We Challenged Chris Do on Design, Branding & Cars...Here's What Happened

Can graphic designers become so obsessed with design that they completely miss what actually makes brands successful?

In this special live episode of The Angry Designer Podcast, we sit down with Chris Do (The Futur) at Creative South for one of our most thought-provoking conversations yet.

What started as a discussion about logos quickly turned into a passionate debate about branding, creativity, business, Adobe, design education, storytelling, and why so many graphic designers focus on the wrong things.

We challenged Chris on everything from whether Adobe owes designers anything... to why "blanding" has taken over... to whether great design actually wins in today's market.

And Chris challenged us right back.

In this episode, you'll discover:
- Why great design doesn't always win.
- Why branding is bigger than logos.
- The biggest mistake graphic designers still make.
- Why clients buy brands—not design.
- How storytelling creates value.
- Why designers become emotionally attached to companies.
- What separates good designers from truly valuable ones.

If you're a graphic designer, creative professional, brand strategist, freelancer, agency owner, or design student, this conversation will make you question what you think you know about design.

Whether you agreed with Chris Do or not, one thing is certain...you'll never look at branding the same way again.

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1 SPEAKER_01: Creatives in general have is a one-sided parasocial

relationship with companies that don't even know they exist.

Let's talk about Adobe.

So we may love Adobe as a corporation, which is a weird

concept to begin with, but they've never led us on.

They didn't invite us in the back room.

They didn't say, hey, why don't we hold the hands?

SPEAKER_02: All right, sir.

Please state your name.

I'm Chris Doe.

Mr.

Chris Doe! The Anger Designer Podcast at Creative South.

Okay, and we've got a couple hours.

Live speak in person.

Live in person.

In person.

That's a little different.

Without a net.

It is so different, you know?

And uh, and I mean it it's been really cool just chatting with

you on a normal human level.

SPEAKER_05: Yes.

SPEAKER_02: I must have must be because you know.

Wait, wait, let me ask you this question.

Hey, yeah.

What other way is there to chat?

On alien level?

What do we got to do?

Do you not feel though that I mean there's so much on that

online world that's just it feels it it's surreal.

We've talked online, but it doesn't feel the same as when

there's human connection, when there's warmth.

You can see, you can see things like you know, your pores on

your face.

You can actually make eye contact.

The kind eyes.

The kind eyes.

It's it's and I think uh there's something huge to be said about

that.

Because I mean it's a lot different, and you can kind of

really gauge a lot more of a person.

I think we can hide a lot more behind a screen.

No?

SPEAKER_01: Maybe.

I don't know.

I think the fact that a conversation is happening live,

whether it's across the world or across the table, that's the

thing that makes it different.

So when you're talking about social media, that's recorded,

scripted, edited, filtered, uh AI'd.

And so that's not reality, and people need to understand that.

But if you and I were a thousand miles apart, but there are high

definition cameras and monitors, there is something about the

energy exchange when we're sharing the space, but it's not

what I think people make it out to be.

No.

That's it.

SPEAKER_02: So that's the first I disagree.

I'm a huge, I'm a huge, I'm a huge empath in that sense,

right?

Because again, I think it's um so much easier to hide behind

screens.

I agree about the cameras and everything else.

But but it's been cool to just like hang out with you, right?

And it is a very, it's a very different vibe.

Um anyway, anyway, this is fun.

What was fun was our conversation yesterday.

Okay, and I wish we started that recording yesterday and had this

because you know, the whole Adobe Mac, you know, um, we

touched on some interesting topics yesterday that you know

we felt that designers were passionate about, and you were

like, guys, like like let's not be so passionate about this,

let's be a little bit more um, you know, what's the word?

Um logical, black and white, objective, clear-headed,

clear-headed, very clear.

And again, this led me to think are designers blinded by design

dogma, and like, do we put so much because again, we we

disagreed yesterday, and I was like, no, Adobe, you know, owes

us.

We're designers, we've given them so much, you know, Apple

owes us, they've helped us reshape who we were.

And you kind of shot that down, you know, and I was like, yeah,

he's right.

Um, so I'm wondering, and this this is across the board for

designers, they really get entrenched with that.

SPEAKER_01: So do you think this is this exists?

Well, I think we have to give the audience context since they

don't know our conversation.

Of a conversation, yes or no.

So I'll I'll try my best to recreate some of that for them.

Sure.

Okay.

I I think of it as like uh as creative people, we're uh

divergent thinkers.

We have strong, uh we skew strong on empathy and

imagination.

Yes.

And some of that is great when it's the act of creation, but

when it comes to like how we see and observe the world, that can

be problematic.

Now, there's a gentleman, his name is Alan De Baton, and he

runs a program called the School of Life.

He's an Englishman, he's brilliant, and he's a

philosopher and a writer.

And he talked about the romantic period, like a period in

literature and art that created i idealistic ways.

Like he said prior to that, um, you married into somebody

because it was an arranged thing.

It was utility because two families needed to unite and

become stronger.

And then the romantic period comes apart about, and then it's

like love at first sight.

Uh I get butterflies in my stomach.

So these ideas he says are kind of dangerous because it creates

unrealistic expectations.

So we got married before we fell in love with people, and we

learned through working together and through cooperation to love

and appreciate and honor the person across from us.

Now it's like, oh, I don't I'm not in love anymore.

I've fallen out of love, and it's a convenient way to get out

of commitments and relationships.

So park that for a second.

Now, what I think creatives in general have is a one-sided

parasocial relationship with companies that don't even know

they exist.

And I agree.

Enter exhibit A.

Let's talk about Adobe.

You say, well, Adobe owes us, they promise these things to us,

and and they made us believe, and now they're turning our

their backs on us, and it's so much for the software, and we're

looking for alternatives, and we're really upset.

And then I asked you for evidence of this thinking, which

then became the challenge and the beginning of this

conversation, where I asked you when has Adobe ever said this is

your life, we promise you this.

Yes, and we'll always keep it affordable for you.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean again, but uh just because it hasn't

actually come out, it doesn't mean that it isn't implied.

Just like, okay, in high school, right?

Um, you know, you're interested in somebody, you're courting

somebody, right?

They they they spend a little bit of time with you, maybe

they'll they'll brush your arm, they're they're not leading you

on, but they're making you feel like, you know, there is a

connection there.

And then all of a sudden, when you ask them for a date, you ask

for a little bit more commemorative, they're like,

whoa, whoa, whoa, where's where did you get that impression

from?

It's that it's that connection.

It's that's I guess where I was going with this, and and where

we feel compelled to give them more, maybe because we're

interested in in the I know, I know, and this is why I love

this.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in that even in that example that you gave

up, where there's a courting period, yes, men and women

misread each other all the time.

All the time.

You know, like, oh, that girl was interested in me.

She was not interested in you at all, bro.

We know that.

And she doesn't owe you Jack.

Yeah.

And also, I've been on the other side of the like I was as

innocent as I can be, and you're saying, what?

Yeah, you've created a situation that it's really tense between

the two of us.

I'll give you an example.

When I was in school, I was hanging out with this girl, I

got the feeling that she might be interested in me.

I'm not interested in her, I've given her a reason to believe

that.

And one day I was giving her a uh ride home late at night, and

she leans over and kisses me on the cheek.

I'm like, whoa, what was that?

SPEAKER_00: What?

SPEAKER_01: Right?

And then it became super awkward and weird thereafter.

Now, am I to blame?

And you when you said they made us feel this way, that's taking

away responsibility and accountability for what you

feel.

Now I know this.

People like my children used to do this to me, my little boys.

They're like, Dad, uh, you make me so angry.

I'm like, did I make you so angry?

Like, yes.

Well, I'm gonna make you happy now.

Are you happy?

I'm like, no, I'm gonna try again.

So obviously, I can't make you happy.

Yeah, how can I make you angry?

So when you say you make me, what we're doing is we're

absconding our responsibility for regulating our own emotions

and ideas and how we got in the situation.

It's a very victim mindset.

Yes.

So even in that situation where two people mildly attracted to

each other, one person misreads the situation, and there are

movies and storylines built around people misreading each

other.

Neither party owes the other party anything.

And when you say they lead us on, if like, hey, come over

later tonight and you're gonna get a little even that isn't

unless it's explicitly said everything is you're reading

into it, your imagination is taking over.

Now, are are we okay with that?

Absolutely.

Okay, now take Adobe.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Adobe is like we're in junior high and we've been

listening to a band, and we buy their rock posters, and we buy

their their albums, their CDs, or vinyl, and we're so in love

with them.

Yes, and we have these fantasies about one day, even though I'm a

child and an adult, they might fall in love with me, pick me

out from a crowd.

And many boy bands and rock stars have built this for this

narrative for them.

Absolutely.

Yes, Mystique and the allure and like Justin Bieber, lonely girl.

He literally goes out, pulls out one lonely girl, and he sings a

song to her.

Do you know about this on stage?

And I I witnessed this before.

I'm like, this is masterful the seduction and storytelling.

Yeah.

Is there an implied relationship between these two?

Not really.

In one from the girl's perspective, yes, but from

everyone else who's watching, you know, he does a concert

every night.

Yeah, yeah.

There's always one new lonely girl.

Yeah, and to assume you're going to become Mrs.

Bieber one day, it's wild.

But that's the fantasy.

And we give ourselves some room to imagine it, but then to hold

them accountable.

Here's the next story.

Speaking about music, Eminem has a song called Stan from a

deranged fan.

And he's telling the story from the perspective of of the fan

who has gone a little bit crazy and how he's gonna hurt his

girlfriend because the it wasn't reciprocated.

Yes.

Right?

Unrequited love is a horrible thing.

So we may love Adobe as a corporation, which is a weird

concept to begin with, but they've never let us on.

They didn't invite us in the back room.

They didn't say, hey, why don't we hold the hands?

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Hold the mouse, but you know, fair enough.

SPEAKER_02: Where's that relationship coming from?

But then to the point, because I thought about that, right, from

last night.

And is this is this because I I know I don't stand alone on this

one.

I know I'm not gonna feel get my back, bro.

Right, right?

Come on.

Where do you go?

No, no, no, but hold me back, hold me back.

But I mean, because you know, this is a passionate topic for a

lot of designers, and so this is where I was wondering, because I

didn't disagree with you once you explained that part, I I

understood where you're coming from.

But then does this design dogma exist that designers are

blinded?

I mean, designers obsess over fucking fonts, okay?

Helvetica, wait, which is I love it personally.

We all which cut?

Right?

Uh bold with like a nice minus.

SPEAKER_01: No, no, what foundry?

What foundry?

See, if we're gonna get into Helvetica, which foundry, what

cutica?

Okay, okay, you got me on this one.

SPEAKER_02: No, and I like Helvetica Nouveau, but yeah,

okay.

Um But I mean, why do we make these connections then?

And is it because that we're just we're we're dreamers?

SPEAKER_01: We're just dreamers.

And you think that makes sense.

Empath makes it sound like sexy.

We're just dreamers.

We dream of things.

Some it's fantasy.

But you're saying that we don't feel that?

Like we genuinely feel like we feel it.

Well that's but that's not empathy.

No, empathy is totally different.

Empathy is you feel something, and I share that feeling.

Like you've gone through a loss, I've gone through a loss, and we

we connect over that.

I can feel what you feel.

SPEAKER_02: It's very But because the font doesn't

actually feel anything for you, just like adult.

SPEAKER_01: Code, zeros and ones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: Again, imagination, yeah, dreaming.

It's yeah, it's it's that Simon LeBanc thing again.

We we love that font so much.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it just doesn't love us back.

And it doesn't love us back, and it doesn't it never did.

SPEAKER_01: It never did, no.

It it was it was a one concert event, and that was it.

That's all it worked.

We're just lonely girls.

Can you sing a bar or this is not a sing us in a chorus?

That could be a new talent we need to discover right now.

So do the song break now.

SPEAKER_05: Song break in green you know let's just break it

down.

Yeah, another thing that I thought was awesome, and it

really blew my mind we were talking about when I said it's

Adobe's retribution for all our stolen policy over the years.

And you said, yeah, I'll let you say it because this was

brilliant.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, well we we're we're imbuing too many human

emotions into a faceless organization.

We really are.

I don't think anybody is at Adobe's ever thought about any

one of us.

Yeah, yeah, maybe all of us, but not one of us.

So they're not sitting there saying, well, you've stolen the

software, we're gonna get you back, designers, and stick the

dagger and like it's hard to eat if you kill your food source.

Exactly.

And nobody's really trying to do that.

If anything, they're trying their best to run a profitable

company while staying ahead of the competition is an important

part most creatives don't understand, and serving their

customers.

We are the customers.

100%.

And and there's no reason why they would do that.

So again, it's this dreamer fantasy mindset that we create

narratives.

Uh Krishna Murray had said the highest form of human

intelligence is to observe without um without emotion.

Oh.

Without judgment.

Right.

So if I see you, I can say you're a white male with a right

righteous beard would actually be judgment.

So I wouldn't say that.

With you know, a beard that's four or five inches long, it's

peppered, and that's what I would say.

Somebody else would say, Oh, you look like uh a wannabe Hells

Angel guy.

That's judgment.

So the highest form of human intelligence is to observe

without judgment.

And what we're doing is we're judging all the time.

With violent language, too, might I add.

Yeah.

So it when you we judge, we're exerting uh unbeknownst to us

moral superiority.

Oh I don't like that cut of font because my taste is superior to

your taste.

I don't like the way you tracked or kern that typeface.

My training is better than your training.

My master beats your master.

Right.

And so that's why it's really dangerous for us to be making

these judging statements.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be keen observers of

life.

Yes.

There's a difference there.

All right.

We can observe things in great detail and know which parts

we're using judgment on and which is us observing.

Uh Marcus Aurelius, and he's one of the three Stoics, with along

with Seneca, and I forget the other person's name.

It's like trying to look at life for what it is, not what we want

it to be.

Did you read um The Obstacles the Way by Ryan Holliday?

Okay.

Basically, Ryan Holliday is a big fan of stoicism.

I think he goes by the daily stoic.

It's pretty clear what he he wants to be, right?

You now you know what I'm talking about?

Now I know the daily stoic.

Yes.

So it's this idea that Marcus Aurelius would say, like he'd

make a daily practice saying, What is what is fine wine?

It's rotting soured grapes.

What is uh uh like a prime rib?

It's a dead cow.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: So are you saying that we're just putting false,

um, we're building up with our minds, with our expectations,

what what I mean, because I mean while I believe in a lot of

stoicism, I think it's a nice way to view the world.

That sounds really harsh and and and not judgmental, but how do

you enjoy life if now you look at a if that awesome steak we

had the other night is just a piece of waiting.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: But what is it then?

If it's not dead cow, what is it?

Yeah, though it's tell me what it is.

SPEAKER_02: Well, in that moment when we're appreciating it, it's

it it's an it's a whole other experience at that point, right?

And right?

SPEAKER_01: It can be.

Yeah.

So here's the thing your read on stoicism is a very non-stoic

read on stoicism.

Uh-huh.

Well, you're judging you're judging, judging stoicism as,

oh, there's no passion in life.

Who is Marcus Aurelius, considered one of the great

Roman Empire emperors, wrote a book called the um the thoughts

of thoughts on meditation and its influence, two thousand

years of or you know, a couple thousand years worth of human

history.

So maybe it's important.

Maybe, maybe it's impactful and that stoicism is an idea.

It is.

Uh, if you if you're into Eastern religion or philosophy,

Taoism, Buddhism, Zen, Zen Buddhism, is all about letting

go of all these kind of human feelings and emotions and being

at peace.

Yes, right?

Yeah, I agree.

You guys are both Christians?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

I am.

You are?

Okay.

So what what is your the I I I'm I'm I'm not big in theology.

Okay, I I'm I'm I'm recovering Catholic myself.

Okay, recovering Catholic, I know, I know.

It's like in the Bible, it's like we try to be Christ-like.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

To be above all this, to look turn the other cheek.

And it's it's a form of stoism.

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, interesting.

Think about that.

I never thought about that, but I I can see that correlation.

That's actually kind of beautiful.

SPEAKER_01: Right?

Do you remember this?

Uh, and again, uh the religious people are gonna hate on us, I

know crucifying me for this, but it's like it didn't say in the

Bible, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and who is

without sin.

It's what is that saying?

Don't judge.

Yeah, absolutely.

Who are you to judge?

That's why I say when we're judging, it's a form of moral

superiority.

I judge you because I have no sin.

I am better than you.

Yeah, and people don't want to accept that, but that's what

they're doing.

Right.

So, in my world view, there's your truth, there's my truth,

there's Sean's truth.

They all could be true, they could all be untrue.

I don't claim from any higher power that I have a better lock

on truth than you.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, fair.

SPEAKER_01: So you are entitled to your version of the truth.

Yeah.

And what we learned too is objective truth is very slim.

It's very little that we can say objectively is true.

Here's an example.

When I was in high school, took physics class, as most of us are

required to, it was believed that lights behave as particles

and sometimes as waves, and we can't figure it out.

In some tests, it behaves like particles, and in some tests it

behaves like waves.

So if you were of the particle people or the wave people,

you're both right and you're both wrong at the same time,

because we don't understand it.

But the thing about human beings is we are so uncomfortable in

not knowing things that we'd rather make up something than to

not know.

But I'm comfortable not knowing.

I don't want to make up a reason for everything.

Like, why that person take my parking spot?

I don't know.

And I will never know.

All I know is that spot is not available anymore unless I want

to get into altercation, which I do not.

So I will look for another spot.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Right?

Why did it ring today?

Like, did I do something wrong?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like, oh, uh, the house is flooded

again.

This place sucks.

Is that all these are judgments versus objective observation?

Right.

SPEAKER_02: Okay, I I love that.

Um let's apply that to design.

Okay.

Because it seems that judgment taste is what defines certain

creative directors versus amateurs, you know, people just

start, um, juniors, and moving into this crazy AI world that

we're gonna have judgment is what's gonna separate you know,

what's being generated versus what you can actually generate

with reason, and then with reasons a lot of the customers.

So, how do we take judgment in that place and then actually

make it a positive?

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

I think in this case you're using the word judgment, and

there's a subcategory of judgment called taste.

That's what we're talking about.

Do you have good taste or bad taste?

Again, this becomes really, really tricky.

Yeah.

Have you ever judged a design competition before?

Not officially, no.

Okay.

Just unofficially explained.

Unofficially, many times better.

That's trash.

That's trash.

Bruh, who let this in, right?

SPEAKER_02: Of course.

Are these what you guys are judging, guys?

Come on.

SPEAKER_01: Now, I have judged design competitions when we're

given criteria to judge on, which is not even usually the

case.

Yes.

And there's three or four judges, we don't even agree.

So the judges, the your contemporaries, your peers, your

senior expert people who are deciding what is good or not, we

can't even agree.

Yes.

So that's why they have judges' awards, where we don't have to

all agree where I'm just gonna pick what I think is great, so

you win a judge's award.

Right.

And it's because I'm exerting my taste over everyone.

Now, here's the thing it would be great if there was a

universal objective standard for great taste and judgment, but

there is not.

There is not.

We have to now accept it's subjective.

And I'll give you an example.

Van Gogh, widely considered one of the most the one of the

greatest painters, never sold a painting in his life, I believe.

He died broke, earless, heartbroken, enough alcoholism,

I believe.

Yep.

Right?

And recently, uh, one of his paintings became the most uh the

highest bidded or sold piece of art in in the world.

Yeah.

So in his own time, it was judged not worthy of anything.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: It's only decades later that it was valuable.

And there's a whole beautiful story behind this.

Do you know the story about why I don't know paintings?

Okay.

So uh Vengo had a brother, and he was trying to sell his

paintings to help his brother out, but the brother was not

very successful.

And after he died, he uh had these paintings and he couldn't

do anything with it, and then he passed away.

And so the the remaining wife, the widow of his his brother,

his sister-in-law, basically, she needs to make money.

And she's trying her best to sell these, but nobody will buy

these things.

And then she uncovers a box of the correspondence between Van

Gogh and his brother, as they write letters to each other all

the time about every painting.

Because what Van Gogh would do was he would finish a painting

and he would write a story about like why he made this painting.

So the lady had a brilliant idea.

She was going to publish a book of his paintings, create demand

for it, and show the letters.

And the letters told the story of the art and the suffering,

and the world wept at the loss of a genius who was so brilliant

in his capturing of light and color.

This is brilliant.

So without the help of the sister-in-law, Van Gogh is still

an unknown alcoholic who died broke.

Right, right, right, right.

You see, so there's some some components to this.

Absolutely, there is almost like good marketing kind of book.

100% a pioneer.

And she was the one.

And this is also an example of brand.

Yes.

Telling the story and the process of something, and the

story between the two brothers and trying to do something, and

both not able to sell the paintings.

It's a brilliant way to present something.

So the book flew off the shelves, and then therefore,

then the paintings shortly thereafter, the demand was

created.

This is a lesson that most creatives can learn from.

So you're Van Gogh, you're making your logo.

Your illustrations, your t-shirts, and the world doesn't

care.

You're not broken, penniless, you're not an alcoholic, but you

may die penniless too.

Right.

Because you haven't learned how to tell the story of the work.

The work is just one component.

It's actually a very small component.

Much is the green of art professors and instructors

throughout the world, because what they preach is craft.

But they're leading you down the wrong path.

It's only one small part of the story, which is how do you craft

the story, not the art itself.

Right.

Because the story actually matters more than the art.

And it's going to hurt people's feelings.

SPEAKER_02: So then the story is what makes the craft valuable.

So then then I guess a strong brand can make average or less

than average look great.

SPEAKER_01: Yes, except for I want to clarify, because average

is judgment.

Right.

Just a thing.

Right.

So what we can say a story plus a product equals a brand.

Right.

So if you subtract the component, no story, no brand.

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02: Okay.

So again, brand built on a story to tell, a good product, which

ideally delivers a nice experience.

And once that starts formulating and people start, you know,

building and trusting in this brand, whatever they put out,

good, bad, can the design dogma be blinded all over again with

this?

And what I mean by that is everybody loves the Nike logo,

right?

They love the Nike logo.

Nike has, for 50 years, right, just done a great job at

branding.

They're pros at this, right?

And and when you look at Nike, when you think the name, when

you when you see a runner, it it instills this feeling in you.

But if you were to just somebody was just to pitch that logo

without the brand attached, it'd be okay.

I don't think that the logo itself the swoosh would be

winning any awards.

So again, does the brand end up influencing or or enhancing what

might be average?

Design.

SPEAKER_01: Logo, uh let's just call it a mark, a symbol.

Okay, let's see.

It's hard for you to like a language.

But you're right.

A mark.

A mark, okay.

I'll I will uh reference Michael Beirut here, uh thought leader

in the space.

He goes, a symbol, a a word mark, or trademark, is nothing

more than a container for the brand.

Correct.

It's a container.

Yes.

So if Nike does stupid things with stupid design with poor

user experience, then that mark is worthless or it might be

actually a negative asset for them.

Right.

That's why when companies rebrand, what they're saying is

we're no longer the same company we used to be.

We then therefore need to change the mark so that we have a new

association with a new brand.

That's what and designers don't understand this most of the

time.

When they think of a rebrand, they just think we're gonna

change the mark.

Because they're not privy to the conversations and strategy and

marketing and writing and positioning, they're not privy

to that most of the time unless you're a pretty senior level

creative person.

Right.

So we're, for better, for worse, oddly obsessed with aesthetics,

craft, and making, and we want to put our heads in the sand and

not think about anything else.

And that's a disservice to the individual, to the community,

and to the profession.

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: So then in this in this regard, then the brand

empowers the mark, the feeling that you get.

So if it's a bad experience, if Apple all of a sudden starts

starts tanking and their products start going downhill,

nobody likes it anymore, that Apple logo's worthless.

Yes, 100%.

So But right now by looking at it, it's funny because you hear

people critique these logos and that's all they do.

It's it they're critiquing just the art behind it.

The mark, the mark aesthetics, the geometry.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

And I have a problem with that, but we'll talk about that.

So I'm gonna give you one more potential metaphor to think

about.

SPEAKER_04: Okay.

SPEAKER_01: A mark, let's say it's like a car or a truck or a

wagon without fuel brand, it goes nowhere.

Yes.

But brand with a good mark, a good vehicle, goes really far,

really fast.

Yeah, that's a really good analogy.

So if you have a VW bus from the 70s, it breaks down all the

time.

Right, right, right.

It doesn't go far or fast, yeah, but it's a vibe.

Right.

And it can haul lots of things and it can take you off off grid

a little bit.

Yeah.

And so again, we need fuel, otherwise the car goes nowhere.

I mean, it can go downhill pretty fast, but other than

that, it needs fuel.

And what that's what creatives need to understand, okay?

So if you have a high performance vehicle like a

Porsche 911, and you have fuel, high premium octane, you can go

far fast and enjoy the ride and create greater value as a

collectible.

And so it it grows in value versus depreciate.

So poorly designed marks depreciate because they don't

exhibit timeless qualities and principles of good design.

Right.

So now when we enter into this era, and it really I get into

trouble for saying this, and I'm gonna say it anyways, because I

don't know of a better expression.

When we as designers talk about the way things look, we're

dragging the profession into the design ghetto.

Yeah, I get that.

We're saying we're not worthy of having a higher level

conversation, so we keep dragging it to being about

purely aesthetics.

Right, right, right.

Now, the the problem, and it's very popular because it's

amateurs talking to amateurs, so no one understands anything.

And I know shots are fired, so come at me.

Is amateur designers love symmetry, alignment, and they

don't understand optical balance, optical alignment.

Yes.

So like the X, if you look at the X, the cross, I don't know

what it's called, but the cross of the X, it's not perfectly

aligned.

Yes.

Because when it is, when it crosses over the other X, the

stroke, it looks like it's off.

Yep.

So real designers spent hundreds, sometimes thousands of

hours making these little micro adjustments because they

understand optically, it now looks aligned.

So when Google comes out, they're like, wow, it doesn't

align, I fixed it.

You just told me you don't understand design at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And everyone who likes it, they thank God you fixed it.

They also don't understand design.

SPEAKER_04: Right, right.

SPEAKER_01: But you'll notice the Michael Beirut's, the Paula

Sherris, the the Brian Collins of the world, they're not in the

feed saying this logo sucks.

Because they know better.

Yeah.

They know that you're dismissing and discrediting a whole army of

creative people who worked on something that you're not privy

to and you're just throwing it away on what you feel should be

right or wrong.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: And the more they critique these things, the more

you know they don't know anything.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Good point.

No, no, no, no.

I agree a hundred percent.

So the brand itself then is what the focus should be on for most

designers when they when they first take on a customer.

It's not it's not focusing on the mark itself, but first

taking a step back and taking a look at the bigger picture of

the brand and trying to point the holes.

So then why do you feel so many of these brands lately have just

been what's the word?

Like oversimplifying, um, you know, blanding.

Yes.

Right?

And we're talking massive companies that, you know, they

could stand for so much, and they their delivery is just meh.

Let's name one of them.

SPEAKER_01: Let's get specific.

Why don't you tell me?

What happened with Burberry?

You know, because that one that one I agree with you.

Pick a different one.

Because you're a fashion guy.

Well, no, no, no.

Because oh I will get in.

Okay.

Let's pick E.

Saint Laurent.

Yes.

Okay.

Another one.

Perfect.

The YSL logo, which is the initials of E.

Saint Laurent.

I hope, and now I'm gonna put on my angry um judging lens.

Yes.

And say that's an ugly mud logo.

Yeah.

It's skinny, it's not well balanced, the interlocking

letter forms don't work.

There's a lot of mid-level designers who can outdesign that

right now today.

Of course.

So when Saint Laurent went with a bold sans serif typeface, I'm

like, I could wear that now.

I could not wear that other YSL monstrosity because

aesthetically it's like the the pinto or of cars.

It's like, why would I wear that?

Or the gremlin?

Right.

That's it's like the proportion, everything is wrong.

Right.

So I'm I'm good with those things, okay?

And what people need to understand is fashion doesn't

want to be about the word mark or the monogram, it wants to be

about the fabric, the cut, the clothes, and the image they want

to portray.

Now, imagine if you are the brand and you're running ads,

and every time you have a modern concept with an interesting

photo shoot, gritty, film noir looking thing, and you slap that

old logo on there, it derails the whole thing because that has

too much personality.

Yes.

So why wouldn't you then go for something more timeless, some

classic thing that allows you to express your ideas versus the

mark?

SPEAKER_02: Okay, but in a situation.

Does that make sense?

Well, it does.

Some marks are just too loud.

No, fair fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.

But I mean, you've said LaRon has got such a huge long brand

behind it, right?

SPEAKER_01: Just to our point before that.

Well we have to use the word brand differently, because we're

we can't use this interchangeably.

The brand exists and has not changed.

What you're talking about the mark.

Yes.

That the mark is not the brand.

SPEAKER_02: Well, no, no, no.

But what what I was saying before, you're right, the

container for the brand.

But I mean, we you know, we just talked about how the brand

itself can make an average mark all of a sudden feel good, feel

like it rocks, it can elevate that.

Sure.

Something like you'd say LaRon, I mean, we know the brand, we

know what the history is behind it, the clothing, the stories,

and it's fantastic.

So it's not going to change the quality of the clothing, but

that mark is I was kind of a little part of me died when they

did that because I was used to the ugly old dated logo.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me ask you a question.

Yeah, how many YSL pieces do you own?

I don't own any.

So you don't I don't.

That's the problem.

It doesn't I'm like a t-shirt and jeans guy.

They sell t-shirts and jeans, by the way, for a lot more.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fair enough.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So here's the second problem.

The peanut gallery chimes in on things they've never consumed

nor supported with their money.

Yeah.

That's the real problem.

All those people who are like, I hate Jaguar, I hate have you

when was the last time you bought a Jaguar?

Do you know where their sales are?

Do you know where their sales are?

Yes, they need a whole reinvent.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: And I applaud them.

Like, we don't tear the band-aid off a little at a time, just

take the whole thing off.

Actually, put them in the in the morgue and let's start again.

You like the whole Jaguar?

No.

Oh, okay, okay.

But we let's I don't want to splinter too far.

I'm just saying, it's like if we are fans and we have a point of

view, we put our money where our mouth is.

Otherwise, we're just peanut gallery.

It's like you walking over to your neighbor's lawn and saying,

I don't like the way you're doing the curbside appeals.

And you don't even live in the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fair enough.

Fair enough.

You're from another state.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fair enough.

Everybody, interesting, as they say, and have a butthole and

have an opinion, and sometimes both stink.

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: So you were you were happy?

I'm I'm guessing you did wear, you do wear Yves Sailor?

I do.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I know.

But I wouldn't wear it with the old I don't like that logo.

Really?

And do not like it at all.

I I'll tell you something because I'm a design snob.

Uh this contradicts everything else I've said.

I won't wear certain clothes because the logo is so

horrendous.

Yes.

That's funny though.

So the brand isn't working for you then.

So how the No, the brand is working just fine because I was

compelled to buy it.

The logo, the mark doesn't work for me.

So the mark hasn't okay.

Interesting.

Remember how he said if you have premium fuel you put in a junk

car, it can only go so far.

It can only go so far.

So you can think of the mark as the car.

Yeah.

Polo.

SPEAKER_05: Remember that?

SPEAKER_01: Of course they remember it.

It hasn't gone anywhere.

It's still around.

They still do.

They still do.

SPEAKER_05: Now it's like giant.

Yeah.

Why?

Why?

Because I now I'm gonna assume that that's that's a really ugly

mark, and that gets in the way of nice clothes.

No?

No, I love it.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, you do?

Yeah.

Okay.

I have one of those giant ones.

And my my friend was making fun of me.

I'm like, I wish it were bigger.

Because I'm a designer.

Okay.

And I look at shapes.

SPEAKER_05: Okay.

SPEAKER_01: And so if we take a mark and the mark is designed

well, see, so polo creates this ivy, kind of aristocratic,

upward crusty, hoity-toity, privileged.

Like, I don't own a horse, I've never played polo, but it

creates a narrative, a story that that's kind of cool if

you're a poor kid growing up and aspiring to live that picture

perfect life.

Yeah.

I literally remember in junior high and high school thumbing

through GQ Vogue magazine saying, one day I'm gonna live

this life.

And so they've inceptioned me from a very early age, you see.

And so I don't have logos on me today, but look, look at my

belt.

It has words all over it.

I would have not had bought this belt if it was just black.

Why would I buy a hundred dollar belt when it's just black?

Nylon webbing.

Why would I do that?

Look at your hat.

Yeah, that's an atrociously sized logo.

It is, isn't it?

And I love it.

Thank you.

Oh if you made it like this small, I'm like, are you

embarrassed?

Yeah.

Are you not really angry?

Are you just a little bit angry?

A little bit angry.

Yeah.

So if you have a beautiful mark, celebrate it.

Okay.

Right?

And and and I like asymmetry.

Yeah.

I like color blocking.

And so people think, are you flexing that it's polo?

No.

I'm flexing that I like this design.

Aesthetically appeals to me.

You guys wear camouflage?

I have a camouflage hat.

I have so many camouflage hats.

I have jackets, shirts, I have everything, shoes, everything I

have, camouflage.

Cool.

Different patterns.

That it could be a really annoying logo.

But it's not.

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: It's a cool, interesting shape.

So I'm particular about the shape of the camouflage, the

color of it, and the application of it.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: So some camouflage, the more military ones, don't

look that good to me.

But you know who has the best camouflage in the world?

Who?

Sweden.

Sweden.

Look at their camouflage.

Is it because of like the grays, the blacks, the black black

black black?

No, no, it's not the color.

The colors are pretty dope.

Okay.

It's the shape.

It's a long history of like excellent design taste.

Really?

Look at the shape.

I'm gonna look into it.

Yeah, look at it.

Because I hunted it, hunted it down, found a Swedish official,

uh, what is that called?

Surplus from their army.

It looks amazing.

It could have been like, you know how like uh uh Polo or

Ralph Loren designed uniforms for the Olympics team?

All of a sudden it's elevated.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: So even utility things, even uniforms can be

beautiful in the hands of a crafted, like a like a well

thought out, intentional crafted piece.

Interesting.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like that.

That's great.

But then okay, so you're so in going back to are these your

designs?

Yeah, these are all ours.

SPEAKER_01: Look how obnoxiously large that is.

Yeah, they're not at all.

Not at all.

Again, you see what I'm saying?

So we need to argue about is that a good design or not, not

because it's big or small.

SPEAKER_02: Right, right.

Hmm, interesting.

Well, that's that's a reflection of us.

This is a hard one.

I mean, working on your personal brain, as you know, is always a

challenge.

But I mean, again, big, bold, it has to it has to be literally

you're too close to the work.

SPEAKER_01: That's it's always you've lost objectivity.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So then do you feel like you have to be an active participant

in that space, in that brand, in that to um an act well, actually

to be able to appreciate the brand, to be able to have an

opinion on the brand.

Like again, the leaves that you say wrong, you're right.

I have no I have no issue with it.

It's not for me, right?

I don't buy it, right?

So then my opinion, my objectivity on it is thin

surface level.

Or you could admit warranted.

SPEAKER_01: You could just admit I have an opinion on it, but I'm

not a customer, I don't really support it.

So maybe I'm not the demographic.

Yeah, 100%.

100%.

And and I think that's okay.

I'm not trying to discredit you from having an opinion, just

like be aware that you're not a customer.

Yeah, I know, absolutely.

They're not speaking to you, literally, figuratively,

financially, they're not speaking to you.

Yeah.

So I'll I will say this.

You walk into the store, a home goods store, and you touch um

what is that called?

Some kind of glass tumbler.

Yep.

And you feel it, the weight, uh, the coloring, the just it feels

like high quality.

You may buy that knowing no story with no brand.

Yes.

Because you have trained your eyes and your hands to know

quality.

Right.

But so I'm I just want to be sure that people don't

misinterpret me as saying like we don't ever buy anything

unless we know the story or the brand.

Yeah.

We buy things all the time without knowing the story or the

brand.

However, in the 21st century, the better product does not win.

Yes.

The brand, the better brand always wins.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's brilliant.

Yep, no, and I agree with you 100%.

So the better brand always wins.

Do you think that with that being said, then the better

brand, the better story?

Or um because I mean, as you know, so much stuff can be faked

nowadays.

It is faked a lot of times, yeah.

Right.

So um, with that being said, then the better brand always

wins, but it's not necessarily the better product.

SPEAKER_01: That infers that inferior product wins in the

marketplace all the time.

Yeah.

I'm gonna talk about it at the keynote.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you'll get to participate.

Okay.

It's a participatory talk.

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah, but that is something that I'm feeling, and I'm seeing that

online.

I'm seeing brands being developed by by people who have

no context in the space.

Uh you see a lot of you know influencers out there that they

they they really shouldn't be talking about what it is that

they're presenting.

They're they're they're branding themselves as experts in a

field, but then when you really find out they don't really have

anything to do with that field, or their very experience is very

thin.

So this happens also.

A good brand will always win.

SPEAKER_01: It should not worry you.

No?

No.

If something bothers you, do something about it or move on.

Yes.

If you don't do something about it, then you're just a whiner.

You really are.

Yeah, fair.

So the rule is you can complain about something one time.

The second time it's you, it's not them.

So I agree with you.

There are a lot of fakers, and they don't mean to be fakers,

they just don't know anything, but they want to try this media

thing, and they're talking out of their butt.

I I won't I won't name names, but there have been people who

are pretty early on in social media showing hand lettering.

And I can tell because I've studied lettering, I know that

they barely know how to draw a line because they do the chicken

scratch line where they like like that.

No, no hand lettering person draws like that.

Yes.

If you put in hours, you you you beautiful fluid lines.

Yes.

Like you know the people who do pinstriping or sign painting?

Yes.

Absolutely.

I'm like fudge.

There are levels to this game.

And the fact that you can take that flat brush and whip it

around and it's like, oh my God.

Yeah.

You're so good.

Now, here's to uh to make an ex um an argument for why better

doesn't better craft does not beat better brand.

The people who do these sign paintings, I think, arguably,

they have way more skill than most of us.

Agreed.

They practice their craft, they're so good.

They cannot make a mistake, is the thing.

The breathing, the design, the spacing, they've done it so many

times.

They put in not their 10,000, but their 50,000 hours of

practice.

Yeah.

Do they command the most money for people who do lettering?

They don't.

They don't at all.

Not at all.

No.

Because someone who types in Gotham, Helvetica, bold, puts a

circle R on it, delivers to the client, they made a hundred

thousand times more than the person who did the hand pee.

Who actually has the craft behind it?

Yeah.

So now why is that?

So we have to let go of this idea that superior aesthetics,

superior craft wins in the marketplace.

Because it doesn't.

It absolutely doesn't.

It's the brand and the story behind it.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Um, there is a gentleman, an economist.

His name is Stan, I want to say she or Shin or something like

that, and he has this thing called the smile curve.

Are you familiar with the smile curve?

Okay.

You know what a bell curve looks like?

It looks like a bell.

The smile curve is an inverted bell.

Okay.

So it looks like that.

Okay, so everybody understand.

So there are five points on the bell curve.

Two one on the top of each end, one in the middle, and one at

the bottom.

And they said of the five design uh practices, disciplines, which

is the most valuable to market?

So the higher up from the baseline, the more valuable it

is.

Yes.

So between concept and ideation, branding, production, marketing,

and after service care, what is the most valuable?

There's two most valuable things.

SPEAKER_05: At the top, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: What is it what is it, what is at the top?

What is the most valuable in terms of what people pay money

for?

The brand.

No, no, wait.

There's ideation, yes, the act of branding, um, production,

marketing, and after service care.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: What is the most valuable in the val in the value

chain?

SPEAKER_05: Marketing would be the top one.

SPEAKER_01: I would say after service care.

Personally, okay.

And production would be down at the bottom.

Okay.

You have one correct answer.

Okay.

Which one do you think is the correct answer?

Production is down at the bottom.

Production is in the very bottom.

It's the least valuable thing.

Yeah.

The thing that everybody here does.

Yes.

Is and they do this for industry after industry, the least

valuable thing.

How do we know?

Okay.

Let's say I have an idea to make a water company.

Okay, let's just call it liquid death.

SPEAKER_04: Oh.

SPEAKER_01: Let's just say.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

Okay.

And then not hire a branding agency to do the work.

Then they hire the illustrator to draw the skull.

Yes.

And then we hire marketers to push the product out.

Yes.

And then I don't know what after service care is, but let's just

say after service care.

Okay, who's making the least amount of money in the value

chain right there?

The graphic designer who built the illustrator to find who made

the skull.

The thing that we champion is what makes the brand, it's not

what made the brand.

Yes.

Who do you think made the most money?

The agency, in my opinion.

But no.

The person who came with the idea.

Oh they're selling it for a billion dollars.

The valuation of the company isn't for the branding agency.

Yeah, yeah.

They got paid, believe it or not, hourly.

Yeah.

Very high hourly rate.

Fair, fair, fair.

Right?

And the marketing firm, their performance campaign, so they

sold a lot, but they make a percentage of what was sold.

Yes.

They so it's all peanuts, it's food chain.

So the way it works, and the Stan She smile curve is

ideation, I believe, branding.

Production, marketing, after service.

Yes.

Now, the way we can see this is if you look at Apple, what does

Apple make?

What do they produce?

What do you think Apple makes?

You mean computers?

Physically.

What do they make?

Physically.

Yeah, what do they make?

Oh no, they don't.

Foxconn makes it.

Oh.

You guys, are you not paying attention?

You're going with this.

I see.

Okay.

You're right.

Oh, I'm not right.

These accountants and economists are right.

I just read.

Yes.

Yes.

The big difference.

So Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, they're like, let's make an iPad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so their internal RD team, they like, what's the brand?

Oh, it's like think different.

Yes, yes.

Oh, I'm a Mac.

I'm a PC.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: They make some money.

Dozen marketers actually in this brand.

And then, oh, Foxconn make this.

So they had done this study before.

If an iPhone costs$100, how much does Foxconn get of the$100?

Yeah.

What do you think?

What's percentage-wise?

Or dollars and cents?

$100.

SPEAKER_02: Actually, I would think it'd be quite a bit more

because you hear the origins are thin.

But regardless, let's just do it.

It's dollars.

SPEAKER_01: Really?

Dollars.

Is it?

Yeah.

Yes.

That's how much money they make.

SPEAKER_05: And that's the production down of the lower.

SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is sort of messed up, but let's talk about

that, okay?

This is crazy.

It is crazy.

And Apple makes, why do you mean they're a three trillion dollar

company?

Why do they have a war chest of more than governments?

Yes.

Okay?

Because they're in the ideation and the branding side.

Shy Day Media Lab now is the marketing.

They're not making anywhere near, you know, they're not

worth a billion dollars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Apple's worth three trillion.

Yeah, for showing you something.

And the Foxconn company is worth a lot, but because they just

manufacture a lot.

But their margins are very, very thin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You should Google this and you'll find out.

SPEAKER_02: There must be more depth to just ideation.

Because you know, ideation is nothing without the right

execution.

And that right execution is everything else in the world.

SPEAKER_01: You can argue it any which way you want, but then we

start the company.

It's his smile curve.

Think about it.

No, no, it's not his smile curve.

He he he.

If I come up with an idea for a camera, a computer, an AI robot,

who makes the most money?

Well, I do.

SPEAKER_02: You can execute it, yes, you can.

But in order to execute it, you need everything else.

That's fine.

But what you're saying is ultimately in the end, though,

it's still your idea that you had not seen the market.

SPEAKER_01: Seven 20 companies create a water company.

Yeah.

They're all executed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who has a better story?

Who has a better idea?

Yes, at that point.

Yeah.

You're saying, well, if poorly exquedito, so like eliminate all

the poorly exquisito ones because they don't exist

anymore.

That's not the argument.

You're still looking at it from the bottom of the curve and

saying, what about us?

What about us?

Well, what about you?

Yeah.

Okay?

Now let's look at this.

Why does China, Portugal, Vietnam, the Philippines, Egypt,

uh, wherever, why are they happy making the least amount of money

while everyone else grabs the lion's share?

To your argument, if it's all about the craft and the making

of it, then why aren't they getting more?

Because they don't know how to create a brand.

They do not create anything that people want to buy.

Yes.

And if we're so easy to do, they would call it off-brand XYZ, and

they'd be able to sell at the same price.

They cannot.

Yes.

So what they've realized is we have manufacturing might and

capability, but we have no ability to tell the story, to

create desire currently in the marketplace.

Now, we we I think it's not too it's not uh something we it's

too contentious for me to say.

Many of the goods in the world are made in China.

Name 10 Chinese brands.

I mean go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: I dare you.

There's no way I would be able to make 10 Chinese brands.

You know, we got the cars.

Try it, name it, name it, I name it.

BYU.

SPEAKER_01: BYD.

BYD.

Yeah.

See, I didn't even get that right.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, if you called it Apple, I'd be like, eh, it's Apple.

You can't call BYU.

Yeah, I know.

It's coming.

Um I can't think of one.

That's that's a university, Bingham Young University, BYU.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

See, you can't even name I can name a few.

I can't name ten.

Name ten American brands.

You'll go off all day.

Yeah, you go off all day.

Ten Italian brands.

Yeah, yeah.

So here's what um hopefully I can do this the right way.

The West has mastered the creation of nothingness in

brand.

The East has mastered manufacturing.

Manufacturing production.

They play to each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Yeah.

But when you have you guys been to Asia before?

I have not.

I have.

What they don't understand, it's like Uncle trying to sell or

sell a product.

Uh put more features.

Put every feature.

Yes.

So I walk into what is considered like the super mega

store for electronics.

It's like eight floors, there's an eight room in the middle, and

it's overwhelming.

You walk in the and try and buy a charger for your phone, okay?

Every booth is exactly the same.

It's like a 10 by 12 booth.

You go in and it is wall-to-wall signage, wall-to-wall product.

You have to shimmy past things, and it's like this is what they

think of as a customer experience.

And what they're gonna do is give you best price.

Friend, friend, best price.

That's not what I'm here for.

Right.

Contrast that with Apple.

Right?

Now, I don't know if you know this, but per square footage,

they have the highest dollar per square foot out of many places.

For retail?

For for retail.

Wow.

They actually beat um Tiffany's.

Tiffany sells diamonds, jewelry, and small footprint.

Apple sells more per square foot than most companies in the

world.

Jeez.

And you've been to Apple stores, they're vast.

They're vast.

Think about what they've been able to master.

Have you ever been to an Xbox store?

Um Microsoft store?

That's what it's called.

SPEAKER_02: Microsoft store.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you've been to one?

Tumbleweeds.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not, well, it's not.

They're trying to imitate what Apple's doing, but they're

putting their spin on it.

That's just it's busy, it's jam everything, but it's horrible.

No?

SPEAKER_01: It's horrible.

It's not it.

There's no exception.

I I went to buy an Xbox.

Yeah.

I waited 15 minutes for somebody to help me.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel special.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And Apple has done it, like every single person who

works there can check you out.

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And their system, like bringing things in and out,

they've mastered this thing.

Yeah.

They've mastered it.

Yeah, they've done it.

And here's the thing it's difficult to innovate.

It's easy to emulate.

Yes.

Why can't they just copy them?

They can't.

Why not?

It's a real question.

Oh, geez.

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: If I had to put it this way, it's because.

Western companies with unlimited resources.

Yeah, why can't one copy the other?

Yeah.

I think it has to do with um.

Oh, I mean, where am I going with this?

The soul of the brand.

Okay, Apple's doing it on purpose.

They're kind of trying to deliver that experience.

Where the other one, there's no experience to deliver.

They're just trying to you can't copy an experience.

You can't copy a female.

You can.

SPEAKER_01: Oh.

Well.

Yes, you can.

How?

Well, first of all, couldn't you recruit the same people who

designed the thing?

Train them?

Hire ex-Apple people.

You're using very abstract language.

You're using very romantic abstract language.

SPEAKER_02: Fair enough, fair enough.

If it's not what you what you live in brief.

Okay, Apple.

Yes, you're right, but you use the words.

Okay.

Word-shaped worlds.

Right, right, fair enough.

Soul.

DNA.

So the DNA.

No, okay, it's it's like it's that the company stands for and

has built a brand around being so human-focused, right?

Where Microsoft has never been about human, it's been about the

technology.

It's been about the product, of the features, everything from

how they market it to their user experience.

And Apple has completely shifted that and they focus on that user

experience.

So if it's not inside your brand, if it's not part of your,

I hate to say it, brand DNA, you know, your core.

There's a word for it.

Hey?

There's a word for it.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, what is it?

It's culture.

SPEAKER_02: It's not in their core.

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they don't have the taste.

That is the word I want.

They don't have the taste.

That's the problem.

It's like you try to take some heathen knuckle-dragging person

into a fine dining restaurant, they're like, this is stupid.

This steak, it's like too red.

I want it burnt.

You know, like, what is this?

You mean the dead cow, of course.

Yeah.

Give me the core's light.

What is this fancy microbrew, blah, blah, blah.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah.

That's why they can't do that because they don't have a

culture of taste, of excellence, and good design.

You give me their budget, I'll I'll redo their store.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: But they just don't have the leadership to say,

like, this is wrong.

They just could look at the numbers, it's not going in the

right direction.

Uh, the everything that could be measured, they understand.

Yeah.

But they don't understand the intangible.

Interesting.

So culture of beauty deep then aesthetics.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Is it a culture of excellence?

For example, um we're not we're not judging anything.

No.

Let's just say there's a loose cable here, and all the crew at

Creative South walk by it all day.

If they didn't have the culture of excellence, somebody would

not flag that, tape it down, and and fix it, remedy it.

If the light here is flickering, or if it's too hot or too cold,

the right culture, like this would not have happened, because

we would have gone and done a run-through, we would have done

a pre-mortem, we would have checks and balances all over the

place.

So where the West, and I'm not trying to be pro-West or

anti-East, where the West gets this done really well is many,

many years of practice of creating the intangible.

And if you read Rory Sutherland's book Um Alchemist

or Alc Alchemy, um, he talks about we should focus more on

the intangible versus the tangible features of anything.

Yes.

More is one in the intangible.

He understands this really well.

So the lead that the West, and I include Europe and America and

Canada in this, is shrinking fast.

So it's like the the giants sleep.

Yeah.

But the East has a long way to go because it's so culturally

ingrained, because they don't have the culture either of

excellence.

They're a culture of price and features.

Price and features.

That's cool.

I actually believe that, 100%.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can see that.

So what they need to do is the management say, I don't know

what I'm doing.

Let me hire the right people and get out of their way.

But then they have to put their finger on it again and they may

mess it up.

Did you know that most of the Chinese auto manufacturers have

hired away the leads of almost all the amazing European brands,

from Audi to Porsche to all other people?

They basically have but then the cars still look a little funky

to me.

What happened?

The culture.

Yes, one person cannot change the tide, yes, uh or the the

current of a stream.

Right.

Yeah.

So despite them saying we're gonna pay you so much money,

give you carte blanche, the culture of the people who make

the decisions above that person still wanna say, Well, why don't

we make it gold?

Why don't we do this?

Why don't we make a bigger logo or whatever it is they're gonna

do?

SPEAKER_02: So we're talking about, you know, because again

you're right, cars, they're pulling engineers, but they're

not able to replicate that same vibe.

Um John John Ivey, right?

Johnny Ivy, he left Apple to start his own gig.

Um and you could argue that he's doing really well in his own

gig.

I mean, God knows, he was just bought for like a billion

dollars, which is crazy.

I say M Altman.

Right, right, insane.

But it it it seems as though he's been able to replicate that

culture, but we're not seeing products, but we must see some

sort of culture there.

So do you think that it worked he was able to do it and and

Apple has now lost their culture?

SPEAKER_01: Or this is many questions of one, but let's

start with one at a time.

Sorry, yeah, I ramble.

What what has Johnny Ivy made?

Well, since I I can I haven't I don't know what he's made.

See, your imagination runs wild.

Yeah, it's true, it does.

But I mean, as far as I know, he's not made a single thing.

Yes, since that the wearable thing that he made that Sam

Altwin invested in is unusable.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's unusable.

SPEAKER_01: It's a dumpster fire.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what happens is when you give boy men billions of dollars of

other people's money, they make strange decisions about teams

and um proximity.

Like we hired the guy that could not be hired.

SPEAKER_02: And thinking that hiring the guy is gonna change

the culture, but really, I mean there was a lot more to it than

the other thing.

SPEAKER_01: Let me give you an example.

Yes, let me give you an example here.

Um in the West, we celebrate the lone genius.

In the East, they celebrate more of like the collective effort.

Yeah.

So the Lone Genius is Steve Jobs came up with all these things.

He did not.

SPEAKER_02: No, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_01: Uh the lone genius is Johnny Ivey designed all

these things.

He did not.

There's a whole team.

Yes.

Okay.

When I ran my production company, we would bring in the

VFX artists of feature films that have won Academy Awards.

And we would plug them in and like, what's going on?

They're like, uh, this doesn't work.

I'm like, dude, you worked on all these films.

Is this not your real?

And we struggled mightily to get it to work.

And then ultimately, days, weeks into the project, I had to fire

them because it's not working.

I bring in a guy and he's like, Why can't the lead VFX artist

from Rhythm and Hughes or Digital Domain who worked on

Terminator 3 or whatever, why can't they do the simple shot

for this commercial?

He goes, Chris, you don't understand.

There's a massive infrastructure over there of technical

engineers, of art directors, painters.

So basically, when this doesn't work, you kick it back, they fix

it, it comes back, kicks.

So the teams all rely on highly specialized team members.

When you pull that person out and the and they can't open the

file or can't render, you don't have the infrastructure here to

support them.

Yes.

So that's the myth of the lone genius.

So Johnny Ivy could be the world's best designer.

We don't know because I don't know him.

Right.

But it could be he had 5,500 other designers working under

him, figuring out where the screws go and how to adhere

something in a modeling department that can make X, Y,

and Z.

Yep.

And that's a lot of money in infrastructure and in human

capital that we don't account for.

Yes.

So it's the myth of the lone genius that perpetuates these

ideas of these superstars.

I love that.

The myth of the lone genius.

SPEAKER_02: That's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_01: It's a very Western idea.

SPEAKER_02: That's why it's like pulling him out really didn't

change anything at Apple because they still had the whole

infrastructure over there.

And him going off on his own hasn't changed the world either.

Because how the hell did he get a billion dollars?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean A company is worth three trillion

dollars.

It's not dependent on a single person living or dying, showing

up to work or not.

Because if it does, it's not worth a penny.

Exactly.

It's too volatile.

Yeah, absolutely.

You can't do that.

SPEAKER_02: Well, and you know what, it's the the reality is

the company has still survived after Steve Jobs.

Um, whether it has it and sorry, it's grown, but by immense

amounts.

Yes, yes, yes, so survived is not the right word.

They've just improved what they've already had.

That's not true.

Isn't it?

Do you like the Apple Watch?

Yeah.

It was under Tim Cook?

It's okay.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's okay.

Do you know like the whole Apple ecosystem has thrived under Tim?

Was it really?

Dude, they're a three trillion dollar company.

No, no, no.

But I mean, he wasn't the one who started the ecosystem.

Well, there are there are parts of the ecosystem that was

started, but not really fully realized.

So I watch whole documentary on Tim Cook.

The things he's done for Apple, uh, most people just he just not

getting enough credit for this then?

100%.

SPEAKER_02: Um because of the myth of the lone genius.

So so Steve Jobs may have um come up with the idea.

He may have had the idea.

He may not come up with anything.

Are you kidding me?

Have you worked in an agency with a creator director who

takes credit for everything?

Yeah, who's done nothing?

Yeah, and and and apparently he wasn't a nice person either.

Um clearly not.

Not apparently.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Um but it is but but very rarely are innovators,

mavericks, uh, world breakers are nice people.

Yeah, nice people playing the rules.

Yes.

He's a world breaker.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: There's a term, it's called the reality distortion

field, and that was given to Steve Jobs because he didn't

accept reality.

Yes.

Do you know the story behind how the iPhone was invented and how

it kind of pushed Apple to the next tier?

Well, no, just I'm morphing from the iPod, I guess.

No?

No, not at all.

So Apple was in secret development of a tablet.

Yes.

And they've been working on this for a really long time.

Steve walks in and they're like, here's the latest version.

He's like, you know what?

We should make this into a phone.

Yeah.

And they look at him like jaws drop, like, how do we take this

much and make it this?

And that's Steve, I don't really care.

Make it small and we'll launch with this.

The iPad was supposed to be the thing that gets dropped.

Not the iPhone.

Not the iPhone.

Yeah, next thing is he's like, we need a killer feature.

Visual voicemail, not linear voicemail.

Now we all take it for granted that that's always the way.

But he called Verizon, he called uh T-Mobile, and or whoever, and

they all refused.

Yes, I do hear I heard that.

AT ⁇ T said yes.

Yes.

Probably all the executives of the other companies threw

themselves off a brake.

Yeah, right.

Think about it.

So ATT and Apple were locked together for years, and then

after that it was open.

But yes.

So they had a flood of new contracts like you can't

imagine.

Yeah.

That's Steve Jobs' ability to bend the world to his will.

SPEAKER_02: Um that's his feat.

Do you think that there are current day, I shall we say Elon

Musk, who who shared the same kind of qualities that Steve

Jobs would, like quirky from a human level, but had the ability

and the foresight and the vision to change the world?

SPEAKER_01: Is there I'm sure there is.

I don't know of them.

Yeah.

Because Steve is was okay, here's the thing.

Steve is brilliant at a couple different things.

He's not an inventor, he's not an engineer, he's not a

scientist.

He partnered up with Wozniak to make this company, and his

brilliance, where he was so strong, was where Wozniak was

really weak.

Yes.

And where he was weak, Wozniak was really strong.

He was the lead engineer to make all these things, and without

each other, they don't build this thing.

So Steve is an early creative who had been able to bootstrap a

consumer electronics company.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: Or personal computer company.

Today, creatives are so irresponsible, aloof, and weird

that they're not starting companies.

Yes.

But like the guys, some of the RISD guys started Uber.

Or Airbnb, I'm sorry, not Uber, Airbnb.

They have an imagination, they team over the right money

people.

Because we're not trained to think like this.

Yes, yes.

And Steve Jobs had said when he dropped out of school, he went

to India on his pilgrimage and he took a calligraphy class.

Those two things shaped more of his thinking than anything else.

Being deeply philosophical, being highly concerned about

aesthetics, and learning about calligraphy taught him about the

uh gave him the appreciation for good design.

Yes.

So little things would bother him.

And he was insane about how he managed people.

So there's the story behind like their first uh printer or

scanner or whatever, they brought it to Steve, and he's

like, Okay, let me print.

And it didn't work.

Like, well, you gotta download the driver.

He said, That is insane.

Make it work, make it assume, make it connect automatically.

And that kind of culture of excellence and thoughtfulness

drove, I'm sure the team crazy, but we, the consumers, fall in

love.

Absolutely.

If you've ever owned a PC, it's constantly downloading patches

and things and connecting legacy things to other legacy things,

and you have too many ports.

Steve's like, you know what?

Get rid of the thing that we invented.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Thunderbolt's gone, everybody.

What the you know, Apple Firewire?

You remember that?

Yeah, I do.

They're like, they just discarded it because and the

whole team's like, well, what about the relationship with the

customer?

Yeah.

He's like, I don't care.

They'll love us for the new thing.

Make the new thing so good they forget, forgive us for the sins

of the old thing.

Yes, yes, yes.

Fool me once, keep fooling me.

Yeah.

Right?

Yes.

They do this all the time.

Like, gosh, I have drives I can't connect right now.

Yeah, I know.

There's a dongle for the dongle.

I'm all dongled out, boys.

Dongle life.

Yeah, I really am.

So that's the thing, is you need world breakers, people who have

the intelligence and sort of a meanness to them because they

have to not accept reality for what it is.

But they can build the reality for what it should be.

Yes.

And they can do that.

So in schools, if we're to do a service to creative people, we

would not just train them in the craft, but in leadership,

communication, marketing, business principles.

But when we hear things like money, we're all I don't want to

hear about it.

We run from it.

Ugh, it's evil.

That's the worst thing.

Yeah, so how are we gonna lead?

So there may not be another Steve Jobs until there's a

change in the way we're educated.

Either a business person who has a creative person trapped inside

of them, which is very rare, or the creative person who

understands business dynamics and can make those hard

decisions.

Yes.

Until then, there's no Steve Jobs.

Yeah.

I'll give you one more example.

Are you familiar with Lucid Air?

Yeah.

Or Lucid, the car company?

Yep.

Better performance.

Yep.

Better luxury.

Yep.

Better build quality.

Yes.

Have you have you been better handling?

Everything.

Everything.

Have you been compelled to buy a lucid?

No.

Me neither.

SPEAKER_02: Why is that?

Well, for one, the price, but availability.

It's just it's just not around.

I mean.

Yeah.

For me personally.

SPEAKER_01: They're available to us.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Relatively, you know, modest price increase.

They're ugly as hell.

I can't look at everything.

SPEAKER_02: I'm like.

I I kind of hold it in the same regard as I hold Teslas.

I think they're all kind of ugly.

SPEAKER_01: Well, there's levels of ugliness.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fair.

SPEAKER_01: And if you've ever driven a Tesla and and and we

own two of them, they're amazing.

No, they're not.

They are amazing.

They are amazing.

Have you driven one?

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: No, I'm sorry, McIntyre is passionate about my

cars.

Sure.

I had the Tesla.

It's a good, convenient vehicle.

Which one did you own?

Easy.

Uh the Model Y.

And it was good.

Old one or the new one?

Uh I think it was only two years old.

SPEAKER_01: No, no.

Meaning what, like how old is it relative to now?

The previous generation?

SPEAKER_02: Last year.

SPEAKER_01: No, no.

It's a brand new one.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Okay, you don't like it?

I didn't like it.

We had it for a week.

And like I said, well, I mean, again, I I like performance

vehicles.

Yeah.

They handle different.

I found the quality, the fit.

You know, maybe the technology was great.

You know, there was that commitment that the battery

range was horrible.

I tend to like my European cars, um, German cars, like the

handle.

Handling and I am a little bit of the horse press.

Do you like my Porsche?

Um I BMW, right?

These are the cards.

Why are you whispering this?

A little humble about this.

I don't like talking about cars.

Well, anyway, I just very Canadian thing.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I like my Lambeau.

Sorry to say that out loud.

SPEAKER_02: But ultimately, yes, I love the handling cars.

SPEAKER_01: You know what I don't love?

The price of gas right now?

Yeah.

Fair.

I agree.

The destruction of our environment.

That there's a hundred thousand moving parts that need

servicing.

Yes.

Those kinds of things.

Yeah, yeah.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

You know, uh, in owning a Tesla for almost 10 years and now we

got another one.

Almost never in the shop.

Almost never.

I think you got lucky.

No, no.

No, I don't think so.

Generation one Model S is what we had.

Yes.

No, no, no fancy stuff.

SPEAKER_02: It's a nicer car.

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: I give you credit.

SPEAKER_02: It's the same team.

But the new ones are they're just the quality factors.

So I mean, the quality again, we can talk about cards that are.

What kind of quality are you looking at?

Oh, replace them.

Well, if you could, I guess you can.

Something pretty badass.

SPEAKER_01: You could totally wise.

You ever heard a show called Pip My Ride?

Yeah, fair enough.

You like to complain, man.

No! If you don't like the seats, pay for it.

And I mean I love the city.

People always say this all the time.

Oh, the build quality is not great.

It's not.

The luxury, it's it's pretty cheap because we don't

understand what they're trying to do with Tesla.

Yes.

Now, maybe we'll end it on this.

I was listening to a radio program that Toyota, the like

the great-grandson of Mr.

Toyota, they bought a Tesla.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: And they took it apart.

And they wrote this report that was then leaked.

Okay.

The report, to your surprise probably, they said this way

this car is engineered is a work of art.

Okay.

They have so much to learn and they're so far behind.

Toyota?

Toyota is saying by looking at one Tesla, they are really far

behind.

That the way this car is designed and built is a work of

art.

Yes.

Now we might not understand what that means yet, but I'll unpack

it, okay?

Now, to get a car to sell at a profit, you have to do some

things to make it profitable.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Do you know every manufacturer of any electric

vehicle loses money on every car that they sell?

Yeah, I've heard, yes.

And so they're just bleeding money all over the place.

Like if you buy a Ford F E 150, whatever it's called, they lose

35,000.

They lose 100 grand per car.

Because why?

Because they're building the car based on the old ideas.

Yes.

Elon Musk is a world breaker.

They don't care.

So if you strip it apart, which I imagine, there's the minimal

number of cables and moving parts.

Everything updatable via the air, the cloud, which is

freaking ridiculous.

So basically he's made a cell phone with wheels.

Right.

Which is ridiculous.

Because they changed the braking dynamics, the handling, the

performance, they change owning a car for 10 years, as we did,

it's like, oh, it's stopped doing this.

That's interesting.

Because in the original Model S, when you're on an uh incline, as

soon as you let go of the brake, if you're on the free motor

version, it starts to slip backwards.

It made my wife nervous.

And then all of a sudden one day we're driving, it doesn't go

backwards anymore.

Because it knows via gyroscope, whatever.

Yes.

It breaks until you accelerate.

Yes.

No car company can do that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, not like that in the cloud.

No, no, no, no.

No car company can build a lot of people.

You do understand that.

Yes.

Because they didn't engineer the car to be able to be controlled

by the computer.

Yes, yes, yes.

Every aspect.

This is a radical idea.

Absolutely.

So again, we are judging things on the way the logo looks, not

the brand behind it.

We're falling under the same trap.

I feel like that's the way you've got to be able to do

that.

You want to touch Corinthian leather, burled walnut, open

pour wood.

SPEAKER_02: Same thing with your yes, with your.

SPEAKER_01: You're stuck on the mark.

Stuck on the mark.

No.

I love you know I like the retro vintage YSF logo, but I don't

buy the product.

You know what I'm saying, Sean?

SPEAKER_02: This is awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Think about this.

SPEAKER_02: There's nothing, I mean, okay, from the car level,

it's a different story, right?

Because the car is a highly engineered car.

And I've always said in that specific case, that car, there's

no question, it is a highly engineered car.

But when it comes back to the soul, okay, that car has no

soul.

It is soul is a romantic word.

SPEAKER_01: Full of judgment.

Well, no, no.

You're saying a mechanical thing when you get natural products,

dead animals, has a soul.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, but happens to the soul when the car

dies.

And again, you've you've driven a standard car, you've driven a

manual, right?

Yes.

And there's something to be said about when you actually shift,

you have a little bit more control versus just putting the

pedal, pushing a button, and going with something like this.

You know, the way the cars curve and they handle.

I mean, it gets to be a very strong story.

We love stories.

Hey?

We love stories.

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

We put meaning into things that have no meaning.

Fair enough.

You've imbued an inanimate object with anthropomorphic

ideas.

It's not so much the inanimate objects, the experience you get.

SPEAKER_02: That's why the Apple store is soud cars.

No, I don't like loud cars.

SPEAKER_01: I like it.

But car heads do like loud cars.

Yeah, fair.

They change the muffler, they take off the sound editing.

They want to make it louder because it has a it has a better

soul.

Yeah.

And you're like, dude, you're annoying everyone by doing that.

That's annoying, I agree.

Right?

You take off the muffler, you take off the filters, you're

like, now you're destroying the environment.

Yeah.

You don't need to do that.

Right.

And you know, these kids who do their hot rod auto-tuning

things, like, you know, the car doesn't go faster, it just makes

it a more annoying sound.

But I like the way it's.

I have a buddy who has a highly modified car.

It's so loud he has to wear earplugs to drive it.

Oh, that's ridiculous, though.

Really?

That's it.

It'll ruin it'll ruin his own.

It'll ruin your hearing.

It's that loud.

That's horrible.

Well, so one person's horrible is somebody else's soul.

You're describing things.

So you know what I love about this car?

It dries itself.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: But that's it dries itself.

SPEAKER_02: You get a car.

You get a car because you like to get behind the wheel and

drive.

It's therapy.

So you're saying if you need to go out for a drive one day,

you're gonna be like, just take me for 30 kilometer, come on.

Every day.

And you're just gonna let it drive the country and you're

journaling or something.

SPEAKER_01: Theoretically, I'm not doing that.

Insurance company, I'm not doing that.

I'm not doing that.

I'm in a more relaxed state.

Yes.

If we're in bumper to bumper traffic, I'm listening to music,

I'm listening to podcasts, I'm making calls.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Doing all safe things.

Yeah.

You know?

And I'm not worried that I'm gonna fall asleep and wind up uh

making my wife a widow.

SPEAKER_02: Fair enough.

Fair enough.

But again, you're comparing Tesla to the Porsche.

Here's your argument here.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Your argument here.

You love your Porsche.

Yes, I do.

It has soul.

Yes.

It does.

What about when we're pulled by a horse and carriage?

That has more soul than a Porsche.

In fact, the engine is described as horsepower.

That's where it comes from.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.

But I mean So you see, the narrative is just based on your

bias and the time in which you grew up.

Because there are times when people are like, I hate the

automobile.

Yeah.

And they're like, well, we don't like to smell manure in London.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So let's switch.

Oh no, no, no.

I hear you.

I hear you.

I'm tired of stepping in crap.

You see what I'm saying?

I do, I do, I do.

But you're justifying this is this is the same thing.

No, no, no, no.

This is the same thing.

Calling you out on your BS.

Hey, you wear polo, leave Sailoron.

Somebody could make the same argument.

Why aren't you wearing Gap then?

Gap is probably, you know, that they're probably a little

better.

No, they're not actually.

Fast fashion is a horrible thing.

SPEAKER_01: Make it a horrible thing.

Make sure you make your argument before.

It's a horrible thing.

Break it apart.

SPEAKER_02: But again, yeah, yeah, I agree.

Make your argument.

I wish you wouldn't.

The argument though.

No, and you I was smart enough not to go there.

Foot mouth.

I mean, the brands that you wear, would they not be in the

same category as you know, why somebody would choose a certain

car versus something functional like a Tesla?

Highly engineered.

Highly engineered, but still functional.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

Here's the thing.

I want us to have a sober conversation about what you

imagine and can label us romantic ideas, romanticism,

versus real.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fair.

SPEAKER_01: So you've attributed romantic things to real things.

Yes.

Whereas you're like, you know what?

I'm a I'm an old guy, I'm biased, it's romantic, and I

know it's all feelings and emotions.

And if you said that, if you just said that, then I can

accept that.

Yeah.

But you're like, no, it's a soul and it can be measured.

I'm like, no, it can't.

I think it's your soul that is elevating.

SPEAKER_05: Interesting.

Because I'm a musician and I have drums that make me what is

soul?

But a soul.

A soul is a ridiculous premise that's a very good idea.

Yeah, it's like it's like I just think it is, mostly.

It's also something it's branding for the church.

For your branding for the church.

But it's also something that makes you feel something extra.

SPEAKER_02: Well, they always say it makes you come alive.

It makes you feel alive.

It's a deeper connection.

You're sorry?

It's a story.

It's a story you tell yourself.

You don't feel more connected with certain inanimate objects.

SPEAKER_01: Of course I do.

But I call that a story.

I objectively know what it is, versus pretending to say it's

something else.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

But isn't that then just branding behind it?

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

It's not then.

Yeah, but then you can accept that and say, it's a story I

tell myself.

Please don't destroy my illusion.

You remember when Cypher is like he betrays Neo?

Yes.

And he's eating his steak.

He's like, oh my God.

I don't care.

And I know it's not real.

I know it's not real.

Please, you never.

Can you do it when you put me back?

I forget what the real world's like, so I just am dumb,

ignorant, and happy.

That's what you're saying.

And I'm saying it's all code, man.

This is not real.

One zero Jack Stone.

SPEAKER_05: I'm covered in.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01: We're in the matrix.

Mr.

Anderson.

By day, you're a computer programmer.

By night, you go by Neo.

Well, I mean Neo.

Oh, answer your clothing question, okay?

I make no illusions that some things are not made any better

than the other.

But it's the narrative and the story and the culture I want to

be associated with.

And I will tell you this, because I was of a different

mindset before.

I literally have flannels from The Gap, Banana Republic, and

Ralph Loren and R L and uh a Japanese brand called Flathead.

I will tell you right now, if I were to lay them out in front of

you, you will by sight and touch tell me which is the cheapest

and which is the most expensive.

I believe that.

You will feel it and you could see it.

Now, to the average idiot, no.

But I think they could pick half of them right.

Yes, yes.

But for you, because I'm like, oh my God, there is a vast

difference between these.

Right?

Old loom, the like one feels like it's two pounds heavier.

Yes, dang.

Yes.

And you look at the stitching and the mother pearl buttons and

all the little things and the detail, like, gosh darn it.

Somebody cared when they made this.

Yes.

This was made in a factory.

Yes.

To meet a quota.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: This is low run.

This is mass manufacturing.

Yes.

And you can feel that.

Now, is does it warrant a 10x price?

It's not 10x, but does it warrant the price hike?

That's up to the individual.

Yes.

Now, I'm getting to be at that point where I understand I have

fewer days ahead of me than what's behind me.

And I would like to have higher quality things, but less of

them.

So I have to go through and start purging lots of things.

And I feel bad.

There's that, you know, immigrant guilt about throwing

stuff away.

I'm like, gosh darn it.

I'm a bad human.

So I'm trying to like, is there a cousin or some nephew that you

can get this to?

Because I don't want to just turn this back into dust.

Yeah.

It doesn't feel right.

And I'm a big believer in this now, where they said there's

something like uh an article of clothing is not worn more than

just a handful of times.

Uh and I try to hit a 39 average.

Have I worn something 39 times?

Will I wear it 39 times?

If I'm not, I'm not gonna buy it.

There are literally things I bought, they're still wrapped,

tag still on it.

I'm going through this process myself.

So I'm not I'm not saying I'm an angel or anything.

I'm working through this, but now I'm asking myself these

questions.

And here's the thing that I've discovered about luxury goods,

luxury brands.

There is a second life, a third and a fourth life for things

that are luxury brands.

People still want them.

So you can literally go into one of these high-end secondhand

shops and they'll buy it from you and they'll sell it to

someone else.

Yes.

So I both uh buy new and use because that's uh if I can find

it use, I'll buy it used.

I don't need to buy it new.

Yep, right, right?

I 100% agree.

Whereas that Zara thing, that HM thing, it didn't even last to

wash is the problem.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's become more expensive to dry clean something than to

buy a new version of that thing.

We're entering into a horrible place.

Yeah, I agree.

Right?

Yeah, so I'm very anti now fast fashion.

I tried it for a stint, you know, I flirted with that a

little bit.

I'm like, I don't like the way she made me feel.

Yeah.

I'm out.

I bought one thing from uh two things from HM.

I washed it, the thing fell apart immediately.

I'm done with that.

Yeah, it's not, you know, it's hard to do that.

SPEAKER_02: Right now I'm looking for higher, higher

quality t-shirts.

I my wardrobe's pretty simple.

T-shirts, jeans.

Yeah, these are always.

SPEAKER_01: So you can buy some from Pakistan, yeah, a high GSM,

organic cotton, um, a certain cut and style, and you can just

buy your uniform and be done.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I don't recommend that for your personal brand,

but you could do that.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

It's amazing.

Buddy, this has been great.

This is honestly see, wow, we couldn't have had this on the

phone.

No, you're such a romantic.

We couldn't! How long have you known him?

SPEAKER_01: How long have you known him?

SPEAKER_05: I've known him probably 30 years.

SPEAKER_01: He's been a romantic his whole life.

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_05: But I get a hopeless romantic.

This is just this is our matrix.

SPEAKER_01: This is what we Yeah, you're like, you're

cipher.

You don't want to get woken up.

I drive.

I'm Neil.

I'm in the Nebuchadnezzar.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

He didn't rule.

I knew that yesterday, right when we were like, oh, we gotta

talk about this.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

I drive your car and I don't get the same experience that you do.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_05: My mind.

Because you have a different story.

That's the same soul in that car.

Yeah, literally.

You're right.

So that's you know what I mean?

Like that's but I think that's the that your soul is what just

replaced souling to that.

No, no, no.

You're right.

SPEAKER_02: Because you said a word actually that resonated

with me, and you said about the culture of the car, the history

of the car, and you're right.

When I still feel something driving those cars because I do

like to hit it hard in the curves.

I like to I'd like to pounce it and shift it and have a little

bit more personal control.

But the culture, the history, the heritage of the brands, you

know, the the pedigree of what they've done.

This story.

These are the cars, the stories, yes.

Yeah, 100%.

Like the history behind the cars and everything else matters,

which is why I'm just not buying cars that are, you know, first

time out without a good pedigree, a good history, a

good, a good story behind it.

So it is it is part of the whole package.

So I call it soul, but I understand, I think it's it's

far deeper than just one word.

It's everything that you just talked about.

The story's fine, whatever, man.

SPEAKER_01: My neighbor, my my former neighbor, I moved uh

neighborhoods, he was obsessed with Porsches, and he's always

wanted one.

So now he's middle age, and finally he's like, I'm gonna buy

my Porsche.

He buys it, used, he's like lovingly washing it every third

day, and he it's parked in the garage, it's got the cover on

all the time.

He babies this thing, and then he goes to car meetups out on

PCH, and they sit there and they admire each other's car, and

they're like so proud.

It's like, what is your pride?

You didn't make that car, you didn't do a single thing on it.

Somewhere along the line, somebody gave you some money so

that you bought it, but they have this immense amount of

pride.

Okay, cool.

He's like, let's go for a ride, Chris.

And I'm like, okay.

So we go riding through Tepan Canyon, these curvy roads

everybody likes to drive through.

He pulls over, it's like you go for a spin.

I'm like, I don't think I want to take the responsibility of

driving your car.

He goes, No, no, I insist.

So I get out, I drive.

He's like, You can you can go for it, Chris.

I'm like, wow, it handles really well.

And then eventually I'm like, I turn her back over to him.

My emotional relationship with that car is zero.

Still zero.

You didn't know.

SPEAKER_05: It's zero different.

SPEAKER_01: Interesting.

It's zero.

SPEAKER_05: That experience through those California.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

See, and to me, that is that zero.

My heart was like, I skipped a beat thinking.

I was just like, I wanted to be that guy.

I wanted to be a person that wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_01: Who cares when you next stood up?

Your ass cracked.

There was a bead of sweat.

A little moisture back there.

And I could describe it in more loving detail of it.

I am a romantic, my friend.

If it does that for you, I will do what I need to do.

And they understand their market really well.

And having said that, I will buy a Porsche.

Yeah.

It's not because they're soul.

I do appreciate beautiful design.

I do appreciate that it's probably the I know you it's

gonna hurt you to hear this, a high performance, fuel efficient

vehicle that is by most standards a superior car.

Right.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it is.

It really is.

Right.

Right.

And that's one of these, and just like the clothes you're

choosing right now, you buy it right, that'll be a car you'll

never get rid of.

You can keep that for 20, 30, 40 years because of the design,

yeah, yeah.

Quality build.

And it it appreciates in theory.

If you buy the right vintage, it goes up in value in theory.

SPEAKER_05: It goes down to the flannels too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tip top flannel setup.

That's gonna be way better than the the cheap knot or the cheap

stuff that was.

100%.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

And I've thought about all the things you said.

I'm not here to tell you the Tesla is a superior car.

It is not.

But for the things that matter to me on the dimensions that I

care about, it's excellent.

Yes.

Now, my wife's like, how come it's so cheap?

I'm like, babe, I know it's cheap.

But if you'd like it to be more expensive, we can buy the more

expensive version of this car.

It's called the lucid.

Yeah.

You could do that.

Or you can change out all the seats and the you know, the

trim.

You can literally change all that.

So if there's aftermarket, people will be happy to put

carbon fiber, wood, aluminum trim, and but then now you've

taken away what it was meant to do.

Yeah.

It's an efficient people mover that has a really decent amount

of thrust, and it's a it's a technical marvel, in my opinion.

Agreed.

Every time we get in it, it's like I'm watching it drive.

I'm like, oh, you know to stop twice before crossing the road.

I'm like, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's never put me in danger, whereas I put myself in danger

before when I take it off.

Because you know, you space out for a second, somebody stop in

the middle of the road.

I'm like, whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It never does that because it it's never asleep.

Right.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And they they somebody share that video when

they're barreling into a smoky car wreck, and then the car

veers right and brakes and avoids that.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I saw that.

SPEAKER_01: That was crazy.

That person would be dead if it wasn't for that was impressive.

SPEAKER_02: It was absolutely impressive.

SPEAKER_01: First of all, no car should be accelerating into

something you can't see, but my God, holy cow.

And it knows this because it's always looking at its blind

spot.

It's always looking at traffic patterns I had.

And it's only getting better.

Yes.

The other day it pulled into a parking structure, waited at the

gate.

I took my ticket, it went underground and parked the car

for me.

I'm like, how does he even know this?

A most engineered car.

I agree 100%.

And it made a 13-point turn to get me in a spot that was

equidistant from the two cars that were so tight to him.

I'm like, gosh darn it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm afraid to pull out myself because it got into this really

tight spot.

Yeah, yeah.

I just like I'm gonna trust it.

Hands off.

Let's see.

And we're in.

And then he couldn't even get out of the car.

You had to go with the roof.

It wouldn't, it wouldn't pull in if it yeah, because it knows

that too.

Right?

Awesome.

All right.

All right.

Gentlemen, it was good talking to you here at Creative South

2026 in person in the flesh.

Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_02: Thank you for this.

I can't wait to see you speak.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.

Right angry designer.

SPEAKER_05: Drink water before you need to give you guys a

drive.

SPEAKER_02: Guys, I hope you got everything out of this that we

did, and then some.

All right.

Um, last one from Creative South.

Yeah.

My name's Mossimo.

My name's Sean.

And you are Chris.

Stay creative and stay angry.

Peace.