Issue No. 10
We are back! You might notice a small change this week: TCF will be coming out every other Friday in 2020, rather than Wednesday. TGIF.
On a recent Sunday morning, Amanda and I sat around her family’s dining room table in San Francisco discussing what’s next for The Creative Factor. In front of us, there were cups of rocket fuel-strong coffee, and blue, yellow, and green Sharpies, along with children’s Crayola pencils and a rainbow-colored drawing of a VSCO girl done by Amanda’s seven-year-old daughter.
One moment Amanda and I talked about brand purpose and value prop and the next Amanda’s super-smart daughter schooled me on what’s cool when I asked what is a VSCO girl. (FYI, “It is the most basic kind of girl you’ll find out there,” she said. “There is a video on YouTube that might explain it better…”) I felt so old.
The scene is familiar to anyone starting a new pursuit: Sometimes, you’re able to set aside hours for deep work. Other times, you’re squeezing time in at the dinner table while children play all around you. But no matter the moment, you can’t not create. As Amanda says below, creativity is a mindset, and our minds are always thinking about ways to invent something new or reinvent the status quo.
During our time together, Amanda and I were quite productive—notably hitting up both Tartine and Salt & Straw—and below we’ve woven together our conversations about what excites us and what needs more attention in the year ahead. Topics include our continued belief that creativity is undervalued and ways to solve that; our against-the-grain view that you have to choose between your creative passion and following the money, and why looking at the world differently than everyone else is a good thing.
May all your dining room tables be bright and colorful.
Matt McCue & Amanda Tuft, Co-Founders / Editors@thecreativefactor.co
We’re trying something new this edition and interviewing…each other? Yep. As we mapped out our year, we kept coming back to key themes that drive our thinking. We share them below to give context to our ongoing conversations about rethinking the hours-for-creative work pay model, clichés about creators and business that need to go, and replacing the fashionable “design-led” term with “creative-led”.
AT: Who is doing something that has you excited this year? Why?
MM: One of the questions we will continue to explore is: How should we value creative work? Wrapped within that answer is how creators earn a living. Jobs in traditional business units, such as sales, legal, and engineering, pay a lot more than the umbrella “creative services” unit, whatever that really means. Why the pay disparity? Let’s think about how we make the case that creative work is as important to the bottom line as sales, engineering, etc. (because it is).
I’m interested in what Jules Ehrhardt, a former owner of UsTwo, is building at FKTRY. Jules looks around the corner before most of us—see his epic State of the Digital Nation addresses for 2016 and 2020. Jules is rethinking the pay-for-time model that most creators follow, with one that is pay-for-value. When creativity is valued on a time basis, clients can perceive cheaper and faster as “better”. That’s a race to the bottom we don’t want to be in. At FKRTY, Jules is encouraging clients to view creative expertise as an investment, not a commodity. And he is doing it with an open-source philosophy to foster development.
FKTRY is one-part creative studio, one-part venture capital firm that works as a founding partner with early-stage businesses. As Jules describes it, “Creative Capital is the evolution of the services-for-equity model for the creative sector. The objective is to establish common terminology, standards, and legal framework to create the category and make it as commonly understood as venture capital is today. This can only be built on exploitable human knowledge, namely premium, pivotal, money-can’t-buy expertise from teams of proven leaders in their field that early stage companies would find it impossible to assemble.
In exchange for FKTRY’s early product, branding, coaching, and recruiting work, early-stage companies compensate FKTRY with a mix of cash and equity. If the start-up grows, FKTRY partakes in the upside. If the start-up doesn’t, FKTRY shoulders the downside as any owner would. As the world becomes more automated, our one-of-a-kind perspective should be even more valuable, right? We need to reset the terms of how we do business, so we can participate more in the incredible value we add to organizations and audiences. What about you? What’s got you excited?
AT: I’m a big fan of Tom Szaky, the founder of TerraCycle, and it’s subsidiary, Loop. Loop is pioneering the development of a circular, no-waste shopping platform. All of the packaging of these consumer goods—from deodorant to Häagen-Daz ice cream—is reusable. When the product runs out, you ship the container back to Loop, where it is cleaned and refilled. What I love about this, aside from the ecological benefits (even with shipping, it’s a more sustainable solution than single-use packaging), is that the model is challenging stalwart companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Nestle to reshape their relationship with consumers.
The packaging solutions, too, are novel. Häagen-Dazs, for example, took the opportunity to re-think the consumer’s experience with scooping at home, from the design of the stainless-steel container that promotes the melt of the top layer first, for optimal scooping, to its gently rounded bottom that makes getting the last bit out a breeze. Loop is expanding its efforts with partner companies like Walgreens and Kroger in the U.S., and Tesco in the U.K., to put these goods on store shelves. It’s not perfect, but it’s the start of something that has the potential to transform the consumer goods industry. Perhaps in five years, we might see the end of single-use packaging.
MM: Tell us about something that is widely agreed upon that you think we should be talking about in a completely different way?
AT: We talk a lot in the industry about how to express the value of creativity in business. Being “design-led” is a popular expression, but the term narrows the perception people carry—the default notion is that we’re about making things look attractive. I prefer to use “creative-led” because it denotes a mindset, rather than a skill set.
The nature of business is changing, and creative-led companies are leading that change. They are challenging the definition of big-B Business, and how products, companies, and ideas succeed. Along the way, they’re shaping our cultures and societies. Just look to companies like Hu.Ma.Ne and Lilium for a view from the front lines of that change.
It’s not only the more prominent players who are changing the game. What excites me is the rise over the past 10 years of a new generation of innovators and creative thinkers; individuals and smaller companies who are bringing outsized ideas to life, and small teams inside large corporations who are fostering transformation from the inside out. They may come from creative fields, but they have solid business instincts and an entrepreneurial drive. They’re building pioneering, conscious businesses. And you?
MM: That creators aren’t interested in money, business, and number-driven results. Among the 500+ creators I’ve talked to and interviewed over the past few years, I’ve noticed the A-level players are very entrepreneurial—even if they don’t always recognize that spirit within themselves.
Over the summer, I had dinner with one of the most well-respected people in the design community whose studio makes $20 million/year. He knew every financial nook and cranny of his business, down to the precise profit margin, 26 percent. He can go deep on everything from brand communication to typefaces, but I think he would make a terrific business teacher because he understands people and human behavior are core to business strategy.
It’s not just someone running an eight-figure business, though. Through The Creative Factor, I’ve met with a number of designers, from college age to early 30’s. One is rethinking the relationship between design, technology, and restaurants. Another is working with three similar companies on her block in the Bronx; she is trying to help them provide a unique offering, so they don’t put each other out of business. And a third will soon launch her own consultancy to help organizations redesign their systems and workflows. It’s inspiring.
Sure, there will always be creative minds who say things like “I don’t do numbers”—that is an exact quote from someone—who contribute to the stereotype. But start talking to people, and it’s clear that meaningful change is brewing. Speaking of looking ahead, what topics need our attention in 2020 and beyond?
AT: I’m looking forward to having more candid conversations in our industry. Creative folks are highly collaborative, but do tend to talk mostly about outcomes, shined up for public scrutiny. I think the important stories are the ones from the journey, even if it’s messy. Especially if it’s messy. I want us to build an extensive knowledge base for creative entrepreneurs via shared stories and experiences.
I also want to seek out more origin stories, because taking that chance—the one that ends up changing everything—is such an incredible, defining moment. Sometimes the gravity of that moment isn’t apparent until months or years later. To someone debating a leap to follow their passion, bring a new idea to life, or start the next company that will change the world for the better, hearing about the (often humble) beginnings of some of the most successful companies is both valuable and inspiring. What’s on your mind?
MM: I’m currently reading The Passion Economy by Adam Davidson. It’s about people who turn the ideas they can’t stop thinking about into thriving enterprises. Like the people he writes about, Davidson has turned his creative ideas into a successful career as a New Yorker contributor and now CEO and co-owner, with Sony, of the new podcasting company Three Uncanny Four.
To frame his book, Davidson charts the careers of his grandfather and father. His grandfather ran a factory his whole career, because it was a stable, well-paying job and that’s what you did back then, even if you had no interest in factories.
Davidson’s dad, on the other hand, moved to New York City and pursued an acting career that is mostly regional. For him, it has been personally fulfilling, but it’s a grind that hasn’t led to long-term financial strength. Initially, Davidson looked at each path and thought he was screwed: Neither looked promising.
Many of us have faced the binary divide of following your passion or the money. But, as Davidson writes, and I believe, the time has come for chasing your passion and following the money. Today, software companies, banks, and more realize they need to act more human—and creativity is human. And the challenges businesses, and society, face today are no longer linear. They’re in need of minds that can connect unlikely dots to solve truly complex issues. That’s also us.
I look forward to seeing more creators launching and leading organizations in the years ahead.
Conversation Starters
Frank Gehry, Start-Up Founder
Architect Frank Gehry is 90-years-young and the subject of a New York conversation that revisits his storied career. Gehry, known for his futuristic, wavy style in the likes of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, also nurtured a start-up within his namesake firm for years. Gehry and his R&D colleagues developed software that turns Gehry’s fluid shapes—which, fun fact, “rely on the curves found in the body of a fish or an eagle’s flight”—into 3D files everyone involved in the construction process can read off.
“Instead of the contractors taking our designs and figuring out how to build it—then we have to do change orders if they get it wrong, which costs money — this way we can show them exactly how to build it and stay on budget,” Gehry told New York. Gehry Technologies sold to Trimble Consulting in 2014. It’s a good reminder that promising business ideas can be found between our imagination and what we make.
Images of tickets from the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics (left) and 1968 Grenoble Olympics from Olympic Games: The Design.
View Every Olympic Design in History
This month author Markus Osterwalder dropped his magnum opus—a complete history of Olympic design, beginning with the very first Olympic Games in 1896. Olympic Games: The Design is a two-volume set that clocks in at over 1,500 pages with 6,000 illustrations about who created what and how they did it. Why Olympic design? It’s the biggest design project worldwide with unparalleled media coverage, writes Osterwalder, a graphic designer who spent more than one million hours on research. The books focus on visual elements, including logos, mascots, medals, pictograms, uniforms, tickets, and posters. “You need to know the past to understand the present so you can design the future,” writes Osterwalder.
Final Thought /
Ever wonder how certain ideas come to be? Us too. If you have the brief for this one, then comet us, bro - we’re all ears. Possibly because we’re busy covering our eyes. (View the original tweet here.)
