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Transcript
That's it. Hop on the Creativity train.
All aboard the Creativity Train. Hello and welcome to episode 188 of the erasable Podcast. I am Andy Wel on hosting duties tonight and I am joined by our favorite favorite co host from Erasable Studio South, Tim Wasem. Hey, Tim.
Hey, how's it going?
Johnny is currently in the.
I was wondering where you were going with that. I was like favorite.
Go on, go on, go on. Johnny is in the middle of a house full of sick kids and is he himself not feeling great? So. So Johnny's not here with us tonight, but we think we more than make up for, you know, lacking what we have in Johnny with another JY guest, somebody who's been on the show before a couple times, Joey Capone. Hey, Joey.
Hey, what's up guys? Looking forward. This is number three.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you. So if you don't know if you join us, since the last episode, Joey is the co founder of Baron Fig, which is one of our very favorite stationary companies out there. And he has been on a couple different times, one to talk about the release of the Archer Pencils, which was a really interesting episode. That was from back in 2016.
Almost.
Wow. Almost exactly. What is that? Six years ago?
It took a lifetime.
Yeah.
How different the world was.
Yeah.
And then he was. We were honored for Joey to kind of give us the first exclusive of the big announcement they made is when they started making bags. So that was in May 2017. So title of that one is the empty spaces for pasta. So Joey and his co founder, Adam Kornfield were both on for that episode. So as we have teased plenty of times, Joey's joining us for the release of Kind of a new. This isn't a brand new medium for Baron Fig, but it's kind of a new thing for Joey, who is now a published author. He wrote a book called the laws of creativity unlock your originality and awaken your creative genius. So we might just talk a little bit about stationery, but like, we are mostly here to talk about this book. And if you've been listening, you know that we've had a couple episodes about books on creativity and resources in general. So just leading up to this, so. So Joyette. So again, thank you for joining us. For folks who may have not heard those other episodes, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Baron Fig?
Yeah, sure. Well, I'll start. My name is Joey Caphone and I guess you could say I'm an entrepreneur. And now a newly minted Author. As Andy mentioned, I founded Baron Fig. Man, that was way back in 2013, so we're going on 10 years and it's a company that makes tools to help you do your best thinking. Notebooks, pens, pencils, of course. And recently I wrote the Laws of Creativity, a book that teaches you how to master your ideas. So under the hood, I'm a designer and I've designed and art directed over 100 products at this point from zero to launch. In a nutshell, between Baron Fig and the Laws of creativity, my work focuses on, on helping people turn their ideas into reality.
So you're kind of like full stack creativity, right? Like if you have a book on how to learn to do it and then you have like pen and paper so people can actually get it down.
Yeah, that's a really cool way to put it actually. Full stack creativity. Full stack in the front end of
creativity, you just need to make like a prototyping app and then you'll.
The second edition of the book, you can use that.
Yeah, yeah, you can have that for free.
That's it. I'm thinking about what the SQL is. I got to mess it up.
So, gosh, I mean, it's not like you aren't already super busy, I mean, with all those, I mean, when actually I have a kind of a follow up question. Related, but like 100 products that you're saying just with Baron Fig, right?
Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. So, so with a, you know, along with running design company Baron Fig personal life, what, like, what made you want to write a book about creativity? And like kind of. How long has that been stewing?
Like the thought, yeah, this, I think you guys are going to like this because this is, there's a lot of writing involved back. I mean I've been recording notes in my, on my phone, in notebooks for the last 10 to 15 years probably. And I knew that I wanted to write the book, but I figured I'd write it, you know, when I'm older. And so starting in my early twenties actually I would just take notes and you know, I accrued a whole lot of thoughts. So then the pandemic happened and of course it shook up all our lives. What was it again? What was that thing? Was it like three, two and a half years that just didn't happen? That's what it feels like. So I'm sitting at the kitchen counter with my wife Ariana, and she is listening to me go on about this book I'm going to write about creativity. And she stops me Mid sentence. And she says, dude, it's time to write the book. We're stuck at home. It's now or never. I was like, oh, my goodness, you're right. And been thinking about it so long that I guess, you know, I'm in my mid-30s now and it kind of is the time to write this, you know, my first book. And so the reason I even wanted to write it at all is because I think creativity is extremely important and people have it all wrong. Maybe you guys can see this in your own life, but people think creativity is something that only professionals have, but it's not. It frustrates me because whenever I ask people if they're creative, the answer is almost always no. Do you guys see that or is it different in your circles?
My gosh. Well, in teaching, all those years in teaching, the older the kids got. And this, you mentioned this in your book. Like this, like, about, like that, this story about, like, NASA, this, you know, the study of like, the kids. Was it the, like the creative genius level was like 98 or something at age five? Five. Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like when I. I've taught seventh grade, so like 12 year olds or so up all the way to 18. And even just in that spread, it was amazing just in those, like six years, how many of them were drawing pictures and making things up and creating things. And by the time they were 18, it was just like a select few who kind of still identified with that. And then the rest of them be like, I don't know what to write about. And you're like, you know, it just, it was such a hard battle because, you know, it's in there. I mean. Yeah, so no, I definitely would see that in, in that setting.
In terms, just so listeners probably want to hear this, NASA did a study and found 98% of kids are at the creative genius level at age five.
Yeah.
But by age, well, adulthood, which they said was age 30 ish, only 2% of adults rank as high.
So thank God we whipped it out of them. Right? Like, right.
Kids are genius, creative geniuses. And then adults almost guarantee to lose it. And so the cornerstone of the book is why and how can I not really teach you how to do it, but remind you what you already knew as a kid?
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. So is that kind of why you frame it around these laws? Right? Like they're sort of like these universal laws and not something that's less definite or definitive or, you know, suggestions or something else? Like, does that kind of have to do with the way that you've structured this.
Yeah, totally. When you go from 98% to 2%, that is a process that's almost intentionally created.
Right.
It's so effective, it's pretty much a near guarantee.
Right.
It's 96% change. And so I quickly, you know, hypothesized, and then I think I proved that if there's a guaranteed process for eliminating it, there must be a guaranteed process for gaining it back. And, you know, I went to explore that because when I was writing this book, every time I told someone, they would be like, oh, dude, can you teach me the magic? And I was always like, no.
What a weird trick.
Magic.
Right.
It's like, you know what? We'll try as seen on tv. And it's like, absolutely not. This is. I don't look at creativity as anything other, Anything more special than basketball or accounting or construction. Like, it's a process and you learn it.
Yeah, yeah, let's.
Here's. I'll drop this because I think you guys, we were talking earlier, and I think you guys have been up to this point in the book where I kind of draw a comparison that helps a lot of people understand where I'm coming from. So the book's divided into three parts. Mindset, process and foundation. Basically. Sorry, foundation, which is your mindset. Yep. Process and excellence. And so the middle chunk is really like, how to do the creative process.
Yeah.
So think about it this way. I think this is the beginning of the part 2. There are tens of thousands of cities and towns in the world, and the three of us have almost assuredly not been to, you know, even 2% of them. But if we were to list any one of them, all three of us would know how to get there, because you'd know you would hop on a plane and use a map and roads and you. All sorts of transportation, and you'd get there by following signs and whatnot. Think of creativity as the same thing, right. Where you're following this process and you don't know the destination, what it's going to be like, but it can get you there every time.
Yeah, you're just. You're giving us a ride and showing us the way to whatever creative project it is that we're talking about.
That's it. Hop on the Creativity Train.
All aboard the Creativity Train.
So if you, as you talk about creativity being like in a sort of an inherent thing or something that, you know, is a path that anybody can use, like, for somebody who we've, like, alluded to, these people who are starting from scratch. Right. Or these people who are just, like. When I say starting from scratch, I mean, like, maybe it's a lack of confidence. Maybe it's just a lack of, like, effort or whatever. What do you think is the first step out of, like, a creative drought or whatever?
Yeah. Is this someone. Are you saying someone who is, like, having writer's block or someone who is unhappy with their life and wants to do something creative but doesn't think they can?
I think more the latter. Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, so somebody who's just doesn't have the creative confidence or doesn't think they have a creative bone in their body or whatever. But, yeah, feels like.
Yeah. I'd start with the na. I. I start with the NASA fact because I think it gives people a belief in themselves that, wow, you know what? I was this way and I can be this way again. And I think that's an important thing to realize. And originally I was telling Andy, before the sh. We started recording, I didn't intend for the book to be so thick. I was just really going to do how to create from start to finish that the middle part of the book. And when I was interviewing people, Tim, like you're mentioning, that were not so confident creatively, I realized that the issue that they needed to overcome, the challenges that they were facing were not how to do it, but how to think about what creativity even is. So then it's like this whole beginning section about thinking is seminal to actually doing anything. And so the first step is accepting. I mean, it's chapter one. You guys have both read it. It's accepting you're weird. Right. And how do you guys remember how we sort of. I broke it down in terms of a practical explanation of what weird could be and how it could be understood and leveraged.
It be a strength. Yeah, absolutely.
I'm looking through. So one of the things I really like about this book are the little short stories in here. And I'm turning back to chapter one and just seeing. Yeah. Both you talk both about Jim Carrey and the Harlem Shake. So anything that can connect both of those can certainly connect weirdness and being unique. Right? I think. Yeah. Looks like what you say here is be a nail, right? Like, how to just kind of, like, hammer at home. So embrace being weird, I guess, is the idea.
Yeah. There's this weird thing that we do as human beings where inside of our bubbles, inside of the world that we exist in every day, we do not appreciate people deviating from the norm. And, you know, Maybe the three of us might be a little different. But let's think back to when we were in grammar school or something, high school. We've all been there where we've, like, said, oh, man, that's the weird kid. Or, you know, some people in the office will be like, yo, that's the weird one. You know, don't eat lunch, the weird one. Or something. And in my mind, weird just means you're different, which means you're, you know, original, which means you're unique. And actually, those people, I think, are brave for letting their differences show rather than trying to cover it up.
Yeah, I was definitely the weird kid that people didn't want to have lunch with.
Yeah, same. I mean, I just found all the other weird kids. And then when we got together and,
yeah, I was, like, super popular. Just if you guys didn't guess that about me.
Quarterback.
Yeah, I was prom king. I was prom queen. I was the quarterback.
And he was.
Yeah.
So I don't know, what's the big thing that you want readers to, like, take away and put into action? Joey? Like, it's like, I think we have an idea of what you're trying to accomplish with this, but, like, if. What's, like, an archetypical success story here?
Well, I think the idea is, number one, is someone who's either creative or not creative. Either way can become more creative. And by the time you're done reading, I hope you understand it well enough, whether it's something you do regularly or something you introduce into your life, that you can actually command more opportunities and more attention and make more money at work. These are all proven. That's Luigi in the background.
Hey, Luigi.
Ultimately, more freedom in your everyday life when you learn how to harness your ideas. You said hello back. And turn them into something that works for you.
Yeah, makes sense.
And you have more fun.
Yeah, it's kind of like a step back. But when. I mean, that also just, like, reinforced this. I had this quote popped into my head. I mean, I'm not going to, like, nail it exactly. But where you're talking about, like, you know, you're talking about first steps and you're talking about, like, realizing the potential you have and how. I don't know, like, creativity is something that we imagine is some sort of superpower. Like, that's a. That's. Some people just get or they don't get or whatever. And there was this great Kurt Vonnegut quote, but I've probably said on the show before, but, like, where he says that when Whenever he sits to right, he feels like a man with no arms or legs, with a crayon in his teeth is like. And that's coming from Kurt Vonnegut. You know, the one who, how many books did he write? How creative a guy was? He, you know, he just. Yeah, he just like stuck with it. It was just. I don't know, I just had to share that because that quote just. I always love telling my students that one kind of for that same reason. It's like, yeah, this is Kurt Vonnegut.
He didn't know what he was doing.
Every time you're figuring it out.
Yeah. Even now, all these years later and all these products later, I still, when I sit down to make something, I'm thinking to myself, man, this is the time. This is the final time I'm gonna fail. Like, this is it. I'm gonna be discovered.
You talked a lot about fear, right? Just sort of like embracing, trying to remember what, what chapter, what law that was in. But you talk about just like, you know, you gotta lean into the fear because you're gonna probably not gonna stop feeling that fear.
Yeah. I think when people see professionals or, you know, people who do this and make money on it, whatever we want to call them, when we others see those people and, you know, confidently moving forth, they think, oh man, you know, they figured out something and they've eradicated that fear. And it's actually not true at all. It's more like we get better at handling the fear and managing it, but it never goes away. Do you guys feel the same on that?
Oh, yeah. When I was writing the book that I wrote, at some point, like right when we were starting, my co author and I were emailing each other and, or texting each other and just like saying like, hey, are you feeling like so much more imposter syndrome than like you felt about writing anything for a long time? Like, I, I feel like I had been pretty, pretty confident in most of my writing. Like, I like in UX writing that I do, or just like regular communication or blog post writing. But starting that book, man, I had, I was just like, this is drivel. Like, nobody wants to read this. They're going to be like, this is not original. This isn't interesting. And yeah, absolutely, absolutely felt that fear.
Yeah. Did you fear and now it's right. Yeah. Did you feel that fear throughout? Or were you able to tuck it away somehow at each stage of the
journey it got a little worse. Like I. Or I kind of got renewed. Like, I feel like by the Time I finished writing the kind of. The first manuscript draft, it was. I was feeling pretty good. I was interviewing some people for the chapters and kind of getting to the swing of that. And then all of a sudden we did our technical review, which is basically finding several people who are also kind of in the business who just basically review it and give feedback. And that basically just tore a new hole in my fear. But it's. It was good. It's a good fear. It's a good kind of discomfort and a clear sign that we were moving forward and making progress. Right. So as long as nobody was just sort of straight up saying, like, this is crap, this is drivel, which didn't happen, it felt good. So. But yeah, we definitely, like, the fear started to go away and of course we pivoted or got onto a new piece of the process and it just kind of came back. So, yeah, it's. Generally speaking, though, it got easier kind of along the way to sit with it.
When you got that feedback, did you at some point have to say, okay, I'm hearing some things that I disagree with. I'm not going to change that, but I will change these other things.
No, I mean, well, so. So we had. Man, we spent so much time going through, Going through the feedback and deciding whether or not we were going to, like, you know, restructure or rewrite or acknowledge them or some of the feedback were just like, ah, I think, I disagree with this. I think we're going to keep it the way it is. But definitely, every piece of that feedback we tried to take in with a kind of. With an open mind. And yeah, while it definitely felt very vulnerable and we were just. It was a little raw sometimes. Like, I really believe it made for a better book.
So.
So absolutely. Yeah. So it was very collaborative. And ultimately, like, it's still. I don't think we sacrificed any sort of like, creative vision for it, but we just definitely got a lot of really good feedback to make sure that it was just the best book it could be interesting.
I had a. I had a different experience where all of the. I initially was interviewing very successful creatives in New York City. I started, and I quickly realized that they did not like what I was doing. I very often was, there's no laws to creativity. Like, how, you know, how dare you try to bottle this up? This is an art.
Yeah.
And, you know, they were very experienced. I want to say it was sort of old ways of thinking. Not to say that it's correlated with age, because it's not there Were some incredible, you know, people of all ages supporting it. But generally, actually overwhelmingly, the thought, the sentiment was, that's ridiculous. You can't possibly write a book like that about creativity.
It's not a commodity, it's just something you're born with.
Right? Yeah. It is magic. You can't understand it, you can't teach it.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's absurd. That's absurd.
Yeah, that's interesting. So it started off being just like interviews with creatives to see what the secret was and they didn't want to tell the secret.
Yes. And I think, you know, it's like a. It's like a cool kids club and they want, you know, they. People make a lot of money off creativity and teaching creativity and teaching it in a way in which it's not actually being taught, but it's upholding the mystery. There's. I don't, I won't name names, but there's a create quote unquote creativity expert out there that is constantly telling people that it's magic and mysterious and kind of like on one hand selling it as this incredible thing, but on the other hand selling it as you can't quite understand it. And so just keep coming to me to help you sort of thing. And I don't believe in that at all.
Yeah, that's interesting. I have to speculate on who that person is later,
start investigating. So while we can't talk about every single line here but one that we can't not talk about because it's dips into the story of the Baron notebook and it's also just a great, I don't know, a great one to focus on. Is kind of a preview is the. Is chapter 13, which is sketch it out. And I was wondering if you could talk about that chapter a little bit.
I knew you guys would ask about that. Of course. And it contains the law of Ideation. So just to quickly tell your listeners, essentially every chapter is a law. There's 39 of them. Starts out with the law briefly, then a story that is first to entertain and then to inform. Then I break it down and share some principles after. So for this one, sketch it out. The law of ideation says, take your idea and make it real. No matter how rough. The final step is only attainable by taking the first step. Once you have something to look at and adjust, you can begin the journey towards completion.
Yeah, I like that. And this one is where I think Johnny picked up on this, and I sure did too, where you just kind of talk about the confidant Right. Like, of the birth of the confidant notebook, which is kind of the. If there are listeners here who don't know Baron, who do know Baron Fig, but don't know the confidant, then I'm surprised at you. But it's one of my favorite notebooks and the showpiece and the way that the reason Baron Fig was born. So you talk a little bit about, you know, the genesis of that and how you kind of sketch that out. And that's. Yeah. Something I really like about this. Just, like, that's kind of how Baron Figg was born. Right. Was through that kind of sketching out what kind of a perfect notebook you're thinking about.
Yeah. The whole chapter is about sketch it out. Doesn't necessarily mean draw. It means, like, take an idea and make it real.
Yeah. Back in the day, you had a piece in here about writing and about crafting as well.
Yeah. There's three methods I use, you know, to bring your ideas out of your head that I list in this chapters of essentially drawing, writing, and crafting. You know, visual, verbal, and physical. And it could, you know, what you choose depends on how you think or what the project needs or whatever. But. Yeah. When the confidant was born. Well, back in the day, I was trying to communicate to these two guys I was collaborating with Adam and Scott, and they just didn't understand. So I ran to the art shop and I bought some painting canvas, and I cut it all up and I taped it with masking tape to a notebook I bought at, like, CVS or something. And the next time I saw them. Cause we met weekly, I tossed it on the table, and immediately they were. They were converted into understanding what I was trying to do. This was a clothbound notebook, which was different, you know, in 2013 for sure, and right away. So I had made my idea rough and tangible, and we could pass it on. And that's. Once you do that. Yeah, you know, you're off to the races.
You know, before. Before we started recording, Joy and I were talking a little bit about how just as somebody who works in a very, like, specific kind of niche area of design and creativity, like, there's a lot of. There's a lot of stuff in here and a lot of laws that I just, like, think about, but with, like, a slightly different terminology. Right. Like what you just described to me, Joey, is what I would call prototyping.
Yeah.
And of course, as a designer and product designer yourself, like you. I'm sure you would use that word in that way. But I'm. I really love how you are taking out a lot of those sort of like very gatekeepy terms that designers. Fancy pants designers use to talk about this kind of stuff and make it a lot more broadly applicable.
Yeah, thanks. You know, I haven't, I hadn't even thought about that at all. Appreciate it. Yeah.
You totally prototyped that notebook, right?
Like, yeah, it was. Well the, especially the following one where I actually built a notebook from scratch that was like a legit prototype.
Yeah.
What the first one was somewhere in, in the middle. I guess it was an ultra crappy prototype.
Yeah. But hey, sometimes that's all you need in order to communicate your ideas.
For sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I think people who are not so familiar with this, you guys are, if you write, you know, to just get the first draft out and you know, you could fix it later. But what we see quite often is people who are not familiar tend to think that it needs to come out the first time perfect and beautiful. And what's. Again, this is a little bit about
the law of good enough.
Right. Being exactly. Being like unreasonable. When we're, we're supposed to be logical human beings. We know you're not supposed to get something right on the first try. It's like Neo, you know, jumping across the street, you know, from building to building. He doesn't get it on the first try, but he's still the one. And it's the same thing in creating. You shouldn't be surprised or upset when you get it wrong on the first try. You should be like, well, yeah, that's supposed to happen.
Yeah.
Now I can do a second try.
Yep.
And then this, that's why I had to write this whole mindset part before the how to part because I realized there's all this thinking that needs to be thrown out and dismantled. You know, the. I guess the thinking we got from going from 98% creative geniuses to 2% that thinking needed to be rewritten. Yeah. What do you guys do when you're starting a new writing project? What are some of the first steps you take?
Well, so I was about to say it's not a writing project, but like one thing that's really interesting about, you know, starting to read your book and have this conversation is that I started a new job like two weeks ago. This is week three in a new job and like basically a new career path kind of for me. And I'm working in training, like adult learning at this large non profit. And a lot of the stuff that I'm Doing is sort of like a new take on what I've been doing before I was in education, but it's like using it in sort of a different fashion. And so I'm half. I'm. I have this chance to think about things from a different direction and also just, like, produce whether it's ideas for trainings or whether it's. They have this big program they're putting together to, like, help people move up within the. Like, within the agency, like, things they can learn that'll help them, like, move forward. Anyway. Anyways. But it's just like reading this and just being in this scenario makes me realize kind of for the first time just how broad creativity is. Right. So I'm starting this new job, but I'm still trying to approach it like a creative. Even though I'm not writing fiction, I'm not working on, like, songs like I am sometimes, but just, like, that's sort of a new experience for me. So just like, even the stuff you say about, you know, leaning into your fear or, like, talking about how, you know, the only person you should be comparing yourself against is, or you're comparing yourself against is yourself.
Yeah.
Because I'm coming in after somebody who had done it for years and had a total different style in me, different temperament than me, and all this just like, constantly, like, starting anything out. And I tried to do this with writing as well and with songwriting is like that Jeff Tweedy book that I talked about before. Like, the. How to write one song. Like, all I have to do is write one song. I gotta do some training. So I needed to get. Is one. I need to make one training. I need to put one lesson plan together, and then once I get that one done, then I can worry about the next one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, trying to get my. My. My scope in check or whatever.
My.
Yeah. There's, I think, a part later in the book about looking forward and looking down. And you have. We've kind of stereotyped them into left brain, right brain people, or the. The suits. And the creatives. And the suits are really good at the planning, and the creatives are really good at the creating, but, you know, they have no idea how to control their life. And it's just, you know, a chaotic spiral. And I think what you're. What you just said kind of reminded me of how, you know, there's a time and place to look forward in terms of like, okay, what do I need to do next? Or these are the three or seven things that are happening. But then look down and this is the only thing that matters right now. So, like, for you, it's putting together this course or even this one lesson. And when you're able to oscillate between the two, that is when you become quite powerful because most people do have a tendency toward one or the other.
Yeah, I think that when I'm. Oh, when I'm thinking about, like, so. So my job involves UX writing, right? Like writing. Taking complicated ideas that you need to express in an interface and try to make them as simple as possible. And for me, I think oftentimes people design software, for example, in a solution, in want of a problem, and it really helps me to, if it's not clearly articulated, figure out, like, what it is we're solving for. I think that in your book, Joey, like, I think to me this really connected with the law of grounding, like finding the anchor kind of like core reason you're doing this, which in I think in my work and in the problem space I work in, I feel like it's often just like, you know, people want to do a thing and they don't know how to do a thing, and we're going to help you do a thing. Right. Like, it's a problem, it's a user problem. And that really helps, I think, just grounding it in principles and then starting to break the component parts of what you're working with apart so you can figure out how, like how it solves that. So that's kind of what I feel like, how I sort of approach that.
Yeah. And as you're saying this, I could see listeners kind of thinking, wow, that's a whole lot of stuff to think about. But as you do it, it really does become second nature, you know, like, I mean, I can't imagine the things going through, you know, professional basketball players head, for example, on like, positioning and, you know, dribbling and where they are and where their teammates are. But it all. There's so many things happening simultaneously that you just kind of assimilate well.
And you had a really good. I can't, man, I can't remember which. Maybe remind me which part of the book this was in. But at some point you talked about how, you know, if most people who aren't a designer will look at a piece of graphic design and just like, see something cool or interesting. And when you look at a piece of graphic design, you're like, noticing all these different things, like use of typography and spacing and concepting and, you know, clarity. And I think about, like, how when I. I'm using software or a web interface or something, and I'm, like, thinking about the language. I'm thinking about, like, the tone and the brand voice and, like, how clear it is and how they break this thing down and the expectations that they're setting. Like, people, experts, and creatives will see all these component parts and how they fit into the whole.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. Well said. And it's about, I think, you know, recognizing that's a possibility and then working toward it.
Yeah.
For example, I am. I am terrible at music. And, you know, one of my best friends is a musician and a music teacher, and we'll be riding in the car, and he'll be like, you hear that beat? You hear that, dude, did you hear that? Or that? You hear that riff, man? No, I didn't. I cannot. And he'll play it over. I'm like, dude, I can't hear it. I hear music as a single unit. I cannot separate it, and I'm okay with that. I think my friend is, you know, Chris needs to chill a little bit. If he's listening, he'll laugh. But it's something that, you know, I can speak to about how I can do it so well with posters because I realize how terrible I am at music and how, you know, one is such an asset and a skill that had to be developed, and the other is, you know, something I'm choosing not to develop.
Yeah, that's really good.
So you are in what has to be incredibly rare, like a rare area to be somebody who has written something about something like this, something that's extensive about the idea of creativity and also creating the tools that people use to make creative things or to be creative. And through, like, through the confidant and, you know, other things you put together, we're sure you get all kinds of testimonials or you get some, you know, feedback from things that people use your products for. So could you share? Like, there are any stories or examples that come to mind of just things that I would say just made you joyful, you know, that they used your tools to create something.
Yeah.
Take an idea.
Yeah. There's been a few things over the years. One that sticks out is this was totally out of the blue. One day, there's a box shipped to me, my name on it. I opened it up, and I was so confused. It looked like a box of dirty confidants. And I'm just like, what the heck is this?
Am I about to be murdered?
Right?
Like, yeah. Is this serious? Is there something I'm missing? It was like, not, you know, not well packed. So the. It was just a mess inside this box. So I was like, okay. I called someone over as I picked up the first one, and I opened it and there was just a ton of writing. And then I was like, you know, what the hell's going on? I picked up the next one. Same thing, just mad scribbles. And, you know, I started to get a little freaked out. Like, does someone send me their journals? Is this, like some really twisted. Yeah, something. This is like the beginning of a bad movie.
Or that. That Eminem song about, like, the stalker. Stan.
Yeah, right.
Joke stand.
Yeah, it's like. It's in Joey. It's like a John Johnny.
No,
it's like somebody doing something creepy. So. Because I read it and it was. It didn't make sense. It finally pulled all these books out, these confidant notebooks out, and I got to the bottom and there was a note. It turns out it was a dozen confidants that were handwritten because this person wrote their third novel in these books.
Wow.
And sent it to me. The originals. Yeah. I was. I was shocked. I got. I was. All of a sudden, I got nervous. I'm like, how? I can't believe this. This is so precious. You know, why are they giving this to me? We still have it. And, you know, eventually they sent the finished book. And that really took me back because there's one thing to see things on Instagram or, you know, through an email. And there's another to have someone ship you, you know, like, two years of writing and it be handwritten. It's just shocking to me.
Yeah.
It was a beautiful experience, though. That was a good question. That's very cool.
I'd love actually to talk a little bit more about. About the writing process because, you know, this is ultimately a podcast about pencils, about stationery. If you're willing to talk a little bit about, like, what tools you use to write this book, kind of like throughout, it's going from just like jotting down some ideas to, like, finished product, digital or analog. Would you kind of like walk us through your process?
Absolutely. So I told you, I took notes for 10 years. That was primarily in Apple Notes. Ten years ago, things were very different. It was easy to sync that to the cloud, and it was safe. And that that Apple Note probably spanned over, you know, four, four or five phones or something. And when my wife had said, it's time to write a book, I took those Notes. And within a day, I had converted it into an organized database in Notion.
Notion. I love Notion.
Love Notion. And I used. And I had the table of contents, you know, set up from all of these lessons. There was a lot of redundant stuff that I had written down over the years, which was great. That means I knew, you know, it was definitely something I wanted to write. And so Notion. I essentially organized the manuscript in Notion and then each database line. Is this the kind of granularity you're okay with, or should.
I'm here for it.
Okay. Okay.
Absolutely.
So, you know, I had. Each database line was essentially a page in and of itself. And then in those pages, I had to do lists or to dos, whatever you want to call them. Checkable boxes, let's call them, because they're not to do's. And every bit of research that I did and every idea that I had for that chapter was a to do.
Yeah.
And so I was just. Instead of bullets, I was checking things off as I was writing and reorganizing it as Notion is awesome for that. And I was just burning through this book chapter by chapter, because I had prepared so well in Notion, you know, had enabled me to be so clear with my thoughts. I don't think I could have written this book as fast as I did pre Notion.
I think you use Notion just to recreate Scrivener is what you did. Like, I guess Scrivener is more for, like, novels. Cause it's like character development and research into that.
But.
Yeah, no, that's really fascinating. Yeah. Notion's great.
I did the actual writing. I tried Scrivener. It was a little too much that I didn't need. So I ended up using Ulysses. You guys. Ulysses?
I have Ulysses? Oh, yeah.
Oh, I love Ulysses. And I wrote the whole book in that, actually. On my iPad, surprisingly enough.
Yeah. Yeah.
I was shocked. But it just came together.
Do you find that, like. Because, you know, your chapters, like, each law has, like a story or two. It has, like a summary from that. It has some, like, takeaways. What did you kind of. What came first? Some of the stories or some of the laws, like the ideas of the laws.
So the laws came first. The idea of the laws. I didn't necessarily write the laws. They. I just wrote the law when I got to the chapter. But I knew what the law was, and I had more or less named all of them up front. So then there was an interesting experience that happened as I was. I assigned stories up front. Front or I did the best I Could. And so I had three different experiences as I was doing this. There was like the first third, second, and then the last third. So the first third, I had a, you know, 30 plus years of interesting stories stored in the back of my head. And I was assigning stories to laws left and right. Like, you know, I was like, man, this is going to be easy. So I got about 15 stories done, 12 to 15 very quickly. Then for the next third, it changed. Now I had to go out and find stories. So I would just read, look up stuff, talk to people, do all sorts of info gathering, and I'd find interesting stories. And there were still enough available laws that I could generally say, oh, this fits with this law very well. And I would toss it over here, toss it over there.
Yeah.
The interesting and the most challenging part was part three was only about 10 laws left where I reached a tipping point. And now I had to find law stories that specifically exampled the few laws that were left. And that was challenging. That was. I mean, I. There was like, when I was down to like two or three, I was asking everybody like, dude, what is a, you know, a great story to illustrate discipline? And I mean, it was a whole thing.
Yeah.
It was a different experience as I went through.
Yeah, that's funny. Did you have any editors who just came at you and said like, yeah, this doesn't really. This story doesn't really fit this law. Do you have any. Get any feedback like that?
Yeah, I ended up having four editors. They kind of had various jobs. You know, there was a manager editor and then a marketing editor who is the magnetism of my words, you know, titles and laws and stuff, which was interesting in and of itself. And then the developmental. In the copy editor and the developmental editor. There were a few times where they were like, this story doesn't work, or how you're telling this story does not work. I'm not getting it. And that was tough. But, you know, I just pushed through.
Yeah.
Like there. There's one chapter about Sal Khan from Khan Academy.
Oh, yeah.
One of the last ones in the second part about the process.
Yeah.
And I knew in my head what I wanted to example, but I could not for the life of me convey it right in a story. And everyone was telling me to ditch it and ditch it and just find something else. And I was determined. It's the one story that I hung onto where I said, I'm going to use this story. This one means a lot to me. You know, Khan Academy is something I love. And I was able to finally find just a couple of quotes that supported what I knew he had been experiencing and what he kind of, you know, all the stories that I read about him, etc. So that was a challenge. But anyway, yeah, it was.
It's funny because back and forth. That's the law of good enough. And basically the story was good enough.
Exactly. Yeah, it was good enough.
Well, I love how deep you dug with some of those stories. Like, I like, you talked about the inventor of the Super Soaker at some point and what he went through. And as a 90s kid, I definitely remember the Super Soaker and. But it's never thought about, like, the design process behind that kind of a toy. Right. Like, I never thought that, yeah, this would be somebody's like, whole life and he would just, like, be afraid and just like, take a big risks and have people turn him down. Like, I just assumed it happened from some marketing team somewhere. So. Yeah, I love how deep you dug on some of these stories.
Yeah, it was. I remember hunting for them back in the beginning of the writing process, and it was so cool to encounter a story because there was like an instant pang of joy where I was like, oh, my gosh, this is the. And the one you mentioned was Lonnie Johnson. He was like, you know, jet propulsion lab, you know, mechanical and electrical engineer. And then the dude was making this thing in his bathroom, and all of a sudden he was like, I'm going to make a toy. And it just risked everything he had done up until that to make it happen.
Yeah.
So 10 years of thinking went into the writing of the book and the idea behind the book. But we know that there has to have been a whole lot of consideration going into such a physically beautiful book, being a designer. So can you talk a little bit about the process, like, the design decisions for the physical book? Like, everything from, of course, color scheme and binding and typography, any of that.
Johnny is not here to ask about bookbinding. And that, of course, is his particular favorite part. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'll start by saying that the confidant notebook opens flat. That was our big thing back in 2013, and we patented a certain approach to bookbinding to make that happen. And we've had to update it over the years. And so when we were making these books, we were just like, hey, let's just convert that into a notebook that has stuff on it. And then now it's a book, you know, when you print on it. Essentially, that was the initial challenge for us. And we did change the dimensions in your last episode, I think Andy mentioned that he was. It was like it's almost the size of a company. It doesn't quite match. Was it going to.
But yes, I was thinking we tried
that size and for some reason it just felt like a little too small. And it already. Even in the larger size, it already is smaller than your average hardcover by a noticeable amount. Some of those, like most of them are large because as I learned, the larger the book, the more people, more money people will spend for it and the more space it takes up on a shelf. So all the advice I got was make your book really big. And I was like, I don't like big books. I'm not making a big book. And, you know, sales be damned. Like, I want to make a beautiful object that I like to hold and not this big unwieldy thing that I don't want to carry around. So to start, the book on the outside has soft touch, which is such a wonderful thing to hold in the COVID design. For those of you out there who can't look at it, I'm sure it'll be in the show notes on how to go check it out. But it's essentially a purple cover with the laws of creativity really big on the front. And then some notes that were actually my notes in sketching the COVID itself.
I thought that.
And one of the interesting things was in production, this was driving me nuts. So Adobe Illustrator had released this brand new ray traced 3D letters. You guys familiar with this?
I am, yeah. Yeah.
Well, I am not, but gone sounds great.
It's like 3D letters. But are you familiar with ray tracing itself, the concept?
No, I'm googling it right now though.
Yeah, ray tracing, I mean, the first I really encountered it was in video games, but essentially it's simulating light. So in video games, normally artists have to like place lighting and fake it. But in with ray tracing, you actually just place a light bulb and the light bulb casts accurate light. And so Adobe Illustrator integrated this where if you made 3D text and you placed the light source, it would cast light correctly. And I was like, oh, my goodness, this is so cool. There are id, you know, the light bulb above your head is such a symbol of having an idea. So what if there was a light bulb above the book, but it's off the book cover, but it's casting a Shadow on the 3D text, there's a light bulb. You just don't see it. I was all about this concept. So I tried to make this 3D text and I did successfully however, in book printing in Nor normally you produce using pantone colors. So pantones are, you know, it's not like dmyk, cyan, magenta, yellow, black, where you have four colors that make the whole spectrum, but rather you choose a few colors which also known as spot colors and like, let's say, you know, purple and yellow. And so instead of using those four colors, the cmyk I'm using two colors. Yeah, specifically yellow and specifically purple. And it costs less to produce and the color looks more vivid because it's not a combination of colors to make the color you're looking for. Am I too technical here or are you guys.
I'm down, I'm.
Oh, you're gonna be with me.
We have plenty of, plenty of printmakers who listen to the show. So I think that like talking about spot colors versus like digital imaging is great.
Okay. So great. So I took it to the master of all things print. It's a gentleman named Adam Waller. And Adam got on. I had never met him before. Someone introduced me to him, got on the phone, dude spent like an hour and a half walking me through how to take this ray traced image and convert it into pantone and essentially take what is a gradated image that has a bunch, you know, CMYK or RGB and turn it into just a single color. And we did all this stuff, this experimentation and he was so gracious and he tried so many ways. I have never seen someone wield Photoshop the way he did. Absolutely mesmerizing.
It's magical. Like some of the, some of my co workers who are designers on Photoshop, that's the way that they use it. It's just incredible.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not, I'm all about Illustrator InDesign, XD, Photoshop I use as a necessity.
Yeah.
So anyway, it was appreciative so much of Adam's, Adam Moller's help. But we kind of got blocked at the last second and so I had to print this thing in CMYK and I was bummed. I mean I was bummed because I, I was like, it's not going to come out as vivid. Well, we passed this over to production and they, you know, Jay was well aware of my sadness about how vivid it would not be and somehow I don't know what they did, but this CMYK book cover is as rich as any pantone. I've.
They used a, like a UV spot coating on it, which I think really pulls it out. Right. Like the, it has that sort of like selective shininess for the letters, the laws of creativity. So it looks like it's really front loaded and kind of glossy, so. And then you have that soft touch coating which I think really helps like contrast that. So I don't know if that's the reason it is just pops the way that it does, but I think it really helps.
Well, that was my hope when I designed the spot onto the face, the letter faces. I was like, man, maybe this will pull it out forward. But it turned out I was ready to be disappointed when I opened the box and I was shocked.
Yeah.
So it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, but I'm really tooting production's horn. They nailed this a couple.
I love how you. You get those colors kind of going throughout the book itself, not just the COVID Like you have kind of the purple accent text in there. And I think my personal favorite is you bring the classic yellow bookmark from. From the Confidant into this book. So. Big fan of that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Excellent touch.
I wasn't going to do that originally and my wife Ariana was like, what are you, an idiot? I think she literally said, she's like, you better put that in there, obviously. What the hell are you thinking? And I was like, oh no, got to listen to that. She knows what she's doing. And she was right. I mean, it's. I can't imagine this book now without the little ribbon sticking out at the bottom.
Well, thank you for talking about that. This is some geekiness that I love getting into. Just sort of the design and cover building process, things like that.
Love it. This was last. I'll. I guess I'll add is I think this. I forget the exact number, but I want to say this was like cover 95 or something.
Wow. Someday released like a blog post or something. Just showing some of the other ones.
Yeah, yeah. I was thinking that it's. There was a lot of crap.
Are we going to see a purple and yellow Squire in our future? That's an accompanying product to this.
Yeah. I would really love to make a Squire. I, you know, I don't know what to put on it at the moment.
Just for your face.
I designed some of the other companion products with a Squire in mind. So I made sure there was always like a little symbol somewhere that could be the bridge between the two things. Yeah. And with this, it was just too contrived, so I left it off. So I'm kind of curious as to how we'll manifesto walls of creativity.
Yeah, that'd be fun. I love the idea of, like, the creativity with the hyphen in the middle, like creti hyphen as, like, your symbol on the side. Yeah.
How do you feel about that hyphen right there?
I love it just because the shape it gives and then also the little, like, handwritten note that you have that says hyphen.
Hyphen.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's. I feel like a total idiot because I don't even think I had noticed until just like, today. I mean, I've had this book in my backpack and been carrying it around for, like. Like, I don't know, week and a half, two weeks, and I hadn't even noticed, like, I don't know what it was, but it was just like. But there's something about, like. I think it's what. Yeah. What Andy's saying about the shape of it. You just. You take in the title so easily.
Well, I'm glad because that hyphen made me some enemies. Seriously. People were like, this is the stupidest thing you've ever done. You can't do that. Nobody does that.
There's a really great old cover of a Joan Didion book called Democracy. And the way that it's, like, separated out, it says Democ on one line and it says Racy on the second line. I have no idea if that's like a. That was a specific choice that they made. I assume it was. But I just. I love. Yeah. Randomly kind of like hyphenated words and really like, creativity is such a much longer word than the laws of that. It makes sense anyway for it to be like that.
Yeah. Well, here's the thing.
Snobs. Yeah.
These days you have to design for thumbnail size, you know, like on. On your Apple Books or your Amazon. And because the Create the word creativity is so big, the text, it was forcing the whole title to be small. So I had to, you know, come up with a creative way to. To solve that. And, you know, lo and behold, I just made it huge. And it broke at after the I. And that was the answer.
Yeah. No, I love it. Well, I think that kind of wraps it up our list of questions. I guess the last one I was going to ask is, do you have. Coming next. Are you going to do any speaking engagements with this? Are you going to be on any better podcast than this? Are you going to go talk to Debbie? Debbie Millman?
Debbie, yeah. She is on the back of the book. So I assume one day she'll be, you know, she'll invite me on the show did.
I can't remember if I told you, Joey, how I. So I went to a design conference and I saw that Debbie was speaking, so I brought my scribble confidant with me to get her to autograph it. Yeah. And she just, like, laughed, and she was like, you're the first person who's brought me one of these to autograph. And I'm like, yes. This is, like, several. This was a few years ago, but. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Did she sign it?
I hope she did. She absolutely did. She signed it in a little, like, thing in the. I can't remember what it's called. The little thing at the beginning of the book with the little window that you have that. So, yeah, she signed it for me. It was fun.
Oh, super cool.
Yeah.
Yeah. What's next? Well, I do want to turn this into a keynote speech, and I've been messing around with that already. That is like, is it the whole book or is it part one and two and three are all their own things. Maybe a combination because it's fun. It's like a performative aspect to the whole deal that I enjoy is getting up in front of people and joking around, being an idiot and conveying some information is just.
I think it would also make a really fun workshop. Like, if you. If there were, like, designer creativity conferences to turning this thing into a workshop would be really interesting. Like, here are some. Here's some ways to take these laws and, like, actually practically apply at least a few of them.
Yeah, I would love to do that. Especially, like, foundational. The foundational laws and having people come away with a. Like a creative epiphany, sort of. That would be really fun. That would be a good challenge.
That'd be fun.
As. As far as SQL goes. Oh, my goodness. I still think I'm going to have to kind of let readers guide me. Like, I was talking to an author recently who said, you know, he wrote a book and then he said his sequel came from the same question everybody kept asking him after the book was like, okay, you told me this, but what about this? And so I'm curious and what kind of question I'll repeatedly get after this book. You guys got any suggestions?
I don't know.
It's pretty thorough.
Laws of destruction.
Maybe it's a novel. The laws of creativity. The laws of destruction. That'd be awesome.
One thing. One thing I don't want to mention to people is that, like, you know, if you pick this book up, be sure to read to the end because the last chapter has some. I don't want to spoil anything, but it has some good stuff in it. So. Yeah, just goes all the way to the end. Tim, any. Any last questions? Any last things you want to mention?
I don't think so. I just really appreciate talking with you and it's. I'm excited. Like I mentioned, I haven't finished the book, but it's been really enlightening for me reading the first part that I've been in just as I've been starting this new venture. So I appreciate you doing what had to have been an incredibly large amount of work while you're also doing so many other things. And thanks for coming and talking to us about.
And, Joey, is there anything that you wanted to mention that we didn't ask about until now?
Well, first, thank you, guys. I appreciate the invite. It's fun to touch base every few years and also watch what you guys are up to and check it out. It's really neat.
I don't think we've talked since we got those erasable Squires made, which is one of my favorite things ever.
Yeah. What year was that?
That was 20. It was 2020. It was pre pandemic 2020.
Wow.
True. Yeah.
I still have one on my desk, I think.
Yeah. They, like. I. Obviously, we don't make things and you don't make things specifically for their resale value, but they're, you know, they're not worth quite as much on the aftermarket as an experiment, but they're up there.
That's awesome.
Yeah. I would love eventually to do another kind of like, collab like that again. That was so fun.
But that was really fun.
I'm thinking one thing that I did that is really fun is if you take the top, the little twisty top off an experiment and put it on the erasable Squire, you can make a Ticonderoga, which is the. The green on it. So, yeah, that's fun to do.
I love that. That's neat.
Flex on people that. You have an experiment.
So do you have an experiment?
Do. I was. Yeah. I think I don't have everyone, but I have. I definitely. That was the first. I didn't get the Alphabet of the limited editions, but I got the experiment.
I didn't get the Alphabet either.
Yeah.
I am so upset. I have four experiments and no alphabets.
Oh, man. Don't tell our listeners that you have four experiments. You're gonna get some offers on the table.
Yeah, my DMs are open, man. You know, best offer wins. As far as things that I wanted to mention. No, I'm good. You guys have asked me, you know, I have been doing all these interviews for this and all sorts of types of people and questions and a lot of stuff I've repeated. Yeah, but you guys have come at this with such a fresh set of questions and interests that really, this whole thing has been refreshing too. So, yeah, thank you guys for that. That's nice amidst all this to have a fresh conversation. I appreciate it.
Oh, yeah, we love talking about this. Joey, where and when can you can people get this book?
Oh, that is a good question. So the book comes out October 18th and if you happen to be in New York City, you can go to McNally Jackson 13. But if not, check it out@joeycophone.com book and you'll be able to buy it physically ebook, whatever you want. Or you could hop on over to Baron figaronfig.com and of course I would be remiss if I did not say hello on Instagram and Twitter oecaphone.
Yeah, perfect.
Sweet.
Yeah. Well, Joey, thank you so much for spending time with us and talking about this. And thank you for this book. This is a really cool thing to read. And then also just to like have on my shelf, I have a little collection of books written by people I know and friends. And I love the idea of kind of adding this to that collection because. Because it's outside of the usual sort of like UX design space, which I appreciate.
Well, I'm honored to be a part of it. Thank you for reading both of you guys.
And Tim, where can people find you on the Internet?
You can find me on Twitter timwassom and on Instagram timothywassum.
And I am Andy Welfle. I am on Twitter and Instagram is wellfley. My website is Andy wtf? This is the Erasable Podcast. You can get this episode and any show notes in the recording by going to Erasable us. We are on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter raceablepodcast and we have a Patreon. If you like what you hear and you would like to support the show a little bit, kind of keep our operating costs in line, you can go over to patreon.excuse me patreon.com erasable you can listen to Joey on episode 62 and episode 74 of the erasable podcast. Erasable US 62 or 74. And speaking of Patreon, let me thank like some folks who support the show at the producer level. We got Melissa Miller, digitaltent Tech, Angie Aaron Bollinger, Matthew Chavon, Andrew Austin, Tara Whittle, Ida Umpers, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Donnie Pierce, Bill Black, Ed Swift, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, John Cappellouti, Steven Fansale, Aaron Willard, KP Millie Blackwell, Michael Diallosa, Tana Feliz, Anne Sipe, Joe Crace, Mike Hagen, Bill Clow, Jason Dill, Mary Collis, Alex Jonathan Brown, Kathleen Rogers, Kelton Wiens, Dr. Hans Noodleman, Jay Newton, Chris Jones, and John Wood. Thank you all so much, and we will catch you next time on the Erasable Podcast. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast, maybe we'll turn it off.