Designing a Minimal Logo

Ian Paget: Nadia, I've come across your work on Instagram a few years back and I've really enjoyed what you've done. And I also saw that you was invited to Logo Lounge as well, and I was thinking you know this is someone I need to get on the podcast to talk about your work and everything that you're doing. But something I'm keen to do with people when I interview them is learning a little bit about their background and how they got into graphic design because everybody has a different backstories. So would you mind sharing with us how you originally got into graphic design and we can go from there?

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. Well, I guess I wasn't quite tuned into the design world until I was in university. I was a very creative kid but it was more geared towards other types of arts like film and television and writing. So when I was at university our department shared different courses. One of them was music and the other one was design and I was studying media and I didn't know much about design back then. I was in the course to pursue a career in film. So that's when I first started learning about graphic design. We learned a lot about web design. So the tools Photoshop at the time Freehand and Dreamweaver. I don't know if they still exist.

Ian Paget: I remember when I was at college, I don't think there was like a graphic design thing. So I relate with this and I remember media studies being one of the main things that you would go into if you was more creative and it was more like you say film and it wasn't really graphic design, but I'm sure there was a small part of it that was.

Nadia Castro: So that's where I learned the tools and then after the tools came the theory, I guess, and just being intrigued by graphic design and like design in general as a discipline. And then I started just like doing stuff like flyers for my cousin's band or posters for local groups, and that's how it just took off.

Ian Paget: That's really cool. So you was basically, I guess that college kind of introduced to it, you know, and I guess a fairly small way and you used your own initiative to kind of develop and grow as a graphic designer and when it come to your studies it was more like just a seed really. Am I understanding that right?

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. Because I wasn't studying design and like my head at the time was really into film, but it just sort of like happened, started being exposed to the design students, started being asked to help out with a flyer or other types of types of projects. So it just ended up being something I like doing mostly like for fun. Didn't see it at the time is like a career or anything like that. And I enjoy doing it. So I just like doing it I guess.

Ian Paget: Well, something that you do a lot now that I see your sharing on social media is logo design but like very minimal. And you do very minimal art and stuff like that. Where did the passion for that come from?

Nadia Castro: Well, I think you always try to make the things you like. And I'm a minimal person in general. I don't tend to like a lot of stuff like a lot of mess and aesthetically that is true too. And also there's my limitations. I think the limitations kind of paved the way for me to be more into minimal stuff. Because I was not great at drawing. I didn't have like the childhood experiences like drawing and painting like some other designers seem to have that history. So because I wasn't a great drawer I was trying to do what I could. And what I could do was also what I liked looking at. So it kind of happened naturally and I just continue doing more of it.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think a lot of graphic designers start in similar ways and that they do these things as a hobby and those hobby pieces end up becoming what gets a job and so on. So I think we should talk about some of that stuff because I'm aware that you work as a freelancer primarily for an agency, is that right? 

Nadia Castro: Yes.

Ian Paget: Do you want to talk a little bit about how you originally got into that? We know that you found this passion for graphic design from doing media studies and you started working on projects for yourself, things that you enjoyed, things that you like to look at basically. So how did you go from that to actually becoming a graphic designer employed or freelance?

Nadia Castro: So then I moved to London about 13 years ago and this was also to pursue a career in film, but I ended up in a film and it was very hard to make a living of, and at the time, so when I first started looking for jobs, I got a job as a graphic designer. It was quite interesting, I was working for a charity in East London and what they did was like, they gave sex education in schools, but in this particular part of East London there's quite a lot of… It's quite diverse in terms of religion, so they had to navigate this very complex and specific set of sex whilst educating kids in school about sex and all of that. So I started doing their brochures and power points and like all the materials they needed to go into schools and do what they do. So that was my first job as a graphic designer.

Ian Paget: Wow, an interesting first job to get. Can I just ask, so you went to London, it sounds like your main passion then was film. How did you end up basically looking for jobs in the film industry? But getting a graphic design job? Was there a portfolio you had or was it just a case of being in the right place at the right time?

Nadia Castro: Well, I had my work from school. I still have a portfolio from design and interestingly enough my first business cards had two sides, one side of it said filmmaker and the other side said graphic designer. So I was doing both without choosing one or the other. I was doing as much as I could have one and as much as I could have the other for a long time. But yeah my first job was a graphic designer and I always did that concurrently as trying to work in the film industry and working in the film industry. So yeah, I was like freelancing in both. And which I think one always helps the other. Having and eye for design makes you a better filmmaker and knowing storytelling as a filmmaker I think helps a lot in making you a better designer.

Ian Paget: Yeah. When I was younger, it's been a long time since I've really been interested in it, but I also wanted to make films at one point and I took script writing courses and stuff. It's a lot of fun and there is clearly an overlap in skills from graphic design to film. So I can see how you ended up wanting to do both. And so are you still interested in the film stuff or have completely gone all in on graphic design now and committed to that one direction?

Nadia Castro: Well, no, I'm fully committed to graphic design. It's definitely like my career, but I still really like writing. And I've been writing ever since.

Ian Paget: I noticed that on your LinkedIn, I was going to ask you about that. Because writing is a skill set that not many graphic designers have. And I think you're in a very unique position when you're a graphic designer that can write because you can pretty much create anything and do anything because those are the two main things for creating a business because you can you can develop your own product and then build your own website or your own marketing material. You are literally your own single handed business owner. It is a great position to be in to be able to do both.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, I even worked as a copywriter for a little while. It was in Portuguese, it was in London, but we had Portuguese clients. So yeah, it was in Portuguese, it wasn't in English. But I continued to be interested in film but yeah…

Ian Paget: I mean it comes with a career because what I've personally found is that your career kind of shapes you as a person because when it comes around to work… I know you work as a freelancer, but you mentioned prior to the record that you are kind of more focused towards working for one company most of the time, but I find that working for companies, it really shapes you as an individual. That's what I found anyway personally.

Nadia Castro: Definitely. And the projects I'm working at the moment with Loyal Kaspar that's who I'm freelancing for. Their client portfolio is very much geared to film and television, so it's like I was born for this in a way, or like all my past experience kind of all fall into place.

Ian Paget: It's good to be in that place and I think that's when you found your real passion really is when you've been lucky enough to find like a career that brings everything together. So I want to put some focus on Loyal Kaspar right? So this is an agency if I understand right in New York is that correct?

Nadia Castro: It is. Yes.

Ian Paget: Okay so you are working as a full time freelancer for them. How did somebody in London get a full time freelancer job in New York? How did that come about?

Nadia Castro: Well the great thing about this agency is that they're very remote minded. They always have been. They're kind of like ahead of the cover. I wish some agencies in the UK were a bit like that. And I had worked with them on a number of projects in the past over the years.

Ian Paget: So were they just like Ad hoc one of things now and again?

Nadia Castro: Yeah. Because when they have really big projects as all agencies they're trying to gather other designers to help out. So I had worked with them a few times and…

Ian Paget: Sorry to interrupt how did they find you for those original jobs was that through like Behance or something like that?

Nadia Castro: I'm not sure. I think maybe Instagram at the time, maybe my website. It was quite a few years ago as well.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that's really cool. I noticed that something that you do, you post a lot of work on different channels, so you are quite active on your Instagram, you're quite active on Behance founder profile on Pinterest, you seem to have your work posted everywhere and it goes to show that doing that is a great way of agencies when they're looking out for talent to be involved in the project that they look at these channels and you was lucky enough to be found and now you're in this position where you're full time. So you were doing these odd jobs and then like one day did they just ask you if they can basically take you on pretty much full time freelance?

Nadia Castro: Oh, they were looking for someone full time and I just jumped on it. And well, I was lucky enough that they said yes, and they wanted to work with me. As I said to them at the time, it was always my dream to work with them because of the clients they work with. And because of the work they do also, I always really loved and admired it. I've worked with other agencies, freelanced with other agencies, but this one in particular, it was literally because of the film and television thing because of the work they put out. So I always wanted to work with them full time but I didn't know that was an option. So yeah when the opportunity came I went for it.

Ian Paget: Sure. Do you mind me asking how does this relationship work with this agency? Because like you mentioned, you're based in London. They are a New York agency. You're basically hired freelance. But what does the average day look like? Like how do they communicate with you? And if you could talk through, I don't know how much you're allowed to talk through. But could you give us an idea of what that relationship looks like? Because I think there's probably graphic designers out there that would probably love to have this kind of thing where they have the independence of being freelance. But the “security” of working with a company full time in that capacity.

Nadia Castro: Well, I think a lot of agencies are starting to do that now, especially since the pandemic. But it is a road set up. We use tools like Slack and so we're in constant conversation, we discuss the projects as if we were in house, really there's not much difference. I think it allows everyone to also be a little bit more creative without having to be stuck in a room. Like sometimes, when I used to freelance with agencies, you end up being stuck in a room with people. Even though like a lot of agencies still think that that's the most productive way. Personally I found the opposite.

Ian Paget: I find it really funny. So I've been working for myself basically at home for a couple of years now. But where I used to work, we would all go to the office in some cases it would be like an hour there and an hour back and we'd maybe have some pleasantries in the morning where it's like, hey, how's things, some small talk, but in general, most people walked in, sat down. None of us spoke with each other really because we're so absorbed in our work that the whole point of actually coming together into one location kind of doesn't really make any sense anymore. Since we've got Slack, we've got Zoom. We literally got all these tools that just make it so easy to work from anywhere in the world. I think the only advantage really of all being in the same location, but I think you can fabricate this online if everyone's prepared to is that you can build relationships with the people, you build friendships, there's stuff that you just can't do online so easily and things like client meetings and stuff like that. But in general the idea of the workplace, it's having these companies that have people scattered all over the world, I just think it makes so much more sense because it opens the talent pool. Especially as a graphic design company, like why limit yourself as an agency owner to only the people within like a 5 to 10 mile radius of where your agency is? It's just ridiculous when there are these tools and stuff that allow you to work in this way and as an owner that means that you can hire the best people for the job, it just seems ludicrous to not do that. So it's really nice to hear that this is becoming more normal now.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. I think it is what you just said, you're able to drop the talent pool. It’s just so much bigger and probably better, right? You just find local designers, it's definitely a big, big positive change in the industry I think.

Ian Paget: Is there anything that they do to encourage the team to get to know each other? Because like I said that's one of the main advantages of working for an agency. And I'll give you a little bit of background on kind of what I get into here. So the company that I used to work at, the main head office was near Reading and there was a point where I started working more remote so I relocated to Manchester and I was working in a small office. And although it was easy to do the work and to be honest I could have done exactly the same thing from home. One of the problems that I started having is that there was this disconnect from the main head office, like they was obviously having meetings that I wasn't being included in and there was stuff that was happening just because people worn all in the same room that excluded anyone that wasn't in the office. So that would have included all of the staff that worked in the other places. So I guess there was more like this cliquey group that was in the office and everyone remote didn't quite have that same relationship with everyone. But I do think there's ways of solving this. I'm wondering if this particular agency which like you said is based in New York, are there things that they are doing to make sure that everybody is getting to know each other well and properly involved in everything and not feeling less left out and stuff like that?

Nadia Castro: Well the thing is they've been doing it for so long I think, they had everything set up, when the pandemic hit already because they've been doing it for years. So they've perfected this and it's an open conversation. It literally is just like being in house with a little extra positive. But yeah, there's constant conversation, we have lots of zoom meetings, lots of video meetings.

Ian Paget: I think that's the key really is lots of meetings. Communication is all in the same place so that you are involved in everything. Which I think is key. Like if there's anyone listening that wants to build an agency that's doing this kind of thing, which I think is great because even as freelancers, we agree for freelancers could build an age agency really easily now. But yeah, the key to it is like you said, regular video course, I guess transparent conversation on things like Slack. The company that I used to work out. They didn't have any of this. So conversations were happening that if you wasn't in the room, you would miss out.

Nadia Castro: No, they are not like that. Really friendly. This setup is a lot less stuffy than some of the agencies.

Ian Paget: It’s more forward thinking and I think this is going to become… well I think it already has become more normal. I think the pandemic has really pushed this forward so it's no longer like forward thinking, it's like this is just the normal way of working now which is really good.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. I think it's better for everyone.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah absolutely better work life balance. Something I do want to ask you about. So you've kind of done the whole freelancing for yourself, freelancing for an agency. So you obviously now I guess working for a team, how do you find working for like a team versus working on projects for yourself? Do you prefer working in a in a team with others?

Nadia Castro: Definitely.

Ian Paget: What's the benefits that come with that you know working with collectively with a group of other people?

Nadia Castro: Well the work is better from the start. You're sharing a project and everyone's putting effort into the same thing and working with like amazing creative directors and everything is just… You can't stop keeping on learning and at the same time everyone's working towards the same goal and when it's just me by myself without anyone to bounce off from. Well the results are good but now I really feel we are achieving something altogether as a team and I prefer it. Definitely.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I can see pros and cons of both because I've worked in companies and for myself. And I think having someone there to bounce ideas off and other people to push you. And I think sometimes also there's a little bit of competition between you as well. Like where I used to work, we had another graphic designer and I always wanted to do work better than him. So when he did amazing work I was like, I need to get better at this and it really pushes you to constantly improve. And I think that's it's like a healthy competition and that's harder to get when working for yourself.

Nadia Castro: Well, it's just like literally like being working towards the same thing. Especially projects it's much different than working for like my clients, they were much smaller businesses and brands. So being part of something bigger, and working with other designers, and of course I think I've learned a lot from the other designers I worked with. And yeah I think it's great.

Ian Paget: It sounds like you really love it. Some one thing I want to go into. So your logo designs on online. So I'll link to your portfolio in the show notes. But you do these very minimal simple logos. And I just want to say for the audience that isn't aware of this, but doing something simple, it's really hard and people don't always realise that. That people that are very good at minimal logo designs that are distinct and original and capture everything about the company. Achieving that is hard and that seems to be something that you are very good at. I'd love to spend a little bit of time talking about your approach and process. How you go about approaching creating something like a logo? So would you mind talking through and go into as much detail as you wish? Talk through like how do you approach like a logo project from start to finish?

Nadia Castro: Well, I think the first step is trying to find out the story. What's the story of the company or the brand? What story they're trying to tell? What story they're trying to sell? So I think that's where I start and then I try to put that into a logo and there's a lot of sketching involved. I like looking at everything out there. I don't like looking at logos out there so much anymore because you're looking at the same stuff and you're going to end up replicating the same stuff over and over. I try and look at like things that are outside logo design. A lot of art for instance, like kids’ books, I like looking at illustrations on kids’ books.

Ian Paget: Interesting. I interviewed someone yesterday that said the same thing that they like looking at kids’ books.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, they tend to be really simple. So it's a good start like how do they do this? It's so simple. So yeah, I like looking at that kind of stuff.

Ian Paget: Interesting.

Nadia Castro: You're always trying to create a shape that is the simplest it could be. And sometimes you start with something complex and you strip it down as much as you can to the absolute essentials where you're still communicating a message. But I don't have anything else there. But yeah just starting from simple shapes and drawing inspiration from all the different arts, and even sketching and then move on to digital and create a few concepts and then it's just a constant conversation between me and the client.

Ian Paget: Okay. I want to go into a few of these things in more detail. I think that's a really good overview. So one of the first steps, you described this as understanding their story, and that's something that I've not heard many graphic designers say. They call it like the research phase or whatever, but you described it as a story. How are you going about understanding what that story is?

Nadia Castro: Well, Who are they? Who are the people behind this brand? Why did they create it? What are you trying to do? I think that's really important to try and understand why the business or the brand exists.

Ian Paget: So it's a conversation, you're having a one on one conversation with them to understand this?

Nadia Castro: Yeah it's a conversation and also research trying to put yourself in the shoes of the people are creating this brand or this product and trying to understand like why are you doing this? Where does it come from? I think like that helps me getting the same wavelength as the clients and trying to understand who do we need to attract? What would those people like? That's a story in itself too. So I think that all helps and then translate into what does that look like? Definitely the first step is a little bit for me more emotional and vague. And then it's only afterwards that we move, okay, so what does that look like?

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think it's an interesting way to approach it because I mean I guess there's people probably listening, that's the same as a normal process. But actually I like how you described it that this is a story, like a story from a book, and now you are translating that into some kind of imagery in some way and I think that's kind of come from your film background that this is the story and paper and now we need to turn this into a movie and your process has clearly been inspired from that background and that passion for film.

Nadia Castro: Definitely.

Ian Paget: I also want to go into what you said about sketching and maybe starting with something complicated and simplifying it down and I think this is like your key strength, this is something that you're incredibly good at. And I think as a logo designers this is one area that people need to be really good at because… And again it came from a conversation I was having a couple of days ago with logo design there's a lot of… I think graphic design is out there that I believe that the logo should be simple but they take it so simple that it's literally lifeless. That it's just got nothing special about it, that it's just boring and that symbol could be used for any company like there's nothing distinct or original or special about it. But you don't do that. Like all of your logos are minimal but they have something to it still like it's that nice balance between being simple but having a layer of complexity to it so that it's still distinct and special in some way. So can you sort of describe in more detail this simplification process? Like you said that you create sometimes complicated and then minimise it down. Can you talk to like how are you approaching that? If you can articulate that in words in some way, how do you take something complicated and then start stripping it down? How are you approaching that?

Nadia Castro: Well, if it's something like representational like you have to draw an animal or a face something like that your first drawing will probably be a lot more complex than what the end product needs to be. So it literally is about taking one line out. Sometimes it's like that, other times it just starts by being simple. Especially if I… I wouldn't say skip but if my sketches aren't on paper and it's digitally then I find it working with the grid from the start instead of free hand drawing. Already like helps me reach minimal solutions. So it's just putting as little as few elements as you can to create something.

Ian Paget: I think if I understand it right. And I mean I take this approach too. So you've got this story from your client, you are then sketching down, I guess what you think this story could look like, but you're not at that point worrying too much about minimising it down, you're just getting the raw idea down on paper. And then you are considering, okay what can I take away while still maintaining that. I don't know if you take the same approach, but something I've seen Aaron Draplin I first saw do this. He will create something and then he will… so he tends to work directly in illustration a lot of stuff, but he will draw it, copy it and then minimise it down a bit and then copy it and then minimise it down a bit and then copy it and keeping all previous versions. And what that allows him to do is if he minimises it down to the point that it loses something special, then he can go back to the previous one. And I don't know if that's the approach that you take, but I think that's one method of simplifying and creating something minimal without losing that charm or that special element to it because you just keep stripping it down until you lose it and then obviously go back to what you believe is like the maximum message using the minimum of means. I think that's a good way of describing that.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. You know that's also part of my process. Other time if it's an abstract shape, I don't know if it works quite like that. You know what maybe it is the opposite, maybe with abstract shapes it's more like what you just said about Aaron Draplin in what his process is. And when it's representational that I try and create something with the simplest shapes. So yeah, just like the outer circle in the square and the line and how can you make an animal or any kind of representational symbol out of these various elements?

Ian Paget: Sure. And based on something that you said a little bit earlier. Grids is an important part of your approach as well. Do you mind talking through how you… I mean it's really hard because it's a visual thing and we're talking about it? But how are you using grids?

Nadia Castro: Well, I work on just like a very simple grid and I work in really small sizes also, so make sure that everything looks good tiny to begin with. And then I just make sure that everything fits in the grid. And it's only then that I realised oh I need to change this a little bit and it no longer fits on the grid, but it's just the way it is.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well you've given yourself limitations from the beginning. I think that's an interesting thing in its own right, because people, well I don't personally work in that way. So I always start with the freedom of like a white piece of paper basically. And I don't restrict myself to grids, but what you're doing is giving yourself the limitations from the outset, trying to make it work within those limitations. And then if you need to break outside of that, you're then giving yourself the freedom to. But you're doing all that you can to stick within those limitations. And I think that's a really interesting approach.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. That's definitely what I do. First try and fit it in and if it doesn't work all nice and tidy, then start broadening and getting off the grid and that's fine because you're trying to reach the best solution. The goal isn't to have it perfectly fit on the grid. The goal is to reach the perfect solution for the brand.

Ian Paget: I noticed something else you do as well. So you do a lot of logos, but something I really like about your work, you do these like minimal vector art things, I assume that's a personal project.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, yeah.

Ian Paget: They're like tiny paintings but vector using minimal shape. So I guess that technically they could be used as a logo, but they're clearly like just minimal or abstract vector artwork and they're really nice. I really like them.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, it's just another way to express myself I think. Especially because when you don't have the outputs, if my head is not completely ready in the moment to write, then like you still need to express yourself, that's another way I find, also it's a little warm up, it takes me a little time to get into the zone when designing a logo for instance. So I find that like starting by doing something else that is = also using the same software and you end up with them being in the zone and just jumping to what you actually should be doing. So that's how those things come about.

Ian Paget: I assume that you're experimenting too.

Nadia Castro: Definitely. You know, you always want to try new things. As a designer, you always have to be constantly evolving. So yeah, it's definitely part of experimenting.

Ian Paget: I like these like creative exercises that you are doing because I can see where things are coming from. So say if you look through a Children's book and I think if I understand right, the reason why you're looking in the Children's book because somebody has taken I guess a complex thing and minimised it down and that's a good source of inspiration to see how people have stripped that down. And you've started these like personal projects into these little illustrations based on what you just said, then you're just doing these as and when, you want some warm up exercise and you want to get in the flow of creating something, you're using that inspiration to just create anything and you're experimenting with things and creating these like really beautiful, minimal pieces of artwork that are really great. But I can see how doing that is really benefiting your work because you can test and experiment with things and they could end up being solutions that you then apply to a logo one day.

Nadia Castro: Definitely. Yeah, it helps you find out something new. Everything does, you know, you're just always finding something new and then you try it out in the next project or maybe the next one. Yeah just finding new ways of doing things like being exposed to different things and then wanting to try them out. It's all part of it and I do enjoy it.

Ian Paget: I can see that it's nice and people should go and check those out because they're just nice pieces of artwork, but I think for anyone that's really into logo design, it's like you're taking your logo design skills but making art out of it. And I think it's a nice little skill. Okay, something else I want to ask you about Logo Lounge. So for anyone that's not aware of Logo Lounge, Bill Gardener has been on this logo podcast previously, but basically he has this website where you can create an account and then upload your logos and you get access to this database of logos and inspiration and it’s fantastic. But something that he does every year and he's been doing it now for, I think this is his 13^th year since his book 13 has just came out. He releases a book, but obviously there's been tens of thousands of logos that have been uploaded over the duration of the year, so that needs to be narrowed down to, I think it's like 3000 logos, which then get put into a book and to help him do that, he picks a jury and I've been lucky enough to be on that jury previously, but from what I understand is he picks out what he believes is the best talent in the industry at that particular time to choose the very best pieces of work. And Bill picked you as one of the judges for the last book, so congratulations for that. Can you talk a little bit about that experience because I think people would love to hear a little bit more about this?

Nadia Castro: Oh, it was just amazing. I really enjoyed it. Very difficult also to do that, to look at all these logos and see them out of context, because how often you see logos just out of context, right? Having to judge them just purely on aesthetic and like execution, it was quite a difficult task, but at the same time it was awesome. I really, really enjoyed having to put yourself in the position of like judging everything objectively and just appreciate them as arts in a way instead of just logos. Yeah, it was a great experience, I'm really grateful for it.

Ian Paget: It's the process. So it was a long time ago that I was involved in it, but at that time you basically needed to give each logo a score between 0 and 3. Is that still the approach for this, or is there a different method that they're using now?

Nadia Castro: I don't remember if it's from… it was a while ago as well, so I'm not quite sure if it was from 0-3, but it's definitely that same process.

Ian Paget: I remember having to look at maybe like a page or ten and then you would score each one and I think be interesting to hear your experience, but when I was involved in it, I wanted to make sure that those that I was given the highest score for should have the highest score because it's really hard to go through like you're going…  I don't think you go through all like 40,000. I think he separates them into different people so you go through a few 1000. And you want to make sure that you get the highest score to the very best. So something I would do is go through all of those I gave her three to and just make sure, are they all equally as good because any that's going to get a three, I'm basically saying this is like a badge of honour and this should go into the book. Was that similar for you? It would be good to hear your take on that.

Nadia Castro: Well, I realised that at the beginning I was being very stingy and then I had to keep going back and looking at things objectively. No, this is this is better…

Ian Paget: I was doing that too back and forth.

Nadia Castro: You know, this is better than when I first looked at it. I didn't see this little detail, I didn't see how well executed it was, and I just kept going back and forth and looking at things over and over again to make sure I was immersing myself in that logo. It was really hard to ask, well, some of them just like grew every time that you looked at them, you found something new. And yeah, it was interesting. Oh, at first I didn't quite like this one, but now I'm seeing something in, and then you look at it for the fifth time and it's like, oh my gosh, this is my favourite logo or something, you know. 

Ian Paget: Was there any that really stood out for you? Like that one?

Nadia Castro: Well, the one I picked, I just loved it. I was just so happy, and there was lots of logos, but it's been a while, I don't remember them all anymore. But yeah, there was quite a lot that it was just like, I want to know who you are because it's all anonymous, so who did this?

Ian Paget: It does end up saying it in the book, but when you are judging, you literally just see the image, all you see is that logo and you've got no idea who worked on that, the story behind it, literally it's all out of context, and I've got mixed thoughts on that approach, but in in general everything that goes into those logo lounge books, visually, they are the best visual forms. And I think that ends up allowing like those books to be really good inspiration for visual ideas and for ways of putting things together. So I think it's a good source of inspiration and they clearly pick a good group of people to pick them out because you went back and forth through things to make sure that you judged everything correctly. So it's a good sign.

Nadia Castro: Yeah. It's an amazing tool technically because you're looking at the logos out of context without any thoughts about the brands behind it, and what they're trying to do and you just literally like looking at its execution and how they look. I think it's great technically for inspiration.

Ian Paget: Absolutely. Okay, one other topic I want to ask you about. So I noticed at your Instagram and the link that you have on that and you've got links to like Prints and Vectors that you have for sale, and I think with graphic designers we are in this very fortunate position where we can relatively easily have multiple revenue streams. So in your case you've got your… I guess I'm going to say full time job, even though you're working freelance, but you're also working on these other revenue streams, so you have prints that you sell, you have vectors that you sell as well. Do you mind talking through some of this as well? Like clearly you are working towards having multiple revenue streams and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Nadia Castro: Well, it didn't quite start like that. I'm not a very business minded person whatsoever. I'm not very inclined that way. It was more about just like experimenting and like trying to do stuff, part of what the process we discussed a little earlier. So I didn't do it with that intention of like having multiple revenue streams, although that's definitely something that other designers are a little bit more business minded should totally pursue because it's great right? Because you're getting money on things you've already did. You're not having to create something new to get paid, you're being paid for something you've done already. So it's definitely something, if I was more business money because, you know, I never advertised or like spent much time into it and like I don't have like a big body of work of things to sell, but if I was more like that, it would have been something I would have invested more of my time on for sure.

Ian Paget: Well, I think it just goes to show as graphic designers and I tried to mention it often because I don't believe there's any other industry where a single person has all of the skill set that they need to start a company because we can create the logo, we can create the website and if you can write as well, which is true in your case and my case we can write all the all the content for the website. If we want to create products, we can do the artwork for like t-shirts and stuff like that. And there's all these sites out there that allow you to sell them on there. So we can single handedly really easily as graphic designers create an income whether that's getting a job or creating products through these other things. And I mean something I'm thinking you are creating these minimal vector arts as kind of fun and to get you in the flow of creating those. So you're already creating something really nice and at the moment you are sharing that on Instagram and Behance and stuff like that, but you could so easily sell those in other ways and I mean you are already kind of doing that but you're already creating it, so you could easily generate an income from something that you're just doing for fun. And I think that that's the beauty of being a graphic designer, whether you're business minded or not, if you're just creating that and sticking it somewhere where people can buy it then if you make a bit of passive income from that, then it's great. If you don't, it doesn't matter because you're doing it anyway.

Nadia Castro: Yeah, definitely. It's exactly, you got nothing to lose. Absolutely. You just need to dedicate some time into putting the right thing onto the right platform and that's the bit where I'm like, oh it's just… yeah if you have a short attention span like I do… but if you are able to be like just a little bit more dedicated there's so many opportunities for you to create very different businesses and being able to manage them all and have like multiple revenue streams for sure.

Ian Paget: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've covered a lot in this interview, so I think now is probably a good time to wrap this up. Nadia, it's been really great to be able to spend some time with you and to chat through things I think for me personally learning how you're approaching simplifying logos down is really useful information. So thank you so much for your time and I appreciate you being on.

Nadia Castro: Thank you. Thank you so much.