Advice for designers

Tom: Hello, and welcome to the first ever episode of the make things better podcast.

I have Allan with me today.

Welcome to the first ever episode. How are you doing today?

Allan: All right.

All right.

I am boiling in my room, but I'm all right.

Alright today it's a Friday.

It's always good.

Tom: Yeah I think it's the best day to do a

podcast because we've got a couple of hours now we'll just

have a pretty laid back chat.

And then hopefully we're kind of done for the week.

Really?

Have you been able to get out much in the weather this week?

Allan: Apart from a run this morning, no. I've got too much work to do. Too much work to do.

Tom: That's the right answer given that this is like the Hive IT podcast

and we are both working for hive.

That should probably be my answer as well.

Um, I managed to get out for like a few walks now and then

But most of the time I've just been sort of on my laptop, roasting in my apartment. It is really hot.

Allan: Hear that hive directors we're working really hard.

We don't even leave the house.

Tom: This podcast is literally for hive.

So it is important that we

We make sure people know we're doing our job, but, um, yeah, this podcast then

What's it about really?

So make things better.

That's the name of the podcast it's through Hive IT

Um, I think the first question really should be who are Hive IT

You've obviously worked there for like five years.

Right.

So can you tell us a little bit about Hive IT and sort of just what the

general crack is working for for hive?

Allan: Oh, I still don't even know.

I think Hive IT are a digital agency.

Um, and we work, um, well we try to work ethically.

Um, that is our motto.

So we always try to be honest and transparent when we

do things and yeah, we do get things wrong from time to time.

But, um, we're, we're always honest about who we are

I guess

In the tech industry, there's a lot of, uh, jargon bandied about stuff that makes

people feel smaller for not knowing it.

Um, so like, you know, Oh, what, you don't know how to use this, or

you're using some old technology or using a browser from 1996.

It's, uh, uh, it's, uh, kind of looks down on people who might

not have, might not have the time to be an expert in technology.

And I suppose hive are the type of people that won't look down on you and help

you go through things and try and explain things in plain English,

because not everyone can be an expert in tech and you just need help.

You just need help.

Yeah.

I think hive hive just does that.

I think in a nutshell, um, we do a lot of tech for good.

Just stick that in there.

Um, plug, plug, plug.

So we work with a lot of charities and a lot of stuff like that.

And we will avoid working with things that maybe say, um, are controversial.

Tom: Yeah.

I think that's a great description really of hive sounds to me like, well, the first few

weeks at hive, because I only joined, sort of probably, probably about 30 days ago today.

Um, I think it was 4th of May and yeah, my impression straight away

was like, it's just a lot more kind of friendly and like sort

of human centered sort of compassion being at the heart of our work.

And obviously we have people who are like amazing at using various sort of,

uh, tech technology, which I don't even have a clue about like some of the

software engineers, the work they are doing.

And I just wouldn't know what they're really getting up to

be honest, but it does seem like sort of having that human centered

approach is kind of at the core.

So it's like really trying to figure out, understand.

Our clients and the people that we work with, understand their needs.

So yeah, that does sound like a bit of a plug, but I mean, so

far, that's what it seems to me.

Allan: It's not only like, our clients and, uh, well, our friends, essentially, we, we do

build up relationships with them, but it's also about, I think this is one of the few

companies where I feel that the company genuinely cares about staff and how we

feel and how we're feeling every day.

So, you know, our mental health is looked at, or whether we're being

overworked is looked at it's, it's a big thing crunch in the tech industry.

These days being in, you know, you've got a deadline, you've got to work, work

and work, but, um, yeah, it's been good cause uh, our company lets us train the

way we want move in different directions.

And I think that's the other side that.

That I don't think everyone can see, but when you're working with them, you

will start to find out like, you know, you may start as a PM and turn

into a, say UX designer or something.

If that is what you want to do, that's the other half, I feel like I'm towing

the company line, but really not.

This is just off the top of my head.

Tom: Yeah.

It does sound like we've kind of prepared this episode, just to like plug hive and talk about how it's

such an excellent company to work for, but that wasn't really the intention at all.

but yeah, just, uh, I guess we're kind of new to this podcasting, um, and I'm sure.

Most episodes, we'll be talking about more specific topics and

not just how amazing hive is.

Um, but yeah, it's just good to talk about that.

And I do feel quite lucky really

to work for hive because like literally about a month or two ago,

my business kind of fell apart.

And I was like, what do I do now?

And then I just got quite lucky, really with the founder of hive

listening to my previous podcasts on a completely different topic

and sort of getting in touch.

And here I am today, but, anyway.

So, our sort of intentions for this podcast then I think it is to just kind of

talk about how technology is changing and sort of delving in deeper and exploring

various topics, which are quite current to do with design and technology being

a little bit more mindful perhaps.

That's kind of the direction I'd like to go in.

Why do you think that's important right now, Allan, sort of exploring and

understanding things in a bit more detail to do with tech rather than just

focusing on the sort of superficial level of this goes here, this is how you

can improve tech, blah, blah, blah.

Allan: I think it we're coming to a crossroads of tech being so integrated into our lives.

These days, from our phones to our consoles, to our, to our laptops,

to even just going into a coffee shop.

Nowadays tech is so integrated and because it's become so part of our

culture, now we need to understand its impact and its effect on us

and our effect and impact on it.

I mean, like there's already studies coming out about biases on

particular tech and particular data.

There's, there's a whole culture around it that we've moved on

from being very functional.

Um, so as you said, like plugin A, plugin B, get C we need to now

let's look at, um, well add a bit of emotion to, to tech, I guess.

Um, what makes us happy?

What puts us off?

What makes us anxious?

With the COVID recently everyone's suddenly realized that.

Yeah.

Tech can be really good for keeping families together in unfortunate times.

Yeah.

It's not ideal, but you can see that a lot of these things are improving

because it is becoming us now.

And I don't want to say we're becoming it, like some sort of Android of the

future, but, uh, but yeah, I think that that's the key and there now needs to be

a philosophy around, a culture, a way of thinking, uh, a manifesto almost

of how, how we move forward with tech.

Tom: Yeah, absolutely.

I think an important point you raised there was kind of how we

are sort of becoming technology.

It's becoming so integrated in our lives, but the way in which we use technology

to like maybe speak to our families during the coronavirus or speak to our

friends, It's not, it's not replacing that human interaction in real life.

I was out in Portugal for a while for the first few months of the corona

virus and me and my friends would try and have a Friday night quiz.

And every time I joined that, there'd be like 10 of us on the

quiz and don't get me wrong.

It'd be maybe a bit of a laugh and there'd be some like funny jokes and whatever,

but it was just absolutely nothing like our time spent in real life, you

know, the, it just wasn't as fun.

And, you know, you'd be drinking alone in your apartment.

And at the end of the night, when the quiz is over, it's like, ah, what do I do now?

And so.

I think it's really important that technology doesn't replace

That like real life sort of connections with people and getting on.

Like now what's going to come out of the coronavirus.

It seems like a lot more people are going to work from home, but that may

not always actually be a better thing. For some people that's going to be like

quite problematic because I think a lot of friendships and, and our communities

are built through the workplace.

Like a lot of people's friends come one way or another, through work.

And so if everyone starts working from home, are we going to become

even more isolated and lonely and loneliness is a huge problem nowadays.

So I think that's another sort of problem with technology.

And another topic that maybe I'll explore through this podcast.

Allan: Well, I think, I think you make a bigger point of people.

If we move all working from home, what happens to the office

culture and stuff like that.

But I think.

As great as humans are that it will evolve.

So our city centers became become less office blocks.

So, uh, we're living at home.

I think there's a lot of people that enjoyed working from home, um,

because they had more family time.

They got that commuting time back and then.

Yeah, because of COVID we didn't have the sort of social spaces we, we used

to have, but once those open up and we work from home, we could have more social

spaces for us to be able to intermingle.

So it's almost like we're adapting to a situation, changing it up,

um, being a little more healthier.

So now work is less stressful because you don't have to do the commute and

you can take those two hours and you could spend time with your kids,

or you could spend time with, uh, with families and family members at the pub

even, or the pub around the corner.

So I think it really benefits smaller towns and little, uh,

little communities which have been neglected by the big cities.

Which is the other side of things you'll know this, if you, if I'm ever on

this again, I will take the opposite of whatever someone says on, on anything.

I apologize.

Tom: No, that's good because.

If someone has something to say, that's the opposite of me.

I'm going to learn from that.

If, you know, you were just to agree with everything that I

said, I'm not going to learn.

I'm not going to get anywhere.

And so I think to kind of balance points of view is just so important.

And that's another thing that's, you know, that's going to make for

another podcast one day, sort of the polorization, um, which has been

caused. The sort of binary yes,

Or no way of social media nowadays, that will make for a good episode one

day as well, because that's another problem that we have with technology.

We saw it with like the American election and Brexit as well, you know

I was watching a documentary the other week about how all of these like campaigns

on Facebook actually led to some

of the votes going one way or another. uh, which, which is crazy as well.

I think just to have conversations with people, understand topics

in a bit more detail and to not be so yes or no is just so

so important in this day and age.

So that's another thing, that I'm sure we'll explore in the future.

Anyway, we'll start to talk a little bit more about maybe your

experience in design and about what you do as well, if you like.

So yeah.

First of all, how did you actually get into design and maybe why did

you want to get into design as well?

Allan: Uh, such a massive subject.

How and why I got into design, honestly, I think I remember my, uh,

design technology teachers as a young kid, um, telling me I had no future in

design and I should do something else.

Good teacher, good teacher.

And I think that just made me determined to go.

I think I've always enjoyed.

Storytelling.

I think storytelling was always a big part of my life.

And, uh, you know, I enjoy films and enjoy animations and enjoy

the whole process of storytelling.

And I find

Design is just, uh, just a means of storytelling for myself.

I guess that's where the inspiration started.

I was going to take psychology cause I was also interested in the

way people behaved around stuff.

How people interacted with things, why people interacted with things, what goes

through their head at particular time?

It, it fascinated me.

And so those two things sort of clashed together to become.

Design.

And so I just went to art school when I came to this country when I was 18.

So yeah, I went to school in the middle East for most of my

life and then came here for uni.

But you know, I had to spend three years here because you need to be in the country

for three years to get your student loan.

So I decided to go art college for three years and then uni and then the usual path

through and I then got hit by the recession.

So I ended up serving coffee for a couple of years, and then knowing that

jobs were tough in design and very competitive, I decided that maybe I

needed to create my own job for a bit.

So freelancing and doing bits and pieces.

helped build a portfolio up

Then I got my big break in data visualization for a government company.

So data vis is

people say it's like making graphs pretty, but it's taking what looks like a

spreadsheet of loads of numbers and then quickly graphing them up and then going

And, uh, so how do people look at these graphs?

How, how, what information do they want to get out of it?

What are they looking for?

Those types of things, and then redesigning the graph around that

person's interpretation.

So, you know, putting things in order or alphabetical order and stages of size.

And I think that was my biggest selling point.

And then I got a lot of people just wanting diagrams and visualizations

for complicated things so that people who aren't experts in it would

understand what those things were.

And then I got, then I went through various jobs as you know, uh, working

in after effects for a video company.

And just jumping from job to job, just not finding my niche.

Then I think I spotted hive's ad and I jumped in

I didn't have any technology.

Well, you know, I didn't know how to code very well.

Didn't have any technological skills so to speak, but I did have a design brain.

Stuck, stuck on me.

And that helped a lot, just that problem solving and making, uh, I think my first

project at hive, I managed to break immensely because I didn't know much

about coding and I broke the whole thing and had to go up to the client and

say, I broke the whole thing as well.

So that was, that was fun for the first few

Tom: What happened with you breaking the project? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Allan: Well, so I was, uh, unsure how this whole, I was very new to sort of

HTML, coding and CSS and SAS and doing that and then using a compiler.

So this is a thing that sort of takes what you've written and then rewrites

it in a format that's much neater.

It does magic to it and then it stucks and it makes websites.

It looks nice.

But then I, I think I was just.

Inexperienced.

Uh, I was new.

I was unwilling to ask for help because I thought I could do it, which was a

mistake, I should have just asked for help.

And I managed to upload it and then break the whole website, completely.

and basically had to call in one of the directors to help me out with that

situation and clear it all up and backtrack through everything I'd done.

So I learned from that situation, ask for help.

One advice, I always say, just ask for help.

Don't be so proud of yourself or precious, or whatever.

Just ask for help.

Um, yeah.

Tom: How did you feel at the time when that went wrong?

I didn't know where to turn and I had to tell the client as well, why we hadn't

hit deadline as well, but I think admitting to the problem and asking for

help was probably the two big things.

Because I panicked obviously, but now, um, I guess just being older, I guess

maybe that's the case, but I am happy to sort of fail quickly on a project.

So getting things wrong really quickly is much better for me.

It means I can get those out the way.

Cause you never hit things.

You never hit things on the first try anyways, when you're a young designer,

you think that's, that's how it is.

Like you looked at all the other designers and they always put all their beautiful

designs up and you're like, Oh, what?

Every time I make something, it doesn't look like that.

But, what they don't tell you is that it's probably, they're like 10

thousansdth attempt at that one thing.

And they've iterated, iterated, and it's changed so much over the time.

But yeah, I feel like if you're a young designer yeah.

Just keep hacking away at it because that's what I didn't

realize till late, um, yeah.

Tom: Well, that's great to hear because obviously you're doing.

Great work now.

Like I've seen some of the stuff that you've done and I'm just like,

I wish I could do that one day because I'm very new to design, but

it's good to hear that, like you did kind of have that crash at first.

On one of your projects because it'll help people understand

that right now someone could be going through something a bit difficult at

work, for example, or they might have just broke a clients' projects and they

might have to tell them that

But, it's like, well, it's not the end of the world.

Sometimes we can get so like stuck in the present and obviously it's good to be like

mindful and aware of what's going on right now, but due to maybe I don't

know, perhaps recency bias, you kind of value negative circumstances,

in the present more than actually what's going on over a longer period of time.

And like over time, obviously things really worked out for

You at Hive. It's going okay now.

Um, can we go back to what you were saying about kind of how you first

Got into design.

And you know, you were at school, and a teacher said that you weren't great

and so on, but what I wanted to ask was a little bit about, actually,

if you don't mind me asking anyway, like where you grew, how you ended up in the

Middle-East and so on, because I've just not asked you anything about this so far.

So I'm just quite curious really.

Allan: Oh, it's always a long story.

Whenever someone asks and I'm like right, let's start from the beginning.

So yeah.

So my dad's my dad's from from Plymouth

And he grew up to be a doctor and decided to work abroad.

And that's where he met my mum, who was Filipino at the time.

So they got together.

So they met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then had me, and that's where I spent most

of my years growing up, except during the Gulf war, which I was evacuated to the

Philippines for a year, just well obvious for obvious reasons, and then came back.

So I went to school, I've gone to school, I've gone to a load of different schools.

I used to go to a sort of, I guess, a British international school

for the first part of my life.

So all the way to the end.

Till year nine, I think.

And then I, during those years I spent a year in Philippines, like during

the Gulf war and I went to school there at a local school, just had a mud path.

In fact, most of it was mud.

Um, I remember that.

And then.

After the after year nine, I was sent to the American international school

in Saudi, um, uh, and then finished out and graduated high school from there.

And I guess, yeah.

And then I moved to the UK at 18 and, uh, uh, and, and tried to figure out my path

here, um, which was difficult because, um, I didn't have all the things I didn't

even have a national insurance number.

So I had to basically go in and ask for one so I could get a

job so I could pay for stuff.

Which was tough.

And yeah, and I think I had to do a lot of stuff by myself from that point

onward, um, parents were still abroad, so it was a lot of me trying to figure out.

Who I am, what I'm doing is this the right path?

Am I making a mistake?

Um, so yeah.

Yeah.

And then I grew up in Newcastle, so my dad used to teach in Newcastle.

And I grew up there, uh, well I grew up supporting Newcastle because

my dad was there for a while, but we didn't spend much time there.

And I spent three years there then I moved to Sheffield and stayed at

Sheffield because I moved around a lot.

Um, and I only ever had friends for, I think, through my life

only three to four years.

So I didn't really have long-term relationships with people.

Everyone was very temporary.

So it's only been recently that I've actually got like a set

of friends that have lasted a longer then then a few years.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I can sort of understand that because I think.

A lot of people in the UK make their friends either through like university or

through their friends from school as well.

But, if you've like grown up in a different area of the world, it's going to be quite

difficult to kind of form long-lasting relationships with people sort of,

well, obviously from your school, like you won't really have been able to do that.

It is difficult, like my mum was the same.

Like she went to about five or six different schools when she was younger.

So I don't think she has got that many friends from.

her schools anyway, but obviously as you get older, you just make a lot

more friends from your area and so on, which is good.

My other question then, this was one that I was thinking about last night.

So you talked a little bit about how you want to like tell sort of stories.

You like the storytelling aspects of design, do you think now in like 2021,

you have a much better, I think you do anyway, but you might, um, counter me

I personally think anyway, that you have a much better opportunity

to sort of express yourself and be creative through design than ever before,

because we have so many tools to so.

But a lot of those tools are online.

So as a sort of artist, do you think you have more ways to express

yourself now than before or not?

Allan: We have different ways of expressing ourselves now than before.

Yes.

I think all new software's democratized it a bit.

Um, so like everyone has a chance at jumping in and creating something amazing.

So I think having access to higher standard equipment and

software allows a person to create that amazing piece of work.

But I think.

We've always had, we've always had the humble pencil and some coloring pencils,

We've always had

the crayons so people could be really creative and create

We've had paint for ages and you can create lots of stuff on that.

I think it's just, now you can create it with a higher degree

of polish because of tech.

So you can do something in like, you can put a 3d animation together.

Um, you don't have to be Pixar.

You can like, you know, paint with like huge canvases and, and

you don't have to have a massive studio to be able to do that.

I think when I was in art school, this was in the early days, but, and it was

frowned upon, the digital tools, but I was always in the mind that these

are what they are, they are tools.

They don't replace your creativity.

So if they took those tools, digital tools away, all those people

that network that does beautiful work on whatever software they do

can still do beautiful work, regardless because you know, a colored pencil or,

uh, or some paints would help them.

I think what it has done is allowed more people to appreciate things.

So it has allowed people who wouldn't have access to art or design.

To have that access.

So if you're out in the middle of nowhere, so I grew up in the middle

of a desert, it'd be, it's nice to be able to see artwork from New York,

say for example, or some design pieces made in Berlin or some graphic design

stuff from like Dublin and being able to constantly see all this inspiration.

Um, I think that's really nice, I think that's, I think that's,

what's helped inspire a lot of people and be more creative.

So remember, these are just tools as any other tool you can use, but

I think, yeah, it does help them create a little more polish I guess.

Tom: Yeah.

That's, uh, that's quite interesting to hear because I think like I've

not really come from that much of a creative background at all, but I just

think, because it is so easy now to, well, I say it's easy to create stuff.

I'm not very good at creating stuff myself yet, but hopefully you give me

a few years and maybe I'll get there but, um, it's so much easier than it

ever has been before anyway, to like.

Just follow a few instructions online.

Get the right software and I feel quite lucky really that I've been able to like use

these kind have access to these, this software, like Photoshop or, you know,

all the different Adobe products really.

But if you have access to those and you've got access to YouTube, you're kind of

sorted to be honest because you really can just follow tutorials

and that's all you really need to do nowadays.

So on that point, actually, do you think there is like any innate skill

involved in design or do you think like someone could be born with no

skill in it at all without that sort of creative eye and then become a

really great sort of graphic designer for example?

Allan: There's no denying that some people are born with a, sort of

a visual sense where they may be more visual learners or maybe that's how

they grew up in the world because.

Say for example, they had dyslexia and using things visually helps

them understand things a bit better.

But as I said, anyone, anyone can be creative.

It just takes time and hard work.

Like anything else in life.

If you want to become an amazing musician, like, yeah, there are

all those prodigy kids out there.

They're one in a million, but there's some brilliant

musicians out there otherwise.

And all it takes is just doing your craft every day, working at it,

learning new stuff, going on YouTube and finding out what other people

are doing and learning from them.

I don't, I don't ever think that creativity or design is innate.

You might have a slight advantage, but I think it's about your brain.

How you look at things, you can train your brain, you can improve it.

Take drawing classes, go out, take photos, just work on stuff.

I think it's it's, I've never been.

Everyone you meet.

Sometimes they say, Oh, I'm not very creative or I'm not being very creative.

I think a lot of times it's because you're told not to be in jobs.

You're told not to be creative, not to do things your way.

Not to understand it.

If you go back to say every single one of those people's drawings for

when they were a kid, the confidence in their drawings was

You can see it, like the confidence coloring the confidence

in their line, confidence in composing a lot of pictures.

Cause they didn't have that sort of

One, they didn't have the feeling that they were being judged.

And two, then didn't have the feeling that, you know, it's, it's not allowed.

It's something that they leave in their childhood and yeah, and a lot of

jobs don't allow for that creativity, but maybe they should allow for some

so that people feel a little

More in control of their lives, I guess.

Tom: Yeah, yeah that's interesting to hear

I think as you get older, obviously there's more like

social norms to conform to.

And so you can feel a bit constrained especially if you take a job where

you have like a boss and a real hierarchal structure, so it can be quite difficult.

And you kind of just feel like everything's outside

of your own control. With design, you do have that creativity and freedom

I think one thing that I personally find it kind of lacks in a sense

and that you would get if you was like maybe an accountant, for example, is that sort of

objective answer whether you've done it right or not because

with like Maths for example, you know, whether it's yes or no, with design it's so subjective

And, you know, you could always kind of make things a little bit better.

You can never really get that absolute one hundred percent.

And so it can be difficult in a sense in that way at times

because like I'm not great at this point.

My aim is to get a lot better at design by following plenty

of YouTube videos and just trying to try and to work hard really.

But right now it's like, I probably do need a little bit of feedback at times.

And because you don't have the answer yes or no.

Whereas with something a bit more quantitative, or I don't know what

the right word is, but it's like, you can define something as like either

definitely, yeah, you've done the job right or wrong If you know what I mean?

Allan: Yeah like the sort of

One plus one equals two that

Yeah.

That's a definite answer as opposed to more of a sort of, um, I don't feel

that text is given off the right.

Um, Readability, for example, I think we're getting better at design.

I think it's still quite subjective, but we know what we're looking for.

Now.

We know what works and what doesn't work, and we test we

test and test and test anything.

So like for example, your piece of work, you can put it out.

And I think it is that feedback loop.

You just need to put it out.

Test often, uh, and again, get other people to look at it and go, I'm

not sure about the colors or I am not sure about how that's working.

I don't know if people can read that and then you incorporate bring

it back, cooperate, bring it back.

The real test of design working is one; people don't notice it

they shouldn't really notice the design of your work?

Because it will, say for example, you're doing a, say a website,

the interface should be intuitive.

They should just be able to do what they need to do, uh, enjoy the

experience of what they want to do.

And I'm not saying aesthetics is not, not important.

Um, that is part of the journey, but I'm saying that it should be a point

where they don't notice the design.

Um, they shouldn't be noticing, you know, The rounded corners of a box

and they shouldn't be noticing, but they will notice when things are not right.

And that's, I think is the hard part to find.

But again, with testing, you can put it out there.

People say that doesn't feel right and you go, okay, let's have another look at that.

That's design, I think in a nutshell, and we mean unlike art, where you are,

sort of creating a message for people to interpret. In design, we are actually

still creating things for people to use, see, make comprehension on.

And that's, that's, that's the real test.

That's our test.

That's how you test design, put it out there and see if it works.

And.

Most of the time.

It does

Most of the time, it doesn't, I don't know, but yeah,

it's tough.

Um, and I always think yeah you always get the flashy designers, but like, uh,

you know, they put all sorts of stuff up, but then half the time it's like,

yeah, but is it a good design because Mr.

Briggs next door with, uh, his, uh, big glasses finds it difficult to read your

website, even though it looks beautiful.

It's not really helpful to him.

Um, because he can't use anything.

Yes.

It is annoying to a designer going, but it looks aesthetically

amazing, but then you also go.

Yeah, but granddad, next door can't can't read any of it.

So it's useless.

Tom: I think another thing just on the point of like design, one thing that I do sort

of love about it is over time, you like accumulate more and more tips.

So like with Photoshop or after effects which I've been working in recently, it's

like, I'll come across a tutorial and it's like, Oh, that's nice.

Like, I, I want to try and use that.

Okay.

And then once you've got that tip, it's like, you've unlocked

a new character on a game.

And it's like, you can always use that character, you can always use

that tip, you know, in the future.

And it's like, you just kind of build up, build up these like characters,

these layers of just design technique that you can use in the future.

And like I'm very new to it.

But I feel like over time, if you just keep going with it, you'll

get to a point where you're like almost complete the game.

And it's like, you can just go into any level with any character anytime you want.

And it's like, okay.

I feel like that's kind of the end goal, but then maybe the game develops as well.

And so there's more new tips and.

More characters to unlock.

Once you get to a certain point and they bring out a new episode

Like a new software or whatever.

Allan: There's always the end game of creating that perfect piece and

knowing, knowing the software in and out, but you'll never get there.

And I think, I think that's the joy and fun of doing it.

Is that you'll never get there because you constantly will always want, there'll

always be something else to learn.

There's always a new shortcut, shortcuts.

When I was in my early stage of designing stuff, I used to say

like, why do people use shortcuts?

The buttons are right there.

There's no point using the shortcuts.

When you get into work, you suddenly realise, um, yes, use all the

shortcuts speeds up your work.

You can concentrate on other stuff now.

Um, I mean, like.

That's something that's changed my mind.

I was like, oh, all right now you've got less weird language.

to learn to use in illustrator for example.

that helps you move around a lot quicker and do what you need to do.

But yeah, I think software will always develop.

You will always need to keep learning new stuff.

And I think that's the fun part of it is, is that you're always a beginner

almost every time you go, ah, right.

Oh, something new.

Uh, I don't know how this works.

Uh, and then you're a beginner again, and it's put you in that mentality again.

It's quite nice to be, be there.

Cause then it goes, I can't make any mistakes because I

don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know how it works so I can make as many mistakes

and experiment how this works.

Tom: Yeah.

I think like just kind of on quite a broad basis, two of my favorite

things then about design would be.

That you'll have that opportunity to be creative, which you

don't get in many jobs.

And you also have the ability to be forever learning, like just continuously

learning all the time, because there's always stuff you can learn.

Um, and you don't really get those two things that creativity

and learning in that many jobs.

I think they are two things that are probably really

important in anyone's career.

Um, but to go into maybe a bit more detail on your advice for any sort

of designer who wants to get into design, because I feel like we have

spoken about a few benefits of it.

There might be people potentially listening, going, Oh yeah.

I wouldn't mind getting into maybe design.

Um, what would be your like top three pieces, pieces of advice for anyone

who does want to get into design?

Allan: Um, top three top, three, number one.

Don't listen to me.

Don't listen to all these stuff.

This is how you get into design.

It's just, this is.

This is, this is the top tips you need to learn or are these top skills because

they will always change, I think

You need to be interested in solving problems and puzzles.

I think I did another interview where I said exactly the same thing.

You've got to want to do a good puzzle.

Cause that's what design is.

In essence, you you're given something by a client, whatever it is.

And you've got to take those pieces, which some are missing.

Some are mislabeled.

Some, some have disappeared down the back of the couch and you've got

to put something together so that someone else can understand and work.

And the client is happy with what the outcome is and

whatever it comes out as is it's got, look, it's got lots of iterations.

It's got a lot of, uh, uh, this didn't work oh that doesn't work.

I think you've just gotta be able to be.

A fun lover of puzzles and know that you will not get it first time.

You will.

You'll never get to it first time.

But I mean, if, if we're asking how to get into the industry,

which is probably what everyone wants to know

Tom: you can't go into an interview and be like

"I love jigsaws"

That's probably not going to work

Allan: well, it depends on where you're doing this, a jigsaw factory might be quite good

to get into this industry.

Um, have a portfolio of, of your work of work you've done

for other people freelance.

And if you, yeah, if you don't have like any, any clients or, or you've not worked

for any big companies, cause you're just at the start of your career and there's

not much, and you've got what you've got in college, but it's not like great.

And you're thinking just start creating your own briefs at that point.

Uh, start putting something together, create your own little mini projects.

Whether it's in, you know, motion design, create your own show reels

or create your own movie.

I mean, that's, what's great about technology is that if you're

in animation or if you're doing anything on video, you can stick

it out there and let people see it.

Um, without having to go through the hoops of, uh, a big production company

or going to a job to get the facilities, get, get a good portfolio and keep doing

work and keep learning from that work.

I think I recently went to a conference where it basically says, uh, we're

always told not to do free work.

Um, but there's certain things you can do free work for.

So anything with a social benefit or charity.

They're always.

Yeah, you're not going to get paid.

It doesn't pay the bills, but you've got a client that are happy or are likely to be

happy with most things you produce because they don't have those things in house.

They don't have the money to spend on a, a designer or UX or visual

designer or motion designer, whatever type of designer you are.

So yeah.

Going out to those people and helping them.

So you're not only helping yourself, you're also helping a good cause and

you're adding stuff to your portfolio.

Um, so yeah, always have a portfolio.

Two; the tip.

I always get whenever, like you're supposed to hire for a

design role, especially myself is to hire people better than you,

which seems counterintuitive.

It's like, Oh, but I'm at the top, I'm the head of creative.

So I should be the top

I should be the best artist.

Yeah.

But it shouldn't be that way.

It should be that the people you hired around you are better than

you, and then you can learn from them and they can learn from each other.

I think best place for, I always find

I enjoy learning is when I was at art college.

I think I did my best, not my best work, but I felt most open

because there was loads of people doing loads of different stuff.

And then I was pulling all the experiences from around me.

So yeah, that's tip two, experience life, do things, um, just go

out and find and do things.

We can become so caught up in our, in our daily lives, that

sometimes you could just, you know, if you've always wanted to, um,

skydive, go for it, just go skydiving.

I know it's not that easy.

I know it's not that easy, but just start doing things.

Cause sometimes waiting around and not doing them is worse because I'm a

a forever procrastinator on stuff.

But yeah, going out, that's the other part of design it's just experiencing

life because how, how can you design anything if you don't know, um, what

people do and how people react and, um, what stuff is out there, what's it like

under the sea and all the inspirations you could do go out there and find,

cause it's so easy to be just stuck on Pinterest and go, Oh, that's pretty.

Oh, that's pretty.

That's really nice.

I really like how that looks instead of just going out there and going

like, ah, trees, ah, sunshine.

Oh, hair.

Oh, that's, that's interesting advice to me because when I look for inspiration

for my designs, so often I just go online and try and find something fairly similar

and then think, ooh, I wonder if I could replicate that, but in this way instead.

That's probably not a great way to start, do you think going outside

in the real world helps more?

I think, I think looking at other people's work does help a bit.

I think we can get quite caught up in it sometimes.

You can get quite caught up in trying to follow a style or trying to

follow a particular way a photo has

been taken and you become derivative of most of it,

like a poor copy of whatever that is.

That's fine for learning.

I think that's perfect.

Do lots of that.

Copy other people when you're learning, you'll, you'll learn new techniques

of how to say draw a particular line or how to take a particular picture.

It's brilliant for that, but understand that you are copying other

people's work and you being quite derivative of that type of work.

What you need to do is.

I guess not only just go out there and try and find other things to inspire you

like nature, nature, for example, massive inspiration, or it just is the way

that someone's coat looks while sat in a cafe, you go, I really liked that pattern.

That was a really good pattern.

That's why a lot of designers out there, you know, luckily have a

camera in their pocket at all times.

You can just go.

That looks really good.

I'm going to keep that and keep a bank of those type of images,

stored away on your computer.

So every so often you can jump back into it.

Even old projects, keep them stored on your computer.

You know, the ones that clients have rejected because you never know.

Like later down the line, you go, wait a minute.

I drew a bear that was really similar for this project.

And go back to that and see what you've got.

And then you can go back to it like, It would be really cool using

that old man's patterned coat on top of that, that'd be really cool.

So that's pulling lots of stuff from experiences using the knowledge you've

built up from copying other people and learning those techniques and just pulling

all those, all those things together.

It's tough at the start, but yeah, it's something you do going out

there and get those experience.

Get those weird photos of well, grass and gravel and texture, photos,

and cool patterns and lots of stuff out there. The way people interact with each other.

Or, funny designs on, on like ice cream trucks or something like that.

All that type of stuff is, is it's a better inspiration.

For, for your ongoing work because it doesn't become so like

you're trying to copy someone else.

Tom: Yeah.

It's a little bit more, well it's just more refreshing really to get out there in

the world rather than just stay online.

And you're going to be more creative if you go for a walk, like when I was doing

best with my own sort of online business about a year ago, or maybe even longer

ago now, um, that was when I was just like going on walks every day, just

in nature, that really was when I was being like doing the very best, because I was

just so much more creative. My other question for you then just going off

what you were saying about how one of the best times for you was when you were

surrounded by people who were kind of all interested in art and design and,

you know, you were taking ideas from them.

Or sort of just seeing what they were up to.

And, you know, you have the saying that like

you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time, that's some sort of saying as well.

And how important do you think like collaboration is in design?

Allan: Collaboration is, it's super important.

Uh, whether it's just feedback from people around you or

working with other creatives.

And it's tough.

And I have tried to work on this because I'm quite an introvert.

I don't like networking that well.

Uh, so if you stick me in a room, I need to put a lot of energy

in being social, so I get drained really quickly through the day.

Like, you know, all right.

I'm done talking to people and finding interesting people, but, um, I just need

some time for myself just to recoup.

So it's tough.

Uh, I think it's, uh, It is tough.

And yeah, I remember talking to someone saying, it's like, everyone

just always assumes that because you are a designer or illustrator or an artist

that you're always extrovert and talking to lots of people, but sometimes it's

hard for, for a lot of those people.

Um, and, and talking and meeting new people is quite draining.

But I do think, what I've always been told is that you

do need to surround yourself a little bit more creative people.

Um, and, and, you know, talk to them, interact with them.

And then I guess my own fears of, of, you know, I get that sort of imposter

syndrome, that type of thing, like where you think you don't belong somewhere, like

you've cheated the system by being there.

Uh, you're not good enough to be there.

Or, you shouldn't be there because I think, I think a lot of creators will,

will know that exact feeling like that, that self doubt of am I good enough?

Why am I here?

All these people a lot better than me, but I'm like, I'm higher than them.

They're expecting me to be better than them.

That, that sort of, that fear hits you when you're talking to a lot of, uh,

like when I started talking to like, and like there's loads of people that do beautiful

work out there and it's intimidating.

Cause I think they look at my work as like, it's not that good,

it's not as good as their work.

Um, I think, and then, then when you actually do meet them, it's just like

Yeah.

So what, um, but we both like, uh, you know, Designing dinosaurs, if

that's all right, it doesn't matter.

And I think, yeah, we build up all this sort of internal

fear when meeting other people.

And I think.

It's hard to get out of, especially with an introvert, but collaborating with other

people, meeting other creative people, especially that will help you a lot, even

if you don't understand it at the time.

So you should go to those meets and meet those people because you know, there could

be that one point where they suddenly go and you you're down in your luck and

they ring you up and go look, mate, I've got, um, I don't know, Sony on the line.

They need some new characters for their box art.

I'm busy.

So would you, would you mind, I've seen some of you work, you go in for it.

Um, and given that, that sort of heads up, I think that's also how hive works.

We build those relationships with our clients.

So they become, I don't know, I don't want to sound cliche, but like, like

our friends, but, but they become.

Like a part of the sort of work we do.

And it does become a case of he's like, oh, I know some guys

hive did some work for me and they were really good.

And then we get that.

And I think that's where we get our most satisfying jobs is from

word of mouth recommendations.

And by being collaborative, you might actually get a lot of those word of

mouth collaboration type things, I rambled.

Tom: No, no, it's good to hear.

I mean, I can definitely relate like obviously to the whole sort

of maybe overthinking things a little bit, but I don't know.

I personally over think all my work so much, like so far anyway, and

it's hard to get out of your own head sometimes and just be like,

okay, we're going to put this out.

And it doesn't matter if it's perfect or not.

And I think the thing you've got to consider is like, how many

hours have I actually spent?

Sort of working on this, how many hours have I spent.

Working on design in general, how many hours have I spent in Photoshop

or illustrator or after effects?

And you've got to take that into account because if you're ever thinking, ah,

this person's better than me at this this or that, you've got to consider

Well, how did they get to that position?

Because they're not necessarily better than you, as we said earlier, it's not

like they're born innately better than you at design is, you know, it's just

that they may have spent more hours on that practice than you, and you might

have spend more hours on something else and you know, that's just how life works.

So it's being aware of that, which is important.

And it's so much easier to say it on a podcast like this then to actually

implement that in your life.

Because I know after this podcast I'll think right, how do I go

and put this podcast our next or whatever, you know?

And like, what can I do to improve this?

It's difficult.

Allan: That is an important thing as I, uh, the other thing I learned is basically

don't be precious about anything, any piece of art, no matter how many

hours you have put into something.

Know that it's, it's likely to be

Ripped apart, or in fact, I used to always go with clients into a meeting whenever I

did a piece of work and sort of cut them off before they ripped my designs.

apart by saying you can rip my designs apart.

It made me feel like I had a little more control over it, even though I didn't.

But I think having that type of that type of criticism on your work, um, yeah,

it, it can sting, can sting quite badly.

Uh, I think having that thick skin is it's good for a designer cause you know, it's

like, yeah, people won't like your work.

Um, Mr. Boss in the corner might hate it.

Um, but.

It doesn't make it bad work.

No, does it make it good work?

No, it means it's work that's constantly evolving and just don't be precious about it.

And that's tough too.

Like, you know, you put tons of hours into something and you're

like, yes, it looks perfect.

And then you send it out to someone else and they go,

uh, it's not what I, it's nothing.

I like, um, this doesn't work at all.

Uh, and that can be like a devastating blow.

Cause you're like I put so much work in.

to this it is, it's gone.

It's a killer, but you've just got to go.

Right park that aside, that feeling at the side for a bit

I'll invest in that feeling later on in the night when I'm like, I don't know,

playing COD or something like that.

What I will do now is listen to why. Ask those questions.

So what doesn't work for you on this, or what, uh, what are you

expecting on these particular things?

Or, you know, uh, how is it not fitting for your target audience

start pulling your own design apart?

So it's like, what is it?

Is it something about the text, is the font the wrong choice?

Is it saying this, or is it saying this and ask those questions and you find

that you start collaborating with the client just as much as you do with other

creatives, uh, which is important as well, because they should also feel like the

work you're doing reflects them as well.

Um, because they've got bosses to show this too, and they

get criticized for work and.

You know, it's a never ending cycle, but sometimes it's

good to have some criticism.

Tom: Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

That was, I think that was the first or one of the main questions

that you asked me for my interview at hive, you said

how do you respond to criticism?

I gave you some kind of spiel about how, you know, I don't mind because you

learn from it and that's important to me.

So yeah, I do think like just kind of being okay with that, sometimes you do

need to put your emotions to one side for a little while, but I think it's

because I think the reason why we can be a little bit sensitive at times

to criticism or feedback on design is because it can be like a reflection

of your own identity or your own work.

And so it's like quite personal.

And I think that's maybe one of the main problems, I think like, just with.

This is getting a little bit deeper.

Now, but I guess the podcast is, you know, there is an intention to go a

little bit deeper, but I think capitalism in a way sort of sort of

promotes or sort of results in us all, having a bit more of an identity.

And so that's why we can be a little bit more sensitive to criticisms of our work.

But if we didn't have such a strong identity and if we were more just

like, okay, this is me in the moment, you know, my work doesn't

really say anything about me.

I'm just like a living person I don't know why I'm here.

I don't know why anyone's here.

I don't know why earth even exists.

Then maybe you'd kind of detach from your identity a little bit.

And maybe that would result in people not procrastinating as much.

This is probably something I need to start to listen to myself.

These sort of ideas about how my existence isn't really as.

You know, it's just ego driven again, it's just my ego being

out of control probably, which is why I care about some of my work too much.

Allan: I think it depends on the culture.

Tom: Yeah.

Allan: We do grow up in, uh, what psychologists call a loose culture.

So this self identity is a very important part of a loose culture.

So loose cultures are generally like, America is loose culture, where the

focus is, is on being an, an individual and finding your own path, you know,

striking it out to you on your own.

Um, you know, you know, all the big things, finding your

dreams, that, that type of stuff.

Uh, and then you have your sort of tighter cultures.

I think they are called.

So these are more communal based.

Uh, so a lot of them are in Asia, so that everything's done as, as a committee,

you, you tend to follow more rules, but because you follow more rules,

you're more in tune with the people around you because you know how

everyone works and how the protocol for, you know, doing a business meeting is

the same, regardless of what you are.

You have your greeting, you do this, you say this, and there's a certain

sense of structure to everything.

Uh, and in those societies they have their advantages.

So that they are less about the individual, they are more about the

collective getting together, being the community, supporting each other

different ways of looking at stuff.

But, um, in our culture, it's about being individual.

You stick it in your work and it can hurt when, when someone criticizes it.

I think you just have to separate yourself in that moment when, when you get that

criticism, like I've been in uni critiques where someone's put a lot of effort

into a particular piece of work and the tutors kind of just ripped it apart and

You can see them well up and it's hurt them a bit.

I think one sometimes a tutor needs to be careful that when you're doing the criticism of

someone, that it is their work and that it's not a slight on them, it's just on the work.

And you might need to say that.

At to start off every time you do it.

But on the other side, you do need to separate

your work out from yourself.

So you have put a lot of personal effort in you've created that character.

You've made it look like this, but know that someone else might not like it

or might not fit what the brief is.

So I don't know.

It's a tough one.

I think.

Remember that

Yeah. Yeah.

Remembering criticism.

It's not about you.

It's about the work.

They're not actually attacking you unless they are actually attack

you then, then it's about that.

It's about you and not the work, but yeah.

Um, just to keep that in mind.

Yeah.

It will hurt a bit, but that's, that's what you have to pay sometimes.

Tom: Yeah, yeah.

It is challenging, I suppose, in any field where you have room to be creative,

there's always, you always have to be a little bit more vulnerable perhaps,

and that's just comes with the job.

And obviously there's like, there's benefits to that as well.

Because on the flip side, when you do some great work, it's like, you

can really feel proud of yourself.

You gain a sort of sense of fulfillment or achievement within yourself.

It's like, I know, I only really started using after effects maybe about six weeks

ago, just before I got this job, because I knew I need to use it for this job.

So I just took like an online course.

And although the video that I recently created isn't anywhere near as good as I'd

like it to do, I did feel a real sort of sense of achievement once that was finished,

because, you know, I'd worked hard and tried to build that over the last six weeks.

So pros and cons to it.

And I guess if we didn't have the con, we didn't have people saying,

no, you need to do this better than.

The pros of doing good work, wouldn't feel quite as sweet.

Allan: Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, I think it also helps that whoever's saying those things also

doesn't say it like you need to do better.

What does that mean?

Tom: Yeah, yeah.

Allan: Yeah.

I think it has constructive has to be respectful as well.

I think a lot of people forget that one day to give them feedback.

It needs to be something like, so, yeah, I like it, but I don't think that works.

Or maybe we could try something different or try and get them

to think about it in a different way.

I think I've been lucky when I was learning after effects

to be in a production company.

So I had people around me that knew the software inside out

with like some of the best animators I've met.

They weren't the best illustrators, which is the skill I brought to them.

So like there was an intermingling, so I would draw stuff out and

they would help me put it all together and how it would work.

and having those peoples surrounding myself with

those people that has helped a lot.

I mean, like that's what you don't get when you're sitting on a YouTube and

learning by yourself, you don't have six other people sat around you going, Hmm.

Maybe you can try doing it like this.

And like having that sort of expertise on tap is a beautiful thing sometimes.

And yeah.

So if you're out there and you're creative and you're learning a piece

of software, talk to some of the experts ask for some tips and advice

and have them look at your work.

Yeah.

You might not get the response you want.

They might rip it apart even, but if they're good and they are good people,

um, they will help you up a ton.

They will point out things.

You could do things you could learn and how to, uh, upgrade

up upskill that skills.

Tom: Yeah, absolutely.

I'm not in any at the moment, but I'm sure there's plenty

of communities out there on.

social media, or just out there on the internet where you can join and

you can give each other advice and help each other with various projects to do with design.

Do you know of any actually Allan?

Allan: Behance tends to be quite a happy community, though you don't get much feedback on stuff

other than, Oh, this looks great.

Behance I think they're owned by Adobe.

So if you, if you're in the Adobe ecosystem, they're

up there, but not sponsored.

Um, But yeah, there's people out there that will give good.

I think just talking to some of the big players, there's

some great people on Twitter.

Um, Twitter is actually a quite useful tool and I've found there's some great

artists out there that will genuinely give you some, um, decent feedback.

Maybe not straight away, because they probably have a million people

now asking them for feedback because of, uh, this one lowly podcast.

Um, by the way, if you have any feedback about us,

Whether we're not doing anything right.

Whether our mic's are off or maybe just speed things up or slow things

down or talk about something different.

Just give us those advice, send it across to, do we have an email?

Tom: uh, you can send it to my email.

Should I, should I say my email now?

There's no like, okay.

It's tom@hiveit.co.uk.

Allan: Yep.

Send, send all the abuse to him.

Uh, send me all the praise.

No, don't, send Tom some praise because he's

pretty much a set this all up.

Um, and I've let him, let them just loose on this, uh, ever evolving

podcast to see where it goes.

Uh, so even this is a design experiment to see, see how it

works, how we move forward.

Uh, we're not precious.

So give us that feedback.

We'll be thick-skinned, don't worry about it.

Tom: We have to be, we have to be after what we've been saying over the last twenty minutes.

Allan: We will hold hands while reading the hurtful comments.

You'll give us, but yeah, just, yeah, this is, this is our own, I guess

our own little design experiment.

To see what works works.

What people want to listen.

Getting that feedback from, hopefully the more than

one listener out there will, will help us get better at what we do, or at

least get Tom the steer that we need to see where we can go with this.

Tom: Exactly.

Exactly.

I think we'll go for one final question and then we'll wrap it up.

Allan: Cool.

We've been talking a fair bit about design, technology, how

the world is changing and so on.

Why do you think that design is so important?

Allan: Why do I think design is so... It isn't and it is

It isn't important, it's something we've we've put together.

Um, this is controversial.

Design isn't important.

Don't become a designer.

Yeah.

Uh, it's a tough one.

Design is like, design's always been around for ages through nature.

For example, it has been its own design for millennials and created

us humans in the prospect.

And I guess we've taken on the sort of.

We've become self-aware we created this sort of design element

in our lives, I guess, design I've said design so many times in that last sentence

Tom: It's a design podcast, it's okay.

Allan: Uh, design is important and isn't important at the exact same time because

it's us, I guess, as humans and how we interact with the world, whether it's

through technology, whether we design the technology we interact with the world, um,

whether it's the tools we use that we've designed to interact with the world

design is important because it's about us.

Um, and it's about how we work with things and how we can make things

better, hopefully, but it can be how we can make things worse as well.

Um, design isn't always good design as long as bad.

So that's why I don't think it's, it's, it's important

in the sense that people put.

Importance on it.

I think it's, it's an integral part of our lives and it can go

either way, you can design for good and you can design for bad.

And there's plenty of examples out there for designing to manipulate people.

Um, that, that isn't good, but in essence, that is design

and that's the way it works.

I think good design is this as good as its purpose, if that makes sense.

So if you're creating good design for the right reasons, then it's

good design, but you could create really good design for the wrong

reasons and maybe they'd make it bad design?

Tom: Yeah.

Allan: See, see, it's design in itself is a hypocritical concept

that's innate in us.

Like, so yeah.

Good design.

Um, yeah, let's say for example, a missile is, you know, designed to full spec.

It does what it needs to do.

It goes, it flies, it goes and lands it explodes yeah but is it

a good design in the fact that it, um, kills people, uh, essentially it, or is

it bad design because it kills people.

It's hard to describe why, why you call it.

It does what it's intended to do, but it's it.

I wouldn't describe a missile as like the, I wouldn't have a

picture of a missile on my wall.

Would I?

But, essentially that's something that has been designed, designed to do something.

Um, and I guess, yeah, that's a tough one.

This is why I don't, like I said, I don't feel design should have an importance.

It is there, it's always there, it's a part of what we do.

It's how we interact with things.

And as I said, nature has already done most of the hard work and

heavy lifting in design by just being there and functioning.

Our bodies are a massive design mess of, of evolution, um,

that we all think is special.

But, um, in essence, we're just a bunch of meat bags.

Um, moving around.

Um, yeah.

Not to put anyone off design is important, and if we have

an understanding of how humans work and we're designing for the improvement of how

those humans work, that's the importance.

That's the direction design should go.

But then, as I said, there's always the opposite way that design can go.

And it's used to manipulate people into spending more, or, you know

like loot crates, for example, that's, that's a design decision that was made, um,

and there's people that teach those design decisions and how to push

those on, on younger and younger people.

Um, that, that isn't good.

Um, that's not good at all.

Um, so maybe

design needs a

Sort of moral code behind it somewhere.

I know it's a big, it's a much bigger, maybe that's a future podcast debate.

Cause that was a tough question.

Tom: I was thinking about that, once I asked the question I was like oh dear what have I done either

because I think a better question would have been

probably is design important?

And there's just so much to talk about. The internet as a whole, right.

Everything on the internet is being designed in a better way continuously.

Everything's looking nicer websites look better.

You have YouTube, you have all these amazing videos now, and

there's so much information and that is amazing, but that's kind of in a

virtual world in a way.

I mean, it is obviously it is the real world, but the internet is not quite

as tangible as my breath right now, or, you know, it's very hard to describe.

And so if you don't think that as as a whole is a good thing than making better design

on the internet, which attracts people to the internet may not necessarily be

a good thing and Oh God, it gets, so it gets so deep, doesn't it

Allan: There's a generation that loved the tangible stuff.

Uh, but there soon will be a generation that aren't so hooked

on having something tangible.

Um, there's probably kids these days that probably will never

buy a Blu-Ray or DVD or a video or however, Betamax, VHS

cassette tape, physical media anymore.

Uh, and probably won't even own say for example, if you wanted to own snow white.

Well, yeah, there's probably a generation that doesn't even want to own that because

they just pay a service to watch that.

Um, and they don't actually own, they lease it almost, we've almost become

a sort of lease culture where our software is all digitally online.

So what happens when that, that company disappears?

We lose it all or it gets closed down.

It's an interesting time because we're moving away from the fact of

owning something, having a possession.

To almost paying someone for the privilege of touching, using

a particular service or using a particular thing, because say for

example, cars or, you know, there will be a point where people

won't buy a car for their household.

They will just lease a car or hire a car because it just works

out more economically viable that way, people won't own things.

And so that tangibleness disappears, like books almost disappear or picking up

I don't know something else that's tangible that I can't think of at this point in time.

Tom: It's crazy, we haven't even touched on NFT's either.

Anyway, we should probably wrap this up.

It's actually been a longer podcast than I expected.

Tom: Yeah, it's been good.

Allan: It's been good.

Allan: Uh, I'm happy to just talk about stuff like this, whenever.

Tom: Yeah, sounds good.

I'll probably get you on again soon then.

Um, but yeah, to anyone listening, thanks so much for listening.

This has been the first ever make things better podcasts.

Hopefully we will make this podcast better as well.

Um, I appreciate you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.