Welcome to The Honest Designers Show
We are so excited to launch our brand new weekly podcast, The Honest Designers Show!
This new podcast features our founder and CEO Tom Ross, alongside experienced designers Ian Barnard, Lisa Glanz and Dustin Lee. Each of your hosts have excelled in their own creative fields, and this new show is our way to give you a transparent look into life as a modern designer. Want to learn how to land your first client, develop a unique style in your work, or simply to realise that other folk are going through the same challenges that you’re facing? Then this is the show for you!
You can listen to our first ever episode below:
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Other Ways to Listen: Soundcloud | iTunes | Stitcher
Meet Your Hosts
The Honest Designers Show started when our founder Tom found he was regularly chatting and sharing tips with top designers; Ian Barnard, Lisa Glanz and Dustin Lee. We soon organised a weekly call where we would help each other with areas we were struggling with and try to give each other actionable feedback. Soon we realised that the collective experience of the group was proving so valuable for each of us, that we thought ‘why not share these conversations with the world?’.
And so, The Honest Designers Show was born! This podcast is an insight into how to succeed in the creative industry, as well as giving you a totally transparent, under the hood look at some of the tougher, less glamorous hurdles to overcome! We also tend to get a little goofy along the way, so this is a chance to get to know each of us a little better :). We’ve loved recording this show for you, and we hope that you find value and enjoyment in listening to it.
SHOW NOTES
In this first episode we delve into exactly how to develop your own personal style as a designer. This is something every designer goes through at some stage, and once you land upon your own unique style, amazing things can start to happen! We describe our own journeys of how we got there, roadblocks we overcame, and dish out plenty of tips on how to find and develop a great style yourself.
[1.00] Copying others to find your style, and getting comfortable with yourself
[1.45] How to recognise when you’ve found your style
[2.25] The ‘switch’ moment when you finally discover your style
[3.00] Using other people’s work to find your own style
[3.40] Why copying is a natural part of the process
[4.20] Finding different sources of inspiration
[5.15] Being inspired by outside styles
[6.00] Using outside inspiration for marketing yourself
[6.30] Dustin’s shaving routine (and how it helps inspire him!)
[7.30] The power of mood-boards and other cliches
[8.30] Ian’s struggle to nail down a particular style
[9.45] Why you shouldn’t worry if your style flits all over the place
[10.20] How your style can often by subconscious
[11.15] The importance of practice
[12.05] Feeling comfortable in your skin
[13.25] Ian’s random feed (and why this doesn’t matter!)
[14.50] The home-runs in the early days
[15.15] Copying your best self
[16.00] Holding yourself accountable with a fan-base
[17.00] Why consistency matters
[17.50] How to avoid giving up too quickly
[18.30] Why feedback is great (even the bad feedback!)
[19.25] Why no feedback is the worst feedback
[20.25] The insecurities of being a designer
[21.20] Why you should aim to divide people with your work
[22.00] Finding your core fans through polarisation
[23.00] Taking note of what you’re drawn to
[23.50] Finding your style in other areas (music)
[24.40] Dustin’s friend’s amazing project
[25.55] Getting out of your head, and getting lost in the process
[27.30] Learning along the way
[28.10] Why Ian works on what interests him the most
[29.45] Exposing yourself to multiple influences
[30.50] Why a defined style can be an advantage
[31.30] Listen to your personality type to find your style
[32.20] Our various styles (and who is most distinctive)
[33.20] Why YOU can be your style (rather than just your work)
[34.00] Why you can attract clients with a narrow style
[36.00] Why other people’s style might not be right for you
[37.45] Some styles are more achievable via practice than others
[39.00] How to see different styles in imperfections
[40.00] Having fun and trying different things
[42.00] ‘Find your fun’
[43.00] ‘Do what’s weird about you’
[43.50] How to stand out in a busy industry
[44.30] Branching off from your best ideas
[45.10] Tom’s teacher ripping up his artwork at school!
[46.25] How Lisa judges a successful project
[47.40] Dustin NOT going to the bathroom on the call
[48.45] Lisa’s weird world
[50.00] The importance of giving yourself some slack
[50.50] Tom’s tip for feeling better about your journey
[52.00] Why people remember your failures (and why this is ok)
How you can help
As this is a new show, we’d really appreciate your help spreading the word. If you enjoyed listening and found value in this first episode, you can do these two things to help us:
1. Subscribe to The Honest Designers Show in iTunes
2. Leave us an honest rating/review in iTunes
Early reviews can make the world of difference for new podcasts being discovered, and it would mean the world to us if you were able to help.
Click to listen to The Honest Designers Show on iTunes
Here is a quick guide for how to leave a review on iTunes
Let Us Know What You Think
We would absolutely love to know how you enjoyed this first episode. We’ll be releasing a new episode each Wednesday, and look forward to hopefully answering many of your questions on the show. We continue to be so grateful for the wonderful community here at Design Cuts, and hope that this show is another way that we can give back to you all.
PS: A bit of trivia for you: the artwork for Honest Designers was a group effort. The wonderful lettering is by Ian Barnard, the illustrations are by Lisa Glanz and Dustin/Tom compiled the wider layouts, details and colour palettes.
I love your podcast! Being a fellow creative, I have been conjuring up visual images of the 4 hosts over the course of the last year as I eased into this podcast. It is amazing that I have not yet “seen” a photo of them only these little illustrations on their podcast thumbnail (and now here). In keeping with their very present senses of humour and, perhaps providing some fodder for a future episode, I thought they might find my inclinations amusing: Tom reminds me so much of the actor T.J. Miller. Ian, the elder statesman, by my conjuring, resembles Michael Fassbender and Dustin was the easiest and quickest visualization – comedian Dane Cook. Lisa, Lisa, was the toughest… in the end I see her as a cross between Emilia Clarke and Ana De Armas. Just thought I’d share… I will think of a reason later :)
Hey Dave,
This is awesome! Reading who you picture our hosts as from their voices has spread huge smiles around the office- we love these so much! We do actually have all of our episodes on our Youtube channel, so if you would like to be able to to put a face to the names Dave, you can e-meet our lovely hosts here: https://bit.ly/2NRFfpr
Where can I find the earliest episodes of the podcast? I would love to listen to it from the beginning!
Thanks so much for reaching out to us Prontip, and it is awesome to hear that you would like to catch up with all of our episodes from the beginning!
The great news is that you can check them all out on our YouTube channel, or in our Learn Section here: https://bit.ly/36FbVKC
Hello,
I love this podcast and its honest and ego-free talk.
I’m on the cusp of selling digital creative products but am unsure about copyright and licensing. How do you guys deal with this? How do you come up with licensing agreements and what do you/can you do when you catch someone exploiting your work?
Another topic of discussion that would be great, is how do you keep momentum going for a non client based project. Especially when you can’t just bunker down and work on a project all day and night because you have kids/other commitments. How do you keep going to get something finished?
Best wishes
Lizzy
Hey Lizzy
Thank you for getting in touch and happy to hear that you’ve been enjoying the podcast. I will pass your question and topic suggestion to the hosts and I will get back to you when I have more information. Thank you :)
Love the podcast. I just wanted to let you all know that there is an app that packages your Illustrator files similar to Indesign. It’s Art Files. Here is the link to their site: https://www.code-line.com/artfiles/
Hey Matt, so happy to hear that you like the podcast. Thank you so very much for sending us the link to this very useful app. I will share this with the Honest Designers hosts ?
Love listening in every week! I know you have touched on freelancing and the basics of charging but I am wondering if you could touch on whether becoming an LLC or just trademarking your business is needed.
hey Erica,
Thanks for the comment on the podcast and this is a really great suggestion! I will pass it over to the Honest Designers and hopefully they can chat about it in an upcoming episode!