Jada Britto: The Reflex Blue Show #248

by on August 24, 2023 at 10:01 am
Posted In: The Reflex Blue Show

Jada Britto: The Reflex Blue Show #248

As the last of this year’s HOW Design Live podcast interviews, Jada Britto joins me to discuss her talk on, ‘Reigniting Hope: Breaking Out of the Checkbox Mentality.’ I had met Jada the day before at the conference, and immediately knew I would love to have a longer chat, and thankfully, we found a time to record the next day with just hours of the conference left. We discuss what a checkbox mentality is and how to get out of it, diversity of thought, when to bring up designing for accessibility with your client, her teaching Design Management at Georgetown, her designing more sustainable packaging at Colgate-Palmolive, and more.

Once again, big thanks goes out to the team at HOW Design Live for bringing in such a great group of speakers, and giving me the opportunity to talk to a number of them. For those who missed any, at the 2023 event, I recorded three recap shows:

I also recorded eight interview podcasts (including this one):

I have four more episodes recorded (three from the 2023 OnBrand Conference in Omaha) that will be launching in the next month(ish) to wrap up Season 16 of The Reflex Blue Show.

Enjoy.

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Emily Mills: The Reflex Blue Show #247

by on August 17, 2023 at 2:54 pm
Posted In: The Reflex Blue Show

Emily Mills: The Reflex Blue Show #247

Emily Mills was at the HOW Design Live conference in Nashville to talk about transition as a creative professional. And as the founder of Sketch Academy, she was also spending quite a bit of time sketch noting the event itself from the exhibit hall – for those who want more about the live sketch note mural she did with Gary Kopervas, I spoke with Emily about it while she was working on it from the exhibit hall on both our Day 1 Recap (where Gary also joins in), as well as our Day 2 Recap where the mural was well under way.

For this show, I met up with Emily after the mural work was complete, and spend most of the episode talking about transitioning from a designer to an illustrator, sketch noting, her Sketch Academy, and more.

As this was recorded after most of the conference was over, we also talk about this year’s closing party, which involved a LOT of neon (the theme was ‘Nashville Neon Lights’ after all). A lot of the memories of an event like this come from the location, and as The Gaylord Opryland® Resort & Convention Center was just enough distance from downtown Nashville to make leaving an actual decision, well, I really only left the area once (not counting the to and from the airport). Of course, the upside was I did not seem to be alone in this thinking, and because of the convenience of staying at the event site (which contained plenty to do as I found out), that closing party seemed to have been attended by a larger group than I have seen in a while, and by a lot of the people that usually skip it, and it was a great one.

Enjoy.

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Carl Gerhards: The Reflex Blue Show #246

by on August 11, 2023 at 10:23 am
Posted In: The Reflex Blue Show

Carl Gerhards: The Reflex Blue Show #246

Carl Gerhards was at the HOW Design Live conference in Nashville to talk about the rebrand, I mean, ‘the next generation of the Pepsi logo‘. It’s rare to have such a large company make a shift in their identity in today’s age and get a lot of positive feedback from the design community, which this one deserves. To my surprise, this was mostly handled in-house. It was fun to talk with someone about what is involved in a rebrand of this scale – the Pepsi brand alone has around 300 SKUs for packaging in the the US, and around 2,000 worldwide.

We also talk about their t-shirt operation in the exhibit hall at HOW Design Live, as well as if you hang around after the show, the news that the new Pepsi blue is none other than, you guessed it, Reflex Blue! And we talk about growing an in house team, like the PepsiCo Design + Innovation one Carl is at.

Since I have been podcasting, starting with the Be A Design Cast in 2005 to the Reflex Blue Show of today, we always had a little thing of who we’d love to talk with about design, and honestly, I’ve spoken with more people on that list than I ever imagined I would, but one of the few missing ones was someone who worked on the brand we seem to discuss as much as any other over the years, Mountain Dew. We have spent many episodes talking about new flavors, have had multiple taste tests, and probably have a slide or two about it in most of the presentations we have given, but have never actually spoken to someone about what it’s like to work as a designer for the brand itself. When I saw Carl was speaking at HOW Design Live this year, he was the first person on my list because of this. So yes, we talk about designing for Mountain Dew.

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Shayna Kulik: The Reflex Blue Show #245

by on August 4, 2023 at 1:59 pm
Posted In: The Reflex Blue Show

Shayna Kulik: The Reflex Blue Show #245

Shayna Kulik was at the HOW Design Live conference in Nashville this year to talk about how art and culture affect pattern and color. Just a look around any room immediately makes me realize how many patterns I see during a day, and how many I have probably not even noticed, so it was great to be able to talk to a pattern visionary like Shayna to help me understand this aspect of design that I often neglect, but shouldn’t.

We also talk about Shayna being on the board of The Color Association, a group that I didn’t really know existed, but if I give it any thought, a group that I should have known about, and how they use trends and forecasting to figure out how to design color pallets for products that won’t be in existence for another two years. I mean, have noticed that when I buy a shirt, the shoes from a different company somehow coordinate with it, and that only happens by chance every now and then, so of course there is a place to go to make sure the red you use in two years will be the red someone else is using.

We also talk a bit about the difference between the patterns we see, and patterns as in repetition of something happening more than once, as well as where patterns may end up next.

We may be around two months since HOW, but we still have three more podcasts yet to release from the event, so stay tuned. After that, I have already recorded another show remotely, as well as three shows with the keynote speakers at the 2023 OnBrand Conference in Omaha before wrapping up Season 16.

Enjoy.

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Ben Greengrass & Jessie McGuire: The Reflex Blue Show #244

by on July 19, 2023 at 2:39 pm
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Ben Greengrass & Jessie McGuire: The Reflex Blue Show #244

Ben Greengrass and Jessie McGuire of ThoughtMatter seemed to be everywhere at this year’s HOW Design Live conference in Nashville. They gave a talk titled, “Creative Bravery: The Importance of Friendship, Humanity and Embracing Vulnerability to Break Creative Boundaries”; ran a booth at the exhibit hall; and ThoughtMatter even sponsored the lunch for the HOW Women Lead conference the day before HOW Design Live officially kicked off.

We talk about all of this, as well as doing socially impactful work like they did for Misfits Market; diversity in the field of Design, and how to promote it; and more.

We also spend a bit of time talking about how to network as a student or recent graduate. Ideally, everyone in the profession would all get that perfect internship that would introduce them to everyone in the industry, and then have it turn into a full-time job. Fortunately, this is not the only way to get experience in graphic design, and it’s not the only way to meet others in the field. Networking sometimes simply means you talk with another creative person, share ideas, and hopefully learn something, even if you never meet again – and even if what you talk about has nothing to do with graphic design at all. I love hearing of companies who find a way to give back, and find a way to get creatives to start talking to each other, and ThoughtMatter has started an event, AfterTHOUGHT, that does just that. If only I lived new New York City… but these things happen elsewhere, you just have to find them, or start them yourself.

Enjoy.

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