Designing Identities for TV & Film, an Interview with Emily Oberman

Ian Paget: So you've become really well-known for your work in film, having worked on logos and identities for films, such as Ready Player One, The Fantastic Beast films, Birds of Prey, Warner Brothers. You've done lots within film now. How did you get into working on branding for TV and film?

Emily Oberman: That is a great question. And it's kind of goes back a little bit of a long way, and so I'll try to sum it up. When I went to college, I went to Cooper Union in New York city. And while I was at Cooper Union, and even in high school, I had kind of an acting bug.

And so at a certain point at Cooper, I took a leave of absence to go and study acting. I had done it a lot in high school, and I wanted to sort of live that dream. And I did that for about a year. I started with Stella Adler in New York City. And after about a year, I realised that I didn't really want to be an actress. I didn't have the sort of constitution for that.

So when I went back to school at Cooper, I started studying filmmaking, which was sort of a way to combine design and theatre or performance in a way that was satisfying to me.

And then I went to work at M&Co. And at M&Co, they did title designs and some TV stuff. And when we first started doing more TV, I immediately volunteered to be the person who did the video and the motion graphics at M&Co. And so that sort of got me really excited about doing that sort of thing, working with Tibor Kalman, doing that, and just the sort of way that motion moves and tells a story in a way that's like a movie, but isn't a movie.

So from there, when I moved to No. 17 and then to Pentagram, we continued to do that because Bonnie was working in a similar way. And so at No. 17, we had a really nice combined way of looking at motion graphics and stuff for television and film. And then that sort of continued to blossom.

And the big change was when we started doing the titles for Saturday Night Live. And then that sort of became this starting point or inspiration for a lot of the work that was moving forward.

How working with a non-profit lead to designing identities for Warner Brothers

And then when I moved to Pentagram we were approached by a non-profit called Film Independent, and they are kind of the AIGA of film. They do work, putting together independent filmmakers. If you want to direct a film and someone else wants to write a film, they find a way to get you together. They also offer a lot of programs and education for young upcoming independent filmmakers.

And they came to us with no money and just a dream. And so because I love what they do and love film and love motion graphics, and love design, they were just this wonderful, wonderful client for us.

And so we started doing the design for them. And as they were, and still are a terrific client of ours. And from there as we were doing their identity, we were also doing strategy. And I was brought on by a special board to do this work because non-profits have a board who pretty much run what they do. And on this board, the head of the board was these two women named Mary Sweeney and Sue Kroll. Mary Sweeney, being an Oscar winning fantastic editor and Sue Kroll being at the time the head of marketing at Warner Brothers.

I didn't think anything about that, I just thought they were brilliant, wonderful women, and this was an amazing project. And so we worked on this and it went really well. At the same time, we also started doing the Spirit Awards for them, which is a whole other joy in my life.

But one day Sue Kroll called me and said, "I'm having a little trouble with an identity that we're not quite getting right for a new film. And we love the work that you did on Spirit Awards, would you be interested in taking a crack at this?"

And I love Sue and I love the work that we did, and so I said yes immediately without knowing anything about it. And Sue said, "Great, it's this movie. It's called Fantastic Beasts, and where To Find Them. It's kind of a prequel to the Harry Potter series." And I dropped the phone.

I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter, and the idea of doing something like this for a person that I admired so much with content that I admired so much was just phenomenal. And so we started working on the Fantastic Beast stuff and that went very well.

And then Sue asked us to look at the DC logo, which is also a Warner Brothers property. And so we did that and that went really well. And then they would come to us and ask us to do logos for films. And that just sort of evolved and snowballed. We did the second Fantastic Beasts movie, and that's sort of how we started working on that.

I worked with mostly with a man named John Danford and now a woman named Blair Rich, and together they are just a really smart, really engaged client. And that's my favourite kind of client, they're focused and they know what they want, and they understand their films, and we get to sort of stretch our wings. And we always try to add, because we're filmed geeks, we always try to add a level of meaning to what the logo is.

So The Ready Player One logo is in itself amazed that you have to travel through to get to the egg at the end, which is in the O of one. And things like that really delight me.

When the logo went up first on Instagram, it took two hours for fans to find the maze in it, and then they started finding it and drawing it.

So that's sort of the long way of saying how it started.

And my takeaway from that is kind of a hey, you never know. I didn't think at the time that we started working for this nonprofit, that I just loved, that it would lead to, oh, and not just that, but we recently redesigned the whole Warner Brothers identity.

So the whole thing sort of snowballed into this wonderful collaboration with this studio that I love doing work for something that I'm so passionate about that basically also started with the germ of my wanting to be an actor. So it's just a delightful timeline, I guess.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah. Very, very much so. And you know what, it's very relatable because I'm just going to be straight up and say, when I imagine Pentagram, a Pentagram partner that is, in terms of being a graphic designer, that's very high up there. And for most of the audience that almost in itself seems like an unobtainable goal, but it's surprising to hear that even in your position, you're getting that domino effect where something happens and then that leads to something else, and then you get more and more opportunities off the back of that.

Can I just ask that a nonprofit, I apologise, can't remember what the company was called, but was that voluntary free work that you did whilst at Pentagram, or was it just a low cost thing that you guys did?

Emily Oberman: I mean, I would say it was somewhere in between the two? We did, they paid us. And I would say if you're calculating the hours per amount of money that they paid us, it's an extremely low return. But again, on of the beauties of Pentagram is that you're able to do that sort of thing.

There's a very Robin Hood situation. Paula has been doing the public theatre for 25 years for free, but it's a beautiful, wonderful project that has done wonders for Pentagram. Not to mention that we all get to see Shakespeare in the park for free, which I know is good in the first place, but we don't have to stand in line for it. It's just part of what Pentagram offers to everyone who works there. And when we can all go back to theatre, it's a delightful perk of working at pentagram.

And so back to Film Independent, for the original branding, they paid us a very small amount of money about which I think we certainly spent much more time on the design.

And then the Spirit Awards that we do now, which is kind of the anti Oscars. It's the independent film version of the Oscars. It's always the day before. It's a little bit more irreverent. It's all independent film. It's a little bit more inclusive, I would say, well, it's a lot a bit more inclusive. But we do the Spirit Awards and they pay us for that, but all of that money is on the screen. We use the money for the production of what to do and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

I look forward every year to what we're going to do next for the Spirit Awards. It's a pure joy, kind of in the same way that Saturday Night Live is that we've been doing for almost 25 years, first at No.17, and now at Pentagram.

You might think that that's a high budget project. It is not, but every two to four years, we get to redesign the open. So it's this exercise in keeping something the same and making it totally different at the same time. And there are two other things that I love with the same passion that I love filmmaking.

And those are New York City. I'm a born new Yorker, so New York city and comedy. I have the soul of a comedian, I would say. I'm not as funny as Kate McKinnon, but so the idea that we get to sort of do something every few years, that is sort of the embodiment of New York and comedy is another joyful kind of work for me. And I think everyone on the team who gets to work on it.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah. I can hear that just the way that you talk about it, that you absolutely love working on these projects. And it's nice to think that even at the level that you are at, you're able to make the choice between projects that basically pay the bills and the ones that you really want to get stuck into because you absolutely love it.

The design process for designing movie identities

Ian Paget: I wouldn't mind spending some time going into how you work on one of these projects, because I'm going to title this episode, something around creating identities for movies, so you I'd like to get into the process of how you're working on say a logo or an identity for a film. So what does the process look when you're designing an identity for a film? Do you have to watch the film? Could you share with us what usually happens when you're working on an identity for a movie?

Emily Oberman: Of course, I can share that. The first thing that happens is you read the script or you watch a rough cut of the movie, and sometimes both. Sometimes you read the script and then a little while later you get to watch a rough cut of the film, which I, again, in the like, Ooh, this makes me so happy kind of way, reading the script of a film that is not yet out there or watching the rough cut, and watching the rough cut more than once.

So the change is, again, it solves the theatrical bug in me, it's the smell of the grease paint. And it's also really great when it's kind of a science fiction movie and there's a lot of CGI. So you're watching the rough cut before the CGI. So a lot of times you're seeing the actors on green screen in green outfits with ping pong balls on them, or on weird stilts to make them at the eye height of whatever monster they're fighting, it's awesome. Love it.

So that's always the first part of the process, even if the logo itself is incredibly simple, knowing that backstory doing the sort of method acting of the design part of it is really important.

And I work very, very... I'm not alone wolf. My husband, who is Paul Sahre, who is another graphic designer, is the opposite. He is a lone wolf. He works by himself. It's harder for him to work with other people than it is for him to work alone.

I am the opposite. I'm chatty and interested in collaboration and always excited about what someone else brings to it, as opposed to what I bring to it. Or even when someone takes a tiny little idea that I have in turns it into something phenomenal. And I learned that from Tibor.

Tibor was incredibly collaborative in the way we worked together. He was always interested in sort of the best idea wins. And so that's what it was like. At M&Co, and now that's what I brought to my team.

And my team is selected for their design ability, their brains, and their cultural expanse and their wit. I have a very witty, very intelligent team.

And so we all read the script, whereas many of us are on the project, all read the script and then we get together and brainstorm and talk about what the ideas would be. And usually I have a few ideas of my own and then they have ideas as well. And then they go off and sketch basically.

They take my ideas and work on them. They take their own ideas and work on them. And then we do a variety of pinup sessions, where we look at when people used to pin things up in a room together. And we look at the work and edit it down all together.

And I think I'm pretty good at finding the top three to five ideas and judging them into what they need to be.

And then we work on what the shape and the form of the logo is, but we also begin to dive into what it will be out in the real world. And we do, I would say, elaborate proof of concepts for films.

And while we're doing that, let's say we're doing a billboard of what the logo would look like with the stars on it, or something that relates to what the subject matter is, at the same time, because we can't help ourselves, we also will write a tagline that goes under it.

The one I can think of right now is when we were working on Birds of Prey, one of the taglines that we came up with was Prey for Gotham. And while we were presenting that the client loved that. And that became the teaser campaign tagline. So we think of things in this 360 degree way that again, if something makes all of us feel joy or feel it's smart, or laugh really hard, we use it.

And now in fact, sometimes they come to us at the very beginning to write taglines. So that also evolved into something that we got known for and that is now being part of the way we were used in the process.

So, and then from there we present to the client and then they have to take that to the next level at the studio, and then we make revisions and then that goes to the director of the film for final approval.

And then from there we usually make a few versions of it. There's usually a monogram or some sort of short hand form for it. And then there's whatever stylistic imagery, like The Fantastic Beast stuff is very chiseled and gold, or chiseled in stone, and The Ready Player One was chrome. So that sort of gets added on top. But the logos have to work first and foremost in black and white as a concept that you can understand without the bells and whistles of the renderings.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love what you're saying about working with your team and the way that you do. So I'm curious to dig into the part a little bit where you are brainstorming those ideas. And so you said that you get your team to sketch out ideas. Is that just sketching on paper or when you used the word sketch, did you mean rough mock ups and Adobe Illustrator?

Emily Oberman: It's a little bit of both.

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: I would say I used to sort of be of the mind of don't touch the computer until you've sketched by hand. But now I sort of say to the team that they can present the ideas in whatever way best conveys the idea. So often if it's something that I've sketched out in a notebook myself or I can describe myself that immediately goes into Illustrator or whatever, to sort of start to get refined.

And some designers come in with things extremely sketchy, but off the computer. And some come in with hand drawings to explain things. And my theory is whatever it takes to get the initial idea across is all that we need. And it's sort of up to the individual. Sometimes it's just words and a mood board, sometimes that's enough to convey the idea. Sometimes it's words and a little piece of motion that we find that sort of helps understand what the pacing of something would be.

So, and again, it's extreme. It feels a little like a college crate when we do it, 'cause we're all talking and I really like push back from the team. If I say, "Oh, I don't know about this one. It's not. I don't see it. I don't care." They say, "No, no, no. What I really think is this one is about is I don't know, is the lightness and the form, and maybe it's not drawn right yet." I am happy to hear that and say, "Okay, let's see what this turns into." As opposed to just needing it to be what I think something is or needs to be at the beginning.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And when you're working with that team, they've all read the script and watched the rough cut of the film, as the manager of the team, are you giving them any kind of direction for what you have mind or the way that you see it, or are you really treating it as a collaborative process and letting them loose to do what they want and you simply direct it when it all comes back together, when the team present those potential ideas to you?

Emily Oberman: Usually I have a sense of something. Usually I have a few ideas that I toss out at the beginning that are I'm thinking of this as a big, giant bold type that's going to fill the screen or whatever that is. And it should feel like, a san serif, and it needs a noire quality about it. And sometimes it's as direct as it needs to be this, this, this, or this. And sometimes it's a very light, general direction, and then they go off.

I've become, I think, a very good art director or creative director. Like I said, I think I'm very good at either pulling out the best ideas from what comes around in that first crit session, and I'm also really good at taking something and changing it to have another layer of idea that sort of brings it home.

I think in a slightly different way than the team, I think, but again, we're all sort of blending together and the way we think and work. But to answer your question, generally, I have a sense and a few ideas at the beginning and then the team takes those, evolves them and does their own. And I would say, I don't know what the ratio is of how often it's still the one that's my first idea or something completely new that the team came up with, but I love it either way.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, like you said, you go with whatever the best option is, and it doesn't matter where that originated from as long as you're solving the problem in the most effective way.

Emily Oberman: Yeah. And I love and trust the people on my team. They are picked. I always refer to us as sort of the Island of misfit toys. We're all quirky and we're all incredibly different, but we all have a similar passion and thought process, and we all feed off each other and bring the best out in each other's strengths. And like I said, everyone is quirky in their own way, which is a joy.

And I'm making it sound like it's all fun and games. We work freaking hard. We do things over and over and over to get it right. We work late nights when we have to and I sort of puzzle and worry over something like a worry stone. I mean, I needle it, and noodle it, and needle it and until it's right and it's hard, but it's nice to be able to work on things that you get joy from.

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very much so. And I can tell just by the way that you're talking about it, that you absolutely, absolutely love doing this, which is so nice to have.

I want to go back to say, you've had your team come up with those ideas, you gave them some kind of direction, and then they are coming back to you. And you've said that you're having some kind of team presentation where everyone is sharing what they've worked on, and then you're choosing what a handful of directions to continue with. How does that look? Is everyone pinning up on some kind of board or do you get round on a boardroom table and put everything in the middle? How does that part of that process look?

Emily Oberman: It's like an old fashioned wall crit we put up and again, in the time of COVID, everything is different and harder.

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: But we usually are in a room together where again, the energy of everyone being together sort of feeds off each other. And we literally pin some stuff up on the wall and look at it. And then this is sort of a running joke with the team, I usually have a pen and a bottle of whiteout and go through and redraw, or we tear pieces of paper off and pull things from one logo in another and sort of make this collagey, hand drawn on version of the logos that are evolving.

And so it's very analog when we're doing that. And again, the whiteout that I use to sort of carve away at letter forms and then add little pieces with a Sharpie or a small pen, depending on it, or again, like I said, tearing something off from another thing and placing on it, it feels very organic, the process.

And it's a little bit of whenever I'm like, "Where's the white out?". It's a sort of funny moment for us.

I also do want to say, not every client is as perfect or fantastic as what I'm describing. I think that you're asking questions about the film and motion stuff, which is kind of a hard job, but also a guilty pleasure at the same time. I don't want to make it sound we're all skipping through the office all the time. There's a lot of trek and dry to use a Yiddish expression that I'm not even sure what it means, but on the projects and some things are have a very different cadence.

Ian Paget: I think you made that clear and everyone knows, most people listening to this, I'm making this assumption, they are graphic designers, they worked in studios, they worked for themselves. They know it's not all fun and games, even when it is a project that you really, really want to work on. It's hard. But I think as an outsider, you will only see the final thing. And in your case, because you are working on a lot of these big films, I can see why you felt that you needed to share that.

Emily Oberman: There's also some heartbreak. We worked on a film that I'm going to refrain from mentioning what it was. We worked on the film, we worked really hard. We were excited and thrilled about where it went. They chose a logo, the director approved it. We were so happy and proud. And then two months later the director changed on the film and the new director had a whole other vision and had a whole other team that he wanted to work with.

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: And so after thinking that this had happened for a long time, that logo died. That's a little bit heartbreaking. And then even right now working on some films that had to stop production because of COVID and those will come back. But all of a sudden you were in the middle of something that you were working hard on and it just stops. So that also happens, especially in an industry like film or entertainment. That's just the way it goes.

Ian Paget: With those projects where that happened, where the director changed, are you allowed to show any of the work that you did or is it just literally pushed to one side and forgotten about?

Emily Oberman: We were not supposed to show the work. I do not generally show the work that didn't get chosen even like that sort of...

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: That has to stay in the vault. I will confess to sometimes showing it to a group of students who have -

Ian Paget: I think that's different. It's not public.

Emily Oberman: It's not public and it's not anything that they take away with them. It's just something they see. And again, it's nice for students to know how hard you work and how many different ideas get presented and how things evolve. But no, I can never show anyone the beautiful logos that we did.

Ian Paget: That is such a shame. I know one day you're going to have to speak to whoever is necessary to create a book or something to bring all of this stuff out, because I know film fans in particular with the film and TV projects you're working on, that would be so fascinating to see for them. But as a graphic designer, personally, I would absolutely love to see what's in the archive. I think that I personally say that almost like a holiday going through the archives and seeing what could have been.

Emily Oberman: I totally agree. And I would love to, and maybe someday you're right, we could approach the studios and say... I just feel like there's a certain, we the studio wants people to just see the vision that we want them to see. We want to just have them know what the story we want to tell about this particular film is.

Presenting the design work to the film studio

Ian Paget: So another question I wanted to ask, so you've worked with the team, you've narrowed it down and you've agreed on some kind of direction. When it comes around to presenting that work to your client, what are you showing them? Are you showing them one direction that you feel is going to work for the film, or are you showing them a handful of different potential options?

Emily Oberman: We are showing them a handful. There are different clients where we show one, and then there are clients that we show between three and five. And then for the film stuff, we generally show more.

We show between five and 10, I would say, which is very unusual, but Hollywood is a very different entity from regular branding. When they do a design for a poster, for a film, they will look at a hundred different versions, which is why I think it's rare when posters for films, no offence to all my clients, there are posters for films that generally look like they've looked at a hundred and made it into one thing.

I will also say, I don't feel that about a lot of the work that my delightful client, John Stanford creates. I think all the work that he does for all the marketing for the films that we work on together is amazingly smart and beautiful.

But there are websites about movie posters that all look the same. And so we generally present more than normal for the film work. Sometimes it's because we just love all and we can't bear to part with them, but for film, I don't think we've ever gone in and presented one idea.

But again, in that sort of world of accidental presentations, when we were working on Ready Player One, one of the things that we showed as part of our proof of concept was taking... Ready Player One it's about this dystopian world, where everyone sort of lives in this virtual reality that was created by an eccentric billionaire who was obsessed with the 1980s. And the '80s are a big point in the film. There are a lot of '80s references in both the original book and the film itself.

And first of all, it's brilliant to make a movie about the future that has all these touch points from the past that everyone can relate to. It's just brilliant, the book too. So while we were doing our proof of concept stuff, one of the things we presented was classic '80s films with the logo for Ready Player One done in the style of the poster from that movie, The Breakfast Club or Goonies.

And when we presented that, they loved that idea. And then they turned that into a poster campaign that they made themselves, but that was based on our thought process. So I would say even though that was part of a presentation where we showed a bunch of ideas, that was a singular idea that turned into something.

Creating logo design files for movies

Ian Paget: One of my other questions is more to do with the files that you provide. It's something that I've often wondered. Say for Wizard World in a Wizarding World, sorry, and Ready Player One, there's lots of textures, glows, highlights and so on. How are those actually created?

The usual advice for most designers is when you provide files to your client, they should be vectors, because vectors are scalable. But those, I assume that they are done in Photoshop because as far as I'm aware, that's the most practical and most easiest way to go about creating those more elaborate logos. How are those done? Is that the way it is? Are they in Photoshop and just really big files?

Emily Oberman: Well, first of all, we do present things in vector. Again, like I said, all logos have to work in flat black and white. So that's point one. Point two, is that we make detailed Photoshop files that look like what the final piece is supposed to be.

For the Wizarding World, The Fantastic Beasts, or Ready Player One, we make those, but then the studio remakes them based on our Photoshop files. They redraw them with a much higher resolution piece in the end, so they can be scaled for film and so they can have all of those details that need to be there when you zoom in on something.

So the final, final, final version of it is created by the studio or the company that's actually doing the physical animation for it. So we give them the template and the style, and then they make it perfect and then they give it back to us so we can put it in our portfolio or on our website.

Ian Paget: So that file that you give them, is there a maximum size that you would typically do at, even though they are basically recreating it in whatever the format they're using?

Emily Oberman: Yes, we do it as large as we can, but I am going to confess to, if your next question is, what is that? I don't know.

Ian Paget: Okay.

Emily Oberman: I can ask someone on my team and they can tell me.

Ian Paget: I'd be curious to know. It was just out of interest to be honest, because I've seen it and I often looked at film posters and the logo is actually used in the films themselves. And you can see that they're really big. They're really big on the screen, especially if they're 8K or whatever. I don't know if films go even beyond that, they're big. So I was just imagining that they would have to be extremely large PSDs, but it's fascinating to hear that the film studio is then taking it one step further and recreating it in some way.

Do you know what they're using? Is it still Photoshop or are they building it in 3D or something?

Emily Oberman: I think they're building it in some 3D program, that again, I can't tell you the name of.

Ian Paget: Don't worry. It's good to know, because as a graphic designer, you're providing PSD files and for me and the bulk of the audience listening to this that's sufficient information. So I can always try and reach out to someone else and get the next part of the process.

Emily Oberman: I think if we were a bigger company that only did film title work, we would be doing that ourselves.

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: But because we are generalists, film, title work, or film logo work is only a piece of what we do, we are not set up with that level of tech that they need. And who's to say that someday we wouldn't be? It used to be that you go to do motion graphics, you went to a facility and use their technology and their machines to do that, and we do that all ourselves now. So maybe that will change, but right now that is the way it is.

How Emily Oberman Became a Pentagram Partner

Ian Paget: To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up going in that direction. But anyway, we have just over 10 minutes left. So I have one last big question for you. So I read the in 1993, UK founded the Design Studio No.17, and then 17 years later, you closed up and joined Pentagram becoming partner number 19. That is a huge deal. How did that happen?

Emily Oberman: Well, so No.17 was me and my partner, Bonnie Siegler, and we had the company and we worked together wonderfully and happily and beautifully for many, many years. And I think then as we were coming up to the 17 year mark, we were starting to have slightly different focuses or interests. And we decided, and technically not exactly 17 years, but close enough.

Ian Paget: Right.

Emily Oberman: And we just decided together that that seemed a perfect amount of time for us to have had this beautiful, collaborative, fun, funny studio together. It was just a really nice tidy way to wrap it up. And it gave the story a nice arc.

And so we made that decision and then coincidentally, Pentagram said that they were interested in talking and it had always been a dream of mine to be part of Pentagram. And it was incredibly flattering and thrilling. And it's one of those things for me, it was kind of, "Oh, the Yankees called. I sort of can't not give this some thought." And I don't know, I used to know enough about baseball to know whether that's a perfect reference, but it seems a really good reference.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it is.

Emily Oberman: And so I went through the long and gruelling process of what it takes to become a Pentagram partner, which is you have to submit portfolio, you have to talk, you have to go and meet every single partner and talk to them because it has to be a unanimous decision amongst then I guess, 18 partners.

And so it's nerve wracking because you meet all these people who are iconic and who are basically judging you. I mean, I was friends with Paula and Michael Beirut beforehand, and I knew Luke, but I certainly knew of... Oh, and I knew Abbott really well. We went to college together. Oh, and Eddie was my student at Yale. So it's funny when your student becomes a Pentagram partner before you do.

But it was everyone else whose someone who I had admired and whose work I knew. And so it was, I don't want to say frightening experience, but it was an intense, really, really intense.

And those individual conversations that you have with them, you also get to know all of them really in a nice way, because they talk to you as much as you've talked to them and you get to sort of understand if this is a group of people that you want to be part of.

And of course they all are. Pentagram is a funny and interesting place, because I think people think of Pentagram as this big entity, that is Pentagram. But pentagram is a collection of individual partners who are all independent thinkers, who all have a voice in how the company works.

It's another version of the Island of misfit toys because every partner is very different. And it's a very eclectic and personal way of working. And it's a group of real human beings who have passion about what they do. And I say real human beings, not like other companies don't have human beings in them, but I think it's just different from what the perception of Pentagram is.

And so then it took about a year, and then there's a voting process that happens at a partners meeting where you were not there and you have no idea how it's going to go. And then if you're lucky, you get a call saying you're in. And you also have to have a body of work and a certain level of, I don't want to say fame, but you have to be known in the design community to be asked to be a Pentagram partner, in general. That's changing a little bit now, but you have to have an established career. So there is that aspect of it.

And then once you're brought into the partnership, you are kindly given sort of an on ramp of a bunch of years where you are sort of learning the ropes and everyone helps you get work, everyone helps you understand what Pentagram is, which is a little inscrutable, even when you're on the inside.

Pentagram works like no other agency or design studio that I've ever known. And the partners are incredibly supportive of each other.

Pentagram works in a way where nobody is looking at the other saying, "Why aren't you doing enough?" Everyone is looking at themselves and saying, "How can I do better?" There's not a level of competition between the partners, there is a really nice supportive group.

It's kind of socialist in the way it works in that everyone has a voice and everyone's voice matters. There are certainly some people whose voices are clearer, or have been there longer, or more embedded into what Pentagram needs to be, but you learn that as you go.

And Paula once said to me, "It takes about seven years for you to really understand what Pentagram is and how it works." I've just crossed my eight year mark and I'm still a little on the "oh hi..." Is this really happening? I still feel like a young and new partner, even though I am neither young nor new, but it is a very supportive organisation as you come in.

Because Pentagram has a large footprint and there is an expectation of working with big, big brands and nobody judges or forces that on you at first, you are brought in and supported as kind of a Padawan, I would say as you move through time and clients and concepts that evolve.

Ian Paget: Well, Emily, that was absolutely fascinating. And I know it's one of those topics I could ask questions for hours. But I know that you do have a call now, so I'm going to let you go, but thank you so much for coming on from me and from everyone listening.

Emily Oberman: It's really been a pleasure. I am a fan of this podcast. I think you've asked fantastic questions and I'm really happy to have been here.