Your Strategy Simplified Ep. 3 | Design Strategy: From Concept to Execution with Peter Flood

Stephanie: There's certain things that are really key to design that ⁓ you just have to get that mindset and that helps working on this, you know, simple way to move faster. You want to think about these four things. You think about audience message, hierarchy, and action. Audience being who is this for, right? That seems like an obvious one, but again, that's what we're talking about. If you're taking two broader strokes with that, it could hurt you. So you just want to, there is maybe a point where you can narrow it too much, but you absolutely need to narrow that some. but you don't want it to too wide of a scope. And then the next would be, you know, what is the thing they need to understand? So the message, like what are you, again, if you can get that down to its simplest form, that is where it's going to be most effective. you know, it's design at the end of the day, design really is, it's just another function of communication. So that's really key too. You always have to think in that what is the simplest way that you can communicate something most effective way. Welcome to your Strategy Simplified podcast, where we make strategy simple and actionable. When most of us think about strategy, we tend to think in categories. Business strategy, IT strategy, or marketing strategy. But there is a form of strategy that is quietly influencing all of these. And it often determines whether they succeed or fail. Today, we're talking about design strategy. Design is not just about making things look good. It shapes how people understand information, how they feel about a brand, and ultimately how they make decisions. That's why I'm so excited about today's conversation. We're gonna dig into what design strategy really is, why it matters, and how anyone, designer or not, can apply a more strategic design mindset to their work. Today's guest is someone I've had the pleasure of working with firsthand. Peter Flood is a graphic designer, a design professor at Worcester State, and incredibly talented artist. We worked together at Hasbro where he still works and his design work has helped bring some truly iconic brands to life, including Star Wars, My Little Pony, Monopoly, Nerf, Play-Doh, Disney Princess, and many more. So welcome Peter. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm super happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Steph. So can you share a bit about your design background and how you initially got into commercial design? Yeah, absolutely. So my background sits at the intersection of illustration, graphic design, and industrial design. ⁓ I've always loved visual expression, but the reality is commercial design is really what taught me that Design has to do more than express something. It has to solve something. So over time, especially working with brands that you mentioned, in doing so on a major scale, working with ⁓ the largest retail accounts within the United States, I started seeing design less as simply decoration and way more as a way to clarify, persuade, and create. connection. there a certain moment or project that you realized that design decisions were not just creative choices, but they were strategic ones? It certainly happened over time. My career is an interesting one because I went to school and I got a bachelor's degree in illustration. I was taught in a very formal manner, really kind of the best way to say it's just a very old school manner. I was taught how to use oil paints, watercolors, gouache, mediums that just They're not really utilized very much more in a commercial sense. I've always been super grateful that I have that knowledge. really, that foundation absolutely has been, you know, so strong for me as my career has continued both in fine arts and especially in graphic design. But really, to be honest, my master's work, that that's where it really helped me to formalize all of that. Like it pushed me to think way more deeply about research, empathy when it comes to design work. You know, the big thing I tell my students day one when I have design 101 is talking about design decisions, you know, and what those really are, the difference between art versus design. And to your point, design is often this thing that is done sort of behind the curtain, behind the scenes. And I think a lot of people don't realize the importance of it in our everyday lives, but the reality is ⁓ most everything that you ⁓ as a human, as a consumer as a citizen that you are working with, that you're experiencing. There's been someone behind that helping to shape how you interact with that. Whether it's a service or a product, that's just reality. So when it comes to decision-making as a designer, you just talked about thinking from the consumer's point of view. What changes in your decision-making process when as a designer you start thinking more about intent, your audience, and even business outcomes instead of the aesthetics first? Yeah, one of the first things when I got my master's what we talked about was features versus benefits, right? So ⁓ when you're thinking about a product or service, there's always features. If you're marketing something, you're trying to communicate whatever those, whatever it is about that product. And pretty much every market is one that's heavily saturated, right? We live in America. We're all about capitalism here. Capitalism, I would actually argue, has been a huge proponent of good design work because if you go back to the 50s and 60s, it just created this massive landscape where you had advertising done in a way that never had been done. And it really just helped shape where we are today. ⁓ But when we're talking about the features of something, As a designer, have to kind of look past whatever those features are. And then it becomes, what are the actual benefits? You know, that's great that this product, whatever it is, does X, Y, and Z. But the bigger thing is what does that mean for the end user? What are they getting out of this? What, that's what you're really trying to communicate to them. That's what, that's how you really, I hate to say it, but that's how you're trying to sell them. ⁓ You know, that's the reality. One of the things that I talk a lot about strategy is how strategy becomes powerful when it starts being a decision-making tool. So it helps guide what decisions you make, what you choose to do, and what you choose not to do. How do you see design strategy as a decision-making tool for your design work? So strategy gives you criteria. Once you know... who it's for, what they need, what the message is, you can eliminate a lot of options. So you're no longer asking, which option do I like the most? You're asking which option best supports the goal. ⁓ So a perfect example of this, in my master's branding work, initially I had too broad an audience and I was trying to serve more than one need. But once I narrowed the need to understanding and thought more in psychographic terms, instead of broad demographics. the messaging, the identity, visual direction, it all got much, much stronger. That is so interesting because when you're narrowing the audience, it might feel counterintuitive, but you were talking about benefits. It helps you lock in on the benefits for that particular target audience. Yeah. Better than just a broader audience. So if we... kind of take a step back. We talked about commercial design, ⁓ but there's also other areas of design. These are the things that I struggle with. know, presentation decks that just become incredibly time consuming because there's too many choices that you have to make and it ends up taking way too much time when you really just need to get your message across. There's a lot of things like that ⁓ that come across in our everyday lives, even when we're not designers. How can you use a strategic design mindset to help guide simple choices in something as simple as designing a presentation? Yeah. So yeah, think what you're describing a lot of times, and again, this is a huge part of what I teach to all my students. And actually, my wife and I, we also work with the business chamber that's national. ⁓ It's a whole group of people that work on an overall pitch over a certain amount of time. It's an eight week course and we're one of the courses we help with branding, marketing, all that. And so it's, been fun. It's, it's a really interesting thing to work with, ⁓ small business owners from, know, they're all, the business is all drastically different, but the reality is what we're trying to tell them can absolutely apply regardless of the product, regardless of the service, wherever they are regionally. ⁓ so, but Back to what we're saying. What you're talking about really, that usually happens when there's no ⁓ framework. So the simplest way to move faster when you're doing anything like that, you got to decide on four things first. Just think about audience, message, hierarchy, and action. Audience being who loses four, right? That seems like an obvious one, but again, that's what we're talking about. If you're taking two broader strokes with that, it could hurt you. There is maybe a point. where you can narrow it too much, but you absolutely need to narrow that some. You don't want it too wide of a scope. And then the next would be, what is the thing they need to understand? So the message, again, if you can get that down to its simplest form, that is where it's gonna be most effective. ⁓ And then hierarchy, that for me, this is where as a long time designer, this is where I probably nerd out more than any place, any other place, but. uh, what matters most on the page, right? So hierarchy is the epitome of all design work. It's, where the fun lies because it is you acknowledging that all of sudden you have a lot of control over where those viewers eyes are going to go. Um, and you know, you can think about that in different ways. I say viewers eyes just cause most of what I do is layout design. Um, and it's display work, things like that. So it's very, it's very stuck in like a print graphic sense. ⁓ But that's to me, that's, you know, that's the bread and butter. That's the fun stuff. And then action is just that simple. What do you want them to do next? It's that idea of a call to action. What is that end goal? ⁓ And I know I'm making it sound easier than it is, but ⁓ that's really the crux of it. Yeah. When you're seeing all these new AI tools come out around design, how do you balance using some of those tools with using that four-step framework? So AI can absolutely help with speed, iteration, and exploring options. But it doesn't replace judgment. Strategy still has to come from a human. It can definitely generate variations. but it can't fully understand the nuance of audience, brand responsibility, or what really matters most in a given context. ⁓ the danger really, it's not AI, ⁓ but it's skipping the thinking. It's denying not only yourself as a designer, the importance of design thinking, but ultimately that end user. Because ultimately you're still trying to communicate human to human. So you can use AI in the mix, but you just, you know, can't give it full control, I guess is the key there. So you had talked about your background really coming from art. Like you described using oil paint and manually doing art as part of your training for design. How do you feel as someone who is trained in that way and now had a career, done your masters? So you've had an educational evolution and a career evolution, I'm assuming, and now teaching it to your students. us a little bit about that evolution and how you see design changing and maybe what the opportunities are too. know, I'd say if we had this conversation two years ago, there probably would have been more fear in me from the standpoint of AI. ⁓ But for me personally, You know, I'm a lifelong learner. know that about myself. I've taken personality tests, which didn't, I didn't really need them to tell me that. That's just who I know that's part of me. But for anyone that's creative right now, you could live in fear of what is happening right now, but I can promise anybody that if you embrace it and I can't tell you to embrace it in the right manner, because that means something different for everyone. But embracing in the sense of just not keeping your head full in the sand on this thing. It's going to go a long way. It's not going to take over and you shouldn't let it take over. You want to keep your own autonomy as a human, as a designer. That's, that's crucial. Just letting it work with you. Just, just looking at it and understanding, Hey, this is just another tool in my arsenal. This is something I get to use to explore. And you get to do it in a way that frankly we've never been able to do. I mean, I'm a long time collector of art books and history books and all these things. Cause I like having. I like having rich media, especially I like having paper media. There's something about sifting through a book, whether it's a comic book or a massive hardcover. As a human, I think it does something to flip the pages and see these visuals. But what's cool is you have this tool now that has all that, right? It can sift through this a little bit faster. And if you can figure out where it's going to work beside you, then that's kind of the key. mean, the best way to think of it, is almost like, you you're still driving the motorcycle. You're still Indiana Jones and you're driving the motorcycle and you still, and this is just having your dad or Sean Connery in the little box car next to you in Indiana Jones and the last crusade. And that's, that's what you got here. This is embrace it. I, know, I found it to be actually pretty fun at times just to experiment just for those purposes alone. So, you know, see where it takes you. Yeah, that's a great perspective. Instead of being fearful, embracing it. So you're kind of doing this already, but I'd like to hear if you could give some advice to people like myself who get stuck on small design decisions that end up just taking way too much time. What would that advice look like? Yeah. So it's kind of like, it's what we've been talking about, but you want to go back to the purpose, right? You get stuck because you're choosing in a vacuum. But if the goal is clear, the Decision is usually clear and if if two choices both work choose one and move ⁓ but perfectionism ⁓ It can disguise itself as stopfulness. So you just need to Need to be clear of that. So two of the most important things if you're ever starting any kind of design task I find is brainstorming and I'm talking old-school pen the paper Quick chicken scratch writing, just dumping as much as you can, just get it out. Just fill at least three line pages of a college notebook, just get it out there, ⁓ sift through it after. And then the really fun next part of that would be mind mapping. And I think most of us that, I know we went to public education around the same time and we had those fun word bubbles and you had the one word. You draw some lines and create some more bubbles and you just kind of see how far that would expand. I would say if you're an adult and you haven't done that in a while, do it. It's really fun. Even if it's like it doesn't even have to be design related. If there's, know, if you're starting a garden is we're in the Northeast and a lot of us are thinking about garden right now. Like start there. Brain dump everything you think you want to grow. Mind map it and then go from there. See where, see where it takes. Wow, I haven't thought about mind mapping in a long time, but I definitely agree with getting all of your thoughts out there. have notebooks full. I even have a specific gardening one right here on my desk. I like thinking about it in practice, especially if you're getting stuck. ⁓ And can you walk us through a little bit? Like, let's say that I'm stuck on a design. I'm not a designer, but I need to get... this thing done, ⁓ how could you do a mind map to help kind of flush out what that might look like? Are you going to be writing down, for example, your audience and the messaging and the hierarchy, ⁓ or does it look like something else? Yeah. So in that case, what is a good idea is to do, at that point, you really want to start kind of multiplying what You want to multiply these exercises, right? So if you know, ⁓ if you know you kind of have multiple subfields of whatever you're thinking about, then that's like, I'm to brainstorm out, you know, and even put a, you know, put a timer, right? We all have cell phones, we all have timers. So like literally give yourself, be like, I want to give myself three minutes and I'm going to focus on this one aspect and I'm going to get it all out. I'm going to, I'm going to write out every last word, every phrase, everything that pops in my head. that goes with this one more specific thing and then work your way through those. And then what's a really fun thing to do. And this is, this is what I really love about mind mapping. You're going to start to notice that you are putting some of the same words down. So not that you need to pull out of the source, but be your own the source. like if some of them are close enough, what is that where you're trying to get to start that in the center of that new mind map. say, okay. ⁓ this is, you know, I kept going back and this is it. So clearly there must be something here and then you can kind of branch out and see, all right, well, what, why did this word come up at this thing and this thing? And then see at some point, there's almost a guarantee that those are going to connect, right? There's going to be whatever, and you're going to have one of those as we love to say, like an aha moment or a light bulb moment. Ah, okay. That is, that's what I was getting at. And and actually I would take this I'll go a little one step further. So this was something this is like one of my favorite things that had happened And this was when I got my masters again We had spent a month doing just a core logo. So part of part of my coursework we had gone through and we did basically a mini brand identity We had to literally build a brand from scratch ⁓ and you know logos we can Delve further into logos and what that means from branding standpoint, but ⁓ They're obviously very important right to any brand they're not the most important thing, but they're obviously very important ⁓ and What my professor had said at the time is you might have some That seemed very obvious that seemed very cliche And you kind of in your gut you're like, I know these I know I don't want to do this, right? I know it's not really gonna work out ⁓ But he told us he said You're going to keep revisiting it. So just sketch it out. Like just get it over with. Basically in the early stages, it's like, it doesn't matter how rough it is. Just get those thumbnails somewhere. So it leaves your brain. And then by, by you like giving it that space, getting it out of there, you're creating space for something new, which was really fascinating. Yeah. And it's always stuck with me because I think it's, it's true, right? We're, we're humans. That's the first thing we do. We're Ultimately, we're all these sponges and from day one, from the second you're born, that's all you're doing. You're absorbing, you're imitating, you're growing, you're evolving. So it's like, it's all there, but just throw that thing out so that you hopefully have room for that, for that new thing to come in. Wow. That is cool. Talk to us a little bit about logos. Yeah, logos. So it's funny. This is, I mentioned the course that my wife and I teach a couple of times a year and we always, we intentionally do this. So we have this, we have a very fun board game. I think it's literally called the logo board game. I forget who created it, but it's great. It has all these little, ⁓ it's got a bunch of cards. It's sort of like Trivial Pursuit in a way. So they basically have, they call it the logo game. It's really not just logo, it's actually just branding in general. So some of the questions we'll ask about ⁓ mottos or jingles, whatever it is, know, it's runs the gambit. ⁓ But it's great. It has these very topographical, very, for the most part, it's very well known, culturally known brands, and not just American brands, it's, you know, global, I'll say mostly American, but still it's somewhat universal. ⁓ So what we do... When we start this course, we very intentionally, we kind of will start it and we'll be talking about logo, talk about logo, blah, blah. And then we, we started to do that. We have this like hard, we have a harsh ⁓ PowerPoint slide. That's that in the biggest as we could get is like brand is not a logo, right? So it's just, we, we sort of, get them all excited. We're like, yeah, let's talk about a logo and then we very intentionally is just like, it's not, but that's not it. Like if you're just, you know, if you're a small business owner and your core focus right now, it's just that one element. You're of missing, you're missing the whole point, right? It's not, ⁓ it's not to say it doesn't matter. does. It matters so, so much, right? A logo is, it's really important, especially in this day and age. Super important. You have to, you know, not only do you want to make sure it's representing you, but you also, you have to be really, really careful now. that even if you did unintentionally, that you're not misrepresenting yourself by kind of using someone else's or getting too close to existing work. at this point, you know, it's there's a lot out there. So we live in a very heavily saturated field of of products and brands, things of that nature. But yeah, it's logos are. They're an interesting thing, and I would say this like. It's like everything else. It evolves as culture goes. You know, I think we're, we kind of have moved past, for the most part, we've moved past the idea that every logo has to be super simple and super clean. know, Apple sort of brought us to this point of like, everything has to be so clean and simple and blah, blah. And we have to feel like we're, kind of getting, we're, we're drifting away a little bit now. We're, we're acknowledging that a big part of this is like, a lot of people are doing things from a digital standpoint. So you don't have to limit yourself at this point. can have you not only can you have all the color you want, but it can also be an animated logo. can be, you know what mean? It doesn't have to, we've moved beyond this idea of it having to ⁓ exist in print and be able to work in print from this scale to that scale. And it's not to say you shouldn't still think those ways because you should, you should always be thinking ⁓ from, you know, the team we used to work on, right? You want to be thinking from an Omni standpoint and that's, that's crucial. ⁓ but it's more just acknowledging that it's like everything else with design. think you just, you know, have fun with it. ⁓ but it, it's, it obviously still has to speak to your overall brand. You know, it's not, it isn't a brand by itself, but it does have to, it has to obviously be very good representation of a brand, which is a big ecosystem depending on the size of the company. Yeah. So it's important. Yeah. Clearly you have a passion for art and you're an artist outside of your professional work. ⁓ From a strategic lens, how does your approach differ between personal art and a commercial design project? And how much fun can you have, so to speak? Yeah. They're, yeah, drastically different. I mean I for me I always have these moments and it's funny and I've done it more times than I can count where I sort of I sort of fall out of making art right like fine art becomes So backburnered because it gets so tied up in my nine to five or just in life or trying to do maybe like we always have these waves of freelance to come there's different things so it sort of knocks me out for a while and and I You know, I'll find myself it's becomes like this It's way more an urge. It's like a need like all of sudden there would just be a day or weekend where I'm like, no, I'm going to like it just sort of how I wake up and I just go and I pick up something, a brush or a pencil and, and, and go. Uh, and a lot of times what it is for me is I'll find my way back to all like, I'll sort of just find a new medium. You know, I'll, I'll look and say, well, I have never done, never done this. So I remember it was probably two, it was actually This was maybe two or three years ago. ⁓ I remember when I was younger and I really liked oil pastels, but oil pastels were, you know, they're kind of, they get kind of greasy and they're messy and it was just, they're, they're fun, but it's, wasn't quite what I wanted. And I was looking at, forget what I was, I might've been looking at magazine or somewhere I saw, ⁓ I saw a painting, it was a portrait and I looked and it was soft pastels. And I was like, wow, those are. That just, like it just, the quality was unreal. ⁓ Just, it was, you could tell whoever did it, like, passion was like screaming through this painting, right? And so it was one of those types of things. I found this great reference photo, a random reference photo of like a seal, and I just went for it. I stayed up. I think I was up like most of the night. I had some kind of music documentary in the background. And just did it. it was ⁓ so that I have those moments, these intense moments of like that need. And I would just sort of dive right in and I'll do it. and it's it's good. It's very cathartic, I think. But it's also just like you you kind of need those moments where you get to really go for it. ⁓ Because from a commercial standpoint, I think you, know, you can find those moments. ⁓ And obviously, you know, I wouldn't so I've been in my career now for about 15 years and I wouldn't still be doing it if I didn't have a certain amount of love and passion for it. ⁓ But it's also easy to get, know, it's a nine to five, right? So there's easy to get into autopilot mode. ⁓ And it's easy to sort of not you might you're probably not going to have the same passion as you would for something that's like self-expression versus something you feel like you're doing for money, if you will. ⁓ I think I know myself, I'm fortunate. ⁓ like I said before, I'm a lifelong learner and you know, I, part of design for me that's always remained fun is I work in 3d design and it just, to me it's, it opens up all these different doors. It's, it's, that's definitely the thing that helps to keep me going. It's just like, ⁓ it's, something I know you can, you'll never, you'll never fully master it. Like it's, it's going to keep evolving. It's just like AI and it's, it's funny. Funny enough, AI now is already very much pushing 3D on a whole different stratosphere. So again, just living this stuff in real time for me is, it's hard to put words on it. It is really a pretty incredible time to be in this field. After you have one of those moments where you get all your creative energy out, it builds up and then you... create something that's so satisfying and fulfilling to you, do you feel like that refreshes your energy for your nine to five? Or how do you feel it might impact how then you approach the next day, back to your nine to five commercial work? No, it does. Yeah, it definitely does. think you can, ⁓ when you're doing commercial design, you can get stuck. you're working on, yeah, I'm fortunate. I work on a lot of brands. But when you did the intro, right, I touch a lot of brands, you working for Hasbro, we have an ever evolving plate of brands. And I look out where within my role, I get to impact almost every single one of them in pretty meaningful ways. it's but with that, it does come, you know, it can come with some redundancy. ⁓ It can come with. It can obviously come with some stress, but side stuff, the more true art, the self-expression. Yeah, it definitely does it. I think it can, it can kind of clear up some of that mental space. It can allow for very productive days of, of true graphic design work versus fine arts. Well, one of the things that I learned when I was working with you is that when you're designing for a brand, you're not just designing for yourself, but you're designing, like you said before, on behalf of the brand and on behalf of the customer. I'm wondering how you kind of navigate that tension when you're working between creative preference and brand responsibility. Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. ⁓ It's, you hear this phrase a lot and there's a couple of phrases you hear a lot as a commercial designer. Too many cooks in the kitchen is probably the number one. And when I say that in my position, I'm, I'm working with brand creative. So I'm working with the people that actually sat here and heavily honed in on the brand identity itself. I'm working with marketers that are very specific to a region. sometimes even just to certain accounts. So retail accounts, I could be working with certain marketing folks that are integrated directly into sales. I certainly won't leave out sales because I love all the sales people I work with, but they tend to at times put on a creative director hat, even though seemingly it's very far away from what their profession is. So, you you're working with all that. And to your point, you still have to think about that end customer, right? The end customer should be number one. And the hope is that we're all working towards that. And I think usually we are, you know, I, for me, I can fully appreciate the term too many cooks in the kitchen, but I actually love the collaboration. I mean, I think, you know, there's times where it can be challenging and there's times where you have to, I'll use another term here, kill your darlings. And that's never fun, but it's, you know, I think it's, it's not hard for me to do this. And it's something that was a learned skill. But like if you can, if you can put your ego to the side and you can just, just be kind, really. I mean, we, it's funny. It's, ⁓ it goes a long way, but, but being, it's more, it's more than just being kind. It's just being open, being receptive, being able to take critical feedback and, and figure out how to apply that, ⁓ using, you know, using your learn language, which for me is design, but then working with someone that isn't always thinking that way because sales language is, is even though there's paths that cross, it's not the same thing. And that can be said for marketing as well. So being able to ⁓ interpret all that and make sense of it, you know, there's, there's a fun in that, you know, they can certainly, as we both know, it can be, ⁓ it can be trying at times, it can be challenging, but I think when it is successful, ⁓ it's hard to beat. You know, the good feelings. So for creatives who struggle with constraints, how can design strategy actually free creativity rather than limit it? So strategy gives you a Once you're in that lane, it can definitely push you much harder, much more confidently. You know, I think we were kind of had already touched on this a little bit, but like If you are thinking too broadly at times, you always want to start there, right? You want to go wide swath and then you want to try to like hone in shrink that down. But a lot of times those constraints in, know for me, I've always dealt with these ⁓ in the world. that you and I, I'm still in and you and I used to be in together, right? We were dealing with certain accounts that had very specific dimensions. It was literally like, Hey, this can only be this height by this width. You can't adjust that. can't. You got a square. You got a rectangle. You're going to live in that. You're going to understand that. ⁓ And it's, you know, for me, that's as a designer, that's really the fun of it, right? That's you get to this is that new puzzle you get to figure out because you might have all the assets and they could be in a different format or maybe no one's thought of any format yet, but they just sort of exists out there. How do I now pull these in? How do I? How do I make sense of it? How do I make them ⁓ make sure they're staying unique to that brand identity? So. And a lot of times within that constrained space, as the example you gave, there's a lot of messaging that you want to put in that little space. But how do you make that all make sense and resonate with the customer? Yeah. So that goes back to one of the earlier points. It's hierarchy, right? I don't care how big or small the medium and the platform, like none of that really ever matters. Hierarchy has to come into play. Even if you're only working with two elements, which one needs to be more prominent, right? That's all, that's the whole idea behind it. You're just, you have to be able to sit there and as a designer and think about, ⁓ what do want them to see? What do I, what do I first want them to see? What I want them to leave with, what's going to keep them there for hopefully. more than like, I don't know, what's our, I think the average attention span is like half a millisecond at this point. It's some unreal number. So yeah, how do you, how do you try to ⁓ hold on to someone's attention for more than, you know, that very, very short window? Yeah. So if you could give one piece of advice to someone who's just starting in commercial design, what would it be? It's, uh, I'm going to say it's like a twofold, right? So embrace the technology you have, right? Embrace, embrace what is there, embrace what's on the horizon. So again, talking AI cause can promise whoever's listening to this, it's not going away. Uh, it's just simply not going to happen. Um, so embrace all of those things, understand them, learn how to use them, but also you have to be able to just Operate and think in classic ways, know picture if you you know, if you're using AI Spend some time using a pencil Try to spend just as much time doing both Try to use this as much as your fingers are typing, you know, those things matter. It's ⁓ It's a it's just that balance but you can't be you can't be afraid of either And I will say this I think most designers of my generation, my age, there was a clear separation. As an undergrad, I went for illustration and there were, we all lived in different buckets. didn't all do the same thing. We had fine arts, we had illustrators, we had photographers, graphic designers, ⁓ interior designers. But for the most part, it was the fine artists and illustrators. We were the ones that always had pencil or paintbrush in hand. And you very rarely saw. people within those other ⁓ categories or mediums holding those things. But as a designer, you have to be able to it. have to, there has to be some part of you that's I mean, it's scientifically proven. Like there's something that happens when this is moving on a paper and this is functioning. It's actually very healthy for you. It's very crucial. So just try to do both. Just the other day, I'm working on my strategy framework and I did exactly that. Right? Like I can't just think it. So I have to do the same thing. have notebooks of design for how you take in this case, a company's vision and mission and turn it into your goals, strategies, OKRs and KPIs. And it's so much fun like to get your brain working in that way, but I have to do that. I have to write it down. So it's using all of our senses and I think that that stimulates more, more creativity, more problem solving and more inspiration than just like asking chat GBT make this thing for me and it makes it more like, why is this? There's something not right about this, you know? Why didn't you read my brain? This is not what I wanted. Some pretty weird AI hallucinations for sure at this point. So yeah. going to test that. So one last question for you. If you could give a piece of advice to someone who's not a designer, but finds themselves wanting or having to create something, whether it's like a presentation, content, visuals, what would that piece of advice be so they could start thinking more strategically? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of what we've talked about. I think using using some those tools like ⁓ brainstorming, mind mapping. ⁓ You know, one thing we didn't talk about, which it's sort of that next evolution of that part is ⁓ thumbnail sketches. And if no one's ever heard that, the term literally comes from the fact that you're trying to do a sketch that's roughly the size of your thumbnail. So when what happens when you're drawing incredibly small? is you're forced to, like you can't, obviously you can't pack a lot of detail, right? If you're using a standard number two pencil and you're sketching at something that's only an inch by an inch square, there's only so much you can get in there where you can actually legibly still see what you're looking at. And what it does is it forces you, again, it forces you to bring in the think in a certain way. So you're making pretty critical decisions really early on in terms of how something might look. So it's and you can do with anything. think everyone always thinks like, well, that, you know, a lot of times people think of this from more of a logo design standpoint. But even if you do layout design, say you, you know, my wife works on catalogs, right? If you're doing something like that, what's to stop you from still having like you can have these little squares and then you can do little lines that might show, you know, the body copy and you can figure out how is that going to look? And by doing again, just by By doing that exercise, you're going to ideally something new will come of it. So I think that's, you know, that's a big part of it. But yeah, it's just that early work. The more you can. The more research you can do on your own, the more critical thinking in those early stages of what you are actually trying to communicate, that's what's going to help you to refine it all in the end. it's it's going big, going wide to then really help narrow in on what you're trying to do. That is a really cool exercise. I've never thought of that before with a thumbnail sketch, but a lot of times I feel If I'm stuck on something, I want a huge screen, a huge sheet of paper. And then I kind of narrow it down. I love thinking the opposite way. ⁓ So that's something I'm definitely going to have to try. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Can you talk a little bit if people want to hear more from you, see your work, where can people find you? Yeah. So at this point, I'm maybe spread a little too thin, but it's fine. So beyond my nine to five, ⁓ I do teach at ⁓ Worcester State. It's been wonderful experience. I'm still new in that ⁓ career, but ⁓ my wife and I, for many years, we've done freelance on the side. So we do have our own little design studio. It's called JP Flood Design Studio. Certainly we'll share the link with you. We've helped, you know, we've helped pretty much. We've helped a lot of businesses. We've done everything from ⁓ breweries. We've helped automated welding companies. We've sort of had our hands in all sorts of things, everywhere in between. ⁓ It's brought us some pretty incredible connections. One of the big connections it's brought us, we're actually part of a diverse ⁓ business chamber. I had started initially in Virginia and now it's become a national business chamber and we're actually... regional ambassadors here in New England. We are in the early stages of this and I'll be sure to give you more information, but we're actually going to be hosting a golf tournament this October. It's going to be intended for small businesses. We're hoping to get a lot of different vendors in terms of ⁓ small businesses, drafts, all sorts of things. So we'll certainly keep you in loop there. ⁓ something happening far... Sooner than that, this upcoming Tuesday, I'm really, really excited. I'm actually getting part of a panel at Johnson and Wales University. So that's going to me and a group of four other people. We're going to be discussing design and AI. So that should be fun. Yeah. And then lastly, and I can share a link with you. I have started a podcast with a good friend of mine that I teach. I'll certainly share that link as well. Fantastic. Thanks Pete. Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for sharing so much about design strategy and giving us a little bit of a playbook that we can follow for anyone who's a designer, not a designer or anywhere in between. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. And for anyone listening, if you're stuck on a design or struggling to put a design together, when is the last time you thought strategically about your design. And what would happen if you started to focus in on who your audience is, what are the benefits they need to know about what you're communicating to them, and how might that help you make some design decisions? Think about it. And I'll see you guys next time.