On Target to Design Badge Logos with Allan Peters

Ian Paget: You've worked in an agency, you've worked in house for Target, and now you're working for yourself under Peters Design Company.

Allan Peters: That's right.

Ian Paget: So you've worked in all types of positions. So in house agency and independent. And I know in the design space, especially younger designers, they're never sure which option to take. And since you've been in all of those situations yourself, would you mind sharing what was your personal experience with that and was there any pros and cons of each one of those?

Allan Peters: I remember getting the advice when I was graduating in my portfolio class. One of my professors had suggested that if you're jumping out in the field that in terms of money, to not stay at any place for too long. A year or two years, something like that. Get some experience, get some things in your book and then jump because you'll get a lot bigger bump than if you try and stay there and get your 3% to 5% raises, if that, each year.

Or if you're jumping, you're getting like a 10 to 20K jump each time. And so they're like, your first four or five jobs, just that first 10 years of your career, just jump, jump, jump, jump until you glass ceiling out at a higher salary. And then from there on it's more slow progression into ... It's more of like title roles and things like that you're changing. How that applies, at the same time while you're doing that, my strategy coming out of school was to really ... I don't think it was necessarily that going into it, but overall, especially when you look back on it, I worked at more than just agency, in house and independent.

I've also, from the agency part, I worked at boutique shops. I worked at a 30 person design firm. I worked at a three person, like me, him and his wife design firm. Like a small little special boutique shop. I worked at a marketing place that created all sorts of sites and stuff that ... It was like loyalty marketing. I even did that for a little bit. And worked at BBDO which is a big global ad agency.

So switching from design into learning how to be, not just a designer at a ad agency, but I wanted to design ads in commercials and I read books and figured out how to be an ad guy, which is in a sense it's kind of a different profession. And then every time I was making these switches and making these jumps I was learning a lot too.

Where the end goal was ... My wife, her and I, we've known each other since I was working at my first job out of school and she was still in college. And while she'd be studying and doing her homework, she would always come and she'd spend the night and sleep on the couch at my first job and we'd always talk about our dreams and our future and what we're going to ... And that was before we were married. About what the future would hold.

I would always work a lot of late hour there. Not necessarily because I had to, but because I was young and I didn't have kids and I just loved designing. I always have. I still do.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I understand.

Allan Peters: I'd just get excited and I just want to make something the best it can be. And so then she's be working on her own work and she'd end up passing out while I was just still working to like two in the morning. But while I was working a lot of the times, we'd be chatting and we always talked about having our own shop, our own design firm. And did we want it to be big? Did we want it to be small?

As I was going along, one thing is like, you're trying to increase your salary. One thing is you're trying to refine your portfolio and get this collection of work that makes it so you can get more work. For me, right now as an independent agency, the fact that I can be like hey look, I rebranded Target multiple times. I designed their bags and stuff. That helps a lot when a medium sized client comes along and says wow, you did that and worked with Google and worked with ...

It's like anything else. If you can show that you can do it, you'll get more work of that type. But then at the same time I was also learning how each of these different companies worked.

How does a marketing company work? How do they get new business? How does a design agency work? Ad agency? Learning all sorts of different types of skills. Learning how to work with copywriters at an ad agency. How creative directors work. Strategy. Learning all these details.

And then there was a lot to learn about working in house at Target because at that job all of a sudden I didn't have a client anymore. I was the client and I was creating work for other people who I guess were the client. Marketing people at Target. But it's not like they could fire me. If I pushed back on something I was like, "That's not the best idea. We shouldn't revise. That revision's going to ruin it."

I was not afraid to really push for the best quality product. Just really push hard. And I learned how to do it in a very respectful way. But because of that, jumping out of that and running my own design firm now, not that I'm aggressive or difficult to work with with clients at all. I've learned how to work well with them. But then also to really guide them and not be afraid to share my opinions.

Because a lot of these small design firms that I worked for, they would get a revision and they're like, "Well, let's just make it." There would be no question about whether or not they would ... Even if it completely ruined the project, it was less about that. It was more like, hey we got to get paid at the end of this and we want to get another job out of this client. I just want to make the best damn work I can make, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I love that you said that each job even when you worked in house, you picked up all of these skills. I see so many young designers, they just want to start their own thing. They want to be like you. They're looking up to what you're doing and other designers that are independent and they want to be the same.

But I think if you want to be the very best that you can be, the only way that you can really do that is by learning from other people and picking up those skills. So working for an agency or in house or a team in some way. And you can pick up all of those skills because I bet that you wouldn't be able to create such a successful agency without having worked for all those different type of companies and picking up all those different skillsets.

Allan Peters: Yeah. A lot of the skills that I learned at all these different places were ... They were skills on how to run a company. How to write contracts properly. All these things. How to sell work through. How to get a client excited about something or to veer them away from something that might not be the best direction in a way that ... It's not Jedi mind trick them in any way shape or form. But to just help shepherd them to make sure that they get something that's going to be successful for them.

Because a lot of the times, especially if you're working with a startup or somebody who's never designed a brand or a logo before, if you let them guide it and you don't take the reins and take all this experience and the strategy that you've learned over the years to help them create something very successful, you're not helping them then. You're just leaning on somebody who has no experience doing this and you're not going to end up with as good a quality of product. It might feel really good. They might be really excited until it goes out into market and it fails miserably. Not that it always does, but if you've never done it before, you're kind of shooting from the hip.

With the younger designer thing that you were saying where they're like hey ... They might look up to the independent designer and say, "Hey, I want to do that right out of school." You can do that. There are ways to successfully do that. The trick is, it's not only showing that you can do the work and having the high quality work, but usually the high quality work will come because you're able to sell through the high quality work. Because you can have a lot of made up projects that look great, but actually having them and having them produce for a client, it can be a very tricky thing. Because things can get chewed up a bit on the way through the mill, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah. I've actually found personally that when you're quite young and you're new to graphic design, you can actually create just as good work as you can when you're more experienced. But I think one of the ... I mean obviously you improve over time, but I think one of the big things that makes more experienced people have better output is that they actually learn to communicate with clients and advise and direct and so on as you mentioned. So I wouldn't mind going into that a little bit later on in the conversation.

Working for the in-house design team at Target

Ian Paget: Since we're talking about these three different types of companies that you worked on. I know you worked in house and as you mentioned prior to me hitting the record button, there is some ... I don't know what the right word is, but some negative thoughts around working in house. I've done that myself. I worked in house for about five years for a medical company and I've also worked at an agency type place where you work with lots and lots of different clients. So I can see how one can look compared to the other.

So you started off with agencies and I know you mentioned lots of different types, but you started with that. And then you went and worked for Target which is a huge company. How did working in house compare with working for agencies and working on lots of different types of things? Because I think one of the main concerns is that people are concerned that they could get bored working on projects for the same client over and over and over again.

Allan Peters: Well, Target's a brand that I've always loved. I've always ... Ever since they created this one spot. It was called, sign of the times. And it was created by PMH for Target. And it was the first spot that had Bullseye the dog in it and the patterned bullseyes and just more of this conceptual design first style to it. And they had never really done that at all in the past.

It was more just like hey, they're just another discount retailer before that, like Kmart or any of the competitors that were existing at that point. But when PMH came around they were doing some really beautiful work, winning a lot of awards for it. You'd see it in communication arts and it was beautiful to look at, successful.

And a lot of the agencies in Minneapolis had been working on Target and I always wanted to work on it. It just didn't align with my path at that point. And the stigma at the time was that all the good work was being created by agencies for Target and then in house they would just take that and flush it out and take somebody else's design and do the production work on it and just make all the pieces in house.

And so that team was just used so they didn't have to pay a ton of money for production. And I definitely was worried about that. I heard that they were creating this in-house team that was going to be doing a lot more creative stuff. They shared a couple of examples with me but they had just started doing that maybe a year before I got there. And I was chatting with them.

Because I was working at BBDO at the time and I was creating some pretty good work that I was proud of. I was working on some of my first broadcast spots. I was flying out to LA and I was doing a lot of fun stuff that was getting seen all across the world. At least all across the United States. It wasn't for the most glamorous clients but it was high profile and it was exciting.

So here comes this opportunity to go in-house at Target and I was worried about it but there was one fella who I'd followed for a long time, his name's Aaron Lander. And he worked at a little boutique agency called Bamboo when he first started his career. Working for this very talented gal, Cathy Saronto. And that team and everybody who worked there ... It was like four or five people and every single one other than ... I think there was one person kind of managing everything but the design. And it was like four or five designers doing amazing award winning work for everything that they touched. And it was just beautiful.

If you look up Bamboo Design you will find a ton of great stuff. They're not around anymore. Cathy decided they she wanted to work ... She's actually been working in house places. When they decided to close their doors ... And it wasn't because they weren't getting clients or anything. It was just I think Cathy didn't want to work on the types of clients that they had opportunities to work on. And so she just wanted be more selective. And so she decided to do that.

Aaron went and worked at Target. And I remember at the time when he went there ... This was before they started creating this in house thing. I thought to myself, man, he must have been desperate. Why did he go in house and work at Target? At the in house team, what is he going to be doing, production? He's like getting best of show in Print Magazine and stuff. He's so good. So talented.

And he stayed there and it was like, I think he'd been there for two or three years. And I had a lunch with him. And he's like, "Right now, they're at a transition period where everything just keeps getting better and better. They're bringing more and more work internally and the more we prove ourselves, the more work we're getting from the agencies and the more it comes in house." Because it's cost effective to do it in house versus having an agency do it.

So if you can get the talent in house, that's the way to go. And he was like, "Work life balance is better. There's a lot of great things about it." And I decided to take the plunge. To try it out. I'd always wanted to work on Target. And I get there and it's like the first year I was there I got the opportunity to work on some of the most amazing projects. One of them was ... They had been working on this ... Basically the rebrand for Target. All the images that go on the outside of the store.

And they had been working on it for about a month at that point. I don't know if they'd shown concepts yet. But they're like, "We're showing them in a couple of days or a week." I'm like, "Can I do some? Can I please work on this?" And they're like, "Yeah, sure. If you can come up with something that quick, go for it."

And I'm used to working at ad agencies, working on pitches, doing big full campaigns like in a day or two. Because that's what you do at ad agencies. You're always working late into the night, just cranking out work. And so I made a ton of directions and one of them ended up being the one that they created and it got in CA and won a ton of awards. Aw man, like from there on, everything I worked on at Target was just ... I got so many great opportunities. And it was such a cool experience. And it was this underdog mentality always. It was like you're always going against the agencies and trying win some work back from them.

And it was fun. I enjoyed it. I like the challenge of it. One of the cool things about working in house, just to break that stigma, at least that I found working at Target was, that so much of the work that I created actually got produced. Usually you're working at an agency or a design firm or this or that, there's so much you create that just never sees the light of day. It seemed like every idea I had at Target just kept getting made. It was so cool. And yeah, it was a hard job to leave but when the time came to start our own firm, we jumped on it. We had the opportunity and did it.

Ian Paget: I can really hear in your voice how much you loved that job. In researching for this chat I read a couple of interviews from around that time and it really seemed like it was the opportunity of a lifetime for you. It's incredible to hear that everything you did so early on was actually used.

Allan Peters Logo Design Process

Ian Paget: So you mentioned it then that now you're working as an independent graphic designer and I believe that you've been doing that for around five years now. I mentioned to you just before hitting that record button that I originally found out about you from someone's top 10 favourite logo designers list on Instagram.

And after looking at your Instagram feed, I can see that you've designed so many incredible logos that I'm keen to make sure that we spend a decent amount of time discussing logo design and your approach to working on them.

So am I right that you're primarily focusing on logo design now or are you doing other things as well?

Allan Peters: It's a primary focus. Usually other things stem out of that. If you do a logo design for somebody, chances are you're probably going to do some business cards or a brand book or other pieces, other elements.

Ian Paget: Yeah, sure. Sure.

Allan Peters: We partner with brands and with agencies and stuff like that to create campaigns. But I'd say 75% of the work I do is focused on logo and illustration. Mainly logos.

Ian Paget: Sure. Sure. So would you mind sharing with us how you would typically work? And we spoke about it briefly earlier, but you started to talk about guiding the client and veering them away from bad ideas. So I'd like to go into that in some way within this conversation. But could you share with us how you would typically approach working on a log design project from that initial call through to the final thing?

Allan Peters: Absolutely. When you're in school, at least when I was in school, they taught you, they were like, hey, if you're going to create a logo for a client, you talk to them, get to know them, make some notes. Maybe write a creative brief or something like that. And then make sure they feel good about it and basically figure out who the target market is. Just the overall kind of vibe that they're looking for.

And then you vanish for a month, two months, something like that, come back and say, "Here's three logo concepts. Hopefully you like one of them." And hopefully they do or else you're going back and making more logos. And usually a round or two of revision and that was the process. Just in working at different places, learning how different people did it.

Reading different books on logo design, I've come up with how I like to do it. Which it works really good and usually you end up with a very good product in the end, and the client's very happy about it.

And so first, I talk to my client, find out any information I need to know in terms of the background. Because they're going to know their brand better than I'm going to know it. If they want to send me anything, anything that they've done research wise, send it my way. And then usually I'll find out competitors and a few of those types of things.

But the key thing I start with is a brand noun list. And so I strongly feel, especially in the digital age, that it's important for a logo to have an icon. And I know there's typographic logos that it's just the type or maybe the concept or the idea happens within the typography. But the problem comes along when you have to put this thing in an avatar or squish it down on mobile and you need to have just the ... You have to have just that icon at 72 by 72 pixels. Because if you try and put those words that small, they're just going to turn into a blurry horizontal line. And so having that icon is very important in a digital age. I think all brands ... If they don't already have one usually they have to backtrack and they're like, "Oh, well, what are we going to put in that spot?"

And then somebody like Coca-Cola, they're like, "Well, we could take our script logo on the bottle and silhouette it." They're trying to create an icon by backpedaling, which is a difficult thing to do. It's like, you want to do that upfront. You want that to be the hero.

And then you want all of the geometry and all the brand language to come out of the icon created. So the width of lines, if you're rounding corners, if you're doing sharp edges, if you're doing in lining, all these things that you have within the icon. That should inform the typography and all the illustrations and all the ads and everything should come out of that mark itself.

So when coming up with that mark, I say, let's figure out what the subject matter could be so I'm not creating three logos for you and two of them have stars in them and you don't want a logo with a star in it and you didn't tell me that and I didn't know that. And then all of the sudden you're stuck with this third one that you don't really like and then we're doing 14 months of revision and you're frustrated.

So I say just make a list. Any noun, person, place or thing that could represent what this icon's going to be. Something that could be distilled down in an icon. And I usually start by making a list myself. What are 15 to 25 things that this mark could be? I try not to be too picky at first. I try and get a lot of stuff on there.

And I also had this question come up in a workshop I did last week. Somebody had asked, what if I'm working on something that's like a consultancy, where I'm helping people? It's not like if you're doing like an orange soda or something, you're like oh, an orange slice, an orange tree, orange peel, all these things that come really naturally. But then you're like, okay, it comes from consultancy. What do I do for that? And so I'll come up with basically categories like maybe trustworthy is a keyword or the relationship of two things coming together. And so I'll create these categories and I'll create nouns and metaphors that could represent those words and nouns. So two things coming together. You could have two overlapping shapes. So that might be one of the things on my noun list. Or interwoven lines.

I'll put some things in there. Things that can be distilled down to an icon that could represent that idea. If you're trying to do trustworthy, a shield, a lock or a skeleton key. There's so many things that it could be. It could be some sort of trustworthy animal.

So I make this long noun list. I usually do my first, send it to my client, and I say, here's a place to get started. And I always have it in categories so that they have some categories to get their mind going. And I always tell them, don't spend more than an hour or two on it. Just crank it out and send me your list.

And if I'm working with a whole bunch of people, like say I'm branding a city and I'm working with a whole city council, there's eight people, I have every single one of them make a brand noun list. And I take all of them and I combine them all together and make a consolidated list that's all categorised. And I hop on the phone or meet in person and we narrow it down. And this is the key part. Because you could have all those 60, 70 things that we came up with on this huge monster list, but the reality is when you're making your icons, you're probably going to use five of them or 10 of them, right?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Allan Peters: And if the client doesn't like those 10, but they like the other 10, then you're just ... Why'd you do the process in the first place right? So this narrowing down is so key to find out the stuff the client doesn't want to see. That's the whole point of the brand noun list. To get the stuff off there. Like, if they don't like stars, get stars off there right away. And really get this thing shrunk down to 10 to 15. And honestly, I've gone down to like three with some clients. If they're laser focused and they're like, "You know what, I want water and I want a tree and some sort of shore line." I can easily create icons out of that. That's not a problem.

Ian Paget: Is it possible that you could maybe share an example of that that I can put in the show notes for this episode?

Allan Peters: Yeah. I can send you a PDF (view the PDF here)

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think that would be really useful because I haven't heard it described as a noun list before but I've seen a lot of logo designers do word mapping where they write a word in the middle and so associated words like that. But actually this is a nice way of doing it. When you say that you're categorising it, I think that's where it would be nice to see an example just to understand how you are grouping these words into different things for your client.

Allan Peters: Yeah. I can just really quickly talk through it too. Let's say you're doing-

Ian Paget: Sure, yeah.

Allan Peters: And you want to represent people in some way. I'd have a category that said people and then I could put in there, holding hands, a human silhouette, somebody running, somebody jogging. All these different things that all classify under people. And so that could be one of the categories. Nature.

Let's say the city had a lot of nature in it. So you might have trees, leaves, acorns, squirrels, deer, whatever. All these things would be classified under ... You can classify it whatever you want. Sometimes it's nice to have things bucketed. It could just be a laundry list but if you're dealing with like 15 to 20 things, so it doesn't get too complicated to read through really quick for a client. Because you want to make the process as smooth as possible.

One of the things I learned at Target is you want to sell good work, you try and make the deck so simple that it's like a children's book for a five year old. Only like five to 10 words on each page. Really simple. One key image so you're not distracted by 40 things and 40 bullet points. Because nobody's going to read that in a presentation. And so same thing. It's like you have this attention span with your client, how do you simplify and make this as easy as possible for them to digest it so that it's functional?

So anyhow, we got our brand noun lists, right? They get approved by our client. I am feeling good about it. And usually when I'm narrowing it down, I'm really guiding that process to make sure we get rid of ... Let's say if they add some things on there that I'm like, that's just going to be difficult to make a mark out of, usually I'm working that stuff out of there really quick too so that they understand why I wouldn't do that specific thing and I can explain it right there.

And so then we get our final list and then I do ... A lot of people don't do this. I do 15 full on vector sketches. Basically what the icons could be. I usually do them in black and white. A lot of times people say, create many, many of these things but don't ever show your client that much, you're going to overwhelm them. But I really find that this is so helpful for me.

There's been so many times I've presented, in the past where I've presented three of four logos and the client's been like, "Oh, I had this idea. I really wish it was something like this." And I have already made that one. I just pull it out. I'm like, "Like this?" And they're like, "Yes. Why didn't you show me that one?"

I've usually made it. I try and make sure that all 15 of those are logos that I feel really good about. And one of the things that helps sell them through, especially if you're selling it through like a whole lot of people, is to have the brand nouns that you're using from your initial list. Usually I start the deck with, here's my brand noun list that we approved and then when I go through each mark, I'll have bulleted like, here are the brand nouns that are being portrayed in this icon. So in case I'm not there to present it myself, they can quickly make that association.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sorry to interrupt. So you're presenting 15. How are you showing each of these? Are you presenting them like 15 on a slide? Are you showing them one at a time individually and running through each one as a separate thing?

Allan Peters: I like to present, I usually will show black on white, white on black for each one and work my way through it and talk through the idea behind each one as I'm going through it. And then right at the end, the last slide is all of them together. Have them all white on black and then black on white. And if they have some brand colour initially or whatever, that's when I'll have a slide with all of them in that colour.

And then I'll stop and that's when we'll have our discussion and really compare them and just feel how people are feeling in their gut. That way you can see things side by side too. I think that's valuable. Especially if you're presenting over the phone.

Ian Paget: It's been interesting through the podcast because I've interviewed lots of different graphic designers. Some present one logo, some present two or three. Aaron Draplin presents like 200.

15 is a lot I think. Do you find it's problematic showing as many as that? I assume not because you're still doing that. But to me it sounds like an awful lot of logos to show and you'll risk running into the situation where you're going to have the client go I like that, I like that bit of that, I like that bit of that. Can you mash those together in some way and create something new? Do you ever face that issue?

Allan Peters: That issue I would find happens a lot when you're presenting finished looking logos. Usually ones with typography and full systems are like oh, I like the type from that one with icon from that one. That's usually what the frankensteining is that happens. Usually it's like paring these two elements.

But when you're presenting these really simple, minimal icons, it's kind of hard to mash them together. And so have I ever had that happen? Yes. It's pretty rare. Probably like 5% of the time maybe. And usually I can tell quickly if going to work or not if I'm lucky. Sometimes it makes for something better. And if for some reason it doesn't or if I'm not sure and I knock it out and I think it's awful, I'll tell my client. I'll say that didn't workout man. I had that with a client recently where I was like, "I did what you asked to do and man, it's not working." And they'll look at it and be like, "Yeah." As long as you guide them and you show them and you're honest with them, you can-

Ian Paget: Sure. Sure. So how do you narrow down 15 with a client?

Allan Peters: Okay. When I'm creating an icon, just one more part about that is, usually I'm combining multiple of the nouns together. Usually it's multiple ideas. For Firecraft Pizza it's a pizza slice with a negative space where the fire is part of the pizza. It's a couple of things where I'm trying to visual overlap and combining them. It's usually not just hey, it's a golf ball and I created a golf ball. Usually it's a golf ball and it's a negative space of a letter or something. Usually there's some sort of visual combination.

To answer your question, to narrow to three, that presentation, when I get down to that last slide with the 15 on it, I tell them, "You don't have to make a decision right now, but if you have to pick your top three" ... Sometimes I'll do that. If I have a ton of people, I'll do the whole like, write down on a piece of paper. Because I'll have letters and numbers with each of them.

I'll say, "Just for yourself without looking at anybody else's, write down the three that you feel are the strongest, just in your gut." A logo, it's not going to have somebody to explain it if it's out there in the wild. You're going like or not, usually based off your gut. If it's been out there for a long time, whatever brand ideation that goes around it.

The first time you see it, you're either going to like it or you're not going to like it. And it's going to be you that feels that way, not somebody who's going to be like, "Hey, did you see this logo? It really sucks." Unless you're a graphic designer, then you hear a lot of other people's opinion.

But if you're just shopping at a store or something and you come across a logo, you're going to have a feeling one way or the other about that mark and it's going to be your feeling. And so I try and feel out the room and kind of see what people are leaning towards. And usually I can help guide them a little bit at that point. And then I always tell them to take a day or two and think about it and then come back with what you feel, what you want to move forward with.

I always tell them to pick three and then I take those three and do full on brand modular systems where it's like hey, you got the icon horizontal one for like mobile, vertical or stacked. If it makes sense, also maybe like a badge or some sort of more complicated. Basically from extremely simple to extremely complex in a full system so you have a whole bunch of stuff to work with. And I'm creating that for all three of them.

I just had a client I was working with called FM. It was Featherston Media and they were just narrowing their name down to FM. They got fm.net. And I was like, how often do you get that lucky that you get to do a logo for something with only two letters? You can make it so bold.

They picked an awesome mark where the icon is the letters but not in a cheesy way. In this really beautiful abstract way. And that was the whole ... There's no system to go with that. The letters are there, it's small. It fits great as an icon, as an avatar. It has a brand language that it patterns out of. And the best part about it is I presented the 15 and they came back, they're like, "We're going with that one." It was like the easiest logo process ever. It was so good.

Ian Paget: I love it when that happens.

Allan Peters: I know.

Ian Paget: I've had that a couple of times. To be fair, usually with quite small clients that just trust me, and I love that. Go with it. I normally still develop it further just because I always like to do that. It sounds like you do similar. I like to present work that is about 95% complete. I don't see the point in polishing it 100% and making sure that the kerning is 100% perfect. I'll do all that kind of fine tuning prior to preparing the final files. But yeah, it's nice when that happens. Saves a lot of time.

Allan Peters: Yeah. Absolutely. You end up with a really nice system. It works well. Usually they need more pieces and stuff so the relationship just kind of builds from that point, but that's a starting process. I've got a locked fee that you usually charge for that. Because it's the same exact thing, like I have my go to number. With the little guys it scares them. The big guys, I usually let them tell me how much they want to pay because it's usually more. And then the medium guys, it's right at their level.

Ian Paget: Sure. That sounds good. And I think for listeners, because we're speaking about something that's quite visual, to look at examples there's a fantastic talk on your website that I'll link to in the show notes where you do actually share a few projects that you worked on and it shows examples of these systems that you developed based on that symbol and how you're working it out. So I think people can go in, check that video out. Because surprisingly our time is flying. We've already done like 45 minutes. It's scary how quick time flies.

Make the design you want to attract

Ian Paget: So in relation to your work, there's something that I've noticed about your work and you say on your website that you offer a distinctive design style. And you can tell looking through the bulk of your work, there are similar characteristics between all of it. You own a specific aesthetic that you offer to clients. So I'm curious to know, are you creating a specific style to intentionally attract a specific type of work or is that just your style and it's just naturally developed in that way?

Allan Peters: I'm specifically going after it. One of the things I've always done in my career is I'll work on passion projects, things I feel good about, on the side in ways that I can kind of flex my creative skills and do the type of work that I love doing, where I'm not being constrained by a client and I can really ... Like anything else, you dress for the job you want.

Make the design work for the type of design work you want to get. I actually did a video recently on my Instagram where I share these two posters I created for ARTCRANK, which is a poster bike show. It's been in Paris and many of the cities in the United States. But it's all started here in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Charles Youel.

And two of these posters that I did, it was kind of these fictitious bike gangs. And not like motorcycle gangs, but bicycle gangs, which is really pretty dumb. Which I did on purpose. And I tried to name all these different bike gangs after different neighbourhoods and different roads and different icons around the city.

Basically, the whole point of the project ... Both these posters have 12 badges on them with a big scripty badge overprinted right over the top of them. And they look really cool. The one over the top will be like Minneapolis bike gangs and then there's a St. Paul bike gangs and then all the badges are all the different gangs.

The purpose of that poster ... Yeah, yeah. It's great, I'm making a poster for a thing so you can sell some posters. But the main point was I want to get a bunch of badges in my portfolio because I like making badges and I had created, I don't know, four, five, six of them or something at that time. And all of the sudden after I did those two projects I had 26 more badges in my portfolio. And you get a lot of calls and a lot of work based off that type of thing.

Like all of the sudden it's like hey, ESPN needs a bunch of badges for these articles that they're working on or some outdoor company needs a badge for their ATV trailers. Whatever it is. There's definitely purposes for those types of things. And that said, since we're on the subject of badges, I don't feel like a badge is a perfect solution for every brand at all, but I do like making them so I make a lot of them.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah. It's been addressed on this podcast so many times and I want to stress it again now. Showing the type of work that you want to attract is the way to go.

I'll share a story with you and the audience. I worked in web for a long time because I worked for an eCommerce web design agency and I wanted to get out of that and I applied for this job for this company in London. And I was all excited about what they did because they did loads of print design work. And I didn't have any print design work in my portfolio so I went to that interview and we went through my portfolio and the first thing she said was, "Oh, we'd love to do more of this type of thing."

And it just made me realise, if I don't want to do that I shouldn't show it. And it doesn't matter how big the client is, you just need to take it out of your portfolio because whatever you show, you're going to get more of that. I mean, you've done it. So many guests I've spoken to have done this. They created fictional projects or intentionally targeted specific type of clients so that they have projects to show that is the type of work that they want to do.

And then when someone wants something like what you've done, they go with you because they can see that you can do that type of work. So it sounds obvious, but at that time I didn't know. I wanted a job working in more print and I thought I'd show what I've already done. And actually what I should have done was created a load of fictional print based projects and went in going look how good I am at print based design work. You should hire me.

Allan Peters: Yeah. That's a good story. So lately I've been working on a shop for my website. And I started in April and I've got probably 80 products on there right now. It's so fun for me. Making these projects and stuff like that, it's like yeah, I already got a portfolio full of stuff. I'm going to get this type of work. It's less about that. It's more of ... A good example is, you ever heard of Aesthetic Apparatus? They're these poster designers.

Ian Paget: I haven't. No.

Allan Peters: They're out of Minneapolis. They're amazing, amazing designers. And their posters won tons and tons of awards and all that kind of thing. But I don't think they ... If they submitted them every poster show or every award show they would be winning stuff constantly but I just don't think they need to. It's one of those things where their work is just that good.

I remember I was talking to them one day and I was like, "How do you do it? How do you make a living just doing gig posters?" And he's like, "Oh, we do all sorts of stuff." He was like, "This is our PR. These are giant business cards. So we make these gig posters and then we sell them online, but we're getting new clients that way. People are seeing our work that way and they're seeing us flexing our skills."

And then all of a sudden Absolute calls them up and says, "Hey, we're doing this campaign with all these ads where the backgrounds are done by different artists." Things like that. "And we would love to have one that has that Aesthetic Apparatus look." And the same thing for all this kind of stuff. All your work, it's your kind of calling card so people are going to see it whether it's on Pinterest or whether it's online, Behance or wherever.

They're going to see that stuff and they're going to ... When General Motors is working on this big project and they're like, "Oh, you know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of that thing I saw on Behance the other day. Who did that? That would be perfect, that style." And that art director is going to go dig up your work and give you a call.

So yeah, you got to put out there what you like. And if you love doing that kind of work, making fictitious ... Well, these products I'm making aren't fictitious. They're products that I've been selling. But man, I just like doing it.

It's like when I was in high school. When I was in high school I would draw in all my classes. I didn't do great in high school because I would sit there drawing while the teacher was talking. I would get so distracted because I just love, love, love to draw and I love to make stuff. And I love drawing the kind of things I want to draw. And same thing with this man.

I love design and I love making cool design that ... If I'm going to make a hat, I want a hat that I want to wear. I want it to be the best damn hat I've ever designed in my life. Like the hat that I would want to find at a store. Where I'd see it and be like, "Yes, I need that."

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And showing off on Instagram, other people see it and then you get more work.

Allan Peters: Absolutely.

Badge Hunting for Logo Inspiration

Ian Paget: We've got about six, seven minutes left of our time. I mean, we can go on a little bit longer if you're happy to. But I earlier watched a talk that was on your website about badge hunting. And I mentioned about this video already so I'll link to it in the show notes. But badges and badge hunting, that kind of seems to be one of your things based on reading through lots of things you've done. Would you mind sharing what badge hunting is and how you go about doing it? Because I think it's brilliant. It's similar to what Aaron Draplin does, but I'd love to hear how you tend to approach this type of thing.

Allan Peters: Sure. When I was talking earlier about learning different skills at different shops and things like that, I was mainly talking about learning the business side. Like that skillset. But in terms of learning design skills, I think a lot of designers do it the same way. They're learning from other designers.

They're studying the designers that they love and figuring out what fonts are they using? I want to know what that font is. Or let's look at those colour palettes. I love that colour palette or I love that illustration style. I love the way that they illustrate hands. All these things. They're making their collections. They're making their Pinterest boards. They're making their dribble category, whatever they call that. All the websites seem to have that now where basically you can categorise and collect things and that way you can use them for mood boards and things later on.

But I remember spending ... Using that example, that Aesthetic Apparatus example or with our local agency there's like wink. All these different local agencies. I remember I studied and studied and studied all their work and figured out why I liked it and the things that I loved about it. And I remember going on this interview once with this fellow, his name's Travis, and he worked at this agency called Mono. And I was interviewing with him and he was like, "I like your work. It's really good. But oh my goodness, it looks like Minneapolis design." He's like, it's very ... Because I think his style was more international feeling.

He had more of a European flare to the work that he was doing and my stuff looked ... It was the people I loved that were locals. It was all these Joe Duffys and Charles Spencer Anderson and everybody from Minneapolis that I loved. I just studied and studied and figured out how they did what they did.

But that was early on in my career and when he said it, I didn't know how to take it. But I thought about it for a while and it's like yeah, I do need to be more broad about this. And I started studying other people from further out and getting more of a broader sense of an education. Really learning from the masters. And in going back to Saul Bass and Paul Rand and reading their books and figuring out all that stuff. But then, I don't know when it was, but I started just finding so much inspiration in all this lost design that was created.

When you're digging through an antique store and you find some package that who knows who the hell designed it and it's from 1945 or it's from a war period or this or that. And you see some typography treatment that was done before ... It was obviously hand done or it was a trend that's a lost trend that hasn't been done since then. Or it might be really difficult to do now because the digital age has changed people's creativity.

I was talking to this fellow Tim who designs badges on the phone the other day. And he was saying that when the computers came around ... Because he's older than me by about 20 years. He said, "When computers came around," he's like, "I loved doing hand drawn typography, whether it's sans serif or scripts and stuff like that. And really flexing what you could do with it." And he said, "The moment computers came around, people were like, 'Oh, why would you ever do that? We just use fonts and we just simplify.'"

And it just evaporated all this hand done typography and all these custom treatments and stuff. It went away, he said, for quite a long time. Most people weren't doing it. And that was one of the reasons why his work stuck out and why he was able to have such a solid career is because he was still doing that and it looks different. It looks better. It's more unique.

So going back and going through museums of ... Whether it's like old train museum and you're looking at all the badges or the way the icons are created inside the engines and stuff like that. There's so much you can learn from these masters and these people that did this all by hand and they weren't constrained by all the rules of a computer or by how easy it is to do certain things on a computer. So people just start doing those things over and over again.

Since everything was hard and it took a long time, there were so many more options easily and readily available when you're making design decisions. But there were printer constraints too so you're dealing with all that back then where it's like, I have to make this beautiful design in two colours or one colour or three colour and you're trying to do a full on illustration and trying to solve a way to do that in a really unique way. Or the way the registration's off and trying to make the design a little bit more hardy so it can withstand that.

There's so much to learn from these great designers of the past. And not just the famous ones but all these people that you'll never know their name. I love it. And I learned so much from them. They're my teachers you could say.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah, for sure. I can see that in your work. I love looking at vintage graphic design myself and when you find something really good it's a little bit like finding a piece of treasure isn't it? So how do you go about finding so many old, interesting things? Where are you looking?

Allan Peters: Well, some places you can look, obviously antique stores can be a great place to look. And usually an antique store further out of a main city. The stuff in the cities are usually more curated and picked through. But when you get further out there's just fewer people looking through them and you find older things.

In the cities usually it's like stuff from the '70s and '80s and sometimes a little bit older. And you get a little further out all of a sudden you're into the '60s and '50s and you're getting older things and stuff that's a little bit more interesting to look at. At least for me, just because it's before my time, being born in 1980.

So yeah, antique stores but then also museums. Especially weird, little small museums. Like a little small town museum. Sometimes they'll have like, hey, this is the Bluworth museum or something for this small little town in southern Minnesota. And you'll go down there and ... Or I've found them where they ... Anytime somebody has some sort of museum-ish thing like we have this really big state fair here in Minnesota. I suppose in St. Paul.

But we have this huge state fair here and they're known throughout the midwest as this big festival that's two weeks long and it's humongous. But back in the corner ... I didn't find until I'd been going there for years. There's this whole building that's just a museum to state fair history and all the awards and things. Like the little crests and badges, medallions, helmets that they'd wear in demolition derbies and things that have logos on the sides of them. Really cool stuff. You find the stuff in the most unexpected places sometimes.

But one of the key things that I want to say that I do ... You brought up Aaron Draplin a couple times. He'll collect lots of things and he has drawers full of antiques and ... Just so many of them. He just has it categorised in huge like ... There's probably so much money invested just in flat files and cabinetry and things. And we love our life the simple here at our home.

We try and be pretty minimal. I do have some antiques that I own but I have just two shelves, something like that. But I photograph and document them because that's really what I need. I don't need a physical object. I don't need to hold it. If I love the front and the side, I'll take a picture of the front and the side and I organise it and archive all the photography so that I have it all. And that's usually better for me anyways. Like if I use it to do a mood board, even if it's just a mood board for myself or I'm looking for unique badge shapes or custom typography treatments and things like that. And to be perfectly clear, I just want to make this portion clear because sometimes people don't understand it, especially younger designers, and they make the mistake.

Using vintage badge design for inspiration

Allan Peters: When you're looking at this stuff and you're like okay, I'm going to apply this to a project, I in no way encourage taking something and just ripping it off and changing the words. The whole point is to be inspired by it. Like maybe, oh, I love the way that they did that treatment. This inlining, I'm going to apply inlining. Or I love the way that they linked the letters together in a unique way. I'm going to link my letters together in a unique way. But it's part of a bigger picture.

It's kind of like ... I heard Dyson, the fellow who created the Dyson vacuum. I heard him speak and somebody asked him, they're like, "Hey, how do you innovate?" He goes, "Oh, that's easy. You find something that pisses you off about the way something works and you fix the problem." And I'm not necessarily saying that there's something wrong with these things. I guess what I'm trying to say is a vacuum cleaner. He didn't create a vacuum cleaner. He just put a ball on the back of it so it's easier to manoeuvre.

So in the same way with a logo, it's like you might find something or oh, that's a great stepping stone, I can use that. But how do I innovate and make it better and add the ball on the back to make it so it manoeuvres better? You know?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Allan Peters: But in terms of the design itself, how can I leverage this learning?

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well, I think it's like anything. When I work on projects I like to ... When I'm looking at logos in particular, I'm not looking for something to copy. I'm trying to pinpoint an aesthetic that I want to try and get across with what I'm doing and having those reference or that source material to reference from, wherever it's coming from, whether it's from a Google search or from going out there and looking in the world in the way that you are.

Copying, that's not the way it should be. It should always be inspired by or those things are there as a reference. You know all those images that you took, you should create that as a product. Like a PDF book and categorised, organised parts. Because not everyone has the chance to travel around your part of the world to see all of those fascinating things. So if you don't already have that on mind somewhere you should consider making it a product in some way because it would be fascinating to see.

Allan Peters: I've always thought about it. I would love to do it. I would like to write something too that went with it though. More than just a photo collage. I think it could be a great story.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I mean, something like what Louise Fili does. She's taken loads of pictures in Barcelona and Paris and she's released these books of typography on the streets which is a nice way to do it. So doing something like that might be really good.

Anyway, we've been speaking now for just over an hour so I think it's probably a good point to wrap this up. We've covered loads of things. I know we could have spoken for another couple of hours. But it's been absolutely incredible. I'm really grateful for you coming on and sharing so much with us so thank you so much Allan for your time. It's been amazing.

Allan Peters: Thank you Ian. And thank you for your time. Thank you for researching your questions and spending some time to get this all put together and your level of professionalism, you're definitely a craftsman and I appreciate it.