is storytelling.
(05:10):
Whether you're designing a logo
or whether you're doing a campaign,
whether you're doing a branding, a rebrand,
or launching a brand, whether we're creating literally,
you know, a Netflix show with walking, talking characters,
it's all storytelling.
We ask ourselves, if you're doing a logo design,
(05:33):
who is this person and what is their story?
And how do we express that story typographically
or symbolically?
So I think we're in the middle of a branding project
right now with a very, very interesting individual
that is an elite athlete.
(05:56):
And the questions, you know, the brand exercises
that we go through always relate to,
what are your core values?
What makes you different from your, you know,
people who you might be in competition with?
What are your goals?
But these are all stories that this person will tell
(06:18):
about what's important to them.
So I think that our job is really fundamentally storytelling,
but then you add in, so we need to understand
your personality, we need to understand your values,
we need to understand your goals.
What is it you want to accomplish from hiring us
(06:39):
to do A, B, C, or D?
For instance, like who's, and that's where it becomes
very practical, which is, I want to increase my viewership,
I want to bring in a younger demographic.
We've completely changed the way we look at it.
We've completely changed our product.
We, you know, we completely, we're relaunching everything.
(07:03):
So there's a lot of times there's very specific tangibles,
but then it's our job to tell that story.
So, and how do we tell that story in a way that meets
their goals, like, you know, that is memorable,
is eye-catching, that does the job, and more.
(07:26):
We don't, we never sort of say,
hey, we just want to get this done.
We always say, we want to knock their socks off.
So it starts with story, but I think always challenging
yourself to be brilliant, to be innovative.
I think I do a lot of judging for the Emmys.
I judge the kids Emmys, the sports Emmys,
(07:47):
the news and documentary Emmys.
And the thing that I look for most is innovation,
not just design excellence, but something that is like,
whoa, that is just remarkable.
I've never seen anything like that.
That's so cool how they thought about this
and how they approached this.
So I think that the fundamental of storytelling,
(08:11):
but, you know, ultimately the goal is to tell the story
in a compelling way, in a memorable way,
and something that impresses you as an artist.
It's like, wow, I'm really, really excited
about what we're doing here.
You know, you're onto something
and you want to stay up late to finish it, you know.
Is it possible for you to describe this process,
(08:33):
typical from concept to final execution?
How does that work?
Absolutely.
So because we work in many different forms of design
and visualization and visual content creation,
I'll just sort of be kind of general.
The first thing is, or the first two things
(08:55):
that are kind of intertwined is reference gathering
and understanding the landscape.
So reference gathering is kind of like, okay,
we've been hired or maybe we're pitching.
We have to understand the landscape
upon which we are designing.
Who else exists on this landscape?
(09:17):
You know, good, bad, or ugly?
And who's the most successful?
Who do we feel is the closest competitor?
And what are they doing in this space
and what makes them successful or not successful?
Then from the, and reference gathering,
we call those mood boards or care sheets.
And this is something that we usually share with the client,
(09:38):
which is us gathering visuals
and sometimes there's some of our initial thoughts as well,
but usually it's visuals from anywhere and everywhere.
And we put them together on, you know, in some kind of deck
and then we walk through these with the client
and we talk about what strikes them.
(09:59):
And that, and this is a process,
some of the process of elimination.
Oh, we really don't want anything like that.
We, this is something that's very attractive to us.
What kind of color space do they gravitate towards?
We even get into audio.
Like what is the soundtrack of this initiative?
Is it rock and roll?
Is it rap?
(10:19):
Is it classical?
Is it a lot of, you know, a lot of brass?
You know, is it, so, so then we move into original Look Dev
and that is, you know, we try and keep that
as interactive as possible.
Discussing all the reference, discussing their competitors,
discussing, you know, the tear sheets helps us sort of
(10:44):
narrow our focus or like bring our focus in.
And then we can start original work.
But if we're working with somebody new,
we usually try and present a half a dozen to a dozen pages
of initial thinking.
And this is actually when we're actively working.
(11:05):
It's not a pitch.
This is when we're actively working on a project.
So then, and then we get more feedback
and then we can move into actual production
of what we call primary elements.
Usually when we have a project, motion graphics project,
there are a list of deliverables, the things,
the items that we have to create as part of our contract.
(11:28):
So we divide those into primary elements,
the elements that are the most important
that will be seen the most.
You know, this could be, it could be social.
It could be out of home elements,
but generally it's what is going to start off a program.
And that would be the title sequence.
But we have to support that title sequence
(11:50):
with interstitials, with promo pages,
sometimes with information graphics known as insert graphics,
especially in sports and news.
So they were the, they have little information bars
that come up with people's names
and stats and things like that.
So that form, you know, that aspect of motion graphics
(12:13):
or anything that appears on, that's not static,
you know, you want to, that's a really, really big part of it.
So we start working on, we divide,
we usually divide a project up into tiers,
which is primary tier elements that really define
that they're the pillars of the project.
And then the secondary ones sort of peel off from those.
(12:37):
They're distinct, they're different, but we're fault.
We now have the DNA that we can follow.
And then the third level are usually things
that are iterative that don't require much original thinking,
but they're variations.
It might be, for instance, say we have an interstitial
(12:57):
that is, that has a sponsor graphic
that includes the sponsor graphic
and there might be seven sponsors.
So we use the same template and just swap the sponsors.
So that's not, that's not necessarily original
unless the sponsor logo requires some alteration
(13:19):
to the template.
And that would be, again, usually in our case,
an After Effects project that we can sort of,
what we call version out.
So those are usually the three tiers.
We tend not to do like other,
a lot of other studios, design studios,
we do not do storyboards or style frames.
(13:39):
Normally we jump right into motion testing
and finish style frames.
Once we have a pretty good handle on our Look Dev,
we don't, yeah, we find that we can work,
the time that it takes for us to do
a really beautiful storyboard,
(14:01):
we might as well be working in motion.
So that's generally how we get around the bases
pretty quickly.
So then the process again for us in motion graphics
is after we have our pipeline established,
then we do boards and our style frames
and our motion tests for the primary elements.
(14:24):
Then we do render tests
and then we do compositing and finishing.
And then we use it multiple 3D and 2D apps.
We, Houdini, Harmony, which is, sorry, a 2D animation.
We use Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max,
more and more Unreal,
which we've been pushing for a very long time,
(14:45):
which we'll talk about later.
Arnold for rendering, V-Ray for rendering,
Redshift for rendering.
The other thing that's really important
that started I think about 20 years ago was file sharing.
Generally speaking, our work product
(15:06):
is not the finished design, our work product.
We actually, our clients expect to get our working files.
They just don't want the cake, they want the cookbook.
So we give them our recipes.
And the reason we have no issue,
that used to be a big no-no.
(15:27):
You can have the cake, but you don't get the recipe.
That's not what you paid for.
But now that's not the way it is.
We have to really be embedded
with our clients' internal design group.
We have to be their allies
and we have to understand how they're going to work
(15:48):
with this project internally,
everything from naming conventions to folder structure,
to typography licenses will suggest fonts,
but they have to buy the fonts
and license the fonts for their use, et cetera,
because we have to be very careful
with the same thing with imagery.
If we're not shooting original footage,
(16:12):
all footage licenses have to go through the client
because they're the ones that own it.
We can buy a studio license to work with images,
but ultimately all of that needs to be owned
and licensed by the client for their use.
So yeah, and music of course always comes
into the process as well.
Working with the composers is a lot of fun.
(16:33):
What's your framework for approaching new design briefs?
How do you interpret and then translate them
into a creative concept?
Design briefs are coming in many shapes and sizes.
So it really, really depends
on what we see when we read a brief,
(16:55):
how many questions we have,
but the first thing to do with the new design brief
is find out what's missing
and sort of identify what's missing, identify what's there.
What meat is on the bone
and what can we really sink our teeth into
and what questions do we have that we feel are important?
(17:19):
And one of those quite often is music
and other ones could be, what do we stay away from?
But we just actually got an RFP from a client
we haven't worked with before.
And we have a ton of questions about their goals.
(17:41):
What are their goals?
And so what are their goals?
Like, I don't know, personality wise,
how do they see themselves?
You can say things like, if you were a superhero,
what superhero would you be?
Or who are the product designers out there that you like?
(18:06):
What commercial have you seen?
Or what movie have you seen?
What music video have you seen recently
that you thought was just kick ass
and you felt was relatable?
So the big thing about RFPs is really understanding
what information is there that is important for you
to be paying attention to, like in terms of weight,
(18:30):
like how weighty is this seems like the most important thing.
This is the lightning rod
or this is the North Star of this RFP,
sorry, request for a design brief.
And here's some ancillary information,
but if we feel like we don't have a clear grasp
(18:50):
of the North Star,
then that's when we need a meaningful conversation.
And the other thing about briefs
is connecting with the people.
It's a very, design is a very human undertaking
and listening to them speak,
understanding their ethos.
(19:15):
And then the movies start
and the pictures start appearing in your mind.
As a designer almost instantly,
when you start talking, ideas start popping up
and I'm always writing things down
in our first meeting,
well actually in all our meetings,
but there's things.
(19:36):
And as you see your design group
start to get traction,
more and more ideas come,
ideas generate ideas, generate ideas.
So for us, as far as design briefs go,
it's really, again, understanding their North Star,
understanding, if they can speak visually,
(20:00):
descriptively, that's great.
Sometimes we work with people who can't visualize
their way out of a wet paper bag.
And then that's hard because they won't know
what they like until they see it.
But if we have a really good tear sheet
or mood board session,
that will really help us and help them understand
(20:26):
where we're going, what our direction is.
So I'm gonna have to ask,
who or what are your major influences
when it comes to design?
Is there anything in particular
that comes straight to mind when you look at concepts?
The only thing I would really say about that is,
I don't have, I mean, there are designers that I like,
of course, and admire and appreciate.
(20:47):
So everything from how car lights
shine through a picket fence at night
as they swing around in the shadows that they throw.
It's like, I pull from theater,
I pull from opera, set design I'm referring to,
album covers, what I see on a concert stage.
(21:09):
And again, that you just look at people
that are really beautiful visualists,
and it's just being open to everything.
The world is where your ideas come from.
Now, as we move into the visual media
and visual communications topic,
we know visual media plays a crucial role
(21:31):
in brand identity and viewer engagement.
How do you approach the creation of visual media
to ensure that they're both memorable,
but also that they're effective?
I think I would say categorically that our goal,
our individual goals as designers
and top designers in our field
(21:51):
is always to be memorable and always to be effective.
That, first of all,
comes from understanding desired outcomes.
Also understanding thresholds for innovation.
I think that the idea of being memorable
(22:13):
often is related to innovation.
Like in other words, I've not seen that before,
or I'm gonna remember that.
But it also can be relate,
it's also very strongly related,
gosh, I'm gonna get into the weeds here.
Brands, we always sort of say that people can get,
(22:34):
their eyes can roll back into their head
when you start talking about brand exercises.
But if you talk about brand as a person or as a relationship,
or even you use the word love,
like the way, I love this brand so much,
I'm going to wear it on my body.
Like I'm going to wear that t-shirt.
(22:54):
I'm going to wear the Nike hat.
I'm going to only ever buy Adidas.
It's kind of like, I'm only ever going to drink this pop,
or whatever it is, whatever brand it is
that you connect with.
I think it's emotional.
(23:17):
I think in the end, and this goes back to storytelling,
that you sort of say,
I want to do something different,
but it can't be different for the sake of being different.
It has to be really on point
for what the desired outcomes are.
So understanding the thresholds,
(23:39):
for instance, a lot of times people say,
I want something really new,
really like that's just going to be wild.
And there's very few people who really mean that,
especially for large corporations,
because they have a board of directors to answer to.
They have marketing people and marketing analysts.
(24:01):
They have research.
They have all kinds of things
that will be brought into the equation.
But we would generally,
we would prefer to be dialed back than nudged forward.
So we can come out swinging with some really,
really over the top,
(24:23):
or really, really big ideas.
And then they'll say, it's too much.
But again, we'll usually find that out
when we do the mood board exercise.
So, you sort of say, take risks,
go too far, get dialed back.
(24:44):
But getting dialed back is not a setback.
It's something,
it's just bringing your focus where it needs to be.
The one thing that is difficult
is there's not many metrics for success in motion graphics.
(25:05):
Like you look at, for instance, the opening,
the new opening for House of the Dragons,
something that's not necessarily commercial.
What did they pay for that?
And what does it bring to the show?
How does it,
it's certainly a memorable opening.
(25:25):
I've heard a lot of people say,
we really like this opening.
We like it more than the first season's opening.
But it's one of those things,
what has it brought to the game?
How does it justify its cost?
Is it something that's going to translate
(25:47):
into something that's marketable like T-shirts
or other merch that can be sold
as part of the fan base of House of Dragons
and Game of Thrones?
So, the metrics for success in design,
the only metrics that we can really, really count on
(26:10):
is in commercial sales.
And that has to do with selling a product.
But there's so much design out there
that is not related to selling a product
that the measure of success lies,
sometimes it's not quantifiable.
(26:31):
And sometimes, say for instance,
a perfect example actually for great design
or memorable design or getting the word out
is a presidential election.
How do they do their messaging?
And how do they make sure that what they're saying
and what they're doing is really, really disseminated
(26:53):
and really well understood?
So, I think for instance, the get out the vote movement,
the get out the vote posters,
the get out the vote, how do you grab people's attention?
How do you motivate them?
You'll know right away when the vote happens
whether more people showed up at the polls
(27:13):
than the previous election,
and you say, oh, we did a really good job.
But again, there's a lot of factors that go into that,
into how many people vote
and how many people are cynical about voting, et cetera.
So, I think that being memorable and being effective,
measuring that can be challenging.
(27:36):
But generally for anybody with experience, especially,
me having been in the business for almost 40 years,
you kind of know it when you see it.
And it's not in Emmy awards or design awards,
although those are always very flattering and rewarding.
(27:58):
And it's a fantastic acknowledgement.
It's really what has happened to your design
out in the world and how is it being received?
There's a lot more data now, again,
Instagram, all the different social media platforms
tell us a lot about engagement.
But in the end, the ability to be memorable and effective,
(28:25):
just starts with, again, really fantastic storytelling,
really fantastic visuals.
And ones that the client is really excited by
and you're really excited by.
It's almost like gut.
It's very entrepreneurial.
What would you say are some of the most significant changes
(28:47):
that you've seen in the field of visual media design
over the last few years?
I think, again, going back to what I learned in university
versus what we're doing now,
it's the inclusion of so many different media
in your final product.
(29:08):
For instance, you could be using photography,
you could be building practical elements
and then shooting them or incorporating them again,
depending on what your design is.
Is it physical or is it a page?
Is it moving content like animated
(29:28):
or a commercial?
So you can have practical elements,
photographic elements.
You can be out doing a shoot on set
with a production designer and a lighting designer.
It can be pure typography.
You can be using various 3D and 2D design applications.
(29:53):
There's just so much right now out there in terms of,
like before I would say,
because my design career really sort of coincided
with the beginning of computer graphics,
everything that I produced came out of a computer.
And now that's not the case.
Like, we'll be out on the street shooting stuff,
(30:15):
we'll be making things that are not in the video,
we'll be making things or having things made
that we can then shoot or using motion capture, lidar.
And again, on the technological side,
the creative technologies that are in the world today
(30:38):
are just really, really, really remarkable.
We have not gotten into AI very much.
There's a lot of arguing about the use of AI
in the visual fields.
So, the dust will settle and we'll find our way
through that particular wormhole.
(30:59):
Now we get to the interesting topic
of the role of technology.
What's something that you've seen
in this advent of digital technology
and all these new media platforms,
how has it influenced your design work,
particularly in the realm of visual media?
I would say like since the mid 80s
and that famous, whoever he was,
(31:21):
saying we're going to have photo real, believable,
synthetic actors in movies,
I think that as someone who's been using a computer
to make pictures for a very, very long time,
we have been waiting for real-time rendering,
which basically means as soon as you have created your image,
(31:46):
you see your image.
And the speed of computing of course is the,
oh, the singularity, that was the word of Raker as well,
where we kind of can't keep up with ourselves technologically.
It had to do with the CPU,
but it's one of those things where I don't know
if people are paralyzed by the number of options
(32:07):
that they have now when they're faced with a blank canvas
or whether it's just incredibly exciting
just how many things can be brought into a production.
What would you say your thoughts are
on the use of emerging technologies like AI,
augmented reality in the world of design?
Do you see them as a tool that enhances creativity
(32:28):
or as a potential challenge?
With the exception of AI, they're all tools.
They're all doors that you can walk through
into bright, shiny rooms with different colors
and different opportunities and different outcomes.
I think that sometimes it's very practical.
(32:52):
It's easier to shoot in a volume or mixed reality studio,
like the Mandalorian was the breakout article.
Mixed reality walls had existed before the Mandalorian
came to public awareness,
but that really, everybody pretty much understands
what volumes are now.
It's because we don't have the money to go to Morocco
(33:14):
and shoot on a train in the desert,
but we can create that world in Unreal
and have our actors in a big volume studio,
and we have the Moroccan desert behind them
and a train running through the scene.
So that's a lot more cost-effective
(33:34):
than actually flying the entire crew and cast to Morocco
and suffering the heat and stuff.
So there is a practical component to some of this.
I think that the AI is the one that is dynamite
or that's more explosive where we draw the line
(33:57):
and how this helps us and then evolve around it.
AI is not going away. It's definitely not going away,
and it's going to change so many aspects of our life.
I don't think we really, truly understand
what's been unleashed or what will be unleashed
(34:19):
and how this will change our world.
When it comes to creative challenges and aspirations,
what would you say are some of the biggest challenges
that you've encountered with the industry or in the industry,
and how did you navigate through them?
Super easy. Economics.
Things that are out of your control,
like the housing crisis, like 9-11.
(34:40):
Right now, the two, the WAG strike, sorry,
WGA, Writers Guild of America and SAG strike
put a lot of our world out of business for a year,
and there's been this big backwash.
So the biggest challenge for us is not new technologies,
(35:02):
not scary AI. It's been things that are beyond your control.
Those are the things that cause massive layoffs.
Besides poor management, there's a few studios
that have gone under just because the people that read
that were not very good at it or downright crooks.
(35:23):
But generally speaking, for me, my experiences
is things that happen outside your control
that really truly affect your bottom line
and your business and your artists.
Looking ahead, what are some of the goals or projects
that you aspire to achieve in the next few years?
I think we'd like to create,
(35:45):
well, I would like to create one of our own original shows
or features.
I think that it's kind of like writing a book.
It's going to exist for posterity.
Motion graphics, because it's on television,
is kind of disposable.
We only expect our work to be seen for about three or four
years before, like Monday Night Football is a perfect example.
(36:07):
They upgrade, they change out the visualization
of that particular program every three or four years,
depending on how much equity and interest people have
in the visuals and if it's created
(36:28):
at any kind of critical mass.
So yeah, so our work is relatively disposable.
This is kind of like a concert event, right?
Unless you buy the t-shirt, the concert
was something that came and went.
You have your photos.
(36:49):
So I think creating something that lasts, like a band,
will create an album.
And a writer will create a novel and a designer will create,
I don't know, a movie or a...
I mean, people still talk about some advertising commercials
that they remember as a kid.
(37:10):
And you can still probably find on YouTube.
But creating something that has some permanence
and that hopefully makes the world a better place.
You know, you look at people like, oh my gosh,
Saul Bass, just as exciting a designer in his 80s
as he was when he was in his 20s.
Now we come to universal themes in design.
In your opinion, what unites designers
(37:32):
across different cultures and disciplines
in the universal quest to create something simple, functional,
and beautiful?
I think, again, going back to what we started off with,
storytelling is human and storytelling unites the same way
that even though the stories were dark stories,
that series that we did with Netflix was a global hit.
(37:58):
There's something unifying in laughter.
There's something unifying in stories
that are essentially human.
You know, you look at brands like Nike,
how successful they are globally.
You kind of go, how is it, how is, let's do it,
or just, sorry, just do it.
(38:18):
How, Nike's brand is so successfully globally.
And I haven't looked into this.
How does it translate into French or into Icelandic
or, you know, Aboriginal languages?
How do they, how do they translate their slogan,
(38:43):
their identity, their culture around the world?
But I think that the key always with successful brands
is creating that emotional connection
that people identify and fall in love or relate.
And that's a human thing.
(39:05):
You know, the emotions and human condition
in all its forms are universal.
Again, I'd like to thank you.
This has been absolutely wonderful hearing your insights
and just to end, I guess, if you could give
one piece of advice out to aspiring designers,
what would it be?
First of all, willpower.
(39:25):
Don't give up.
I think don't give up.
Unless you're getting a lot of feedback
from people that are saying what you want to do
doesn't line up with the work that you're doing,
but only from people that you trust
and only from people that are experts
(39:45):
that can assess your work and how it lines up
with your goals, your professional goals.
Networking is really critical.
Use your connections, talk to your professors,
anybody who comes in and talks at your school,
meet with them afterwards,
ask them if they're open to mentoring.
(40:05):
You might not be, you know, a shining meteor
streaking across the sky,
but you will be designing for a living.
It could be working with a very large organization
in-house, making sure that all the newsletters
and, you know, in-house communication,
the advertising agency that you're working with
(40:28):
is being properly supplied and everything is being,
you know, it could be,
there's so many different places for everybody,
but basically it's willpower.
Don't give up.
Network as much as you possibly can.
Follow your heroes and work ethic.
Who you are as a person doesn't end at 5 p.m.
You're constantly thinking about your visual ideas.
(40:51):
And I think that by that kind of commitment
and showing up and being super engaged,
it's patience and perseverance and being ready for,
you know, people not responding to your emails ever
and getting a lot of that
and really making sure you've got people to support you.
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