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[00:03] Welcome to Design Speaks. This lovely podcast is brought to you by a graphic design geek and a regular human being. AKA a non-designer. We’re here to chat about music, pop culture, cool places or basically whatever we feel is relevant.

[00:22] (Beatles Birthday song starts playing) Oh my gosh. Sorry. We’re wasting some time.

[00:29] Oh, this is so funny. I’m so thankful! I had something to say after this part. (song continues playing)

[01:03] So

[01:04] Happy birthday! Today is actually your birthday.

[01:09] Thank you. I love it.

[01:10] Um, she didn’t know I was going to.

[01:15] Um, Kelly was driving me here and while I sat in the passenger’s side and did my makeup, um, that’s what we do. Yeah. Um, he was like, oh, I have the perfect song to play for you. And I was like, okay. Obviously he’s going to play the Beatles happy birthday song. You know, each other. It’s just the Beatles, “Michelle”. And I said, out of all of the Beatle’s Songs, this is the one you chose on my birthday?! And he was like, “well, that’s your name!” I know I was like, but it’s my birthday. This is my song in 365 days of the year. I mean, he never played it. So that’s the first time I’ve heard that today.

[01:52] Awe Michelle has like tears in her eyes.

[01:54] Oh, I cry for every everything.

[01:58] So I shouldn’t feel super special

[02:01] Yeah don’t feel special. I’m just kidding thing. So yeah. So you should feel special that you’re crying because I’m crying. It’s stupid.

[02:11] Well happy birthday.

[02:12] Thank you.

[02:12] Today’s a big recording day for us. We’re very trying to get ahead a little bit cause Joelle is going to be going to Israel,

[02:19] Israel.

[02:19] So we’re trying to get so jealous and I we’re trying to get ahead. Um, so Michelle is like working hardcore today for her birthday, so thank you. Thank you. So should we actually start now?

[02:30] Let’s start now.

[02:31] Okay. Hey guys, I’m Brandi Sea.

[02:33] And I’m Michelle. So we will be continuing the process series that we’ve been in with Brandi’s specifically Brandi’s process. I’m, today we’re going to, it’s a, it’s part B continuation of the word map plus whatever else she’s got for us.

[02:49] Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s mostly word map. Yeah. I just, I want to be really like clear and I want to give like an example of something start to finish. I know I gave some sort of like random examples last time of stuff I had kind of started, right. But I’m not all the way through that process yet. So, um, I wanted to go through something that have, I have actually finished and also give some examples from the class, the design concepts class I used to teach at the college.

[03:18] Plus I think it’ll be really, really helpful because I loved last episode. Um, um, I thought that it was really easy for me to visualize and really easy for me to understand. Um, and I think this is just going to kind of make it clear, crystal clear at this point.

[03:34] So, yeah. But besides that, I have a song I found, I dunno how I found this on how I usually do. Probably just

[03:42] listening, listening with your ears.

[03:46] Well, can you find things by listening?

[03:48] I think so. I think it’s possible.

[03:49] Or do you find things by sight?

[03:51] Oh No, I think, I think it’s one of your senses. You got to find things by listening, by feeling, by sight, you know, all the things. This is a much deeper conversation than we have time for.

[04:03] Okay. You’re right. So anyways, the song is by Florence and the Machine.

[04:07] Oh, of course.

[04:09] Who we both decided reminds us of Maggie Rogers and Stevie Nicks. Nicks. Yes.

[04:15] Well we’ll Maggie Rogers. That’s what you originally said. And I said, I think she reminds me, well Maggie Rogers has like a Florence vibe and then I was like, and Maggie Rogers is super Stevie Nicks at the same time. So it’s like the same step. I love these. I love these women.

[04:30] Yes. Is what I’m trying to say like this. So, um, this song is called “Moderation”. And here it is… (plays the song).

[04:49] I love me some Florence.

[05:32] So much energy.

[05:33] Yes.

[05:33] I needed that.

[05:34] She’s like this super-cool Irish woman that, oh, I love her. I love her so much. She’s got spunk.

[05:42] Yeah. So, um, it’s, it can sound, I think part of the lyrics sort of sound like me when I’m maybe not at my best, like,

[05:51] oh yeah,

[05:52] do I look moderate to you? Like I am like in and fully committed and sometimes over committed to things. Um, which can, can not be a good thing, but sometimes it’s really great when you need that energy and you need.

[06:06] totally.

[06:06] So it’s sort of like a reminder to me to not just be crazy, but also like embrace the energy of it when I need it. Yeah. So

[06:16] that’s good.

[06:16] Yes, that was a good one. Okay. So I think, um, I decided I had, I had a number of clients I could have chosen to kind of go through this process.

[06:27] Um, but you’re a little biased.

[06:29] I’m a little biased. I also really enjoyed the research phase of this, so it’ll actually allow, um, when we go into the research step of this on the next episode

[06:40] And a really quick side note, if you have not listened to episode 84 part a, you do need to go back and listen to it for context.

[06:46] Yes. Yeah. So we did kind of a quick overview of what the word map is and what it does. So today I’m going to just, this is going to almost be like a little tutorial, how to, how this works, um, with an actual client. So you know who it is.

[07:00] The client is Kelly Brandford my husband. So my husband,

[07:06] your husband, the one who played on the birthday song was still loves you.

[07:11] Yes, exactly. I mean, he was just, he knew, he knew. He was like, it was, this was the most easily accessible he was driving. So I’ll give him that. Hey, they knew that it was just the next song on the playlist, so he was picked it up anyway.

[07:26] He loves you. Okay. So, um, I guess this was when, I don’t even, I usually put a date on the pages was 2017. Yeah, it was summer. It was, so you started in summer of 2017 but it released in I think October. Yeah.

[07:41] So,, Kelly wanted to do a four song AP and he already had like the songs basically that they were in and he wanted me to do the cover. So, um, I did with him what I don’t normally do with clients unless they are like close friends or family. I sat with the design brief with him at a coffee shop and we kind of filled it out together.

[08:06] Mmmm, hmmm

[08:06] so I’m, at some point in this, um, maybe towards the end ask him to come in and like talk about how that was on the client side, like what that looked like to him. Um, so the words that I used to start out, his mind map, so at the center of his mind map is the name of the album, which is “when skies are gray”. And so, um, as we talked, I got words from him. Um, he gave me words like honesty, beauty, hope, story, emotion, like strong emotion, doubt, discouragement, death, even journey and depth. Um, so those were some of the first words that I was able to start with. Um, he gave me a list of like the instruments that he was using, guitars and cellos and piano, violin, drums. He gave me visual references, um, an album by The Shins.

[09:00] Um,

[09:01] of course not a surprise from him.

[09:04] I kind of expected the national, but that didn’t actually come up.

[09:09] Close one.

[09:09] I showed him some, some different examples of some album art and asked him kind of like, does he prefer like the style of like Jason Munn who we’ve talked about before or Aesthetic Apparatus, which is like, I’m a lot more layered and textured and colorful, um, to what he said, like more Jason Munn Aesthetic Apparatus. So, um, all this stuff was kind of like leading me into being able to fill this, this word of map out correctly. So when I started it, um, he also told me that it was in the acoustic. Um, when I started the map, the first words that I used were “journey” and “honesty” and “sadness”. Okay. K So I’m going to read you, I’m going to read you the, the major, um, things to where this went. So, obviously this isn’t the entire word map. Um, if you want to see the entire word map, go through my Instagram and scroll back and see if you can find Kelly’s art and it’ll be there. Cause I put, I put like the whole process. So from, from journey journey ended up being one of the, the highlighted words.

[10:25] Okay.

[10:25] Um, so there was journey. There was discover, there was, um, stormy and beautiful, dark fall, winter. From winter went to almost so almost winter, um, a road, trees, gray, a hipster-indie-vibey, circles.

[10:46] And when you go see, it’s so funny cause when you go see the album artwork, this is so accurately portrayed already.

[10:55] And so this is before that. So, so, um, so from there, the words that I, that I circled that we’re going to be, um, words that could be a concept. Were journey, gray, winter and almost so then the things that I ended up combining were road to winter, almost winter journey to winter story of warm gray. That one was weird. That’s what I mean. You just kind of like do whatever, a road to almost journey to beauty. Um, emotional fall, almost winter journey, almost winter story. And I’m starting to hear a trend here.

[11:34] Yeah.

[11:35] Almost winter. Yeah. So that was the concept. So that feeling of it’s, it’s not summer, it’s not fall, it’s not quite cold enough for winter. Things are still alive.

[11:48] Yeah.

[11:48] But it’s almost winter that like weird in between place.

[11:52] Sounds very game of Thrones-ey . Have you ever heard their? Their saying is “winter is coming”. I think winter’s finally coming for game of Thrones. They’re about, they’re about to hit their final season anyway.

[12:02] I saw the, the only thing I know about game of Thrones is that there’s dragons.

[12:06] Yeah. That Superbowl commercial benefit and like all you need to know yeah.

[12:11] And stuff that I probably don’t want to watch.

[12:12] Right, exactly. But almost winter,

[12:15] Almost winter. Um, so once I got almost winter, that’s the concept. So then I went back in and I looked for the colors and the visuals. So the color, the main colors were like gray, blue, gray, gray-gray,

[12:31] Kelly’s like “Those are the only colors I can see”. So he’s kind of color blind.

[12:35] That’s probably part of it. It’s like everything is almost winter to me.

[12:38] My life is almost winter.

[12:41] So, um, I, I went through and I picked out visuals like trees and nature, um, clean and geometric. Um, so once I, it was time to go into the, uh, the actual research phase of it. I was able to pull those things out and look for geometric shapes and do research and I’ll talk more about what those things entailed on the research level, but our reach research step of the process. Um, so can you picture the mind map with those words on getting to the concept?

[13:18] Oh, easily.

[13:18] Okay. So that’s Kelly’s. Um, I’m just going to do like a really a really quick, um, talk about someone’s, some other ones that I did for my class, um, because this will maybe push it just a little further to try and just really getting the concept is the most difficult part out of this. But it’s the most important part because you can easily find visuals and you can easily find colors if you’re like expanding on those words enough. But figuring it out, your concept within those words is the one thing that like people have a hard time with.

[13:52] Right. Okay.

[13:53] So shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Um, okay. So in my class, what we would do is I would give them, um, they would have clients at the beginning of the term and they would have to come up with, um, so I would give them a problem. Say this. So for example, this one is, um, the town of old, uh, old town Scottsdale. They wanted to bring more people in for um, like more families. Cause right now it’s like really upscale. It’s like got a lot of bars and, and like upscale shopping and it’s not generally seen as like a family town. So they wanted to create, um, like a brochure or something, um, that would attract families to come and stay for like a weekend or a week or so. So Old Town Scottsdale was the center of the, of the word map. Um, from there, um, because we have a, in these cases I do have, I do have the students fill out the brief as if they are the client. So they have to, either they do that or I will, I will fill out the brief as if I’m the client and give it to them so they have some words to start with.

[15:07] Okay. That makes sense.

[15:08] Otherwise, you know, especially as a student when this is not a real client or a real project, you’re just kind of like talking in circles. It’s like, it doesn’t make any sense. So some of the starting words, were family whether shopping adventure. And now I’m not going to read the full word map, um, because I’m going to show Michelle and I can, I can probably post pictures of this, but,

[15:34] oh, holy moly! It’s a big one!

[15:36] It’s big because in my class I’m there. I remember I said like to fill up the paper. Yeah. So you’re like trying to fill up the whiteboard, the whiteboard writing bigger. The right, the whiteboard is, is the paper. Okay. Um, and also you fill up the paper, but also if you don’t have a lot of time, you go as long as you can.

[15:54] Yeah.

[15:55] So it’s one of the other. Um, so I have another example of one that we did in like 15, like 15 minutes start to finish so that you can see that this is possible. So the old town Scottsdale one ended up, um, the words that we ended up pulling out, we’re curious, cowboys, culture, adventure and family. So we listed them out western, adventure, also fantasy, culture, and curious. We took out fantasy because it didn’t seem right for the town of Scottsdale.

[16:28] Yeah, it sounds more fantasy. Yeah, exactly.

[16:31] So we only eliminated one. So a western adventure was one combination. Curious culture, cultural adventure, adventurous curiosity, western curiosity, and the last one, curious western adventure.

[16:48] Curious Western Adventure.

[16:50] Okay. That’s the one we ended up going with because it makes the most sense does.

[16:54] So you basically have to put words together that don’t make sense to find the ones that do make sense.

[17:00] You combine everything in every way until something starts to pop out and then the more you do it, if we had gone on, if we had gone on longer, there would have, this would have come out naturally just because it’s like, it makes sense. You can start to visualize, if I asked you to visualize what does a curious western adventure look like, you’d probably have something in mind.

[17:21] Yeah.

[17:22] And that’s kind of the point. If, if I were to have said curious culture, that one’s a little bit like, I mean, culture can mean a lot of things in this point.

[17:32] I’m just like curious, does that mean weird or like odd?

[17:36] So, right. So that’s that one. The next one we did was let’s say Dion’s, which is a local pizza shop. The chain here in New Mexico and Texas and Denver.

[17:50] Oh, in Denver. Great. We’re branching out.

[17:51] All right. I said, “okay, let’s say that that Dion’s needs a new look”. They don’t need a complete rebrand.

[18:00] Like they just need a new look, which is what they’ve recently done.

[18:03] Right. So that’s funny because this was like two years ago.

[18:08] Um, let’s see what you came up with and what they look like now. Let’s see what we came up with.

[18:11] So this is the one we did in about 15 minutes.

[18:13] Okay.

[18:13] Okay. So it’s not huge.

[18:15] I see it. Yeah.

[18:16] We start with Dion’s. At the center and we didn’t have a brief for this. This was just like, okay guys, what do you do if you have no brief, if you, if you are like just trying to brainstorm something. Um, so I was just asking them like, give me some words that come to mind when you think of Dion’s. So local, fun, fast, colorful, delicious. Structured. Homemade. Okay. So we went from Dion’s to local to New Mexico to Chile. Dion’s to homemade to from scratch to organized. Um, we went from Dion’s to fun to friendly. So the words we ended up pulling out were work, community, family, local, friendly, homemade and organized. The first two things we did were local, homemade and homemade community. And then we were done. Okay. Homemade Community.

[19:10] Yeah. And that it’s kind of funny. Go look at their branding, go look at how everything looks. I don’t think I’ve even paid that close attention to it. It’s been, I mean it’s been, I want to say like a year and a half since it’s been done. So it’s not like brand spanking new. They do have like a new look with like now we give you your salad and bowls in bowls, not like in plastic bowls. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the actual look of like even like the thing that they put the pizza in the pizza boxes and the bags that they hand you. They all have a little bit of something different on it. So, and that’s, that’s really cool cause it’s, it’s colorful, it’s fun. Um, it’s, it seems really organized. Um, but there’s, it looks cool. I like, yeah, I like it a lot, especially with those words. My, yeah.

[19:50] So homemade community ended up being the concept.

[19:53] Yeah.

[19:53] So then from there you can build on, okay. What things feel homemade, what colors feel like community and all that stuff. Um, and the last one that I’m going to do is for, um, I think it was for rei or dykes toys. Ux Toys was really fun. So Yikes Toys is another, I think. So this, the school I used to teach at, um, they have two campuses. They have one in Phoenix and one in Albuquerque. And, um, so when they write their curriculum, a lot of their like pretend clients come from the Phoenix area. So, um, Yikes Toys is a toy, like a goofy toy place from that area and they have terrible, terrible branding. So they’re like “here, class, all the classes, do something with this”. So, um, we started with yikes toys, so, so basically their, their problem was that they needed new branding.

[20:42] Okay.

[20:42] Um, a lot of these are branding just because it’s a, it’s a good like base thing to learn how to design.

[20:47] Yeah, totally. I want to start there too.

[20:48] Yeah. This is where I was at. So they needed a logo and a brand. So from, from Yikes Toys again, it’s a big one. So I’m not going to, I’m only going to say the words that we pulled out. Um, quirky, wacky, fun, eccentric, unusual, bizarre, novelty. Animated, peculiar and exciting.

[21:09] Now with the word Yikes Toys in there. That all makes sense. The context is there.

[21:14] Yeah. So, um, the, the combinations that we did, sincerely peculiar, classically bizarre, bizarre novelty, classically animated, peculiar excitement, classic novelty, novel excitement, classically wacky. Okay. Classically wacky.

[21:39] That’s the one. Yep.

[21:41] And you, it’s weird.

[21:42] It’s like, it just makes sense

[21:43] And it’s hard to explain. It is, that’s why I wanted to go into a few examples because it’s hard to explain that when you’re, when I just tell people, well I use the word map to find the concept. Well how do you get it? It’s all about, that’s why language and the vocabulary and like saying the things out loud and writing them out is so important because it’s not just like something that you go, okay, I’m just going to pick this random thing. It’s like, okay, when you say it, does it make sense? Does it sound right? Do you have a picture in your head of what that might look like? And then everything just kind of goes, ah, everything falls into place

[22:19] Now it’s, it’s interesting because I, I don’t think that everyone who is, I don’t think anyone just anyone can be a designer or um, you know, go into this field and excel at it. But I think that mostly everyone can do a word map.

[22:37] Yes.

[22:38] And get something.

[22:39] I think anyone, especially even if you know, because even though I love vocabulary, I love reading, I still use a thesaurus because my brain has an end to what it knows. So like even if like for your man, I got to really work on saying “like” it makes me crazy when I’m listening to myself

[23:00] sometimes at work yesterday people were like, Michelle, what’s your crutch? And I, I said, I say like a lot. Um, but I, I gave them my real crutch and they’re like, the glass has been shattered. I know it now and my, my, you’ll hear it. Oh my gosh. I’m going to say it, “makes sense”. Yeah, it makes sense.

[23:17] I say that too, but I say “like” a lot more.

[23:20] So we’re to shattering the glass for everybody at work yesterday. Like what’s your crutch? Okay. Oh, you do say that to say that. And like, so every time we’d say and be like,

[23:30] Oh man, I think I’m over hearing my own voice. Because for a while I just hated hearing my own voice. Now I’m like, okay, I’ve done the podcast for two years and I’ve done the video stuff and I just don’t even care about my voice anymore.

[23:44] Now you’ve got to start working on, this is the point where you start working on what you say and how often you say it. This is the hard part.

[09:17] I know, man. I stopped. I don’t say “um” very often because I was,

[09:22] you’d hear yourself say, um

[09:24] oh well I was in a speech class where you got a point off of your grade every time you said, um, speak.

[09:33] So stressful.

[09:34] So I don’t say I’m very often, unless I’m like really searching for something. So, okay. I think I will do one last one and then we will be done. I just want to make it like crystal clear how, how easy this can be. And um, once you kind of get the hang of it, it’s actually so much fun and it’s really something that you can do with like a team of people especially.

[10:03] So before you head into this last example at work on Monday, uh, we found out that we have been the, the college age group that meets on Monday nights has been using this term called mixer to go hang out with one another to get together and hang out.

[24:44] And so they like outside of out Monday night outside of the Monday night thing, like,

[24:48] so it was like weird because it’s like who goes to mixers? What, what are you even saying right now?

[24:54] And so what is this 1955.

[24:56] So they were like, Michelle, can you help us brainstorm for a new name for this? I was like, okay, sure. And then I was like, I can do a WORD MAP! (brandi’s gasps)

[25:07] You did??

[25:07] And we all sat down and we did a word map together and we came up with the word.

[25:12] YES!!!!!

[25:13] And it was so cool cause it had to be fast. So I knew that like I was like, we can’t spend all day on this. So we just did as much as we could and we got it with the word. The word is gather. Hey. So instead of mixer, it’s just gather and then we met her period gather period up, call to action, do this, gather.

[25:34] That’s awesome.

[25:35] So we were really excited

[25:38] how like what was the energy and like how did everybody..?

[25:41] Really, it was really cool because it started out with, okay everybody to say the dumbest things, just say it, just say it. Cause I got to write it down. And so we’ve started saying like, you know the, the Christian-y terms of fellowship and and yeah. And so like okay well what does that remind you of? And so we would just go, we went through it. Oh it was amazing.

[25:59] It was totally wish you had like timelapse this. I know I almost love nothing more than a good like word map timeline.

[26:06] So I have put this into practice and it’s so much fun and it was really cool. The person who called for the new name loves it. So it was awesome. It was a good moment.

[26:17] That’s fantastic.

[26:18] And with that, your last, yeah, my last example. So, I don’t know how many of you have been following me for awhile, but this past, this past year I spoke at the AIGA Design Summit Conference. I did a workshop on this whole process, but I also did a poster for the event, like a special poster for the event. We already had a theme. So we already had a concept which was “multifaceted”, but there needed to be, uh, a visual kind of representation of what multifaceted faceted means it looks like. And looks like, yeah. So I’m gonna walk you through just a little, so this isn’t a concept, a concept walk through. This is more just like a, how I came to the visuals. Um, so in the multifaceted, so when you already have a concept, say say something like this. Like you have an event and you are, it’s out of your control. What the concept is, it’s just given to you obviously make sure that it’s communicated clearly, that it’s a concept that can be actually visualized. Cause sometimes there’s, you know, there’s confusion on what a concept actually is and you’re given something maybe that isn’t able to be visualized. But in this case, multifaceted is. So a lot of the words that I came up with were sharp, many-sided gems, adaptable, versatile, sophisticated, skillful, sharp, prism, creative and stand-out. Now all of those things are also, were also meant to represent like creatives. So these are words that you can use to describe a creative because creatives are multifaceted. That was kind of the thing. So I ended up finding like this, this really interesting geometric gem shape, like a really like a basic gem shape and it looks kinda like a prism. And from there I, I basically looked at the, the colors that were in here and found some colors that worked. And the colors that ended up coming out were like, were yellow and black. And then I did a little bit of research into certain colors and ended up with like this really interesting sulfur color. Okay. Which is like a yellow. And so I’m going to just leave you guys hanging on why I chose sulfur, because that’s going to go more into like the research part of this for next week. Very cool. But, um, yeah, so there’s some examples of, you know, coming up with the concept with input from the client, coming up with a concept or using the concept when it’s already been given to you and also, you know, just using it and you no longer stretches or really small bits of time. So

[29:01] Love it.

[29:02] It seems like it’s restricting. It seems like, oh my gosh, I don’t have time to do a word map. I don’t have time for all these steps in this process, but it’s, it’s a matter of the more you do it, the better you get at it and you can scrunch it into any amount of time that you actually have and still get something really cool.

[29:17] So you do have time.

[29:18] You do, you do have to make time,

[29:21] Make time for every step of the process.

[29:24] So I hope that that, I hope that that wasn’t just like treating you guys like you’re idiots going over it like six times.

[29:32] I need that clarity. I needed to be laid out for me so I can move forward in confidence. Otherwise I’m going to be like, um so when you said this did you mean and you’re basically going to have to do the project for me. So I’m thankful for it.

[29:47] So yeah, I wanted it. I wanted it to be super clear. I wanted there to be lots of examples and so that, because this part is the absolute most important part. Once you have the concept, once you have the colors and your visuals, then you can move on to the research and brainstorming, which is what we’ll talk about next time.

[30:06] Yay.

[30:07] So Michelle, where can people find us? They can find us on all forms of social media via at BrandiSea you want to spell you name, your name, their name, their name is I am They…go ahead.

[30:19] B. R. A. N. D. I. S. E. A.

[30:21] You can give us your feedback there on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or you can also email us brandi@Brandysea.com. Um, again, if you get any value from the show, please just share it. Share it with all of your friends. Um, whether it be via Twitter or Instagram, or sending the link to us, to someone say, Hey, listen to this episode. I thought it was really valuable and I think you’ll like it.

[30:45] You can also support us on Patrion and I have a shout out.

[30:48] Yes

[30:49] We have another sponsor, patron on Patrion. Allie Blackwood Mead. Yes. Now a monthly sponsor. So thank you so much. Every dollar counts you guys like every little bit. Like it means so much to us.

[31:05] We’re so thankful for your love that. Thank you so much Allie. And you can check out our patrion patrion.com/design speaks and that is it. That’s it. Thank you. To call in a vesper team for letting us use his song shatter in the night as the intro and outro to our podcast. [inaudible] no, Yo man, you were just saying, yeah.