# The Evolution of Graphic Design Industry From 1990—2020 w Executive Producer Ian Dawson

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** The Futur
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjncTuOgd7A
- **Дата:** 20.06.2024
- **Длительность:** 1:40:40
- **Просмотры:** 12,775
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/20227

## Описание

Let's look at how graphic design has evolved through the years through this insightful conversation with Ian Dawson.

From the early days of print and analog design to the digital revolution, Ian shares his experiences, challenges, and the transformative trends that have shaped the industry. 

Whether you're a seasoned designer or just starting your creative journey, this video offers valuable perspectives and practical tips to help you navigate and thrive in the ever-changing world of graphic design.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction
3:45 - The Origins of Graphic Design
10:30 - Key Influences and Milestones in Graphic Design
18:15 - The Shift from Analog to Digital
25:00 - Emerging Trends in Graphic Design
32:40 - The Role of Technology and Software in Design
40:20 - How Design Education Has Adapted to Changes
48:00 - Balancing Creativity with Commercial Demands
55:30 - The Future of Graphic Design: What to Expect
1:05:00 - Ian's Personal Journey and Career Insights
1:15:20 - Tips for

## Транскрипт

### Introduction []

I would say from $250,000 up to 234 million I wish budgets were like that again you heard of the two guys in a garage well that was H starting to happen at that time people are literally doing lines of coke you you'll have to tell me and yeah so hey everybody today's episode is a special one for me because it's a trip down memory lane and before I introduce my guests for today's episode I want to tell you how we first met there's some funny stories here we're going to talk about that and what has changed over all these years I'm out of school and I have a brief stint working as a designer at Epitaph records but it's not a good fit for me so I go freelance and with no leads and no prospects I don't even know what I was thinking just quitting this job but hey whatever I leap first and check to see if there's water in the pool coincidentally at this time my work had been circulated on the Adobe I guess Adobe After Effects CD ROM and it was being circulated with some student work that had done a gentleman reached out to me his name is David newberger and he invited me to come in and speak to him at novacom so I'm in downtown LA and I make my way over to Hollywood I think it's off Santa Monica and I go to this place called novacom and I park in the back and I was like this is a little different and I'm walking in I'm like wow this is a lot different when I walk in and in comes this gentleman his name is Ian Dawson and he's an executive producer and he's very friendly and he comes over to me he say Chris um have you had anything to eat I was like what I'm here to work bro he's like come on he brings me down this long hallway we turn to the left and there's this spread that you just cannot believe and I feel like I'm staying at a high-end hotel with a buffet breakfast spread and he's like she'll make anything you want an omelette you want something and the spread was ridiculous and I was very self-conscious I was thinking I don't want to seem like a pig on my first day here so I might grab a few things and then I just kind of like wow I could get used to is and the gentleman is the person I'm going to be talking to today and his name is Ian and Ian at that time was an executive producer at the hottest broadcast Design Studio probably in the world at least in in La I even was just chuckling because when he introduced himself as the executive producer I'm like fancy title sir it's like what the hell is ex what are you talking about but now I know what it means but back then I was like damn people got fancy titles fancy offices and fancy spread so without further Ado I just want to welcome um a professional colleague and I would call him a friend somebody I've known now coming up on 30 years Ian Dawson welcome to the show thanks Chris that's uh that's a great story um yeah I remember you working there and it was uh I didn't want you to leave I think uh I was trying to get you to stay yeah if I remember correctly usually what I do is I have everybody introduce themselves and tell them a little story but I'm going to hold off on that because there's a little bit more to the story because for fans who are into the deep Cuts this is going to be a deep cut episode everybody so I'm freelancing at novacom and I'm only there for about two weeks that's as long as I'm booked I'm working on projects I know nothing about broadcast design I'm doing Square pixels when it should be nonsquare I'm just messing everything up right and Ian comes in one day he's like hey you know in the way that Ian does things he smiles and he's like what do you think about coming working for us for fulltime and you know what from where I was coming from before working in advertising and then working at the record label I was like I can get used to this is pretty cool but fate or timing would intervene because at this moment in time I was getting the opportunity to start my own company and so Ian offers me a job and I think I remember the price I think he offered me

### The Origins of Graphic Design [3:45]

I want to say like $50,000 which was I don't even remember that's you would remember that I remember all yeah I remember all the glory juicy gory details to the story so I think he offered me about 50k which in in just kind of for everyone to consider it was 10K more than I was making so this is like already a movement but I had this number in my mind and the number I'm going to tell you is going to probably make you think differently about me I said uh Ian the only number I would consider is $85,000 and Ian's eyes like opened up like what you just graduated from a school friend people don't come out of school and make that kind of money he didn't say that but his eyes said something and he's like let me get back to you know there's kind of like a little astonishment like this young kid probably cocky is just asking for too much money and the reason why I asked for this amount of money is because when I was working at Cold Weber that's what they offered me I'm just like you got to match my last offer he goes let me think about it so fast forward I'm G to start my own company and so the word already circulated around the office that I'm leaving I'm finishing up my freelance gig Ian comes in the door he's like you didn't give me a chance to counter I said well things move fast Ian I'm starting my own company and Ian said to me good luck I think he me it I think he meant but I felt like he was saying in my mind good luck we'll see you come crawling back in a few weeks when you don't know what you're doing so Ian please introduce yourself and tell us how uh tell us a little bit about you and your backstory oh boy uh so I'm Ian Dawson I've been a EP senior producer VFX producer you name it uh Graphics horror um started uh in this business in 1988 I was still in college at Northridge um I uh got lucky enough to have a night class with a guy who was the technical director at Entertainment Tonight and he introduced me to John Ridgeway who was a creative director at Paramount on Entertainment Tonight John was like yeah come in you can be an intern I started there and literally I started getting paid from the first day I started working as a kind of a motion control assistant um with a guy named Joe dubs there over the years we you know we did a tremendous amount of work we launched networks around the world in over 20 countries TV station you know we can go into all the details of of novacom at the time but uh that was a good run I was there for about eight years then went to Rhythm and Hughes and ran Rhythm and hughes's post and CG work for a while uh and then for commercials and um then went and started working for a few you know independent shops yours being one of them at blind but Yuko and you know a couple of Jerry steel V effects and and a number of other ones and uh eventually uh we have a mutual friend Chris and I Doug Sharon I think Doug at the time was a rep for blind and uh Chris used to have these poker these great poker games at his house which were a lot of fun and they were very social people within the industry and once I came and there was uh a gentleman Kyle Cooper there uh who I'm sure everybody here is familiar with and I think Kyle like was the first one out in the game if I remember correctly he was I can't believe you remember that yeah and I guess uh it was like a week or two weeks later you called me up I think and said you know are you interested in meeting with Kyle and I that was really my first time meeting Kyle was at your house you know playing poker so yeah I ended up going in and meeting with Kyle and working for him for about eight years uh and then uh decided to sort of do my own thing um was always scared of freelance Believe It or Not uh but I've been sort of working out of my own company since about 2015 and it's more you know I do end up working at companies for like a year at a time or longer if they want and then sometimes I am doing work through my own company after working with Kyle I kind of got back into doing virtual reality augmented reality work and we can go into some of that if you want I recently finished up a Consulting uh gig for a year at B Grizzly which is part of omnicom's creative Services Division and uh now I'm sort of back uh doing freelance again through my own company I have a bunch of questions and this is going to be a Nostalgia episode everybody so if this is not your cup of tea feel free to skip it but if you want to find out about the way that the IND hisry was and how it's evolved I'm going to encourage you to stay here with us I want to go back to 1995 that's when I got out of school and I started working at novacom take us back the position and the place and time what was happening in the industry from your point of view and I described novacom as one of the hottest if not the hottest shop in the world doing broadcast work I was just blown away that there you guys were designing things for German television and you you're working on all kinds of TV shows and show packages it was nuts there and some of the people who were walking in and out even though I was only there for two weeks later on became icons in the industry or were already icons because this was a time in place where the edit Bays literally cost a million dollars they were using quantel paint boxes Henry Harry's things like that maybe I'm messing up the timeline here but no no you're right hard for me to imagine that there's a machine that literally cost a million dollars and they had multiple machines like this when you don't know what these things are people would describe it as it's photoshop on steroids but for video and that seemed like about right so take us back there what was happening that point in time let us live the good old days first you have to remember at that time when you had come in After Effects was pretty new it had just changed from kosa after effects to Adobe you couldn't do stuff on the desktop pretty much I mean um you needed a paint box which cost $250,000 or more uh which was literally the Photoshop of the day um made by quantel and then you had a compositing tool which was uh at that time hay and you could basically just composite one layer at a time over the other and then eventually there was a Henry and that allowed you to do five layers of compositing at a time and then eventually it went up seven and whatever layers but yeah there was no desktop uh work at all uh you know I had come from the print World cuz my uncle

### Key Influences and Milestones in Graphic Design [10:30]

owned a print pre-press kind of place doing movie posters so I knew um I knew where this was all going because the print world has had totally changed and I helped him do a little bit of that too you know that transition was slowly happening um from you know working on these high-end you know dedicated pieces of equipment to you know Max and people were doing Photoshop work we had a lot of people at that time doing Photoshop work you were doing Photoshop work at that time um and then people were dabbling in you know after effects doing simpler smaller things in After Effects we could see at that time you know these million-dollar boxes were potentially going to go away um and then flame came out that could do some other things that you couldn't do in After Effects and plus those machines were much faster they were dedicated Hardware dedicated video cards all of that stuff that you know made doing that work a lot faster than doing it on a desktop at that point we're in the Heyday here we're in the mid90s and I heard about these late night sessions with directors and clients when people are literally doing lines of coke uh you you'll have to tell me and these are just rumors I'm just a young kid okay you know going back to your previous question there was about four companies at that time that were the big companies and the big ones here in La it was pit Sullivan and novacom and uh really there were two creative director s that were the big creative directors it was Jeff borts at pit Sullivan and Chris Williamson at novaon Chris was a paintbox artist traditional illustrator painter and did work on the paint box whereas Jeff not to say he wasn't that but he was a lot more into live action and so a lot of pitard Sullivan's look had a lot of live action elements in it whereas novaoms was a lot of like very graphic 3D flying logo type stuff at that time a lot of networks you know rert Murdoch was going around the world buying networks and a lot of uh government owned TV stations were becoming uh privatized and being bought by individuals and those people wanted to you know redo the entire network to look like Western American TV and so we were just in the right place at the right time and you know got to travel the I world in my very early 20s relaunching networks rebranding networks around the world and and shows here in LA and that was kind of the way the world was back then you saw budgets back then what were the budgets like just blow people's minds I wish budgets were like that again poetic about the I mean obviously the equipment was really expensive so you were paying they KN you couldn't do it on a desktop so you know you'd have an artist that was you know making lots of money and you had a box that had a big overhead to it you know million dollars or whatever and there were very small number of companies that were doing it budgets ranged generally I would say from $250,000 up to 234 million depending on what you had you know what you wanted to do um or what was needed so you know you would go in and we'd Rebrand let's say B Sky B in London and you know we'd get a million and a half dollars and then we'd go to Singapore and we may get another million and a half dollars but then they want us to train their people on how to use the equipment and all that so we'd get additional funds for doing those kinds of trainings and title sequences and you know and packages were $250,000 or more you know I get calls today for people wanting show packages for $330,000 or less it's just a huge you know huge difference and because you know you could do it on the desktop and there's more and more uh great creative artists around it's a supply and demand situation our business is you know as every business is so you heard the budgets back then it sounded like novacom was at this super kind of critical juncture within the world of broadcast television you said that they were privatized being bought out by independent owners rert Murdoch going around buying TV station networks whatever and so there was a appetite there was emerging technology and there was low competition you mentioned that there are four major Studios we don't need to get into that but when there are four people who can do what you do in the world you kind of have the Pick of the litter if you will and you can name your own price and so we have these rooms that were the software Hardware packages were expensive but all the supporting equipment the decks the drives the Scopes the monitors audio equipment engineering the support staff everything that touched this was expensive because there just wasn't a lot of customers to sell to so therefore the price per unit is very high which creates a barrier to entry meaning you or I could not just go in and compete with novacom or pet Sullivan cuz we just didn't have the capabilities and at this time after effects it's not fast enough and it's not a mature tool at this point it's considered maybe like an ugly bastard child you can use it um but it's still too new and so you kind of have a not a monopoly but a pretty good control of the market and you capitalize on that stuff so in its Heyday I mean I don't I think it's safe to say now right how much were you guys grossing in 1995 roughly well I mean I think it was at least $30 million at that time you know margins were really high you know 50 60% we ended up not only doing design and and that but also be becoming a facility the company moved from Hollywood out to P Vista and our downstairs portion of our building was uh a facility where people could come out and rent Henry bays and whatever else and um and then we had the design and animation and whatnot up above you know company was doing well at the time I'm sure we were spending a lot of money at the time too but you know so I still for young people who are listening to us or people who don't live in Los Angeles they have a hard time even imagining what was going on these Bays were lavish there were enormous rooms sometimes it could be 800 sare F feet or something like that and all the CRA mons that you'd expect with a room that costs roughly $1,000 an hour to book and it's not like you're just booking for an hour you're booking for multiple sessions weeks long sometimes to do the visual effects were designed and compositing for commercials and back then they're throwing crazy amounts of money it would not be unheard of for people to spend a million dollars on music video a million plus on TV spots this is when people like Ridley Scott were still directing commercials when they were still semi available maybe towards the tail end of that David Fincher was doing music video at the time at propaganda so you know that's the kind of setting so the reason why you would walk into the kitchen and it would be so Decked Out is because the clients there were paying so much money per hour per project that the client service game had to be on point and that was the shocking thing for me to experience to walk in like what kind of design place is this because I've not imagined anything like this being possible I asked you this question earlier but I I want to try to ask it one more time see if you have an answer for me I heard rumors about parties with how do we describe these certain people you pay them money to hang out with you and party and drugs and all kinds of stuff that was just part of the landscape it wasn't unusual can you set those rumors yeah I mean you know it started well before that

### The Shift from Analog to Digital [18:15]

there was a place called Abel and Associates and there was a back room at Abel and Associates that was a very wellknown as the cocaine room and many of people uh that was kind of the first company and lots of other companies Rhyman Hughes and others came out of the people that worked uh there at AEL and Associates um I I suggest that everybody look that up if you're interested in graphics know your history uh that'll be really interesting to you those were the real Heyday but like you know we used to joke that I would sit a lot of times in Chris Williamson's paintbox room and if you opened the door to Chris's paintbox room it was like Fast Times at richmont high like Spicoli coming out of the room there just be the smoke cloud um and you know you were in there being creative having a good time and uh you know we didn't hire anybody to come in or do anything like that but a lot of the uh you know clients liked working at our place because you know not only of the great food and the great artists and the great work that was done but you know people were doing lines and people were smoking pot and that type of stuff was happen it was yeah different times and for people who don't understand the reference that Ian dropped just think Snoop Dog and you'll understand the smoke reference okay everybody you can or Fast Times at Ridgemont High if You' seen haven't seen that movie definitely go see Fast Times at Ridgemont High and look at SPI coming out of the car what the van so Ian and my story kind of intertwin throughout the decades and there's moments and there's learning lessons and it's was like kind of ironic because I recently had lunch with you and I said your name came on because I just recorded a video where I mentioned you but I just want to just open that Loop I'll get back to it in a little bit so there's this move from Hollywood to pla P Vista p Del R Vista yeah P Vista what I had heard at the time was DreamWorks skg was going to take out a big chunk of land out there and develop the next great studio and there was so much Buzz behind DreamWorks and I understand that one of the things was a lot of people uprooted from Hollywood because it was myig great West anyways and went West to meet the demand but unfortunately or fortunately there were many kind of activists protesting the development of this land they wanted to protect it to conserve it and ultimately that kind of pressure shut down DreamWorks coming out and there probably other issues but I always thought it was like wow what happened here is there a Learning lesson because I went to visit you when you guys move out and it was this massive facility I can remember walking through and just like looking at all this space whereas Hollywood it was jammed and it was an energy and a kind of a phenetic quality to it whereas here it's like kind of spread out yeah we went from like 10,000 square ft to 40,000 square ft you know the Bays were bigger at at the new place and like I said there was downstairs was all the high-end Bay equipment and upstairs was you know designers and and after effects artists and whatnot originally the thought was okay this is going to be Hollywood west and um you know DreamWorks is going in there and whatnot but we also needed uh at that time a bigger space um we didn't have enough Bays for the amount of work but I think there was a little bit of a misconception that people would drive over or be you know come to pla I mean we were busy but post wise it you know for the downstairs it wasn't as busy as they had hoped that it would be to try to get everybody you know agencies and everybody over there you know as time went on that wasn't a big deal you know once novacom ended up closing or whatever there were lots of companies in Santa Monica and that area um you know doing agency work and whatnot at the time we were one you know besides Rhythm and Hughes we were one of the first companies you know out there and then eventually chaiet day moved out there uh that was when I was at Rhyman Hughes but um yeah back at novacom it was tough and we but we did some really interesting things at back then like we were the first company really to do to run a Henry across town we had a a box at Paramount and we had a box in pav Vista and we could literally have sessions so if somebody didn't want to drive to pav Vista we would tell them go over to Paramount you could sit in a room there and you could literally watch the artist in pla doing the work and nobody had been was doing that really at that time um it was very hard to do that in La at the time because you needed you know the you needed fast enough internet and unfortunately because uh you know the whole idea of DreamWorks going in there they had laid the fiber line literally that ran underneath novacom at that time and so all we had to do was get GTE and it wasn't AT& T at the time I think it was pack Bell to talk to each other and let you know let it happen we were really the first to be able to run kind of work remotely yeah that way on these high-end boxes so and if I remember correctly the center of the design visual effects industry was in Hollywood because the studios were there and if you wanted to work with Studios you want to be close by because there's these ecosystems that get created but there was a slow and steady migration of directors setting up their production companies out on the west coast buying up small lots of land and converting automotive shops into like these really amazing things brookheimer was out there there's a couple other people who are establishing shops so you I think novacom was just a little ahead of the game and I think that's a theme with novacom if you want to be an Innovative person you have to take some risks the signs and the winds were pointing in that direction the mishap was one DreamWorks ultimately didn't open up shop there and that's a big problem and number two you're just a little bit too far ahe because you moved out there and eventually there were no more of these kinds of shops in Hollywood except for one uh and ultimately they also decided they're going to move west as well so there were a couple of stragglers and you're using Cutting Edge technology to tether two boxes together so somebody can watch in real time which was a crazy concept I can't remember if it's fiber optic or people tying things with T1 lines now we take it for granted that we have super fast internet these days but back then guys you could not run a professional operation through a cable like that the way that you were

### Emerging Trends in Graphic Design [25:00]

doing it we didn't have email in the way that we have it now or anything like that so I mean that was like a really you know to have those types of connections it was really high-end very expensive one thing I would like to touch on in the same thing that it kind of goes from you know the transition period uh you know Billy pitard uh was really at that time trying to get a lot of the design companies together because what was ending up happening at that time was because you know Macs were being able to be used and design was done people were you know you heard of the two guys in a garage well that was H starting to happen at that time and uh a lot of clients started to say well I don't want to pay for pitches you know this is probably a good theme in your you know at the future here where and Billy pitard wanted to try to stop that right he wanted to make it where they we had some sort of uh not Union but way for us to make it where we have to get paid a minimum amount of money for pitches and wanted it to be an industrywide thing and he couldn't get kind of all the players together to do that and so you ended up with a lot of people uh doing pitches for free from their garage competing against the high-end companies and ultimately that is you know and the desktop Revolution is what ultimately killed a lot of these high-end y companies and uh you know if they Diversified into other businesses then they could potentially survive but if they kind of stuck to the what they were used to doing all the time uh you know they would flounder I want to get your unique perspective because you're such an industry veteran and we can see a lot clear looking backwards you're one of the hotter shops you're one of two main companies it's fascinating and I want to just pin this and then we'll move on from this is that from novacom you guys wanted to do a live action because it was sexy it was cool and they're working with actors and it was a different thing that they were doing I think also because a lot of the creatives wanted to diversify their own work right so they wanted to learn how to direct and and get to play with film and do stuff yeah and I bet and I can't speak on any kind of authority on this but I met pet Sullivan was thinking we needed more Graphics work because that they're just Wrecking in the cash so it's always the grasses Greener syndrome and I know this from my own experience because when we're just doing end Tags I'm like I want to do something else can somebody else give us something to do it's the nature of the creative Beast to want to do weird wild things that are not profitable in of your own self-interest but anyways I just I want to ask you this from being at the height of the where I could see it to being closing and shutting down what were a couple of Lessons Learned From the Inside from that perspective like what would you have done differently knowing what you know now well I mean I tried to get the owner of the company at the time John Ridgeway um who I really loved to think about diversifying the business and get more into actual commercial production I had the ability through my exwife and and you know others to get some people in there Paul Hunter and we had uh a flame artist Nick Piper who was very interested in directing live action and we could have easily marketed and gotten music video work and uh and Commercial work if we had just made an effort because we could design it all we could finish it all we just didn't have the directors on staff necessarily to pitch um but imagine you know having a director be able to just you know walk over to a couple of designers and sit and work on boards and conceptual ideas uh that didn't kind of really exist they were two separate worlds at that time had we gotten into doing more commercial production I think the company might even still be around um I also think that there was a couple of guys at the company who were doing DVD menuing uh work which was very kind of just taking off and they ended up leaving and starting their own company um uh Matt Kennedy and Jason Juan uh did that and you know had those things been able to be kept within the company and the company have the vision to support those things inside of it I think it would have for sure lasted longer in the hindsight moving to ply out at that point good idea or bad idea I think it was a good idea we needed the space um I think that they just didn't expand into the space you know like I said if they had Diversified into to these other areas I think they would have expanded into the space John didn't really want to do it because it you know his thing to me was oh well I don't know that and I don't think it makes a lot of money and I was like what are you talking about commercials make a ton of money you know um especially when you're doing it like kind of from Soup To Nuts right yeah you may only make 20% on the live action or whatever right marking that up but you're doing all the post and you're also coming up with the creative he had his reasons whatever they were you know I wasn't the owner and you can only advise somebody so much and give them you know I'm just a young whipper snapper at that time so you know you're a guy with a lot of ideas and you rocking the boat probably the company was very uh Forward Thinking and in some ways they weren't it it's wild it's like I guess you can only be Innovative in so many different ways and then you stop but there was something that was coming up it was called the desktop video Revolution that follows desktop publishing and there was a guy a young man his name was Flavio Kaa and he's one of these early Pioneers this Italian designer who's living in La working out of Venice I believe and I met his producer and he was using like video vision boards and using Premiere to do animation and design things that was not meant to do but he was doing it and we're marking the shift in this kind of technological Revolution which was we're putting powerful tools in the hands of designers versus operators I I don't want to call them that but there are people who understood how to use the tools when there are these designers and artists who didn't have the tools and when those two worlds came together of course the best Art and Design always wins at that point right they didn't see that coming they did not shift enough but it comes down to this thing I think retention of talent is probably the biggest thing because the industry can go any which direction but I remember Nick Piper was like directing commercials and music videos doing big things with visual effects because I remember sitting in one of those Bays when people are working looking at the work like jaw dropping like how do even know how this is done there's a level of technical prowess here that I'm just not even understanding because remember I'm just barely out of school myself just watching this and if they could have grown a team of directors um brought in some desktop stuff and diversified into commercials and Main perhaps main titles they could have been more prepared to shift with The Changing Winds and the one thing that we know because we've both worked on commercials and broadcast packages commercials are quick high paying fastpac and don't have a ton of

### The Role of Technology and Software in Design [32:40]

deliverables you basically turn over the package and maybe some supers and that's it broadcast packages oh my God the list of things you have to deliver out of control although that's changed a little bit because of Internet deliverables and those types of things you have lots of different aspect ratios but yeah generally for commercials yeah but generally that yeah but generally back then for sure that was totally the case but back in the day basically if you delivered a tape a master a digital Master we would open it up and it's like uh there's English one with and without supers and that was it that was our run list and I saw because from uh I think it was telesign the list was like folded out of the box it's like oh my God there's I don't want to say 300 but there were a lot of elements I was thinking oh there could easily be 300 right elements lots of stuff to do so from a profitability point of view if you can get something done quicker and there's less deliverables less things go wrong less grinding of the machine it would have been much more profitable yeah and I also think it would have supported uh artists development which I think was really important right artists wanted to learn how to do different things what whether it be you know get on desktop or become directors or whatever it is um and if you can give them a path through your company to do that the more app they're willing to stay at your company because you're supporting them in those Endeavors but I would like to get back because you did mention somebody who unfortunately passed away during covid which was Flavio Kaa and um I was very good friends with Flavio he actually worked with David Carson Flavio was definitely one of the first people using After Effects and Co kosa there was another gentleman D named David Spar grve called Sparky that was his name David was a magician at that you know at kosa After Effects everybody was trying to book David Spar grve for a project at the time and um those two guys were definitely Pioneers I'm not saying there weren't others but uh yeah those guys those two guys basically had a huge impact they were the first real creative animators in you know working on I mean a lot of times they didn't even design anything they just sat on that on you know like a lot of artists do now they'll just sit in After Effects and do the design and I remember during this time getting 3/4 inch demo resel and tapes and 3/4 inch people what what tape well forget about look it up guys look it up there were there was tomato who's bursting on the scene uh compos Vision influencing a whole generation of motion design artists there was this these radio Scotland spots that it was like just gorgeous typography with the Scottish accent it was just beautiful and seeing all these Works uh and I was just collecting these demo rails and dubbing and just making sure we need to study this stuff it's incredible work and it was just like an amazing time to be alive back when we were still doing things at ntsc pausing there I want to jump forward in the time because we got to get to eventually where you are today we could go on for a long time here we can the whole it could be a 15 hour episode everybody cuz we there's so much com history between and I in terms of our own timeline and our progression But ultimately that world starts to open up to desktop design two guys in a garage there wasn't two guys and I wasn't in a garage but I would say like yeah guilty we were doing it I wasn't doing it for free low cost but there was this new kind of energy being put out there and people always want the new and they don't want to pay for these rooms and things like that so Ian and I we do a dance there was a of time when I'm like Ian are you free and available and you're like uh yeah I think so and or I try to hire you want to be hired but we just couldn't get it to work but we do work with each other I want to share a story with everyone it's like we were working with a director named Robert house he's a designer turned director he has a very unique vision and we worked on several music videos with him I love working with Robert he's a British guy and Ian you were in the office at the time helping us to produce work there's a couple things I want to say about you and hopefully I don't embarrass you here is Ian is a professional and I need to explain to you what that means is he's there to do a job he wants to make sure he has a fiduciary responsibility to the company booked him to make sure uh it's run properly that people are doing the work that they say they're going to be doing and paying them and also to make sure that it's profitable but there's a couple things I really love about you and I will share to anybody who wants to hear which is you always say something like this uh here's what I think we should do here's what you want to do and you've heard my bit I work for you make the decision and I respect that to the just the bottom of my just my fiber my being because you're saying I'm not going to just not say something I'm going to say what needs to be done but at the end of the day it's your ass on the line it's your decision you have the right to be wrong and I respect it no matter what you decide and we will do what you want and I think you continue that on everywhere you go because it's part of who you are number two is I remember there was a freelancer I can't remember who it was who messed up on something and you walked over to him and you said something uh like you know you messed up on this thing and he giggled like he didn't take it seriously and you said well would it be funny if I didn't pay you for today and his face wasn't smiling anymore and I was like and I had to come overan I thanks for doing that but you know they're all they're creativ and they're going to get spooked and then that's end of that right and the last thing I want to share with you is this we book people Freelancers even executive producers and when the booking is over there's always this funny kind of feeling like uh what else and it creates this uneasy tension for me but I remember coming up to your maybe second or last day you walked over to me and said hey it was a pleasure working with you appreciate the opportunity you shook my hand and said if there's something else let me know but I just enjoy the work experience and it created such an impression on me that I go around telling the story to people and said I don't care what Ian felt about us if he thought we were jerks if we treated him well or not but he always was a professional and that's what professionals do they don't try to guilt you into things they don't try and like well you know it could have been better if we did this and you never listened to me and that way no matter what happens in the future somebody's like hey you know somebody good I'm like yeah Ian Dawson which leads us to the Poker Story in a little bit and I just want to say that with people especially even you guys who are not so young anymore you just wear your heart on your sleeves and shoulders and you can't contain yourself if you feel slightly disrespected you're going to act in a weird way and my businessman drir always told me you can feel whatever you want but they need to walk away with the impression that you enjoyed the process and you're professional always and that's who you are in please thank you I you know I have this perspective and always have that if this was my company how would I want somebody to act in that position so everything that I have done comes from that point of view you know I and I hold other people or I try to hold other people to those same standards because look you know whoever the owner is yourself or whoever you know you have money on the line you have

### How Design Education Has Adapted to Changes [40:20]

your business your reputation you know you're out there putting it all on the line I'm not I'm working for you know a che a paycheck or you know and I need to respect the fact that your whole livelihood is based on how well you know the company is doing and everything about it you know look I have good and bad reputations in this business based on you know depending on who it is that you talk to I make sure that people understand that they have a job to do that's my role and but I'm also trying to be as supportive as possible to everybody um but when I see something that's not right and that I don't think is the right thing I'm going to say something and you know some people understand that and are old enough I guess mentally to to get that and others aren't and they take offense to some of those things I look at it as again I'm the eyes and ears and working for the owner of the company and you know they can't be there and they're entrusting me to be there to make sure these things are getting done so um you know I want to do that but also have a good time doing it and work with the best possible people I can so and I've been lucky enough boy to work with some really great people so you know I appreciate you saying that Chris because this business even though it's grown so much is a small business still and you know you're always going to have people in life that like you and other don't like you and you just have to go do what you think is right so a couple more things about my friend Ian here and you might be thinking oh Chris grow up you know what what's going on why is this so special because when you see someone do something that is different it stands out and I'll tell you I've worked with producers and executive producers who are overbearing who is my way of the highway and are super aggressive and then I've also worked with producers and executive producers who are like kind of like tip toey kind of squeaky mice and always doing what the clients wanted just a pushover I'm like I don't want either one of them I want somebody to be tough to have my back when the time is necessary and to be soft when it's necessary to understand the needs of creative people we work in the creative industry uh they don't need to to be infantilized but they're they need to be treated a little bit differently we're not working in a factory and to be able to thread that needle is an important thing and I remember I think Kyle asked me so what's the end story what's going on with him and I think that this leads us to our poker night but yeah I said you want somebody who's tough who will tell you like it is but follow your orders if that's what you lay down you want somebody who's going to help you make money and just not let the clients have their way he your guy and if that's not what you want then don't work with him he goes okay and then next thing you know you guys are working together for oh I don't know eight years or something like that yeah and I want to say that there's an there's some kinds of producers who like phone it in and what do I mean by that literally phone it in we have a deadline and they're like I got to go and they go home then that leaves me as the owner it's like okay so who's going to make sure that we did what we promised we're going to do and I would say that the world's cut in half there's the ones who are going to stay to the end and the ones who talk a good talk and they're at home in bed by 800 pm and Ian is not that kind of guy so you're sitting there in the trenches with the team the boys and the girls and you're there like okay what do we need and you're there to support them let me go get dinner for you guys let me who needs what we we got to get an asset file okay let's that's what producing is producing isn't just like making sure at the beginning then it's okay it's like all the steps in between and that's where I think you build a relationship with the team where like God other people are just gone but you're here with us and you might be hard on us from time to time but we know you care about the product you're really here to support us and if nothing else there's respect there so that's me giving your flowers thank you I appreciate that and I hope look I hope artists who I have pissed off along the way have realized that there might be a few oh I'm sure I know there are um but I Hope they've realized you know working at other places and working with other people and whatever that you know maybe he wasn't that bad you know no uh or whatever if I can impart one thing for people your word is everything if you say you're going to do something you have to do it you have to own up to if it's a problem you have to tell people what's the them how you're going to solve it all you know all of those things trying to get around that is you know it's not doing anybody any good and um you know that was one of the things working with Kyle you know he would always say to the people who work with him like I've availed myself to this client so I have to make sure you know it's on me it's my name it's my reputation if somebody didn't want to do anything or somebody wanted to go home or whatever it was you know it was all on him in his mind you know it wasn't he had support but in his mind it's all on him it's his business it's his name Kyle is a name that is going to go down in history for all of the things that he has done and he wants that reputation to remain you know um and so he really cared about the work that left his building the clients that he worked with uh it wasn't just about money for him at all money was a means to the end of creating great work for him whereas for me you know I want great work but I also need to make sure the business runs and that you can keep doing that great work that's why you have me here but for him as the owner you know you too I'm sure like there are projects you just want to do it doesn't matter how much money this is going to cost me I want to do this I've availed myself to this client and I really like the project and I'm going to do whatever it is that it's going to take to do it so you have to have that balance of those jobs and the other jobs that just make you money uh so that you can do all the things that you really like to do creatively and they're not you know they're not all those kind of projects so I think I was telling you at lunch you know one of the biggest things for me that I try to tell artists Young Artists is you know you're not really creating art here and I know it's a terrible thing to for people to hear but you know art is something you do when you're passionate about something and you create whatever it is you want and hopefully then somebody recognizes it and wants to pay you for it right but you didn't do it because somebody was going to pay it pay you for it you did it because it's what you were passionate about we're in the creative Services business so people are paying you to do something they're they are commissioning you to create something that they want and they're wanting your input into it skills and everything into it but it's not art in that traditional sense it is Artistic for sure but it is not art by definition I think people you know mess that up especially young people coming out of school I think and you know they want it to be their way you know and we can get into more of that conversation but I think that's a big thing for people to understand is you are working for a client that has you know particular things that they need yeah I think it's deceptive the to be a creative person and to accept money from somebody to do a job that you promis you would do and then to completely

### Balancing Creativity with Commercial Demands [48:00]

disregard what they want and just do what you want at least be honest about it I think there's a purity in art that you just make stuff and you don't really care if you sell it or you don't sell it it's nice when you sell them but that's not why you made it it's comes from a place of self-expression a need to get something out of your creative soul and it's a very different thing when you agree to take somebody's money to solve their problem and I also do understand though and you know this is the part where I'm sympathetic to artists a lot is you know every day coming up with something new and something different and something that's unique and you know addresses a client problem and all of those things that is not easy I thought I wanted to be an artist you know I when I sat next to Chris Williamson on one of my first days and he was on the paint box I thought I wanted to be a paintbox artist and a designer and then I realized I'm never going to be as good as he is I don't have anywhere near the chops that this guy has and to every day have to you know come up with something that clients are going to want and want to pay you for that is really difficult and so I'm there to support them trying to do that as much as possible within this box that we have of you know needing to make money giving the client what they want giving artists the freedom to and time to come up with what they need to do it's a real balancing act before we get into VR and aug AED re reality especially in light of some of the news coming out of apple um I wanted to talk a little bit about the state of the industry as it pertains to broadcast design I think the four that you had mentioned or referenced before the four big companies are any of them still around no I don't think so are there any big broadcast Design Studios left I don't know if they're that big um well I mean uh two guys that used to be at novacom uh who I think you know Nick and Marco bassic they have a little company called Drive Studio they do a lot of sports branding um they're very good Marco was you know to me he's probably the best compositor especially on you know Henry that I've ever seen but I'm you know he's not on a Henry anymore and Nick was an amazing designer too uh you know that that's actually just really briefly you know when we talk about artists and their time you know that was a really big kind of Bon of contention between Nick and I because Nick always wanted more time and you know I can't just design you know in a day or two I have to have my time you only have a certain amount of time right just generally so uh you know trying to do that and work with artists but put that box around them is is why I can tell you it's the most difficult thing and probably where the most tension lies yeah it was like a lot of dominoes falling So novacom eventually shutters and then Pitter got embroiled in some kind of financial Scandal and then their offshoots the children of these companies I think three- ring is one of them they go out of business everybody goes out of business well it's very hard to stay in business doing this I mean there's a lot of a lot more competition everybody's undercutting everybody which you know is they don't realize I mean everybody's trying to get the work and make a living but they don't realize they're actually hurting themselves in the long run right so um you know I think Billy Pitter did have it right to try to get a some sort of organization together where we could all talk about these types of things and you know not price fix but set some standards in the industry that would have helped everybody but unfortunately that didn't happen why don't you think that happened I think it was just the time when artists were like screw that I'm going out and I can use after effects in a and a back and sit at my house and do this why do I have to listen to you guys as the big companies trying to stop me from doing that but they I think they just didn't realize that yeah that you know you're going to have that same competition here very soon you know is basically the idea um and it's been a race to the bottom I mean let's face it it's a race to the bottom it still is even now I think it's one of these um generational divides basically everybody who wants to standardize and have some kind of Prof professional practice a guild are the people are established who have a lot to lose when it's a race to the bottom and then the generation that is I'm just getting started I can't ask for the kinds of money you're asking for and and if I do I won't get the work so becomes a battle and it's like we're the crabs in the bucket trying to fight for survival we're all going to get cooked but everybody's out for their own self-interest and there was a period in time when I started to talk to my contemporaries like screw you we're going to go after our job the way we know how to and so our own shortsightedness prevented anything like this from happening yeah and there are no residuals and you know look if you're in the visual effects uh world you know they've been crying you know we I've been in it too it's crying about the fact that you know there's no residuals these movies make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and you know they're literally squeezing people it becomes a cycle and we're in one of those actually right now people just need to realize that what goes around comes around it just does what do you mean when you say it comes around goes around what meaning you okay you want to do this thing for cheap right now because you need the job and whatever but you know the reality of it is you've just created a new market you know a new pricing structure which then everybody has to follow which now you're going to be competing in you know it just keeps going down and down you know in terms of the race to the bottom and you know obviously if you're really good at what you do and uh you know you are at the top of your field you can try to demand more money for it and hopefully there will be more demand for you but as we've seen there's just more and more people doing this and there are a lot of good people doing this work people in corporations and whatever have the feeling that well if that guy's not available I'll just get this guy it's not about necessarily all the as much like oh I've got to have this amazing artist to do this work for me you have children our children are of similar age not too far apart if they wanted to get into this industry what would you tell them I mean having any skill is a great skill being an artist and having an art skill is a is a great thing and I don't think that'll ever go away whether you want to be an editor or you want to do after effects or you know whatever I think though the Heyday of making a lot of money in our business is you know as an individual doing it yes you can do it as a company I think it's very hard I would always encourage my as I am now my kids they're both very artistic one's a musician and one's a photographer and writer unless you're at the top of your field in either one of those it's going to be hard to make a living so all you can do is let them understand that but you want to support them right you want to give them the support uh you don't want to anybody crushing anybody's dreams because you never know they could be

### The Future of Graphic Design: What to Expect [55:30]

that one in a billion or whatever it is I think everything in society is going to change you know I think with AI a lot of things are going to change and it's not just about the art business you know and graphics and all that I think so many bi Industries are being disrupted right now I'm more worried in general about yeah how are they going to make money you know if you're not a prompt engineer how are you going to make money in the future you know if you're not a coder and you're not a prompt engineer doctor and you don't grow food you know all the things that are truly needed to survive I'm more worried about that societally than I am even just for my kids in a particular area AI is a big controversy right now right like oh it's going to take over people's jobs and I don't necessarily see it as totally taking over people's jobs see it as reducing the amount of work that is going to be needed from those people which means there will be less money going to individuals to do that work if there's a certain amount of a pie and it takes less time to do any portion of that the pie generally isn't going to get any bigger so it just means that there's more smaller teeny little slices versus bigger slices for beet which makes it harder and harder to make a living that we're used to is I guess where I'm going for well I think it's a Fool's erand to look at what has happened in the past and say well let's replicate that thing again because once he catches up to the current timeline it's not a good place so you're like well Dad didn't you have a great career doing all these things and making a ton of money doing x y and Zed well those times don't exist anymore those conditions don't exist anymore so if you follow that exact path you're not going to find the same opportunities and we both as parents assuming you your children like I love my children we don't want them to suffer and knowing that one day we're not going to be there to help them and we're trying to get them to be autonomous they need to figure out a way that they can live a fulfilled life that's in alignment with their values and hopefully to find some Financial reward at the end of all those efforts and so I would warn everyone right now if you're in the production aspect of things what AI is very good at doing is production and it would be enhanced and ultimately optimized to point in which you may or may not be needed and the work of 20 can be done by one and so if you're the one great if you're the 19 you're kind of screwed but here's what I think we've gone upside down on this world in a good way so it used to be we would pay top dollar to get artists to build you the Supreme expression of an idea so the compositing the color grading it's 8 bit it's 10 bit it's 12 bit color depth it's just it's not just ntsc it's HT know it's 4K it's no it's 6K it's 8K and that was the game to create an higher Fidelity but the game has totally turned upside down as far as I'm concerned because with social media we actually crave something different we're it's an always like a course correction from going from Super high-end glossy looking visuals made by a team of or an army of people to I want to have an intimate conversation with a person and I don't want the technology to get in the way and so there are a lot of people authors writers content creators who need help in making visuals in telling stories and they're not looking for highend visual facts and Fidelity they're looking for is it intimate is it real is it authentic and is it telling the story so editors who find themselves out of work say trying to cut commercials can get a ton of work cutting content for YouTube for Instagram for Tik Tok those kinds of things so one thing that my my Coach K McLaren would always tell me it's like what is it that you really do it's not so much that you create commercials it's that you know how to make compelling images whether it's print if it's small or if it's a billboard you know how it makes really exciting visuals so rack your brain don't look at so much the application but look at as what is it you're ultimately doing and if you can find that then you'll be safe cuz there is the need for this and I'm seeing people do really well yeah no absolutely I mean even you know even from the advertisers advertising agency side of things you know I can't tell you how many times I've heard you know well just shoot it on the iPhone and you know because they only have five grand or less or whatever and you and you're you know my elderly thinking is why would you do that like you know and then they and then you know they try to explain to you that well we want it to be authentic as if this person was really doing this on their phone it's not about the Fidelity or anything else about it it's about we want the authenticity of it being like somebody did it on their phone and we know that doesn't cost nearly as much money so we don't want to pay you as much money to do it and that's really what it's coming down to because you know we're in we're everybody's not watching TV as much they're watching you know their phone or their iPad or whatever it is uh and a lot of it's you know 15 seconds or less you can decide whether that's good or bad uh but the reality of is it's here it doesn't matter whether you think it's good or bad it is what exists your job is to figure out how to supply that and what they need still you know to be the problem solver I think it's a mistake for Creative people out there to sell the technology that they use versus selling themselves because you're going to fall down that rabbit hole it's like so you're saying you're going to pay me a tenth of the cost because we're not using a red but we're using an iPhone okay so that's me selling equipment rentals we're not selling the vision which is I don't care if I pick up a red or um an AR or an iPhone you're paying because I'm the one who's telling the story and I'm G to tell it in a certain way that only I can tell for that you're going to pay me the same price it doesn't matter it's nominal the difference in terms of the price you're going to pay me and that's how I look at it so if you wind up selling oh I'm using a fancy Macintosh or PC with these you're selling the wrong thing I totally agree with you the hard part is getting the client to understand that and be willing to do that because and it's gotten even more difficult because the client tends to be now a younger producer you know who's grown up in this world and uh they have they don't have the same experiences or even knowledge of what was done in the past and their view is well I can do this with I've been making Tik Tok videos on my phone for whatever you know what I mean like what makes you so special that is the hard battle there I know you talk about that a lot in the future and you know I think story is a huge aspect of it still being creative just because you can pick up the phone and make it Tik Tok video or Instagram video it's great you need people that can make that content but there's still you still have to be compelling unique you still have to have a perspective uh you still have to come up with you know what's going to make it interesting for people to buy that product let's say Roi is a huge three letters in our business uh especially on the advertising side right now because you know it's not easily quantifiable and there's a huge thing going on right now about like how much Roi are we getting for really spending this money I could definitely see a business model changing where Roi becomes the most important thing and you get rewarded for the ROI and you don't get rewarded if you don't get the ROI I think there's a business model there and that will make cream rise to the top as well right so yes uh it's just a different way of doing it I think people will get paid for doing it their costs will be taken care of but they won't get their profits if you want to call it that until you you've proven or it's been proven that your conceptual idea actually turns into sales or whatever it is that is the metric just so our audience understands it's not a far-flung idea some crazy thing that's not happening in la land but I don't know Ian do you know of a company called sandwich video no I don't I haven't heard of it okay want to take note of that sandwich video has a very interesting story from what I recall so there's a young guy and he's making videos and he's trying to help people get their projects kickstarted successfully so he kind of writes and because it's lowbudget he stars in these videos and he makes them and guess what they make a ton of money and after he does this a couple of times he's like wait a minute why am I just selling this as a service then he eventually negotiates and leverages I don't want to get paid I want a piece of the company people agree so it takes a person with a bold idea and have some proof and belief

### Ian's Personal Journey and Career Insights [1:05:00]

in themselves that they get this so I don't know if it's the case still but when I was looking into them they don't do pay to play they're like I want equity and then he becomes so popular that he's become an actor himself and he's a spokesperson on TV commercials now like I don't say for Progressive Insurance but it's like he's out there because and it's a strange thing he's not Brad Pit he's uh an everyday man bearded um a little heavier and just like a guy next door and he's just good at pitching he's become like our generation of Billy Mays he goes in he does the thing so he becomes a spokesperson now and so they have a track record of writing producing commercials that either get you funded the ROI stuff gets your Kickstarter thing he helps to move the needle and because he's got a track record of this that's where the game is now can is what you make going to move the needle and if you can move the needle you have a lot of different kinds of Leverage that's where you can literally say back to that young art director oh you're good with your iPhone you don't need me just go make it what are going to say to that it's like no I don't know how to make this and no one's going to give me that opportunity because I don't know what I'm doing exactly that's why we're talking right ultimately everybody's got to become accountable I think so and this is a way to make people accountable I don't like it necessarily but I am a numbers guy I do budgets all the time and I do everything so I do understand the idea again putting myself in their shoes if I'm spending this money and I never get Roi on my you know return on the investment or what you tell me it's going to do and how many hits I'm going to get or whatever and I never get that why do I want to work with you versus somebody else that can get that and the people who can get that can command a premium and I'm okay with accountability as long as there's upside for both of us so we set a baseline you pay for cost and if it does what it's supposed to do that also means that you must allow me to direct more than you directing it because my financial future is involved here because I'm just covering costs not for my creativity not for my input so if you give me more creative control you can cover my cost and if it gets this many views or that much engagement or that many conversions I have to benefit from that too that is I think the fairest way to structure a deal I mean you are the client as well at that point so it's a win-win in theory for everybody right even if it even if it doesn't get the ROI the client didn't have to spend all the money that they had spent would normally have spent you get at least paid for doing the work but you're not making any profit and everybody has the potential of an upside you have skin in the game and that's important and I think that is a healthier model for both there's less risk for everybody uh and you can try people you can literally pay them for their costs and they're going to do it economically they don't need to do for more because at the end of the day it's not about the production they're going to quickly realize that all that glossiness actually doesn't move the needle and we're going to learn together so the structure has been created for so long that both the agency and the creative aren't responsible for any outcome there is no Roi when you're on a TV commercial who's to say it's done anything we have no idea but now we live in an age where we can measure lots of things not everything and we can tie things with cookies and counters and analytics that yeah why not that gets to something you and I had talked about I think that opens up the world to artists and producers being able to work directly with Brands not to say that they haven't been doing that but brands should be more open to working directly with these people and cutting out the ad agencies in the sense that um if you are delivering the Roi you're it doesn't matter who's doing it whether it's a big giant conglomerate or you know agency or two guys in a garage if the two guys in the garage are giving the ROI you know producing the ROI what does it matter the brand doesn't care they just want the results because that CMO you know they have to go keep they want to keep their job so your job is to try and make them shine as best as you can if you have that perspective that you're you know you are working for these people and how would you want to be treated and you do everything in that I'm not saying you're going to be successful but those people will at least recognize that you are trying to do what's right for them even if you're not successful at doing the you know whatever it is that they need at that time right because your success is tied that's the thing it's tied together if you succeed I succeed if not and then I'm not going to try to sabotage myself and if I do I'll be starving and I won't be able to do this for very long let's do this let's park that part of the conversation let's get into the third Act of our conversation and let's get into things that are exciting uh virtual reality we've heard about this meta The Meta space the multi verse whatever then there's augmented mixed reality there's all kinds of RS in this let's go to the Future now and we've been talking about these things for a long time is this like The Comeback and the resurrection of 3D films and then the subsequent destruction of 3D films where are we in that state yeah I mean I started doing VR work in 1990 and headsets were $40,000 vpl headsets good friend of mine David Warner was doing some amazing medical stuff uh back in that those days another friend of mine Bill Roos was doing you know stereoscopic VR video at that time uh it just was too expensive you know unless you were locked Martin or you know building ships you know we think it's untouchable now you know an apple headset for $4,000 imagine you know VR where it's a $40,000 headset to give you a little background on this you know I was the visual effects supervisor and producer at prologue on Iron Man one two and three we didn't do as much on um and we did a lot of the AR UI fantasy work uh there and so when we were done with that we started getting calls to do more of that work we started getting calls from government agencies I realized or at least I thought like okay how do we take this fantasy UI stuff that we've been doing in visual effects and uh try to bring it to the real world and so kind of my focus was how do we bring the you know the artists in our world the visual effects and design world and the programmers that create apps and these things and you know bring them together and get them to work together because it's all producing but it you know on the on the side of making apps it's product management and on you know the side of making uh art uh you know graphics and such it's producers so uh how do we get these people to talk to each other and have the same language and work together and that's kind of been what I've been not solely focused on but spending a lot of time focusing on over the last 10 to 15 years I've done a number of proof of concept pieces for like Hershey's and rebok and T-Mobile and NFL and lots of you know probably 20 or so projects uh in that vein and you know really in every single case we can technically make the things that we want happen but the graphics are not quite weren't quite there yet and uh just the engines to drive them you couldn't have as many polygons textures can't be as big all those fun things it's basically you're dealing with gaming but even on a lesser scale than that you mentioned apple and Apple came out with their headset and everybody was anticipating that and graphically yes the graphically it's amazing I will say that but again people aren't going to pay $4,000 uh to have two hours of battery life to you know all we can go into all the negative things but I think people don't understand that you know apple is going to put out a product and get developers interested in developing for that product uh and future products and if consumers end up buying it wow fantastic but I don't think they were even anticipating you know it being a consumer product so much even though they're going to still try to sell it that way graphics Wise It's a whole another area for designers and animators to get into if they're not and for years I've been preaching you know for people to learn unreal especially the 3D animators many of them just said oh I don't want to learn another piece of software I've got all these pieces of software that I learned now they're all wanting to learn unreal right they all realize everything has gone that way or at least a lot of stuff has gone that way I've always tried to say hey there here's another market for this design family to get into but you're going to have to learn some new technology and some things because you're going to be working with these other people it's not just dependent on you anymore it's you have to work with some you know these programmers who have their own vision of what can and can't be done that's really what it's coming down to in this in this field um and so I try to push those boundaries as much as possible and it helped that I got to work on Iron Man and had that fantasy UI stuff that changed people's perception kind of like Minority Report did and so that has helped me in the field um even though I wasn't the artist and everything but having that perspective of trying to bring entertainment type work to that field is very important and I think a lot of people uh want that and appreciate that it's a difficult Market in itself right now because there aren't there isn't another there isn't a real consumer headset we can't just go out for $1,000 doar and buy a headset that looks like the glasses you're wearing and you know have beautiful AR overlays

### Tips for Aspiring Designers [1:15:20]

on it just doesn't exist right now and you know for years I've been hearing oh in 5 years oh in seven years we're 10 years away in my opinion from being like everybody having the glasses instead of an iPhone um but I do think that we could get to the point where the iPhone plugged into a pair of glasses that isn't as heavy or big as you know the Apple Vision Pro is something that we could see with in the next 5 years maybe even in between that is you know using the phone as the actual computer system couple things to touch on here is are you familiar with who Scott Galloway is Professor G yes he's no fan of Mark Zuckerberg so he says when Zuck bought Oculus he was very happy because he's like let that boy man child invest and dump as much money into this as possible because it'll slow the rest of his operations down because thus far there's yet been a dominant headset and a killer app that everybody must have we're not that state yet and I think you're right somewhere between 5 to 10 years from now where this technology becomes so light and transparent that it just can be integrated into everything that we do and by the way I don't believe in the killer app is your operating system just like iOS I mean uh you know your Mac operating system that is the killer app is the fact that you had the ability to move Windows around right and have a graphical interface in that way it's not a specific app it's the operating system that allows you to do whatever it is that you want to do that is the killer app well Apple recently announced they're cutting production that demo requests and demo time is down for the Apple Vision Pro that does not bode well it's a fairly expensive device that I even think at $2,000 I'm not ready to buy it and I have discretionary income it's mostly because the form factor it's too big it's too heavy and I need something that I'm going to feel good wearing however I did see something recently which got me very excited again so I don't know how much of this is real but there is a Tik Tok re going around and there's a guy and he's a sneaker head and I don't know if you ever see these uh shorts or or Clips on the internet where people go to these sneaker shows and they they're buying very rare like Jordans that are like 5,000 bucks and they're negotiating and they're like I have 100 Grand I want the whole table Yeah right yeah right it's like wow this is crazy content so the young gu actually wearing a headset and he goes okay tell me about the shoe what do you want for them he goes I want 12200 and he's looking at him and he goes okay and he's wearing his Vision Pro and he's like pinching and twirling and touching he goes last auction uh sold for $900 how much you want for this shoe he goes okay well I can come down to $950 or $1,000 so they start negotiating real time he's using realtime data over like he goes okay hold on a second and he holds a shoe up presumably scanning it for something maybe it's just for fun because it look good to see if it's like the real shoe and what anything he's looking out for and perhaps he's comparing it to authenticated shoe he goes okay it's real it's good shape he goes um how about uh we do this we flip for it and he goes okay so he goes if you lose it's 900 if you win it's a thousand or something like that because he wanted it for Less right so the guy had to agreed to 950 he goes no I'll pay you 50 over if you win so he like flip for it he goes okay he goes hey Siri flip a coin what do you call he goes okay it's heads uh you win he goes uh you have venmo or cash app right this is wild this is all happening with his headset on he goes yeah so he holds up his phone to the guy's face he scans he goes okay all right you have the money and the guy checks his phone he go yep here's the shoe to me that's the future Ian oh absolutely that is the future and I can and more I mean I can tell you a lot more you know I mean there's tons of other examples of things first of all we're I'm sitting at a computer right now with at a screen right I eventually you're just it's just on you wherever you are you know uh I you know so everything that you're used to doing and then some you can have happen anywhere you are uh and you can have as big of a screen pretty much as you know your vision will allow you to have my goal is to try to have some influence on that whatever small amount that I can while I'm still alive um but uh you know it's definitely a fun area to be involved in it definitely takes the skills that I have you know learned in terms of producing and other artists work and I've learned a lot of others in terms of product management uh and how to structure Sprints and stuff like that for software development um so that's been interesting learnings for me you know unfortunately it's not there yet we you know it's not cost effective enough yet to miniaturize it to the point where uh it's a consumer product yet but I you know I've seen some interesting little consumer products they just don't have the graphic Fidelity they'll be uh Limited in terms of it's just one color or it's the color is not very good or the bit depth whatever it might be there are things like contacts they do exist they're not anything that you and I are going to access anytime soon you know the fact that there are contact lenses that have AR overlay of graphics on them even if they are just you know a green color or whatever is pretty darn amazing so if you can get it miniaturized to a contact Glens it's just a matter of time before they get it to where it looks like your glasses your sunglasses they haven't proven enough Demand yet and the manufacturing is too expensive so you know if anybody's going to that's why everybody's hopeful about Apple uh is and has been hopeful about Apple is because they have all this cash and they hope that they will make keep making that investment but I but the same thing like you said is you know developers aren't wanting to develop and I there was a at least the article I read was Apple's got to make the investment in the developer Community they have to you know they you know Facebook had to do the same thing they had to pay for projects to be made so that there was content on their you know in their store and Apple's not used to doing that they're just used to collecting the 30% they're going to have to reduce that 30% and make investments into uh the applications even though the headset won't be ready yet for Consumer Market they have to drive that market in that way or else it won't happen I think there's good news and bad news to this like I said it doesn't bode well for apple and Tim Cook right now because from what I understand he's probably getting thinking about retiring and he wants to have one more hit product post Steve Jobs Legacy that he can to make his stock go up so that he can like pull the par Legacy I don't think he can spend the kind of money he already has that would be my guess right so I think it's about Legacy to say you know I was in the man Shadow and standing on the shoulder of giants but this is my contribution the watch The Vision Pro and here's what I think I'm in a way glad that it didn't do well even though I'm an apple Fanboy true and true because I think every Giant needs a little humble pie that they've stood on this we're the best we're Apple screw you you pay us to play here's what I'm thinking couple of suggestions in case anybody from Apple or of influence can is listening to this conversation between I and myself is okay you didn't do well so you have cut your production in half that means you're sitting on technology they said that a new headset is not even being considered into end of 2025 so don't be waiting with baited breath that a newer lighter cheaper version's coming out but you know they can say one and do something else but I just want to put that out there what they should do is you know what just give them away you can afford it apple and here's where you go you don't look at consumer applications you look at people in research in engineering and education and you let them play and you help them you don't ask for your 30% you ask for 0% until they make $2 million in sales then you can ask for your 30% and you give them the support and the toolkit and the team the Brain Trust that you have to help them develop velop things when I said killer app I was thinking app but I also thinking about the word application how do I use this thing in new and novel ways that it's not just a gimmick now $4,000 is a lot but it's not a lot relative to healthcare magic leap and Microsoft realized you know that there was no consumer Market they needed to go after Enterprise market and then they both were competing for you know the military a military contract which Microsoft soft ended up winning but magic leap is still you know pushing to do Enterprise work um they're nowhere near at the level in terms of you know dollar volume that Microsoft is making because Microsoft's got a billion dollars or two billion dollars or whatever it is from the US government Enterprise is really the place to go that's where you know things are getting made I mean Shelley Peterson who uh used to work at Lockheed in the space division you know she brought in an AR company to they have these Fasteners on the rockets that were taking weeks to do with lots of Manpower and uh you put if you could put on a headset and see exactly where these Fasteners go you can cut the time in a third or even more which saves millions and millions of dollars those are the areas where investing $20,000 in five headsets and another 400,000 or whatever in an application let's say it's a half a million dollar but you're going to save $20 million it's a Nob brain those are the areas where the AR Market is right now and the VR Market yeah there are people who you can buy a you know Oculus headset for a meta headset for you know 299 3. 99 you can play games you can work out it's great it's fantastic you know you can watch videos that are 360 or80 um I think

### Audience Questions on Design Trends [1:25:50]

that's great I think it's terrific whether they made their money back or are going to make their money back no they probably aren't but it's a market and there are people who have bought it big seller during Christmas you know there's a vibrant app you know store um and of course he's trying to make you know metaverses where people can go in and do stuff and I do believe in some of that especially for Brands and you and I have talked a little bit about that at our lunch but I do believe that brands are going to have to make their own we websites of the future which are going to be Comm you know communities uh that people will go into and engage in and buy things and do lots of other things besides purchasing because it's not about purchasing it's about the community aspect of you know that brand and have and knowing who your customer is and what type of customer uh you know you appeal to and that will create word of mouth and get you more customers and whatnot um I truly believe in that eventually I think every corporation is going to have their own commun communal website that will be a metaverse and it will have to be ported to hopefully you know it's not Digi beta and beta cam again I mean beta Cam and you know VHS again it's literally like you know we can come up with one standard that all the headsets are using and or the web browsers are using or whatever there is the groups like the chaos group and others that are trying to I me the Kronos make those standards but uh I see that as you know if you were looking at the future of where some graphics areas are that incorporate design and 3D and you know programming and all of these things those are big areas where there will be need you know making avatars and all of these other you know environments things that sure AI may help out with a lot of that but you still are going to need creative people to do it let me make the pitch yeah sure because we never know who's going to listen to thisan so I'm gonna put this out there everybody who's listening to this I have a very specific Theory and point of view on this is there's this thing that every product that every new invention needs to hit critical mass whereas the more people use it the more likely more people are going to buy into it so right now developers don't want to make it because there are not enough consumer to buy and use it so there this chicken and egg problem it's like uh maybe this is not the right analog here but if I have a cell phone and no one else has a cell phone I guess that doesn't make sense because you can call landline but let's pretend like cell phones can only talk to other cell phones like a CB radio I can only talk to other people have CB radio so the more people buy it the more compelling it is for us to have it so let's get away from the selling for headsets into selling hundreds of not thousands of headsets and where I see this and speaking very biasly is from a point of view of Education because when you think about four grand it's a lot of money but when you think about it as the cost of private arts school or private school that's $24,000 a semester my son just convinced us to pay for a study abroad program for a month and it's 10 grand so relative to that ain't nothing and we have a problem in America maybe other parts of the world that our education system is failing us why not allow educator to use this for their students to create an experience I can't help but to think this I if you and I were like two really notable speakers and people were just drawn to us if we were having this conversation via Vision Pro where you can experience this in dimensions in which ways that you could not before everybody always has the besty because you can move around and you can see us interact versus a two-dimensional representation of ourselves that would be exciting to a certain group of people but we would never do that because who can afford it who's going to see it we would put all this energy and it just wouldn't happen so I say give the headsets to schools K through 12 um undergrad graduate school and give it to Educators who are pushing the envelope with storytelling with technology and let them make the ecosystem for you with you and so that now we're not talking about selling 10 or five we're talking about thousands at a time because a school has what 1,200 students 2,000 students you would kind of have adoption in ways that you wouldn't have before and hopefully what happens is you have a whole generation of people growing up as this is just second nature to them just like how their smartphones are second nature them you and I grew up when we didn't even have a cell phone in our hands and now our children don't know how to work without it I need a change in my pocket to call on a right there's no more payones right Superman has nowhere to go because there's no more phone booths for him to go and change anymore we don't understand that everybody I remember one time I was looking for directions I was using Apple Maps and then Apple's like just hold up your camera like what said you it's like turn right there go through that's pretty cool we need applications that enhance our lives and if we can have this I think education makes perfect sense education is a big one and there are a lot of people trying to do education I mean it has been proven that students will learn information so much quicker when they feel compelled and and they are interacting with what it is that's being taught versus it just you know just sitting there and watching or listening to somebody when you are interactively doing it when you are participating in it some students do like much better in biology lab because they actually are dissecting the Frog right and they're doing it it's not just learning about it in a book um and so the more that you can turn education into practical practically seeing its application you know even math like instead of just teaching people like okay here's the equation and whatever it's like how does this equation relate to Something in life that either I might need or even if I don't want to become an engineer how is an engineer using this in real life right and if you can do more education in that way that's what we're missing in schools totally everything is I'm going to tell it to you and then you have to regurgitate it back to me but there's nothing that gets them involved in how does this relate to real life even if it's something that I know I'm never going to do in life I want to see how it relates to Something in real life because maybe that'll spark some interest in me if it's multisensory you have a higher probability of hitting someone in the way that they learn some people are visual some people are is it auditory Learners oral and then some people are kinesthetic and if we're talking about ancient civilizations let's not look at in a book Let's have let's go to the pyramid and not just looking from the answer but let's walk it together let me point out do you can bring people anywhere in the world there is amazing things you can do with this technology um and there are people who have been doing it um it's just again the access to it so I think you're right giving the headset away and then getting grants for the developers to develop the actual software that will run on them that are the lesson plans or were the experiences that you're going to have you know if you were looking at where money is being spent let's say from the federal government on education that would definitely be an area where I think the money should be going to and I think that should be in cooperation with uh industry I think we're missing the boat in that because we do have the technology to do it is a little more expensive than what you know everybody would like but we could start that now we can start that process now and you know I think Apple tried to do a little bit of it when they like were giving iPads to you know to the schools and then they had their like coding application I forgot what it was called where you know was Swift based and it was showing you like you didn't have to physically code it would show you and you could do it by moving things and then you could then see how it relates to the code so you're seeing the code at the same time you're like doing the real- time manipulation we need more of that in an educational fashion totally agree so instead of looking at these avangard Technologies as Edge case use exotic applications for a handful of people let's just make it common every day that's kind of how we think and work today and the cost of them versus the retail price is different so you can afford to give away a lot of units you can send me 10 of them you can send Ian 10 let us play and let us distribute the headsets to other people so we can start developing a community you have the money you have more money than God but here's the cool thing it creates a secondary market for

### Final Thoughts and Advice for Designers [1:35:00]

where this conversation began and I think we're going to land the plane here which is if you're a creative person living in 2024 don't chase after commercial production or broadcast packages even main title design you should get into World building you should be in unreal because there are uh these Hollow or hollow space the sphere the volume all these things but if these headsets become adopted well guess what the teachers don't know how to make Mount Everest they need someone unreal to pull and replicate this they want to build a model of the human body and blood cells let them have the tools then you create this secondary market for Content creators and that's an exciting world yeah and it's not just entertainment right it's everything so that's one of the things you know that I've Loved about it is that you know it's not only entertainment but I get to bring entertainment friends with me is that you know if it's an Enterprise thing or it's something for a medical company T-Mobile or whatever it's an Enterprise thing but it needs you know people who have done design and 3D animation and all of these things and brings them into the into that world which is exciting because it's you know it just diversifies again as an individual the types of work that you can do so you're not just stuck on oh I only design broadcast work or I only do commercials or whatever no there's a whole other world out there you just have to get connected to it and maybe you are the person that's going to create that amazing new educational app or whatever it is that you know that drives it you don't have to wait for other people it is truly accessible for everybody I think even more so now you can team up with other people that have similar interests are different backgrounds you know whether programmers and UI people and ux people and you know and 3D people and whatever else it you know everything happens in a team especially in these things not everybody's going to have know every single aspect of it or at least very few are um so you got to work in a team there's give and take in the in that sit in those teams you know I try to make it now where software is not driving uh the product the design is driving the product because I'm coming from that side of the world that doesn't mean that the designers are going to get everything that they want in the design that they've come up with but you want to work with programmers that are going to try to get to as close as that as possible and not just be the no people all the time that's new for them too you know they're used to pulling off a piece of code off the internet that already exists or whatever uh and plugging it into this thing so that they don't have to spend the time to think about how to do that it's already been thought of by somebody else

### Outro [1:38:00]

well a lot of these things are new ideas new things creatives come up with new ways to do things that aren't just you know A to B finding developers that uh are fluid in that way and understand that process is important and part of the process just as much as a designer realizing that just because you can create everything doesn't mean that it's affordable and that you can you know that you have the time and the money to do it it's a balance truly is a balance in that regard why don't we leave them potentially wanting more for those of you interested in VR and AR uh we have a special opportunity here in La at least uh because augmented world is going to be this year in Long Beach I'm going to be on a panel there you should definitely go if you're in the LA San Diego Orange County or if you can come to La it's really great show it's kind of the Big Show for AR in the VR World um they do have a little you know some booths with show people showing off their Wares but the talks are really amazing the panels are really amazing uh you know you got John you got people like John Gada there uh you know uh from The Matrix who's totally into VR and AR work it's just uh I highly recommend if you're interested in that stuff to go there or see some of these things online when is that Ian uh that is June 17th through 20th I believe there's a lot of people from lots of different disciplines there which is what makes it unique you know you have entertainment you have the Enterprise people you know so it's kind of very unique to have all these you know seae people and you know all these different people mixing all together because they all just want to learn more and understand what the state of the state is in that technology all the time if you're watching this episode we'll include in the show notes below and if you're listening to be sure to check us out uh wherever listening to this podcast we'll include that code and so that hopefully you can run into Ian and geek out over the future of augmented reality virtual reality Ian Dawson as we were heading to the future we were first able to travel back to the past and thank you for allowing me a moment to kind of relive that time in place with you and with our audience it's been real fun catching up with you too Chris I really appreciate this I wanted to do this for a while with you so I'm glad we got to do it I'm Ian Dawson and you are listening to the Future