YouTube, Lettering & Logos with Will Paterson

Will Patterson: When I was in school, I had a friend called Jay who had a YouTube channel and he basically did like GFX, so like proper gamer stuff and he sort of inspired my passion into creativity because we enjoyed the same things. We failed school together as well. Yeah, he did Photoshop stop, and he was designing syndicates backgrounds and syndicates thumbnails and loads of proper gamer YouTubers at the time. I just thought it was really cool. The way that I started my YouTube channel wasn't based around that, but it was based on the knowledge that anyone can grow a YouTube channel. You don't have to be cool at school or the bees knees to actually get people to follow you.

I just, from college, when I quit college, basically learning how to become a secretary, I decided that when I was going to learn design by myself, it I couldn't find a tutorial online of something that I wanted to learn, I would teach it myself by just playing around with the software or teach myself a principle and then post it on YouTube and hope people would watch it, and it sort of snowballed from there.

Ian Paget: Have you found that by doing YouTube videos continuously as you are, that you're attracting clients? Because I notice that almost all of your content is targeted specifically at designers and not clients. Do you get many inquiries as a result of doing your YouTube videos?

Will Patterson: All the time. Yeah, most of the people that email me. It depends on what kind of company you're working for. I work for agencies as well as off my own back, I treat my job ... I am technically an agency in the sense of when a client comes to me and if they've got multiple needs, it's not just a logo. I hire other people to help out with all the needs, but under my name. The way that people come to me is they normally see a video, and they either are starting a new business or they have a business or it's a company that has found me online that finds me entertaining or knows my skillset.

They sort of have that element of trust, so they become a client in one way or another, whether that's logo design or hand lettering.

Ian Paget: Just to understand, when a client comes to you quite frequently you're outsourcing that to different people that have a similar style to you. Can I just ask briefly how are you actually managing that if it's under your name? Are you finding people that do similar work and sourcing it out to them? Are you the person that's collaborating with the client, just so that I can understand how that works?

Will Patterson: Sure. For instance, it depends on the scale of the company. If at the minute, I'm working for a very large company in America and it will be going on for the next two months, but I'm only working on a logo concept for them, just one concept to give to them, that kind of client I work for myself, but let's say ... I can't really speak about many of my clients because we all make them NDA and stuff like that, but if a client, let's say it was a watch company or somebody comes to me and they say we've got this new idea. I won't just offer them a logo. I'll actually offer them more services.

I'll do the logo, but normally the other sides to the branding, like if they wanted animation or web design or brand strategy, I have people in place to give them that. I'll either get them hired onto the job, the people who are working with it, or I will just send them to someone that I know that can do it, or I'll just hire someone for a couple hours or whatever and do that for them.

Ian Paget: Are you still the person that coordinates with the client, and you're just collaborating with these different people to complete the tasks?

Will Patterson: Sort of, yeah. It always is different. It's not like a set process when it comes to a huge project. I don't really talk about it much on my channel because it can become confusing because I can't give any specifics to a certain client. I can't really do a case study on it. For the majority of the time, if they ask me to brand them and come up with an identity for them, I'll be doing that, and if there are any other needs, I will hire someone to come and collaborate with them.

If there's something that I can't do but I know they need to have, I'll urge them to go to someone else, or I'll get someone else to come to me, under my sort of branding banner to design that or the website or whatever. I'm the one that talks to the client, yeah.

Ian Paget: Nice. That sounds really good. I mean I'm doing something similar at the moment, but I actually passed that over to someone else who will complete that task and do all the communication and everything. There's obviously some great things that we can do as individuals to still grow our business to an agency level. Now I want to steer back to the YouTube side of things because I know that it does obviously position you as an expert and is clearly attracting a lot of people towards you. The people like myself, and there'd be quite a few people out there, they were to consider to start their own YouTube channel and they haven't taken action.

In my case, the main reason is because the moment I turn that camera on, I feel nervous, and I just don't feel comfortable. If I record anything, I watch it back and I just feel like a retard. I was wondering what's been your experience with that when you started out? Do you suffer from any kind of anxiety with doing YouTube videos, or do you find it quite easy?

Will Patterson: Difficult question because I am much different in person. I am a lot different. I've got a persona, which is highly exaggerated. I am actually really solemn, I'm very quiet. I'm not much of a talker, but when I can put myself into a mode where I do talk a lot, like on YouTube videos or podcasts or whatever, and it's not a performance, it's more of an engaging tactic, if you get my drift.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I do.

Will Patterson: The fear that I have, because I've been doing YouTube videos for such a long time, for me, it's like a few years now, four years I think, I've grown used to a camera, and when I look at the camera, I don't see me. I see my subscribers. I see the ones that always watch and I try and answer those questions that they have. I mean the only things that I get self-conscious about or fear when it comes to stuff like that, is I pull my beard out and I can't grow a proper beard. I just let it grow out, and also my weight I also get anxious about that. Well not anxious, more of like a self-consciousness off and on camera, but I strive to push myself to do it.

It's not hard for me now, but at first it was because you become natural to the camera. It's sort of like your friend. It's just like another day when you do it. It becomes easier over time. It's like when you first hear your own voice in a recording and you hate it because it sounds weird, and then over time, you won't even notice it's different. It just sounds normal.

Ian Paget: I can totally relate with that, doing the podcasting because when I first started doing it, oh dear God, I was so nervous and kept saying "Um" and "um." It's an uncomfortable thing, so I think podcasting and videos is clearly the same thing. For me and anyone out there that's listening to this that wants to start a video, based on what Will just said, it sounds like you just need to start and just start to get comfortable with it.

Will Patterson: That's it. The best tip I can give you is to go in with a mindset of you do not have to post this. The amount of videos that are not posted on my channel, it's unreal.

Ian Paget: That's pretty interesting.

Will Patterson: Yeah, because I really go in with it. That's why I love video, because I'm such a slow guy. I either talk too quickly and it doesn't make sense or I talk to slow and it's not very concise either then. I go in with the mindset of it's a safe environment because I, in video software or editing software, in post production, I can edit that. I can get rid of that silence or me getting mad at the camera or something. I can get rid of all those. No matter what happens, I can rerecord it and make it decent again so I can bring it to my standards so that I can be comfortable with it.

Ian Paget: I know a lot of your videos, I've watched a few of them, and they're quite heavily composited. There's bits of it where it's a video of you, which is nicely lit and you might cut to screen capture of you working on logo for example. Could you talk through kind of the process for creating a video like that? What tools and what software and so on are you using?

Will Patterson: Sure. I'm actually uploading a video now, but I've literally recorded and edited one now. The tools that I use for it, I've got these like they're called Aperture LEDs. On this side, I've got like one that is a key light that bounces off the wall, and another one that's a spotlight with an umbrella that diffuses it. Really cheap lights. I think they're like 60 quid for both of them. They're on C stands, and the softer the light, the better, especially if you've got glasses so it kind of stops the reflections.

Will Patterson: I also have an Audio-Technica something mic that plugs into my computer through an XLR, and that gives me good audio. I think the main thing is just lighting. If you can soften the light, get rid of any harsh light, it can make it a lot easier for the viewer to relax and watch you, and it also gets rid of some of the blemishes.

Ian Paget: That's great advice. What kind of camera and software are you using?

Will Patterson: Oh yeah, by the way, the way camera is like a bridge camera. It takes 4k video and I downgrade it. The software that I use is ScreenFlow. I record a screen on ScreenFlow 3. I also record the audio into Adobe Audition, and then I edit it in Premier Pro.

Ian Paget: Okay. You're consistently churning out videos, and you have been for years. Obviously creating videos takes a lot of time, and I know that you're also doing client work. How are you structuring your day or your week in order to continuously produce good video content and also do your client work as well?

Will Patterson: That's a difficult one. It's with difficulty. I've been thinking about this a lot actually recently over the past couple weeks. There's a mentality of hustle, and I've said it a few times on different podcasts where I just don't agree with the hustle mentality in the whole sense of if you want to see your dreams happen, you have to work ridiculously hard, and I may be exaggerating, but give up on your life, just base your life around working and working 25/7. Something that I learned very quickly was that it wasn't the amount of time that I was spending on something, it was the smart time.

I always call it smart time. If I'm using my time correctly, am I doing things that actually will build my business in the time I spend? Because I spend about eight to 10 hours a day working, and then on a weekend, I won't work at all. Some days I'll take off, and the time that I fit in I want to make sure works correctly. My day normally structures in the morning I'll get up, I'll shower, get ready and then I'll sit at home for a bit looking over my emails. I use an app called Things 3 that organising my day. I'll put a little to-do list together, check if I've got any meetings, at what times, and then I'll hit either an office or I'll go to a restaurant or a hotel and sit down, do some emails and do any admin stuff.

Then I'll normally come up here. I'll think about doing a video of some kind, and I'll start doing client work, do some lettering and I'll just bounce between them all day, doing a bit of client work, a bit of lettering and then sometimes I might not have done a video or sometimes I might not have done any lettering. It's all about bouncing them around, but I think having multiple things to do during the day, like I always separate them into three projects, lettering, client work and video. Having those things always leaves me wanting to do one of them, so it's like I don't procrastinate. I just do it. I do one or the other because it's all I sort of do.

Structuring my day is kind of ... for me, it's easy because I have to learn self-disciplined because I've never been employed. I've always worked for myself. I've never had a boss telling me to do something. Mine is based on I think a fear of failing. If I don't do it, then I'm not going to get to that next step, and it's not always a financial failure. It's more of like a moral failure of like I'm letting myself down or there's thousands of people that want to see a video today, so I have to put one out. It's hard to work out how I structure my days. It's normally my wife as well. She normally tells me what I should do based on the work that I've got. I hope that answers it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does, perfectly. I'm quite happy because we've actually got time to dive into something else with this. I'm quite curious to talk about your hand lettering, but I didn't think that we'd have time for it. So I think, yeah, let's go into that. With your hand lettering, are you able to talk through the process that you take from initial client conversations through to the final piece?

Will Patterson: Sure. It's very much like the logo design process, but a heck easier. It's so much easier for me.

Ian Paget: Do you classify lettering and logos as two separate things? They're two completely different separate processes for you?

Will Patterson: Oh yeah, completely. I have to separate my mind because otherwise, I'll be working on every letter form like in a logo, making sure I test each size, scale, reflectivity and stuff like that. I'll always be checking them. Hand lettering is authentic. It's meant for a purpose, but it's also meant to be interesting. It's like a logo isn't meant ... for me anyway, I don't ever create them to be interesting. I create them to work and for people to make money out of them. If it gets interesting, that's great, but the primary purpose of hand lettering is to convey a message to a consumer and nowadays, an interesting way that sort of looks like magic or in a natural human way that can convey the company's mission statement or whatever.

Whenever I get a client process or a hand lettering commission, it follows the same rules as to the admin of it, so obviously contract paperwork, NDAs, and then payments and stuff like that, client brief. Depending on what it is, if it's an ad campaign or something it may change, but it kind of follows the same thing, the only difference being is that I will give them a few concepts. With logo design, I don't give concepts. I give one that I know is best, but with hand lettering, I like it to be even more collaborative with the client, whoever they may be.

Ian Paget: You're treating it more like a piece of art?

Will Patterson: Yeah. It can be subjective to a sense. It's more subjective than I think a logo design can be, even though logo design is pretty subjective nowadays. I mean in the traditional sense of lettering now, a lot of people have a lot to say about it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, you're right.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Okay. I think, let's talk about these two things separately. A lettering piece, obviously once you've got the client and you've got the brief and everything, how would you go about starting that process in terms of actually working out what that lettering piece is going to look like?

Will Patterson: Sure. I normally panic, and then ... Not really, sometimes I do. I do what comes naturally. It starts off with writing the word out on my iPad. I always use my iPad for that right now, for client commissions because I can do it anywhere. They don't have to scan it. There's so many more features on it. It's just like using a Cintiq for Photoshop really.

Ian Paget: You're using an iPad Pro with the Apple pencil?

Will Patterson: Yeah. Apple pencil, Adobe Sketch and Procreate. Yeah, I write down the word, I'm just doing it as we speak right now so I can remember. If I have a concept for something, it would like say Merry Christmas, I would just write it down normally and I would see the relationships between the letters and I would come up with maybe two or three ideas, depending on the scale of the project and what it's for. I'll pick the best one, and I would just go for an idea based around the best that I can do subjectively in the actual artsiness of it.

From there, I would build around the letter forms and I would change the spacings built around the letter forms and then once I've done that, I would think about effects, wherever it's supposed to be clean, wherever it's supposed to be a bit more rugged and torn and stuff, and then I would work out then ... this is really paraphrasing it, I'm going off the cuff here, but then I would also check and see if they want any shadows or if they want it scanned in to look 3D or anything like that, but mostly my lettering is very 2D, very much like it's been there for 20 years and no one's washed it sort of thing. Kind of like that vibe.

Ian Paget: I know that you said with the lettering that you normally present the client like two or three different options. Are you fully rendering them to completely finished polished pieces or are you presenting sketchy type work at that point?

Will Patterson: Interesting question because I probably do it really wrong. I actually do render them sometimes. A lot of the time, because I enjoy lettering a lot, it's something that I do for my job, but it's also part of my daily enjoyment and it's how I relax when I work on personal Instagram pieces, I kind of sometimes want to finish it to make sure that what I am coming up with at the end is the best. I want them to see what it could be like.

Ian Paget: I agree with that. I know there's been a lot of conversation about this. Some people present, they either will show you the client sketches, whether that sketch is on a piece of paper or sketch is on an iPad, for example, but I don't personally agree. I don't know if you have this experience, but if I show someone a sketch, they can't see what I can see.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: I can see something in a rough sketch, but they just see the sketch, you know what I mean?

Will Patterson: That's it, yeah.

Ian Paget: I guess you have that exact same problem, that you don't want the client to get the wrong idea based on a sketch.

Will Patterson: That's it, and that sketch is like that idea that you had, even if they said it was great when it was fully rendered and they loved it, they will not say it's great when they've already seen it in the worst light. It's all about perspective of selling the work is in, and with hand lettering, if I have a couple of different ideas, it's like ... say if it was an agency, I wouldn't render out. I would just give them a couple ideas because they know themselves that it's just a render. If it's just like a little business or even just a big business with no agent involved, I would tend to make it look as good as possible without spending all my time on it fixing it. Yeah.

Ian Paget: With the lettering pieces, just to get a perspective in comparison to logos, how long do you typically spend on a lettering project?

Will Patterson: It depends on the scale of the amount of words. It's hard for me to tell. For instance, today I've worked on ... I've been doing a course and everything else, but during my lunch break, I was working on some Merry Christmas ideas. I like to do some really nice Instagram pictures for Christmas, and that isn't finished yet. It took me about an hour but it's basically finished, and it's just something that I had on my mind. If it's like a branded one for another company, I would spend more time on it because I know that some things that I like that I would have in it, they wouldn't have in it and they'll have conditions to it and they want to have some sort of say in it.

It depends really on my mood and also I guess ... it's hard to explain. You get a feeling of how ... you know when you're fully ready for it and you want to do it and you're just raring to go because you have the idea in your head already? I think it's easier then than it is when you're coming up with your ideas and then you've got the pressure of money, you know?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I know that.

Will Patterson: It's a hard question to answer, but generally it will take, for a proper client piece that I normally do, probably on and off it will take me a week because I don't work in it all the time, all day, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah. I'm in very much the same boat because I find when you work for yourself because obviously you don't have a boss ripping you, so to speak, there are certain times of the day when you're more productive and better at working at things. It sounds like you're similar to me. You don't pick and choose what you want to work on, but you kind of do and you jump between different things because you've got different types of projects to work on.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: That sounds cool.

Will Patterson: That was exactly it.

Ian Paget: I want to talk about now, okay, so lettering we've spoken about that. Can you talk through how you go about working on a logo project in comparison?

Will Patterson: Sure. This is much easier to answer. I work on a lot more logo stuff, obviously all the admin stuff. Then when I'm starting the ideas, the first thing that I do is I get my sketchbook out and I do not use my iPad. I only use paper now. I don't know why. I just like paper and pencil for logo. It just seems a lot easier for me so I don't get distracted. I'll get a little dot grid out and I'll just start sketching ideas, any ideas that I've got on my brain. I'll bring out all the good ones first and I'll see them slowly get worse and worse and worse, and then I know I'm in the right direction because I'm getting worse.

For me, I always see it as kind of at the start, you need to get all your preconceived ideas out of you. It's like sifting through the rubbish to find the good, so I just get them all out and from there, I will do some research. I will mood board and I'll go back to creating some ideas, and then I'll sort of like-

Ian Paget: So you're doing sketchbook work and then research and then mood boards. That's quire an interesting way of doing it because I know lot of people, they might start with the research, then the mood boards, and then the sketches. What's the reason why you jumped straight in the sketches?

Will Patterson: As I said before, it's kind of like getting your ideas out because you can have an idea for a company and you can be raring to go, and you're like, "Yeah, I definitely know what I'm going to give these people," but I must go ahead and do some research. No matter how much research you do after, you're still going to do that idea.

Ian Paget: Yeah, okay. You're just having an initial brain dump, so to speak. You have any early ideas, and then once you get to a point where you're basically dry of ideas, that's when you start doing the mood boarding and so on to spark new ideas basically?

Will Patterson: That's it. I try and make my work look bad at first because if it looks bad but it works, then you're onto a winner because a logo in its worse form should be able to convey a message. So that's the reason why.

Ian Paget: Okay. You mentioned that you go into mood boarding. What's the next part of that process?

Will Patterson: After mood boarding, again it's just sketching, and I'll sketch for a few days coming up with different ideas, going for a walk, and I'll sketch. I'll just have tons of paper, sketchbooks with me and I'll compile them all together and with a big pen, big red pen so to speak, I'll just number them or star the ones that I could work with, and then I'll sit and ponder on that logo for a while and see which one I want to vectorise and I'll vectorise one that I think works best and I'll test it, and if it doesn't work, I'll vectorise another one, test it and see it works and so on.

Ian Paget: Do you have any useful methods for narrowing those choices down? Because if you're literally presenting the one, have you got a clever way of knowing that that final logo that you choose to vector is going to be the perfect choice?

Will Patterson: Yeah, I think it's more to do with common sense. I'll narrow them down by common sense and I won't go any deeper than that. I may have like 50 of these little tiny sketches depending on whether it's an icon or a fully typographic letter based logo, which is what I normally work on. If there's like an icon, I'll have like 50 of these little icons on a page and a lot of them will look terrible, but I know that there's room to improve or to find the golden side of that.

The way that I narrow it down is just using my common sense, like will this logo work on social media, will this work in the applications to which they have expressed in their brief? One thing, I don't trust myself, I don't trust my brain. I don't trust my eyes, so I tend to vectorise them first. I'll vectorise the ones that I know can work and I'll go from there.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I understand. I do something similar. I do a lot of sketching, and then the best option, I literally take a highlighter or a coloured pen or whatever I got near me and I'll circle the ones that work.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Then you can narrow it down from there. It's like you said, it's kind of like common sense once you know how a logo should work. That's when you know that that one is the one.

Will Patterson: Yeah, totally.

Ian Paget: I know that you are presenting the client one option.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Could you talk through what you're actually presenting and how you go about presenting the logo to make sure that the client is going to agree it? I currently present multiple options, but I am considering going into one logo concept approach, but my concerns always being what if the client doesn't like that one, you know?

Will Patterson: I've got a good answer for this one.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Can you talk through how you're presenting that one option and how you can ensure that the client is going to agree it?

Will Patterson: The first thing is that you cannot ensure that they'll agree with it. It's called the art of selling, but backtrack from there. When I present a logo, it is generally on black and white at first. Depending on the scale of the company, whether they have partners and they have to have board meetings or whatever about it, if I have to do a full on presentation, I'll go the whole 10 yards sort of thing. If it's like not a presentation, I'll come up with like mock-ups and I'll show them the application of the logo. The reason why I only show one is because if I give them multiple options, what I've found is that then they become the designer, they become ... and I've just produced something for them.

They have hired me and entrusted me to come up with a mark that is the face of their business through my experience and my eyes, and they have faith in that. If I give them ... in my understanding of what I've done, whenever I've given them multiple options, I've only set them up to fail if they choose the wrong one or the one that I know doesn't work the best. Now that's not to say when they've seen it, they want to see another one, and if they want to see another one, I'll give them another one, and I've already got a few to show them. If I get them to solely focus and buy in on one logo, then that helped them and it helps me come very straight-headed towards the goal.

It's not about the easiest way to do it. In fact, a lot of designers, if they did this, they probably would only ever create one logo and not have any sort of lying around for that company, any other ideas that could work just as well. The problem I guess with my way of doing it is that some clients could perceive it, if they were listening to this, as me being lazy as to not presenting them a logo, but in reality it's all about making them focus on what actually matters, which is this one mark. What do you like and not like about it based on nothing else but your preferences right now? Not based on another comparison of a logo or anything else.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't want them comparing. If they compare the logos, then they start becoming a designer, and we all know that clients do try and design the logo with you. I'm all for collaboration, but there's a cutoff point as to when you say, "No, you've hired me for a reason" kind of thing. I hope that makes sense.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. I've actually only really been freelancing just over a year now, working on the logos and I've adapted my process from one that used an agency and I'm starting to make it mine, and I'm very much finding that even though I might be presenting multiple options, there's always ones which is stronger.

Will Patterson: Sure.

Ian Paget: Thankfully, in most cases, I can convince them that one, but you're totally right, that when they do pick the wrong one-

Will Patterson: Yeah, but the thing is what you're doing is good though because that means you're good at selling it. That must mean that I'm not because I don't let them fail. That's why they pay me a lot to do something, you know? If you're showing them that one is the best and you're able to actually articulate that to them, I think ... yeah, because I have a problem with articulation sometimes. I'm not very good at speaking, even though I do speak. I don't want to set them up to fail basically.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I do the bulk of my conversation actually by email. Sometimes the easiest way to get them to agree is actually with a telephone conversation.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: That's when you can speak about the different options and why ... I had one client where he liked two of them, and obviously they were both viable options. I wouldn't present different options, and one of them is clearly better, but in my eyes, one of them was stronger and I was able to explain the reason why and I was able to get them to buy into that, but you're right, it doesn't always work. I'm wondering, okay, in those situations where the client hasn't liked it-

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: ... are you just literally presenting them another one? How are you handling those objections? Are you just simply taking out a couple of other options and letting them choose from those? Can you talk through how you handle that?

Will Patterson: If the client doesn't like it, the first thing I do is I make a video for them that's private. I make it's like a critique video. It's really weird. I might have to upload one one day. Well I might have to public it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, you have to now.

Will Patterson: It's basically me in front of my computer in the exact same setup. I treat it like a video, but a bit more formal, of me explaining the process, and I'll actually show them what I've done. As I walk through the process, I can remember certain milestones in the creation of it. I'll be like, "I put this thing here because of this" or "It didn't match when it scaled" or "I need to create a variant because it's on like a black background or something and this works because of this, and this one doesn't work because of that." That's the second thing I'll do is I'll not fight my corner. I'll fight for the logo because I know that even though it's not finished yet and it's a concept and it still needs to be finalised and stuff, I know it will work.

What I do is I try and show them my excitement for it and my actual enthusiasm for this one, and if they still don't like it, which does happen. It does happen, and I don't blame the client for that. They've just like ... I've obviously either missed the mark at one point of understanding the brief and translating it or they are making a bad decision. What I'll do is I'll go back to not the drawing board per se, but I'll take one of those other ideas that I have vectorised and I'll work on that. I'll try and show them what doesn't work. The biggest part of my presentations really when it comes to that stage is designing what doesn't work.

From that moment on, I spend probably 90% of the time working for them designing things that won't work, but that they want to see. I will prove to them it doesn't work. Sometimes they will want it anyway, and that's just the way that it goes sometimes. I'll always give them the one that I prefer as well. I'll always finalise it and give them the one that I prefer in case they change their mind because they have hired me for a service, not a product. Yeah, if I've explained that correctly, I hope you understand that.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I love it. I really like your video idea, and to some extent, you should probably do that with all clients anyway I'm thinking because it'd be good to have the opportunity to run the client for the process, your thought process and you can kind of get them to buy into the end idea because they followed along with that journey. I think that's a fantastic idea.

Will Patterson: They also can't butt in either because they're just listening to a video.

Ian Paget: It's a video, yeah. That's a great idea. Now I think I want to kind of just talk through how you actually started your career, because I know at the beginning of the conversation you mentioned that you've never worked for a company. You've always worked for yourself.

Will Patterson: Yeah.

Ian Paget: You were studying admin?

Will Patterson: I was learning how to be a sexy secretary.

Ian Paget: A secretary, okay. How did you go from learning how to be a secretary to working on logos and lettering and doing YouTube videos, because that's a huge learning curve? How did that go? How did that happen?

Will Patterson: It's a very strange story that I don't think many people know. People have heard snippets, but basically I failed all my GCSEs by choice. I wasn't a graphic artist, but I think the obscenities that I drew on my GCSE papers were sort of lining me up for that. I was not a disruptive student. I was just lost in the education system. I'm dyslexic, ironically. I saw words differently. I couldn't read quick. I wasn't very well spoken. I mean I could do public speaking fine. I don't know why, I do it all the time in my church, but I knew that I wasn't academic. My brother was. My dad is, he was a doctor. My mom wasn't, and I wasn't.

I failed all my GCSEs, and I managed to get accepted into a level two course. I was in college, and from there I went and did business admin because it had the word business in front of it, but all it was was me learning how to look sexy and be a secretary, write reports and learn business lingo, a bunch of jargon. It was a good time though. I did enjoy it. It was something that I could get my teeth into, but when I finished my second year, because the second year was like a two year course in the next level of it, and this is where it gets really strange.

Now I'm a Christian, right, and I have been since I was like 12. My family isn't ... No one I was really friends with were either, and I started going to a church when I was very young, so when I was 12. Then when I was 17, I was like in my faith, like now I'm a Christian and I believe in Jesus and God and all of that. I remember just one day asking God why I'm doing what I'm doing and what He wants me to do next because everyone is pretty scared because they were like, "Well you're not going to get an academic job either. You'll probably be on like ..." Nothing wrong with stocking shelves at Costco's but no one wants to spend the rest of their lives doing that.

I remember thinking, "What am I going to do?" For some reason, in my mind God just put, in my perspective anyway, God just put this idea of "Why don't you do design?" At that point, I was kind of like that's mental. I am crazy because I've never touched Photoshop. I can't draw, and I'm bad at learning.

Ian Paget: How old was you at that point?

Will Patterson: I think I was ... yeah, I was 17 or 16, turning 17. I was just like, "That's crazy. I'm not going to do it." Then I did do it. I thought about it, and I was like, "When I come out of college, I'm not going to exactly get a job being a secretary because there is no jobs for that around here." I just said I'm going to trust whether it was God or my gut feeling. I think it was God. I went ahead and quit college, told my girlfriend whose now my wife that I'm doing this. She freaked out. My mom and dad freaked out. My dad was kind of like, "Just let him get it out of his system." I sat for three years learning. Instead of going to uni, I took out a loan and I sat for three years learning.

Ian Paget: How was your learning? Was you busy doing some kind of online course or did you go to some kind of courses at a local college or something?

Will Patterson: No, no, I just learned on the computer.

Ian Paget: Yeah, okay, got it. You found tutorials online and you started learning and practicing.

Will Patterson: Lots and books.

Ian Paget: That's amazing.

Will Patterson: I was just reading books. I've got a book about grids, and this passion started consuming me of creativity. It was like a dream come true. I was like, "Maybe one day I might be able to draw. Maybe one day I can do this." I started doing that. I created a tee shirt business called Prophecy Apparel, which I still do own but I don't sell anymore on there. That didn't really work out because I wanted to do more client work and I wasn't really making money. Even though I was creating YouTube videos and stuff like that, I started to focus on the old school nitty gritty lettering and calligraphy and that sort of coincided with everything.

It's an amalgamation of learning by doing. I was literally learning as I was going. I was making fake projects for clients. They weren't real clients, I was just creating these fake projects. I can't remember exactly what videos I was watching, but I was watching illustrated tutorials and stuff, and then I'm really good at systems, so I'm really good at working out how software works. I was just doing that, reading blog posts, looking at other peoples work and really dissecting and reverse engineering how design has created things. I learned in a new way myself, and that sort of spun out into the tutorials online where I guess a lot of people might see it as me teaching in a different way.

That's how I became here. It's just like everything sort of fell into place. It's a weird story, but yeah.

Ian Paget: It's not. It's almost like when you was a young teenager, you were very lost and you didn't really have a place in the world so to speak, but the moment you started learning how to do lettering and working on logos, that's when you found your passion.

Will Patterson: Yeah, I've always been good at playing guitar and stuff like that and things with my hands I can do. Sounds wrong, but I'm all right at doing stuff. When I started learning calligraphy, it was so calming and something to really put my focus into, and then Instagram and YouTube started taking off. It's hard for me to explain. If you got my wife in here, she'll probably explain it in like 10 seconds.

Ian Paget: How did you get your first client then, because I know you said that you was creating all these fake projects? Was you putting them on a website or something? Where did your first client come from, your first paying client? How did that come about?

Will Patterson: This is like a really cool story. I've got an awesome neighbour. When I was living with my parents, our neighbours across the road, I used to hang out with them when I was younger. He was like the neighbour's son was creating or started a painting and decorating business. For some reason, I don't know how, I think it was my wife, she was my girlfriend, she was friends with his girlfriend. I mean he was a nice guy. He's called Ken, and I speak to him every now and then. He wanted me to design a log for him for his business. I popped myself. I didn't know ... I was like, "Oh god, this is my first logo."

I quoted him 30 quid or 30 pounds, which is probably like how many dollars?

Ian Paget: I did one that was like 25 pound when I first started out, so we're in the same boat. Keep going.

Will Patterson: I literally, I designed him a logo and I used like a Serif font, and I don't know how... It was actually a big project for the first project because it was going on brochures, business cards and a van, and he was my neighbour, so I would have to face him every day.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's a big deal.

Will Patterson: I just spent like a week coming up with this one thing, and I didn't know what I was doing. That's the time when I realised this is for me, but it's just so fun learning how to do it. I basically did it, and oh man, I'm going to have to get you a picture of the logo because it worked really well, and I'm not even kidding. I'm not ashamed of it, because every time I come out of my office, because his van is parked opposite the road to me, every time-

Ian Paget: You have to take a picture, if it's your first logo and people haven't seen it. We need to ... I'll put that in the show notes.

Will Patterson: Yes, because it's so strange and it's such a nice reminder from where I've come from because every time I finish work and I go outside, it's parked there. I see it.

Ian Paget: Your story is nuts. You literally started almost pretty much from nothing, not having any qualifications, but you've been able to build up this-

Will Patterson: Yeah, and he gave me 40 pounds as well instead of 30.

Ian Paget: Nice. Brilliant. That is your first project, and then everything went from there, like your YouTube following has grown, you got more and more clients. You're at the point where you built an agency and you're collaborating with people.

Will Patterson: I think, yeah, it's in a nutshell.

Ian Paget: You're well known in the industry. Yeah, you're well known in the industry. I've known your name for a while. I've seen your videos and stuff. It's nuts to know that you literally came from nothing and you built up. It's amazing Will. You've done an amazing job.

Will Patterson: Oh thank you so much. I just wanted to say as well that as a little encouragement. Thank you for saying that though Ian, because it's reminded me of something that I've said to my wife. At that time, I had nothing to lose.

Ian Paget: Yeah, you didn't really. You literally had nothing because a lot of people, when they come out of college, they've got some qualifications or something. I don't know, if you come out of school, my immediate feeling is you're probably not going to get a job where you're going to completely struggle, so I think you've done ... Yeah, you've done well to get to where you are now. I'm pretty excited for what the future is. It's awesome.

Will Patterson: Thank you so much. That's really encouraging because sometimes it, even as a ... I'm sure you get it as well, people who are seen or deemed to be successful by other people, they don't feel that sometimes. They feel like there should be an end of "If I just get there, I've made it" or whatever, but then in reality it's just like there's another mountain to climb.

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Will Patterson: The molehill that you see is someone else's mountain, and it's like it's a perspective thing, right?

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's a really strange thing because I know I've always had goals of what I wanted to do, and to some degree, a couple of years ago actually reached that point. For example, I got a logo in a book, I got an article in a magazine and was featured on Creative Bloq, getting invited to these award things, all this stuff, which you kind of ... when you imagine it as a kid, it's like you can imagine all the people cheering and you're standing on a pedestal and it's like, "Yeah, I made it. Yeah." The reality of it is you get in a book, you show everyone and no one cares anymore because it's like, "Yeah, well done."

Will Patterson: Yeah, literally.

Ian Paget: It's not what you imagine, and you just need to keep going. It's like the reality of it is that there isn't actually an end. It's just you need to keep working toward your goals and everything is about the journey, not the final destination because the destination isn't what you imagine it's going to be.

Will Patterson: That is...

Ian Paget: Right, yeah, that's the way it is.

Will Patterson: It is. It's like you've got more to lose as well, so the pressure's on.

Ian Paget: Oh come on, I wouldn't think like that. If anything goes wrong, it's not going to go drastically wrong. Don't be thinking that.

Will Patterson: YouTube please do not shut off my channel.

Ian Paget: Yeah. That's the worst thing that can happen is your channel go, but to be honest, people that are subscribing, they know you. So if your channel did just vanish, just start it back up again. People would carry and watch it.

Will Patterson: No, I'll make a website called MeTube or something like that and just directly compete with them.

Ian Paget: That's a brilliant idea. Will, I know that you've got a bright future ahead of you. It's been a real pleasure to chat with you. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Logo Geek podcast.

Will Patterson: No worries, man. It's been great speaking to you.