Graphite Pro
Ignite Creativity. Elevate Design. Shape the Future.
Welcome to the Graphite Pro Podcast, the go-to space for visionary creatives, designers, and innovators seeking inspiration, strategy, and deeper conversations about the creative process.
Rooted in the Creator brand archetype, Graphite Pro is more than a podcast—it’s a movement that champions creativity as a force for transformation. Whether you’re a designer, artist, storyteller, or entrepreneur, each episode delivers thought-provoking discussions, expert insights, and practical takeaways to fuel your craft and career.
Expect conversations with industry leaders, deep dives into design thinking, and explorations of how culture, technology, and creativity intersect. From pushing the boundaries of artistic expression to reimagining the future of design, Graphite Pro is where creative minds come to grow.
Join us as we redefine creativity—one episode at a time.
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Graphite Pro
When Makeup Meets Code: How Tech is Disrupting Beauty and Beyond
The creative industry is experiencing a seismic shift as beauty brands hire more engineers than makeup artists and traditional retail stores get disrupted by digital-first competitors. This transformation represents the convergence of the creative and technical worlds, requiring new approaches to design and business.
• Bold Hue's groundbreaking personalized foundation device scans skin tone and creates custom makeup on demand
• Fast fashion retailers like Forever 21 are being disrupted by digital-first brands that better connect with Gen Z
• Traditional retail struggles with inventory management, digital transformation, and creating meaningful experiences
• Design professionals increasingly need to integrate AI, AR, and other technologies into their creative processes
• Sustainability and inclusive design are becoming essential considerations rather than optional approaches
• Economic challenges require creatives to understand business context and develop more efficient workflows
• Newcomers to creative fields must develop T-shaped skill sets and navigate competition from both experienced professionals and AI
• Successful creative professionals will need to continuously reinvent themselves and stay current with emerging technologies
Stay creative, stay hungry, stay human.
You've been tuned in to Graphite Radio, where creativity meets culture. Part of the Kaffeine Audio Network and proudly distributed by Pepper Labs. Thanks for joining us on this journey of ideas, art, and innovation. Be sure to subscribe and stay connected for more stories that shape the world we create. Until next time, keep sketching your vision into reality.
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to Graphite Pro, where creativity meets culture, code and the cutting edge. I'm your host, adrian A Franks, aka AD, and today we'll talk about a wild shift happening right now under our noses like little. What happens when beauty brands start hiring more engineers than makeup artists? According to the recent article in the Business of Fashion, companies like Estee Lauder and L'Oreal are going all in on tech. We're talking about AI, skin diagnosis, ar try-on experiences and even smart mirrors.
Speaker 2:Beauty isn't just pigments anymore. It's about pixels. Here's the twist. This isn't just about the beauty industry getting smarter. What it's really about is the creative industry getting more technical and the technical industry needing more creatives. Think about it. Who's designing those virtual try-ons? Who's building those brand stories into a digital experience? That's us, the designers, the storytellers, the UX pros, even the creative tech niches and the technologists. Well, here's the question I want to throw out to you guys If beauty is becoming tech, what other industries are ripe for this kind of creative technical transformation? And let's take a deeper look. How do we, as a creative class, show up in these spaces and show them in what ways that we can reflect our style, our stories and even our science?
Speaker 2:Ai-driven tools, sustainability and inclusive design are the keys to all of that. Designers are increasingly expected to integrate AI tools into their workflows to streamline processes and generate innovative solutions. That's also a big push towards environmentally friendly materials and practices, as well as making sure that things are accessible to a diverse range of users. Now, on the flip side of that, it's the economy side. You know the cost of living, operational expenses are rising and you know freelancers in small studios might feel a pinch or two, or small or big whatever, but they're going to feel some type of pinch, especially newcomers. Newcomers are going to have to face challenges like finding a niche you know, a thing that they're actually pretty good at, while also being pretty good at a bunch of other different things Building a strong portfolio. You know that was a thing that was pretty huge in my day, but portfolios can't just be pretty. They got to show intent and thinking and even navigating like a competitive job market, because now they're going to be competing with experienced people, junior mid-level people, as well as AI. So that is a big thing they have to consider as well. For the seasoned experts, the idea of staying current around emerging technologies and adapting, like these new client expectations that will be a challenge, especially this idea that you have to change behavior and, you know, break old habits. Now, with all that said, it's going to be a need for this idea of continuous learning and basically upskilling one's self to more or less just stay competitive. All that said, I think it is a dynamic time, especially for those who can balance creativity with tech and savviness, you know, to more or less increase one's business acumen around the design industry and really figure out how to really thrive.
Speaker 2:Here we will unpack all of this and more right after this. Looking for creative inspiration, graphite Pro Radio explores the intersection of design, culture and innovation, one conversation at a time. Join us for deep dives into the creative process and game-changing ideas. Start listening today. Okay, let's get right into the news of all this cool creativity in the world that we live in in terms of design and product.
Speaker 2:Have you guys heard of this one brand called a bold hue? I got a chance to understand this more from just talking with my wife, nicole, and you know she's big into like skincare and beauty and making sure that you know everything with her. You know skin, which is what the biggest organ of of your body is just taken care of. Now this bowl. Here is this groundbreaking beauty tech devices kind of dubbed the career of makeup, kind of like you'd only drop a couple of pods and you kind of tell it what you're looking for. It output essentially like foundational skin tone colors that you can use for foundation shading and, you know, essentially makeup. It's like personalized makeup.
Speaker 2:Now the utility around this handheld one that you kind of use from the device you use it to kind of scan, you know, kind of scan your forehead and your chin and just like everything around your neck, right, ultimately your head, and what it does. It kind of take like a unique skin tone and analysis and essentially it start looking at what type of skin pigment that you are and it more or less can print out foundation that works for you. It used these cartridges like red, yellow, blue and black and white and it ultimately combined all that data from where it scans and what it kind of knows about you and ultimately a bunch of other different people and it just gives you like your own personal foundation. Now for what I read online it's dermatology approved, it's vegan, it's clean, it's cruelty free, it's actually pretty lightweight, so you can kind of take it wherever you want to go. It has like this, I don't know, like personalization aspect of the product. I think that's really kind of cool, definitely infused with these moisturizing antioxidants and even leave the skin kind of feeling soft and smooth, without like all the heaviness and the greasiness, I guess, because that's like the vegan approach to it.
Speaker 2:But nonetheless, this, this particular device, is kind of more or less revolutionizing skin care, especially around the idea of inclusiveness, from, you know, talking to a lot of people who use foundational makeup and things of that nature specifically women in the past, and you know anybody can to a lot of people who use foundational makeup and things of that nature, specifically women in the past and you know anybody can wear makeup, of course, but it was mostly, you know, a women's product. A lot of these foundations and makeups was only really tailored to one group of people, that was mostly white women. But I do think now that we have the technology that can scan people and use all this data, this idea of personalization of products is actually real. It's no longer science fiction, it's really science facts. Now, who would be the person or peoples that would want to use this product? Now, in my personal mind, professional mind, I'm thinking it's going to be people who are just at home who just want to kind of get exactly what they're looking for. So that's just a normal user of anywhere, definitely a makeup artist who's probably on set, whether it's gonna be a photo shoot or video shooting. They just need to get like a quick touch up of talent and they don't really. Maybe they run out of foundation, maybe they can just print something real quick and boom, there you go, they can kind of do their job pretty quickly and, you know, with no ease and relieve that kind of pain point. It's also great for personalization around skin tones and even this idea of inclusiveness, like I mentioned before. So check out bold hue.
Speaker 2:Let's move on to what's happening currently in fast fashion, specifically the forever 21 type stores and fast fashion killing the stores off. Now, maybe I shouldn't use the word kill. I mean, it's more so that these stores are getting disrupted by fast fashion and I remember kind of going to Forever 21, not really my store, kind of not my demographic, but I do know that a lot of women and a lot of children and teenagers and just millennials or you know, people, I guess, younger than me, and it was one of those stores that they can just kind of go in, get some cool stuff, maybe find a piece to go out, but, uh, you know, they can match it with something they didn't even have any closet, or even like get a whole new style. But you know, and it's funny because forever 21 was, like his own, fast fashion. But I think what they didn't consider is that people like you know, tamu and she and who, these digital focus companies just going to come in and just eat their cake Because, you know, look at Forever 21. Some of the things they just kind of didn't do, more or less, you know, got them disrupted. Mind you, they was the original disruptor by being fast fashion.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about a couple of points of you know why these guys got disrupted. One thing they probably need to consider that they got, you know, beat by their own game. Look at Shein and Fashion, nova and Tamu. What these guys did really well was take these trendy, cheap, quick clothing and made them really popular, especially like online and especially just in social. If you think about, like Shein, fashion, nova and Tmoo, what they did very well was go digital and go digital really quick, really fast, now, being that those brands I just mentioned, went digital first. Well, the inherent value of that is that they got to Gen Z really quickly, almost like natively Gen Z they're used to, like Shein, zara, baobab and all these guys. They really up the lives their online and even like this whole mobile first experience Forever 21 never fully translated that and it kind of you know, let the digital transformation just kind of skipped them a little bit. It's not to say they didn't have an online presence, they just didn't make their overall brand more so digital first.
Speaker 2:I think another point is is too much inventory, too much inventory and really too little strategy. If you think about any brand that's just housing tons and tons of clothing that's just going to either have to get shipped or sit in a warehouse or sit in the store for too long. Well, housing all that inventory is going to cost money. That's going to cause a whole lot of around like high turnover in production. It's going to cause a whole lot of around like high turnover in production. It's going to cause a lot of things go up in what they call dead stock. But when you're just housing a lot of inventory, you're really not moving clothing.
Speaker 2:Now all these other guys, well, it's kind of like the mls can easily target the audience very well, since I'm using a, I guess, some type of app or online store where they know exactly what to order. They know exactly what to create when somebody orders something, versus making a lot of things based on fashion trends. They can just go with people literally want and you can just ship that on demand, almost like what they call drop stocks or drop shipment or whatever. And if you know anything about you know too many clothing being in the store. Unfortunately, it just kind of ends up in, you know, a landfill. But that's not to say that even the other guys I just mentioned don't have that same problem. But yeah, when you do overproduce a lot of clothing, it will more or less end up in a landfill.
Speaker 2:I think the next point here is that these guys missed on these cultural moments. You know, younger consumers want fashion that feels very personalized and even just memeable Not meaningful, but memeable. That's like a cool thing, right? If you think about like TikTok. There's like this thing called micro trends and things around thrift culture. Forever 21 just didn't really keep up. Their brand has started to feel a little dated. Why, never? You know, all these newer brands really lean into like aesthetics niche and really just telling great stories. It's more than just having to open the store and hope that they come.
Speaker 2:I mentioned earlier about this idea around sustainability. Shift Fashion, especially fast fashion, is still booming, but they are being called out by Gen Z about this idea of eco-consciousness and being really, really vocal about being sustainable. A lot of these brands are more or less they kind of pretend to care about sustainability, like h&m conscious line or these weird things that certain brands would do when they want to roll out a campaign and kind of say that they're eco-friendly. But forever 21 really didn't evolve that narrative like at all around this. They just kind of ignored it. So Gen Z will let you know how they feel with their devices. So keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:Also, I think you know mall and retail it's a dying breed. Again, if you're talking about storefront, storefront has to be an experience. It's no longer this idea that you're just going to go in, have a lot of clothing or products or whatever and you're just going to have people sifting through all this stuff, finding something that they just may not even like and hopefully they'll buy right. That approach just doesn't work anymore. I mean it's really kind of collapsed. I know a lot of brands that really couldn't really pivot to like the e-commerce or create like a pop-up experience. When it comes to like retail, they just kind of got left behind. I think Forever 21 was built on really foot traffic and not foot traffic. That that foot traffic more or less just kind of disappeared Again. I think more and more retail has to consider itself to be more of an experience and less about a big store or a box that just hold items.
Speaker 2:So I think it's that the last thing I'm going to add here is when a brand kind of don't have a cult following or they lack a cult following, you know it's kind of, you know you're kind of in trouble here. You look at something like Skims or you know, even like Uniqlo they have a loyal customer base and like a whole point of view. When it comes to like ideas, fashion, art, design. Forever 21 really lacked that. I mean the idea of I don't even know what Forever 21 even really means anymore. I guess you mean this idea of staying forever young, but it was everything to everybody. Then it just ended up being nothing special to nobody. So again, when you're a brand, a top of mind is real. You know, you got to have that cult-like following and you got to tell stories.
Speaker 2:Let's take a quick break and when we come back we're going to get right into the graphite tool of the day. This idea of reinventing yourself becomes tech. Welcome back. Let's jump right into the graphite tool of the day when reinventing yourselves becomes tech, the new creative frontier. Lifestyle, beauty and fashion brands aren't just about skincare, cool kicks and tech styling anymore. They're becoming more like software companies, from AI, skin diagnosis to augmented reality try-ons. Brands like Estee Lauder, l'oreal and Nike are investing heavily into tech. But what does that mean for creatives? Is the next art director going to be a coder? Is the next creative director going to be replaced by a prop? Let's talk about AI and design Now.
Speaker 2:I've already covered this on a couple of episodes, but there are some people really using AI and even like AR to like, reinvent the whole like creative process. When it comes to like making art and making design, I've seen people use the Vision Pro kind of expensive, but they're using it to actually create art in the real world. They're using augmented reality to layer their drawings or even like their paintings or sketches onto like live surfaces or big surfaces and using that technology to more or less transfer the ideas seamlessly onto walls and even like canvases like prior to that you have to use like some kind of projector or some scaling system to more or less kind of transfer ideas or canvases. So people are really using like ar tools and vr tools and AR tools to more or less be cool with design. I've also seen a lot of people using these same kind of AR goggles to more or less augment what they're doing when it comes to fashion design. They're using it to scan like the garments or give them pointers or teaching them how to do certain kind of sews or hems or even kind of like ways to do certain stitches or hymns or even kind of like ways to do certain stitches, and you look at that technology. Normally you would need a computer to kind of look at it, synthesize it and mimic it, but now you can more or less mimic it in real time, almost more or less having like a digital teacher in your face or these goggles as you more or less just kind of go through that kind of design practice.
Speaker 2:Other things to consider too I mentioned something about sustainability and inclusive design. This is like something that's dear to me because if you think about design, it's really for everybody, it's not just for any one group, but design is really for everyone and everybody and everything. It's not even just for humans, it's for animals, it's for the environment we live in, it's for the atmosphere that we have to breathe, the air that we're in, it's for any type of existence or you know environment that we live in. So it's not just for humans, but it's for everybody on planet Earth. I know a lot of us are trying to think about design in like a more sustainable way, using different kinds of materials, different kinds of eco-friendly materials, using something that doesn't leave a big carbon footprint, and even thinking about how to make things more inclusive. Living here in New York is that funny thing that it's a great city that knows design but the train stations and the overall transit system it's not the most accessible, it's not really inclusive of all people, especially if you get like a injury. Like the biggest thing you know you can deal with is, you know, injuries to your leg, like you have to walk this city and you know certain stations don't even have escalators or elevators or just other means of going up and down on certain platforms. So I do think even places like metropolitan areas like new york could really a you know a page from like the inclusive design practices and material and start thinking about how to be a better cities.
Speaker 2:I often say that the next best designer or the next Johnny Ives probably won't be, I guess, from the tech world. They'd probably come from like architecture firm. Because you think about an architect. They have to think about like the environment. Right, you think about what architecture is, is is, it's the views, it's the land and I just mentioned that we live in you know, certain environments. Architects have to kind of think a little bit more broadly than just you know something that looks aesthetically pleasing. They gotta think about a building that's gonna be more or less have a certain intent and function behind it. They're gonna have to think about who's gonna be in the building, how it's gonna be used, what type of furniture is gonna be in the building, what type of functionalities and systems is gonna be need to actually use such set dwelling or building. They have to think about like everything, not just you know a couple cool pillows and some paint chips, but they really gotta think about the people and the intent behind the building. So I do think the next designer, a great designer, is to be more or less someone who have, like an architectural mind.
Speaker 2:Other things to consider economic challenges. I know right now we're living through a lot of uncertainty. It was what a lot of financial analysts call the market uncertainty, this idea that, well, you, you know, any day we wake up, certain leaders can just kind of pull a lever and the market change, and sometimes that uncertainty is kind of hard to plan around that, especially when it comes to designing new products or deploying new products and services to people. Or even this idea that, well, maybe I got a great idea but I can't really get it prototyped, probably because now we're gonna have to be dealing with tariffs and hold our politics. So you think about the design practice, whether you're art director or designer or creative director or just a creative person or professional across the board.
Speaker 2:Yes, certain industries may get affected, but I do think one way to kind of keep yourself more or less, I guess, relevant in the game really getting to understand how the business, of any business worker and how your talents can be best used more efficiently, especially with the rising costs of just getting work done. It's going to be this push to be more lean when it comes to using certain design talent. It's probably going to be using probably less freelancers or freelancers that have more of a T-shaped kind of skill set, and definitely this idea of how do you really effectively use smaller studios to augment work that bigger guys can't use, right? So maybe that's something to kind of consider. But you know, there are some other ways to kind of navigate this. Again, there's a lot of literature around using different ways to navigate these economic hurdles and bubbles that goes up and down and inflate and deflate, but I've seen in the past that everybody that I've noticed that ever had to deal with these economic challenges. They just figure out the best way to stay relevant by using the current tools at the time.
Speaker 2:Now I do think a lot of designers are going to have to start thinking about how to use AI, but also how to use a spreadsheet a little bit more efficiently. Is there a way to use AI to create certain kinds of spreadsheets that you can track your scope a little bit better? Is there a way to use certain tools like Salesforce to re-engage a population of people that you're selling a product to? Is there a way to use e-commerce data to better understand which products to make versus the products that you feel? I know I can be that kind of designer who say, hey, I want to make this because it sounds really cool, but maybe the market's not looking for that. So I do think you know understanding economics micro and macro is always a good plan when it comes to thinking about being a design professional.
Speaker 2:There are going to be a lot of challenges for newcomers and even seasoned experts. I mentioned earlier that you know a lot of newcomers are going to have to deal with people they're going to deal with very much. So, like these vets, they're going to have to deal with people who are kind of in the middle part of their career. They're going to have to deal with AI. So you know a lot of newcomers are going to have to deal with a lot of uncertainty about what to do. I do think certain things that can help these guys overcome certain hurdles is really building a great portfolio with a whole lot of intent.
Speaker 2:I would say try to find a niche, but maybe that's not even the best approach now, because I do think you have to not be as much of a niche, but look at yourself as a T-shape. Is that a way to have one or two things you're good at that you go deep in and you can kind of spread your skillset across multiple kind of things? Also, being, I guess, in communities with people who can give you good mentoring that's always going to be a great thing. Now that can work not just for newcomers. Can give you good mentoring that's always going to be a great thing. Now that can work not just for newcomers, that also works for the seasoned professional. So mentoring, upscaling, definitely being a community of people and just more or less staying relevant, is always a good thing. Okay, so let's just do a recap.
Speaker 2:I mentioned know, learn about everything you can when it comes to AI and design, like what's some of the coolest tools besides just the chat tools of AI that you can use or the generative nature of using, you know, image generation or video generation. Is there a better way that you can use AI to be more optimized? When it comes to, like workflows? Is there like technology like AR that you can use to augment certain types of ways of working right, or is there better ways to collaborate? So is there a way to, like I said, to use these tools not just AI, but just tools in general to more or less be a better designer.
Speaker 2:I mentioned something about sustainability and inclusive design. Again, design really is about being inclusive of all people and all things. Certain people and certain groups do have certain needs when it comes to design over other people. So always keep that in mind about what inclusive design could really represent, because if it's good for a certain group of people, it probably could be good for everybody, depending on what you're designing, what problems you're trying to solve. And sustainability Again, we are in a new world of, I guess, post-digital not even post-industrial really. In this whole post-digital world where everything is just assuming to be digital, definitely, information is flying everywhere. Misinformation is what it is. Is there a way to really make sustainable design more prevalent? That can be with, like raw material. That can even be with information that we consume online. So think about how we can be a little bit more sustainable in our lives.
Speaker 2:Also, economic challenges I think, as a design professional or creative professional, the best thing you can do is look at the market and not just be reactionary to it. How can you be more proactive with it? Can you just take what's out there and say, well, this is what my skill could be best used at, or can I use my skill set over here? Or this is the place that might consolidate my type of skill. So what do I need to do next? So looking at the market a little bit more holistically is always going to be helpful, and when it comes to being either a newcomer or a seasoned vet, the reality of it is you got to reinvent yourself or disrupt yourself, right, just don't get caught flat for that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's it for this current episode of graphite pro radio. Glad you guys tuned in. We're going to be producing more things that I think I'm going to go a little bit deeper on certain industries now, like I've been kind of loosely talking about the fashion and beauty with this particular episode, with some obvious different things on how to better be a better creative. But I do want to go a little bit deep on certain topics and certain subjects and get some more people Actually get people on the show period. I haven't had any guests yet, but at some point I'm just trying to find a meet. I'm trying to make sure I find the right guest for you guys. So definitely stay tuned for that. And you know, as always, stay creative, stay hungry, stay human Peace.
Speaker 1:You've been tuned into Graphite Radio, where creativity meets culture, Part of the Caffeine Audio Network. Thanks for joining us on this journey of ideas, art and innovation. Be sure to subscribe and stay connected for more stories that shape the world we create. Until next time, keep sketching your vision into reality. Bye.