Writing a Logo Book

Ian Paget: Right, James, you've been on the podcast once before. But since we last spoke, which I think was a couple of years ago now on the podcast itself, since then, you've released a book and something I'm excited about. I know that a lot of graphic designers want to do this type of thing too, so I thought I'd get you on, talk about the book, help me get a little bit of self-emotion. But I thought we could dive into some of the how to stuff.

James Martin: Why the bloody hell not? It sounds awesome. Yeah, books are fun. I didn't even read a book till I was about late 20s, 30s, and now I read them all the time. It's a bit crazy that I've written, but it's all good. This is all good.

Ian Paget: Yeah, well, I can relate with that as well. I was very much the same. I know, as a kid, I didn't like reading, but as an adult now, I love reading, especially, graphic design books. Anyway, so your whole book, let's talk about from the beginning.

James Martin: Sure.

Ian Paget: How did you actually get the opportunity to write a book of your own?

James Martin: It seems like such a long time ago. Now, even though it's only just been released over the last few months, it was actually all started early 2020. Yeah, it's a hefty old process really, and obviously, in between that we've had this thing called COVID. So that was also fun. Yeah, basically, what happened was I just got an email from a lady called Janine talking about whether I'd like to write a book. Saying that they are a publishing house and all the rest of it and I was like, "This is all rubbish. Somebody's ever been pulling my leg." But there were certain things that start to add up, she was like, "I've been following you on Instagram for a couple of years."

She was obviously sent me links to the website and then it was all starting to... I don't know if you do this, but even with clients when they come to me and they say something, I'm like, "Right, you can find out anything on the internet. You can find out companies, you can find out turnover." You can find out anything. I basically did a bit of research and I was like, "Hang on a minute, this is all adding up." Yeah, just before COVID really, the publishing house, Rockport, who are part of the Quarto group, reached out to me and just said, "Would you like to write a book, or if you would." Obviously, from there, I was like, "Yeah, I'd love to write a book. I'm not too sure what I've got to say, but I'll figure something out."

That was what I quite liked about the whole process as well, that they didn't come to me and say, "We want you to write a book on X." They said, "If you were going to write a book, what would you like to write your book on?" I was in total control of the contents and the ideas and all of that. You basically go through like it's almost like imagine the X factor but shit. It's like you go through stage one. Obviously, there's no other competition so it's just you and you're pitching to, first, you pitch the editors and you pitch to the people bigger up, and then once you go through that process, it's like, "Okay, well we like the idea of the book. How about you flesh out some rough chapters for us."

You don't have to do a huge amount of work before you start getting paid, but it's they want to see how you would structure the book and then they're, "Okay, well, yeah, this would probably make it quite a good book." Obviously, a book is supposed to tell a story, isn't it, as well. Yeah, got for all of those stages and then was offered a contract. We've sorted out royalties, contract, payments. Then from there, it's basically you go through different stages of creation. You do what's called like a BLAD, which is like B-L-A-D, which is basic layout and design.

You choose like one of what a couple of double page spreads throughout book based on like variations of topics. What you're doing during that process is you're figuring out the layout, like the type hierarchy, images. Whether they bleed off the page, how we do multiple images on different pages.

Ian Paget: Sorry to interrupt, at that point, have you actually wrote anything yet or is it just laying something out?

James Martin: Well, yeah, so at that stage there is a big chunk of the writing done, yes. You don't just start picking up random topics. Basically, the idea is to read it. Yeah, so write it first, obviously. I missed out a big old chunk there. I didn't know.

Ian Paget: I'd love to go into the process in a lot more detail.

James Martin: Okay, cool.

Ian Paget: I'm going to interrupt and I'm going to break down this into a couple of questions and I just want to interject. In your particular case, you've been really lucky that you've actually been approached by a publisher and they basically asked you to pitch an idea. And they are then guiding you, it sounds like they're paying you, all this stuff. Which is an incredible position to be in. But I just want to add that as a designer, we've got the tools, everything that we need to actually, not only write a book. Assuming that you can write, if you can write, you can also create all the artwork and basically do everything that you need to for a book. There are companies out there like IngramSpark where you can basically upload your artwork and people can order your book on Amazon.

James Martin: Yeah, it's the self-publishing route.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's self-publishing, it's print-on-demand. I think if you can get a publisher, it's cool because they're going to put down all the money, they're taking all of the risk. It looks like, in your case, they are like bulk printing them because it's got fancy finishes and all that stuff. You can do that yourself, you can still self-publish and do that but then you are taking all of the risk. But there are print-on-demand services. In terms of like an opportunity to write a book, if you as a designer or whoever's listening to this, to be honest, if you want to write a book, you can write a book without a publisher.

James Martin: Oh, 100%, 100%.

Ian Paget: In terms of this conversation with James, I want to focus on his process, how he's worked with a publisher. I'm working on a book self-published and we can share and exchange ideas, so I'm looking forward to this. Let's rewind on the process. You've given an overview so far. You spoke about how you got approached by the publisher, and you basically pitched an idea too though. How did it work for you in terms of actually writing that content? How did you feel about that process?

James Martin: Yes, so obviously what you do is once you've fleshed out your chapters and you've fleshed out what's within each chapter-

Ian Paget: Can I rewind even further?

James Martin: Yeah, sure.

Ian Paget: So talking about those chapters, how did you go about working out what you actually wanted to be in the book?

James Martin: Yeah, it's just a process of what you are going to write about. Like with most, there's obviously always a beginning, a middle and an end. I'm always a big fan of telling stories, so with my book, in particular, which is the only book I've written, also I know how I did that, is basically they almost started as like, "So how do I get from here to here?" How do I get from having no idea about design to actually now writing a book about design or not being a logo designer to being a logo designer or not being a graphic designer to being a graphic designer.

Ian Paget: So you basically worked out high level bullet points for that journey?

James Martin: Yeah, so I wrote out, I jotted down what I thought was interesting. It would be, "So what would people want to know?" I broke my chapters down into a little bit of my background, my upbringing. Where did that creative spark lead to? For me, I never wanted to write a book about me 100%. I didn't want it to be almost like a self-promotional book with just my work. I decided to lean into helping other creatives, so it was luckily by having my ears open and my eyes open over the last 10, 15 years, I've been getting lots and lots of questions and answering lots and lots of questions. Basically, that helped me flesh out the book. It was I was thinking, "So what would I want to know growing up as a designer? What are the answers I would've liked 10 years ago when I was starting?"

That helped me flesh out the book was like, "Well, how can I help people?" But obviously before that it was just who is this random person just helping me? Obviously, I had that there's a bit of an Instagram following and it's a fairly good reputation, I would say, in the logo design world now. It was I painted a little picture of just my education, where I grew up, what I was like as a kid? Because the big premise of the book is you don't have to have all your shit figured out. When I was younger, I was very privileged. I had a good schooling, good public school upbringing, but then there were... I talk about a lot of the bad stuff that happened to me as a kid. As that which followed onto drug issues and leaving home at 17 and getting expelled from school and all of these bits and pieces.

I basically just wanted to paint a little picture of people that a lot of stuff does happen. I didn't want this to be just look at all the great stuff. It was like, "Look, this is the good stuff that happened, this is the bad stuff that happened as a kid." I wanted to highlight that we all have a story and a journey.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and I think the that's really important as well because it makes you relatable and it makes people realise that no matter your situation, you can become a graphic designer. Because I know, personally, like I grew up on a council estate. Both my parents were retired, we didn't have a lot of money growing up. I've still become a graphic designer, I didn't go to university, and I think it's good that people can see that. Because I think there's the... when you only see the end product, when you only see the fancy finished graphic design on all the nice printed paper, it's easy to think, "I can't do that." But actually when you share that story, like you have, obviously, it makes it a lot more relatable and hopefully it's inspiring to people. I think adding that in is a good idea.

James Martin: Yeah, well, I don't think any of us are any different from the next person, and I know you feel the same. Ultimately, we all have different lives, we all have different journeys. But we all have the ability I think to a degree to become whatever we want, that's our choice. Obviously, there are money does help, I suppose, but if you can't be asked to get up from the sofa and you're a lazy-ish, you're never going to get anywhere like some people. We were never particularly like even though we went to... I grew up, up until the age of about 10 or 11, in not a particularly rich family, mom and dad worked. Mom worked nights as a nurse and dad worked all day every day and they both worked weekends and traveled abroad to make sure that we could go to school and stuff.

Then it was one of those lucky moments when a rich auntie died that I didn't even know about. I don't even think my mom and dad really knew her that well. She, well, very kindly left all of me and my cousins. So it was my mom's long lost auntie who left my mom's kids and the cousins and all that, left some money in a pot to help us with education and school and stuff like that.

Ian Paget: Oh, wow.

James Martin: Yeah, so it was like one of those crazy random little miracles, I suppose you could call it. But then again the school I went to was great, but at that school I was sexually abused by my teacher. At that school I found a drug problem, I got kicked out. Yes, it is privileged in so many ways but there was a lot of shit that happened to me there. It's all about you can't change it or you can't do anything about it. But I don't think... everybody's always talking about, "Do you have to be educated to be in design? Do you have to be rich? Do you have to have a good upbringing?" I think it's what you got in your mind. If you want to become something, you can become something, I truly believe. Especially, with all you need is an internet connection now, isn't it?

Ian Paget: Yeah, internet connection, computer, and the ability to communicate.

James Martin: Exactly, and yes, that is an investment. But when you're talking about businesses maybe 20 years ago or 20, 30, 40, 50 where you had to buy a building, you had to have staff, you had to do this, you had to build, you had to... whereas today you can, as you say, invest a few thousand pounds maybe. Maybe not even that on a computer, an internet connection, and an idea.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and then in terms of learning, it's funny how things have changed since I was a kid. I think we're both a similar age. I remember when I was-

James Martin: Go to the library.

Ian Paget: ... maybe even... Yeah, like even a teenager, in terms of learning graphic design, there was no YouTube when I started working. So I couldn't sit there and teach myself like you can now. Now you can just search on YouTube and learn anything, so I think anyone starting now is in this amazing situation where if you have access to a reasonably good computer that can run illustrator and have the ability to communicate, you can do what we are doing.

James Martin: Oh, 100%.

Ian Paget: Yeah, you don't need like degrees, qualifications. You don't even need any A-levels or GCEs or whatever they're call it now.

James Martin: No, I don't have any A-levels.

Ian Paget: Any qualifications. Yeah, you don't need early qualifications. Some companies want that, some companies expect that. But in terms of your ability to become a graphic designer, you succeed based on your work, not based on your background and so on.

James Martin: I think you also succeed based on your ability to keep going. Your patience and your work ethic. I guarantee, well, I know and I know that you'll probably feel the same. I don't feel that we are by far the best designers, the best creators on the planet, but we both work extremely hard.

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

James Martin: When you work hard, opportunities happen. I wasn't a gifted artist, I wasn't a gifted creator. I always liked drawing, but I was never like top of the class at school. I was never naturally talented, but I drew every single day and I still draw every single day and that helps me create better and better and better stuff. I think as long as you put that effort in and you persevere and you get through those days and those weeks where it is tough, you can't be bothered, but you're still showing up, those are the people I think make it... Like all the people that people may be listening here who they look up to like the Draplin's or the Chris Do's or Paula Scher's, whoever it is. Now, these people have been hustling for decades. They've been working for years and years and years, and maybe without social media, you wouldn't have a clue who they are but they'd still be working hard every single day.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah, and they are in a position where they don't even need to.

James Martin: That's the beauty of it, I always love that idea is that I think you really know the people that don't necessarily have to work but still do work. That shows you the passion that they've got. That shows you the love for their job, and I think that's a wonderful thing. Wonderful.

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. I think you'll be in that same position one day, James, based on what you are doing at the moment.

James Martin: Well, I'm going to work very hard all time, so-

Ian Paget: Sure, well, you always do. Right, so let's go back to the book. You created, it sounds like what you did is create some bullet points.

James Martin: Yes.

Ian Paget: I'm just going to interject a tip that I did, and it's something that I picked up from Pat Flynn.

James Martin: Cool.

Ian Paget: What he does, he used Post-it Notes and it's similar to what you've done. But basically on each Post-it Note, you write down a word or a topic that you want to include in the book. Then what he does is he then starts to group those, all those Post-it Notes down into groups, and then each of those groups becomes a chapter in the book. Then obviously you put that chapter in an order. You've basically done that in a slightly different way, but I do like that Post-it Note technique.

James Martin: Yeah, it's probably some people, yeah, it's nice to see like where, especially, when I'm doing writing notes, for example, a lot of those notes might be on different pages. Where I suppose with Post-it Notes you can see it all in front of you at the same time.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and you can move it around and put into different places. But, in general, the outcome is the same, you have a high level breakdown of everything that you want to include in your book. You started to mention a little bit earlier that you were then bulking those out. You had the titles, if I understand right, and then you're then creating content for each one of those headings.

James Martin: Yeah, so the idea, obviously, it was really important. It's something that I spoke to the publishers about. It's that I wanted this book to sound like I was talking to people. I really wanted it to retain my voice because that was really important for me. I didn't want them to make me sound too intelligent, which is what I'm basically trying to say. Yeah, I wanted to leave those my conversational style in there. But so the process of writing was basically what you would do is you'd start with maybe like a double page spread and you'd write that out, for example. What you and what the editor and your editing team would learn from that is the style. Because obviously you have a certain amount of words. I was only allowed 30,000 words. I was only allowed... That sounds only allowed that, but I wrote like 90,000. You have to bring it down to a book.

Ian Paget: 90,000 is a lot of content, James.

James Martin: No, I wrote that book three times over. I had so much stuff, but that's all good for when it comes to-

Ian Paget: Hopefully, you can repurpose it as well. Maybe even write a second book.

James Martin: Yeah, exactly. But I think because it's such an interesting experience, I'll go into a bit more detail about that but I'll bring a bit more value here with reference to how it came about. But you write basically one part of a chapter, and what you are doing now with the editor is you are learning how to write a book. What they'll do is you'll send all your words. I would write let's say how to find your style? I'd write that little section and I'd have maybe 500 words to write on that bit. I'd write my 500 words, which ended up maybe being 800 and I'd send it to them. Then they would break it down and talk to me about how... Like I was writing paragraphs that I could actually explain in a sentence.

Having like the editor, what they do is they're so clever with words and they're like rather than... Because I had a little of fluff, and with a book, fluff's great but fluff in the right places. Because a book is there to teach, it's to educate, it's to learn, it's to be almost fairly precise. Fluff can sometimes distract, I would call it. You could sometimes lose your point if you're going on too much. What they do is they teach you how to look at paragraphs and think, "Okay, so what are you trying to say here?" "Well, I'm trying to say X." "Well, why don't you just say X? Why do you have to have X and then Y, Z, A, B, four, nine after it?"

That was a really interesting process for me because it allowed me to actually be a bit more controlled with the things and the bits and pieces I'm trying to say. Then so from that exercise, what you then do is you create... so I had obviously timelines to have certain stuff done because there was a launch date. That all went all a bit chaotic during COVID, but we still kept to that date. It was all good and all ready in time for obviously printing process, shipment, and all the rest of it. But from there, so once you've got your style down and you understand a little bit about the writing and editing stage, you then do chapter one. That was my first thing like just write your intro.

You got 3000 words or whatever, write your intro and you chapter the intro before the chapter one stuff. Then once that's done, it's like, "Right, write the first quarter," and then you write the first quarter. Then you have a different timeline for that. But all the time you are creating stuff. That stuff's also getting edited in the background. Basically, what you are not doing is you're not writing the whole book and then getting smashed with a load of edits at the end of it. You're doing like fighting it off in little bite size chunks. For anybody that wants to self-publish, I would say that's an extremely integral part. You don't want to write a whole book for it then to be like this doesn't make any sense. The way you're explaining stuff isn't working.

What you want to be doing is you want to write a chapter or write a good section of the book, find an editor, or a friend, or a copyright or whatever. Give it to them and let them basically smash it apart and learn from that process and then you can take that through.

Ian Paget: I just want to quickly interrupt on that. It's interesting hearing how the process worked when working with a publisher. It seems like there's a more structured process, which obviously makes sense. As doing something self-published and that's something I'm slowly working on, my thought or rather what I did and it is partly to save costs. I wrote the whole thing and sent to an editor. But what I didn't realise there are different types of editors. There isn't just one, like they just send it to an editor and the editor makes it better. There are people that will, and I can't remember the exact name to them, but there's a certain type that will completely restructure it and completely rework it. There are those that just read through everything and fine tune it and just make it better. Then there are those which proofread, and proofreaders don't go in and change stuff.

James Martin: Spelling, yeah.

Ian Paget: They just check spelling and-

James Martin: Yeah, because you got copywriters, editors, and more structural stuff. Then, obviously, editors that they're, as you say, different type. There are editors above editors. There's the big editor who basically just fashion apart. Then the editor who's trying to make sense of it all, and then there's the copywriter and then there's the proof readers, as you say.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and it can become expensive doing self-published so that's why, personally... Well, I didn't even think of doing it with just like a quarter of the book. I wanted to write the whole thing prior to sending it over to somebody. It wasn't too bad, but obviously each time I have to run it by somebody there's a cost involved. Well, in your case, you're working with a publisher, that's all included in it and that's one of the great benefits of working with a publisher, I think.

James Martin: Yeah, because I think I would've probably done the same as you if I was self-published. I would have just smashed the whole book and then gone, "Right, what now?"

Ian Paget: Yeah, but it's interesting. It's really interesting to hear that they got you to write a couple of sections first and then sit down with you. When you said that they started asking you questions, like what is it you're trying to say here? Was that like over a Zoom call or telephone call or was that just my email?

James Martin: Yeah, so they would do a lot of by email, but in the early ages, it was very much on Zoom with design.

Ian Paget: Nice, very hands on.

James Martin: Yeah, very much so because I don't know how to write books. I have before, I do now, but I didn't know when I was going through it and it can be... I think it's like with anything. When you've got write 30,000 words, you've got to have like 200 plus high res images, it needs to be done by this time. You're suddenly going, "Shit, right, I'm also running an agency. It's also COVID." The agency got busier. COVID didn't help anything. I was writing a book and I was like, "Crikey, this is a lot." But the idea that what made it really digestible for me was realistic timelines, and also like, "Okay, it's like with anything, isn't it, like a process. Okay, right, I just have to get this bit done. Then once I got this bit done, I can move onto this bit. Then once I got this bit done, I can move onto this bit."

It was rather than just trying to smash it all in one with it becoming quite daunting, the ability and the way it was broken down into, "Right, let's get it right down here first." Then if we get it right here in the beginning, then it's going to be a lot less work at the end, especially, with the editing and what are you trying to say and all that stuff. Yeah, from my point of view, that was really helpful for me, I must admit.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and with self-publishing, that's something that you need to do yourself. I'm personally the type of person that I actually find it beneficial to have somebody telling me. In general, the things actually get done are my client stuff because I've got a client there that needs it, and obviously, I just sit down and get it done. I think with self-publishing, that's been one of my challenges. Although I have-

James Martin: You keep making time for it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, like I've wrote 50,000 words, it's gone through an editor and all this sort stuff. But things keep getting in the way, things keep becoming more of a priority. Clients, obviously, you want to get that work done. It's one of those things that keeps getting pushed on the back burner. I think, in your case, I'm curious, if you didn't have a publisher, do you think you would've finished it in the time that you did?

James Martin: If I didn't have a publisher, I wouldn't have written a book.

Ian Paget: Yeah, so they're really driving you-

James Martin: 100%.

Ian Paget: ... yeah, they're driving you and breaking it down into different chunks that's helped. They've done all of the organisation and the push and the drive and all that stuff, and I think that's awesome. But actually speaking with you now, there's lessons that can be learned from that. So you spoke about how it was broken down into different segments and how... because writing a book, especially, writing 90,000 words, that's a lot of work.

James Martin: Right, it's months and months and months and months of writing.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that's an enormous amount of content. Actually, just sitting down and writing that, that sounds scary. When something is big like that, you put it off because it's just too much. But if you actually think, "Okay, today I'm going to write 500 words. That's my goal. That's all I need to do today is 500 words towards this first section."

James Martin: That's exactly right.

Ian Paget: If you've got it broken down into steps, that's a really good way of doing it. What I think I need to do now is write down the steps that I need to run through, stick a note on the wall and basically just aim to tick off each thing one week at a time. Then it's going to get finished because you're making progress.

James Martin: That's exactly it.

Ian Paget: It's when you don't work on it, if you don't work on it, you're never going to get it finished.

James Martin: Yeah, if you said to yourself, "I'm going to get up at whatever time it is, and before I start client work, say between 8:00 and 10:00 or whatever, I'm just going to do 200 words." Suddenly, you're doing 1000 words a week without even thinking about it, obviously.

Ian Paget: Yeah, because 200 words is like, "Oh, yeah, I can sit down and do that in half an hour."

James Martin: Oh, it's easy. Yeah, you can fly from it, can't you? That's the thing, and that rather than waking up every morning and thinking, "I've got to do a book, I've got to do a book." If you break it down as well, "I just need to get... if I can just get this page done today, or this section on monograms done today, or if I can write this part about my childhood today." Or early morning on a Sunday, I'm going to just grab a coffee and go and write for two hours. I don't care how much I got done, but I'm just going to spend two hours writing and then I'm going to have my weekend. I think that's how I did it. They would like say, "Right, we need to have this quarter done in the next six weeks." Then I'd be like, "Okay."

So rather than just doing it all the night before, I would say, "Right, I've got six weeks here." I dedicated time every single day to make sure I was getting something done. It was always every day it was moving forward rather than not doing anything for three weeks and then trying to smash it in three weeks. I actually used the time I was given because that made it, again, like a lot less painful, a lot less stressful. Just ticking little bits off day by day. Then it all starts to come together and there will be days where you're like bang on it, you are like it's just flowing out of you and you are like, "Oh, yeah, this is more making sense," and you just carry on and carry on and carry on.

I would say if you're in that situation, sort everything else just ripe, just [inaudible 00:32:50] because there will be days where you're like, "Oh, I just don't know what I'm trying to say here, or I don't know what..." It's like with anything, isn't it? It's not necessarily creative block, but writing's very different. It's slightly emotional, it's very draining. There's a lot of thinking involved. There's a lot of like, "Okay, so..." It's not just writing, it's like what am I trying to say? What am I trying to share? What do I want people to get out of this moment that I'm writing here? Yeah, what lessons are to be learned? It's not like, "Oh, I don't know what your book is, for example." But it's not like a story that's in your head like a Lord of the Rings or a Harry Potter where it's all your imagination just going off.

But even with those, there has to be structure. If you're doing something that you are looking for the listener or the reader, sorry, to get something out and then you're trying to teach them something, what are you trying to teach them? What's the best way to teach them? What's the value prop here? All that stuff.

Ian Paget: Yeah, something that I found useful, so what I was doing. And it was probably from November 2020 to like February 2021 where I was really just all on. I just made it my goal to sit down and write. I think I set myself a goal of like 500 words a day. So every evening I'd sit down, I'd write 500 words. That's all I needed to do, no specific plan. But how I did it is I did it in a number of drafts, so draft one was just get it out of my head. It didn't need to sound good, I just needed to get out of my head what I wanted to say because I'm not the best or I don't see myself as a good writer. I just wanted to get out of my head what I wanted to say, and it didn't need to make any sense. It was just there on the paper.

Then when I finished the first draft of that, I see that as like that's draft one of the book. There is some structure to it or everything I want to say is in there. It's just a pile of trash at the moment, like you couldn't release that because it's just-

James Martin: Brain dump, isn't it?

Ian Paget: Yeah, brain dump. I brain dumped everything I want to say. Then what I then did is went through again and rewrote everything, so just tied it up. I found that really useful because I know people speak about this left brain, right brain thing, which in reality is nonsense. But I like the idea of that you are in this, in one stage, you're in this creative mode and you're just getting everything out of your head. In the next stage, you're editing and tidying and improving. I found that a much quicker way of doing it, rather than every sentence you do, trying to make it perfect, you get everything there on paper. And I found doing it that way was a really helpful way to actually get something finished, especially like I said, being not very good at writing.

James Martin: Yeah, and it also probably stops you from repeating yourself as well, doesn't it? That's what I was very much the same. Like just get everything down. Like I said, I wrote 90,000 but it had to be written down and had to get down to 30,000. I think it's like 27,000 in the end or whatever. There was a lot of fluff there, there's a lot of times where I was repeating myself. There are parts of the book that repeated themselves because when you talk about process and creation, and you might talk about something in chapter one. Then by the time you've got to chapter seven, you're talking about that same thing again but in a slightly different context.

Ian Paget: Yeah, because you forgot that you wrote that bit.

James Martin: Yeah.

Ian Paget: That's the issue with, because like I said, 90,000, that's so much work, James. That's absolutely incredible.

James Martin: It was, it was a huge amount. Yeah, but if even like right now, we've been talking for 40 minutes almost. We've been talking about the book with something we're both passionate about. If you probably broke down our word count or our talk count, we'd be up at about 10,000 now probably, already.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that's true.

James Martin: By the time when you're writing and talking, you're just going, and you're just going off and you're just... Whatever's in my head, I'm just putting down. So even things like do you know what I mean? When you start to add all those fluffy words up and rather than being precise with your stuff, you are being on lot more conversational like you're having a chat with your mate. So rather than just saying, "You should niche." You might be going, "Well, you know what, I niche back in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and I wasn't too sure about it in the beginning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." There's a lot of fluff that you can do around any particular topic. 90,000, funny enough, wasn't difficult because it was just full of rubbish. It's just full of me talking.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it sounds like you basically approached it like I did where you just got it all out of your head.

James Martin: Exactly. When I'm talking like I know you'll be the same. When you're talking about something, you're super passionate about like design or my process or whatever it is. I can talk about it forever. You have to stop me talking about it. I'm not going to stop talking about it. That doesn't really help when it comes to having certain words for a book.

Ian Paget: Right, okay. We've spoken about writing. I think we've shared a lot of really valuable stuff there, so how you broke it down and actually getting it down on paper and then fine tuning it, working with an editor, and so on. You spoke earlier about something called a BLAD. What is a BLAD?

James Martin: A BLAD is what is known in the industry, apparently... I'm probably going to get it wrong, but I think it's like basic layout and design.

Ian Paget: Oh, okay.

James Martin: That's what it breaks down to. What that means is you are not just designing a book. Once you've got all the words, you're not just trying to design a whole book, so what you do is you do a BLAD, which is maybe seven or eight double page spreads. You might have your content page, you might design your content page. You might then design like a very picture heavy double page. You might then do a very text heavy double page. You might do a double page spread with writing on the left and an image on the right. Basically, what you're doing is you're trying to almost frame your design decisions moving forward. By the time you finish the BLAD, you know what you're using for your headers, you know what you're using for your body type. You know how to house your pictures. You know if there's one picture that is going to bleed off the page and you know how your layout's going to look when it comes to type based stuff. You know how you do your quotes, for example.

You're basically taking snippets. You're taking us like eight pages out of the book, which you then do all of your, well I'll say, make all your design decisions on. When you go through the process of creating the rest of the book, you know what you're doing, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's just a basic layout and design. It just helps you get on board with the editors and how it's going to be laid out and how it's going to be designed and all the rest of it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, and I guess from your perspective working with a publisher, the publisher can approve that and make sure that they're happy with how the general look and feel of the book's going to be as well. I guess that's why they do that.

James Martin: Exactly. Yeah, so I actually worked with... When you go through like publishers, they give you two choices. You could either design it or they can design it in-house with your guidance. I decided to basically allow them to design it with my guidance just purely because writing it and designing it and having it all have to be done... it would've all had to have been done in the same time, but I would've had triple or double the work, let's call it, designs. Writing's easy, design, getting to design layouts, I find it a little bit tougher, I would say.

Ian Paget: Oh, so in your case you actually got them to do it?

James Martin: Well, that's the thing, you actually design it together. I put the BLAD together, so this is how I see it rolling. It's almost like you project manage the design. So after the BLAD was created, we'd go for like an editing stage of like, we'd go, "Well, I think..." Because I had a lot of my sketches in there, which would've been white paper on white backgrounds and I was like, "Well, I think they need some board around them." You're talking about like double pages and how that's going to... I want these to bleed off the page rather than be cropped in the page. You're talking about where you want your numbers for your pages laid out. Like how do you want all that sort?

Basically, you sort all that out in the BLAD and then they take that information and continue that through the rest of the book. Obviously, being a designer, I'm a little bit more probably pickier than somebody that isn't... You know what it's like, you want everything lined up, you want everything thing like... We see things that normal people don't see. I think most designers do. If it's even a few pixels to the left, you're like, "That is not right. Fix it." Yeah, I put that, and no doubt, they got really, really annoyed with me. But, yeah, so basically then we basically tandemed the design process. They would do the layout of the words and all the rest of it and put the pictures there. Then they would bring it back to me, so they would bring back quarter of the book.

Then I would be almost like the project lead on, "Now we need to get rid of this. This is not working. I think this should be on this side" You're doing it together. But, again, which was a really handy thing for me because I was concentrating on writing the book and that was my main focus. Then obviously that went into the design stage, but I was like, at the beginning, I was like... Because you make this decision day one, you don't make this decision halfway through. Because they've got line up some designers and all the rest of it that you can collaborate with, and obviously, book out studio time. It's a big old moving machine.

But, yeah, for me it was I think if I... Well, when I write my second book, I will definitely probably take on the desired myself because I ended up doing quite a lot of it anyway. I think my slightly controlling nature took over a bit. Because when you got a book going out in the world, you really wanted... I wanted it to be a little bit scrappy, but I didn't want it to look crap.

Ian Paget: Well, yeah, it's got your name on the front, James.

James Martin: Exactly, yeah. But it was a very, like I said, like a very interesting process and I'm glad I did make that decision, but there were some times where I was like, "Well, this isn't looking as well as I wanted it to look." But they were great, they were like, "Look, whatever you want to do, we can do it." Which was lovely. Basically, that was how the design process went, and it ended up being a really, really cool looking book. It also won like the graphic designer award for book design last year.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I saw that. Congratulations. Congratulations.

James Martin: Yeah, I must have done something right.

Ian Paget: Yeah.

James Martin: Yeah, it is a beast even thinking and talking to you about the whole book now, I'm having flashbacks of me like I don't know what I'm doing. I have no idea what I'm doing. Was this the right decision to do? But you've got to take that risk, haven't you?

Ian Paget: Yeah, so how did you go about things like paper finish, the cover? Because I don't have a copy of the book. I'll be open and admit that, I will get one, though, James.

James Martin: Oh my God, unbelievable.

Ian Paget: I've been moving.

James Martin: I know, I know.

Ian Paget: I don't have space for books.

James Martin: I know you got a lot going on, and my face in front of you all the time is not what you need.

Ian Paget: But on the front cover, it looks like you got a number of logos like embossed or something and it looks really slick.

James Martin: Yeah, so embossed on front, back and spine and-

Ian Paget: Was it all them or was that you saying I want it embossed?

James Martin: Yeah, that was them. They were like-

Ian Paget: Nice, okay.

James Martin: They were like this, but so I basically laid out the front and back cover and they were like, "Right, these are going to be embossed. This is going to be like a gold really nice gold, shiny gold, like lighting. We're going to basically hard backing. We're going to have like some really nice end papers, which are like the, obviously, almost like the in-seam of the book when you open it. They're like design or something cool for that. Yeah, basically, they just said they're going to go to town on it because they want it.

Ian Paget: It looks like they really have. Yeah, it looks really nice.

James Martin: Yeah, it is. That's what I like as well. It does feel nice. When you're holding it, you can feel the logos raised and it's very cool. I'm very lucky as well in that regard because a hard back book embossed...

Ian Paget: Well, yeah, doing self-publishing and print-on-demand, you can't do that with print-on-demand and you need to [crosstalk 00:47:25] speak to like basic stuff. But stuff that they've done, you would have to get that. You can do this self-published but you have to buy in bulk in order for it to be cost effective. Then if you're buying in bulk, you then have to sell them and distribute them and all this stuff and doing that self-published. That's where it costs loads of money. Print-on-demand, though, is you put your book online and then when people order it, it gets printed. You can still have it hard back, you can still have colour sheets and all that stuff. But in terms of like the cover, you can't do what James has in his book. You have to physically get that produced in bulk in order for it to be cost effective anyway.

James Martin: Yeah, it's not cheap.

Ian Paget: Yeah, so what was it like, James, to actually get a first copy of that book?

James Martin: What was it like to get a copy of the book for the first time? I don't know, I just had to repeat that to try and let it digest a little bit. Yeah, it's a very weird feeling. It suddenly feels very real, and I think what I mean by that is up until that point, it's on computer, digital format. This written words chatting between you and the editor. It's all quite closed, quite private. Then seeing it come through the door it's like a huge wave of excitement. Then in this huge wave of nervousness and crap in your pants and... Because once it's, you know, there's no going back. Now everything's out there in the world, which is not a problem.

There's nothing wrong with that, but obviously there's, especially within my book, there's quite a lot of openness and vulnerability and stuff that a lot of people won't know about me. But I chose to put it in there because I knew it was difficult to talk about and I know it's going to help people. I think in that regard, it's, as I say, it's like so many mixed emotions. It's a bit of relief because it's finished. It's a long, old slog writing a book, and yeah, so a bit of relief. Like super amounts of excitement, like super shaft, like really proud of myself, and also just almost like this I did it. It's done and it's now... Also, almost this feeling of, "Right now, the hard work starts." Which is like selling it.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah, the motion.

James Martin: Which is like you think, "Crikey, I've just spent a year and a half in the process of creating this book in the middle of COVID and now it's here and now the hard work starts." I'm like "Crikey, right, that's fun, isn't it?

Ian Paget: Well, you are already doing a lot of self-promotion anyway because I frequently see you on podcasts, you are posting on social media all the time. You do Instagram stories, Instagram posts. You're already doing that stuff anyway, but now you can go, "I have a book, buy it."

James Martin: Yeah, I suppose. Now there's actually some real content that I can share rather than just me saying what's in my brain. But, yes, it's also a difficult thing because I think, naturally as creatives, it's we are not salesman or a sales team. So selling has always felt quite difficult. It's a lot more natural now, obviously, over time learning to sell my expertise to clients and prospects and all the rest of it. Obviously, to the publishers and all the rest of it. But before, selling was like it's dirty. I don't want to... Because there's so many dirty tactics, isn't there, online? People just promising the world and delivering, not even the letter W.

It's trying to find a way of like... because I sometimes, even now with the book out, I feel like, "Oh, should I re-share that person's post of them with my books?" I don't want people to get bored, or should I talk about the books? I don't want people to get bored. But at the end of the day, I've got to sell the book as well.

Ian Paget: Well, what we're doing now, and it's one of the reasons why I thought I'd invite you on, we are talking about the book. But what we're actually doing is sales and it just doesn't feel like it because hopefully people will listen to this and think, "I like James, I want his book. I want to support what he's doing."

James Martin: I think you should do that. I think everybody should do that right now. Yeah, buy my book.

Ian Paget: Yeah, buy my book. Aaron Draplin does that... Buy my book.

James Martin: Yeah, we can just finish the podcast now, just buy my books. But, yeah, no, it is. I think that's the difference between a creative and a creative that make something of themselves, isn't it? Is the ability to market and sell. Well, I say not make something of theirselves, but I think there are some fantastically talented artists in the world who just can't get out there and can't get in front of the right people or can't find the work. But there are some average artists who are making lots of money. I think the difference is marketing and selling.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think that's why the publisher reached out to you initially because they could see, okay, you have an audience, you are active on social media, you do good work. They could probably see you'd be ideal to be a person to write a book with them. Obviously, now you came on here, I invited you on. Hopefully, people will buy the book listening to this. That's not why I got you on, well I mean it partly was, but we're talking about your book, and I think because you are already established, people trust you, people know like and trust you, and all that stuff, they would just naturally buy your book. But I think if you came on here being some random new person that nobody's ever heard of, that would be different because that would be a harder sell.

But now it's like, "Oh, James, made by James. Everyone knows made by James. I want his book." Brings out a book, you buy it without even thinking. I think all of the work that you've been doing over however many years, all of that reputation building, reputation growth, it's established you as an expert, as like your best mate a little bit like what Michael Janda does. Michael Janda is an expert, but you see him as a friend at the same time.

James Martin: Very much so, yeah.

Ian Paget: I think you doing that will be of great advantage to you in terms of selling the book.

James Martin: Yeah, firstly, thank you very much. I think the words you say there is reputation, and I think that is something that I didn't have for a decade? I think I know we approached on it I think before is they happened. It takes a long time to build and find your voice and build a business and build a reputation and decades. And a lot of the people that I look up to like your Mike Janda's or your Chris Do's or your Draplin's or your Paula Scher's, whoever they are, these people have been doing the stuff that they've been doing for decades, decades and decades. It's not an overnight success thing.

Ian Paget: Well, yeah, I guess both of us, to some degree, we are following that same path where we are slowly building up that credibility. Now you have a book and that book will give you so much more weight. I actually think that catapults you to a new level because not only is it a book, but it's, I haven't read it yet, but it's, I'm going to assume, it's a very good book. It's got a publisher behind it. How many have you sold, James? Have you sold many?

James Martin: I don't know exact numbers, but I do know that Amazon UK did 1,500 on pre-order.

Ian Paget: Wow.

James Martin: That was just Amazon UK.

Ian Paget: That was just UK, wow.

James Martin: Yeah, so that is mind blowing for me because I was hoping to sell 1000. Like, "Oh, I hope like one person buys it."

Ian Paget: Well, your publisher must be really happy with that.

James Martin: They are happy. They are happy with me, which is always a good thing because that's another thing for me is building relationship. I want to do another book, and there is talks of another book already in the pipeline. But I don't want to let people down. I want to pay back people's trust in me. For me, it's quite a lot of weight to bear on your shoulders. You got to write this book, you got to write a book that people are going to buy. You got to write a book that is going to sell. And to know that it has done that and all those things. Because what would've been the worst case scenario, if they invest in me, we both put in all this work, it goes out.

Obviously, I've been given a chunk of money to get going, but I can almost... It'll be a bit of an ego dent, I suppose, and a bit quite deflating if nobody bought it. But I can carry on with my life and do my work. But for the publishers, it's like, "Ah, that was-"

Ian Paget: Yeah, they put in the financing. They've taken risk.

James Martin: Yeah, they've put in a lot of time and effort and risk, and if it didn't pay off, I would forever, although it'd be okay, feel a little bit bad about that. Feel like I'd let them down. The fact that I haven't and it has done really well, and I don't know... It was, when it came out, was bestseller in UK and US, and I think it might be number two or three now but that's after four weeks almost.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it was a bestseller at one point.

James Martin: Yeah, exactly.

Ian Paget: Now you can say it's a bestseller.

James Martin: I don't like to do that. I sold it and it was a bestseller for one day. I don't think that really counts. But, no, it was number one for like four weeks on Amazon, which I'm really proud of. But that wouldn't have happened without the support of the people that bought it. That's not me, that's down to the people that supported me and I'm forever grateful for that. Yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting.

Ian Paget: Yeah, well, I think that's a good point to wrap up the interview, and I hope people listening have found it useful having a bit of an insight into the process. Yeah, going by James's book, I'm going to be open to say this is my way of giving back to James to help him promote his book, so go and buy it...

James Martin: Well, you should have told them to buy two books.

Ian Paget: Buy two. Well, maybe three, maybe four.

James Martin: I mean, we've all got a girlfriend, a dog, a boyfriend, whatever it is, just buy everybody one. Everybody just buy their book.

Ian Paget: James, could you maybe throw in a bonus if people buy a load? Like if they buy as many as 10?

James Martin: If you buy 10 books, I will send you a hat. How about that?

Ian Paget: That is cool. I actually think people might take up the offer.

James Martin: Well, I hope so.

Ian Paget: Would they need to... Like if you was genuinely going to do that, would they need to contact you directly?

James Martin: Yeah, if anybody does do that, just DM me and show me your receipt and I'll send you a hat.

Ian Paget: Well, there you go. That's a Logo Geek discount.

James Martin: As an exclusive.

Ian Paget: Yeah, special for people that made it all the way to the end of the interview.

James Martin: Yeah, I love that. Love that.

Ian Paget: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much, James.

James Martin: I'll tell you what, I'll definitely do it too.

Ian Paget: Cool. Awesome. Good stuff. Again, and thanks very much, James. It's been fantastic speaking once again.

James Martin: Yeah, cheers buddy. Always a pleasure.