Mistakes & Lessons Starting a Design Studio

Ian Paget: Normally what I do for interviews is actually right down like a list of questions so I've got some kind of structure but in this case, I just wrote down a whole load of notes of stuff that we could potentially go through. So we could talk for hours I feel. But I want to ask you about one thing, I don't know if you've ever been asked about this and I think it could be a fun, little icebreaker.

So in your book and I don't know if this is true. So for listeners prior to doing this interview, Jan kindly recommended the book Tell Me Why? Which was written like 20 years ago and it's really cool to be able to speak to you after reading that book knowing that we're 20 years on from that. But there's a short story in there about side agency thing called parasite where you would break into agencies and use their stuff out of ours. Is that real? Is that actually a thing? Or are you just playing? Or are just having some fun with the book?

Jan Wilker: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Have you been asked about this before?

Jan Wilker: No.

Ian Paget: No? Really? In 20 years nobody has asked?

Jan Wilker: Yeah. I was always hoping someone would ask and it's funny that I had to wait that long, so I'm a little bit surprised.

Ian Paget: I went on your website and found the page for the book, and I saw on the side this little audio clip expecting it to be like an audio version of the content about the book. But it was basically YouTube talking about this, how you mentioned the story, you convinced the… is it Claire?

Jan Wilker: Yes, exactly.

Ian Paget: To put it in and nobody has asked you about it.

Jan Wilker: Exactly.

Ian Paget: Is it even real?

Jan Wilker: The story itself? Well, it's a real story but it's fictional. So we always thought back then that it would be great to do that but since we had our own studio, we didn't need to. But other people used our studio like friends of ours…

Ian Paget: I see.

Jan Wilker: We allowed them to use our studio, but then at some point of course, when I guess paying the rent didn't turn out to be as easy as we thought and hoped it would be, we certainly thought it would be great to have this underground club where we just get these keys of these different agencies in New York and we just go there at night, at weekends and we just use their infrastructure without them ever knowing and we just use their paper and their scanners back then and colour printers.

Ian Paget: I'm really amazed, especially in somewhere not like New York and knowing that particular book caused quite an impact at the time. I'm surprised that like the owners of the big agencies didn't think this is a fun idea, you know just as a way of just hanging out, we just go to a different agency each week and yeah it would be quite a fun idea.

Jan Wilker: I would still agree, yeah.

Ian Paget: Okay, so I'm going to go into the more serious questions. You set up an agency 20 years ago now. Just over 20 years ago I think.

Jan Wilker: I think it's more of a studio than an agency.

Ian Paget: Okay, a studio. And I mean in terms of things like marketing and stuff like that, reading your book it seems like you're wasn't very good at it. And I'm actually amazed reading the book that you was able to keep really keep it going. So I think something that would be interesting to ask you about is what would you do differently now if you was going to start this? Because I was so surprised that you basically came together, you started off by getting a studio space before you even have any clients and it just seems like a funny way of doing things. So would you do it in a similar way and just kind of find your way through things as you're going or would you based on the last 20 years do it in a completely different way now?

Jan Wilker: Well, I thought about it a few times how I would do it and I always came back to the same thing that and I guess I would do it the exact same way, and that is I think based on a couple of… I guess experience that I had over the past two decades. A lot of people… when they would meet me, they would say, hey, cool that you're doing it and I'm trying to do the same, but I'm working at this agency right now and I'm trying to kind of merge into my own thing. And a lot of people they were never really able to do that. Like the soft move, I don't think I would have had the capacity to do that. That doesn't mean that other people couldn't do it. A lot of people have, but always when I listened to them, I thought man, it must be so difficult to slowly phase out of this. Monthly pay check and then work late nights and weekends and I would not have had the mental capacity to do that or just energy in general. So for me it was always all or nothing. So if we're doing this, we're going to do it now and right from the beginning.

Ian Paget: That's such a surprising response. Because I was thinking that since you've had 20 years’ experience that maybe you would market things differently. So I think one thing that you did really well back then and I would be honest for listeners, it's a great book because it's really honest and you kind of screwed up in so many ways which is really kind of quite good to hear because I think a lot of people make those same mistakes but don't necessarily talk about it. But one thing that you did really well was the mailers. So there are a few different examples that you included in the book where you would create these things and basically send them out. I don't know exactly how you did that because it wasn't specifically written in the book. So I mean those things that you were creating, you would get like a few thousand printed out. Were you literally going door to door around the businesses in New York and posting them through?

Jan Wilker: No, back then… I mean initially we were planning to print a high gloss like four colour beautifully produced book, but we didn't have any work to show, so that would have been a waste. So all we had was our thoughts and some fairly dry information. So we ended up printing black and white on a newsprint. And I remember our first mailer announcing our studio formation basically like this new formed entity that we are in business. I think we must have laboured over this for three months every day. And then we went to this old printer in Chelsea. And I think he printed it in like 2 or 3 hours. It was such a strange feeling for us to just labour over this for two or three months. And then the guy just whips it out in three hours and we come back and then that's it, that's what we sweated over so much. And he would just do it in a heartbeat. And then I think we printed 600 or 800 of these. It was all very cheap back then. So first of all, we didn't have any contacts really to send it, so we would send it to our friends and family and parents of course. And then we…

Ian Paget: So you’re basically posting it out so getting address, right?

Jan Wilker: Yeah. But then we still had 550 left. We ended up purchasing addresses in the publishing and music industry, because that's what we wanted to do back then. And I mean this is all the… I'm talking about 2001 here, this is a long time ago. So there were these companies that traded in contexts in postal addresses and names. So we purchased I think 500 addresses and contacts and maybe one is like 10 cents, 20 cents. So that's what we used as our initial kind of contact database. And then we sent this out to 500 people. And some people in the music industry actually came back to us with a project and that was… in the moment not so surprising because that's what we were hoping for. And we didn't really know the realities and the usual return percentages of these mailers. But we actually did get some pretty substantial projects from this little newsprint Black & White Mailer. That was very helpful that mailer for sure in the beginning, we were lucky.

Ian Paget: Was that all prior to actually having any work to show?

Jan Wilker: Oh yeah, we didn't have any work to show. That's why we just resorted to printing in black and white. It was this old like… back then we did a lot of these black and white boxes and lines and infographic key layouts. And we just wrote our hopes and dreams and fears and everything in between on this big foldout on the front and on the back, it was just us, a photo of us looking a little bit stupid in suits that were way too big. We had to do it this way, there was no other way. We didn't have any work to show, we were forced to create something like this. And it strangely looking back it worked quite well.

Ian Paget: And have you continued to do those mailers? Because like I said of all of the marketing that you didn't do, that was one thing that was great. You did those mailers and it seems like that was one of the strongest things that you did. So have you continued to do that over the past 19 years since that book was released?

Jan Wilker: So after this came I think another announcement for our website. And then we did the book Tell Me Why book with Princeton Architectural Press. I think this by itself was not only a book, but also, I think this helped us immensely with getting our name out into the design scene around the world. So I think that that surely helped us getting recognised by other designers, schools, institutions, clubs around the world and festivals and conferences. So we would be able to kind of start traveling and getting invited to places which was such a surprise. I think this must have been one of the major surprises of starting our own studio that all of a sudden we were invited and asked to travel to places. And that was an amazing time that I think changed so much in our lives and also helped so much becoming the people that we are now. I think that was really… I think 10 years of traveling a lot.

Ian Paget: Is it traveling for work or teaching? Or what type of things was it?

Jan Wilker: Workshops and lectures.

Ian Paget: Wow.

Jan Wilker: To really everywhere around the world.

Ian Paget: And they were all paid things that they were paying you to travel and to speak and do work and some stuff like that?

Jan Wilker: I mean travel is paid, the stay there is paid. Maybe we get a little bit of a lecture fee or it's kind of like in kind things that hey, you come here, but I have a friend that has a cottage there and then you just stay a week after you do your lecture, you can just go there and stay at this house or we're going to fly… I mean there's so many examples of this and it's very uncomplicated and simple and we were not asked by at the beginning at least by these like big name glossy, high gloss places. It was just a couple of friends in Ecuador putting together a design conference and then they asked us to go there and then we would go there and then afterwards they would find a way to fly us on to the Galapagos Islands as our fee. So I think that that was just amazing. So that's how I ended up on the Galapagos Islands for 10 days. Me and my wife and that's just beautiful. So it was fantastic to see the people that would connect with us would be the people that we just also get along with so well. Like by doing a book that was so open and honest, it was basically guaranteed that the people that would contact us would be people that would be on a similar wavelength. So we had a beautiful experiences with beautiful people around the world in these 10 - 12 years that we travelled so much.

Ian Paget: It sounds like the book was probably one of the most impactful things in your career by the sound of that response.

Jan Wilker: Yeah. In regards to being invited and to travel for sure. Oh yeah, I think that was a big thing. I mean, the book for sure was the biggest thing but I think everything together like the work that we continue to do, our website, the things that we did. I think all kind of made sense to a certain kind of person and then they got in touch and invited us and so that was extremely perplexed but endlessly grateful for all these opportunities. It was a rather surreal time to go to all these places and of course traveling like this being picked up at the airport by locals that want you to be there and that see something in you that is actually there, because we try to be as honest as possible and then they went through a similar thing there in their countries like starting their own studio and they’re at the beginning. So very quickly we had this friendly network of like-minded small studios around the world. And with some of them we still are in touch. So it was kind of a beautiful thing to do this book unknowingly to us that it would be the starting point of so many long and deep friendships with other designers.

Ian Paget: I was going to mention that to see if there was any big plan with the book. Because there was a part at the back of the book where you did mention why you wrote the book and I don't know if this was something that was kind of new and different to what was out there previously. But normally when a graphic designer writes a book it's usually when they've made it and it's got all their best work and yeah there would be some advice that's honest and transparent, but nothing like what you guys shared in that book. Because it's so much more relatable than anything else that I read. Like you really put everything in there. I know something that I really struggled with when working for another company. So I didn't go all in like you did transition and it took me a long time to start my own thing, but you mentioned about how you were so uncomfortable on the phone and I don't know if this was entirely like anxiety or if it was just because you wasn't comfortable speaking English then but there was part in the way you mentioned about how you were so uncomfortable that you pretended that it wasn't you just to not answer and I'm a native English speaker and speaking in English I'm comfortable, but in terms of like answering the phone when I started out working as a graphic designer, oh my God, so nervous picking up the phone. And I mean people talk about this, but it was quite nice to just hear that you were so uncomfortable in your own agency that you pretended that it wasn't you. It's kind of funny but sad at the same time.

Jan Wilker: Yeah. I felt so stupid and ill equipped. I think denying myself like that it's… I'm not me here, I will let Mr. Wilker know that you called, I think that was such a strange moment but I just couldn't bear it because I was just so used in Germany to use language as a fairly precise tool to communicate, and in English I just lacked complete mastery, not that I had any in German but… I mean all I had was my school English and I could not… I had a very dull tool. Like it was not sharpened like, I had basically something that looked like a knife but it wouldn't cut it all so it was useless that tool that I had and it took many, many years for me to… I mean even now I still use a lot of translating apps English to German, German to English and of course Thesaurus and all this. But in the beginning that was such… I felt so inadequate like why am I over here in New York? Why am I doing this? If I can't even pick up the phone and to this day I do hate the phone very much.

Ian Paget: I was going to ask you if you’ve improved?

Jan Wilker: I think I improved and I'm here talking with you now it's pretty much like a phone call, but to this day I'm struggling with it. Much less of course. But it's the sense and the command and the knowledge that I have in German that when someone talks to me, I know so much about them, I know the region where they're from, I know what kind of person they are and here I just don't have it, I don't hear it. I don't have all the subtleties and I think that was something that I missed dearly in the beginning. But I think over time I continue to work on it. So I'm still learning, I'm doing my best. But that there was a funny moment in the beginning.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I just think it's good for people to hear that. Especially for me, because I'm somebody that's struggled with my speaking. And it's one of the reasons why I do a podcast, to help with that. And I think just the transparency and honesty it helps people, because I assume it would be other graphic designers that would be reading that. And I can imagine that quite a few younger graphic designers reading that want to start an agency would check it out and it's kind of quite nice to hear that, okay, he struggles with that, and you guys made loads of mistakes and lots of things went wrong and you still did okay. You still survived and 20 years later you've got a… well, what seems to be on the outside, I mean you can correct me if I'm wrong with it, but what seems to be a very successful studio. So even with those bumbling errors and mistakes it worked out. And I think it's nice to hear that even now given the opportunity to do that all over again from the beginning, you would still do it in the same way.

Jan Wilker: Yeah, for sure, the exact same way. And I think also, I mean, we don't need to linger on this much longer, but in the beginning Hjalti and I, we didn't know each other at all. I think we went out for one drink during my internship with Stefan and we didn't know each other, but it just felt like the right thing to do and we didn't have anything to lose. We were young and we were both newly in love with our now wives. It was just a time where it just… that's what it needed to be. And we were just lucky that both of us are kind of chilled in certain areas and other areas that are very dear to us. We try to push ourselves and then everyone else very hard and I think that that just so far worked out quite well and that's of course just luck. We didn't know that in the beginning. I mean I remember thinking that even if it's a year, it will have been a great year.

Ian Paget: Absolutely. Something else I wanted to ask you about, so both of you have a background working with Stefan Sagmeister. I know that you referred to him as Stefan because you are friends with him, and he is someone who I feel there's quite a lot of controversial things to get his name out there and to get known and things like that. And I don't know if you've learned this from him. I know that you was their only for a few months as an intern, but I have noticed that there's a few things that you guys do as a studio which are quite different. And I don't know if you do this intentionally. So for example, like just simple things like your email address, a fairly normal studio or some somebody like a normal company would do like hi or hello or something like this @companyname.com for an email address, but you're using tell me why, which is like a reference to the Backstreet Boys and speaking with you after this is not something that's in the book, but something that you do now, you have like an ice cream shop, which is part of your studio and you sell clothing and you do all these things which are not stereotypical of a studio. They seem quite controversial and they seem almost as ways of being a talking point. Is that something that you've done intentionally to get that attention in the way that Sagmeister does with some of the controversial stuff that he's done?

Jan Wilker: I think just like our beginnings and the way our little studio gets evolved, hopefully evolved. I think all this is pretty much driven by our own curiosity and I would also say that we get bored with things quite easily. So we always want to keep ourselves busy and there's just so many things in life that are just so interesting and just beg to be explored more. And I think that this is true for our work every day as designers or like visual communication, that there's just infinite amount of things that are just captivating and very interesting too to go deeper. And then there's so many things around it that are still extremely interesting. I guess in general my point is that life and the world is so immensely rich that it's… I think it would take more energy to avoid getting into all these other things then than to actually do them and try them out. I'm very easily excitable I guess.

I'm just so interested in all kinds of things that… I just want to try all these things out. So doing a little ice cream shop for the neighbourhood makes sense for us in this area of New York where we are in in the community, in the neighbourhood where we are, with the space that we have ground floor storefront. Like all this kind of makes sense. It's not forced. I think that that's something that -- that's also how the book happened. It was not forced. It was our curiosity and also our shock in the beginning that hey, all these glossy monographs they make it look so straightforward and that everything is golden in your career. And somehow that was not the case. So we wanted to just I guess bring a voice and no one else did it. So then we had to do it ourselves like write this book and as truthfully and kind of like the anti-monograph of monographs that… we don't write it like 20 years and then hindsight it and everything was rosy and beautiful and cool. No, we write it when that stuff happens. So the 1st 24 months, we actually write it then when everything is fresh and just happened so that we don't start making up stories that that are nicer or make us look nicer than it actually was. I think that was the… and everything we do feels back then at least felt more like a playground. I mean we were much younger and way more oblivious to things in the world than we are now and like a certain arrogance that comes with youthfulness was certainly.

Ian Paget: That really comes across that you are doing things that seem a bit crazy, like you didn't even have a Visa and you set up a studio which had rental costs, no clients. It's so drastic, it's like are you crazy? I bet there were people saying these guys are crazy.

Jan Wilker: But it's only drastic if you would have had all the information.

Ian Paget: Yeah, true.

Jan Wilker: If you just don't know, I thought Visa situation is much easier. Like me growing up in Germany GIs were everywhere in the part where I grew up and like these army barracks were everywhere and somehow, I never thought about it. I just thought somehow Germans and Americans are friends and it can't be that difficult to do that. And it turned out to be little different, but I just didn't know. So this arrogance paired with youthful obliviousness and also just like the ill guided optimism of a 20 something year old, that is unbeatable when it comes to just starting things that do not make too much sense to a 30-40 year old. So I think it was in that moment, it was not crazy because it didn't feel crazy, it just felt like the right thing to do.

Ian Paget: Sure. And I think you had and I assume you probably have this today still. A lot of support, like your first client was a referral from Sagmeister, which is really cool of him to do that. You had a family that provided financial support. So you had a safety net in that sense. It seems like everyone that sent work to you was friends. I don't know if that was from intentional networking or if it was just from your current network, but I know when… on this podcast, when I've spoken about things like getting clients, it's the same with most people that they get their early clients from friends, family and stuff like this and that seems to be very much the case from that book. Like the bulk of what came in was friends, family, friends of friends this type of thing. Has that continued to be a thing that a lot of your work is coming from people that you already know that are friends, they like you, they trust you, they know that you can do a good job?

Jan Wilker: I think word of mouth is still one of the bigger ways of us getting projects for sure. But added to this is also like I think over the years we also just try to professionalize that that area of our daily life in the studio that we have, that it's more streamlined and it's more I guess less random, that things come in, we have a certain pipeline of new projects that is less reliant on chance. That that there's a certain…

Ian Paget: You’re more likely to get clients based on a current process rather than what you did when you first started out, which was hope for the best.

Jan Wilker: Yeah, so that we are a little bit more active. Not that it changed that much overall, but there is some ongoing like we have these portfolio books that we use as a tool and which we send out. So now they are four colour printed nicely bound and nice size and paper and all this.

Ian Paget: Is that still going out with friends, family?

Jan Wilker: Not friends anymore. No, they got enough printed material from us, they're good on that. We use this to send out to people that we think we would be a good fit to work with to reach out to them. So we're still doing this. But yeah in the end I think it's still word of mouth and people see the work… and I think in the beginning we didn't really know what we were doing, we were just doing our work. But then over time it became clear looking back that we do have a certain kind of way of doing things and that basically naturally limits our appeal to potential clients. I think from the very beginning by doing what we wanted to do or did best or were most excited about, the future limitations would be built in. Meaning like we're not for everyone. And I think that that is also not… I think that's pretty obvious and that's how it should be. If you are who you are then that's who you are and so not everyone will like you. Hence not everyone will like our work. And I think that insight once that was clear I think is helpful and makes things easier. So we're not spending too much energy to convince people to please work with us. It's much easier for everyone involved if they like what they see and if they can really identify something with us. If they see something in our work that that they really want I think then everyone is happy in the end.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think one thing that really stands out from what you guys do over other studios is that…

Jan Wilker: Yeah, I think if you would only set foot into our space you would be very clear that it's not an agency. It’s a studio.

Ian Paget: What makes it different? What makes an agency versus a studio different? It’s the size or what is it?

Jan Wilker: Certainly size. But I would also say that a studio is kind of the extension of the owners and it's clear to see, it’s run by someone or a couple of people that proudly bring in their personal convictions. And I think an agency tries to send these edges off and appeal to a larger audience. That's how I would see it.

Ian Paget: Okay. I want to talk about this because you are quite defensive about me using the word agency. What is there with that? Because when you say a studio is almost like an extension of you, does that mean… So I know you have a small team, so I think if I have it right, you have like 5-6 people? Do you remain fairly controlling of the output?

Jan Wilker: Yes.

Ian Paget: How does that look? Do you art direct and get the team to do lots of different versions until you're happy?

Jan Wilker: Yeah. Or I design myself. I think we are still making things and I just recently talked with Hjalti about it. The times when Hjalti and I sit in front of the same computer, and we work in the same file next to each other and he grabs the mouse for a minute, I grab it for two minutes and then he again. These are some of the most enjoyable moments that we have in the studio like actually making things. That's why we started. In the beginning we said we were doing this to do kickass work, whatever kickass means to us. And just doing this together is a beautiful thing. And so we're not really kind of like a passive creative directors or anything like that. I think that we want to make things, we need to be involved, we want to be involved. And I think that's why we also… even if we wanted to and we surely tried a few times over the past 22 years to become an agency somehow this has always been hindered by our need to be hands on involved. And that means that it doesn't scale. Whatever we do it just doesn't scale. Always when we tried it, we just lost control and it just didn't make us very happy. It was just so annoying to see other people have all the fun and do what they wanted to do and we wanted to do it ourselves. So that means smaller team and we are involved and I'm not saying that this is a good thing. It's just again, we tried it a few times and we just couldn't scale it. Our process, what we like about it, what keeps us continuing is the making of things. And if you are creative director to 20-30 people, you're not going to sit there for three days and design a logo moving vectors around you. That's not going to happen, that cannot happen. And we tried it and somehow so far at least we were unable to do so. That's just a limitation that has to do with our personal choices and roads to happiness or fulfilment. It can change of course. And I'm sure we're going to try again to scale and to maybe become a little bit larger, but so far, we always were so happy when we're back to this team of 6-7 that's the maximum.

Ian Paget: Sure. So with this approach it kind of makes me think of Pentagram how they work, how they have the partner, the partner has a team below them. But when I've seen people like Paula Sher speak, she is very firm on if you work for her it's… they are like an extension of her. They might do some of the work, but at the end of the day it's her thing, it's her studio within a larger company. And it feels like the way that you're working is quite similar. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but out of curiosity, how does it work having a like so you've got seven people, I assume that includes both of you as well. So there's five others within the company.

Jan Wilker: Yes.

Ian Paget: How are you working with them if you want to retain the authorship of them? How does it work? Do you give them a job? Get them to start on it and steer it?

Jan Wilker: Yeah. So my answer to this is that… and it's like maybe a little bit long winded answer and it has to do with the reason that we don't work with freelancers because we tried it and freelancers they are I guess educated themselves or were educated by the design agency business to do certain things in a certain way. And we try to avoid these tropes and things and we try to have these being the starting point. And freelancers, they work very efficient and fast and that's why we have this staff that they all can do multiple things. They're not specialised in any particular thing and we give them space to experiment. That's where this curiosity comes in is that we give them a day, two or a week to just find something in a certain area and that area can be defined by software, shapes, time, melody, whatever. Find something in this area that is surprising and that is something weird and looking for this we do this together as a team. So we look for these things and it's kind of like an expedition team.

Ian Paget: It’s like exploring for the solution.

Jan Wilker: Yeah, exactly. And I think that this is something that would be different from how Paula runs her team, for example. So that's more the creative director way where you sketch something and then the other people can execute. We don't sketch as much because we don't know yet how it looks like. So our direction is more, hey, I want you to use this tool and this material, spend three days and find something that is unusual, I think this would be a direction. So it's not like we don't think of it and then we draw it and then it's being executed, but it's more sending individuals or teams or together as a studio on these excursions or expeditions as you call it. It's not very efficient this way but it is very entertaining, I can tell you this. And it's never boring. But it's also a little bit risky because you don't really know when you find something, but that's kind of our process that we stood by and perfected and made many different subcategories of. So we have this process of going somewhere without knowing where we're going, I think that's something that we've kept and tried to make a business out of. If you want to say it that way, that's what we're trying to do and it is not efficient at all. So it's kind of opposite to a streamlined service business that you don't really know where you're going, but let's hope for the best.

It's difficult to charge by the hour for this, which we don't. It's all fixed fees and then it's up to us if we need three weeks every day to find something or if we find something in five days, it's always challenging and it's still to this day also nerve wrecking to start something without having a clear idea of how this will look like and what this will be. So clients need to be curious just as we are and they also need to be okay with taking a leap of faith with us. But that's how I would say, that's what is similar, but that's also what's different from us and dear Paula. I mean, you have to know that Paula and I are very good friends and the New York design scene is very, very friendly and close and it's a very nice place to be I have to say, that we all know each other very well, we respect each other. We have dinners and lunches together and talk very openly about anything and everything. And I think that this openness to fellow designers and heads of studios is something that was there from the very beginning. I remember, since you mentioned Paula, I remember them in maybe two years after we started or one and half years they asked us to come in and just present our work in front of their staff, and then Paula and Michael came to our studio and I was very impressed by Paula being so open and interested. I think that was a fantastic thing to see. And so we try to do something similar to have an open door for everyone who asks who wants to come in, who's curious, we let them.

Ian Paget: Something that really comes across with you is that your studio is not a company, it's very much part of who you are and almost like an extension of you. Because when you think or through this podcast I've spoken to hundreds of different people in general, there's a very linear process that people follow. There's very specific things that people do to focus on the income and stuff like that and obviously you are doing that, but something that really comes across is that if it's not enjoyable to you, you just don't do it. Like you seem to find ways of just constantly enjoying what you're doing and finding exciting and interesting and that really comes across with creating like an ice cream thing and just trying other things and like your process. How I would think based on reading and speaking with lots of people, I would think that having a team, I would need to kind of art direct them or let them have ownership of that. But the way that you have done it, it's almost like you… okay we're going on an adventure, I want you to go exploring in all these different directions, but you are very much involved in the process. And that in itself seems to make it sound so much more exciting. Like it's not just about money comes in, job goes out, it really feels like you found a really nice balance of I love what I'm doing. Is that right? Do you feel that that comes across to me anyway?

Jan Wilker: Yeah, I mean I think that's I guess that's one side of it for sure. I think that that there are days where this is very much true but I also don't want to miss the design process itself. Like exploring is also not easy to do, not everyone can do it. It's something that that you have to train and practice. So it's not that the people here leisurely explore. It's a craft that we are teaching them and they need to be really good at it to be here. I didn't mean to make it sound like, oh you know, we're just hanging out. There is very much a… you can be really good at it or you can suck at it. So we certainly do not have anyone in here that sucks. They will not last very long so that's one thing. There is a certain level of quality that still needs to be met. But for the right kind of person, it for sure is, should be interesting and fulfilling. So people stay with us many years. Like 6-7-8 year’s people stay with us and then we try to kick them out to start their own thing. Because that is the best thing for anyone to do.

I still think starting your own thing is just amazing. Every morning to just come into your own little kingdom how small it might be doesn't matter. It's really beautiful and even if it's for a year or half a year or five years, it doesn't matter. I think having done this I think is very important. So having said that the other thing is that there are also days where we question very much the way we do things. As I said, working like this, a process that is based on exploration, guided by certain external parameters is not very efficient. So that means that you can only do that if you're okay with sometimes making less money than your salary like I'm talking about us, the people that work with us, they always get the same salary but as the company had Hjalti and myself, then it's up to us to decide, hey are we okay not doing this or doing it this way? But we just make less. That is up to us and there are months were like oh man, this sucks, this is so stupid, and why are we doing this? So much energy goes into this and the client hated it, or we hated it also and it was unsuccessful. We didn't find the right thing.

Of course, there are these weeks and months where you question everything. So it's not all perfect, but I guess testament to us liking it is that we're still pretty much doing it that way. And I'm not saying we figured it all out at all, we didn't certainly. But working like this is the way for us to do our best work I think, it's not easy. It's not the best way to run a business with an inefficient risky process that really makes little sense that's difficult to reuse previous knowledge or work that you cannot build in recycle loops. From a business sense it's sometimes very questionable. But we came this far and we're always also questioning everything and playing around with everything. So there have been many different iterations of our studio. But the one thing that seems to stay very similar is this process that is based on playful exploration.

Ian Paget: I think one last question I have for you. Are you going to do a follow up to your Tell Me Why book?

Jan Wilker: We talked about it so many times and we never really want to do it, but it's like the 10-year anniversary, we talked about it, 15 years and then 20 years is now, basically next year. And we always talk about it and people still ask us… I think that's one of the most common questions that we get, hey, is there going to be another book coming out? We started a few times thinking about it seriously, but I don't think we ever will do it, I don't think so. The only thing that we talked about is that that we do the last 24 months of…

Ian Paget: That's a good idea.

Jan Wilker: Of our studio.

Ian Paget: You give a start and the end.

Jan Wilker: Once we know that that we're going to stop, I think that's when we're going to do the last 24 months. I think this would be the only version of a book that we would do. And then everything that happens in these last 24 months of our studio will go in there.

Ian Paget: I don't think you're going to write that book. Because it's part of you, it comes across that this is more than a job, this is your life. And to close the agency is to bring end and I don't think that you would do that.

Jan Wilker: Well, I have news for you. I think I think that we would be able to but only more recently, I think the for sure the first 10 or 15 years for sure our reason for existing on this planet and our egos were very much connected to the success of the studio. But that just ended up really dragging us down when things don't work as well or when there are financial issues or just it's not going so well in general with the work or clients have strange decision processes and whatever that is, or we just write very, very bad proposals and shoot ourselves in the knee as we did in the beginning quite a few times. That was not ideal to have to have your persona that closely connected to the success of the studio. I think over time we tried to disconnect it more and more or disconnect ourselves more and more. Of course we're still connected and we have a long history with the studio. But I think we would be we would be able to end it on a good note or on a bad note, and I'm very happy about this that we would be able to do it.

Ian Paget: I felt like you need to call it ain't nothing but a heartbreak.

Jan Wilker: Yeah, that could be.

Ian Paget: Because it feels like there's a lot of good and bad things and to bring it close to it, it goes well with Tell Me Why.

Jan Wilker: I mean if you want to grow as a person, start your own design studio. I mean, you know how it is.

Ian Paget: It's very fulfilling but not easy.

Jan Wilker: Yeah, it's very fulfilling. But also it's extremely challenging and you are responsible for everything and anything there is. You cannot hide behind anything, it's all you. And everything that is bad about it, it's your mistake. So that is something that just continuously puts pressure on you. But if you're someone that likes improving things and yourself and all this then then starting on studio is the fastest and quickest way to get to a new you in a way that… I was someone very different 20 years ago, very, very different. And I think that the studio or just running this and trying to do a good job and changing with it and with the times is immensely helpful to become the people that we are now. Hjalti is different, I'm different and we had our difficult times and we still do. But there is something rather simple in just continuously grow with the things around you and with things that clients throw at you. So this is design related, a tool related software, everything all these areas, but then also becoming a better speaker, better on the phone, better listener, better boss.

There are all these things that every day you're being reminded of your inefficiencies and the things that you suck at. There's never a dull moment, you always know what to do, what to improve and I think that's… I happen to enjoy this and not that I knew that that would happen, but I happen to do that and we're still very much the people from 20 years ago. But I would hope that we improved a little bit. And I mean, as I said earlier, we're both like when we started 22 years ago, we just both met our girlfriends back then. We were both newly in love and then we both married them and we're still together with them. Sometimes when I think of it, it's quite nice to know that we've been in this for so long and we shared all these highs and lows for these two decades and we still haven't figured it out. It's still all fairly new to us and it's still so much to figure out. But yeah, let's see. Maybe we will end next year, we will do it for another 20 years. We'll see.

Ian Paget: You have to wait 24 months so you can start documenting it, right?

Jan Wilker: Yes.

Ian Paget: Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Like I said prior to doing this, I tried to aim for about the hour and I know that we could probably keep talking all day. But in terms of this interview we covered so much and it's probably going to be a featured episode because it's been really interesting. So thank you so much for your time and thank you again for pausing me to have a chat prior to doing the interview which isn't something I normally do and like I said prior to the interview for getting me to read your book. It's been a while since I've sat down and read a book. It's the first book that I read this year, just because I haven't really been in the right headspace to read a book but you've got me back into that and I really enjoyed it and I'm sure listeners will want to check it out and follow along with what you've been doing, because there's a lot that I think people can learn from that whether that's just to accept who you are and accept that there's going to be flaws and things are going to go wrong, but you can keep going and be a success. So thank you very much Jan for coming on, it's been really great to be able to spend this time with you.

Jan Wilker: Oh yeah, thank you so much. But I have to say that maybe I regret telling you to read the book. It is really so long ago and I don't think that we actually ever read the book after it was published.

Ian Paget: You didn't actually write it, you got someone else do it. You probably forgot what's in it. It's good, I think it made the interview better. I think it was a good idea.

Jan Wilker: But it's really so long ago and I do remember that person back then. It's 20 years and the book has been out of print so it might not be so easy to.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I had a second-hand yellowed copy.

Jan Wilker: Yeah. But yeah thank you so much and if we ever do it again we will talk about something else.

Ian Paget: Yeah absolutely. There's a million other questions I can ask. So yeah, thank you again. It's been really great.

Jan Wilker: Cool. Thank you so much.