Episode 100 - Prof. Phil Cleaver

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Design Education Talks podcast by the New Art School. This is a very special episode, episode 100. Uh, and we have again, uh, our guests from episode one, Professor Phil Cleaver, uh, to celebrate and to discuss again, uh, and to meet and to talk what's changed and what hasn't changed. Uh, welcome Phil. Well, thank you for having me back. It's wonderful. It's really, really wonderful to have you here. So take us through your journey in design and what led you to pursue your career. Well, when I was about 15, my mother and father sat me down at the kitchen table and they had a conversation which I didn't even join in in, which was like my mother's to work out what to do with my life. And my mother said, he's got a God given art for getting into trouble and he can only do two things. One is cook and the other is art. And then she said, well, he can't go into cooking because he can't speak English, let alone French. Because in that day and age, you had to speak French to work as a chef. And then my father said, oh, if he's going to go into commercial art, which is what it was called, he's going to have to get a trade like cabi or a chippy or something for Sparks to fall back on. And my mother responded with the first time I'd ever heard a swear. She said, you could throw that little bastard in a sewer and you come out smelling the roses. And my dad went, yeah, you're right. So I went to art school. And then being told I was only any good at one thing, I've just done one thing. So I have been doing art ever since. That's wonderful. So who was the biggest influence in your early career and what did you learn from that? The biggest influence in my early career was Anthony Frosch, I got the Central School of Art and Design. That was a joke in itself because when I did my foundation course at Harrow, and then applied and they actually wrote to the head of Harrow Art School saying, is this his own work? And the head of art school showed me the letter and he wrote back saying, there's no one else like this nutter. So I got accepted into the Central, which was full of mostly middle class, rich kids. And this East End bump. And then I didn't really get on that well to start with because I'd come to learn the trade not. not work. I wanted to learn a trade anyway. We did this typography course and I did this piece. I did a layout and it was like a duck going to water. Everything seemed to work and I knew exactly what I was doing. So I proudly showed it to the tutor. He said, that's no good. And I said bollocks and he said, no, it's no good. So I went in a composing room and I typeset it all in six on six, two, six, two, Gil Sands. And then I went back and I didn't do any other lessons for a month. And I went back and then I put it in front of him and said, now tell me that ain't readable. It's no good. And he said, now I'll teach you. And it turned out to be this world famous photographer typographer called Anthony Froschak. And it was through that I met and got invited to, I went to Penn showed my work at Pentagram and I started working for Alan Fletcher. And through Anthony I then went to TAY Day, Total Design in Holland. and I worked for Vim Crowe, who was nicknamed, was the grid. So I learned grids. And then I worked with Michael Wolfe at Wolfe Owlins. And then I was headhunted into Allied International Designers, sort of creative director of branding in the eighties. And then I got fed up with not doing enough design work. So I started a company called Cleveland. which then grew into yet another bloody big design company. So I got fed up with pushing paper and wanted to use a pencil more. So I started Etow, which just means and others in Latin. And we've been going for 32 years. Wow. So how did this- And my largest job we've ever designed was Visa worldwide. And the smallest job was an East End rat catcher's business card. That's excellent. So how did this experience shape your approach to design? Well, one thing art school trained us to be was not many graphic designers in an art school. I remember one student trying to do a letterhead and they said, no, you'll spend the next 40 years of your life doing that crap. What you've got to learn here is how to think. So the central was quite unusual in that respect because they wanted to train you in thinking and in concepts and expand your mind. and not how to be a mini graphic designer in art school, which is what the LCP basically was in that day and age. And I think that gave such a good background because I got asked if I could do an exhibition 30 years later and I just went, yes, yes. And I got back and someone said, Phil, have you ever designed one? I said, no, but I can design anything. I was trained to design anything. So we designed an exhibition, maybe we did more exhibitions. But what I'm saying is you're not frightened about what you're going to design because you were trying to use your mind. And I think not having computers was a great help in training creativity. Because I often get asked about things like, why do you never have any problems? Or we get stuck with ideas. And I'm like, you can't get stuck with ideas. You can if you work on a Mac. Because if you put in dog into search engine, you get pictures of dogs. Well, I go to an art library and I look at books and I look at hundreds of irrelevant images. I look at how Picasso drew a dog or Chegel drew a dog. different books, I look at history of dogs, I do all this. And for all this irrelevant information, normally comes an idea. But if all you're getting back is what you put in, you're not gonna get any more information to get a creative concept. And before anyone says it, artificial intelligence is basically the clue is in the first word. It's artificial. It will become another tool like using InDesign or Illustrator or Photoshop. It's a tool for creatives. It should actually make my life easier. Well, it does already. So what projects did Central give you in order to train you into thinking? Um, well, I was, it was quite interesting because like most things in life, I've never done what I was told to do. Um, so because I started working with Anthony, um, I then just started doing my own work, my own way, which is all typographic. Uh, much to annoyance, a lot of students who came at the end of their degree show just typeset their business cards because there was only letterpress and hot metal was a way of producing anything in those days. I'd set nearly the whole composing room in a year. It took them four years to dis, put the text type back in the cases from what I'd set. Wow. What was the biggest challenge you faced when starting out in the industry? This is a plug for my book, What They Didn't Teach You In Design School, because I wrote all the little stories in there. Like the same as it is now, how do you get in front of people? How do you knock on doors? I was asked by a very big designer to show my portfolio, and then when I, because there's no internet, so I then show my portfolio and they showed me what they did. and they both agreed, they agreed and I agreed, I would never work there. Remember they said, why are you here? Can you show the rest of the studio your work? So I went through this typographic portfolio again. Then when I got home, I wrote an invoice for entertaining your design studio for an hour. And I laughed and I put it in the post box. And then I didn't get paid, but everyone I found up in central London afterwards said, oh. It's you. Yeah, you can come, but you can't invoices. So it sort of began to open doors. You got, you know, if you send an email saying, hello, I'm a student. I've just finished work. Will you please look at my portfolio? You're not going to get anywhere. It's no idea. There's no balls. There's no creativity. That's what I mean. You've got to be trained to think differently. And how do you feel that the design industry has evolved since you started? Um, I, I mean, I still think great work comes out and there's still amazing designers, but most of those are actually doing things with ideas. And I still a great believer. An idea is more powerful way of communicating than a piece of hell vetica with a four point on the end of it. And you tell me that's a brand identity and logo. And I'm so glad that things like Berber and all that lot, which are sort of merge to look the same are now going backwards and saying we want something which makes us look different. Yeah. So that blandness hopefully will disappear. But what people now say are concepts is on the whole a load of bollocks. Oh, sorry. Are you allowed to say that? So, so do you feel that the industry is going back to more ideas based approach? Well, I, I'm hoping it is. Uh, I mean, Michael Wolf was phenomenal with coming up with mad ideas, which, which changed branding. You know, Henry would, would did blue circles. So he drew a blue circle. Um, you know, Michael Wolf decided to put, you know, clouds on a petrol station or a fox to sell paint. Uh, so I think, I think there was two strands of everything, but I do think ideas and concept work. But it's harder to sell. And if the designers can't sell it, the work gets blander. But don't you also feel that the decision makers have changed as well? I mean, yeah, they've all got young. They used to be all old. Yeah. Um, yeah, I still think you can sell an idea. You can sell a concept. Um, but you've got to understand the client and have a way of communicating. It's good if you, if you have the client in front of you, but if, if you have like a marketing expert, or whatever, or somebody else representing the client, then it becomes really, really hard. Yeah, well, I tend not to these I don't tend to work through marketing departments, I tend when we're doing brands to be working with CEO, or check, you know, the board of directors. We were brand guardians for Nectar for five years. And then we had to package them up. Um, we packaged them up to to sell them and obviously they sold and of course we lost the client, so they all left. But what was interesting is the CEO said, when the marketing guy said, I will get Phil Cleaver, the client went, oh not him, he always argues with me. And the marketing guy went, yeah, that's why we're getting him, because he doesn't muck about. So it's all about communication. It shouldn't be about a designer. You should not really be your the conduit. You're not the Vienne result. So it should all be about what the client, how that client communicates. And you have the skill set to translate what he wants and what he hasn't even dreamed of into reality. Absolutely. But in a larger structure, that will be more challenging. It's fantastic, which you can deal directly with that. But in How do you do it in a larger structure? Well, how large did you get when we designed visa? We didn't deal with the marketing department. We still with the border director. Yeah. And when we do, I mean, I'm working with a bank in Vietnam. And when I'm working with them, I deal with the CEO. I get that the marketing department is sitting there, but, um, that was quite interesting because that banking Vietnam, I did a presentation and didn't hear anything to, I think two years, uh, and what they'd gone. they've done is they've gone to two well known branding agencies which have other studios in lots of different countries. Yeah. And the CEO just went, I've had enough of those because they never seem to do what they're not they're not producing amazing work. And so she said, just get me get cleaver back get that mouthy one who designed visa and did BNI Bank in Indonesia. Yeah, my question was not about the size of the work. My question was referring to exactly if you had people from a large structure that, you know, exactly from other departments that don't understand ideas-based work. Because what I understand, what comes out, at least so far, we have less ideas-based work because the decision-making structure is far more complicated. And also you've got designers who don't know how to sell. Of course, of course, but if this issue of making is complicated, it's the designer's job to go up, is to take it up, to get the right answers. Even if you end up having an argument with the client. But in a larger agency, you have client service, you have marketing, you have a load of other people. Usually it's very interfering with the designers. Usually the designers never get to meet the client directly. How can you design for someone, how can you design for a client you've never met? I have to meet people. I have to talk to them. I can read their body language. Absolutely. I can sit. No one can sell what I'm designing the way I can sell it. Absolutely. I gave an international design conference, and I've had the question a couple of times, which was like, Phil, your work's really creative and very different, but your clients let you do it. And I'm like, and our clients, they work on, won't let us do that stuff. And I'm like, well, that's because you don't know what you're doing. My clients are no different to your clients. I just know how to do my job. which normally doesn't go down very well, but it's the truth. My clients are no different than anyone else's clients. I just get them to buy more creative work. I completely agree with you. I was just saying that in a large structure, usually again, an art director or even a creative, hardly any art client. So you're saying the structure within a large creative design company or a large ad agency. Yeah, the designers don't get let out. Well, it's a bit like asking me to design with one arm tied to my leg. Yeah, of course. No, of course, of course. They are completely green, but it's a challenge. Because I've never yet met an accountant who hasn't got a foot in either camp. So, absolutely. Michael Wolf sold directly. Alan Fletcher sold direct. All those that generation of designers were the lead and they sold what they designed. Absolutely. That's wonderful. So let's go into design education. Um, what do you see is the biggest gap in design education today? Um... I think a lot of the problem with, well, let's start with students, is a lot of it is if you spend your whole life looking in computers and you don't actually experience life and work out how to design without a computer, which is how anyone in my age group, we all learned to design. We never had a computer. All that the computer did for me was get rid of four assistants. That's, it's the, it's make, I think the computers have made a lot of work bland. Um, and I think the computers are amazing. I mean, I think it's fantastic because I obviously do all the work we do, but we're working on a tea thing, a tea branding in Malaysia and The ideas came from walking on the streets and looking at the actual grids of the shops and making the grid of the book where they work the same as the grids in the shops. We're using photographs I found in a flea market in Penang. It's not using things off the internet. We need the woodcuts, so I've got books with woodcuts in some of you. It's not... It's not the stuff you can't do that research only on a computer. You know, I had better ideas walking around flea markets or art galleries and I do sit in looking on pins. Was it pins? I don't actually use any of those pins set and all that stuff. I think it comes from, it comes through living. What makes a great designer is someone who's very curious and they wanna know everything. and they want to know how it works or how to do this. And they don't have to look in the computer all the time. They have to go out and experiment with it. Teaching in China was quite, you know, the head of graphics came into one art school and there's one of the Chinese students got a fish and she's inking up the scales and with a roll of printing it. And he just looked at me and I said, oh, she's doing amazing work. Because they all became much more creative. because I wasn't allowed to use a computer to get the imagery. And when you and I worked in ISM, you got me involved in coming to do a talk in ISM, you know, I was talking to the students and once you get them into the vein, you know, we had one student throwing spaghetti and his dog was catching it. And that, the photographs of that made a fantastic cookbook. And he had a fish with his kitten underneath trying to get at it. I mean, it was just fun. The students have got the ability to be amazingly creative, but I think we're not training them. You know, they all want to get their marks and do this and learn that. So it's an interesting... conundrum of how you do that because We produce a lot of what I call Mac monkeys I know all the programs and how to do everything but we don't know how to think or we don't know how to create Brilliant. So what techniques are you using to encourage students to get into that mode? Um, I suppose it's talking to them. It's actually doing one to ones when they're trying to do ideas and beginning to explain, well, have you done this? Do that? Try this? Look at that. None of which are answers to computers. I mean, again, in China, one student says I said, I don't know what to do. I said, well, what's your favorite food? And he said, noodles. So I said, well, go throw noodles at your girlfriend and take a picture. And another girl said, what's your option? She said, I'm really like fashion. So I said, take any food and turn it into a dress. And she made a dress out of lettuce leaves. It's freeing them up. That's what I think it's about. It's just getting people free up and try different things. Brilliant. So how do we get students more involved with craftsmanship? Because it seems to me that with the rise of digital, the answer is more craft, more drawing. How do we get them to do more of that? I think everyone should do life drawing in an art school, whatever. If you're doing a PhD, you should still be life drawing. Because it's about training me a hand and I am a coordination. And in the same way that I still teach students. to do typography, but it's what if you've understood letter 500 years and you've underdone you set with some stick, a composing stick in your hand and you've learned to type set with metal, you begin to understand what's going on a computer. Whereas without it, there's no reference. It's also this whole thing of learning from your body and learning by doing something. As a dyslexic, dyspraxic, I think I've got quite a lot of ADT. I think I've scored on all points with those. I found out I'm a neurodivergent. Feels like I've become a member of the X squad, you know, the X-Men. I seem to have clocked up nearly all of those things. What I'm getting at is by using your body to do a process like printing or getting involved in inking up type or type setting, you begin to learn about something three dimensional with your body. which you could never do on a computer. But when you go to a computer to type set, you've got a much more understanding of how to set correctly and how to look at the leading and everything else. And also the other point is, I don't think anyone's really teaching typography that well. In terms of that, I can spend half a day playing with one font to get it to look right on a page of type. You've got to really be able to play with things. And I think play is the other point, you need to play. Absolutely. So how can we encourage because, because a lot of the a lot of the way that students have learned before coming to higher education, you know, is the complete antithesis of what we're doing. So in a way we have to reprogram them. Yeah, and also to make them, you know, I say that, well, you know, we're going to do a job. Well, why don't you work out where you can use your skill sets to help society to go find a charity or go find a local shop near the art school and just say, well, for nothing, I'm going to redo your branding. Yeah. Or for you go, go to the hospital and say, what does no one seem to understand, work out what it is and do it. But you have to do that. You have to physically go there. Talk. people and then you begin to understand their problem and then you can use your graphic skill set to solve the problem. If you sit at a computer and do a hypothetical brief, what are you going to learn? And I think that's the whole point is giving them confidence to play and go do things. Is that distinction between analog and digital? Because a lot of places you just have computers. So there's no space that is not digital. So these spaces are kind of, at least they used to be under attack. Uh, they still are. But if you can go, so if you go to the designer, you could go, you can rise. All right. You can do their press into silk screen. I've got computers in the fashion, which are stitch. Yeah. So you can actually do a book cover, which you program it up and it stitches the type into it. Me. It's amazing. I I'd actually like to go to an art school with all the, I mean, middle The facilities are fantastic. I'd love to go there because I could just, you can do everything. Three dimensional modeling. You could make your own fonts, print them out. Yeah. It's fun. Oh, this is great. I mean, you've got to have that. Sorry. You got to have it. The point is you've got, you've got to train, train them in actually wanting them to go try out how to do risos, how do you do letterpress, watch silkscreen. You got to get them involved in things which are physical. Then they start doing things more creative. Yeah. It's just where they're coming from necessarily has not encouraged them that. And because this generation has been born with mobile phones, has been born with digital world, it's very hard to get them out of that. Yes, but I think to get at creativity you have to get them out of it. Absolutely absolutely because if everything if the only thing you with all of the stuff including AI You're only getting back what you put in Whereas if you for real I think for really great creativity insights is it's They call it research, which is what designers have always done, which is look at different things to see what the problem is. Yeah. And I think the two dimensional world of a look at the screen does not give you the same experience as actually life. It'd be better to go study anything but graphics. Don't look in graphics books, go walk around art galleries, flea markets, junk shops, and find... you'll find answers to your design problems in the most unexpected place. Absolutely. And also the size of the screen. I mean, we used to draw in A0 papers, you know, A0 was like you have to use your whole body. Yeah, I still haven't forgiven Yang Shikou for designing an A system. Yeah. It was much better when all the paper was different sizes. Yes, yes, yes. But I'm talking about the sheer size of the paper compared to your body. Whereas, you know, even a big screen is quite small. Yeah, I mean, I'm waiting for AI to develop even further so I can really begin to, I can just tell it how to lay out what I want. I mean, we just, in Misak, again, we just were doing a job and we took an 18th century woodcut, they were English and I wanted him to look oriental, so we just told Photoshop, can you turn that into an oriental and it did a perfect job and I'm like, that's fantastic. That would have taken weeks in an old, you know, in the old way of doing things. But you can only use bits of it. The other bits he did were complete rubbish. I've actually done an experimentation because we work by benchmarks. So the client and us have got the same words and may judge what we design by these benchmarks. And I've put benchmarks into AI to see what it would come up with. And so far, we're still winning. Yeah. Also with AI, a client has to articulately... know what they want and be able to describe it. So I think designers are safe because I've never met a client who can do that. As long as the client is looking for perfection or as long as the client is looking for something unique. Yeah, well, you mean a computer wouldn't come up with a Nike tick. No, of course not. It's things like that, yeah. Brilliant, to go into creativity, of course. What does design thinking mean to you? Well, again, it's like jargon, isn't it? It's like, you know, design thinking to me is like, you know, I'm a designer, so I think, but I don't actually think. So again, my head, I get so confused. I don't go, I find it sexually complicated and miswired. I think design thinking is when you're given something, like... We were working on a bank years ago in Indonesia. It was the largest state-owned bank in Indonesia. And it was called Bank Negara Indonesia 1946. And one of the brand qualities is they wanted to be international. Well, I couldn't even spell it. So I called it BNI Bank. Because it's common sense, but common sense isn't common anymore, it seems. But that's called design thinking. I think it's visualizing things. People talk to me and I see pictures. Yeah. People describe things and I see symbols. It's quite weird. But design thinking is like an artist. If you're an artist, you cook like an artist, you paint like an artist, or you sculpt. You're still an artist. And the same with designers. I think the way designers work and their heads are wired, whatever they do, it is a way of looking at the world and how to actually communicate. communicate it to make it simpler or to say exactly what it's meant to be saying. And it's no big thing. It's just the fact you're designing your thing. Absolutely. Do you think though designers today are taking enough risks because, you know, your, your process can, can give you amazing ideas, but to actually apply these ideas and put them in front of the client, do you think that there's enough risk, risk taking in design today? I think that translates if you've got any balls. Um, I think you've got to have the courage to stick by what you're doing. It's also great. You know, It's great to be able to sell. You've got to stand up and sell what you believe is the right solution for that problem. But you have to break that down before you get to that stage. You break that stage down in what familiarization and the analytical process of what you're doing. So if it's a Vietnamese bank, you know, like we don't want to look like anyone else. So you show them every Vietnamese bank logo. They've in Vietnam. And we go, well, if you don't want to look like any of those, you can look like this. We go, that's different. And you go, yes, I know. But if you don't want to look like that, you can look like this. And that begins, you can visually show people things. It's not trying to be an MBA business analyst. It's where, you know, if again, the banking, you know, We own orange and blue, where you actually walk around Vietnam and the petrol station's in orange and blue, everything's in orange. I mean, you don't own the colour. And then you show them visually. The thing is, you don't need the verbal language, you can show nearly everything visually. I have a little book which is full of pictures and it works in any language. You know, I can point at a fish and I get fish and I can point at a bowl of rice and I get rice. It's a little book, about this big, it's just full of pictures. You don't need words. You do for certain things. You can actually use pictures to do anything. So showing clients pictures of things is much harder for them to intellectualize their way out of. Okay, okay, okay. I get that. And what other techniques? I'm glad you do because half the time I don't think, I think I don't get it myself, but anyways. What, what other techniques you use to balance between client expectations and your, and your creativity. Um... Well, I think if you answer the brief correctly, then the client's happy and you're happy. So it comes back the answer to any design problems in the brief. So if you haven't broken it down and educated the client just to talk into a creative visual world and they don't know how to talk or express themselves, then you're 50% lost already. So you're saying that it's how you educate, it's in how you educate the client. I think you have to certain extent. Talking male language in your language and get them to understand and agree on what you're trying to do, i.e. But benchmarks gives you the ability to analyze, talk to the client. They have a set of words by which you're designing against. So when we did Burton's, the client said, well, okay, we got it. The brief is. We want to be traditionally English. We want street cred. We want a link back to the owner. And we want humor. and it's a fashion retailer. So we ended up with British Bulldog, which was English, with Ray Burns on, which was street cred at that time. Humor was it was a British Bulldog wearing sunglasses and the owner was called Montague, so the dog got called Montague. So when the client sees that, he goes, I've got to answer everything. So it comes again about breaking it down. It gives you the idea, but it also gives you a way of the client. Normally by the time you get the client to agree on a set of words, they think you can't answer it anyway. but the trick is answering what the brand's trying to do. Absolutely. And also it's like designers would do, you can pick up a book and if it's centered on a computer and not done visually, you can work out the age of a designer. Because they've never actually printed it out, trimmed the page and looked at it in the book. It's just, you know, if I was in an antiquarian, a very high powered antiquarian book dealer, and he said, Phil, our catalogs look terrible. I said, well, all you got to do is copy what's on your shelf. There's 400 years of technology and thinking behind that. It's all in the golden section. The type's readable. It looks fantastic. Just copy it. You do a better job than hiring the designer. You've got to do that. I didn't get the job because he got the answer. It's not a good one. You coined the term blandism to describe the homogenization of branding. Why do you say something about that before? Why do you think this is happening? I think it's I think we've gone through it. We're coming out of it. Okay. I think at one stage Google all of that lot began to look the same. They all begin to come together. and then now they're beginning to go apart again. It was very easy to sell a line of type, you know, put a couple of colours on the letters and say this is a great brand. Yeah. But I mean, I think with branding, you have to look at smell. You've got to look at sound. You've got to build a visual language. It's still a complicated thing to get every element of it to work well. And also you do have to have a brave client. That's a blessing. Yeah, but I start every press, but when I'm doing a credential presentation, the second slide says there is no boring design. There is only boring designers or worse boring clients. So we either get thrown out or they know what they're going to do. We don't hold back when we go for good. Because there is no boring designers, boring designers. Yeah. You don't become an interesting designer if you don't learn how to live. I mean, I always remember John Higgity saying, he read the... He read, I think, The Economist every week. because it fed his brain with information which gave him ideas. So unless you're reading things, looking at different things, learning about things, you're not feeding that muscle in your head which is the creative ideas place. So I think that's the other point, you've got to live an interesting life. So to go back to students and education, what would you say to students, again, trying to make it in the real world? I think you always have to go 10 miles further than you thought you'd have to go. And, you know, when we're designing, sometimes we design a book cover, we design what the clients ask for, and then we design what we want, and we show it. We use graphics to sell it. I've never yet had them choose the one they wanted. I've always chosen the one because you're using graphics to sell it. So students, I think it's a hard, hard to break into the industry. It's never been easier. It's never been easy and it's still, I think it's probably harder now anyway. But again, it's, you keep knocking on the door and you'll break it down. Do you feel that students are less resilient now? And how do they, yeah. I think, I mean, I think it's partly to do with, you know, everyone, you know, everyone, everyone can do certain things. So they think they know how to do graphic design, if they can use the computer. Yeah. And I think the point is, it is a, I think it's a trade. And I think commercial art is a close of terminology, um, from graphic design. No, I'm most talking about the, the setbacks, you know, the resilience. I mean, What you said about people trying. Yeah, I always worked on the assumption I might not be a very good designer, but I'd be a last man standing. And also you've got to, a student has to be exceptionally resilient because a lot of ways of teaching in art school is that you knock them down and they get back up. Or you criticize them and they take it personally. I mean, you've actually, if you want a plant to grow, it's not the normal way. you teach art. I think they've got to realise it's not about them, it's about what they're drawing or what they're communicating. And I think you need to culture, you need to hold and nurture something to make it grow and I think there's an aspect in art school where you help them to see what they can do more than just tell them they don't, you know, it's not very good go away and do it again. I mean, that doesn't get you doesn't get the student anywhere. I think you, I think it's, it's a, it's got to be a marriage of both things. Yeah. And I think you've got to have people, you've got to have educators who have also to certainly understanding of what it's like to work in the real world. and art school should be the incubation place for a phenomenal talent. And I still like the fact that Central never trained graphic designers. They just trained people to think. But they also have to train a number of fantastic designers, which kept went through the Central like Fletcher. But get all that mob, all John McCartney, all those loads of them. They all came from that here, from that understanding and teaching. Tell us about internships and about paid or unpaid internships or what students be doing, how they need to secure an internship. Well, I think it has to be, I've written about that in my book. Yeah. It's another plug for the book. Yeah. I think it has to be a trade, a trade off so that they get to learn something. And then through them learning and doing something. the employee gets help with their work. I think doing internships, we always have an intern, but they come for a year and they come after two years in art school. So they do two years in an art school and the third year spent in industry. And the whole, they're, we're getting, they get trained by the studio and me one-to-one. for a year. So when they go back to art school, hopefully now they've got a better skill set and a better understanding and they can actually do more. And I don't think you get back reality if you haven't done any internships. I mean, I think in 17 years we've got 16 grade A, or 16 top ones for degrees. And I think that's to do with the fact they're better armed when they go back to art school. And they realize that now's that last year is the only time when they can really to be themselves and do their work their way to show the world what they can do. I think that has improved them. If you've been in art school for three years and then an internship, it depends how good the design company is, if it's worth doing. mean your jobs then there's no point that's not you're not learning anything. You need to go find who you think is the best designer you know and see if you can learn off them. But that's never really changed. But I think internships should be paid if they're working in one form or another. We've got minimum wage now so that actually has stopped quite a lot of internships. after when you finish start school because legally you can't employ anyone under who's not a minimum wage. So that has an effect. But yeah, you got, it's got to be symbiotic. You both got to get something from it. It's no good if one of you is not getting anything. This doesn't work. That's brilliant. What advice would you like to leave us with? Oh, always be yourself. And ignore half the advice you get and just go have some fun. Because I think having fun and doing what you love will get you through anything. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, Phil, thank you so much. So this wonderful conversation. So I hope I'm around when you have the 200 and 300. Definitely. And of course you will be. Of course you will be. Thank you so much. Thank you. All the best. Bye bye.