Personal Style, Personal Six-Pack

Illustrator extraordinaire Alice Lee co-hosts this week’s episode of Overtime! Meg and Alice discuss a more eco-friendly Instagram interface, BMW’s new logo redesign, and how to let your inner style loose.

This episode is brought to you by .ME, the most personal internet domain that puts your signature on your work. Take control over your online brand and show your prospective clients how awesome you are! Whether you decide on a YourNameSurname.ME combination or a well-known alias for your domain name, .ME is uniquely positioned to provide you with the space you need to create a captivating online persona that’s a direct reflection of you.

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Links mentioned in this week’s episode

• Normally
• Carbonalyser
• Alice Lee’s Instagram

Transcript

Meg: Wowee, hi! Overtime is happening now. I’m your host Meg “hot potato” Lewis, and today we have a fun episode because I’m joined by an incredible co-host, someone who is extremely talented that I would call myself a very big fan of. It’s Alice Lee. Hi, Alice.

Alice: Hi, thanks. Lovely intro.

Meg: Yes. Alice, I became a huge fan of your work because of that amazing slag illustration system you created but in addition to brand illustration systems, you also do murals, you do editorial illustrations and you really just powerhouse. So, I’m happy that you’re here.

Alice: Oh, thanks for having me. Hot Potato back atcha.

Meg: In this week’s episode, I realized that Being on Instagram is actually bad for the environment. Whoops. BMW launches a derpy logo refresh. And just like your six pack, your own design style is hiding inside of you waiting to be let out.

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Meg: Okay, let’s get into the news. So, the first news story I want to talk about is so fascinating to me. And it’s a huge subject, but I’m very invigorated by it. So, Fast Company launched an article titled, “What Instagram Looks Like After an Eco-friendly Makeover,” which, that headline is such a small part of what this article is about. So, I didn’t realize any of this information, maybe I’m just naive. But this has totally changed my perspective, is that, okay: so, servers are, you know, in climate-controlled warehouses all over the world. And those obviously use so much energy. And I never really thought about that because they’re so far away, it’s so far removed from the stuff that I’m doing on the internet and on my phone. But technically, data centers like that use about 3% of global energy, which really doesn’t seem like that much on paper. But there’s a person named Tom Jarrett in the UK who works for a studio called Normally and he set out to do a research project where he tracked his own energy consumption on the internet, I guess there’s a Firefox plugin called Carbonalyser.

And so, he used this tool to track his own energy consumption through internet use. And he found out that in one week of using the internet, he used as much energy as it would take him to fly from London to Zurich. And I think that information was just very shocking to me. And so, then Tom set out to try to figure out how we can curb our internet usage in a form of using less energy. So, I think a lot of the issue there that he is trying to fix is that the way that, especially social media is designed, is for us to just keep consuming which we all know this. But I’ve always thought of social media sort of like you have to stop using it so much for your mental health. But I never thought of it from the perspective of using less energy. Has this thought ever crossed your mind?

Alice: No, I think these are two such important topics that I’ve never connected: the mental health piece and then the energy piece with, you know, using your phone a lot. And I’m just really curious about my consumption now because a flight from London to Switzerland, that’s a significant – flights take up a lot, use a lot of energy. So, I’m just curious, you know, for me, like how much of that scrolling is contributing to energy usage? But I think the other interesting thing is whenever I’ve thought about curtailing my internet usage on my phone, I haven’t thought about it in terms of redesigning the apps. I’ve just thought about it in terms of like, quitting cold turkey, like, throwing my phone across the room just being like, “I’m not touching this for the next like, day,” you know, versus actually changing the behavior but still keeping the phone.

Meg: Yeah, it’s really interesting and I think, especially in this use case where he redesigned Instagram to use less energy. So, Instagram just allows you to scroll and scroll and scroll and every time it’s, you know, inputting all those images and all of that data, it’s just using more data and more energy. And so, the way that he was able to redesign it, it kind of gets served to you in bite size chunks, so that it’s not constantly loading more information and more information. So inherently, it’s using less data and less energy.

And yeah, I think like, because this is a design and creativity focused podcast, I think that’s an interesting thing for everybody to think about is – I know that the companies we work for don’t encourage us to redesign things to be bite sized. They want us to stay in their apt.

Alice: Sure.

Meg: I would hope that the world is at least trending in this direction. And I think that brands, it’s now kind of cool and trendy for brands to care about the environment. So, I’m hoping that this is a trend that emerges – of companies maybe even launching different versions of their products that help us to use less energy, or at least thinking about it a little bit more. Because if I have never thought about it this way, I’m sure other people have too.

Alice: Yeah, I mean, I guess for like Spotify, there’s the data saver feature where you can like, turn off, you know, certain aspects of the app that cause you to use a lot more data. But that’s more in terms of saving money so that you don’t have to pay an outrageous data bill, but maybe there’s other, you know, data saving features for apps in the future.

And it also makes me think about – Instagram is an example of an app that probably uses a significant amount of data because you’re downloading images and media, but what are other apps that probably do that? Like maybe Youtube or, if you play a video game where, you know, you’re all connected to like one server or like one world, I don’t know how this works, you know what I mean?

Meg: Yeah, absolutely. I guess so many of the patterns that we’re designing for as designers is to keep people involved and keep people engaged in their content. And yeah, I’m trying to not spiral out of control and think about it of like, how can I create content that’s actually serving a very important purpose so that people aren’t ingesting what I’m doing and then using more energy? If it’s anything like that, I might just not do anything ever again.

Alice: That’s a lot of pressure.

Meg: But I guess it’s just another interesting way to be mindful about consumption and what I’m putting out into the world and how others might be consuming it.

Alice: Do you do anything in particular as a consumer to be more mindful about your internet usage?

Meg: I definitely am pretty hardcore about the screen time thing. And yes, I also always have my phone on Do Not Disturb, which is amazing for, mostly for mental health purposes, it’s been so helpful for me. And this year in particular, whether or not this is a good thing, I have such mixed feelings about it, but I’ve turned my Instagram into more of a business than a personal outlet, which just means that everything that I post in my feed on my Instagram is now, I’m trying to make it intentional and purposeful, and not necessarily curatorial. But what I’m trying to do is just make sure that I’m being intentional with everything that I’m doing, so that way I’m not wasting people’s time. But yes, I think turning my Instagram into a business outlet for me has been really empowering for me to think of Instagram as more of a business tool than anything, which keeps me off of it.

Alice: Okay, because of boundaries?

Meg: Yeah, I guess so. Being intentional with how you use the internet, especially with how you’re posting on the internet. And if you can be empowered by the fact that what you’re doing is serving a value to the people that are seeing it, then it helps us all to be more intentional with what we’re posting and what we’re consuming, which I absolutely love. That’s great from an energy standpoint. So, check. We’re making some progress.

Alice: Yay!

Meg: For the second news story today, let’s talk about this, okay. So, I guess that BMW launched a logo refresh really recently. And it’s always fun to talk about brand redesigns and logo redesigns, because I generally, I’m always quite neutral on things. I can be like, “Oh, that looks silly,” or “That one made me laugh.” I have initial gut reactions to the emotions that I feel when I look at logo redesigns, but I’m not the kind of designer that’s like “Absolutely not” about anything. So, anytime I see a logo refresh, I like to talk through my feelings about it, because I think it’s helpful for me to find my opinions in real time and on a podcast.

So, this logo refresh, I guess they launched it to go with a concept car called the i4. And looking into the history of the BMW logo, they’ve pretty much had the same logo since 1917. They just have applied different effects to it like one time, it might be shiny and look realistic, another time, it might be more flat. And so, this new logo refresh is the same thing. It’s the same exact content of the logo, it’s just different. They’ve just applied different styling to it. And my gut reaction when I saw it, compared to the old logo is that it just kind of looks derpy, because there’s like nothing going on. It’s just like, a white stroked circle with like the BMW – what do you call that? Like a circle with two different colors inside and then it says BMW.

And so, it kind of looks like whenever I’m at the beginning stage of a logo design and I’m thinking through my ideas and I’m like, “Nope, this is – something’s wrong but I have to just keep going.” It looks like that, like it looks incomplete, but I can’t blame them because it’s the same thing that they’ve always done to where it’s the same logo it’s just there’s different styling. So, it looks just, especially compared to the last one, it looks very unfinished.

Alice: I know what you mean. I do also agree and I also think I’m similar to you in that I don’t get like, super worked up about logo redesigns. I usually have some kind of reaction like “Oh, cool,” or “Weird, okay.” I’m not like, “Oh my god, I’m never going to get a BMW ever again. This is an insult to my eyes to have to look at this,” you know, or I’m never like, “Yes. BMW, this logo made the car for me,” you know, it’s never so extreme for me.

So, it is fun to kind of talk through it. And I do agree, I think maybe this is just part of this style that’s rippling through a lot of brands right now, like I saw a side by side of a lot of iconic fashion brands. Like Burberry for example, redesigned their logo. So before, it used to be this like, really lovely, fun, horse drawn chariot thing with a serif font. But now it’s like Burberry just like sans serif all caps. And I don’t know if that’s maybe just a sign of the times and having to adapt to being put into more context on screens, smaller sizes, etc.

But I personally really prefer the older logos. Like, I’m looking at, in the article that you’re referencing, I looked at the older logos from even before the most recent iteration, where there’s like BMW and this really fun, serif font and it looks almost hand drawn. And I love that. That’s what I want to do. It just feels like so much personality.

Meg: Exactly.

Alice: And it feels really unique to that brand, as opposed to like, this look could have just been taken and applied to any other car brand in this, you know, general field.

Meg: Yeah, you made a really good point about brands kind of right now and just stripping all the personality out of things. And that’s definitely something I hear a lot from clients whenever I’m working on, especially brand refreshes, if they’re like, “Oh, we have a great system in place, but it just needs to be refined,” they often ask me to just strip everything away and make it fresh in that way of like taking everything unnecessary away. And that breaks my little heart because I love working on design that has exciting and personable branding elements that really create a personality for a brand. And yes, I do think that there are a lot of ways that we can create personality with very little. And I think that’s the magic of type and type design. But in this case, it just looks like “meh” compared to the other ones.

But my other point that I think is very interesting, and I’d love to talk to you about is that as soon as you scroll down and see it on the car, and immediately I was like, “Oh, okay, no, I do actually like this.” And I feel like I always have this epiphany when it comes to anything that’s print design or like, actually 3-D in a space that actually, this happens to me every time to where I always feel like the simplest things digitally end up looking amazing in person when they’re not on a screen. And it’s so confusing to me how that happens but it does. And whenever I’m at the grocery store, for example, or a drug store, and I’m looking at products, I’m always attracted to products that have the simplest design. But with my history as a digital designer, I always have to add more and more and more and more elements to things in order for it to look good on screen. But I don’t understand why that happens to print design. I’m sure somebody out there knows the answer to this.

Alice: It’s really interesting when you mentioned that you liked it a lot more when you see in context. And I think that’s an important part of critiquing identity and logo redesigns, is like, there’s so much context surrounding it that almost makes it very difficult to truly critique a logo when you see it just stripped down as its, you know, singular unit. You really have to understand the different context that it’ll be applied to. Whether it’s, I don’t know if BMW has a mobile app or something. So, whether it’s like on the on the screen on your phone, or on the hood of a car, and that’s a very broad range of environments that you have to look at it in. So, I think that if their goal was to have something that can really look good across those different environments, then maybe this is the most successful solution that they had. So maybe then it is, you know, effective.

Meg: Yeah, I think that’s a very wonderful take on how to critique brand design and especially logo design. And that’s a really good point to keep in mind.

Alice: Yeah, whenever I’m designing, I always feel like when I put it in context, when I put my illustrations in a context, like if I’m painting a mural, I will usually work on it digitally on my computer first, but then I’ll like pump it up in the photo. And there’s always this like, five to 10% boost whenever I like put it in context. It’s like, you know, sometimes I’m like, “I’m not feeling it. Like there’s something kind of off but let me just see it in context, then I get excited again because of that boost.”

Meg: That’s true.

Alice: So yeah, I do think that there is something magical about putting the pieces together whether it’s of your space design with your illustration, if it’s a mural. Or it’s car designs, the hood with the logo to see how it’s going to actually look on the car.

Meg: Yeah, it’s kind of like the old saying of like, the camera adds 10 pounds, but this is like –

Alice: Yeah, ten sparkles.

Meg: Context adds ten sparkles.

Alice: Sparkles. Yeah. And then if we get it to 100 to begin with then it’s 110 in context, it’s even more special.

Meg: Yes! That’s right.

Meg: Now, Alice, your work has such a unique style, even though you span so many different colors and textures and definitely subject matter. And it’s so fascinating to me how I can always recognize your work even though each piece and system you’re creating is so different. And I think that’s a fun conversation for us to talk about because I also am known for my style. And this is something that I have questioned and reconsidered a lot throughout my career because you know, people tell me this a lot that they can only recognize my work, and as someone who’s solving brand problems all the time that can get very confusing – having a unique style. So, let’s talk a little bit about style. Do you like – zooming out – would you recommend that all designers, illustrators, artists have their own style?

Alice: Yeah, what a great topic. The quick answer to that question is yes, but then the longer answer is, yes, but you already have that unique style. So, it’s helpful to have of course, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the answer is because you already have it. It’s inherent to you just like your actual voice, you know. One artist that I really admire, Victo Ngai, she said in an interview, a teacher once told her, your drawing, your illustration, your artistic style is just as natural to you as your handwriting. So, you can try to hide it, you can maybe do other styles, you can work in someone else’s voice as much as you want. That’s totally cool. But at the end of the day, just by existing and having opinions and a point of view, and then putting that to paper, like you have inherently your own style. It’s just like your handwriting.

Meg: So true. I mean, if you gave us the exact same prompt and same color palette and told us to use the exact same content and a piece, they would come out two completely different ways. And I think a lot about that too, because I think my style in particular, even though it has quite been the same throughout my whole career, it can overlap with trends that come and go and so sometimes people want to talk to me about like, “Oh, this person is riffing on your style,” or like, “They stole your style or something like that.” And I could never feel negatively towards that. Because whenever I look at that work, I look at it and think, “Wow, my brain would have never made it that way, though.” Like, clearly, they have their own style. And maybe there are some common elements between my style and theirs. But there was no way that I would have been able to make what they make. And there’s no way unless they just copied it, that they’d be able to make what I do, because our brains are different.

Alice: Right, yeah. And I think that what you mentioned at the end, that’s a different issue. It’s just like someone straight up copying your work. But I don’t think that that’s what you’re asking about. We’re talking more about just the general visual language that you work in, like your visual vocabulary, and the way that you interpret things visually. So yeah, I do think that, like A. we all have, inherently by existing, we all have our own unique voice, whether that’s in life or artistically, but also B. as an artist, as illustrators, designers, it takes work, experience, time put into honing and finessing and harnessing that. You know, I mean, it’s like we all have it deep down but it takes time and energy to bring that out and really let it shine. Someone told me recently that we all have a six-pack but like, you just can’t see mine, or other people’s because, you know, we didn’t go to the gym and work out that particular part of our, you know, muscle, but underneath it all, we all have a six-pack so if you put in the work, you can really bring that out.

Meg: This year I’ve been honing in and teaching a find your style workshop, and what you said about the six-pack thing, it was making me laugh hard, I was trying not to laugh over you so everyone, and me included, could still hear you. But it made me think that it’d be really fun to go to a find your style workshop that’s half finding your style half finding your six-pack, where it’s like you do like a little design exercise and you do some crunches and go back and forth and see what see what happens first.

Alice: Yeah, or maybe if you don’t want to do crunches, you have to do more design exercises.

Meg: Yes. Okay, so I’m sure that you get asked this a lot. And I’m going to ask it because I’m sure everybody’s wondering. But when it comes to having a style, and you in particular, because you work with a lot of big brands, especially when you’re creating illustration systems for them. How do you adapt your style to the brand constraints in general?

Alice: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. I think, you know, for a long time, I didn’t really overlap my personal style with the style that I was creating for an in-house brand because it didn’t seem like they wanted that. Companies have their own set of constraints that they’re trying to solve for, their own market that they’re trying to target. There’s all this data. So, my job is really to take all that information as inputs and then output a system that works for that. And sometimes my own style isn’t the right solution for that, which is why I’m always really confused. Because whenever I’ve put out work that is for maybe like a larger brand in the past, like Slack, or like WordPress, for example, sometimes I’ll get emails afterward saying, “Can you just do what you did for slack but for us, and just like change the color?” And then I’m like, “I don’t think that would work for you because I created that for them with these specific parameters in place, and I’m sure you have different things you’re trying to sell for too and a different audience. So that doesn’t make sense.” But I think the Slack project is really unique because that was one of the first times in my career, up until that point in like 2015-16, where the company was really open to letting me put in a lot of my personal style. Like it just so happened that it overlaps really well. And I was really lucky and I’m really grateful to them for letting me do that. Because then that opened up the door for letting me inject more of that of my own personality into future client projects.

Meg: Yeah, I think this conversation and what you mentioned about solving for problems and adapting your style based on those problems that you’re solving for is such a fascinating topic to me. And this is, whenever I teach find your style workshops and all that, this is something that I’ve really had to finesse of how to explain this to people. And especially coming from a designer, I think with illustrators, you’re kind of expected to have a style more than designers usually are because designers, our job is to solve problems and to create solutions that best solves the problem. And I think there is now, luckily this wonderful spectrum that you can land on as a creative. If you want to be a problem-solving creative designer, illustrator artist, or if you want to be strictly an artist with a style. In my career, I started as more of a problem-solving designer. And I would have to basically adapt my design style based on the solution that was best for solving that problem. And because my brain is very unique, I would always end up where my style would be peeking through a little bit. And I know what I can do, my skill set is limited, I am very good at some things, not very good at other things. And so, I would be able to create, you know, some great solutions for these problems from a design thinking standpoint but my style would always be peeking through.

And now as I’ve gone through my career, now I’m more on the artist side of the spectrum, where usually companies approach me because they’ve already figured out a solution for the problem they’re trying to solve for and my style happens to fit exactly within that solution that they need. And so of course within that, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, you adapt a little bit, you change things a little bit here and there, based on the solution that needs to be solved for the problem. But basically, you’re acting as an artist using your style to create that solution, which it’s important for every creative to know where on the spectrum they want to fall because I think a lot of times, people that are on the problem side of the spectrum feel guilty, like, “Oh, I should have a style. Why don’t I?” Or maybe they’re like, “No, design isn’t art, design exists to solve problems.”

So, I see a lot of arguments on both sides. But I think it’s a personal thing on finding out where you want to be on that artist/problem-solver spectrum. And just embracing that and realizing that that’s where you want to be. So that’s the kind of work that you need to make.

Alice: Yeah, I totally agree. And, and my journey has been really similar to yours too. I started off in house illustration, product design. So, I was definitely in the problem-solving design way of thinking. And then after I left that job, where I was working at Dropbox, I went freelance and so that independence really allowed me to move more towards finding my own voice and then expressing that through my professional work. And being more on the artist side.

Meg: Yeah. So, as you evolve, what do you think is next? Like do you think that your style will change?

Alice: Oh, yeah, I think my style will definitely change. I think it’s always changing from project to project. Yeah, I think it’s probably interesting, and maybe you’ve experienced something similar where I do think my style changes quite a bit, but that’s just because I’m really in it, you know. And so, I see all the little changes that I’m making, and maybe from the outside, you don’t really see it, but then over the course of like a year, you might see it but not from like project to project.

Meg: That’s true. I recently just started using purple for the first time and it makes everything feel like, “Oh my God, who am I anymore?” But of course, to other people, they’re probably like, “It doesn’t look like that big of a change.” But for me, it’s just, like, a new color means so much.

Alice: Yeah, totally.

Meg: Alright, Alice, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Is there anything you’d like to promote or add?

Alice: Follow me on Instagram, I’m @ByAliceLee. I honestly would love to see you and say hi.

Meg: And I’m sure by now, everybody’s really curious to know what your work looks like.

Alice: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I post a lot of work on Instagram. Although I’m trying to post more just like, random pictures and stuff too.

Meg: Cool. Alright. Thanks, Alice.

Alice: Thank you.

Meg: The hotline for overtime is in full swing. Call 1-833-DEZIGNZ. That’s 1-833 DEZIGNZ, spelled a little weird, and leave an audio recording of your most embarrassing design question. And you know what? You’re recording plus my answer might be featured on the podcast. That’s 1-833-DEZIGNZ. No question is too embarrassing, I promise. I’ll start. Sometimes I see lettering artists switch their work into some kind of outline mode so they can perfect their letters, and I have no idea what that’s called or why they’re doing it.

And that’s it for this week’s episode of Overtime. And if you haven’t listened to it yet, you know, I have a brand-new comedy mindfulness podcast called “Sit There and Do Nothing” out in the world. It is a destination for guided meditations, stories, affirmations and other weirdly very soothing experiences. It’s guaranteed to turn you into a blob and will absolutely make you feel better than before you started listening to it. I do a lot less shouting in that podcast than I do in this one, and mostly I talk in a slow and calm tone like this. Okay, bye hear me next week!