This week we are talking about when to draw the line on knowing the “limits” of what you can do vs. when you should stretch your skills and do something you might be even a bit uncomfortable doing.

Inspirations, Thoughts, & What We’ve Been Up To

Featured Music:

The Frail Ophelia’s – “Scotland”

•  Michelle
  • Basically just finishing up Newclear Family
• Brandi
  • We are going to start a Patreon for all you lovely people who’d like to support us
  • Our 100th episode is coming
  • We will celebrate 2years of the podcast in February

I think something you can get out of this [conversation] is knowing other people’s strengths. Like knowing your community. Knowing other people who have skills, and tucking those away, and knowing that they are there is another huge part of this. It takes a lot of pressure off of you feeling like you need to know everything.

THANKS FOR THE FEEDBACK!!!!

“I’m a fan. Of Brandi. Of Michelle. Of Design. And of this podcast. If you’re a designer, you’ll find value through the stories of a colleague. (Perhaps, you’ll even send it to your Dad so he knkows what you do.) If you’re not a designer, prepare to have your questions answered about the people and thinking that crafts the world around you.”  – HughWeber on iTunes

Find us on all forms of social media via @BrandiSea on Instagram,Twitter,Facebook, and you can email us any burning questions you want Brandi to answer on an episode at brandi@brandisea.com.

THANK YOU to the ultra-talented  Vesperteen (Colin Rigsby) for letting us use his (“Shatter in The Night”) track in every episode of Design Speaks.

TRANSCRIPTION

Brandi: Hey guys, I’m Brandi Sea

Michelle: And I’m Michelle

Brandi: And you are listening to episode 72 of Design Speaks

Michelle: Welcome to it. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about knowing your limits… Basically

Brandi: Okay,

It’s a brief summary

Michelle:  Where to draw the line.

Brandi: Oooh, Sounds intense

Michelle: It sounds like it can be an eye-opener, for many of us, but maybe, we’ll see.

Brandi:  Maybe more freeing. This topic mainly came from last week’s conversation.

Michelle: So hopefully you benefit from it, until then, Brandi, how about your week/upcoming bits of life?     

Brandi: Yeah, so instead of talking about my week this week I just decided, well I am going to bring a song, which is really exciting, but I thought I would give you guys a little sneak peek, there’s going to be some really exciting things happening here on the podcast. We’re going on 2 years in February, which is really cool. We’re currently planning our 100th episode which is less than 30 episodes away right now. I don’t know how that happened. Wow, we managed to talk about things for almost 100 episodes. So, we’re planning episode 100 if you guys have any thoughts or ideas on what you might want to hear on a 100th-anniversary episode we are open to ideas. Also, we are going to be launching a Patrion page for our podcast. As you know, up to now, we do not have any sponsors. That is not because we haven’t been approached by sponsors, it’s primarily for me, as sort of the main person behind this brand, I want to make sure that any sponsors we take are something either we actually use or something we actually like stand behind. There have been some random people who are like, “hey can we sponsor you?” and maybe we can use their product, but they don’t necessarily have something that you guys would find beneficial. Not something you would want to hear about on a creative podcast.

Michelle: We have had people show interest in supporting us, and we are giving you a way to support us through the Patrion system. We will give you more details on that in an upcoming episode also online via Instagram. So keep an eye out for that so you can support if you would like to.

Brandi: We are working on what kind of incentives you guys could get, or not if you want to give just to give that would be great, Time is money. Michelle and I both take a lot of time to do this, so it would be nice to have some support from you guys. So we are working on that.

We are going to be implementing some book reviews and interviews, possibly in the new year. We talked about last week that we now have a show notes/ transcription producer, Joelle. So she is going to be helping out. We are also finally going to be doing a series of episodes starting in the new year on My Process, Michelle’s been wanting me to do this for quite a while, and I’ve had a few questions over direct message, specifically about my process that quite honestly are just hard to explain in just a text or a message to somebody. And I think it’s just time, so I will go into every step very in depth and talk about how it works and why it works.  So yeah, lots of really cool things. I’m working on possibly revamping the graphics for the episodes. Not our main graphic, our cover art. It’s very representative of us and I love it. Just lots of little things here and there to hopefully make this a little better.

Michelle: We are trying to up our game for you.

Brandi: There are a couple of other things that we aren’t 100% sure of yet if they happen then you will know, but there are a lot of things happening in the background to make this even better and more efficient.

Michelle: All good things, all good things. Tons of fun things coming up.

Brandi:  So my song is, I’m just going to go the long way of how I found this band like I usually do, so this band is called The Frail Ophelias, like Ophelia from Hamlet. Okay so this is how I found it, I follow one of my very favorite designers of all time, his name is Jason Munn, he does a lot of gig art, gig poster art, and I have his book and he’s brilliant. I follow him on Instagram, and he did this art for this band called The Frail Ophelias.  The cover art is his style and it’s awesome, the album cover is Macbeth, and I thought, “oh man, I’m going to go look these guys up”. They have just over 100 followers. Then I went to look at the about, and once I read the about you’ll know why I love this band. Okay, so it says, “The Frail Ophelias, Shakespeare inspired, indie folk from San Francisco.”  Can you say anything else that has more things I love in one sentence? Just insert “color” maybe, process? It goes on to say, “the bard is our muss, party like it’s 1599.”  So I listened and I thought this was going to be weird music, but I listened, and the album is basically the play broken up into song form, and it is amazing. Not that the song is super unique, but one song has the line “double double toil and trouble,” and lines that other characters say. It’s not just inspired by, they actually use lines from the play in their songs. So the song that I am bringing today by The Frail Ophelias is the first song on the album and it’s called Scotland and I really like it.   

Scotland by The Frail Ophelias

B: It is really good, it is Shakespeare, it is like San Francisco indie rock so it’s like north Cali indie rock which is brilliant. Different people understand Shakespeare in different ways like some people need cliff notes, but through music, you can sing these lyrics and understand them and they help you feel them in a new way. I’m so excited about it. Thank you, Jason Munn, I want you on my podcast.

M: I don’t have much of a week either, my last day of filming for New Clear Family is tomorrow.

B: Oh, now the big question, when is this going to be released to everyone?

M: Our goal is the new year. Post [production] is already happening. Most people know that you shoot everything out of order, but tomorrow we are shooting basically the entire first episode. SO we have not done that yet. So we can’t release anything until that’s done.

B: Do you have a trailer?

M: We have bits and pieces, I have not seen any of it yet. So, I’m getting anxious about it. I know what we shot look beautiful in the way of a Sitcom. I’m working with such talented people that I don’t think they would allow it to not look beautiful.

B: So you guys also need a bit of last-minute funding so where can they find New Clear Family, where can they find ways to support it?

M: The easiest way is to shuttle you to our Instagram  newclearfamily and you’ll find a link to the website where you can give if you want. We also are selling T-shirts. We’ve gotten a lot of funding already and it’s covered basics like lighting, we’ve gotten every location for free thankfully, and we were able to buy food for everybody. We had some early call times, like one of our call times was 4:00 AM. And if you’re crew you work a 17 hour day and I’m crew. So that’s the only way to give right now, through that website via the Instagram @newclearfamily, and you can keep up with us there to find out when we are going to be releasing everything. It’s been a blast, but I think we are all in agreement that we cannot wait for this to be done. So that just it for me this week, and I don’t have a song this week.

So today on Design Speaks we are talking about when to draw the line on knowing your limit/when you should stretch your skills.

B: So where did this question come from?

M: Well last week’s episode we talked about the benefits of having a team leader, whether that be a creative director or an art director, at least in a creative space, and how those positions are important because of how they asses other’s skills and find their strengths for the team. So when you are given something from a client or from your team leader and it doesn’t quite match your skill set should you say, “hey, I don’t do well in this and here’s why this is why this should not be given to me”. Or do you sit back and think, “You know, this isn’t my skill set, but maybe it’s time I stretch myself”. Where is the line or where should we draw it?

B: So, I feel like I have a good place to speak on this. Because when I started my first design director job, it was out of what I think my immediate skill set was. When I first went into the design work field, it was as a web graphics designer, and over the course of a few months the position opened up for the art director. It was one of those things where I wasn’t even asked if I wanted to do it, so it was more me looking at it. So what if you’re in the position where someone says, “you’re the only option to be the designer here, would you be interested in being the art director here?” This is a big jump though so we’ll go to smaller levels of stretching. On something like that, then you would have to look at the skills you know you have. So look at the skills you have and look at the skills that that job will take, so for example, would you consider yourself a leader? Are you able to delegate well? All the things that you can see that that job entails, do you already know how to do that and what things are things that you cannot do, and what are things that you feel like you can learn as you go. There’s that whole idea of, “fake it till you make it” and I think that this is valid in a creative space more than in a lot of other spaces because a lot of the skills bleed into each other to some extent. Over the course of my having my first job, I often think that my first job was the best job I could have has to start with because I was able to make it my own thing, but also because of the sorts of things that that place required was so vast and varied, they needed stage design, they needed branding design, book covers, T-shirt design, and right before I left I was going to help with some jewelry stuff which was way out of my skill set. So, always be willing to learn something new, but you need to know yourself well enough to know if you’re getting into something too deep or getting into something that you couldn’t like, therefore making you not good at. Would you be willing to learn on this job be beneficial or detrimental to the team? Something that happened often while I was working in my first job was for the job of an illustrator, a lot of them needed an illustrator, so I would find an illustrator to come do what was needed. So, because I am capable of drawing, could I have done that? Possible, but me trying to sit on my office would have been a drain on my energy and my time, so they would be paying me to do a job that I am not suited for. Then there was stage design, so we had to change the designs of the stage for the different teaching series that would be going on. I had never done stage design before, but it was definitely something that fell into my skill set because I know environmental design, so I built it into what I knew because stage design is environmental design. I knew that the things the video team was working on had to work with the banners that would be going up, or the stage props, so I went out of my way to learn more about stage setup and lightning, and how things on the stage can affect the sound, so that was something I was willing to stretch myself on whereas the illustration was not. It’s not always a matter of always wanting to stretch yourself, you also have to realize what your limits are. Also be willing to ascertain whether those are limits because you are afraid or if they are legitimate limits.

M: In the same sense, say I’m doing the same thing as you, I can also say, if they need some kind of illustration, that is beyond me. But if they come to me and ask if I can help with this live stage element, I would for sure say yes, even though I don’t have all the skills in the world, but because I get it. I understand what you mean by that.

B: Right, so I think the whole fake it till you make it thing is about telling your boss, or your client, “yeah, I think I can handle that”. And that doesn’t mean you know exactly how that will happen, it means that you believe that this will work.

M:  So it means, fake it till you make it… sometimes

B: Yeah, or, say if they were to drop that stage design in my lap and it wasn’t something I was remotely interested in/ didn’t have time to do/ I was flat out uncomfortable with handling because maybe it was just too big for what I feel like I can handle, then that would be up to me to find a resource outside of myself, whether that be someone else on the team, or even if it means finding someone outside that team, outside of my workplace who does know that thing, and not to necessarily hand off the entire thing, but to be there and work side by side on making this thing happen.

M: I think whenever those things are handed to you, it’s going to be overwhelming, but you need to assess why it’s going to be overwhelming.

B: Everything new is scary. So being able to step back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, why is this scary? Is it scary because I don’t know how to even approach this? Or is it scary because I know my limits and whatever the thing is, I know I won’t be a good job? If you know you’re not going to do a good job on it, don’t just take it. Because honestly, I know that we all want to take it, especially me, I am that person who wants to take on everything to figure it out and make it happen. Whether that means me giving it to someone else, or me figuring it out on my own. But if you can figure that out, and you start thinking, “if I take this, it’s going to make me look really good, if I just say yes all the time then they will think that I can do everything, and I can figure it out”, but then you end up not being able to figure it out, and that’s worse. It will look worse on you later.

M: That’s actually been the only negative thing that I had in an annual review, it was that I need to learn to say no. Because I want to and can do a lot, but saying no means that the things I say yes to, I can do even better. The word, no, is so hard for me to say, but I recognize that there are benefits to me saying it. The initial disappointment sucks, but in the long run, it is better and it makes sense.

B: It would actually be a worse disappointment if you said yes, and did a terrible job at it, and delivered it, and they needed it, and it’s a crappy job.

M: And this may be something not many people relate to, but I work at a non-profit, so I am working on other people’s money. So if I waste time, I waste other people’s money.

B: Another thing that I was thinking about earlier, when you first brought this up was that you may also want to know what it is you want to learn. So when you are at a job, stop to think about, this is my job but what other things would I like to accomplish while I’m here. Most people don’t go into a job thinking, they hired me to be this web designer and I’m going to be cool with staying here forever. Everyone wants to do more. If you can visualize your end goal, like do you want to be a project manager, or eventually be the liaison between the printer to be more of a production artist. So think what skills do you want to learn and that can help you gage where that line is, so you can learn what you’re willing to do and not do. It can be a bit of a catch 22 though because you may not realize that you enjoy something that you really hated learning.

And Michelle, you said you have a hard time saying no because it takes you away from what you’re actually good at. And there is a theme that has been around in design for a while that all graphic designers need to know all of the things like you need to know print and web. But it’s starting to become less than, so people are becoming okay with people having specialties. I like this because I don’t like web design. I can design a pretty website, but you don’t want me to build it. It won’t work. So I have had to step back and say, I do not want to do this, not because I am not capable of doing it, but because it brings me zero joy. So I have decided to become the best at what I do, and figuring out where my strength is, and building up those strengths, and saying no to probably lots and lots of money because everyone wants a website.

M: So, I want to ask you, have you ever done something that you should have said no to? And how did that turn out?

B: Yeah for sure. There have been websites that I have done that I should have said no to earlier in the process. So I learned to be upfront with the client and ask, is something you need a website? If the answer is yes then I tell them I can work with the web designers. But they need to know that I am not going to be the one to build their website. I did a proposal with the web guys I work with at 11online, for the city of Albuquerque, for a new Route 66 project they were doing, and part of the proposal was they needed a web design, so I designed the front page and the guys made it work. There were also times where because I needed to take time to learn it, the end result ended up being not very good because I didn’t have enough time to actually execute it because I was spending so much time trying to learn how to do the thing.

M:  Is there a silver lining in this somewhere, can learning still be good? 

B: Of course, learning is still a good thing. The biggest lesson I learned was to know my strengths and know what I’m passionate about and what I’m not. I also learned how to communicate that to other people. To let them know that I know they need something, but I’m going to call an illustrator to do something, but I will be working with them so they don’t have to worry about talking to another person.

M: So this goes into pricing, but when you have to bring someone else in, does the client also have to pay an illustrator too?

B: It depends on the project. So once I got hired out to do a lettering thing for a client, and I believe he gave them a quote with my price added in, and then they paid him that full amount. That is the easiest way to do it,  but you want to make sure that you are transparent in your billing to say that “X amount went to the illustrator”, but make sure the client knows, they do not9 have to pay them, you will make sure they get what they need, but just so the client knows what all they are paying for.

M: As a client, I would much rather have that then 2 invoices saying, “you owe this person this and this person this”.

B: I say it depends because there are some independent contractors who do things their own way, so they aren’t relying on 2 different people to make sure they get paid. It really is just a matter of preference and who you’re working with.     

I think something else you can get out of this is knowing other people’s strengths. Like the community, knowing your community. Knowing other people who have skills, and tucking those away, and knowing that they are there is another huge part of this. It also takes a lot of pressure off of you feeling like you need to know everything.

Creative community is extra important. And this is something that is great when you have a creative director, they can help you figure out where your line is too and why you may be afraid to do something.

M:  As we learned last week, no project is done completely alone.

B: Unless you’re a freelancer, sometimes you do more than you actually should.

M: If you would like to rate and review us, please do so on iTunes, Design Speaks so far it’s all 5 stars, we’d like to keep it that way, but you tell the truth. You can also find us on social media, @BrandiSea and you can email us brandi@brandisea.com

B: For now our currency is you sharing this with your friends, but hopefully we will have a Patrion soon.

M: And thank you to Vesperteen for letting us use his song Shatter in the Night as out intro and outro song. Talk to you guys next week.