Over The Bull®
Tired of marketing fluff, shady sales tactics, and overpriced agencies that sell fear instead of results? Over the Bull is a no-nonsense podcast where we share real stories from inside the agency world—the wins, the failures, and the clients we had to cut loose.
Join me each week as we break down the reality of running a business, expose the marketing BS that’s holding companies back, and talk about what actually works. No generic reports. No empty promises. Just real strategy from the trenches.
Over The Bull®
#3 - How to Spot Real Design Talent (And Avoid Template Traps) - feat. Brendan Furnish
In a world where everyone calls themselves a creative, how can business owners tell who’s legit—and who’s just selling templates in disguise?
In this episode of Over The Bull, we sit down with a 30-year design veteran to talk about what separates real creative work from the cookie-cutter designs flooding the market. We cover what happens when businesses undervalue originality, the hidden cost of hiring the wrong designer, and how to qualify creative partners—even if you don’t know anything about design yourself.
With Google attributing up to 70% of ad success to creative and Meta reporting 56% ROI impact from design on Facebook and Instagram, the message is clear: creative isn’t just pretty—it’s performance.
If you’re working with a designer, thinking of hiring one, or just wondering if your branding’s actually doing its job, this one’s worth your time.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01:Google says that up to 70% of ad performance comes down to the design. Meta says it's 56% on Facebook and Instagram. So if you think design is just about how something looks, or that it's optional, you're missing out on what really drives business. How can business owners tell who's legitimate and who's just selling templates in disguise? In this episode of Over the Bull, I sit down with a good friend and 30-year design veteran to talk about what separates real creative work from cookie-cutter designs. Hey, Brendan, how you doing?
SPEAKER_03:Good. How you doing, Ken?
SPEAKER_01:Doing good, buddy. How about share a little bit of your background with us?
SPEAKER_03:Certainly. I always... knew that I wanted to be a commercial artist. And I'm, I'm close to being 60 or I'm 60 now. So when I was coming up, we didn't have backs and we didn't have clip art and we didn't have the internet. And, you know, I saw good advertising and I knew I wanted to somehow be involved with it. And I'm not a, I'm not a traditional artist. I was a, I wanted to be a cartoonist to begin with. And I knew that if I were to get into an ad agency or something along those lines, I had to work my way into it. And I did go to college, but I didn't go to an expensive design school. I almost did. My parents couldn't afford it. So I started working in print shops in their art departments. But at first, I had to work in the actual print shop itself. So I started in Santa Barbara, California. And I worked for a company called Reem Engineering Graphics. And I learned how to screen print. And I also learned how to work their camera and do the basic things that a commercial artist did back then. And I I realized in Santa Barbara, I wasn't gonna ever go anywhere because it's a tourist town. So I moved to Fort Worth, Texas and started working for some really big screen printing plants. And my agreement with them was that I would work production because I was good at it. But after a year or two, they would have to move me into their art department. And so I worked in a grueling, burning hot plant that was huge. And after about a year, I went back to the vice president He said, okay, but I still need you in production. So I worked, I think, two and a half days in production and then two and a half days in the art department. Things back then were done completely different than they are now. We had machines that you actually photographically made type and then you pasted it into place and then you shot it on a repro camera. And we also did a lot of billboard work and that kind of thing. And we used giant opaque projectors in dark rooms where you actually traced images on enormous pieces of paper the image that was being projected against the wall and then you'd go and you'd cut it out of amber lith or ruby lith and you would burn that into a screen or you'd burn that into a giant film negative but what that taught me is it taught me how to use my hands better and at one point i cut so much film that i could i could do big circles pretty much freehand. I'd be leaning my arm on a drafting table, but it gave me the discipline to be able to draw on a computer like I can now with a Wacom pad or even with my mouse. So it set me up for being able to be much more accurate and my abilities with Illustrator. I worked in another art department and then I moved into several other art departments and eventually I started working for advertising companies companies. And I began as, you know, as a graphic supervisor. And then I moved into, you know, essentially an art director and then eventually a creative director. And I've worked for small companies and I've worked for very large companies. I worked for Thousand Trails, which was bought out by Equity Lifestyle Properties. And I was their creative director for about eight years. We did everything. We had marketing meetings where we coordinated with marketing how we wanted to, you know, support sales. Now we're moving into, of course, the internet and we're doing more of that type of thing. And we're doing at one of the first companies that I worked for back after the screen printing part, my wife and I broke off and we started F sharp advertising and we bought two of the first production Macs that were made for creative and Oh, I forgot the name of the thing.
SPEAKER_01:It was like a Quadrate 800. Yeah, it was
SPEAKER_03:a Quadrate 650, something like
SPEAKER_01:that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
SPEAKER_03:And it was$14,000 with the printer, and we got QuarkXPress. And you talk to designers now, they don't even know what that is. But they didn't have half the things that you have in Creative Suite right now. And, of course, the thing moved slow as could be. But we had people from all over Dallas come into our small shop and say, Oh, wow, look at this. So I've been using Illustrator primarily and Photoshop since back then. And that was the, you know, the early, the late 80s or early 90s. And, yeah. I've been using it ever since, and I'm a stone-cold believer in Creative Suite. You hear people coming up to you and talking about Canva and all, and I'm like, really? There's just so many things you can do with the Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere. Back to what I was saying before, I ended up working for Equity Lifestyle Properties, and then they moved their production to Florida. And I had to find other jobs. And I found a number of creative director jobs. And then I ran into the owner of Chef Minute Meals. And I have been with him on and off, but primarily on. I was off for one year when his daughter took over and then he fired her. But I've been with Chef Minute Meals as their creative director for 14 years. And about two years ago, he offered me the job as vice president of marketing. So I've been in... literally hundreds of creative meetings with marketing firms or advertising agencies, discussing what clients need. And I've dealt with large art departments and small shops And we've been friends for, what, nine years, Ken? I know it seems—
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I think it goes back further than that, maybe. It
SPEAKER_03:might even go back further than that. So I've been working on and off with him, and we do projects periodically together, and we shoot together and things like that. But I have designed thousands of print ads and designed logos, and I do Internet work. I put together videos all the time. I've gotten pretty good at that. I still think my core strengths that I have is simply drawing. I think if you can't see a layout in your mind's eye when someone is talking to you, and you can't take... Here's the other one, the bellwether that I use. There's so many people out of college that rely on clip art and they rely on... taking something, an image off of a deposit photos or something and designing an ad from that. And they don't see it. They just, they go through deposit photos and they see something that they think is appealing and they put it together. And I, I don't, I have pretty much a strategy before I even start the design process. But back to what I was getting at is the bellwether is if you can take a blank piece of paper and sketch out what you see in your mind's eye for your client, then you really are probably going to be a good designer.
SPEAKER_01:You know, one thing I think of, I'm sitting here in preparing and I shared the show notes with you, was, you know, Google attributes about 70% of the success or failure of an ad campaign to the creatives. In metas, their number is around 56%, not the Instagram and Facebook. So, you know, when you're sitting here looking at this, And from the standpoint of the owner of a business, I think that they ask a lot of questions like, you know, well, what makes a creative really creative and who should I hire? And, you know, should I shortcut certain pieces or should I not? So I'm curious, you know, when you think about like here's something I'd like to get your response on is often talk about people who are designers. And in the last podcast, you know, What I did was, you know, I was equating some of these do-it-yourself design programs and people that use them. And one question that I had was, well, what about the person who is a professional or good that is using something like Canva, for example? And my point was, I go, well, that would be like Michelangelo having– Uh, all the tools, you know, but, but he goes, nah, let me use this eight pack box of crayons instead. Right. What's your feedback to something like
SPEAKER_03:that? Well, I, I agree with you. If, if you're gonna, if you're gonna go into a fight, you use the best weapons you can. And, uh, you know, yeah, if you're in junior college and you're doing, you know, uh, junior college layouts than things like Canva. And there's several others out there that don't cost a lot and they're basic beginning stuff. But you really still need the basics. And I don't want to belittle people that don't have a lot of experience. And you know, Ken, how I lecture you all the time about what drives me crazy about Everyone thinking that they're creative. I mean, I've got a person that one of the companies that I've worked for who was questioning me why I didn't do design work in Word. And she kept telling me that she could do anything in Word that I could do, all of my box of magic tricks. And then she'd come and she'd show me one of her layouts and I'd do a layout and I'd show it to her and our boss. And it was night and day. But she honestly thought it was good work. And it wasn't. It was grade school work. And that's the problem. Again, I mentioned this to you earlier, too. I could run around and say that, well, actually, I am pretty good at plumbing. But I could say I'm an electrician because I've seen it done. And then you could ask me to wire a dryer into the house. And I don't know how to do that. And there's a good chance I'm going to end up getting killed. And the best thing I could do is just realize that I don't do this for a living. I don't sit and study this. It's not what I've been doing for 20 years every single day. And so why not just capitulate and say, you know, you have the experience, do it. And one of the things that will prove that to you, you were mentioning showing this to a small businessman who doesn't doesn't know the ins and outs. And one of the first things that will do it is your portfolio. If you cannot show a portfolio, especially if you're saying you're a designer or a creative director or an artist, if you don't have a portfolio that reflects that, then obviously you're a beginner. Here's an interesting story. One of the businesses I work for, had a guy that was handling marketing who really had no idea what he was doing. And he hired a guy that said he had an international internet company. And in the beginning or the opening page of his website, you couldn't get in, first of all, which is a telltale sign. It was password protected. which right off the bat, if you're trying to sell services, why are you password protecting your portfolio or your company? It's kind of ridiculous. But it said that he had offices in Cairo and Paris and Moscow. And I'm like, you know, and it's a small town that we're in. And I'm like, what? And The person that hired him at the company I worked for, he was going to do the internet. I was creative director. I did so without me knowing. And then he said, oh, this guy is going to build us a great website, yada, yada. And I asked the guy if I could look at his portfolio. And he said, oh, no, we don't know you well enough. And what happened is he was charging us. He had signed a contract with us and he was charging us. I think it was eight,$9,000 a month for his creative work. And I started having red flags right off the bat. And after about two and a half months, we were beginning to pressure him now. And we said to him, show us what you've been doing. And he couldn't do it. And then when he did show us what he was been doing, it was, it was so bad that, um, I mean, it looked like a, uh, it didn't even look like a college, uh, graphic artist was doing it. He had virtually no idea what he was doing. And, uh, uh, we ran a background check on and found out that he was, uh, he had just gotten out of prison for embezzlement and it was, yeah. And it was, uh, eyeopening and it, it embarrassed the guy that the marketing guy, because it made him look like a moron. And, um, But there are so many people out there that they really think that this is easy and they think that they can just swim in the stream, but they can't. And again, if somebody can't show you the work they've done, And they can't sit down with you and they can't carry on a conversation about the ins and outs and about, and Ken can do this, Ken can rattle off garbage like a ninja. If they can't sit down and talk about a modern SEO and the ins and outs of internet marketing and, you know, the advantages of Amazon and the disadvantages of it, and they don't know this stuff, then they really haven't been working in different fields and with different parameters and they don't No, I mean, Ken and I didn't know a lot about Amazon marketing a couple of years back, and we've got thrown into it because the guy that was handling it for one of the companies I'm with messed it up really bad. And we learned an awful lot about it the last, what, two years, Ken?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's amazing that it's an ever-growing process, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and unless you were in the weeds... and you're in the weeds for a long period of time, you really don't need to be in the weeds. And that's the other problem is you can't be doing this. We probably can't be an expert at everything because, I mean, think about it. You go onto YouTube, and I love to do this, and this is something that every artist should do, is go onto YouTube. I've run into roadblocks. Let's say I'm working Premiere, and I want to do a fade-out, or I want to do some kind of a transition that– I've seen, but I've never done before. And Premiere has a series of plug-in or already there transitions that are good, but there's all sorts of things you can get off the internet. And if you go to the internet, YouTube, there are thousands of experts that don't do Illustrator. They don't do Photoshop. All they do is Premiere Pro. And so they know more about it. They've forgotten more about it than I know. So I go and I watch their videos and I glean something from them. And it's, it's, um, I, and I don't mean to, don't mean to ramble, but it's Jeet Kune Do. Bruce Lee made a martial art and his whole idea was that the martial arts were ridiculous because you were trying to learn a style of fighting that was used by Okinawans 600 years ago. And they were fighting the samurai, which were armed with samurai swords. So why would a person living in our society today learn a martial art that might have worked 600 years ago against somebody coming at you with a sword? You're not going to get attacked by a guy with a samurai sword. Jeet Kune Do was a compilation. Bruce Lee wanted you to take little bits and pieces of things that worked for you from different martial arts and put them together into your own martial art because it works for you. You know, I'm Brendan Furnish, and so I have a martial art I call Brindoism, which is what works for me, and it's a whole compilation of things. So when I do design work, I have a whole compilation of tools that work for me. They may not work for other people, and I may not be able to do what other people can do, the way they're doing it. I do it the way I do it. But I do it by getting, gleaning little things that I steal from other people that are experts and they're one little part of this thing. And I put it together and I end up with a giant briefcase of weapons that I can take on my next job or I can take when I talk to the next client.
SPEAKER_01:You know, that's interesting, you know, when you're saying that, because, you know, as I'm kind of going through it and you're talking about a portfolio, you know, when I think about the average business owner, the problem is I think there's a lot of muddiness in it. So this will take me a while, just a second or two to formulate. Yeah. But, you know, you take someone... who maybe puts together the portfolio. And maybe they're using a lot of do-it-yourself stuff or they're tracing images or whatever may have you. But then you take it and you take someone like... Who was the guy that did all the illustrations back in the day? Norman Rockwell. Yeah. And, you know, he would take photography and then he would take it and then composite his images based on photography. Sure. I remember. Yeah. So it's like he had a– it's almost like there's a foundation. Like the way I'm looking at it is you have– a really strong, firm foundation. You're one of the most talented guys that I can think of when it comes to design stuff. I don't know about that. You're talented. You cross the gamut. And so when I'm thinking of that, it's like you've got this foundation. And from that foundation, you can say, well, I'm going to I'm going to use the style of Windows, which maybe is, you know, your portion of Adobe Premiere or something like that or or whatever. But the thing is, is that you you do have that. that innate ability that transcends, let me go look at clip art or let me jump into a do-it-yourselfer and find this, this flyer layout that I think looks good, but it may completely alienate a brand.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So, so for me, I kind of, I kind of wrestle, I mean, for me, I've been interviewing creatives for over 20 years on and off and, and kind of, you know, you got that smell test that you can pass, but for the average business to go, um, this is the, the methodology to, to know the answer. I think that's, I think it's, I think it's a harder challenge because there's so many ways you can mask with, with things going on today.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that's, that's true. And I think, I think the real problem is there are a lot of semi good designers and, and internet people. And there are a lot of people that are Mr. Haney's of, um, And if you ever watch Green Acres, Mr. Haney drove around in an old truck and he had these placards that he'd pull down and anything you needed done, Mr. Haney would be an expert at it. You know, Mr. Haney could re-roof your house. He could plumb your house. He could milk your cows. He could do anything. And he always had a placard he pulled down. Haney's cow milking. And you run across people like that a lot. And some of them can put together a good plan. marketing plan for you and a good website, but it'll just be so good. And then you run into these people, and I've run into, and I was telling Ken this, and I don't want to butter his ego up, but I've run into two people that are really, really good with websites and the internet and that type of thing. And Ken's good at a lot of other things, but that in particular, he's very good at. And I've run into two people in the entire time I've been doing this that I really think were top-notch, and it's Ken and a guy named Daniel out of Dallas. And, um, and I've run into a lot of people that were mediocre and that were, uh, could do certain things. Ken can draw, Ken can do all the things that I do. Um, but he, he's much, you know, he, I don't know code like Ken by any stretch of the imagination. And Daniel doesn't do design work as much as I do, but he's a, just a wizard at, um, at stuff, the internet end of it. So, you know, you, you, there's so many firms out there and a lot of them, what's really scary right now is that you're going to see all these marketing firms that don't actually have a brick and mortar store where, and I know some people think that that's good, but you, what it is, is it's a salesman and he has a people, you know, outside orbiting that don't really work for him, but he says they do. And so when he needs a logo designed or something, he goes to this guy in Toledo and he needs, um, you know, uh, a couple, he needs a brochure made. He goes to this guy in New Brunswick, you know, and they just, it's not a compilation of people that work together. It's, it's, um, you know, people all over the place and they may not be, you know, be held to his standards or they may not even know what standards are. So, I mean, it's like present or doing print work without understanding what the printer needs, bleeds and traps and, and all those things. You're going to create a problem where the printer is going to send you your stuff back and you're going to have to do it again. So, you know, it's, it's really hard to tell what's out there. Simply by what people tell you. But again, I think the best thing you can do is look at their portfolio. And if you do know anything about it, sit down and talk to them at length. And usually you can tell if they're legit or not. But the average person is going to have a hard time with it. I mean, it's like you sit down with a mechanic and talk about how an engine works. I know how it works, but I don't know all the intricacies and I don't know the sizes of the rings that are going into the cylinder and things like that. And they're going to know all that.
SPEAKER_01:So one of our contentions when we take on a new client for a web project or marketing is to sit down with the client and then we want to understand what their goals are. And so there's this... There's this thing that happens in the beginning where they're sharing our thoughts, and then we're kind of bouncing thoughts back over feedback about how we can help their specific business. And so a lot of this is kind of verbalizing creative ideas and organizing things together. in a way that kind of puts it into perspective. So maybe part of this in conjunction with looking at what they've put together is maybe first ask, well, what do you think about X? Or what do you think about Y? And then get their feedback. It's almost like that feedback may give you a signal whether or not that person is truly a creative or if they start talking about things that are so either vague or ambiguous or nonsensical, in terms of looking like it's really going to achieve the goal.
SPEAKER_03:Right. You have to understand, though, what it takes to achieve the goal to be able to ascertain whether or not they're pulling your leg. That's the problem. And unless you're you or me... Talking to these people and you can narrow them down. And you were talking to some guy out in California the other day that was saying he could do X number of things and you were asking him specifics and he was avoiding you because of it. Because he knew he didn't know anything about it. And that's the problem that a small business has that doesn't have somebody that can coordinate this that's done it for a long time. They're going to run into problems. Now, again, the portfolio, I think, is the number one thing. But I've actually seen portfolios where people have stolen other people's art and actually put it in there. And I knew it was wrong because it had been in national publications and things like that. But there are people that are that... and they would, first of all, it's illegal, it's fraud, but people do it just because they want to leg up or they want to impress somebody. And you wouldn't believe, my wife worked in marketing for many years with a very large company, and I won't get into the specifics, but she had people that came and went in the marketing department and creatives and all that were just not at all what they claimed they were. She saw it. I think it's prevalent everywhere. I think there are welders that get caught because their welds aren't up to par. I think that there's obviously doctors that aren't as good as they should be that hurt people. Our business is filled with it because, again, I think there's a lot of people that see themselves this way. Everybody wants to look at themselves good, but but they're not going to take the time to do it. So back to what you were getting at is I think it's going to be very difficult for a typical business to be able to truly tell if someone is what they say they are, unless you have somebody like you or me that can tell they're not. And it's going to be a trial and error because this person may say they're going to increase your sales, or they may say they're going to give you a better outlook or, on the internet and they may or they may not. And, you know, the other thing you're going to have to do is find some kind of a impeachable measuring point to be able to tell whether they're lying to you or not. And, you know, like Google can tell you the traffic across your site and it can tell you your exposure. And, of course, it can tell you any sales you do on Google and so can Amazon. So I suggest to anybody that's not, you know, swimming in this pool to figure out how they can monitor that and gauge it themselves. before they hire a marketing person that says that they're going to increase your sales dramatically. And that way, if the guy tells you that he's increasing traffic and you look at the things you've determined before and you realize that he has not, you can make that assumption. We are inundated. My boss is inundated with people calling him up, or not calling him up, but emailing him, telling him that they can double his sales in six months. And the funny thing is, is we're in a kind of a niche business and these people are looking at it from, you know, a thousand miles away, knowing nothing about the market that he is in and about his niche product. I don't know how anybody can look at a niche business that they know nothing about. They haven't gone and looked into the industry that we're in and the ins and outs and say to my boss definitively that I'm going to increase your internet sales by 400% in three weeks. They can't do that. And I keep telling him when he sends me, he sends me their proposals. And incidentally, they're fishing on LinkedIn. They're finding them on LinkedIn and they're going after them. So are they really that successful? You know, if they were really that successful, they wouldn't be going through LinkedIn to find this guy's email
SPEAKER_01:address. What gets me is you're hiring someone who claims to, because creative is kind of marketing. And it's like my point in the first episode of the podcast when we're talking about having to fire a client was that he would have this kind of barrage happening too. And it was kind of like you would get accusatory and then we had to explain it. And then you kind of go and then the idea is, ultimately in the synopsis in podcast one is if they're having to email you anything yeah block them just block them man
SPEAKER_03:they hit me up all the time and it's it's it's really disturbing yeah i have to defend myself on a regular basis how come we can't do this and um It's kind of obscene. And most of the time you go back to their, and this is what I normally find, you go back to their business and a lot of the time you'll scroll down their website and all it's doing is screaming at you that they're going to increase your business by 400%. But they won't show you where they're at.
SPEAKER_01:Modern day alchemy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's exactly right. You know, I'm going to turn straw into gold. Just trust me on this. And I work for a guy who thinks that if I turn straw into gold, he'd turn around and say, you should turn straw into diamonds. Yeah, that's what he would. He's actually said that to me because I called the alchemist out on him. But he gets these all the time and he sends them to me in their page long proposal and let's schedule a meeting. And again, they don't know anything about the business. And every business, here's the other thing that anybody who tells you that they're going to increase your sales by 400% in four weeks, it's nonsense. Because first of all, they don't know your business. They don't know the demographic that you're selling into. Yeah, if you're selling pizzas to people that are starving and you're selling it for a good price, you're going to be able to sell as much as you possibly want. But most businesses have competitors and some businesses are niche. And how can you market to the niche person? How can you get out with all of the 350 million people in the country and find the 200,000 that want to buy your product? How can you do that? And you think that these guys have some kind of a machine that they put parameters into and it pops up. AI is great. But AI has its limitations, and right now it just regurgitates facts. It's not at the point where it can tell me who every single one of my people needs to be. Now, when it gets to that point, it may get to the point that it does design work and all of us are out of a job. Now, you know, it very
SPEAKER_01:well. I don't see that happening. I don't see.
SPEAKER_03:Well, they've got what gets me now is you're getting these people that look at these Photoshop plugins where you can take your picture and you can try and make it smile and you can put in a note. There's a you're posing on the beach and there's this morbidly obese guy walking by behind you that's sticking his tongue at you.
SPEAKER_01:Have you done that where you select something in Photoshop and then you do the little generate and you type in what you want it to do and then see if it does it? Have you done that yet?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, I have.
SPEAKER_01:So I did it the other day. I had this really complex piece I was trying to put together the other day. And I asked it to basically remove shadows from a tree that was broadcast on the house. And it was a long line of cowboys. What in the world? Where did that come from?
SPEAKER_03:Well, it knows how much you love cowboys, right?
SPEAKER_01:Apparently, I'm a Clint Eastwood
SPEAKER_03:fan. There you go. They do it on TV and it looks like it's been professionally done. And then you try it in real life and you get this. What they did for the fat guy is they just stuck another section of ocean over him and it didn't match with the ocean that he was in. And anybody that really is good at Photoshop knows that a lot of the time these things take You've got to blend the thing together and you've got to use the stamp tool. And, and it, it, it, you almost have to be, honestly, you almost have to be a painter to be able to make something really look right with, with Photoshop. Um, I did a, a picture of, where one of my bosses, and I won't say who, was with a high-powered political person, and I won't say what kind of person, but he had one of the people that he brought to the trade show with him in the photograph, and he wanted to take her out It wasn't anything bad. She was at the trade show as a trade show person. So they wanted me to completely remove her from him and this high-powered political person. And it literally took me probably three days because it didn't work at first and nothing. And then the other thing he asked me to do is make himself look thinner.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Everybody says this to me. You can go in and just do basic things, but if you think you're going to squish his face to make it look thinner, you're going to make him look like he's puckered up or something. At one point, I had to go in and shave pieces of his face out and then put his face back together a little bit further squeezed in. The only reason why it worked, and it did work, was because I've done Photoshop since the Quadra 650. And I also can paint a little bit. I understand how it works. And so that's why I could do that. But until they get a Photoshop AI program, they can actually do that. And they very well may because data compilation is increasing dramatically. And they're building huge AI factories in Texas right now. with giant computers. They're talking about using more nuclear power around the country because AI pulls in so much electricity. Who knows what they'll come up with? It's kind of scary, and everybody's terrified of AI because if it gets that smart, it might outthink us and decide we're not necessary. I think we've got a long way to go before we can actually sit down and do the type of things experts can do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, this is funny because when you were talking about this idea, because there is this idea of, well, you know... You know, you're, you're, uh, you know, what, late fifties and I'm, uh, I'm 52, I'll be 53 this year. And you know, there's part of this idea of, well, guys are, you know, maybe you're just outdated, you know, maybe you're just not playing the, the AI game, or maybe you're not embraced. And like, I've spent a ton of time looking at artificial intelligence. I know you
SPEAKER_03:and I have gone into it at length.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's like, but here's the thing, man. It's like, when you really go back to it, it's like, you know, we were talking prior to the meeting and going back to some of the history of marketing and design, the technology changes. Right. But aside from people like their attention span being almost nothing. I mean, aside from that, it's like the, the principles of art and design. I mean, let's go back to the Renaissance. I mean, you take paintings, the, the painters would have the people either looking or pointing, or you'd have these abstract triangles or angles that would, that would push your eye to where they would want it to go in the painting and then bounce you back into the painting. And it's like, these concepts are not something that, just, you know, is here today and gone tomorrow. These concepts that are core concepts are, they have to be there and they have to have a sentient, something sentient in order to put it together, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_03:No, I absolutely agree with you. We're all about telling a story and and showing a client or self-actualization where a client says, you know, that's me in that picture, you know, with the fancy car, with a good looking woman or eating a perfect steak, you know, out on my date or whatever. It's all about making someone see themselves there. And, and if you can't do that, uh, and you can't tell a story and, and, you know, relay that directly to the person you're trying to get to buy, um, You're not going to sell. And there have been a lot of unsuccessful big companies, Bud Light, the mess that they got in. And I'm not going to go on either side of that, but I'm saying that you've got to know the people you're trying to sell to in order to sell to them. And then you've got to be able to tell a story. And if you can't do it and you, and what we beforehand, if you before, and I'm not talking about TV commercials or anything, but even print, you have to have visuals that make people want to buy your product. And if you haven't stared at it long enough and you don't have an idea of really the motif that fits different products. I mean, if you're selling beauty care products, products, you're not going to be using hard colors and lots of blacks and khaki, that kind of thing. It's not a macho thing. You're going to have a totally different look. You'd be surprised at what I've seen over the years with what people thought was going to actually fit the market they were trying to sell to. Like I said, the market that I'm in right now is very niche. We've struggled to to handle retail sales simply because it's a niche market. And I think we've gotten it down that we're going to be much more successful at it. But it's a tough nut to crack, marketing is. And then again, I think when you finally get to the sweet spot and you know it, you've done most of your job. But there's a lot of people that don't even know where the sweet spot is and they don't know how to find it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is the other thing, too. I know, like, for example, if you look at people who– one of the things I talk about, too, is this mythology of the internet. You know, back if you were in Rome, you'd follow these mythologies, Greek, you know, whatever. But it's like today's mythology is I want to start a business. And I'm going to advertise on the Internet or I'm going to have AI create these creatives. And it's going to magically conjure up this perfect recipe from beginning to end. And all I've got to do is just fund it and make money. And I do think, honest to goodness, that that is a huge. I
SPEAKER_03:know there's so many people on YouTube and TikTok and all these places that are going to tell you. that they started this at home and now they're making$300,000 of sales a month. And there are people that are doing that. But for the most part, what is the old term? There's nothing new under the sun. If you're doing something, probably there are a thousand people doing it. So it's, And they're all advertising on social media and they're all advertising on the Internet. And some of them have much deeper pockets than you'll ever have. So the real killer that you're going to come up with is where do you end up on a search? You know, anybody who says that they're going to start a company and they're going to immediately make enormous sales is mistaken because they're not even going to be seen by anybody.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, it's like this. It's like, you know, you take any market. There are so many considerations outside of design and all other stuff. Like, you know, you take some of the rental cars. I forget which one it was. But, you know, one was We Try Harder because they knew their position was not good. The other one is if an area has brand recognition and that brand is trusted, for you to break through and you have to work hard just to gain a market share, which is part of the problem too. And then you start delving a little bit deeper into those kind of issues and then you go, wow, it's really a lot more. I've got a couple of questions for you. This is where I want to take this and I thought this might be fun. So in getting an owner of a business, you know, because right now I feel like what we've done is said, oh man, you know, without somebody who knows what they're doing, you can't find somebody that knows what they're doing.
SPEAKER_03:It's kind of a vicious circle, isn't it? It's a mousetrap.
SPEAKER_01:So here I'm going to ask you a question here. Just some quick, maybe rapid fire style questions. If the person's portfolio involves do-it-yourself builders, right? Would you say that that is a bad sign or would you say within reason that's a bad sign?
SPEAKER_03:So you're talking about clip art?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm saying, well, let's start with clip art. Let's do that one first.
SPEAKER_03:Well, okay. If he significantly modifies the clip art so that it becomes completely different and does so in a fact that it looks like it's done right, then I think that that could be acceptable. But I think there are an awful lot of people that are going to do it yourself, builders, and they're going to try and pass it as real stuff. Another thing you're going to look at in a portfolio to see if they really are legit is what they've actually printed. Because you're talking to somebody to spend a print run of$200,000 and they're spending$30,000 on this. Did they actually print it? So a lot of the time in my portfolio, I'll have the actual concept or I'll have the press proof and then I'll have the printed sample sitting next to it to prove to the person that I not only conceived it, and put it into a die line or whatever format it needed to be in, but I'm actually presenting a picture of the actual part. And that's hard to do because you have to actually print the part or you could Photoshop it, but most of the time you could tell.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what about Canva? I
SPEAKER_03:don't, again, I don't like if you're going to learn, if you're going to fight a war, you best use the best tanks that they make. And you're also dealing with something that's not industry standards, not close. Most printers, most anybody that's producing something is used to CS. And, you know, I know there's some programs for video manipulation that are just as good, if not better than Premiere. So I'm going to defer to that. As far as just basic design work and photo manipulation and page layout, InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator are the bellwether. I mean, you just don't have anything that replaces it. So my first question would be is how come the person is using an amateur program to design work?
SPEAKER_01:I would agree. I would agree. So I would say number to that answer would be, yeah, if they're using Canva, that's probably a flag versus an advanced background. And
SPEAKER_03:if they're using Word to do design work, then it's a flag that they don't know. You need to let them walk them out of your office.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe have police escort them out. Oh, my God.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's that bad. This woman actually put wood grain into brush stroke. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, she did a headline copy and the headline was in brushstroke. And hey, the 90s called and they want their typeface back. And then she wanted to show to me how... technically superior she was shows she put the brush stroke into, um, uh, they put, she put a wood grain background into the breaststroke and then she had on a dark background. And when I looked at it, I thought, this is just sad. I
SPEAKER_01:don't mean, I don't mean to
SPEAKER_02:be
SPEAKER_01:in the restaurant for you guys who don't know is like, there are certain fonts that really encapsulate, um, timestamps in the history of the
SPEAKER_03:world. That would probably even
SPEAKER_01:be 70s. That's probably the 70s. I'd go back to the 80s in a minute. All
SPEAKER_03:right. Yeah, I would too. All
SPEAKER_01:right. So I think that, yeah, I think that those things, any kind of amateur programs that you see and those kind of things. And like you said, there are some people that are just exceptional talents that are naturally there. Now, you and I both Now, we may be a little bit biased in this statement, but I would argue that your best talented creatives, like you said, can sit down and, like, I could sit down. Like, if somebody came here right now and said, I want you to sketch me out a giraffe eating off a tree or whatever. Right, right, right. I could do that with them sitting here and not feel a bit of intimidation. I wouldn't need to look at one. I could, too. I love seeing someone that can take a blank piece of paper with a regular graphite pencil and just sketch a concept.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. And it may not be perfect anonymically, but I have in my mind's eye what a giraffe looks like. And I know what a tree looks like, so I could draw it too. But it just irritates. And I'm saying that even on layouts of stuff, I see a layout in my mind and I see typefaces and things that I would use that would facilitate the mood that I want to create because the typefaces have a lot to do with that. And you won't have that if you haven't done this long enough. Now, there are people that are geniuses. There was a car show with Chip Foose where he designed cars and he built these crazy cars from, you know, just normal cars. And this guy can sit down with a bunch of felt tip markers. Have you seen the show?
SPEAKER_01:No, no. Wait, wait. I think, I think you sent me something or somebody showed me something. Oh,
SPEAKER_03:he's insane.
SPEAKER_01:It was, it was an incredible, he
SPEAKER_03:went to high school with a guy I knew that was also an insanely good artist. This guy could paint and everything. And they ended up, uh, uh, the guy that, uh, I knew ended up working for an ad agency in LA and, um, he did movie posters and, He did Tremors, that poster. And so he actually did the artwork on movie posters. And he probably did a lot of it just by looking at pictures and drawing it. But Chip Foose could sit down and a guy would tell him what he wanted to do with his 1968 Cutlass. And he'd start drawing with markers and a couple of straight edges on a big piece of paper. And when he got done, it looked like an airbrush of a car. It looked like it was taken. If I did it like that, and I don't even know if I could, with an old airbrush, because I used to airbrush, it would probably take me three weeks. And he would do it while he talked to you. Now, I never have been anywhere near that level, but there are people out there that are like that. So there could theoretically be people that have just graduated from junior college that are innately talented, but they're few and far between. And the other question is, he's doing something that's... And by the way, he was not out of college when he was doing that. He was younger than me, but he was up there. And so he had done what I keep talking about. He had taken that time, doing it again and again and again, to get to the point that he was at. And there's no excuse. There's nothing that adds up to experience. And if you don't put in the time and put in the sweat and and, you know, research and constantly try and get better, you're not going to be as good at what you take pride in your work. Do it because you're going to you're going to get good at it and it won't be as hard and people will like your work better.
SPEAKER_01:You know, one thing I think interesting, I think you really keyed in on something. You know, if you take someone who is talented, that is younger, you know, which is hard because when you're younger, it's like you need experience to get a job, job experience. You know, you got this weird. thing there too. But the idea is that even when you have someone who may have that level of talent, if you're hiring them for your business, they may have no idea. Like, for example, one of the classics that I give is if you're trying to reach an older demographic, you use a larger font. You use black and white. There's just certain things that you do. And even if someone's got a lot of talent, it's still not honed in with being able to look through the lens of what that business needs for their demographic and still be able to get that. So I do think that if it was my business and I didn't know it, I would personally be one Canva would be a strike. Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, not Acrobat, you know, Photoshop, Acrobat, you know, those programs, anything Adobe Creative Suite, Premiere, After Effects. I think those are huge. Yeah. After Effects, you know, a little, you know, but I do think experience. I mean, if I'm banking my business on something, I want to make sure somebody understands how to look at my particular business and be able to look at my audience and put together a plan, which to me, the junior college kid, even though he has talent, I would take a guy who understands
SPEAKER_03:that better. I think the junior college kid needs to go get a job at the lower level and work his way up.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_03:don't want to get into that, but I know a guy that is very young and he's trying to get into the movie producing business And what he needs to do is get a job in a studio and work his way up. And the beginning commercial artist needs to do kind of what I did. And that is, you know, I had to work my butt off in a factory in order to get into the art department. And that was a factory art department. But I went from that to better art departments every time. And eventually I ended up in a company that was worth$3 billion as their... creative director. It was long and it took me forever to do it. The problem is you have to pay your dues. There are so many people out there that want this business and they think they can just snap their fingers and do it. I don't think that there is... I don't think there's an easy way to anything. I mean, if you want to become a doctor, you've got to be an intern. You've got to get a college degree. Then you've got to go to med school. Then you've got to go and be an intern. And I hear being an intern is like hell. You're treated horribly. You don't sleep. You work seven days a week. for what, two years. I'm not sure how long you're an intern, but you know, you, the, the problem is, is if you're going to be an expert at anything, you've got to pay your dues. And, and so somebody coming to you with a portfolio saying they're going to help your business and they haven't designed, they've designed two websites. They've never gotten anything printed before. Um, and they just don't have a volume of work and it doesn't look like the volume of the work is, is done properly. the same way that we do work, you know, yeah, you need to, they need to go pay their dues.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. I agree. And it, you know, it's hard to say those things because, you know, neither one of us want to, you know, we both want to encourage young talent, but like you said, you've got to, I like your analogy, you know, if you're in martial arts, you don't matter how good you are, you start at the bottom, you got to work your way up and you've got to understand things that frankly are common experience teach and the, uh, the old stuff, you know, like Elvis,
SPEAKER_03:Elvis got a black belt in two years because he, he essentially bought it and it was Elvis. But, uh, most people, um, well, old school, you didn't get a black belt unless you practice for 10 years. And, and I'm a huge, uh, believer in, um, You train, you gain, and if you don't, you won't. There is no substitute for repetition and for learning. If you're not willing to put in the time, you're just not going to get good at what you do. Again, there are people that have been in this business for a long time that still aren't good. That's the other thing that businesses have to look out for. Either they don't have good people, and that's another thing. You can get a great salesman that can go in and tell you the moon, and then back at their shop, or the people they use are, are, are, you know, junior hires or whatever. And, and then you're still going to get the same thing. So, you know, it's, it's a, it's like anything, you know, the difference between this and running a restaurant is if you, if you're, if you're in a city where there's a lot of good food, you're probably not going to stay in business too long. If you don't, produce good food. So probably in our business, if you don't really do a job, you're probably going to weed it out eventually. But the question is eventually. And the other question is, how much business are you going to take from companies that really deserve it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think well said. All right. So I've held you up, man. I told you I'd get you out of here and you probably won't catch the end of the Ole Miss game or... Go celebrate or cry. Do you have any closing thoughts other than the kind of what we talked about to kind of help businesses point them in the right direction? Give us your best advice. fault to leave this podcast.
SPEAKER_03:I've been talking my mouth off here. Again, I just think that it's a matter of, okay, you're going to make mistakes. You're probably going to hire people because I've been in so many companies that have. You're going to make mistakes. So find somebody that once you do think that they're doing the right job and perhaps they're increasing your sales, somebody that it's easy to work with, somebody that you can trust and because there's so many of them out there that you can't and hold on to them like grim death. That's my closing remark.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there you go. You've heard it straight from over. And I, that's what I've done. I, I,
SPEAKER_03:I found two people that could really do this stuff well. And I know some good designers and I know some really good artists. But if I do anything, I'm doing it with those two people because I've had so many bad ones. So the ones that I have, I hold on to like grim death.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there you go. There you go. I think that's well said. That kind of fits the over the bowl motif. Well,
SPEAKER_03:that's no bowl. All right, Ken, I want to go see who won the game.
SPEAKER_01:All right, well, thank you so much for being over the bull, man. I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_03:No problem. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:So in conclusion, choosing a good designer can be complicated, but it doesn't have to be a gamble. Look for someone with real-world experience, freehand illustration skills, production-ready print work, and advanced knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, not just those drag-and-drop website tools. But honestly, the most important trait, a designer who takes the time to understand your business, your goals, your market, your message, and brings original thinking to the planning stage, not just the execution. So ask the right questions, look deeper than the portfolio, and choose wisely. Because good creative isn't just about how it looks. It's about whether it works. Until next time we meet.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you by Integris Design, a full-service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.