I hate writing. I’ve never been very good at it and being a graphic designer, I’ve managed to avoid it for most of my professional life. The Design Dept Bulletin Board is a personal project with the aim of improving my writing skills and cataloguing my various discoveries made while working as the creative director, designer and founder of The Design Dept. 

Each week I aim to write 500-800 words about my favourite video, podcast and typeface for that week. This exercise will hopefully help me develop my writing skills as well and create an archive of my favourite internet discoveries. 

Typefaces are a good example of why I am creating this space. I’m forever finding interesting typefaces that I currently have no use for but would like to save for later - I leave the tab open with every intention of returning - hours, days, then weeks pass and they are forgotten! 

Lately I spend a lot of time glued to YouTube channel, The Futur. There are so many amazing creatives being generous with their expertise, the information is there for the taking if your able to dedicate the time to listen, watch and absorb! Recording these finds is going to be a time saver, as I find myself going back to rewatch the good ones in order to gain a better understanding of something or just to be inspired some more. Knowledge is power and I only wish I always had this much dedication to learning and improving myself both professionally and personally.

I have literally watched 100s of hours of content from The Futur Academy. Chris Do regularly interviews amazing creatives at the top of their game but this one was slightly different. He was approached by Wesley Little, a therapist, who, after binge watching The Futur, realised a lot of her values and observations as a relationship therapist overlapped with what The Futur is teaching students about engaging with clients. That’s where this conversation starts.

All business relationships require you to engage with another person(s). I’ve spent so very little time assessing this interaction that this conversation was truly enlightening. The major takeaway for me was how to appreciate and understand the clients ‘dilemma’ - what are they torn between? People want to be heard and understood. Imagine if you went into every new conversation, or engagement with soul purpose of understanding that person as thoroughly and as thoughtfully as possible. No agenda. No trying to up sell but genuinely trying to understand as much about them as possible and validate their ‘dilemma’. 

There is a pretty impressive role play on how to work with a client that doesn’t value design, taking a $500 engagement to $5k - its inspiring. The conversation is wrapped up on some thoughts about understanding your self-worth and what a therapist actually does. What is the value of Therapy. Imagine if you spent as much time and money on your relationships as you do on Netflix?

The podcast I listened to this week is Fabian Geyrhelters’ Hitting the Mark. He interviews Clement Kwan, the Co-founder of Beboe - a lifestyle cannabis brand in the US. It makes me want to start taking high end, beautifully designed edibles.