Designing Logos for Nintendo with Jim Wornell

Ian Paget: Jim, I actually came across you because someone in the Logo Geek community shared a video where you was interviewed. And I thought this is pretty cool. You worked for Nintendo for around 16 years. So this was from 1990 to 2006. So it was quite a while back now. But you worked on a number of logo designs for games from when I was a kid really, a lot of things that really takes me back to my childhood, reading through the Nintendo magazine, seeing things like Metroid Prime, and Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, Ocarina of Time, and loads of games that were important to my childhood.

And I think probably a lot of people listening hopefully have that same nostalgic feeling to some of this stuff. So I thought it'd be really cool to invite you on to chat about this. But I think probably as an opening question, how did you actually end up working for Nintendo? I think we should go right back to the beginning and talk through this story.

Jim Wornell: Well, the beginning? Let's see. Well, it was September 18th, 1989. That was my first day at Nintendo. And it started off being a college job where I was answering consumer service calls. I remember I was hanging out at my college dorm and a buddy of mine said he was going down to a place called Seekers, which is a temp agency, and said he was going to apply for a job there. And I believe it was for answering calls.

And I said to myself, "Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. Can I come along?" And Chuck said, "Sure." So Chuck and I went down to Seekers. We did our five minute interview, which was basically, "Do you have a pulse? And can you answer phones?"

And so I did two weeks training and started answering phone calls, consumer service calls, like how do I hook up my Nintendo system? Where's my Nintendo power? What games are coming out? Just general stuff, which transitioned into game play counselling, which after a while transitioned into game testing. And then I was an associate producer, and then moved up to graphic design. So I worked for a lot of different departments during my time there. But it started off answering phone calls as a sophomore in college.

Ian Paget: And I bet that was really exciting because you are a little bit older than me, but I do remember the Nintendo Entertainment System that was ... It was a big deal back then because it went from I guess fairly awful home computers, like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore and stuff like that, where you put the cassettes in. I think the Nintendo Entertainment System and stuff like that, that was kind of for, for me anyway, almost the birth of proper home game consoles. And now they've obviously evolved into what they are today. So I can imagine answering telephone calls about that was probably quite exciting.

Jim Wornell: It was so much fun. When I started there, the Game Boy had just been released maybe a month or two before. And so I've always been a fan of video games from ... I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas in the what, the early eighties, late seventies. And then my first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, which had the tape deck that you had to hook up to. And you had to play the cassette at just the right volume to load the program. And if it was too loud or not loud enough, then you had to do the whole thing over again. Basic language, oh yeah. So I moved to some places that weren't video game friendly. So by the time I got to college, guys in the dorm had the NES and we were playing Tecmo Bowl and all that stuff. And so just yeah, I've always been a fan of video games, always.

Ian Paget: It's kind of funny that if there's only one sort of, I guess maybe even in their thirties, young, under 30, probably don't even know what we're talking about, which is terrifying.

Jim Wornell: It's so sad.

Ian Paget: But the thing is a lot of these consoles are very collectible now. People are still buying them, collecting them. I walk by a CX store. We have this store in the UK. I don't know if you have this over there, where they sell like secondhand computer games and stuff like that. And I saw, in the window, the first Pokemon games that came out for the Game Boy. And they were mint condition, pretty much brand new. And they were over 100 pounds. So people are still clearly buying them, collecting them and stuff like that because like I was saying earlier, it's pretty much almost like the birth of home gaming really. And it's madness to think it was within our lifetime.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. And I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm older, but I don't get the excitement nowadays that I do when I buy a game for the first time, I play it for the first time, as opposed to when I came home from the toy store with Pitfall from Activision for the 2600, and I played that for the first time. Man, it was just so much fun. I love playing Red Dead Redemption, and Resident Evil, and FIFA and all those games. But I don't get that excitement like I did when I was a kid. Like I said, maybe it's because I'm older. I don't know.

Ian Paget: I don't know. I know that we can nerd out about this stuff, but I think we should talk about some of the logo stuff first. So I'm really fascinated because you started off answering calls, and somehow you became a graphic designer. And this is interesting. And how I can relate with this is my first job and how I got into graphic design. So I didn't go to university. I don't know about your background yet. But I basically ended up getting a job at a medical company. I started off in the warehouse. They know that I was interested in drawing, illustration. And they basically put me in a job where I could end up learning. And that's how I ended up becoming a graphic designer. I was kind of in the right place at the right time.

How did you go from being a young guy getting a job at Nintendo, which is awesome right away, to starting off answering calls, to becoming a graphic designer? Because that's a big transition. And I think even though this was 30 years ago, I think some of this is probably still relevant today. So it'd be interesting to hear how you progressed through those layers of jobs.

Jim Wornell: Yeah, sure. It was kind of by accident, and it was mostly by accident actually. I was in the mid nineties, '96, '97, '98. I was an associate producer. And my responsibility was to work on the localisation of all the first and some of the second party games that were coming out of Japan. So Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, F Zero X. I'm trying to think of some other ones, Kirby's Dream Course for the Super NES, Super Mario RPG. And all those games would come over to the US, and it was my job to make sure that we had proper screen texts, we had manual texts, we had packaging texts. We had ESRB ratings. We worked with legal to make sure there were no issues with things in game that were coming out. Working with advertising and marketing to make sure that the commercials, the print materials, all accurately reflected the games that were coming out. So that was my job.

And in '98, towards the end of my time there, my department had been getting smaller, but the number of games had not decreased. So it had gotten to the point where I was working on just about everything, first party coming out of Japan. And I was getting really burnt out. I was working on ... It was the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. And I believe I was also working on Shadow Gate for Game Boy and a couple other games I can't remember off the top of my head.

But our design department in-house was overworked and understaffed. And I needed to get Shadow Gate done and out the door. And I talked to somebody up there. I said, "Is there anything I can do to help out?" And they said, "Well, if you wouldn't mind laying out some manual text, that would speed up the process." And I did it. I opened up QuarkXPress, I dropped in text for Shadow Gate Game Boy, and I really, really liked it. And I thought, "Wow! This is cool. I could do this. I want to do more of it."

And it was that point where I decided or I figured out this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I was 28. I was still trying to figure things out until that Shadow Gate moment. I laid that manual text out. I think I did a couple of virtual boy games at the time to maybe some other smaller Game Boy games. But as I was doing that, the head of design gave me a call one day and he said, "Would you like to come work in the design department?" And I said, "Sure." So I transitioned from being an associate producer in localization to graphic design. And was there, was doing that for eight years until I left Nintendo in '06.

Ian Paget: That's incredible. And I think even though this was 20, 30 years ago now, I still personally think that these kind of opportunities come up in that way. Because when I worked at a medical company, they were much more inclined to train up people that were already working for the company, and especially if they saw some spark of skill, because obviously you offered to help out. They saw that you have the capabilities. And they obviously thought, "Oh, we need somebody else to help with this. Rather than spend money looking for someone ..."

So in the UK, I know the company that I used to work at, when they needed to hire someone new, there's a cost of that. They need to put out advertisements, they need to do interviews. It takes a lot of time. But just plucking someone out that works for the company already is easy because you know them, you like them, you trust them, that they have the interest, and you prove the skillset that you've got, and they brought you into that team, which is incredible. So congratulations. I really do think it's right place, right time, and you got lucky.

Jim Wornell: Oh, totally. I fell into it, luck. Yeah, all of that. I will totally agree with you on that.

Ian Paget: So by the sound of it, when you started working for Nintendo, you didn't have any graphic design skills, is that correct?

Jim Wornell: No, not really.

Ian Paget: So how did you actually go about learning the skills that you needed to be designing layouts in QuarkXPress and designing logos and stuff like that for the company?

Jim Wornell: It was it the pre-YouTube days. I would read up any literature that they had from the Quark construction manual, to the Adobe instruction manuals, to we had three other graphic designers in house. And so it was a combination of just getting in and messing around, to asking questions, to reading as much information as I could. It was a whole lot of trial and error. And it clicked with me pretty fast.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I can relate with that because I remember when I started learning QuarkXPress. It was pretty self explanatory really?. If you've got some computer knowledge, you can generally figure out the software. I think even like now, it's even easier. Once one Adobe software, if you learn Adobe Illustrator, you can pretty much pick up InDesign, you can pretty much pick up Photoshop. It's just a case of playing around. And I think even without ...

Obviously it's easier now, because you've got YouTube, you can search the internet and stuff like that. I think kids now, or teenagers now, or young people now, they have a real advantage that you can learn in this way. But again, I still think this applies today because you can start learning on the job. If you've got people around you that you can learn from, then you're in the right place and you can absorb all this knowledge. And if it's something that you really want to do, and it sounds like it was, then you're just going to pick up all of these different skills. And was you learning at home as well? Did you have a computer at home?

Jim Wornell: Did I have a computer at home? I think I did. Yeah. I had a computer at home. I don't know if I ... Wait, I'm thinking. Yes. I had a bootleg copy of Photoshop, and I think I had a bootleg copy of Illustrator. And it was just go in, make stuff, mess around, figure out commands and layers and links and all the commands options of Photoshop and Illustrator. And luckily, the Adobe products, as good as they are, a lot of the commands that work in Photoshop also work in Illustrator. So they're fairly interchangeable with each other. So if I can master, not master, but if I can get really good at one program, it's going to transition fairly easy, fairly smoothly over to another, if that makes sense.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. And I laughed at myself when you said that you got a bootleg copy because I don't think people realise now. So anyone that's listening that has got into graphic design recently, a subscription for Adobe CC is really cheap in comparison to what it used to be. If you wanted QuarkXPress, and Photoshop, and Illustrator, all this sort of stuff on your computer at home, I can't remember the prices. But off the top of my head, I swear they were five grand plus for the set. If you wanted all of the software, you had to buy it all pretty much outright.

So I remember when I started learning, I think a lot of young graphic designers were the same 10 years plus. It was the only way really to start learning. But I think now Adobe and pretty much all other software companies have realised this issue now, and they've been able to solve it by making subscription models and stuff that are much more affordable. So if you're starting out as a graphic designer now, it's a lot easier to learn. It's a lot more affordable. But I still think some of these things that we're talking about now like learning on the job, being enthusiastic, getting promoted, I personally think a lot of this stuff is still relevant here today.

Jim Wornell: Oh, yeah. And learning on the job at a video game company, I mean, that's win-win. I can't imagine trying to learn on the job if I'm working, I don't know, somewhere else like a car dealership or-

Ian Paget: Somewhere boring.

Jim Wornell: Yeah, exactly.

Ian Paget: Okay. So I think we should talk about some of these logos and the process and stuff to get some of that insider knowledge, because you mentioned a couple of other games like Star Fox. Is that Lylat Wars, because I remember in one place, I think in the states it was Star Fox. In the UK, it was Lylat wars. That was one of my favourite games on the ... That was on the N64 or was there an even earlier version?

Jim Wornell: Well, I mean there was Star Fox 1 and 2 for the Super NES. But Lylat Wars for Nintendo 64, I worked on that in my associate producer days. So I wasn't involved in that.

Ian Paget: It's one of my favourite games, as a kid anyway. I don't know if I played it now, if it would still be as exciting. But I recently, and sorry for listeners, because I'm going way off the topic of logo design, but whatever. I recently bought, for the Switch, there's a game, I can't remember what it's called without checking. But in, I think it was, Toys "R" Us or something, I saw you can get this game for the Switch where you get a model of the plane from Lylat Wars with the little Star Fox. And you get this little gadget where you can connect it.

And when you change the ship on the top of this thing, so they're actual like collectable ships, you click it in, you can play that ship within the game. But obviously, it's all modern, it's all 3D. You can turn and boost. And it's just not the same as being limited to being able to just go in a straight line and steer left, steer right, twirl and all this sort of stuff. It's just not the same for me. I actually just want the game that came originally.

So on the Switch, they remastered Zelda Wind Waker, and they left the game the same, but just updated it. And that was a nostalgic dream for me. It was so good to be able to play that game again. And it's just cool to be able to play these things. The nostalgia level is amazing. So it's really cool to be able to speak to someone that worked on the games originally really. Some of these stuff is going to go down in history.

And I think just before we do go into the logos, how does it feel for you having worked on some stuff that is as important as something that's nostalgic? Some of these things that you're talking about, they are a part of my childhood and they stuck with me. And when I see the graphics, when I saw that interview of you and I saw those logos, that had ... It brought back all these memories from a kid. How does it feel having worked on something that is so nostalgic and so important to people? Because I think some of these things, they're going to stick around forever. It's part of computer game history really. And it's something that you physically worked on.

Jim Wornell: It is always cool. It never gets old. It's something that I ... It's a part of my life that I truly enjoyed. Working at Nintendo was the best job ever. And to know that I got the chance to work on some games that will be around forever, it's something that's just always cool.

My girlfriend's daughter, my stepdaughter, she is a huge Animal Crossing fan. And so when she found out that I did the logo for Animal Crossing, she geeked out. So it's just little things like that. I watch a lot of Honest Trailers, it's a YouTube channel, Screen Rant. And they did an honest game trailer of Star Fox 64. And I thought, "Well, that is cool. I've made it." You never get tired of seeing stuff you've done, you've worked on, enjoyed by so many people.

Ian Paget: That's really nice to hear, it's really cool. So that means that you're going to be probably pretty hyped to be able to talk about some of the process behind this stuff. So I've wrote down a few projects that you worked on. You might be able to add some more to this. But I think the one on the top of my list is Metroid Prime, because I'm aware that you worked on that logo.

I also read that this went through 53 iterations, which is a lot. Do you want to talk through how ... I don't know how much detail you want to go in, but fans of this podcast are all nerds about logos and we love all the process stuff. So do you want to share some of the insider information and working on a logo project like Metroid Prime?

Jim Wornell: Well, I mean, you're jarring my memory.

Ian Paget: Testing you, going back a fair, like the time here.

Jim Wornell: 20 years. Yes. There were 53 versions. At the time, it was the most expensive logo Nintendo had ever done.

Ian Paget: Really?

Jim Wornell: Just strictly from the man hours that were involved with creating this logo.

Ian Paget: It was all in house, I guess?

Jim Wornell: Yeah. And while there were 53 versions, technically some of those versions may have been, "Do this with a red ball. Do this with the gold ball, do this with a black ball. Or this version has too much texture. This one doesn't have enough texture." So there might have been very slight differences between some of the versions. But from version one to version 53, yeah, there were 53 versions.

Jim Wornell: And that was a game I wanted to do because I was a Metroid fan. And so when I got the chance to do it, I jumped all over it. And as passionate as I was about it, I wasn't going to stop until somebody approved it. And with a game that big, there are a lot of people who are looking at this. And so to paraphrase Mr. Miyamoto, a late logo was only late until it ships. A bad logo is bad forever.

Ian Paget: Yeah. That's a really good line there. Am I right that Metroid Prime ... So I remember there were 2D versions of Metroid. Was Metroid Prime, the first 3D version of Metroid?

Jim Wornell: Yes, it was.

Ian Paget: Right. So I remember seeing the pictures of it in the Nintendo magazine. I never actually bought the game. I think I was possibly a bit too young for it. I can't remember. But I was very much into games like Ocarina of Time. That was ... So I remember.

So my favourite game, as a kid, Game Boy Link's Awakening, like I mentioned earlier. That was a special game for me. It was hours and hours spent on the original sort of thick, chunky, gray Game Boy, playing with the green sort of tiny screen. That was a special part of my childhood. I'll be honest. That was, like I said replaying that game recently with new graphics and stuff like that, I had the same feeling I did when I was a kid.

Ian Paget: But then I remember there was a trailer on the TV for Ocarina of Time. And it took that game and it made it 3D. And it had, I so clearly remember it, Ganondolf coming in in the horse flipping out with him on it. And that was a special moment of my childhood, because it's that game, but in 3D. And it was really cool that you worked on that one. I wasn't sure if you worked on the logo for that one. Did you work on the logo or was it more that you was more involved in the game in some way?

Jim Wornell: Ocarina of Time, I did not work on the logo. When Ocarina of Time was being developed, when it came out, that was toward the end of my time in product development and transitioning over to design. So I mean, I worked on debug for that game. I worked on manual and packaging, marketing, advertising.

Ian Paget: Still pretty cool.

Jim Wornell: I did everything for Ocarina except for the screen text. That was all Dan Olsen, I believe, because he worked on the screen text for Linked to the Past. EAD, the development team working on Ocarina, I think they wanted him to work on the screen text for ... I'm sorry. The EAD, they wanted Dan to work on the screen text for Ocarina.

Ian Paget: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. So I know that you did work on Animal Crossing. That's a game that's still very current. And I know there's probably people listening that are probably big Animal Crossing fans, because some of the games that we spoke about, they are, I guess, old school. But Animal Crossing, that's still very current today. Can you talk through some of the behind the scenes of that particular logo?

Jim Wornell: Boy, I'm trying to remember with that one.

Ian Paget: I'm testing your memory here, aren't I?

Jim Wornell: Yeah. No, it's okay. If I remember correctly, that one, since it was a different type of game, it was all kind of this village set in real time, and it ran 24 hours. And so we wanted the logo to look like it was a sign as you're coming into a town like Welcome to Seattle, or Welcome to Birmingham, or whatever. And so that was a premise behind making the logo for Animal Crossing. And I believe, and you're going to have to help me out here because it's been a while, wasn't there a train station or some sort of-

Ian Paget: You can't ask me these questions because being honest, Animal Crossing is one game that I really haven't played. I had an ex partner that was really obsessed with it, playing on it all the time. So I totally understand the appeal. But it's not Ocarina of Time or Mario or anything like that. I don't know why it just never really ... It never really roped me in like some other games did.

Jim Wornell: So with that one, I might have done three or four different versions of the logo. Usually, when I work on a logo, I'll do one version that the client wants, one version that I like, and then one version that's kind of in between. So that's probably what I did with Animal Crossing. And they ended up going with the one I worked on and liked, and the rest is history.

Ian Paget: That's awesome. I love it when that happens, where the client comes in with specific expectations and then you show them something else and it's like, "Oh yeah, we want that one."

Jim Wornell: Yeah, exactly.

Ian Paget: That's awesome. And you also worked on ... Did you do the Paper Mario logo as well?

Jim Wornell: I did Paper Mario, yes.

Ian Paget: I love it. I loved Paper Mario. I mean, that's another game that's still kind of stuck around. In fact, one thing I really do like about Mario is that it's one game that works really well still now. A lot of old games ... So a couple of years ago, I bought from Kickstarter this ZX Spectrum thing that plugs into the back of the TV. It had everything loaded on it. And I played it and it's like this is not my ... I should not go back to these games because they're just awful. I mean, they were great at the time, but playing them now on bigger TV and all that sort of stuff, it's just not. Most of what I was playing just wasn't fun anymore.

But Mario is hands down still one game that works so well. You can play the original if you get an emulator. Still a great game, still a fantastic game. And all of the Mario games, especially the modern ones, they've got ... In some cases, they have like this hybrid of the 2D and 3D. But the Paper Mario, I remember when that came out. And it's really cool that still here today, there's still new versions of Paper Mario coming out. So do you want to share some of the logo story behind that one as well?

Jim Wornell: Yeah, it was ... Shoot. If I remember correctly, Paper Mario was also an offshoot or a hybrid of Super Mario RPG, which is a game that I worked on also. Paper Mario, I mean, something like Paper Mario is pretty easy because you're going to ... You're not going to deviate from the Mario font. Japan would not allow that. But I wanted the paper part to mimic the Mario. And then one day I came up with the idea of just what if I crumbled up a piece of paper, and I crumbled it up, I scanned it into Photoshop, and I messed her around with it until I came up with an idea or a look that it's the Paper Mario logo now. So it was just trying different things and seeing what would work. And luckily, that crumpled up piece of paper that I scanned into Photoshop turned out to be the Paper Mario logo.

Ian Paget: That's really cool. I was just searching it on my phone to remind myself what it looked like. And yeah, I can see that you clearly scanned in a piece of screwed up paper with it like that. That's really cool. It's cool to see and cool to hear some of the behind the scenes stuff. And the final result, to be honest, that's what you would kind of expect it to look like. So that was probably an easy one for you, right?

Jim Wornell: Yes. When there are certain things you can't deviate from like with Mario, logos tend to be a lot easier to do. Metroid Prime, there was really nothing like it at the time. But with anything involving Mario, then yeah. There's things you got to stick to, and things they are going to make you stick to. So that was an easier logo to do, I would say.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I can imagine. Were there any other sort of fairly big, noteworthy logo projects that you worked on while you were at Nintendo?

Jim Wornell: Well, let's see. I was looking through a list of games while I was waiting for this to begin.

Ian Paget: Sure. You try to remind yourself because you worked on so many things.

Jim Wornell: Exactly. Let's see what we have. Metroid Prime, Prime 2, Hunters, part of the logo for Fusion, Metroid Fusion. I did Animal Crossing, Golden Sun 1, Golden Sun 2.

Ian Paget: I can't remember Golden Sun at all. I'd have to Google that.

Jim Wornell: Role playing game for Game Boy. Advanced Wars 1 and 2, Mario Superstar Baseball, one of the NBA games, but I can't remember which one. I think it was-

Ian Paget: I remember the NBA games. I had one of those.

Jim Wornell: I think it was 3 on 3 for Game Boy colour.

Ian Paget: Right.

Jim Wornell: Kirby 64.

Ian Paget: Oh, Kirby 64. I loved the Kirby games.

Jim Wornell: Oh gosh, what else?

Ian Paget: So when I was a teenager, probably younger than that, I used to buy the Nintendo magazine all the time. So when you say things like Kirby 64, I remember that being on the front cover. I've actually got a T-shirt. No, not a T-shirt. A jumper with Kirby on it. Just such an iconic character. So it was really cool to work on that type of thing. So what was it like working on the Kirby 64 logo? Was that another one where it was fairly easy because Kirby had existed for a fairly long time if I remember right?

Jim Wornell: Yeah. It's interesting because the first game I worked on as an associate producer was Kirby's Dream Course. The first complete logo and package that I did was Kirby 64. So Kirby was pretty easy because there's standards you have to stick to like Mario. So coming up with that logo was pretty easy.

Ian Paget: So you did the whole packaging as well? I just Googled it just to remind myself what it looked like.

Jim Wornell: Yeah.

Ian Paget: I assume that with the N64, there were some kind of framework that you were working with because I remember the boxes had a set layout in terms of like the graphics and stuff that's on it. So I'm looking at the Kirby 64 packaging now on my phone while we're speaking, and obviously it's got all the little characters and stuff like that. Did you have those assets already created or did you need to draw those as well?

Jim Wornell: No. Some of those assets were already created.

Ian Paget: Sure, that makes sense.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. So it was just a matter of organising them in a pleasing fashion.

Ian Paget: Yeah. So putting it together in Photoshop, I guess, and creating that logo. Was that in Photoshop as well? Because I can imagine it probably was with the ... I remember working in QuarkXPress. It wasn't as easy as it is now with InDesign. You would have all these ... If you did a part in Illustrator and you overlay over something, it was just a pain to do all these different things. So putting it all into one single Photoshop file and saving out as a TIF, I guess, is a hell of a lot easier than trying to layer these things in QuarkXPress or something like that.

Jim Wornell: So with packaging back then, there were Photoshop files that were placed in Illustrator. And the illustrator had the dye line, and you had to fit the files within the dye line. And then we would save the files on a zip disc or SyQuest disc, and send it off to Japan. And so six, eight weeks later, we had our proofs. I don't think they do blue lines anymore. But we used to get blue lines and have to review them and approve them and send them back to Japan. It was a very long process.

Ian Paget: Yeah, especially all this stuff, you don't really think about it because that technology has changed gradually because I was only talking the other day with somebody who was looking at a USB stick and is like, "Who uses USB stick now?" It's easy to transfer virus to somewhere. I use Dropbox a lot. So if I need to open up a file on my phone, I just log into my Dropbox and I can access everything that's on my computer. So these technologies changed a lot. And I remember those zip discs. So am I understanding right? You literally needed to put it on the zip disk and then post it to Japan?

Jim Wornell: Yes. We would either use zip discs, which were 100 megabytes or ...

Ian Paget: It sounds funny now.

Jim Wornell: It is because-

Ian Paget: Who even has a zip drive now?

Jim Wornell: Not only do you have to put them on a zip disc, if you've got a package file with a whole bunch of different Photoshop files and screenshots and fonts, you have to organize them into folders that are no more than 100 megabytes a piece. So you might have to send five or six zip discs, and it's all about putting them in the right folders so that each folder is no more than 100 megabytes. And so when you're sending something off to Japan 20 years ago, you might have to flatten a Photoshop file and put it in a folder. But you always make sure you keep your native files in case you have to make any changes.

Ian Paget: Sounds madness now how you're having to put them on a disc, do all this stuff, and then send it all to Japan, which probably took a week. And then they did proofs and then sent those proofs back from Japan? It is just crazy to think about that now.

Jim Wornell: If we didn't have zip discs, we had to use SyQuest discs, which were these tape discs only about, I believe there were 44 megabytes.

Ian Paget: I don't even know what that is.

Jim Wornell: If you ever get the chance to look up SyQuest drives, it's S-Y-Q-U-E-S-T, SyQuest drive. And they look like eight track tapes. I don't know if you know what eight track tape is.

Ian Paget: Were they those backup tapes?

Jim Wornell: Eight tracks were music. They were precursors to the cassette tapes back in the seventies. But they were these big, bulky, they almost looked like NES cartridges game pack, about that big, and they held almost no memory. So nowadays, you just throw something in a folder, zip it up, send it through Dropbox or WeTransfer or whatever, and it's good. But back then, we didn't have that.

Ian Paget: Even proofing is easy now. Typically most online proofs are pretty accurate. You don't even need to do the whole effort of printing stuff out. It's funny because I started as a graphic designer maybe 15 years ago. And it's madness to think how much everything has changed even in that time, because when I was learning graphic design, at the start of my career, there was no YouTube even then. YouTube is so new. And the internet, it's weird because it feels like it's been around forever. But actually, it hasn't been because obviously when I was 10, it was a new thing. You had those dial up modems when I was going into school and we wanted to connect to the internet. You'd have to wait ages for pages to load up.

You'd have the old modems. And it's weird to think in 20 years how far all of this has come because it sounds ridiculous now. The Nintendo would have a UK based team that would do all the work in the UK. Then they would have to put it on disc, send all the way over to Japan to then send it all the way back. It's like why didn't they just do it all in Japan, and just hire somebody that could do all the localisation stuff? It just seems, now here today, it just seems like absolute madness that that's the way that stuff used to be done. But I guess that was normal then really, wasn't it?

Jim Wornell: And I don't know if you had this over there, but when the internet was new and you had to use the dial up modems, you only had a certain number of hours every month. If you had AOL American Online-

Ian Paget: I'm literally too young for it, because when ... So my parents, we didn't have a computer at home. So when I got my first computer was when I was probably about 20, which would be 18 years ago. And obviously I was able to get proper, I mean, not the equivalent of broadband now, but it's fairly decent internet 20 years ago. And it's weird how things have changed.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. I remember having to pay some of those internet bills where you paid by the hour. And so there were some months where my America Online bill was crazy high.

Ian Paget: I can't even imagine that. It's hard to think about it now because it's easy, it's normal, this is just what we live with really. And you've got the internet in your pocket, you can do all of this stuff so easily. So I actually think now is the best time ever to be a graphic designer because as a young designer ...

So I mean, like I said, you are a little bit older than me. But as a graphic designer now, someone just starting out, you can so easily learn anything. You can go on YouTube, you can learn it. You can sit down, you can communicate so easily. It's easy to apply for jobs. It's easy to get the software. It's not as expensive as it used to be. And having this conversation now, it's just making me think how much, even in my career, how much it's changed. So I can't imagine how you feel. It really has changed a lot because when you started at in Nintendo, 1990, that was only six years after the Macintosh first came out. So graphic design on a computer when you started out was probably a fairly new thing, right?

Jim Wornell: It was, yeah. It was-

Ian Paget: State of the art. That was state of the art technology. You are the first generation to actually work on graphic design on a computer Really.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. And I remember some of my design school instructors who were older would show the process of what they did for graphic design. And it was using X-Acto blades and cutting things out and pasting things up on boards and thinking how weird and foreign that was. And somebody today hearing about zip discs and file transfer protocols, stuff like that, they might think that's just foreign to them and archaic.

Ian Paget: Exactly. It's the same as you back then watching somebody doing it the old way. It's still interesting though, still. I mean, in terms of the process for doing that stuff, it's still very similar. It's just different technology.

Jim Wornell: I find myself doing the grumpy old man speech where people talk about how tough it is and you don't know what you're talking about. In my day, we had to use zip discs and ... So it's come a long way in a short period of time.

Ian Paget: They'll just call you a boomer.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. I get that a lot.

Ian Paget: Not surprised. Okay. So I think we've got about 10 minutes left at this. So we spoke a lot about your time at Nintendo. You work there from 1990 to 2006. So what we're talking about is quite a long time ago. What are you doing now? So obviously there's been a good length of time since then, and you left Nintendo, if I'm right, in 2006. Are you still doing graphic design now, or are you doing something completely different?

Jim Wornell: No, I'm still doing graphic design. After I left Nintendo, I started ... I've done graphic design mostly in the public safety sector. So 911. I guess over there it's what? 999?

Ian Paget: Sure.

Jim Wornell: Emergency-

Ian Paget: Emergency services?

Jim Wornell: Yeah, emergency services. So I spent 15 years working as a marketing designer for a public safety company here in Redmond. And then for the last year, I've been doing graphic design and marketing for a company based in Boston. It's interesting because I'm working from home. They're based in Boston. They're three hours ahead of me. So communication is not always great because of the time difference. But I've enjoyed my time in the public safety sector. It's a chance to be involved with something that's going to possibly help save lives. And that's really cool.

Ian Paget: That's a big transition from working on computer games to doing something as serious as emergency services, because you are right that this is the type of thing that can change someone's life. Was that an intentional choice to move into the area?

Jim Wornell: No.

Ian Paget: That's quite a substantial thing to move into. Computer games are just a bit of fun, to moving into something that actually seems like you could save someone's life with this piece of graphic, this piece of work that you're doing right here right now.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. No, it was not an intentional move. I was finishing up school. I needed to work. And Zetron was looking for a graphic designer. And so I jumped over and spent 15 great years there.

Ian Paget: Brilliant, cool. Okay. I'm just thinking if there's any sort of last question that I can throw your way. So you've been a graphic designer now for a fairly long, long time. It's scary. I've been a graphic designer now for a long time as well. Do you have any approach for keeping on top of stuff? Because we've had this conversation now. We've been talking about zip disk and QuarkXpress and things that are basically just to some extent dead. There will literally be people here that were born in the year 2000, are in their twenties now, which scares me, that won't even know what we're talking about now. So have you found any useful ways of keeping on top of this stuff? This is always changing.

Jim Wornell: Oh, yeah. Trends always change. And I find myself looking at just various design magazines. There's two or three YouTube channels I check out, just because I like to keep up to date with Photoshop, keep up to date with what's going on in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator. So I'm constantly ... I mean, I can't cite specifics right now. I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Ian Paget: Don't worry. It will make sense.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. I mean, if you graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in graphic design and think, "I don't have to learn anything else for the rest of my life." You're fooling yourself. So just like with any other profession, you should always constantly be learning and growing and evolving your craft.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think that's a great thing about being a graphic designer is that, to some extent, you are always having to learn, you are always having to learn something new and develop new skills because let's be honest, right now, the stuff that is available today, the technology that we're using now, the softwares we are using now, people in 10, 15, 20 years will be joking about it like we are zip discs. Technology just keeps changing.

And as graphic designers, you can't stop. It's not like the building trade where you learn and you just keep doing the same thing over and over. And as graphic designers, we are using new technology all the time and having to keep on top of stuff, and learning new trends and all sorts of stuff. So is there a particular YouTube channel that you keep an eye on off the top of your head?

Jim Wornell: One I look at a lot it's called PHLEARN and it's spelled P-H-L-E-A-R-N.

Ian Paget: Right. I'll link to that in the show notes. I haven't heard of that one, but I'll check that out.

Jim Wornell: He's a Photoshop tutorial channel. And the guy does a really good job just explaining things. And like I said, I like to learn as much as possible. I mean, within the last couple-

Ian Paget: I think I need to check that out because it's very easy to get comfortable.

Jim Wornell: Yeah. Even within the last couple of years, I've been really getting into Premiere and After Effects. I may not have been into it as much five years ago, 10 years ago, just because it was still, A, really new, and B, I didn't really have the time. But lately, I've been really getting into Premiere and After Effects, and that video editing aspect, which it's another function of design really. And enjoying it. So you-

Ian Paget: You still got that same energy as you did when you started working as a graphic designer in 1990. It's really good to hear. And I actually think most graphic designers are like this. People that have been in the game for a long time, 20 years plus, they still have that same energy. So it's nice to hear that people in this profession are still learning, playing with new software and playing still. It really is playing.

Jim Wornell: You will not always figure out what you want to be when you're 18 years old. Some people, it clicks right away. Other people, that'll take them longer. For me, I didn't figure out what I wanted to be until I was 28, graphic design.

Ian Paget: I think that's a good place to wrap up this interview. So Jim, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you. This has been a lot of fun. And I hope people listening hasn't minded the nerding out about old games, consoles and old games and stuff like that. Hopefully, it's been a lot of fun for listeners as well. But I've really enjoyed this. So thank you so much, Jim, for coming on. And I hope listeners have enjoyed it as much as I have.

Jim Wornell: My pleasure. It's been a lot of fun going down memory lane.

Ian Paget: Brilliant. Thank you very much, Jim.

Jim Wornell: Thank you.