I do Squiggles and Gradients

You are listening to Working File, a podcast about design practice and its relationship with the world. My name is Andy Mangold.

And I'm Matt McInerney.

On this episode, we're joined by Robyn and Chappell to discuss the Bloomberg Businessweek redesign and see where that takes us.

Why is it so weird? Wait it's not weird anymore. It's not weird.

Why is it so normal?

Why is it so normal?

Well another day, another piece of software that updated against our will, right Matt? [chuckle]

Yeah. Oh boy, I'm so excited. The last time it updated, I waited two years. But this time it doesn't give you the choice.

It's weird that they can just change a thing on you. I know I cringe every time I go to work or open my computer and it's like, "Ooh, new Adobe Illustrator." I'm like, "Oh crap, I wonder what's wrong with this one now." But they just change your tools on you?

With my new job, I got an Apple laptop and it was the first time because previously, I was in government which is all PCs. I got back to an Apple which is, of course, my computer of choice, but it's a new world to me all over again because the last time I was professionally using an Apple was 2006.

That's very different.

And so it's very different and I cannot believe the amount of updates there are. It's anxiety. Anxiety amazing.

Never ending.

Never ending. It's a nightmare.

It's a lot.

Isn't this a fun thing to complain about? [laughter]

Everybody loves a good designer podcast talking about software updates. Guys, what do you think about Adobe Acrobat huh?

It just keeps getting updated and it's never any better. What's the deal?

Honestly, all of that stuff, they've got to be masochistic or something. They just love... It's bad. I don't like it.

You can imagine being in the room where that all happens though, right? I sure can.

I'm sure there's constraints happening or whatever, but it's honestly like Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat are competing for the worst program. It's like they're in competition with each other to see who can do it worse.

Word is really bad. When someone sends us a Word document, there's no telling how it's gonna be translated into a normal text editor when we open it and all kinds of things is gonna be wonky. Man, it's like; I work at a company and develop software. I am normally a huge advocate for upgrading your software and updating when an update comes up because there are good reasons to. When I'm like, "Maybe no.", that's a bad sign I feel like. [chuckle] I should be an easy sell updating this software, and yet I am not when it comes to certain companies.

Right.

Robyn, you're joining us mid cross country move. You're sitting amongst boxes, I'm picturing you sitting on top of one taped up box and you've got... Your computer is the last thing on your desk. How is the move going?

Yeah, that's actually pretty much it. Yeah, I left Amazon last Tuesday and then I flew to San Francisco and I gave a talk for an inspector's conference. Then I flew to New York and I found an apartment in Brooklyn and then I flew back to Seattle last night, so now I'm here.

Oh my gosh. Jet-setter.

Congratulations on the new job by the way. I know I tweeted at you and emailed you, but here in person. Very exciting.

Yeah, yeah. I'm super stoked. It's gonna be fun.

I told Robyn that we're gonna be neighborhood work buddies and we're gonna recreate the intro to Laverne and Shirley.

And just skip around. [chuckle] We're gonna skip around some factories down there.

Sounds wonderful.

Yeah, we're gonna be neighbors.

I know. It's a good work neighborhood. There are some complaints but there's definitely good coffee and a lot of really good spots and Etsy, of course, has a lot of great people.

For sure, yeah. When I was down interviewing, I needed to go there and work on slides or whatever. And I remember I was hopping around coffee shop from coffee shop and they were all really nice, but they were all out... they didn't have any outlets. And I hate being the outlet person. It's the worst thing in the world. But I didn't plan on having to build the decks while I was there and I have this old computer that had bad battery life and I was building my decks there, I kept having to be that person who walks into a cafe and be, "Outlets? No outlets? Okay, then I'll leave." I did that four times, it's the worst nightmare of my life.

It's awful.

We are hitting all our core demographics. We've talked about updating Adobe Acrobat...

We talked about Brooklyn coffee shops; we're just getting right down the line. We're checking all the boxes. This is good.

That's it, yeah.

Actually now that we have transcripts, you can just Google those search terms and you'll come up with our podcast if those are the things you're interested in.

Our podcast is SEO optimized.

Exactly. This is gonna be great for our Google results.

Way to go.

Avocado toast.

Avocado toast. Those millennials. This is really gonna do a lot for our page rank maybe we'll go up to a three now or something.

Yeah, that's great. Should designer's code.

People still care about page rank? Is that a thing people care about?

What's page drank? Is that like a Drake thing?

I don't think it's a Drake thing. A page rank used to be this thing...

Oh, page rank. I thought you said, "Page drank". Like it was like a Lil Jon drank.

Page drank, yes.

That sounds awesome.

Yeah.

Gotta improve our page drank.

Ship it.

Alright. Now that we've covered all the important stuff, let's move on to our filler topic, the fluff.

Tonight, we're gonna be talking about kind of the presence or absence of a weird sensibility in the design world. And Chappell, I actually would like you to explain the roots of this because we're responding to a change in the Bloomberg Businessweek. This is the seed of the conversation. We're not gonna talk about Bloomberg Businessweek the entire time. But we're responding to a change in what appears to be their art direction. And for those people that haven't seen Bloomberg Businessweek before, don't know what we're talking about, how would you describe the change that the magazine has undergone?

So, it became at the current state of Bloomberg Businessweek, if you saw it now, it just looks very much so like an average business glossy magazine that would be sitting on a coffee table. I mean, cleaner. A little bit more interesting than maybe TIME Magazine was before it ended. It's not in print anymore, is it? I don't think so.

I think Newsweek was out, yeah. I think TIME still prints.

Oh, TIME still prints, Newsweek. It's hard to keep up, guys. So, the issue is that for a while, I would say was it three years, maybe, Bloomberg Businessweek kind of underwent this transformation into just kind of letting the creative direction go wild. And I wanna say it was under, was it Richard Turley, I think?

You are correct.

Yay.

Before he went to MTV.

My foot, ouch, dropping names.

And so, I barely know anything. I had to Google everything before this. So anyways, under his direction, Bloomberg Businessweek became pretty outrageous in terms of design, in terms of the context of mainstream magazine design. But it was outrageous enough that it was honestly the only print magazine that I got a subscription to in probably the past decade because it was just weird. It was strange. You would be reading an article on the Chinese stock market and they would have like flying pigs with googly eyeballs and cacti and like the type would be set on squiggles. It was very, very much so out there, in the terms of a lot of mainstream art direction you see.

Do you think it's unfair to say that the art direction was kind of like almost internet aesthetic? I always felt like it looked like the internet more than a print magazine should.

It looked like what Snapchat would do with a magazine or something.

Yeah. But it was proto, proto Snapchat, right?

Yeah, it was like around the same...

Nah, same time. Same time period, I'd say.

Yeah, it was same time. I don't know. I felt like all the design at that point, like it was Richard Turley, but it was also like Allison McCann and Jennifer Daniel, right?

Yeah.

The design department knew what it was and I don't think any of those people are still there anymore?

No.

I know Jennifer's not.

And Tracy.

It was like they knew enough rules to break it. Yeah, Tracy too. Yeah.

Tracy Ma, yeah.

Yeah, Tracy.

Yeah, so it was clearly they were breaking the rules in a way, but what was really fascinating about it is there are so many magazines out there that in kind of more niche-y design magazines that if they did this, I wouldn't blink an eye. But this is a magazine that is being delivered to CEOs of major companies and you would see this in waiting rooms of like small towns. This is not just some niche East Coast magazine necessarily.

Yeah, it's not Lucky Peach. Rest in peace.

Yeah.

RIP.

Rest in Peach.

So that was what I found really appealing about this, but at the same time, I was like, "What would it be like to be some super Connecticut businessman who's flying in on his hydroplane and about to land to go to the stock market and he's looking at the cover of this magazine and there's just googly eyes everywhere." I wish I could film that reaction because you know so many of these people had to be like, "What the hell is this?"

'Cause it's a serious finance magazine. Like the information in it and the stories are great. And that's another reason I subscribe to it. It wasn't just the design. I actually kind of wanna learn about the world too. So yeah, it was something wholly unique and original. And yes, that lasted for what seemed three years and now they've tossed it out for a much more straightforward approach.

Very austere and minimal.

Yes.

And I don't know if it was intentional or not, but this month's issue is an issue that has a photo of Tim Cook on the cover. Basically right now, I would say the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek is... Like the art direction is photography, right? That's the whole thing. That we're gonna have good photography and then the typography is going to recede into the background, crystal goblet it's way out of your mind. You're just gonna be engaged in this big photography. And it's interesting that this month is where they're kind of unveiling a new design, I guess, or at least it's more minimal.

And one of the most famous covers under their previous art direction, one of their most out there ones was also a cover of Tim Cook, where it was this kind of like almost alien photo of him smiling in a little bit otherworldly way. And this like big, diagonally set, cursive font in neon colors, like writing his name across his face on the cover, which I remember when that cover came out and I remember defending it to all of my friends who don't work in the design industry and for once felt like they had something to talk to me about. They're like, "Hey, you're the graphic designer. What did they do with this thing? What a real barf pile." [laughter] And defend it to death. So yeah, I think a lot of designers are in your shoes, Chappell, where it's like, "This is the one thing maybe I subscribe to or, at least was following and now they've kind of gone the way of every other magazine and it'll be impossible to tell them apart from the Economist or whatever, because it's just the same old thing."

Well, I think there's a balance because there were times in which the kind of crazier design of Businessweek, it sometimes encroached upon the writing. And I'm coming from the space of a writer more than I am as a practicing designer, so words are super important to me and there were times where I was reading and I was like this is kind of actually feeling like it's taking away from the writing.

Interesting.

That's right, but also I think in their case, and I think with most design's case, it's a collaborative effort right? Like writing and design, so it's about how they carve out the narrative, the story. So if the design or the photography creeps into the words, I think as long as it's like a collaborative effort between the three that makes sense but what's weird is that it might not be right. I don't know many media publications that a designer will go up to the writer and be like; "this is what I'm thinking" I might be interested to see how that went down because it's about crafting the whole story.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I could definitely imagine. I certainly imagined that a more expressive and out there for lack of a better word design sensibility in the art direction of the magazine is not gonna be mutually exclusive to making the writing clearly understood. I'm sure there is a way to do it where you're really interesting and expressive graphics just enhance the writing and make it more understandable because of the way you're calling it out and kind of complimenting it. But there's also a way to do it such that it's not, and it actually is distracting and drawing attention away and I have to confess, I have never subscribed to the magazine, I have only seen nary a photo or two of a spread now and then and like some of the covers over the past three or four years. I've actually had very little exposure to it. I couldn't speak to whether or not that sensibility was helping or hurting the actual content, so I would defer to Chappell's opinion there.

Yeah, I understand when you talk about "weird design," which I think it's funny to call it that, when you talk about that, I really think it's important to be experimental, and honestly if you have some sort of mainstream publication that's opening the floodgate to the designers and saying, "you know, go buck wild." You take that and you run with it because that is rare. Right?

Yeah.

And that's really what we're mourning right, like it's not that we're mourning that this was the most beautiful interesting magazine of all time it's that this was a huge publication that had all sorts of motivations to keep subscribers and appeal like you said to all different kinds of markets and yet here they were kind of throwing their weight behind a more experimental approach. Which I think feels validating as a designer, it feels like there's still room to do interesting and novel work in print and so to have that taken, I think is what people are mourning. I don't think people are like, "That was my favorite magazine, I loved it so much and now it's ruined." I think they're just: "Oh, that was one bastion of experimentality we had in the more corporate business world that we've lost."

I would suspect the majority of people who are mourning it, didn't even actually read it or to subscribe to it. Just saw it as: "there is one place to go do weird stuff in the corporate world, oh now it's dead now we have no examples to point to."

Yeah, you do have to know your audience at a point and I'm not looking at their demographics or probably the many decks of research they have around that but I can bet that that design was not targeted to their demographic. Hence the swing back to... I was reading, I can't remember who it was, the new... It was the editorial director I can't remember but they said that the redesign is getting rid of all the irony and I thought that was just really fascinating because if you're kind of a visual design nerd, insider, like we are, you look at stuff like that and I know there's a hint of irony in that weird design. There's so much kind of too cool for school weird kid, weird art kid irony, and I think that could be really off-putting for people who are not a part of that world.

Interesting.

To be honest, it's kind of off-putting even being in that world.

I appreciate that that exist and I really enjoyed it while it was around. If I had to ask myself, "do I wanna stand for that?" Not really, I don't wanna just be weird and ironic for the sake of doing that. Not that I think that's exactly what we're talking about but I think you're right that there's a hint of that in there.

Yeah, and it also showing from the perspective, like, I believe everything comes to an end. Everything comes and goes and waves and cycles and what's going to be interesting is that something like that three-year era of Businessweek is actually now this time capsule of really that peak weird design that was going on in that time. And that was like every designer's portfolio was starting to look like that and all the kids coming out of the European schools, out of Yale, all of them they'd bring in their portfolios, and for better for worse, they would look like that and so actually does encapsulate a movement in graphic design. So from a historical perspective, I think it's awesome that designers can work within these capitalists' job frameworks and find a way to express themselves and then it becomes part of the communal history if you will.

Which I mean is a very positive way looking at it I have similar to Matt, I have major problems with when I've had to hire or work with designers in my professional life, who subscribe to that aesthetic, it's a massive problem. It almost always is. It's not for a mainstream consumer, and if a designer makes something for me with that aesthetic and I have to take it to my boss, and I would get fired. So...

Yeah.

It is, there's a bigger problem there.

I mean, there's part of it that is in some ways disrespectful if the entire point is to be ironic. Which again, I don't wanna make this all about Businessweek, I think we can move on little bit and just talk about the idea of weird design, but yeah, I think ironic design might be a better way of putting it. It's like that Urban Outfitters thing where it's like you... It's bad on purpose, right?

Mm-hmm.

Well, so something I wanna be careful about, is... First of all, I'm curious as to what makes this ironic. Is it just that this design sensibility is kind of throwing out what a lot of people would consider to be core pillars of graphic design, and therefore it must be...

Well, it's like the opposite of what you'd expect from a professional designer. Like it's taking from... I feel like you're looking at a Tumblr page full of animated GIFs or something, and you're like, "Oh yeah," because that's what an amateur would do and then it's taking from that language. And so I think we're calling it ironic because it's not what you'd expect from... It's the opposite of what you'd expect from a professional.

Well, I think a lot of think a lot of the things, especially the Bloomberg Businessweek stuff, was extremely well executed. It's not something you can just do as an amateur; it's not a sign of being inexperienced. And I gotta be honest, I question the idea that... I question just assuming that it doesn't appeal to a certain market, right. I almost feel like assuming that business people really like photos with steely-blue palettes [laughter] and white, Gothic texts; it's kinda equivalent of like, "Oh, this is for girls. Let's make it pink and cover it in flowers." [laughter] I don't know what age you get tired of seeing googly eyes on pigs, right. [laughter] For all I know, a bunch of rich people flying around on planes love that stuff. [laughter] I think it's more of this hang-up we have about... Not being taken seriously, which is the...

Yeah.

There's this concern that some people won't be taken seriously, therefore we have to... Honestly, I feel like that's kind of the roots of all modern graphic design and minimalism, is like, "We're gonna do as little as possible, to give as few people as possible, any excuse to not take us seriously. Because we just did this, we barely touched this, we breathed on it, and therefore, we're kind of staying out of it as much as possible, being un-opinionated." So, do we have any evidence to suggest that that's actually what wealthy people, that are the, let's say, the most important audience in some ways, to... Something that Bloomberg Businessweek... Do they actually care about that? Or are we just assuming, based on everything we've seen in cultural already?

I guess I can use an example, because... I totally agree with you, and believe we should not assume... Very wealthy businessmen are into some weird shit [laughter], we can all agree.

No doubt.

Fact. But, I can use an example of, at some point, working in the government, and working around a bunch of different designers there. And I had to work with a designer who would have a style that would be much more in line with the old Businessweek and what we've been talking about. And when this designer would create something, it would similarly look like Matt with saying, the opposite of what you'd expect from a professional graphic designer. It might be... It would look like something... The feedback from the client would be, "This looks like something I made in Microsoft Word."

Sure, Word Art.

Word Art. And so in the government, when you are paying a lot of money to hire professional designers, and they're giving you stuff that looks like your daughter's Quinceañera invitation, you get frustrated very easily. And in this, 'cause government is its own culture and there is some expectation of respecting the audience by organizing the information in a way that's very clear. 'Cause if the government's anything, if we want it to be anything, it's, "Here are clear, simple instructions, to help you." And so in that context, trying something like that, it's unexpected there, and in a bad way. And it doesn't go over well with the audience, because they're steeped in that culture. And this is government, so it's not the best example, 'cause we have expectations of being clear to our populace. But, there are just times when it's not appropriate, or respectful, in a lot of ways. Like Matt is saying, there are times where you kind of worry. I would worry, as a designer, if I was respecting my audience. I think I'd think about that all the time. Because I would wanna balance experimenting and having fun and doing weird stuff if someone's letting me, but I also wanna make sure I'm not going over the audience's head in a way that makes them feel stupid, because that's design... For me that's design at its worst, is when the audience feels stupid.

Yeah, and I guess again I think this is actually helpful because we're not talking just about Bloomberg Businessweek here, because, I again, have barely even seen it. I'm kind of talking in the abstract about the idea and the things I've seen. And I guess I don't see those things as mutually exclusive. You kind of described two different things, right? One of thing is like someone that approaches a problem and they have a preconceived style they're going to apply to that problem, maybe regardless of the content, right? They're just like, "This is what I do, I do squiggles, and I do fun gradients."

"And here are squiggles and fun gradients on your thing. And oops, that's the cover for Princess Diana's death. Doesn't really... "

"Not really appropriate anymore."

So that I think we can make it kind of assessment. That doesn't work, right? Regardless of whatever your style is, I think the whole point of being a thoughtful designer in any editorial context is kind of approaching things with the understanding that each story is kind of different and needs kind of a special treatment. Maybe part of the problem here is just that the consistency of the playfulness and of the "breaking the rules" in the Businessweek stuff happens so often that, we have to assume it wasn't based on the content of the stories, it was actually this is what they wanted to do and so they kept doing it. But I have to imagine there would be a way to basically take the same approach that maybe we're thinking a more classical or more traditional graphic design approach would be and read the content, think about it, think about the subject matter of the issue and then, when you're trying to express that, give yourself a little more slack. Instead of...

Yeah.

Just using a typographic grid and these safe colors over here in the safe color palette, just use a little more, and you could still be somber and you could still be excited and joyous and you could still be scary if you wanted to be, but you'd be doing it with a broader palette than you would be otherwise. But maybe that's not what's happening.

Well, Andy, I think you brought up the term weird. Can you describe what you mean? Are you talking about a style of design, or are you talking about an approach? What does weird even mean to you here?

To me, when I talk about weird, I think I'm kinda working backwards, and I'm saying that anything that I think, basically what Chappell said, a client would say in a presentation "what's this weird option?" That's what I'm talking about. Things that don't meet people's expectations. Especially those people that are in positions of decision-making power. That's kinda what I mean by weird: Anything that kinda breaks at those bounds. I do think that the best kind of "weird" work comes from an experimental mindset, an experimental approach. It's not just... Out there for the sake of being out there.

The thing I dislike is this specific style that we're talking about that seemed to take place for a period of time in the last couple years. Taking a weird approach, I think is great. It's weird because you haven't seen it before, awesome. If it happens to do the job better, even better, right? It's more than, I think, applying the same style to something over and over again. It's actually kinda boring. It's not exciting to do it for the 50th time and have all your work the same, right?

I think in regards to Businessweek, for me as a designer that stuff was the coolest thing. I remember buying it because I thought Jennifer Daniel was super cool and I thought those squigglies were really cool. I'm sure at some point, somebody got... I'm guessing at some point there was somebody in leadership at Businessweek that said: "the data from x month in 2012 was better than this date from this point, so we wanna push the design in this way." Like I'm guessing that's actually what happened. But in the process of that, we lost our cool design aesthetic in this one place that felt like a win. I think all visual designers were like, "Wow, what a win in Bloomberg Businessweek. 'Cause they did it, so maybe we can push it." But specifically speaking, if Businessweek sold a lot less through that, and Lucky Peach, which is another one that pushed those boundaries, also dropped off. And Good was pushing it for a while too, but they dropped off.

RIP.

Maybe it's not performing as well as we actually think it is. That doesn't mean that it's not cool and great to look at. I think that brings a print sort of narrative together in a better, more interesting way. Not that it was just print Businessweek pushed it on web too, but I think it's a balance from us feeling like we've got a good, winning visual design versus what data pointed to them, telling them that they're actually selling more copies of this thing.

Sure.

I'd be interested to see that, and I think in regards to that idea of... Saying "prose for the weird." It's cool to have these sort of experiences. Chappell's kind of right in that. The delivery could be a lot stranger than what the designer's intent is. This is a super dumb in-real-life example of this. I'm in the process of moving, right? I've moved five times in last four years, every move is when I cash out all the coins that are left, that I've collected in my spare change.

Fun ritual.

Yeah. Today, I have a flower vase versus coins, and I get super anxious about it 'cause I hate walking me to a physical place, going into a Coinstar and dishing my coins in. It's the worst experience ever. It doesn't help that Coinstar, their design includes this noise of a jackpot. When you're actually dishing the coins out.

I think at some point, somebody was like, "Yeah, I bet you people think that this sounds like their winning the lottery when they're cashing in their coins and it's probably getting people to do it more." But for me, it was the worst experience ever, because all I could hear is: "Hey kid, you're in poverty," as this jackpot is going down. That sort of horrible feeling. But I do think that's a situation where some designers are probably like, "Oh, this is weird and good. It makes people feel good." But in practicality, it sucks to use. So, content matters, right?

So, to wrap up that whole thing.

I wanna come back to what you said about, possibly, this design underperforming, right?

Right.

I'm curious to ask each of you, and I'll start with Matt because I think I know his answer. But, you're the designer, you're in the room, and they're saying. "Look our goal was X. Maybe it was, sell as many copies as possible. Maybe it was make this writer happy and feel like we represented their story correctly. Maybe it was to appeal to a certain market. We have the data back and this out there design just didn't do it, didn't perform as well as this boring design." Matt, are you gonna defend that in that room or you just gonna say, "That was our goal, we didn't hit it. Time to change plans"?

Probably that we didn't hit it time to change plans. I'm pretty interested in trying to achieve the goal. So, if I tried something and failed, I'd rather admit that I failed at it and try a new thing than... Look, I don't know what I'd be defending. Like if the goal was to make an interesting and new design and everybody's excited about it, awesome. Then I achieved the goal, but if that's not the goal at all, I don't even know what to defend at that point.

Chappell, you're in that seat. Are you gonna defend that design somehow or jump ship?

Well, it's hard to say. I've work as a content strategist so I would go to strategy first and I would wanna know all the variables of that month, and what was going on to know if there's other things that could have caused a downslide in sales. I would be like...

Are would be allowed to say this is a black-and-white example and it just failed, sorry.

Oh, if it just failed...

Let's assume in the abstract you had all of your variables and the results are decisive. Its like, "well, we have this perfect AB tests. We put half of this cover on newsstands; have this other cover and this one just sold 60% as much or whatever."

Yeah. I would straight-up wanna change and grow. But again, it's difficult for me because my ego is not tied to being a graphic designer, and...

That should make it easy for you. That sounds like a good thing.

And so it's a good thing. So, I'm very willing to be like, "Let's change it up, let's switch it up." But that's because it's not my day job, shall we say? But if I've owned that, I think it would be a lot harder to let go of the style. This is me being too empathetic, honestly.

Yeah. But I think like if your goal...

Also not her problem. Also a good thing.

Yeah, yeah. This seems like positive things, so you're saying...

Chappell's biggest problems, "I'm too empathetic and I'm not egotistical about my work." [chuckle] Robyn, I assume you're in that position, maybe also not gonna defend this thing or do you have something to say if all the data points to no, you gonna defend that in somehow?

I think I would set up from the beginning. So I think I would have very clear understanding of what my success metrics are from the beginning, and if I can get buy off that it's not money, that I push it even further. It's like there's the assumption of whether a design working is whether it's selling, or whether it's not selling. And sure, that's the case in some standards, but if their success metric is getting a younger audience to read and they're selling less, but more people who are younger are reading it, then that feels like a win. So somebody's gotta make a trade off at that point. So I think at some point, I would say at the beginning, just like here are our success metrics of whether we think this is good or whether we think it's bad, and if we lose sales then we're okay with that. So from there then I would say like, "Alright," and we're giving this like a six months timeline and we're gonna test it and see how it performs. And then we're gonna make a decision on how we iterate from there. So I think for me it would just be super iterative process that bases on what matters to the people in the room. Right?

Sure.

That's how I'd do it.

I wanna stand up a little bit, just for the things that can't be measured. I think maybe all of us to some degree kind of were drawn to design because it was a thing that had a goal, and the goal was something you could determine if you were successful at, and that was maybe a little more structured and in that way more helpful than fine art, where you make a thing and your goal is to make people feel a certain way or do something; but there's no real evidence that you've done that, necessarily. There's no real way to iterate on your process and find success. But I do wanna stand up a little bit for the fact that there are things that can't be measured. And if, you sold 60% as many copies, but you with somehow with all powerful omniscience knew that the 60% of those copies you sold went to people that were much more engaged with it. Or went to people that despite having no demographic differences were just more interesting, smart people and you were attracting the right people. Maybe not more people or something.

I think there's always something; at least where we stand currently and probably forever, that can't be measured. And I think, if our job is only doing the thing such that it performs the best on the metrics, whatever we've set those metrics to be; then it's not long before we're replaced with machine learning and computers that just spit out a million a different covers and determine which one's gonna perform the best and put it on the news stand. And I personally don't believe that that's all design is. I love the practicality of it. I love having a goal and aiming for it and being able to measure success. Especially in things like editorial, I think there is more there than just what can be measured. Which is not to say that I'm gonna sit in that room and try and convince people to let me put more squiggly lines on Tim Cook's face, but I do think there's a fair number of people out there that would feel that way.

But I think the difference is, if we're looking at numbers that are just so clearly, pointing us in the direction, I think you have to listen and admit when you're wrong. As opposed to like "Well, we just sold a couple less. It's nothing major." But also like "Look at all these news articles popping up about how great the design of our new magazine is." I think that's a different situation. And I also think the scenario we described where the evidence is just so clear, I am very rarely in situations where everything can be measured. I feel for the most part somebody just says "Hey we should AB test it, 'cause they can't make a decision."

Dude, that's a horrible thing, if people are AB testing stuff, 'cause it can't make a decision. That's so bad.

It happens sometimes.

Also, like as a separate thing, I think this goes into a different thing but that whole idea of designers being like, "Let's AB test that." I think... It's super... Just naive because I would... I just don't think that an A versus a B is the strong enough thing. I would set a... "Let's set a control than a one state, a two-state, and a three state." Because if you wanna test things, test things, but if you just wanna figure out an AB test, that's just lazy testing.

Andy in the future, let's do an episode about how the majority of things we say we test are bullshit.

I would do an episode on testing someday yeah...

Sorry are BS because bleep that out.

You're going to have the bleep that yourself later Mr. I-have-a-show and you swore.

Dang it, me.

Yeah, I would love to do a show on testing. That's a whole thing that I have a lot of thoughts on. I know some people kind of specialize in it. Their whole thing is kind of test driven design which is kind of a whole different approach.

To be fair, I love testing I just think I like good tests.

Right, same.

The correct tests, the right thing to test.

Ultimately, I feel like in some ways part of why I feel like I wanna stand up a little bit for thing that can't be measured is that if you look at any creative industry and in this regard, I think the design of an editorial magazine or publication is definitely creative but it's creative and also practical in the sense that you are selling a magazine that is communicating information as opposed to perhaps purely creative industries, like television or movies or something where there is no practical goal other than selling movies and stuff. But, if you thinking looking at other industries if you ever have a situation where people basically say, "Well, we're gonna do what performs best or is most popular," you arrive very quickly at not the best television or the best movies, but in fact, the worst. Because a lot of times when you test things and do all your metrics on what's basically... Testing so often comes down to... And by testing I mean AB testing, having a value set that values a practical goal, oftentimes based in sales, so often comes down to offending the least people and not doing something interesting, such that you're really engaging the remaining population.

I always... Matt in the past, you and I have talked about the idea of just if you care too much about that stuff and focus too much on how things perform you end up making the "Two and a Half Men" of everything.

The "Two and a Half Men" of publications and the "Two and a Half Men" of websites. And yeah, millions of people watch it every week but no one really loves it. They just watch it because it's on and they don't actually think about it. And that's the same thing if you're making this, boring magazine cover that everyone buys because it's on the newsstand and it's got that story they care about. But, no one loves it. And again, I don't know if that's the case. We're using Bloomberg as this continual example because it's convenient not because I think any of these things necessarily, specifically relevant to that example, but if that's the case if it's a matter of trying to appeal to everybody and in the process, not really having a deep relationship with anybody, I think that's another reason to do something that might perhaps be considered more experimental or more controversial. I mean controversial is another word that we can use to describe these things. Some people love the squiggly lines on Tim Cook's face; some people probably thought it was ridiculous.

There's... Sometimes I do enjoy some order in design, but sometimes I sit around and I think about the tyranny of design. And it makes me wild. And the fact is I could litigate any side of this, and any point of view of this, because again I like to hear both sides. But, I do think it's important to celebrate anything that breaks out from the freaking tyrannical grid that is design and the problem is, as most of our society is, sadly everything is black or white, everything is binary. And we're doing ourselves a total disservice, and honestly, right now it's like we really only still have two schools of thought in design, so far as Western design goes. One is Helvetica grids and the other is soupy, weird stuff. And basically...

Soupy.

Basically it... I know there weren't podcasts in the '90s necessarily. There were just radio, but if there were podcasts in the '90s we'd be having the exact same conversation about David Carson and...

I think it's disrespectful that he said it in Wingdings. I think that it's exciting and experimental.

Right, I mean. And it's like... Looking back at it some of it is, you know, Stephen Hiller called it the cult of ugly, and a lot of people referred to it as ugly and they thought who would like this, this is disrespectful, blah, blah, blah. But, my god, don't you just wanna break out the grid sometimes?

Sure.

And express yourself and do something that isn't just a right angle and Helvetica. And so I really do want to celebrate that as much as possible because when you walk around this planet and you look at everything that we create, AKA not nature. And you look at all of it and you're like: "whoa! Stuff is so straight laced. It is so... It is so mediocre compared to what I think humans could be capable of and the sooner we can break people out of boxes the better." But of course that's very optimistic and lovely but it's really funny that we can even sit here and designers can get upset about maybe one magazine changing things up a little bit. And yeah, I mean we can literally do anything now. We have computers we aren't even setting type in a little box anymore.

We could literally do anything and still we have magazines that still have gutters and drop letters, drop case, and you're just like, "Wow, we're still repeating the same stuff that's been going on for centuries." It's kinda sad sometimes and also cool 'cause it's tradition. I don't know, I have a lot of mixed feelings.

You're all over the place.

I'm mixed. I'm really, I know. I'm a Gemini y'all, I'm a Gemini.

Well part of what gets me about that and part of why I mentioned the business people maybe still liking googly eyes thing is that, I feel like because the culture of graphic design is one that's sprung out of Corporate America, and sprung out of advertising and sprung out of capitalism, that the whole culture of graphic design is to make things that people think will appeal to people in suits maybe flying on a Learjet, right? If you look at what we consider core founding principles that's what you end up getting, is the kind of work that is clean cut, it's unoffensive, it's the establishment. We're designing the thing that looks like it's the established thing. And that's like a value that pervades the entire industry to the point that Matt earlier when he was talking about this was like, "Oh, this is something that was like some animated GIF, this isn't even graphic design. This looks like something that you would just find if you looked up animated GIFs on the internet." When of course it's graphic design, it's still the same thing, we're using the same tools but when you venture even just a little bit... And honestly compared to Ray Gun or to Emma Gray, the Bloomberg Businessweek thing is like totally tame. It's barely experimental at all, it just uses some bright colors every once in a while.

But as soon as you stray even a little bit away from this pretty utilitarian brutal aesthetic that everyone has decided is what graphic design with a capital G and a D is supposed to be, then you... All of a sudden you're disrespectful, you're pushing people away, you're being totally experimental and off the wall and crazy. And I agree Chappell, I feel like why is there not more variance allowed for within what most people consider the safe bounds of graphic design? These things can be executed well, they take skill to make, they do express more things more vibrantly than grids and grotesque typefaces. Part of me mourns that when I see the magazine change back. It's like, "Well there goes another thing that at least we could've learned from." Something I always say that... I don't know where I heard it first but it really resonated with me was that, "If you're in battle and you fire a mortar and it lands too short, when you fire the second one it better land too long." If you're adjusting your aim, you don't wanna be too short and then too short again, and then too short again, 'cause it gets way harder to actually hit your target. And I feel like all of graphic design, like 98% of it, you could clump into the way not experimental enough, not pushing the boundaries enough, totally square, inside the box, completely boring and sterile.

And so when we get that 2% that's maybe going a little bit further such that we can maybe find a happy medium somewhere, where we are using more of the tools available to us and we're more stretching our language, our visual language and our tools to do something interesting that doesn't offend and push people away. As soon as that happens, it exists for a few years and then it gets kinda cut back and here we are firing all of our mortars short again and nobody's being expressive.

That's capitalism, you know?

Yeah.

It's just goals and meeting new goals and trying... That's what logo redesigns are. It's just meeting goals as we were previously talking about. Did y'all see the... There's a Twitter thread, I don't remember who started it, but Eric who came in and just gave this amazing impromptu graphic design history lesson.

He's always dropping knowledge on Twitter.

He's amazing, he needs his own show. Maybe I can get the link for you guys so you guys can link it.

I can find it again. It was actually all stemming from your tweet originally, I remember.

Yeah well it actually might have been...

You started the thread.

He put in all this... He screen capped his own writing on it and it was amazing and I won't try to summarize too much of it, but he did talk a lot about how in the 1960s, starting around that time there really was this split that occurred in graphic design where you just, you have the camp that really strongly felt that design was a service industry very engineer-like, such as the Paul Rands of the world where everything is on a grid and completely in service of a company, and then you had the people who felt that graphic design was meant to be expressive of political beliefs and more systeming from kind of an artistic impulse. And that started happening in the '60s, it really started coming to a head. That divide still totally exists.

Yeah and they're both right, right? No one's wrong.

And they're both correct, yeah. They're both totally correct. And again, it's context and I think I went through a phase where I was really, really bent on design as a service because I was working in the government and that is all about service and if we hired designers, I had to be like, "You know that you're a service provider, right?" And not to make that sound... For me, that's not a bad word. And I know...

No.

Not at all.

As we've talked about maybe on this podcast we've talked about Ralph Caplan's quote about we're all problem solvers and there's... It just depends on the context. When you're hungry a short-order cook is a problem solver, when you need something explained visually a graphic designer is a problem solver. So these are really, really... It's an important thing to do to provide a service for a person but at the same time now that I have distance from government I see that maybe I was going a bit crazy there and that [chuckle] there is this for kind of designer as expression, as expressive... As an expressive person and that's getting away from the grid and busting out of the grid. And expressing something in the way you feel you want to do it in and that's not maybe as comfortable for some people. It certainly wasn't comfortable for me again working where I was working but it's really, really important that all these things exist together. Whether or not you can be that expressive in a mainstream publication I don't know, I don't know that it's totally possible for a long term but that's okay. I think that design is supposed to be... It is trend based and any experimentation it's gonna come and go. It's just the deal.

There's something I wanna make sure we mention which we've kind of been talking around a little bit and that's like those two sides of an argument you mentioned. Chappell as we said they're both right, nobody's wrong. Graphic design is not meant to be anything, graphic design is just the process of giving shape and form to ideas on a surface of some kind and... But I think the important thing to note is that of that divide like one side is clearly in power. The side that is making things that are "practical, utilitarian" that is doing the sterile work, that's how you get the jobs at the places that pay well. The people making experimental work they're making their DIY posters and zines and they're doing their fun stuff but no one's paying them to do it. They're not paying them a whole lot of money. That's part of the reason why the Bloomberg thing specifically was like, "Here's an example of people doing experimental expressive work." and they're doing it for a company they're presume being paid pretty well for their labor. Here's somebody that's doing the kind of work that we, in some ways, wanna celebrate and they're doing it in a way that it's practical but the fact that so few design studios, companies whatever, higher designers that work that way means that of course all of the colleges and universities that teach graphic design... And they teach graphic design with the goal of getting people jobs when they graduate.

They're not gonna teach to the thing that's not being hired because that's... That's not a great end game for them if they're trying to run their little business of being a school and so the thing that gets rewarded with money is the thing that self-perpetuates and that's how we end up with the certain type of design that is in power and another type of design which is it's... I think it's an ideal in some ways that in the world of capitalism is very hard to realize practically and so when it happens on a rare circumstance it's beautiful and then when it stops happening it's like, "well you know capitalism done chewed it up as it always does." [chuckle]

Well, it's weird to see like... I don't know if you guys notice it but when... So you see like the super experimental graphic design which I only see from people's personal Tumblrs or looking at what's coming out of Yale or the people really into like Metahaven and all that stuff.

Metahaven, yeah.

So you see all this and then once you really get into the workforce you start to see how those designers who really idolize that stuff, how they're kind of trying to make it work in the mainstream and you see how these underground or Indie trends become mainstream and you see it all over the place because this is... This is kind of like they were... If you're raised you know "raised" in college on looking at these Tumblrs and seeing this sort of visual language you adopt it whether consciously or not and so you see these trends in... I feel like every... Right now the major trend of every website and Subway ad is where the background looks like someone sneezed confetti on it and it's like little doodles, little squiggles, and triangles and I'm like, "Is this because all designers right now are of age that they all have Trapper Keepers growing up."

I can't totally get it but I know that a lot of these elements, these squiggles and all that are coming out of more experimental work and it's just, it is ever so slightly influencing very straight-and-narrow capitalism ad agency work.

It's the sterilized version of that. You put squiggles on it but they still... It's all in rectangle and they're nice, evenly spaced and we're still white Gotham on top that's way you know it's official and professional.

Yeah. And you see it. You see some websites start to take that aesthetic on. Like the outline is probably the best example I can think where those are... Whoever designed that I'm not sure who did but they clearly had a lot of visual references, they are very thoughtful and they kind of pushed the web design to the edge of what would be considered like a pretty, pretty average user experience but at the same time with visual elements that make it feel a little bit more risky.

The other thing I always keep coming back to, this is totally a love them instrument, Right? Because most of what I design is software, not editorial work. I have to wonder where is the experimental voice in software, right? Where's the person making the interesting out there, expressive kind of app or whatever, and mostly that doesn't exist I don't think, and partially I think it's because...

Snapchat exists in the world, there's a Snapchat.

Well I was gonna say, Snapchat is the one example, the other one I can think of, and people may disagree with me on this, but that camera app, VSCO which I have at times downloaded and opened, and tried to understand. And it's like looking at an alien control panel where nothing is in the language I speak, and it's just various shapes all over the place and gestures to do everything. Like it very much is an interface that you have to assume from looking at it, they didn't sit down and say "We need to make this as usable as possible to the widest audience" which is what almost everyone does when they sit down to make an app.

What was that to do app clear or something, where everything was a gesture and if you didn't read the tutorial you didn't know how to use it.

Yeah, that's maybe an example too. But I feel like part of me has to wonder where is the experimental voice? Because we mentioned things like Ray Gun and Emma Grey and this other kinds of examples from the '90s of what I would consider to be truly experimental work, right? And if the closest we have to that today is Metahaven and Tumblr, is that the same kind of equal? And then similar question in our industry, or at least not in my industry where we're doing software stuff, I wonder sometimes if there is room for that kind of thing and if the best equivalent we get is Snapchat and VSCO, however you, you pronounced it correctly, was it, what was it Robyn?

VSCO?

VSCO.

I used to work with one of the designer, so I got a little understanding of how they work.

Oh. Can you maybe shed some lights on that? Because I always felt like is was, like they were trying to make a really cool app, and that for better or worse they didn't... They definitely were not thinking the same thoughts I think when I design an interface; which was like "I gotta make this really clear" they were like making it cool and expressive; which for me never having, like I downloaded it couple of times and been trying to use it and then just failed and I would give up, and that is kinda the thing I measure, but once you learn how to use it it's fine 'cause you have learned how to use it and it becomes muscle memory. But yeah that app has been successful. And so has Snapchat in spite of what I would consider to be really breaking the rules of UI designed. The rules we have like don't make people think that kinda stuff are being thrown out of the window, those things successful in spite of it, or because of it maybe.

Sure, yeah. I would say calling Snapchat successful is difficult because, and even VSCO too. It's successful to a set of standards. They'll never be huge. I'm looking at Snapchat stock right now, that sold it for the $3 billion and it's running at $18 a share right now. So it's successful but it's not really that successful, and they have a wall that they're gonna hit, and the outline's gonna deal with it too, because it's that break in the main stream that's gonna be hard for them to push forward. In regards to VSCO, I think they're sort of a product of not being able to understand entirely what their product is gonna be. Because when they first started off, all that company was a company that produced film processing, so for actual cameras. Then they moved into Adobe Photoshop like Lightroom install that you could get your photos to look like it's old film, and then it pushed into app. But when they got into app, obviously because of Instagram, they were one of the first people that pushed that in the sense of like Instagram's filters were designed because we had really bad cameras, so they've made everything look like crap to make it look interesting, versus VSCO which like set out with the understanding of making it look good from the beginning.

But when they pushed themselves as a company and they got into storytelling, and that's when they broke. They didn't know what their app was gonna be and you could see it like, through the iconography for sure, like it's a trash app to use, and even if you do get them muscle memory down they change it every 45 seconds. But as a product itself, they just don't know what they are. They do this one thing really well; which is photo editing, but they wanted more. And I think as they pushed into more elements of their business, they just lost it. They lost the ability to have people update and understand what the UX was. So they're weird, and I do think there was a break of say like how successful some of these more interesting companies are. Like Snapchat they're loved, they're not that successful for how much they sold for.

I would love to be as successful as Snapchat. I will take that level of not very successful.

Yeah, maybe it's a scale thing though, like I'm coming out of like Amazonian head space of like how we designed. And it was a little bit of different in this scale in which we called success right? I think you gotta have a clear understanding of what success is, if for Snapchat, if they're thinking to theirself "Great, we just went public and our shares are $18", that doesn't feel like that successful, that feels like "Oh, wow, your shares are only $18". So it's how you define success, what level are you comfortable with calling success. So I don't know. That's what I'd say.

Yeah.

And I think Andy one thing about the question of like where is this experimental software, is if you could measure a physical magazine in the way that you can measure software, don't you think there'd be even less of it?

Well yeah, and that's part of what I'm getting at.

Considering it's a business... And there is, there is experimental software in the world, or art software or art games or whatever. That does exist where that's the goal, right? But I think we just have this... I think it's a combination of things you can't measure in magazines and editorial. And also the idea that editorial is a little bit closer to the art world that I think software is perceived as. I think software is very much seen as a means to an end in business, and if we're just running it through the capitalist system we already described what that does. So...

It ruins everything.

Not super shocking.

I hate it so much. [laughter] Oh I'm getting mad now!

I mean I think there is something interesting about... Because I don't know what you call the kind of design that Snapchat started with, but because it was so... It felt so loose... It felt like the app could fall apart at any minute, Like it's just barely held together with string kind of thing, but what was so fascinating about it, and what I think made it so successful among younger people is that it created this kind of garden wall effect, where younger people felt like that wall was just high enough that adults and people they don't want would just stay out on the other side of that wall.

And they're right. I did.

And yeah. But what's fascinating about it and which people act like "Oh young kids, Millennials, they don't even talk anymore. They use their phone." I mean that's kind of true, but, when it comes to Snapchat, what was amazing about it is because the design was so lacking, it could only be mastered by actually interfacing with another person. And so, to see kids sit around, they would sit with each other and teach each other how to do it. And almost everyone I talked to who became really good at Snapchat, it was because someone sat with them and taught them. And I think that's actually a very interesting approach to software, but I'm sure that's not intended. I don't think they were like "Let's design an app that gets people in a room together," but it's kinda part of what I think made it a success among younger people, and made it something that felt very sacred to them. And I don't know, though, that you can... It's always that thing. Can you grow with your audience? Can One Direction keep growing with its fans as they get older, or do you just stay with young fans? I don't know that I see it doing so well there.

We're talking about this kind of sliding scale of whether or not you can have a black and white answer does it work or does it not? Where I feel, in editorial, it's pretty fuzzy, software gets a little bit closer, but we're also not talk... Nobody's asking "where are all of the experimental airplanes? 'Cause no one's going to get on the experimental airplane. [laughter] It doesn't work. It doesn't fly.

No. There are experimental airplanes. That's the whole thing. Basically, like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have their skunk works... Their experimental places where they make absolutely insane airplanes they should never make. They're so dangerous. The SR71 Blackbird was built so that it could only be flying at the speed of sound. When it was sitting on the ground, the gasoline would leak out of the plates of the plane [laughter], because if they had made it so when it was sealed and on the ground, when it got up to the speed of sound, the heat would cause it to fail. So they had to make it so when it got up to the speed of sound, the heat would cause the metal to expand and it would seal up. That's insane! That's nuts!

But the goal is still flying as opposed to... I feel like in software we're talking about the goal is being different. I think that is very different.

Well but...

I know.

I know a lot about planes and it's [laughter] a perfect example because...

Fun fact about Andy. If you bring up anything he knows a lot about, at least enough to impress you, enough to make you think he...

All right. You know a lot more about planes than I thought you did. [laughter] I thought you were just gonna talk about the experience of like, I just flew Virgin and it was nice and they had lights in the planes.

Well this is the thing. Matt. I hear people express that thing you're expressing which is like "Well look. We're in software. We don't have room to be experimental." But all of the amazing stuff humanity has ever accomplished, even in the most strict, dangerous, engineering industries has been through experimentation and through doing stuff that people said couldn't be done or was totally out there. And you're right. It's not a perfect example because we set out with the goal of flying at Mach three or getting to the moon. Through that goal, we had to invent the microwave and all sorts of heat shielding insulation that we now have that we didn't have before that.

And I think in software you're gonna get the same thing. If you have some crazy goal you wanna achieve with software, yeah, you're gonna have to do a lot of weird, experimental things, because somebody hasn't done it before. But we're talking about things people have done before. One more social network. Oh, we already have a way of doing it again and experimental is just a way of doing it weird.

To be an old grandpa here, what did parallax scrolling do for us?

Aw, Pe Paw. [laughter]

Well, so...

I mean this is what I'm saying. It's breaking out of the norms and it did enable a lot of experimentation, but you know what's really wild is on the same coin; I can't pay a parking ticket online. So it's really weird how there seems to be...

Bad priorities.

A massive schism I want the experimentation, but I want something for the normie side of my life. I don't know. It's kind of... I see experimentation, I see that stuff, and I don't wanna be a total grouch about it the moment it comes out and be like "yeah it'll be gone in a few days." I don't wanna be that person. I want you to love fidget spinners. I want to think that they are good for society or whatever, but the moment you see something sometimes it's just like, "Cool, what is that? What's this for? What's the next step here?" [laughter] Aside from making... Do you know how many ad agencies that probably poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into parallax scrolling microsites? You know?

Yes.

And for what? To crash browser all over?

So that when you scroll you go, "ooh."

Oh yeah.

That's why I think. I dislike parallax scrolling too, but here's what I will say. I think people underestimate what can be learned with the right approach if you are willing to be more experimental in your work. It's not that the thing that's experimental is always gonna be better and you should just do the expressive out there thing because we believe that's better and that's what's important. But, back to my mortar analogy, I think if you allow yourself to maybe do something that feels wrong at first or is outside of the bounds of what the board of directors is going to accept because they're a bunch of stuffy old white guys sitting on the table. You do something that's going to maybe push them a little bit. There's things you can learn from all the conversations you have internally about it, all the conversation you have with your users and your customers about it. And, I think that's the one thing that people kinda leave out of the conversation because that's something it's hard to measure. How much did we learn? I don't know. Did we learn $10,000 worth of lessons or you know, it doesn't quantify it cleanly, so you end up kind of discounting it. But, I do think that it's only through making the kinda out there work that you end up...

A really basic dumb example is that, when we're working... At my company, On Design Things, we have a rule of like, "make the thing that you think is ugly and show it to people." If you make an ugly thing you have to show it to everybody because even if you think it's ugly, you're probably be right it probably is ugly, there might be something redeeming in it that you're not seeing because you just only see the ugly bit.

When you show it to somebody else on the team they're gonna say, "Hey, you know what, you're right. That is not good. We can never put that on the internet or print that or whatever, but this one aspect of it is actually really interesting. Can we focus on that and kind of pull it out?" And, I think that that same approach is no reason that you can't take that same approach on a bigger scale if you have less strict rules about what you will or will not let out the door of your company, whatever you're doing.

Absolutely.

And now we're in the final word segment, and that's mine. Chappell, what's your final word?

You know, if you always listen to music that sounds good or always watch TV that makes you feel good you probably will not grow or at least grow so fast as you could be right? And, I, to bring it back to Businessweek as we did in the beginning, I subscribed to that magazine because, again, they were trying new things but it also really challenged me and there were times I would open a spread and be all like, "I don't know if I like this." And, that's a really good feeling to have in a world of so much sameness and when you immediately say, "I don't know if I like this" it gives you an opportunity to really examine because that's just called bias and it's a really great moment to examine bias and then all of a sudden maybe you're gonna unlock some door that you'll get to walk through and you'll find this whole new life you can live where all of a sudden, you know what? I do like googly eyes on pigs and I never thought I would. And so, I think it is important to put the stuff in your path and in your way to keep challenging you and even though... I mean, yes, I get it. A magazine isn't like the most challenging thing in life. But, if you can challenge yourself visually, it's gonna help you expand so much and get to the next thing in your life. And that's my schmeal.

Preach.

Preach.

I agree so much. I wanna do a whole episode on taste cause I agree so much with everything you just said, but we've already been recording for an hour and 12 minutes. So, Matt what's your final thought?

You know, I feel like Chappell in that like I could almost defend either side of this because sometimes I am doing work and I'm happy and everything's great and I don't feel like I need to be experimental and then sometimes I'm very bored with what I'm doing and I'm like I need to do something weird and experimental 'cause I'm boring. But, I do... I mean, the one thing I do always come back to is like even just this question of like, "Is graph design personal expression or whatever?" The thing I at least I can do when I know will be right is trying to express logic some way. And I guess that's another way of just expressing myself 'cause I think the logical thing is the right thing to do. Also, the world's not so logical and reasonable that that's even boring. I think we're actually in a... I think we could express logic a little bit better and maybe we'd be in a better world 'cause people would do reasonable things.

So, I dunno. I think... That's the closest I can come up with for like why I'm motivated to do any sort of design work, is just try to express the logic of whatever I'm doing. The only time anything ever bugs me is if I think it's a style. If I think I'm just seeing weird design 'cause someone else saw weird design and they saw a weird design and now it's just repeated. But if it's an expression of what is best for that piece, that article, whatever. I'm all in. I love it. And, I also get a kick out of it when I see it for the first time. I wanna see something new. Yes, please.

I like that Matt you're like, "Oh, you want me to be even more expressive I will express... "Take two.

You want me to be more expressive I'm gonna express my logic.

Exactly. You're like a, "I'll be very expressive. I will express my logic to you. See here my expressed logic. Look at this path."

But couldn't the world use a lot more logic, Andy?

You know, the world could use more of a lot of things and a lot less of a lot of things. That's a quotable for you. Robyn give us our final, final thought.

I like weird design. I think it's fun and engaging. If you want to make weird design make sure you have a business buy off before you do it so that way when the going gets tough you can be like, "Hey what's up. Remember we had that conversation we knew this was gonna happen so you can't let go". And I think that's important to do with any sort of design, but especially if you're gonna push the needle in an environment that is kinda into it or kind of not into it, make sure that you have everybody in the room being like "Yep, we agreed to this. Remember, this is the thing, we knew this was gonna happen." So we are able to engage in that content a lot stronger. I guess that's my final thought would just be, "Get buy in and push the needle as much as you can and listen to Nada Surf in the process."

Draft up a contract that says, "Robyn is gonna make a weird design. I'm gonna need everyone to sign on the bottom," and then there we go, we're safe.

Just take somebody out to coffee, be like "What's up? We're gonna push this one thing. You might get bad data or you might just get a weird off put insight for two weeks, but let's commit to this for six months, for three years; three years is a big commit. And then we make our assessment after that." I think ultimately Bloomberg Businessweek started on the bottom, got really up high and is now somewhere in the middle, and that's okay. If you get weird design, go and read the Outline, go read 538, go read Vice 'cause those are where those designers went to push stuff, so be the new generation of pushers.

We're all pushers.

Started from the bottom, now we somewhere in the middle, Bloomberg designs.

We got a good Drake quote in there; we got a good Mean Girls quote in there.

You actually quoted Hamilton earlier, Matt, I'm not sure if you realize you did, but you did.

You know what, I bet there's a lot of times where I've said a Hamilton thing that I didn't pick up on it but you did.

Yeah, and I'm just sitting here biting my hand, like, "Don't point it out, no one cares," and then I don't.

All right, thank you for making our podcast both of you, this was a lot of fun.

As always.

Is there anything either of you would like to promote? Chappell, what do you wanna promote, anything?

I just wanna promote Livin' Life, that's it.

Living life. Robyn, what do you wanna promote?

Nada Surf.

Nada Surf again.

Yep, that's it. I'm giving a talk in San Francisco on Friday, but it already sold out so it's useless to promote, but it might...

Yep, also this will come out afterwards.

Be on the internet. So just listen to Nada Surf.

As always, thanks to XYZ Type for sponsoring the transcripts; you can check them out at XYZtype.com.

Get at us on Twitter and tell us what you think about the conversation tonight.

At Working File, tell us what you think of Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm the practical one.

I'm the expressive one.

I'm the very cool and busy one.