Ευχαριστώ και ευχαριστώ για ένα άλλο Mixed Media Tuesday. Για σήμερα θα δημιουργήσω ένα 3-δημιουργικό πάνω που θα δημιουργήσω το κραύσο μου και για αυτό θα παίρνω με το ρεζιν μου. Εγώ είμαι kind of obsessed lately. Είμαι αυσιασμένος και πώς εύκολο είναι να παίρνω με μόλες και να δημιουργήσω τα δημιουργικά πράγματα. Θέλω να δημιουργήσω με το μεγάλο ρεζιν με αλουμιλίδι και αυτό γιατί οτι χτυξάει σε λίγο από 10 μήνες. Δεν σημαίνει αλλά πρέπει να παίρνεις την αυσιασμία για τα σύρυνες, πάνω πάνω που δεν θέλεις να δημιουργήσεις το ρεζιν με το ρεζιν και also να μη δεις ότι θα δώσεις τα δυνατία. Θα πάρω με τη σκαλιά γιατί είμαι χρησιμοποιημένη σε ένα κέντρο πάνω που είναι αυσιασμένο και δεν μπορώ να μιουργήσω δημιουργικά στον πάνω που έχω σε κάθε κέντρο. Οι μόλες που θα παίρνω με η στιγμή από την κολλογία Βαγαμπάνδου από Σταμπεριά, θα χρησιμοποιηθώ από αυτή την κολλογία πολλές από τα πάνω, από αυτή θα χρησιμοποιηθώ από το κλογικό μεχάνισης και θα πω ένα τελειο μόνο από την ίδια κολλογία Βαγαμπάνδου και σε αυτή την κολλογία θα χρησιμοποιηθώ από αυτή την μόλω. Τώρα αυτή η μόλωση είναι πολύ δυνάρος από τα πρινάρκες, το πρώτο δυνάρκος που were made from silicone, αυτή είναι η πλαστική, but you can still use resin inside. Το resin i'm using has two parts, part A and part B and you need the same amount of each part. Τώρα δεν θέλω να χρησιμοποιηθώ από κάθε κολλογία, οπότε θα μην χρησιμοποιηθώ για να μπορώ να καταλαβαίνω το κλογικό μεχάνισης as well as the bulb and then for the rest of the product i'm going to pour in that mold that has lots of gears and i'm going to use the gears in this project and i have some leftover from a previous pour as well notice that i am using a stick to help the liquid go exactly where i want to go instead of going around the bottle and on my table so this is a really good tip i'm going to repeat the same process with the other bottle making sure that i have the same amount and now i can mix those two liquids together the moment you start staring with your wooden stick you will find out that they become quite milky and that's not too obvious in the video since i'm working on a white cup but you will see it in real life and as you mix it up it will become clear again that's when you know that you have mixed it up enough with the clear resin that cures in 24 hours you have to steer and steer to make sure that the two liquids are nice and mixed together but with this resin it is quite forgiving you don't really have to measure the parts you can just eyeball them it is really quick to mix them together plus it cures in no time so this is why i love it so much so i'm just pouring now on my clock mechanism and again i'm using my wooden stick to help the liquid go exactly where i wanted to go now once i'm happy with that one i will move on to the mold that has the bulb on top and i'm going to pour that as well and then the rest of the product that i have left over goes on the mold that is full of gears using the wooden stick to make sure that i help the liquid go exactly where i wanted to go i don't make a mess so i have quite of a clean pour however if you feel like you have some over pouring you can always use your stick and scrape it off just like i'm doing here and you will see that as i'm doing that the bulb is coming together it is curing really quickly and you will see that the mechanism with the clock starts to cure as well i'm going to leave those for 10 minutes but you can also remove them the moment they become solid white they are going to be quite pliable then so you can even cut them with scissors or just bend them around your project now i did work quite quickly and i didn't make sure that my resin went all the way to the edges you can see this isn't perfect but i'm going to still work with that i'm not going to pour any medium i'm think it is going to be okay since this is a mixed media project and nothing has to be perfect unmolding the resin is a piece of cake it's super easy to pop them out of those molds whether they are the silicone ones all the plastic ones the good thing is that now it is quite soft so if you want you can use your scissors to clean up the edges if there is some overpowering when i unmold my pieces i like to bend the mold instead of the actual piece i will also unmold the gears and you can see i did some overpowering here but this is not an issue i can easily cut out any excess do any cleanup that you need to do now that the piece is quite soft still but once it completely cures it's going to harden up so here are all the pieces that i have ready to go and i do have some extra gears bits and pieces from other pouring that i did in the previous week which i'm going to bring in on this project as well now i want to have that bulb hanging from the top of my frame and that's why i went into my husband's things and i looked for a piece of cable i'm going to use the cable at the top of the bulb and now that the resin is still soft i'm going to use my craft knife to create kind of a gap there so that i can easily secure the cable inside that hole the resin is still soft and you can see i can easily make that gap there and the cable fits just fine if you don't want to play with resin there are other ways to recreate something similar for example you can use a chipboard die-cut panel this one is by stamp area and it has tons of gears that you can use however it is the thickness of a chipboard it isn't resin in a mold which has more dimension but you can definitely recreate something similar especially if you want to work for a flatter project now in my case i will use some of the circles the inside circles and i like to use bits and pieces from things that i have in my craft room to create something completely different so these ones the inside of those gears are going to be used on my project as if they are nails so i'm sticking them down on the four corners of my frame and you will see they will get a completely different look when everything is finished and now i'm going to use jesso black jesso i will cover up completely my wooden panel and i will also cover up completely all the pieces that i created with resin and again remember that you can recreate something similar even if you don't have the same molds or if you don't want to play with resin for example you can use a real clock mechanism that you may find somewhere and you can even use a real bulb and with the magic of video editing here are all the pieces ready to go i did cover the map completely with black jesso they are nice and dry now and let's start putting things together so i have this rice paper that i used on another project this is a leftover but it is a favorite of mine i absolutely love it you really don't need to do anything when you use this rice paper for your background it has visual texture you can get some real texture by sticking it down and having some crinkles here and there i think that the design is great especially for the project that i'm going for so i did measure mainly eyeballing and then i'm going to cut it down to size i can then stick it down for that i'm using my mat medium i'm going to apply a generous amount directly on top of my wooden panel then place the rice paper on top and go over it with my brush again and mat medium i don't mind if i have some crinkles it's not perfect trust me you will see that in the finished photos and the close-ups it does have wrinkles but that really adds to the finished look now it's time to put my bulb together so for that i'm going to use my glue gun and just press them together until they are set and the fun part about playing on a glass mat is that you can easily clean it from any type of medium so you see here i do have some melted silicone but i can easily peel it off now i have my bulb ready to go with the cable attached and i'm going to bring in that chipboard with the die-cut gears and i will try to find a gear that fits on this cable and i know that it works on this one i just want to have something at the top where this is going to hang from just to make it look more interesting so you see here i can have it like that however i thought that this gear was quite small so i'm going to switch to another one which is bigger and that's the one that i will be working with at the finished project just keep in mind that not everything comes to me super quickly i just play around with things i audition different elements for my projects but i always do video editing so it looks really effortless and quickly how i put things together but trust me i don't do a project from start to finish in just 20 minutes now finally it's time to create my composition and stick everything down you can stick them down by using the ultra thick gel medium you can also use any strong glue and since i had that glue gun on my table ready to go i thought why not use that it is quicker and simpler so you will see that i'm going to mix both those ways in different pieces in terms of composition i will try to have kind of a diagonal from one corner to the other all my elements plus the bulb hanging from the top i also had this key from a previous pouring from another mold so i thought it would be fun to use that on my clock as well now i want the bulb to be raised so i need some gears to hold that at the top i'm going to use my scissors to cut the cable and i will decide how long i want that cable to be i'm just auditioning again and again trying to decide what looks pleasing to the eye i don't want everything to completely overlap but i still want to have something connecting all the elements on my project and this is where that gear i picked earlier is going to go at the top of my frame so that the bulb is hanging from there of course this is not the correct color i'm going to cover it up completely and make it black and you can see me here being lazy using an acrylic black marker instead of using my black jesso but that really doesn't matter so my chipboard gear goes in place and now it gives a little hole for holding that cable and of course that's where i realized that the cable is still white so i need to cover it up with jesso and i'm going to place it down again i used my hot glue gun here now everything is black on black and you can't really tell the details but the finish touch where i will be doing the dry brushing is going to bring everything to life so i'm going to continue with the composition again keeping in mind that i want to create kind of a diagonal from one corner to the top right corner so i'm going to play around with the rest of the gears that i have on hand and try to decide where i want those to go and now finally it's time to do the coloring you will see that nothing comes so natural you can go again and again on top of what you are coloring until you are happy with the result i'm starting with a mix of yellow and off-white vanilla color this is acrylic paint by the way i am using the vivace line by stamperia just because it has a shine finish on it and i'm going to start coloring the bulb the main bulb with that now one thing that you can do is instead of using the resin that i worked with you can use clear resin it does try in 24 hours but the next day you will have a clear bulb that looks pretty much the same as the real one however i'm too impatient to do that in the previous day i just have to go ahead and do the idea that i have on my mind at that specific time and i can never work with clear resin but just keep that in mind so first i added my first layer then i went on top of it with vanilla now i didn't like it again so i'm going with yellow again on top of that don't be afraid of color just play layers of acrylic paint one on top of the other didn't hurt anyone until you are happy with the result you can always use black gesso as an eraser and start from the beginning now here i'm going to use copper metallic acrylic paint and this has a lovely shine on it you can go with wax if you like to do that i'm going to do dry brushing at the detail of the lamp i'm making sure that my brush is completely dry and i will go over the lamp as well as the rest of the elements this technique works like magic bringing all those details into life it makes you look as if you know exactly what you are doing but trust me just the brush going over those elements just make sure that the brush is completely dry and you don't load it too much with acrylic paint but again try to don't be afraid if you add too much paint and it doesn't look good then just go over it with black gesso and start over trust me it's a really fun technique and you will have so much fun now i'm going to bring in another metallic color and this is silver again i'm going to use the same brush making sure that it is completely dry and i will go over it here and there adding those details on the gears notice that in this project i didn't do a lot of work on the background i was really happy with how that background looked the rice paper did all the work for me and i didn't even add splashes which is kind of strange for me and that's where i didn't like how the cable is looking so i'm going back on top of that doing the dry brushing technique but this time with black gesso and i thought that it would be better to go over the light bulb with that copper color as well to make it look warmer now i will touch up the frame as well just again by using the those two colors the silver and the copper one i am going around it not adding too much again just the touch dry brushing the gear there at the top of the bulb as well as bringing all those details on the frame to live you will see that those nails on the corners do come to live the moment i go over them with the brush and if you want to make your bulb look more realistic you can go over it with a glaze i'm using here just my glossy accents which i'm going to apply with a brush one of the questions that i get a lot is how did i come up with that idea now i like to start from a quote and the quote for this project was so many ideas so little time which is kind of my daily problem since i have so many things that i want to create and i don't have enough time especially not enough time to video edit everything that i want to make so in this project i go mainly with the quote so the quote says so many ideas and the idea is represented with the bulb so little time and you can see all the mechanisms you can leave it as it is or if you want you can actually add the quote i'm going for a quote i always like to add one on my mixed media projects whether they are convases or are journals and for that i'm using the retro alphabet by waffle flower it has been released a couple of months ago and it is my absolute favorite and my go to alphabet lately and i didn't video edit that part where i am playing with the letters to see what is more pleasing to the eye you can go up and down if you want or you can go in a completely straight line which is what i chose to go with for this project i completed the quote by printing out the rest of the phrase on my printer and you can see here some close-up photos on the finished project it's so dimensional it's nice and shiny you can see all the details and i'm absolutely in love with it this is going directly on my wall of my craft room you will find the full list of everything i used the link down below the description area here on youtube as well as on my blog i hope that you have found today that you got inspired thank you all so much for visiting don't forget to like the video to subscribe if you haven't done so already and make sure to leave me a comment thank you all so much and i'll see you all next time


For this last session is David Zimmerman and he is an internet marketing consultant who specializes in search. He has several years experience working with B2B companies, especially manufacturers. He started his own consultancy, Reliable Acorn LLC, after working in several agencies. David's core belief is that all marketing should be measured. Measured marketing is more effective and less expensive. There's no excuse in David's mind for marketing efforts whose results are not measured. So without further ado, Mr. David Zimmerman. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for coming today. It is the last session of the day and bowling will begin shortly. So yeah, my name is David Zimmerman. I'm an internet marketing consultant. I've been on my own for about three years now. I started Reliable Acorn then. Before that, I was working in various agencies around town. I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. And while I was working with these agencies, I kind of gained a reputation. It was actually a good reputation because what they would do is they would give me all the difficult clients. The clients that people didn't want to work with because they were unreasonable or difficult or just plain mean sometimes. Oh, just give them the David. He'll handle it. Now I gained this reputation because for some reason I was able to actually hold on to some of these clients. Sometimes I was able to resurrect the relationship with these clients and that ended up getting me more difficult clients. Which led to job security because people wanted to keep me around, which is actually pretty nice. But I think the secret to being able to hold on to and work with really difficult clients was one word that I would use that a lot of people were not willing to do. This is a very scary word to use with clients even under the best circumstances. You know, it's like we're told everywhere around us the customer is always right and then somehow it's wrong to say to a client, no. But sometimes it's really about the money and we're afraid to say no to a client because we're afraid they're going to take their money somewhere else to someone who's going to say yes. So we're scared to say no to our clients. Now you might not be working on your own, you might be working in an agency and the same fear could be true. Your boss tells you to do something and you're afraid to tell them that's not a great idea because they're the boss, they're the expert, they should know. Or you don't want to say no to your boss because well, you got to pay the mortgage next month and you don't want to take their money somewhere else to someone else's pocket. Saying no is a scary thing. But I'm here to tell you saying no to your clients will help them. It will help you and is well worth your time. We'll start with the basics. Saying no will help your clients. Have you seen the oatmeal, right? The comic How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell. This would be hilarious if it weren't so true. One time a client called me and they said David, David, I want to add my puppy dog to every page of my website. Okay, why do you want to add your dog to every page of your site? Because my dog is really cute. I have no doubt your dog is cute. But how will that help you get more plumbing customers? Well, you know, I just thought about it the other day. Is this a brainstorm? Nevermind. You see what I did there? I said no. And I ended up helping them. Now, as a small plumbing company, they might not have had an unlimited marketing budget, say, at least. And even though they might not have taken a lot of time and effort to put the dog on every page of the site, that time and effort could have been better spent doing something else that is more productive later. Now, even if you're working for a large company, there's going to be limitations. Maybe if you're working at a large enterprise company, the limitations is developer hours. And if you come with an idea that your developers don't have time to implement or that you can get them to implement, another idea later you needed to implement, they won't implement because you've already used up your time. Saying no can help your clients out. A few months ago, a client called me, David, David, our competitor has 72 followers on Instagram. How many do we have? We have none because we don't have an Instagram account. Oh my gosh, we must be on Instagram. Stop everything and we need an Instagram account because we need 72 followers as well. Well, okay. Side note, how many of you follow a personal injury law firm on Instagram? Okay, that's what I thought too. So we said, listen, we could spend your time and your effort developing a strategy for Instagram, growing your followers, and maybe one day we'll have 73 followers on Instagram. But your AdWords account is only limited by the amount of money you can spend because every click is really expensive, your personal injury law firm. So why don't we take the money from your Instagram and put it into AdWords and you will actually get more customers rather than maybe possibly get a customer from Instagram? Oh, that's a great idea, David, here's more money. You see what I did there? I said no and I helped the client out. No helps your clients and that's why we need to be sure to tell our clients no. The second reason we need to say no to our clients is because saying no helps ourselves.  Like I said, I had a little reputation of dealing with the difficult clients and I was working at an agency and I was on the phone with someone who was a little disappointed. As we spoke, as we were speaking, they became a little bit agitated. I tried to listen a little bit closer. They started to lose a little patience. I tried to suggest some possible solutions and they related me to an orifice on my backside. I was really surprised it went there and I found myself staring at the phone in shock until my boss stormed in my door and pantomined to me, you hang up the phone. I didn't know what to do, I was paralyzed. You know, if I hung up the phone with the angry client, that's done. If I don't hang up the phone, I lose the job. Well, I hang up the phone. Boss leaves, storms into his office, calls the client. And I think, where can I find a box to put all the stuff from my desk? Because I'm going to need one soon. Until I heard my boss say, you do not get to speak to any of my employees in that fashion. You are no longer working with our company. You are no longer allowed to speak to David directly ever again. I will personally handle the transition of you away from our company. You see what he did there? He said no. And that's why I would like to work for him again. We have lunch every month. Saying no helps yourself.  Right? Nobody does.  It's okay to say no to help yourself. Now, thankfully not every client is quite so aggressive. You know, but even the most friendly clients can be problematic. When I went out on my own, it was scary. It had people coming to me from all over, willing to pay me just a little bit because it's all they had for all that they needed. It was really tempting. I'm just starting. I'm scared of where the next paycheck is coming from. But I realized if I take a really high-demanding client for pennies and the dollar, I'm ending up working for less than a minimum wage. I'm not going to enjoy what I do. And frankly, just as a one-person shop, I don't have the resources to help someone that small. They need a larger company who can scale. I can't scale me. So I decided to turn down those clients. It was scary, but I had to say no for my own good. So my peace of mind, what I wanted to see out of my company, what would make me enjoy working for myself more. I'm glad I said no. The thing is, we were just talking about this. If you say yes to anybody, no matter how little they have, you are just a commodity. You are suddenly competing against Odesk for any old fool who will say yes for a price. The next thing you know, you are making even less money. And here's the secret. If you say no, you are now the expert, and you can charge more. You're not just the person who jumps and drops everything and builds an Instagram account because they said they had to have an Instagram account, even though it wouldn't have done a darn bit of good for them. Saying no helps yourself, and it is totally okay to help yourself. Now, let's just pretend that I'm such an amazing speaker that I totally convinced you you must start to say no.  Well, you'll notice there's something in common with all the ways I say no. Don't really say no. I give people options. We can do this, or we can do that. We could put a puppy dog on your page, every page of your site, or we could wait for something that will actually help you. You could cuss at me, or you could work for somebody else. Give options. I have a client that redesigned the site in two weeks after a six month long process. We will finally launch this site. They want everything on their homepage. It has to have a video. It has to be in parallax. It must have two slider widgets. It must be everything. How do I say no? You can't have everything on your homepage. Well, the other thing we have to do when we say no to our clients is support our ideas with data. Do you know, dear client, that Google says you have less than three seconds or someone is not going to wait for your site to load? That's less than three seconds. That's not as long as your website loads in three seconds, people will wait. Data won't wait to three seconds. And if you have a video of this, of that, and everything else on your homepage, it might be the best homepage ever, but nobody is going to wait to see it. Supporting the idea with data helps us couch our nose in a productive way that makes them see the benefit, which ends up helping them out. A few years ago, when our phones looked like this, remember that? A client called. He's like, I have to have a mobile website. You don't need a mobile website. No, no, David, somebody wants to sell me a mobile website. I must have a mobile website. We looked in Google Analytics. They were getting a couple visits from mobile, but not a single conversion in months from mobile. So maybe people were visiting mobile, but it wasn't converting. So it wasn't really worth it in my mind. But I have this rule. We could try anything, but we're going to measure it. So I said, listen, let's try this. We're going to have a little pop-up when a mobile visitor comes. It's going to be a little pop-up say, hey, give us a call. And we'll track every one of those phone numbers. And we'll show you at the end of a couple months. Ain't nobody want to talk to you. Ain't not worth your time to build a mobile site. A week later, we started building a mobile site. Right? Because I supported my idea with data, and it showed that I was wrong. Because that's another benefit of really kind of reinforcing this idea of data. It prevents us from just saying no. I've been working volunteering with kids lately. There's a couple portraits they drew of me. I don't beat them, so I don't know why I have a black eye, but whatever. You know, when you're working with kids, it's easy to kind of get in this rut of saying no. Can I do this? Can I do this? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It just cascades. And next thing you know, you're saying no to... You can't go to the bathroom. Well, you know, you can't say no to that, right? But if we check ourselves by giving options and supporting our ideas with data, that becomes protection for our clients to make sure that we're saying no in a productive fashion. So maybe you want to start saying no. Maybe you know now how better to say no to your clients, but you know what we need to do? We have to practice. About a year ago, I decided it was time for me to get healthy, so I signed up to start taking Krav Maga. And this is me being tossed around doing Krav Maga. You'll notice I have a big smile on my face because it is a lot of fun to be tossed like that. This is Paul. He's a nice guy, despite the fact that he has totally tossed me around. You know, when I started doing Krav, it was a little scary. I remember one class instructor say, okay, today we're going to learn choke hold defenses. That's totally cool. Like, what do you do? Someone tries to choke you. And he starts to say, it's really easy. You put your hand up, tilt your head, twist your body, break the hold, clear it with your arm, move to the side. Done. And you can do that. That's easy. Exactly. So my partner stood against me and he goes up and he goes, all right, ready? Go. The partner puts his hands on my throat. I freak out. Nobody has ever put their hands on me like that before. Now, this guy's name is Herb. He's smaller than me. He is the nicest guy in the world.  So I think Herb saw the terror in my face, backed off, asked if I was okay. Put his hands on the throat again. A little bit more presence in mine. Okay, I think I did this, and this, and I twist. Yeah, all right. So I did it again. Now I can do it. I don't even think about it. Put your hands on my throat. Please don't. Put your hands on my throat. I will just do it by reaction at this point, because I practice. The same thing goes for saying no. So let's practice saying no. And for the benefit of the people next door, they need to hear us. We need to empower them as well. So let's talk about hypotheticals that you may have encountered before. Let's practice saying no. Hey, I got this really tiny little website change. Can you just make it for me really quick? I'm sure it will not take much time. No. Here we go. Thank you. Winner, winner. All right, there. Thank you. See, exactly. No. What kind of website design is this? My kid could do better than that. Why am I paying you any money at all?  No. Hey, you know what? I know we're supposed to launch a website tomorrow, but here are 10 pages of changes that we really need to have done before the end of the day. No. Some of you have encountered these, I see. These do come from real life, right? Hey, you know what? This is my favorite. I have no money to pay you now, but if you build this for me, I will bring you a lot of business later. Hell no, yeah. Yeah. But we don't always have to say directly no, right? The little website change. Hey, you know how important is this that we make it right now? Okay. Maybe it's not that important, but we talk to them about their options. The person who is just furious with your design. Hey, you know what? Can you give me some specifics and I'll be happy to help you? Or maybe another alternate is here is a phone number for another local web design company, your competitors. Maybe they can help you better than me. Yeah. You know, or maybe it's, you know, I learned this at WordCamp Greenville. Let's save that for round two. Was that you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's save that for round two. You know, or the free, well, there's sometimes, you know, with free, no is the only thing you can say. Right. When the mortgage company takes good intentions, I will be happy to take them from you. In the meantime, thanks for nothing. Yeah. Point is, you don't always have to say it so bluntly, but saying no will help your clients. Saying no will help you. And it's probably the most important thing you're not telling your clients. Right. Thank you. You know, do you have any questions or hypotheticals you want to run through? Do we need to practice any? Yeah. The first doggy photo at WordCamp Greenville, that was the puppy that the plumber won on their way. No. No. No. It was a Pomeranian. And, yeah, it was, we actually had the oatmeal comic posted in her office when they asked, so someone took a picture of the Pomeranian and stuck it on the poster. Luckily, the client didn't come by and see it. To your point, no is not always, and you can tell someone no with tax. Right. And the definition of tax, of course, at least I wanted to go to hell in such a manner that they look forward to the trip. Yeah. Yeah. I did it yesterday. I have pages with the, have like a paragraph on each page. Yeah. And I, so I asked, well, why do you want me to do, well, it makes more sense. I said, well, they're not going to go to this page because it's out of context of the whole strategy of your ministry. Right. Well, we need to have more pages. Yeah. Why do you feel like you need to have more pages? Well, we're going to rank more if we have more pages. I said, well, where in the world did you hear that? Well, I read it somewhere. Well, Somewhere is my favorite source for SEO advice. Right. Yeah, exactly. This is your best page of content because somewhere Yeah. Yeah. This is the right thing to do. Yeah. I can add those many points to your menu, your strategy menu. Yeah. Under strategy at some points, they can come to that sub-strategy on that page and, but it keeps the pages happy. Oh, you can do that? Absolutely. Wow. And, you know, I'll have it done in 15 minutes. Yeah.  Right. Made them, told them no because it was a disaster idea, but made them happy. Yeah. And helped them out. You know, because Google's not going to share a page with 100 words on it. Exactly. Or even 200, right? If you're just putting a paragraph, Google will be like, well, what do I care about this page? And now, no one's going to find them. Yeah. You know, at all. So, especially if that's their page that's driving their traffic. Yeah. That's your point about giving the customer options. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even start rewriting the content on all the rest of your pages. Right. And, oh, and she was, well, we have it done, then we just come back to you and we're going to pay you to change that, right? And I'm like, absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. I mean, that ended up being really, really good because now the client not only avoided a disaster, but now they have a reason to go and actually help themselves out all from standing up to them rather than becoming a desk and now you're just another person who just makes changes to whatever they say, right? They're paying you to be the expert and now they respect you as the expert and that's the benefit of this. Yeah. Right. I have fired clients before who want me to be their pencil and it's not just for their own good.  One of the advantages of being on my own is being able to pick my clients, right? Right. Right. I'd rather go have no clients than a company than do that. And I found myself and the mobile example was exactly what I did. I was so used to telling that client, no, that I almost knowed myself into a bad decision, right? And that's why I have to check myself because otherwise, just like, you know, you get in this habit of nose and it's really, especially if they kind of trust you after a while and if David says, no, I won't do it, well, I need to check myself, right? And so that's why, that's how I learned to make sure I don't just get too full of myself. Yeah. Yeah, toys. Yeah. Any other hypotheticals? Any other challenges with saying, no, how can I encourage you? I want you to be like, go home and say, no, right? You guys might not be WordPress experts after this weekend, but you guys know more than the people who aren't here. You know? And that means you've got something valuable that's worth using now. So next time your boss, your client says something contrary to what you've heard this weekend, use it. You are the expert. Use it. All right. Thank you guys. I hope to see you get an eye to bowling. Have a great weekend. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha.


I got married and I was accepted to the University of New Mexico and finished in newspaper journalism with my major and then was drafted, joined the Navy and was a naval officer for four years and then in 1975 moved to Hollywood to see if I could make it out there and my first job was as a production manager at the ABC television network and there I got a job as a producer and continued and assigned myself a job of directing an episode one time and continued in producing and directing. George was scarfing shrimp at this meeting and this guy says hey George the ocean call they're running out of shrimp. The last producing I did was with Seinfeld. I was also the director for five years and then after that I only wanted to direct so I directed Alan DeGeneres's television show. I did a short series of Mary Tyler Moore and that was good and user radio was a lot of fun. The cast was good and the Seinfeld was terrific too.


Narciso Rodriguez. I'm a fashion designer. I make dresses. I make shoes. I design accessories. Is there like a, yeah it's a bit of a crazier scene. Maybe we can turn up Narciso's microphone. Sorry. It's a sign. I'm very passionate about my work. I'm very impressed with my fellow award winner here, whose work I admire so much. I feel humbled to be in the presence of these guys. Wow. Should we pass this one? Is that me? Maybe we should pass that. Okay. I don't know. Maybe it's me. I'm good. Let's see if Andrew is my sparking and if not we'll pass this one. This will become the talking step. My name is Andrea Cochran. I'm a landscape architect and I have a small office in San Francisco. We're 14 people and our work really explores the intersection of architecture, art and landscape and tries to blur the boundaries between all those things. Our work, our studio is 14 people and it really sort of thinks about half that work is high in residential work. The other half is affordable housing and parks and wineries and hospitality. So it really is a very rich diversity of work and what I found is that one part of the work feeds the other and we can try things out on the residential projects and then have them built on the other institutional projects that allows us to create a more rich set of materials to work with. I'm Robin Standerfer. I own a company with my husband called Roman and Williams. It's an interior design firm but it's really a practice that makes things. We make spaces and objects and experiences and that's what we love to do and a real focus of the way that we approach interior design as a place to engage people and the spaces are stylistically diverse. They're about context and about being relevant to the client and the place they are on the planet and to always engaging the story, everybody's story in all of their spaces and I hope to get to tell you more about those spaces tonight. I'm going to start with some of the questions that I think the teens asked a lot of the designers this afternoon. So my first one is, do your parents understand what you do? Or how do you explain it to them? I would say most of the time, no. They have actually asked me repeatedly, what exactly is it that you do and how does this apply to search engines? But no, I think at certain points I've been lucky enough to work on a lot of different projects and some of them resonate with different audiences which has been interesting to see. But yeah, I think there's a bit of an eclectic portfolio. So some of the projects are really quite apparent and approachable and some of them are a bit more esoteric. But I think when we talk about both art and design, there's this question of answering questions versus asking questions and I think early on in my career design was this is like an amazing Brian Eno sound situation. Kind of enjoying it actually. Can you hear that? It's kind of magical. Anyway, at certain points I think art was defined as kind of a practice of asking questions and sorry, art being asking questions and design being art that answers questions or being kind of more targeted, having a client is another thing. So I think at certain points being able to break it down and say here are my motivations, here's why I do this, and here's the output and how it's applicable to this and that. It starts to make more sense to them. Can I check? Sure. No, it was difficult for my parents to understand why it would want to go into a career in the arts or design. I mean, I think for them, the law or doctor would be a wiser choice. But it took a long time. I remember even sort of midway into my career, I was working at Calvin Klein. I was one of the best design jobs in America.  And then over time when I started my career, they understood that whatever it was that I was doing was working, so they then understood what was going on. I don't know if my parents really understood. I went into landscape architecture because I wanted to, well actually by accident, I wanted to be an artist and they told me that being an artist was not, that wasn't going to fly, I had to be able to support myself. And so I became a landscape architect kind of by default because then I thought, well maybe I'd become a veterinarian because that was like a real thing. It was like natural science and that was the other thing I was interested in. And then I became a landscape architect just by accident in college by finding a class and someone talked about how those things related. And suddenly the interest in art and science became something that I could really do. And I think for them, I think they always thought of landscape architecture. Planting trees or digging holes are not like, not that it was a designed field. So, but then after a while they kind of got it, but it was, you know. Well no, just to start with that answer. But I think that, you know, when you make spaces and my parents are no different than I think a lot of people, they think of the end experience, which is sort of amazing. But the process of making the space seems completely strange and sort of magical that you go from that initial sketch to sometimes, in some cases three or four years, until you actually have a finished product. And that's a long time. I mean, think of fashion. There's so many things that are much more compressed about creating, going from a design to a finished product. And construction architecture spaces tends to be slow. I think that what is wonderful, my parents live in New York City. They get to experience a lot of our spaces. So I'd love to see the results. But the process seems, you know, I try to take them through it, but it's, I think, seems completely mystical to them. And I've sort of just come to accept that. I love that. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you. What I find really interesting about your answers to is that each of you, I think, has within your explanation has come up with an explanation about what design is, which in some ways are some of them are similar, but I think go with each of your fields. And I have one more childhood question, and then we'll move on from some Miss America questions to some other ones. But what did you do at an early age, and we don't have to go in order if people just want to jump in, what made you realize that design was the right path for you, even if you were dealing with parents who didn't understand or in circumstances where people didn't quite know what it is that you were aspiring to do, how did you figure out that that was the thing you needed to do, and how did it sustain you on a particular path? Ladies first. That's better? Yes. Well, you know, I think that when you love something and you have to look at its essence, I think for me design is about making things, and the essence of making things is something you love, and if you love it and you're devoted to it, I think that it sustains you. It sustains you through difficulty and not being sure or certain about which exact path to take. I think that, whether it's my relationship with parents or friends or education, always loving that sense of creation, always being inspired by making things, and whether that's about color or shape or technique or detail, that the essence of that, I think, can really keep you feeling rooted and keep a foundation that's very strong, that drives you through a lot of different challenges that any field has, but an artistic field, it's challenging to harmonize the administrative, the financial, and the artistic together, and I think that a lot of design fields, certainly a lot of the ones represented on this panel have those challenges, and I kind of love those challenges, but they're always something you have to persevere and work through every day in macro and micro ways. You know, I look at it backwards, because I didn't figure out what I was doing until I was kind of doing it. I was an adult, but in looking back, it's kind of no surprise what I am. I mean, my favorite thing to do was play in the woods and build forts. So, I mean, that's the landscape architecture seems kind of... And the other thing I love to do was, I like to play with the Barbie dolls, but I didn't care about the Barbie doll, I care about making furniture for the Barbie doll, or making clothes, or, you know, it was all about the creative process. So those are the two things, sort of a polar opposites, that, you know, build tree forts, be in the woods, and then designing things, and so in retrospect, looking back, it's not a surprise, but at the time, none of those things, and it certainly didn't lead me to the career path. It just, in retrospect, I realized, oh, I was kind of primed for it the whole time. Okay. Robin's point is so true. I mean, it's, for me as well, it was about making things, creating things, the inspiration, putting that into, I don't know, a building, a box, a shape of painting, and persevering, even when you sort of, you're inexperienced at what you're doing when you're young, and you're sort of testing the waters, trying to figure out what you want to do. You know, that paper, the scissors, the collages, cutting the fabric, was so meaningful to me that it sort of pushed me in the direction of fashion. Yeah, I never made a decision. I'm still waiting to make a decision. I think you have to know it's always been about creating things and making stuff, and what I've really liked about it. Oh, yeah. Oh, is that working now? Is this better? Can you hear me now? Cool. This is much better. Yeah, so for me, I never really made a, never really made a specific decision, and it's always been about making stuff, and what I really love about my discipline, if you can even call it that, is I get to do lots of different types of things, which means tackling new challenges and constantly kind of discovering and experimenting. So for me, it's always been about being output focused, but focusing on the journey as an exploration and trying to find new pathways and new applications of technologies. Erin, you mentioned when you were talking about your initial description of design about the idea of a client, which is one of the things that we talked about when sort of differentiating between art and design, that idea of functionality and a client. And I'm imagining that things are very different in terms of what Roman and Williams are doing or what Andrea's doing regarding a relationship with a client versus what Narciso or you are doing. So do you, any of you have an idea, so often for some of your work, you have a client in mind from the get-go, whereas with you, it might be different, but do you often think of a client when you're doing your work, a particular type of person? Is that often? Always, I mean, I think it's the most, it's like a rule to know who you're designing for. It's like the basis because if, and I think good design is built for people to use, it's practical. And so it starts with knowing your customer. That's a, I design for many women. I always, I mean, people designers, fashion designers sometimes bend themselves into these like kind of idealistic women who have downtown girls, chic girl, uptown lady, and I've never really been interested in that, I've been really interested in dressing women of all ages, everywhere, all body types. It's what I find to be really inspiring. So, I hope I answered your question. Anyone else want to chime in on your relationship to fashion? Yeah, because it's really about people. So, you, if you, I think, take your head out of the idea of a specific client, but think about this idea about this communal experience that if we hope, if we're successful, that engages a lot of different kinds of people, different ages, different demographics, right? I think that a great space, a great hotel, a great restaurant, although sometimes it becomes super popular, becomes kind of niche, and can be for a certain kind of group of people, or it's expensive, so that starts to kind of take certain people out of the ability to kind of go there and engage with it. But one thing we really love in a place like, let's say, the Ace Hotel is it's very much about sharing. You'll see someone there, one day I came in, I saw, and then four skateboarders come in, and a whole range of people, and that's when you do, like, I get goosebumps, you know you succeeded. Because people just are loving the experience, and it's not about only kind of making one kind of honey, do you know what I mean? It's like there's a lot of different bees, and that's, I think, a great thing about when design can really be inclusive, and not exclusive, it's at its highest hum. Because everybody's on? Can you guys hear in the area? Okay. Oh, I need a mic, okay. For us, I think it's really interesting. Our work is a little, I guess, schizophrenic that way because when we work for our residential clients, it's really about making a place kind of like, with you, where it's really identifies who that person is, and is there something about them or references something that's really powerful to them to express in the landscape. But on the commercial or institutional projects you're making places for lots of different people and it's very public. And on those, it's been interesting transition for me to kind of identify who they are, but I think what it comes down to is making really comfortable places where people feel that it's scaled appropriately and they're comfortable in terms of shade and sun, and you know, I think when you think about good design, then it draws people in and there's enough activity so that there's places for people to be alone or in groups, and I think they start to be drawn to it because they're comfortable there. For those of you who design spaces, are you ever surprised with what someone does with a space when you're done with it? Sometimes usually as part of the process discovering that narrative together, whether residential or commercial. You know, you're tending to, let's see the standard hotel, we had a lot of space that we weren't allowed to program but you were allowed to do something public so we made a little ice skating rink. And there was time, it was a long project, but there was time to kind of figure out how to again make this corner which is a very kind of prominent corner in New York City, right, on the 13th in Washington be active and not pass it. So, and also people are just like, how did that get here? I mean really, I have to say I think the best design is sort of unselfconscious and not sort of heavily purposeful and just sort of appears. I mean certainly we're all in the background but I think that it's again strongest. You're not forcing it on people and people are allowed to engage in it and enjoy it so I think people, yeah they do, to answer your question they do make more of it but you've created almost in a way like you've put those breadcrumbs there and then they come and sort of track them and then the temperature raises. As a landscape architect, I don't think anybody should become a landscape architect if they're control freak so our spaces are never look, I mean not never, but in 10 years they're completely different than they look and what we designed for day one is never what it's going to be later. I mean things happen, trees die, plants grow, there's a sort of evolution and it's like there's never one moment in time that it's the right moment so it's part of a continuum so yeah a lot of stuff happens and sometimes it's like and you have maintenance people and unfortunately in this country that's not the most I'm like you're up where it's really a profession that people study and learn a lot about so it's really something about evolution. I know Erin and so you do things very you know in different fields but what about your control freak or when do you have to let go of something? A lot of the projects that I work on are all about embracing chaos, a lot of the collaborative creativity projects like the Johnny Cash project or the sheet market is all about people hopefully you know breaking the rules but getting people to work together and actually highlighting their individuality and their creativity in this platform. I worked on a project at the Tate Modern called Exclusive Forest which was all about evolving animations and it was really an experiment in and of itself how do you make an interface that encourages people to create their own rules and then break those rules so no I'm really excited by embracing that. Sure I think all designers are control freaks now you have to you create something if you sketch it you have to bring it to life you have to see it through the production chain I'm meticulous about the way things fit how they're made what they're lined in yeah I guess control freak I would love to hear about for each of you in your own projects if there's one piece or one piece of work that you might identify with that was sort of a turning point for you in terms of being an expression of your individuality or in a professional way was kind of a key turning point that was a little Miss America E I know. Someone ready to go first? Aaron was. This is probably not the answer you're looking for but I feel like honestly each project has represented has been a turning point and kind of a constant repivoting and experimenting I think the a project I worked on a long time ago called the sheet market was one of the first experiments I did with Amazon Mechanical Turk and it was very much the thing that got me interested in collaborative creativity and getting people to work together to make something I think since then I've become a bit more optimistic about the future of humanity and it's the role of technology in that process so I think there was a bit of a pivot from more critical to more optimistic but it also was a serious pivot in really thinking about the potential more utopic applications of some of these technologies remaining critical and hoping to encourage that kind of discourse because it's important. It's very true, I think for me since I started to work or sketch or design I think it's been process of evolution and one season we start I start thinking of one thing that doesn't really come to life until two seasons later but there are different there are different moments that have just I think my career or my work in people's minds press moments the wedding dress that they did those moments I think bring your work to a broad audience but then there's the evolution your personal journey which is the best part, the hardest part the sweetest part the part for me that's the most fulfilling I think it is an evolution and I think for me starting my own office 15 years ago was a big moment where I could sort of express myself as an individual designer and not be part of a partnership or a firm but I think the big thing for me too has been editing and trying to edit edit edit and to get to the minimum that you can edit where it's not boring and get to that point where you feel like I think with your younger design you want to add stuff in and try new things and I think when you get to a point where you're comfortable you can take stuff away and feel good about it I think that's sort of a career point where you feel confident that we don't need that, we don't need that and you can be your own editor I think that to me was a critical point and continues to be Oh, it's just so interesting to listen to everybody's answers I like going last I think that it certainly is there's two parts one is that the experience I think that I have with Spaces and I've talked about that before but that experience is sort of so important and that's why I think that Steven and I are very focused on stylistically not being interested in doing one thing doing high, doing low doing a lot of different kinds of things because I think that then it becomes about your engagement first with process which is personal and extraordinary I think that again going back to making things why I do this is because I love that whole sequence the challenge of that process and touching every material and visual color and every shape and all the conversations and everything that goes into that although it can be overwhelming and intense and infuriating and really extraordinary and satisfying but then so that's one part of it and that's a very in a way private part of it because like going back to the question about family no one even as much as we're partners and we're a couple it's very personal that design moment when you see that color you see that shape and then you can see people react to it and it's the own experience sometimes you get that they'll connect with the experience you had but often it's completely independent and that tension between yours and then giving it away is I think one of the most satisfying and amazing things about doing this excuse me are you satisfied when you look at some of your older work when you do you think it's critical or would you redesign it or do you think it's just right the way it was no I mean I think especially working with technology it's really challenging because technology is changing very quickly and it's very difficult to archive a lot of the stuff and it's very difficult to look at it with the eyes that you had when you created it in the context that it existed I think about what they meant to me at that point in time and now realize that they won't have that meaning to any of the viewers but that doesn't bother me there's new stuff to do yeah some things could always be made better I think when you I mean I work on deadline too so sometimes I have no choice but to end it and then you could look back about NAW for out of sleeve but I don't know I think it is for me it is the process that always takes me to the next season so I look back sometimes fondly sometimes scared but it's the foundation of what I do so I have to look back okay sorry we're working with two mics here I have a couple projects that are kind of favorites that I look back on and I'm really proud of and I feel like they have the timeless quality and then I have others that I think they were fine for the time but I've moved on and I can see where I've moved on from there but there's a couple that I'm still very proud of oh I don't know there's always there's always little things you want to change and with spaces they keep living and they also do there's operators and they have a life of their own so you go in and people have added things you can like those things sometimes they surprise you and you love them sometimes you can't stand them and so I think that um but it is it's cumulative I think as each thing happens you realize that that was influenced by something else that you did before and then that leapfrogs is something that you do next and there are always a conversation between all of them but when every time I think something opens as it were like usually I mean residential projects are unique that's a different kind of experience but public spaces which we do a lot of you know there's never seems to be enough time or enough money or enough anything so there's always a moment of difficulty kind of let go you give it away and it's sort of like a child it has a life of its own and you're on to the next one so then don't look back, yes check um either in your own design category or beyond it what inspires you to create today and is there something that you're working on today that you think is pointing you in a future direction can think for a minute I don't know if you've heard that Narciso said it was a secret I mean I think there's there's countless new technologies we live in an incredibly exciting time so I see where I first started trying to get started doing like data visualization projects and there was no data to be had and you know I would work with public APIs and there would be traffic accidents about you know mortality and it was totally not where I was trying to be but now there's just an abundance of all kinds of fascinating data and fascinating technology so the hardest part is actually deciding what not to do as opposed to what to do um but I what inspires me is just exploration and you know it's like being a pioneer or something, astronaut just for change of views um yeah I think you discover that again as part of the process I don't know I mean we've made some spaces that have had some cultural relevance that have changed people's I think experiences but I don't again I think it's about loving what you do so much and sort of just being so focused so inside it I think if you really are getting a rhythm and being inside it then they will come if you will and then the response comes and there's a powerful connection with it and I don't know that you really preconceived that you're going to make the next big thing I just don't really believe it works like that so I don't have a hard time when I look back at projects that are more important I think people have a real powerful reaction and relationship to I could not pinpoint how all those things come together it's like cooking it's spontaneous and when they come together it's incredible but I people ask us all the time I would say press call and say what's the next big thing all the time I'm like I have no idea but hopefully somehow I know by doing it and discovering it that way for us I think the change is we're starting to design a line of furniture with an outdoor furniture company so that to us takes us into more product design which has been a really interesting thing to work with and I think also doing predominantly residential high and residential work where it's really about this emotion and personality that's very palpable and sort of tuning into that other person to doing much more public spaces and more civic scale spaces which have a longer lifespan and you're not thinking about what's going to work for now but designing for the really long time and making things that are really enduring and so that's been a really interesting shift for us as we think about that different scale oh thanks so your question was about inspiration to me everything that we're working on in the office is a top secret and the inspiration for the next season I mean I said it jokingly but it's kind of true I walk to work I take pictures of everything that I see people how they look how they're walking down the street and I get to the office and I put it all down and some of it makes it to the wall of inspiration and some of it gets discarded but it's all kind of drives drives ideas and makes the next season makes the next season come to life in a very mysterious way I mean I don't know how all of these little bits of inspiration drive that next collection but they do I think we live in a world now where more and more people sort of know about design or think they know about design in ways that I think that five or ten years ago it probably wasn't something that people would as easily identify with what do you think this kind of general popular knowledge about design does for the future of design blessing and a curse blessing and a curse I mean it's it creates a challenge and I don't say that only because I happen to be a design professional it's more about defining what design means and it goes back to when I talked about it being unselfconscious it starts to create design with a capital D and I personally and I think certainly at our practice and Steven and I feel like we are interested in design being again egalitarian and integrated even if sometimes we make things that don't fall into that category we run a business right and there's certain realities about running a business but in a philosophical way I think sometimes all those people knowing about design sometimes it engages a big community that are interested and that's the blessing that's beautiful that's wonderful but I think the curse can be that it doesn't always allow design to be cooked and hatched and really considered on a level it starts to make it kind of too fast and immediate that anything can be designed and I actually think it's a very I love spontaneity but I think there needs to be a great amount of consideration to what design means and what making something means and that that's an important crossroads I think we're at with a lot of sort of TV a lot of content and I love to hear what Aaron has to say about it because that design content and that's it's sort of cool like with music like everyone's sharing it but then how do you then create at that same time a platform to where you're setting it apart where you're making something that stands out as something that has a point of view that's not just diluted by it being coming from every different direction and I'm interested in where how those two things are going to play in a unique moment now with the amount of design content that is everywhere and it's good and bad right but it's challenging to be part of that tide I think for us as landscape architects it's an amazing time because for the first time almost ever I've been practicing for a long time people actually know they can name a landscape architect and know what landscape architecture is I mean like fashion design people could name for hundreds of years people who were at the forefront of those fields it's only now and even in architecture it's become more and more but in landscape architecture it's a profession that's come into its own that actually has someone has a preference or an idea I love it I'm like go for it, tell me what you think because before it's like these blank stairs like no one knew what you did or how you did it so for me the idea that there's actually more information out there and design in landscape architecture is actually understood as a profession is I'm thrilled I'll continue on my optimistic track I think to me in dealing with computers and technology there's sometimes this feeling that there's a battle between design and the tech design usually represents tech moving more towards human not human moving more towards tech and I think that's a good thing that I'm excited about and I think it's generally it's seeing design really take over the technology world has been really powerful and exciting and inspiring and I think it's really important frankly because technology is playing such an important role in our lives having it be sympathetic to what has evolved for millions of years to be us is crucial for our happiness and really improves upon our success, our efficiency and fundamentally what more important things like it being fun to be alive so many interesting different perspectives on one question I mean for fashion it's a little confusing because design, I mean for me represents something very rarefied, something very considered something well made and executed and something really thoughtful and so much of fashion today not just in fashion but many many disciplines there's fashion design, there's way too many people putting product out or people misleading consumers with what they call design and I think it just for me it's a little bit confusing because it's overwhelming there's so much so much out there putting on fashion shows who have a right to put on a fashion show but it's not really design and I'm kind of tough on myself and the team that I work with we love design we appreciate everything that everyone does and we hold it sort of sacred so it's a tough thing although I have two more pages of questions I actually would love to turn this over to the audience because I'm sure a lot of people out here have questions as well so if people could oh great we have a mic stand over here so it would be great if you have a question if you could come up and identify yourself and let us know if you're a designer or interested in design let us know how that informs your question it would also be great because Narciso has to leave early if those who have questions for him might start us off so please come up if you have a question it's no time to be shy I have a question I speak into this cool so my name is Margo I work at a fashion start up here in the city although I'm not a designer I went to design school for a year after I got my BA in economics so probably an aspirational designer but it hasn't happened yet I guess my question is I'm inspired often always by things visually auditory here I go now with adverbs for senses things I see on the street things I hear music people I meet I'm not necessarily quite sure the best medium in which to manifest it so I'll draw or I'll make some music but it's never really focused in that like it's never been a driving force that I will focus all of my inspiration is one medium so I guess my question is was it very clear to you really early on was it going to be clothing or apparel or that it was going to be in the tech space or AI or was it going to be in spaces or experiences was it obvious to you or was there some kind of period sorry for me it was very obvious I was eager at 15 some fabric I needed to make something but that doesn't I mean everyone's journey is so different I mean I work with people who studied architecture who studied graphic design and then worked I met an attorney who was 40 and loved fashion so much and knew so much about fashion she just gave up law and started from the bottom so I mean everybody's path is different and it just you keep creating whichever way you need to create until you find where you're supposed to be I think anyone else have an answer to that or can we have another question hey guys thank you very much it's a wonderful conversation I feel like the other capital D word right now is data driving business design there's a feedback loop now that's really informing us I'm a great director I deal with a number of different media and obviously digital is a big part of it but I also think about how data is now informing design and I I don't know when this will happen but I'm just waiting for the scales the tip unfortunately and I said unfortunately because I feel like it's not the base but it's sort of hard to deny when you do see results this may be more predominantly in the user experience but I do think it could be quantified in fashion how were your sales how was the ace reservation and so on so I'm curious to see how is data and how is this feedback loop playing a role in your maybe in your vision of success or in your entree to the next thing and your expectation of it or you're embracing of it or maybe you hate it I'm sort of struggling with it as well but curious to hear your take thanks it's a good question and I think it's actually a pretty nuanced answer I think it's clear that there's a lot of power that can come from analysis and from a lot of the data that can be gathered and forming that recursive feedback loop but there's also some pitfalls that are easy to fall into as you get gravitationally pulled towards something and that local maximum may not actually be the ultimate maximum that can be achieved by taking a leap and doing something that's totally different than has been done before so I don't know if that really answers your question but I'm both optimistic and excited about the potential for data to help us with these recursive understandings but also realize you need to take risks and do crazy stuff that data I initially say is headed the wrong direction and ultimately turns out to be something bigger and better I think that's a absolutely right answer and if there is one and I can tell you that because we had a history Steve and I before we opened Roman Williams in the movie business and we designed sets for films and now there's similarities between the two but the reason I bring it up is because in both cases too much data analysis can often constrict creativity it can because it's so studied and those spontaneous seemingly absurd ideas that often create unquestionably the greatest work and I see it all the time I mean I was in a meeting yesterday where someone said well and these two guys that we've worked with down in Miami and these awesome two Israeli guys who make the greatest drinks in the world and have won all these awards and all these herbs and everything they do is sort of counter to everybody's analysis of how a bar or restaurant should be operated they're really just doing their own thing and they're really getting incredible response and profiting but some new investors came in and they were like oh we think they're using too much ice and we have to do an ice analysis of exactly the amount of ice because we could spend on using a few less cubes of ice every day now I'm all for look you definitely don't want to call me to give you the greatest financial advice in the world like I'm focused more on I mean we do okay at Roman and Williams but it's just money is not the first priority but I'll tell you when you're creating something extraordinary if you're lucky enough to get there too much data analysis I don't think would be your starting point it can certainly help inform you but it can also just crush you next question so I was just wondering if you guys had any advice for someone who's looking to actually switch industries and enter the design industry I personally I work in the financial industry right now so but interior design has been a passion of mine since I was a child so just wondering you know if you had any advice I know in RCC you mentioned someone that changed industries at the age of 40 and started from the bottom just you know any advice that you guys had I just say I hope you have some money in the bank to make a transition if you're really passionate about it you I mean you have no choice right I mean you have to you you can't take no for an answer right you just have to do it if you can Hello my name is Michelle Mitchell I'm a student a senior student at the City College of New York I'm studying electronic design and multimedia right now and our classes are they give us the opportunity to be very explorative also so we learn the foundations we learn structure but our professors give us like room to just reach out so sometimes I come across concepts where I have a great idea or I thought it was a great idea and then when I'm working it out something gets a little sketchy and then I lose myself and I can't figure out how to finish it so when you were or even now how did you like refocus and come back like to the beginning so that the concept you had can actually be carried out to like its completion and giving up on that project for me it's always been about passion it's like everything that I've worked on has gotten started off by some kind of curiosity or some kind of excitement or interest and then that passion makes me follow through until I have some form of deliverable even if that's nothing that anybody else is interested in usually it turns out that if I follow through and have some kind of some output now but at some point later remember that I did that and it will have some hook to something else that I did one thing is don't beat yourself up because it turned out to maybe not be ready maybe the timing wasn't right eventually those things do make you a more mature explorer so I think keeping a catalog and taking a lot of notes and trying to follow your passions are the things that have worked for me great answer everyone's going with Aaron's answer on that next question so on this panel of four we have two people from San Francisco and it sounds like the other two are from New York how important would you say your location or your environment or your living space is to collecting inspiration whether it's on your walk to work or even if it's just allowing you that freedom to run with an idea I'll just say that I don't think I would be where I am today if I had I was born in New York City and coming to California was the best thing I could have done professionally it was an environment that encouraged people lived outside they did things outside I see things all the time so for my career I think it's a great place I think for a lot of other careers maybe for architecture and others probably not the best place but that's my experience this is a funny answer just born and raised in New York City but I actually think that focusing on Andrea just even her profession I think getting to nature is an amazing and critical thing to do wherever you live so if you're making in or New York City or Miami it's I have found and it happened to me actually late in life because growing up in New York City you don't spend a lot of time with me or I didn't and being able to do that and making that a priority has I would say helped my ability to be successful as designer a huge an incalculable amount I love being in New York City but to me it's so inspiring everywhere I look here whether it's architecture the people the way the city moves the grittiness the glamour everything about it is just I think it is at the core of everything that inspires me today I love Tokyo and I love traveling it's beautiful to take a walk in the woods but I'm just surrounded by such great design every day and I love it I've been offered jobs in Europe and I keep coming running I run back to New York wherever I am it's really such a great city for design I'm originally from Southern California and there's been countless advantages to being around people working in technology in the Bay Area but those who know me know that I love to be around you as much as possible in college I studied abroad twice but I feel like you can get also nature being included in that you get inspiration from everything around you and diversification flexing your muscles is usually valuable so while I love the Bay Area I don't try to stay there all the time is there a question over here we met before my name is JC Campbell and it's kind of piggybacking off a question that somebody asked earlier and that actually jump ship to start venturing into your passion versus staying into whatever you're doing I guess what I'm trying to ask is what's the biggest risk you guys have taken and do you either regret taking it or looking back do you feel like it catapulted to where you guys are now before I started my business I had breast cancer I was in a partnership for a long time and I was afraid to leave because I didn't know if I could do it on my own and so faced with that choice I thought well I have to lose so I just I quit and I worked out of my house where previously I had been in a studio so I just completely cut back I had part time people come in and help me and I just totally changed everything and within a year I had enough work that I could afford to move back into a space and share with some people and then I built it up and now I have 15 people in my office so I think sometimes you're afraid to take a risk and life makes you take a risk and once you take that risk I would not have been where I would I realize I'm so happy today and I actually think of it as a blessing that I had to make a change and I think sometimes change is really hard and it's really scary and sometimes you have to just make yourself do it It's all about taking calculated risks I think one of the things I've been most surprised about is the things that felt like the biggest risks in retrospect don't actually seem like they in college I went in in computer science and I switched to fine art and that seemed like a crazy risk at the time I was so happy that I made that decision and kind of don't get me wrong because I work with and admire a lot of computer sciences but for me personally that felt like a huge risk to change paths and I'm hugely happy I did but I feel like there's countless risks and often times it's about taking the risks where it feels like it's pretty big fall down and often times it turns out to not actually be that much like the potential upside for going out on a limb usually quite a bit higher people will forget the pitfalls or you can work past them just creatively taking bigger risks it's not as risky as it may seem at certain times noted sure risk is a good thing it forces you to rethink everything that you thought was your path I mean whether it's one from one season to the next in your career my career I've always tried to take a risk it's a good thing just realized I gave kind of a bumbling answer and what I was really trying to say was that not taking a risk is sometimes a bigger risk that's that's what we all wanted to say thank you that's exactly okay we have time for one last question hi my name is Jennifer you know and I'm very interested to hear about mentors in your professional development and why you recognize or chose them as mentors in your life and pieces of advice that resonate with you or have resonated with you that you'd be able to share with us I think sometimes they are unexpected and you recognize them more in hindsight so if I look at people now I've had them along the way and it's not even about naming them so specifically as they were moments, moments with certain family members moments with certain teachers moments with going and hearing somebody speak that I think inspired always again speaking personally inspired me to feel like I could take that risk like gave me a certain amount of confidence in certain decisions so I think that it's less about that one person who gives you that direction than a collection of experiences that start to create a mentorship and so yeah I can't and maybe I do think in some people's cases they can point to one person but I think it's about trying to be that kind of great sponge and sometimes I think a book can mentor you it's about how you treat the information and how you absorb it and then what you do with it maybe I'll jump in for a quick second I had a bunch of amazing professors in grad school who taught me a lot and what they really taught me most was that each one of them had an amazing perspective on the same thing and they were all right but had I taken all of their feedback and tried to incorporate it would have been horrible a little bit of fiasco in actuality what they taught me was not listening to people is important and actually really being selective about what you do it's okay there's tons of things that are right simultaneously and figuring out which one works for you and what you feel most strongly about going there was really what I learned from them mostly absolutely that part the hard part is figuring out which is the one that's right for you but that's so important you get all of this great advice I remember someone saying to me you should start your own business and I thought they're crazy I couldn't possibly do this without support eventually I did do that I don't know it's finding those jewels that's the hard part great first I'd like to thank you all for coming and I'd also like a round of applause for our great panel we look forward to welcoming you all back to Cooper Hewitt on December 12th so mark your calendars I'm really excited and also we hope you celebrate National Design Week in all sorts of ways this week by going on our website looking at our videos attending some of the programs at Harlem or coming to our Gala so thank you


Hello, I'm Gilberto. Hi, I'm Saurabh. And today we'll be talking about Core Web Vitals in the real world. This talk will explore how well the sites across the web are currently doing on the Core Web Vital metrics and what progress the web as a whole has made over the past few months. We'll also take a closer look at some specific improvements that a few companies have made and the challenges that come with optimizing for real users. Let's dive straight in and see how you can apply some of these learnings on your websites too. During the last Chrome Dev Summit, we shared with you that 60% of the page visits within Chrome were meeting the Core Web Vital threshold. Between then and now, in around less than 6 months time, we have seen that number going up further by 4%. What a healthy run rate! It takes a village to achieve something like this and we'd sincerely like to thank the developer community for their constant effort to make their websites faster, capable and truly usable. I want to take a moment and reiterate that you are not alone on this journey. Chrome is also making changes to help websites load faster. One example of recent change from Chrome in the last 6 months has been the rollout of Back Forward Cache which helps web pages load instantly when the browsers back and forward buttons are used. It significantly improves the browsing experience of users, especially for those with slower networks or devices. Back Forward Cache has been supported in both Firefox and Safari for many years and now it's available in Chrome since version 96. As web developers, it's critical to understand how to optimize your pages for Back Forward Cache across all browsers so that your users can really reap the benefits. And we're glad to see how some of you have already been exploring that successfully. Mindvalley, for example, has optimized their pages to qualify for Back Forward Cache, ensuring that the pages aren't reloaded after each click of the back and forward buttons. This makes those experiences both instant and seamless. When pages are loaded from the Back Forward Cache, they are far more likely to meet all the recommended core vital thresholds. So ensuring that your pages are eligible is a great way to improve your scores. We just discussed how more and more page visits within Chrome are meeting the core vital thresholds. But keep in mind that a large portion of web users spend most of their time on just a handful of very popular websites. So let's dig deeper and see what the picture looks like at the original level using the data from Chrome User Experience Report. By focusing on the origin, we can better understand how the web is doing as a whole, considering both big websites and small. Amongst the three metrics, cumulative layout shift metric saw the most significant uplift of 5.3%. This number goes up to nearly 25% when compared to the stats from a year before. This means the content stability has been constantly improving across the web. Overall, approximately 4.5% more websites now meet the core vital threshold at the original level. And that's a huge improvement within the span of just a half a year. In fact, if we compare it with the same time last year, this improvement is nearly 15%. What does that tell us? In a nutshell, this means that all kind of sites, whether big or small, have had success improving their core vital scores. This gives us the confidence that our combined efforts are moving in the right direction. Also, more and more companies are realizing that improving core vital is important not only for users to have better experiences, but also to have positive business impact as an outcome. As a result, we have seen many companies prioritizing it, even making them company-wide key performance indicators. But while the momentum is good, we still have a long way to go. Largest content for paint in particular has a lot of room for improvement. And we hope that if we can help more and more websites fix these issues, we'll see a major jump in the overall number of websites meeting all three thresholds. As a matter of fact, it's quite common for sites with global traffic to have really different, largest content for paint metric values across countries. Users may get different site experience depending on where they are located and what devices they are using. For this reason, it's critical for site owners to analyze their audience and better understand how these indicators change across multiple dimensions. Remember, network conditions and device capabilities are key influential factors of these metrics changing. Let's cover the journey that the online magazine for web developers and designers' machine magazine took on optimizing the largest content for paint metric globally. Optimizing for core web vitals requires knowing how to read metric values in the right context, depending where the data comes from, either from real users or lab synthetic testing tools. Data based on real users, as measured by the Search Console core web vitals report, suggested that most of their pages were not passing the largest content for paint metric threshold. They ran through most of the common reasons that caused high largest content for paint metric timing. The first bottleneck to check is the presence of pages with low server response time. So they focused on optimizing their content delivery network in order to deliver a low backend time on traffic from every country. Then the render blocking time resources had been reduced by inlining critical CSS and the third JavaScript. This is particularly positive to reduce the page blank screen time that act as minimum possible value of the largest content for paint metric timing. The third point is to optimize the resources load time, in particular images that could drive the health CP timing. Their images were appropriately resized and served using the AV format. But they also took care of the critical images network request start time that should trigger early.  Thanks to all of these efforts, their Lighthouse score improved from a sub 50 to a sub 70 range on mobile, topping to a maximum 88 Lighthouse performance score on their own page at that time. But despite all of these optimizations, the Chrome User Experience report was still reporting a vast amount of pages still not passing the LCP metric threshold. That's when they decided to implement real user monitoring, or RAM as we call it. A technique that measures and provides websites performance insights of real users. RAM helps detect poor user experiences and issues with deeper context, which usually goes unnoticed, such as measuring loading metrics by countries, browser versions or other dimensions. There are both free and commercial solutions available in the market that are applicable to any type of site. By using the WebVitals.js library and sending back the hits to Google Analytics, they being able to measure the same metrics but split by countries and device types. And thanks to the WebVitals report, it has been possible to quickly visualize the data in a dashboard. In India, largest contentful paint appeared to be 31% higher compared to other countries such as the US. This insight is an example of a region-specific issue that is possible to discover only by using full RAM solutions. The next step was to measure the core WebVitals metrics by other dimensions, such as the network connectivity speed, device capabilities and user-chosen settings. They found out that 66% of the India Chrome mobile population had data saver enabled. By checking the navigator connection save data in JavaScript, they could conditionally avoid loading additional fonts when users have data saver enabled. And for the future, they also implemented the prefers-reduced data media query to replicate the same logic in the RCSS. Results on lab data using web page test and emulating the data saver mode shows a 20% improvement in the RCP time. And after going live, this change led to a plus 80% increase in the number of pages passing the RCP threshold, from 20 all the way up to 100%. This is a great example about how optimizing for core WebVitals leads to faster websites but also helps developers build more inclusive web solutions for their users. Signals such as data saver are indeed useful, but it's possible that users may not always enable these settings even when they should. Think about how many times while being in a hurry we forgot about setting a real useful feature. It's quite common. That's where other proxy signals such as device memory can help developers identifying high or low end devices in order to implement effective adaptive content strategies. Measurements by smashing magazine show a clear correlation between device memory and LCP timings, suggesting it can be used in a similar way to data saver as a signal to optimize. If you have a site with high traffic from low end devices, it's suggested to split metrics by this dimension to understand whether further actions should be taken in consideration. Now, let's turn to another part of the world. The Brazilian publisher Global used RAM to improve the cumulative layout shift and largest contentful paint respectively by 88% and 28%. In a market where low end devices accounts up to 35% of the Chrome sessions. And beyond the standalone browser usage other sites like LINE used RAM to improve co-app vitals on their app using webviews, topping a 20% LCP improvement. Overall, all of these companies used RAM to first identify and then take action on performance issues as faced by real users. The challenges may be different for e-commerce, social networks, news publishers and even CMS. But what's important is that by knowing these data points through the help of RAM solutions they all successfully managed to improve their end-users experience. Alright, to summarize, remember that the core web vital is a measure of real user experience which is why real user measurement tools is critical to understanding and optimizing those experiences. If you've never tried out a RAM solution we strongly encourage you to. Next, go deep into your analysis. Don't just limit yourself to the basics. If you're using Chrome user experience report or search console, that's a great start. You'll have a much better understanding of how your users are experiencing your website once you start drilling down dimensions like country, device or even very specific feature preference of your users like we discussed today. For example, as you saw earlier the same web page could deliver a very different experience for new internet markets like India, Indonesia, Brazil and more where there is high concentration of low memory devices and unfortunately internet speeds are still not at par with what we see around the other parts of the world. Lastly, remember that any site type can achieve their core web vital goals and that the data we shared earlier shows that many sites across the globe already have. The key thing that's needed is true understanding of your market and most importantly your users. Focus on the user and all else will follow. Anyway, with that we come to the end of this presentation. We hope you truly enjoyed this journey of core web vitals in the real world with us. Thank you. Thank you. Grazie.


Hello everybody, what's up and welcome back here to the channel. I'm evil rabbit as you can see on the screen up there We do have a e92 2.0 vdc Drift car here, and we are on need for speed open a world. We have shut down the streets There is nobody here, but me and this e92 But before we do that big shout out the coldest water for support in the channel They got a promotion everything going on down below make sure you guys check it all out all the information We'll be in the description box below. I feel like it's time to rip the c92. So, uh, let's have a little fun Need for speed the most wanted rockport is where we are at right now So, uh, let's go full send Roll out here and see where we're at kind of We're just gonna go this way. It's just don't enter, but we're going like I said we got this whole city locked down for us today Thank you to rockport pd for locking this down for us.  Being able to say in real life have a city locked down like this Would be super fun told roads. We can't go this way.  Nope? Like I said, we we almost broke the car off That would be terrible. Let's get off the highway Get this some city city roads again Play very bumpy as you can tell try to manage those bumps. I kind of see where we're going Oh Of our e92, but luckily And we're not a real life because we we would be DEA dead on that one. Oh, we need some lights Donuts in the beginning. Oh, I'm gonna get some airborne off this. I was right. Oh boy Getting the big Forza horizon vibes again, which you know looking forward to horizon five coming out Could be doing a lot of stuff on there Let's plays and drifting and builds and all kinds of stuff games to drift and everything I'm probably coming back on horizon as well got this good This way no idea where I'm going. I don't remember this map much But we are just trying to go full send here. We died once we have One oh boy this suspension. We're gonna get airborne. I'm gonna light it up. Oh Oh boy This suspension is not the right set up for this. Oh, yeah, that's definitely nope slop Sign says heat it up, but I'm trying to not die What I'm doing Right here Trying to catch the bus. This is a lot harder than I anticipated I anticipated we were gonna just go quite easy to the city But this track is so bumpy We definitely need to dial pecs and dampening we're gonna do this again City street drifting always fun. Like I said very forza horizon vibe is Man, I don't remember this gate this road being this bumpy, but then you know that again We're here on a set of course. I'm not made for speed most water Luckily, we do not have time Oh I get a step almost set my thumb on that one go to work next day.  Look my thumb. Oh, no Yep, I bumped definitely got the better of me on that one So there's a lot of this map that I had yet to explore But we are here just for a mission as well man Also should be all sponsored box below you guys check out that coldest water Black summer give away stuff going on down in the description box below as well All the information big thank you then for being a supporter of the channel Always keep me hydrated on these gift runs. Oh Somebody try to grab it you crash Oh, that was that was bad all these airport jumps We are definitely taking a beating in this e92 Definitely need to come back and dial the suspension You know we found the edge of the map definitely gonna come back dial suspension. Maybe bring a Not as Competition-esque car. We bring a street car a little highway run if we can This car does not want to stay sideways. I haven't seen an axe billboard in forever. Oh, we're done We're gonna go to the map. No, oh geez. Oh god. Oh, we're oh we're dead So that's good to be here for this episode here on a set of course I hope you guys enjoyed you should you follow me and also should be all the transkers for box below I'll see you guys on the track