Episode 34 // Kathy and Mike from Phoenix Design Week on How Design Shapes a State’s Brand

Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Phoenix, Arizona, it’s time for Phoenix business radio, spotlighting the city’s best businesses and the people who lead them.

Mike Jones: Hey, we’re back. It’s [easy 00:00:14] brand casts.

Chris Stadler: I know. It’s awesome.

Mike Jones: Yeah, this is awesome. [crosstalk 00:00:18]. It’s my favorite time of every month.

Chris Stadler: I know.

Mike Jones: We have to wait in anticipation because we’re slow and we don’t want to do it more often than once a month. So this is great. [crosstalk 00:00:26]. Easy brand cast for those that may not know, is the place. This is a great podcast and radio show that Chris Stadler and I host. I’m Mike Jones and-

Chris Stadler: Yeah, I’m Chris Stadler as Mike said.

Mike Jones: And we get to interview awesome people in this great state of Arizona about what makes Arizona great.

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Mike Jones: And how to build a brand here and I’m really excited about today because we’ve got some really cool guests on our show from AIGA and Phoenix design week. We got Kathy Morgan. Kathy, you want to kind of just give us a quick little intro as to who you are and what you do?

Kathy Morgan: Hi Mike. Hi Chris. Hi everyone-

Chris Stadler: Hey Kathy.

Kathy Morgan: I am Kathy Morgan and I am a graphic designer. I’ve owned a graphic design studio called Morgan and Company here in Phoenix for many, many years.

Chris Stadler: For a while. I saw the date it, since 1982-

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:01:14] Yeah. You don’t need to say the date.

Chris Stadler: Well, I have to cause it’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Mike Jones: That was when-

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:01:19] Thank you.

Mike Jones: … you were designing in print [crosstalk 00:01:20], right?

Kathy Morgan: That’s right. I was a toddler at that time and my role [crosstalk 00:01:27]-

Chris Stadler: Did you use french curves to…

Kathy Morgan: … here today is as representing the board of AIGA, Arizona, which is the local chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design. I am the treasurer on the board of directors and I’m also the co-director of Phoenix Design Week this year.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome. They roped you back in?

Kathy Morgan: Yes. Last night at about 3:30 AM when we were proofing that program, I was regretting that decision, but it’ll be great in a couple of weeks.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome. Mike, you’re a little bit involved with Phoenix design week too, is that right?

Mike Marinello: I am a little bit involved. [crosstalk 00:02:06] I wasn’t up until 3:00 AM but I think about 2:00 AM and then again proofing documents about seven.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Chris Stadler: And you’re directing the event, right?

Mike Marinello: That is correct-

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome. Yeah. And then what’s your, the rest of your life? Cause I know that can’t be all of it.

Mike Marinello: Actually this year it pretty much is.

Chris Stadler: Yeah?

Mike Marinello: This is [crosstalk 00:02:26].

Chris Stadler: They are owning you.

Mike Marinello: This has been pretty much a full time gig-

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome. [crosstalk 00:02:30]

Mike Marinello: Since the last one wrapped up.

Chris Stadler: All right. That’s awesome.

Mike Marinello: Yeah, it’s been a wild ride. There’s a lot to oversee, a lot going on.

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Mike Marinello: Yeah. It’s a pretty serious event.

Mike Jones: And then real quick what got you into it? Real quick, just a little bit into your background.

Mike Marinello: My background, I’ve been designing forever and ever and ever. You mentioned French curves.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: I remember Ruby leaf and I remember I’ve played around on printing presses and things. I remember when there was no undo and Photoshop.

Mike Jones: It’s going back a ways.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: Wow.

Mike Marinello: But, I started out little working at Kinko’s, got into graphics and repographics and from there have freelanced my own stuff. I’ve worked for couple of radio stations in town. I’ve worked for just a couple of businesses, worked for some publishers here and there, kinda cut my teeth on web stuff the last couple of years, been a fun transition but again this year just kind of pulling Phoenix design week together.

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome.

Mike Marinello: Making that happen.

Mike Jones: That’s very cool.

Chris Stadler: Right on. [crosstalk 00:03:45]. And it’s like [Maranello 00:03:46].

Mike Marinello: Correct.

Chris Stadler: All right.

Mike Jones: So Kathy and Mike, thank you guys for coming on the show today. I’m really excited to have you.

Kathy Morgan: Thanks for having us.

Mike Jones: And we’ve got a fun list of questions, try to keep it casual and there’s no real agenda or game plan other than Chris, Chris always has an agenda. I never have an agenda. Chris always has an agenda.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Jones: And so we work really hard-

Chris Stadler: Secret agenda.

Mike Jones: … to blow up his agenda.

Mike Marinello: Okay. [crosstalk 00:04:11].

Mike Jones: So if the three of us can get on that same page, we should be good.

Mike Marinello: Absolutely.

Mike Jones: And yeah.

Chris Stadler: I’m excited.

Mike Jones: But yeah, we’re going to talk a little bit about state of Arizona.

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Mike Jones: What it’s like to build brands here, especially from kind of a design perspective. I’m really excited about that conversation as a recovering designer, and then we’re gonna talk a little bit about AIGA and Phoenix Design Week. So it’s really fun topics that are close to my own heart having been involved in some way, shape or form over the years-

Mike Marinello: [crosstalk 00:04:40] Sounds like going plan. [crosstalk 00:04:42] Could I, so I have a request, could I talk about conscious capitalism?

Chris Stadler: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Not only can you, you should-

Mike Jones: Wait, wait, wait. What is conscious capitalism?

Chris Stadler: That is a great question. You’d almost think he was planted [crosstalk 00:04:55]. That very question. So, conscious capitalism, Mike, I’m glad you asked that. It’s a local association bent on world domination. No wait, sorry. On a mission to share [crosstalk 00:05:08]-

Mike Marinello: That’s not what it says.

Chris Stadler: With the whole, sorry, I was getting my agenda mixed up. On a mission to share with the whole world how doing good in your business is just good business. The local chapter of Conscious Capitalism Incorporated hosts a lot of local events and provides resources for business leaders to instill a higher purpose in their company and engage all their stakeholders, and Mike, you know nothing about conscious capitalism. Do you?

Mike Jones: Nope. Nothing.

Chris Stadler: Nothing.

Mike Jones: I am not involved in any way, shape or form.

Chris Stadler: If only we knew someone who served on the board.

Mike Jones: Yeah. I wish I knew somebody too.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Jones: Yeah. Let me know.

Chris Stadler: Well, yeah. Mike serves on the board, in case you didn’t get the sarcasm.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: So if you want to be conscious though and you don’t know how, go to, get in touch at Consciouscapitalismeasy.com. That’s, Conscious capitalism easy.

Mike Marinello: Yep. That’s the website.

Chris Stadler: And just a little bit more about [crosstalk 00:06:01] conscious capitalism.

Mike Marinello: Yes.

Chris Stadler: You mentioned it. Higher purpose, having a higher purpose within your business and then there’s three other tenants of conscious capitalism. So Mike can answer to your question. What is it?

Mike Marinello: Yes. There’s kind of the 32nd answer. It’s really about doing good through your business, which will lead to a good business. Those things work hand in hand, doing good and doing business can work together-

Mike Jones: And what does that [crosstalk 00:06:27]-

Mike Marinello: To improve people’s lives. And so that looks like four things. One is having a higher purpose through your business, something beyond profits, right? Something beyond transactional commerce. Really taking care of all of your stakeholders within your business, not just your shareholders. So having a win, like a win, win, win mentality when you comes to your business and all the people that it interacts with, everyone from yes, your shareholders, but also your employees, your staff, your customers, and even the community people that you touch in your community and the environment at large and how you use the resources that your business needs to produce the products and services that you provide for people.

Mike Marinello: Then the third tenant is a conscious culture, which is building that into the culture of your business. Really is seeing this kind of win, win, win mentality for a higher purpose throughout your entire culture and making sure that everyone is really on the same page about that as you’re doing business, and a lot of that really gets played out in how you take care of people on your team, looking at kind of a holistic care of people that that work for you and work with you, and then lastly, that takes conscious leadership, right? That takes leaders within the organization who are consciously pursuing that higher purpose, who are instilling that culture and are looking to take care of all of those stakeholders.

Mike Marinello: So that’s kind of the premise, most people I know when they hear it they go, “Yeah, that’s how I do business.” We talk a lot about unconscious conscious capitalists in our, in kind of the movement-

Chris Stadler: It’s called subconscious capitalism-

Mike Marinello: Subconscious capitalism. It was birthed out of a book written by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and Dr. Raj Sisodia, who’s an academic who’s done a lot of study of kind of business and economics and kind of the triggers and levers that companies typically have used, and then also how does kind of this more conscious aspect play into that? They wrote that book about in, I think it was about 2012 that it came out, and the movement has really just blown up since then, and really it’s a sense of let’s recapture what capitalism really meant originally, and take it back from kind of the corporate greed and the crony capitalism that really has infiltrated a lot of bigger businesses, and really, I think given capitalism in and of itself a bad name and a bad rap.

Mike Jones: Gotcha.

Chris Stadler: But if you were curious about when the book was published, you would just reach behind you and grab [crosstalk 00:08:50]-

Mike Jones: Oh yeah, I can reach behind me and grab it [crosstalk 00:08:52] cause it’s in here.

Chris Stadler: That’s how serious we are, but, and how much we love [crosstalk 00:08:55]-

Mike Jones: It’s not anything new. It’s not a new thing. I think for most people that interact with it, they go, “Yeah, that’s how I do business.” What do those events look like?

Mike Marinello: Yeah, so the Arizona chapter puts on a whole series of events. We’ve been doing typically around one to two per month and they’ll range anywhere-

Mike Jones: Bake sales.

Mike Marinello: Bake sales, we do cookies-

Mike Jones: Raffles.

Mike Marinello: [crosstalk 00:09:18] we make cookies.

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:09:19] Do you guys sell chocolates?

Mike Marinello: We go door to door and sell… No.

Mike Jones: Although the girl scouts, like sometimes we have turf wars with the girl Scouts, but it’s a dirty business, I mean, you know-

Mike Marinello: So typically those-

Mike Jones: It’s the dark side of conscious…

Mike Marinello: I’m just gonna railroad right through whatever you’re saying.

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:09:35] do it.

Mike Marinello: So those events typically look like a gathering of conscious capitalist minded people in the Arizona community. There’s a little bit of networking. Typically there’s some kind of content, a presentation, either from a local business who is practicing conscious capitalism and how that’s working out in their business or some aspect of it, so particular niche. So, recently we had a startup here in town who is, built some technology around extracting water from the air through solar panel, these kind of water devices, Zero Mass Water’s the company, really cool company and they’re going global with it and their intention is to give every single person on the planet clean fresh water, even in climates and areas where you can’t get that from the ground.

Mike Marinello: They figured out how to extract water from the air.

Chris Stadler: If you can do that in Arizona, man…

Mike Marinello: Oh yeah. You totally can-

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:10:23] You can do it anywhere.

Mike Marinello: Yeah, and so they talked around, it was their chief of staff that came and talked for about an hour about their culture and how they’re really trying to instill a sense of higher purpose within their company, not just to customers, but also internally in how they take care of each other, how they take care of employees and staff, how they communicate internally. So that one had a very HR focus bend to it, and I think more often than not, that’s a lot of the content is more HR, has an HR focus to it, but sometimes there’s more, communications, and, you know, I talk about higher purpose, well, how do you tell that story to communities at large, right? Beyond your company and how do you do it in a way that’s authentic and real and not just corporate speak or, “Oh, it’s another social responsibility initiative because the board told us that we have to do something.”

Chris Stadler: People do that?

Mike Marinello: Yeah. People do that. So, and then sometimes it’s more debate style when we’ve had some really good conversations in the last couple of years with members where we’ll kind of produce like a workshop type environment and take different topics and kind of go like, “Hey, can an oil company be conscious capitalist company? Is Amazon a conscious capitalist company?” Kind of poke holes in that, see where people line up, have a little bit of debate, you get different perspectives on that. Really, really interesting conversations that come out of that.

Mike Marinello: There’s some larger events as well. We just hosted the international conference here in Phoenix, which is a global conference that attracts about a thousand people from across the world who are in the conscious capitalism movement, that travels around from state to state every year. We had it this last spring, and then we’ve also done like, we did a pitch event with all the universities about a year ago that brought in student-led startups from the different universities and kind of ran them through a very fun pitch event and at the end sponsors we’re able to give them either cash or prizes based on those different sponsors, kind of companies and what they could provide.

Mike Marinello: So it was really cool event to kind of feature some different companies and give a little conscious capitalism flavor, they had to pitch based on their higher purpose. So that was kind of fun.

Chris Stadler: So I see what you did Mike Marinello, you were the interviewee and you’ve become the interviewer.

Mike Marinello: How does that [crosstalk 00:12:42] like it?

Mike Jones: It’s like the student has become the master at asking questions.

Chris Stadler: All right. It was great. It’s like we’re having coffee. It’s awesome. [crosstalk 00:12:48] Right? But I have a question for you guys. This is about, this is design, right? So we’re all like little bit of experience with design. Biggest design pet peeve, biggest design pet peeve. Who wants to go first?

Mike Marinello: I have to pick one?

Chris Stadler: Your favorite? I can tell you mine if you guys want some time to just-

Mike Marinello: Serial commas.

Chris Stadler: Serial commas?

Mike Marinello: That’s Oxford commas are like, we’re going to have a fight later. [crosstalk 00:13:21].

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:13:23] Go outside, yeah.

Mike Jones: I’m a big Oxford comma fan.

Chris Stadler: Oh no, [crosstalk 00:13:29].

Mike Marinello: We can be on the same side of the fight. We’ll go find [crosstalk 00:13:31] that comment and-

Mike Jones: Okay.

Mike Marinello: No, no.

Mike Jones: So you like the Oxford?

Mike Marinello: I love the Oxford comma.

Chris Stadler: Okay, so you guys actually-

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: We’re in agreement. This is great. I made an assumption [crosstalk 00:13:44] the most highly intelligent people, you know, like the Oxford comma [crosstalk 00:13:50].

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:13:50] Oxford comma, how can it [inaudible 00:13:53] okay.

Mike Marinello: Kind of just like, I hate those things. One of the first things I said when I came on as director for Phoenix Design Week was I want serial commas.

Mike Jones: Yeah. We had to, Chris hates this, but I, cause you picked a style guide for [Rezounds 00:14:12] and that did not include the Oxford comma and I was just like the golden book of [crosstalk 00:14:19] in the children’s section.

Mike Marinello: It’s all negotiable.

Mike Jones: Yeah. So I negotiated [crosstalk 00:14:24] back in.

Mike Marinello: Yeah. So our style guide is basically AP style using Oxford comma and they’re like two other bullets that are like little things. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Yeah. Why reinvent the wheel?

Mike Jones: Who else has a favorite design pet peeve?

Kathy Morgan: My pet peeve is other people with pet peeves, if that makes sense.

Mike Jones: We’re all doomed.

Kathy Morgan: I really would like to speak out against designers dissing other designers on social media all the time.

Mike Jones: Yes.

Kathy Morgan: Everybody is so quick to put up some design and hate on it and somebody worked hard on that. I don’t care what the criteria was, but everybody is so quick to judge. We’re all in this together people and let’s be a little kinder to each other.

Mike Jones: But what if they didn’t work hard on it?

Kathy Morgan: That’s my story again [crosstalk 00:15:25].

Chris Stadler: She’s not falling for your trap.

Mike Jones: Okay, so I’ll go next and judge, so-

Mike Marinello: I gotta jump in and say, you know, we’re coming to the end of all our print deadlines and naming your layers-

Kathy Morgan: Yes.

Mike Marinello: This has been a big pet peeve for both of us.

Mike Jones: So, lack of naming layers.

Mike Marinello: Yes.

Mike Jones: Okay.

Mike Marinello: Layer one, layer two, layer…

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: Copy whatever.

Mike Jones: I can see that being an issue-

Mike Marinello: Trying to pick up someone else’s artwork-

Mike Jones: Yes.

Mike Marinello: And run with those files.

Mike Jones: Yup.

Mike Marinello: Bad.

Mike Jones: That’s a good, that’s a good pet peeve.

Mike Marinello: Bad.

Mike Jones: Yeah. You’re not judging their work though. So it’s, you know, your still [crosstalk 00:16:07]-

Mike Marinello: Peek behind the curtain.

Mike Jones: Yeah. So, mine is just a failure to letter space and like-

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Mike Jones: Yeah. Just like, just an inattention, something so easy-

Mike Marinello: Kerning-

Mike Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Just like control the letter spacing in any prominent headline or logo or anything like that, you know, it’s just so easy to do and it makes it look so much better.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: Mine is more, I have a recency bias with mine right now, which is, I’ve been doing it while I work on my own presentations and other peoples and so yeah, small type on presentation slides. Yeah, I was watching a presentation yesterday that I was given feedback on and I, I’m pretty sure it was like maybe 18 point, maybe, and I was like, “Buddy, I love your presentation but I can’t read anything on your slides.”

Mike Jones: Doesn’t Guy Kawasaki have a rule about that? Like 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type.

Mike Marinello: [crosstalk 00:17:09] like Zen of presentations or-

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: I’ve always heard like minimum, like no smaller than 24 point, and even that’s, that’s pretty small. So yeah, but I’ve been known to break rules so I’m sure I’ve done an 18 point slide somewhere. [crosstalk 00:17:25].

Mike Jones: If he lifted up his sleeve, you’d see some tattoos. He is definitely the all in [crosstalk 00:17:29].

Chris Stadler: Combination, every other letter-

Mike Jones: A pirate-

Chris Stadler: And the [kurrent 00:17:35] is like just terrible.

Mike Jones: It’s all over the place.

Kathy Morgan: Okay. I will throw you one Chris.

Chris Stadler: Okay, all right. Thank you.

Kathy Morgan: Along the same lines is not designing for the environment, the whatever is going to be seen in. So thinking about this program that we’re working on that in the environment that it’s used, the lights are off in the convention centers. So that type needs to be super legible. So just recognizing as a designer that you can’t be using eight point light gray text type in that document.

Chris Stadler: Yeah, but what if they worked hard on it though? I’m sure their mother loves it.

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:18:24] That’s fine. They can have worked hard on it.

Chris Stadler: Awesome, think they just need to work a little harder [crosstalk 00:18:31].

Kathy Morgan: I am not going to publicly diss them on social media.

Chris Stadler: Yup. Yes. Thank you for throwing me that bone.

Mike Marinello: [crosstalk 00:18:38] Kathy will bring it directly to them-

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: And then tell them where they have not met expectations.

Chris Stadler: She’ll handle it the proper way.

Mike Marinello: Yes.

Mike Jones: Yeah?

Chris Stadler: Cool-

Mike Jones: That’s great. All right, so let’s get into, what do you guys call, you guys call it AIGA?

Mike Marinello: No.

Mike Jones: Or you guys just be all AIGA even though it’s four syllables.

Mike Marinello: Kind of like a GIF.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: GIF.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: Is it a soft G or a hard G?

Mike Jones: Yeah. Do you guys call it anything for short-

Mike Marinello: AGIA.

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:19:07] Behind the scenes?

Mike Marinello: Just AIGA.

Mike Jones: Okay. So tell us a little bit about this AIGA, what it does, what it is, why it is.

Kathy Morgan: So AIGA, pronounced like that, originally stood for the American Institute of Graphic Arts when it was founded over a hundred years ago, and sometime in the past few years, the organization recognized that graphic arts was not applicable to all of the design that goes on nowadays. There is user experience and environmental design and all of that, and so just specifically saying graphic arts and limiting design to graphic designers wasn’t serving anymore. So there was a lot of conversation about what should this organization be called and it got settled somewhere in New York that the organization would continue to be called by its letters because there is a lot of heritage in that, but it would simply be AIGA, the professional association for design.

Mike Jones: So you guys have listed amongst your, so, it’s a four tiered mission, to bring programming to the community that helps you improve design ability, connect complimentary disciplines, increase social impact and then promote community excellence. Maybe you guys would each pick one of those and expand on it a little bit.

Kathy Morgan: Those are the four pillars of the AIGA chapter, AIGA Arizona chapter mission, those who are the national-

Mike Jones: Okay.

Kathy Morgan: … ones. So I can talk to that.

Mike Jones: Yup.

Kathy Morgan: Let me see which one I want to pick out here.

Chris Stadler: Yeah, pick your favorite. I’m big on ranking. Prioritize.

Mike Jones: Yeah. Chris, you are the master ranker.

Kathy Morgan: I’ll go with-

Mike Jones: Why bully us when you have a number of lists. That’s all I’m saying.

Kathy Morgan: I will go with encourage social impact. So a big deal that we do besides Phoenix Design Week every year is CreateAThon, which is a 24 hour design marathon that a bunch designers get together in a location and have, invite nonprofits in our community to participate. The nonprofits have to apply and then get selected and then for 24 hours, a team of designers is assigned to six or eight nonprofits, however many they decide to do each year, and it all depends on what that nonprofit’s particular need is.

Kathy Morgan: So some of them are just starting from scratch and they need a brand and the initial materials to get them started and others have a little bit more, they might be established already, but they might want some help in particular with refining their website or something like that. So there’s some goal that’s defined for each of them at the beginning and then 24 hours straight, they come up with something new at the end, and that’s a huge draw for people in the community, love to participate in that. People in the design community like to do that, get together.

Chris Stadler: I have a question.

Kathy Morgan: Yes.

Chris Stadler: If it’s a design marathon, why is it 24 hours in that 26.2 hours?

Kathy Morgan: Say that again.

Mike Jones: This is such a Chris question. I love it. It’s so awesome.

Chris Stadler: Never mind. Consider that a suggestion. The design marathon would be 26.2 hours.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Kathy Morgan: I see.

Mike Jones: You’re translating miles to-

Kathy Morgan: Okay. So is that a-

Mike Jones: A kilometer. [crosstalk 00:23:12]

Kathy Morgan: A vocabulary pet peeve?

Chris Stadler: Can you put that formally, lodge that as a suggestion?

Kathy Morgan: Can I pitch that to the CreateAthon organization or [crosstalk 00:23:23].

Chris Stadler: On behalf of Chris Stadler.

Kathy Morgan: Okay.

Mike Jones: A motion.

Chris Stadler: Michael Marinello. What is your favorite, what, which one of these four things as closest to your heart?

Mike Marinello: Promoting community excellence is pretty far up there. We do things like the Annual Best Of where people can submit and show their work and kind of showcase what they’ve done over the last year that they’re really proud of and then we do other things throughout the year. We’ll help out with portfolio reviews at the different colleges, and that’s always cool to be able to give students or actually anyone in the community feedback on what they’re doing and have discussions with them and help kind of further their goals. Let them know what it’s like out in the real world or give them, just encourage them, help them get on their way.

Chris Stadler: Do you ever rip designs off the wall like they did, like the stories from her school, the portfolio programs that have those brutal professors that just like, “That’s crap!” And they just rip it off the wall.

Mike Marinello: Everyone comes up, I mean at the portfolio reviews, I know they have poster shows that they do, but portfolio reviews, it’s usually on their laptops, sitting there, and I’ve had to a number of times, they’ll be talking to me about it, but the laptop is facing them and I have to stop them and say, “Hey, really quick, if you’re showing off your portfolio, you need to spin that laptop so I can see it completely. You can look over the top and point to things and scroll but-“

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:25:06] It’s the little things that make a portfolio presentation.

Mike Marinello: Yes. You need to know where your audience is and speak to them. Yeah. The stated goal of every portfolio review is to see how many students you can get to cry. That’s how I approach them [inaudible 00:25:21]. No, we’re promoting excellence Chris, you don’t beat people down to make them excellent. [crosstalk 00:25:29] build them up.

Chris Stadler: But we’ve all heard the stories, right?

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: I mean, the portfolio programs and it’s like, “Yeah, back in the day when I was using French curves, we had this one guy and he’d always tear art off the wall and make people cry and they’d run away.” [crosstalk 00:25:42]. Maybe that’s [crosstalk 00:25:45] told students to make them feel lucky that we didn’t do to them.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: Uphill both ways in the snow.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: “Back when I was a kid, using french curves and Aldus PageMaker…” You guys remember that, yeah?

Mike Marinello: Yes.

Chris Stadler: So, what are, do you mind if I hog another question at you? [crosstalk 00:26:05] So, what are some of the ways you helped to brand to Phoenix as a design hub and attract creatives from across the nation to visit and get involved in our community?

Mike Marinello: Big one would be Phoenix Design Week, you know? Yeah. [crosstalk 00:26:23]

Chris Stadler: Man, I did not see that coming. What!

Mike Marinello: Yeah, every year we put on this event and we get, you know, we have a two day conference and then a full week of community events where different people around the area can showcase, you know, we’ll have tours of different studios or print facilities or, you know, this year we’ve even got a biomimicry hike going on. It just kind of get to showcase the community, get the community together and kind of rally around different events and learn and engage with each other. We have got speakers coming from the East coast, from the West coast. I think one of our guys is flying in from Singapore, the day before he was doing something. As far as participants go, we have, we’ve got one of our first big groups from a school down in Mexico-

Chris Stadler: That’s cool.

Mike Marinello: … that’s coming up. We draw kind of from all over the place. We’ve got stuff happening in Tucson. We’ve got different things going on in Flagstaff for design week. It’s kind of the place to be in this area and I think we’re one of the bigger, better put together conferences for AIGA, kind of on a chapter level for sure.

Chris Stadler: So do you guys get a lot of people from outside then? Is it an attraction for-

Kathy Morgan: No, it’s pretty local. This contact from the university in Monterrey, Mexico is the first time that we’ve really had a big group come from elsewhere. We’ve had one or two people come from New Mexico, California and Las Vegas, El Paso in the past, but this is the first time we’ve really seen that magnet draw people in and it’s exciting. We’ve connected them with our board, the AIGA Arizona director of education and mentorship, Christina Carrasquilla, who is a professor at ASU poly, and so she’s going to connect with them and talk education stuff and also kind of be their host person while they’re here in town.

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome.

Mike Jones: Yeah, we got to interview her two years ago, I think, at Phoenix Design Week on one of our shows, which is really cool. So that’s awesome [crosstalk 00:29:00].

Kathy Morgan: She’s awesome.

Mike Jones: And that’s awesome that you guys are getting that kind of traction in the building that connection with the school down in Mexico, it’s really cool. [crosstalk 00:29:09] hearing that a lot. I think that’s not, as we’ve brought different guests on, especially over the last year, we’ve been hearing more and more about these just kind of bridges being built between especially like Northern Mexico and the Phoenix area and in Tucson as well, just some really cool stuff happening. So that’s really cool to hear. That’s kinda also happening within the design community as well.

Kathy Morgan: The other thing that happened this year that we haven’t done before is that we were contacted out of the blue from, by Oscar de La Salas, who is with Gensler, Phoenix, the Phoenix offices, the giant architecture firm Gensler, and they had never heard of Phoenix Design Week before. They have a whole aesthetic internally called Gensler design I think. It’s a whole design thinking program-

Mike Jones: Very cool.

Kathy Morgan: … and they said how is there a design week and we’re not in involved. So to see the original now 10 years ago, vision of how Phoenix Design Week was conceived and created to be a place where designers of all disciplines could connect and now having that [crosstalk 00:30:23] start to happen is really cool.

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome.

Mike Marinello: Yeah, I remember 2009 like that was kind of the original vision was that this was beyond like the graphic design community that really all encompassing and ideally, yeah, architecture would be included in that-

Kathy Morgan: Right.

Mike Marinello: … and sorts of design discipline. So that’s really cool to hear.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: I know it’s been a long time in the works and a hope, a dream.

Kathy Morgan: And we found through those connections, like with Oscar, he has connections that we don’t have and so we can work together, both ways of that. He was able to contact the mayor of Phoenix and she will be giving opening remarks at the conference. So that’s something we were not able to do on our own.

Mike Marinello: So she flat out told me no. I submitted the forms, I jumped through all the hoops, I got the like, Nope sorry, she’s busy response.

Chris Stadler: Yeah?

Mike Marinello: Yeah. Oscar had a different way, Oscar said, “Hey, let me give her a call.” What? I think it’s good. [crosstalk 00:31:32] It shows you that relationships-

Kathy Morgan: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: … really-

Kathy Morgan: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:31:35] it’s the power of [crosstalk 00:31:37].

Mike Marinello: Yup. That’s awesome. That’s really cool.

Chris Stadler: So, what do you guys see from year to year that you’ve liked from the design community? So I’m guessing that you get exposure to a lot of people during the event that you don’t get throughout the year. What do you guys see in Phoenix’s design community that makes you think it’s a healthy growing community?

Kathy Morgan: You ask hard questions, Chris.

Chris Stadler: Thank you actually.

Kathy Morgan: You’re welcome.

Mike Marinello: One of the things that I’ve noticed that kinda hits me every time I go to one of these events, you know, Phoenix seems like on one hand it seems like there’s this huge community, there’s all this stuff going on, but you start talking to people and you’re like, “Oh, you know so-and-so.” “Oh, you worked with so-and-so.” “We live on the same street?” John Arvizu, I’ve found out just chatting with him last year, you know, really had no idea who he was, but turns out our kids went to the same school together, he literally lived like three cul-de-sacs down from me, it was just wild kind of making these different connections that while it’s a big valley, it’s really kind of a small community that’s not, it’s not super size, it’s still really realistic to kind of get out and meet a lot of different people in a lot of different fields and there just so many cool people out there.

Chris Stadler: So it sounds like there’s a lot of potential for these networks, a forum that is yet unrealized.

Mike Marinello: Absolutely. There are kind of some outliers that hit a lot of these different groups. I mean, it’s crazy the more you, you’ll go to one event and they’re like, “Oh, hey, have you been to such and such and such and such?” You know, no, you know, show up at a creative mornings and they tell you, “Oh, you need to go sign up for the Phoenix Designer’s Facebook page and check out drink and draw, you know, later this evening at wherever.” It’s, there are so many different events happening like every month. It’s just, it’s crazy what our design community is like and how many different things there are to do and how many really amazing artists and designers are out there.

Chris Stadler: Have you guys seen a style kind of emerge that’s a little bit distinctive? Like, have you seen some distinctives come out through the culture of Arizona that kind of show you a little bit about the thinking and the culture of that’s around here?

Mike Marinello: Seems like there’s been a huge kind of mid-century modern graphic style kind of revival with local artists.

Chris Stadler: Is that something you haven’t seen nationally or?

Mike Marinello: Probably not as much, just because we have so much of that architecture, kind of that iconic architecture built into Phoenix.

Kathy Morgan: I don’t know that there’s a style or at least I don’t recognize it, like you can’t see your own whatever. We did have a speaker come a few years ago, forgive me, I don’t remember her name, but she was a specialist in typography and she goes all across the United States and has people in these different places that she visits send her photographs of the local typography and signage and then she kind of analyzes them and does a presentation, and so her conclusion about Arizona from what everybody sent to her is that we are colorful in relation to anywhere else. She said it was glaringly hugely obvious to her. We had red and teal and yellow and really strong colors. So if that-

Chris Stadler: Interesting-

Kathy Morgan: Did I answer that question? Yes.

Chris Stadler: That is really interesting. Have you guys seen that at all? Mike have you seen that in your-

Mike Marinello: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever made that connection before, but yeah, when I think through like especially like street signage and like environmental signage in the Valley, that does resonate, that does ring true, and even when I think about just kind of like the waves of design, more at a consumer level in like Arizona in general, like you’ve got kind of the pastelies, like desert colors of like the late eighties, early nineties that I grew up with, and then if you go back further, you get some other distinctive like kind of color palettes over the years.

Mike Marinello: Obviously that’s transitioned a lot since then, thank goodness, but yeah, I mean you just look at the full pallet, right? If that’s what we’re drawing from, from a historical perspective as designers who are looking to be influenced by what has come before and what resonates with people even though we might not like the overall style, but we still draw from it, that’s a huge pallet that we’re choosing from. And I think that’s also reflective too, of talking off, thinking off the cuff here, but it’s reflective of our geography and our state, like, we’re a super colorful state.

Chris Stadler: Absolutely. You know-

Mike Marinello: We’ve got the bright flowers that, I mean, the soro greens, the, I mean-

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Mike Marinello: When it rains this place is popping. You know, red rocks, not just in Sedona, but even like, you know, Papago park, right?

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Marinello: Right around the corner here, and you’ve got, you know, rich, lush, well I don’t know if flush is quite the right word, but you’ve got forests and you have, you know, pine trees and obviously lots of desert hues and sunsets. I know when we were branding, actually when my two business partners and I, David and Jeff and I were working on branding Rezound, we were working through some of those like aesthetics of like, hey, we wanted Arizona somewhere in the mix, and the thing we landed on originally was our sunsets, and our first initial branding was very dark purples and deep reds and oranges, and you know, it was like, yeah, that’s a sunset. We’ve brightened up a little bit since then, but-

Chris Stadler: Well, I wonder if the sunshine has anything, cause like in Oregon, you know, when it’s cloudy, it kind of desaturates everything, right?

Mike Marinello: That’s interesting.

Chris Stadler: I wonder if they, that’s why they got that word, you know, desaturation-

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: But in Arizona obviously it’s so sunny and then it, you know-

Mike Marinello: Bakes.

Chris Stadler: Cause I was thinking like everything is bright and, you know, colors are vibrant and bright as long as they’re not made of plastic. All of my kids’ toys in the backyard are very desaturated.

Mike Marinello: Yeah, that’s true.

Kathy Morgan: You know, I was talking with Jason Schupbach, who is the director of the design school at ASU now.

Chris Stadler: Okay.

Kathy Morgan: And he just took on that directorship a couple of years ago, so he’s been here for two years and I just saw him last Friday at a reception for Cheryl Heller, who is now at ASU, huge in the design world and she’s moved to our state, and I asked him, “So how has the move to Arizona been for you as compared to back East where you used to live?” And he said, “Well, you know, the desert took a little bit getting used to, but now I can truly say this is the most beautiful place I have ever lived and I love it.” So there is something to our environment that we have here that he can verify isn’t elsewhere.

Chris Stadler: I love that answer. So what are some characteristics of Phoenix that make it outfitted and… We’ve kind of answered that, but it’s a question so we’ll go and ask it then, uniquely outfitted as a design destination. So, I don’t know if we’re thinking like internationally, nationally or just within this state, and then do you think AIGA, AIGA-

Mike Marinello: You keep trying [crosstalk 00:39:54].

Chris Stadler: Does AIGA have potentially a role in that?

Kathy Morgan: I pulled out a quote from one of our breakout speakers at design week this year, her name is Unique Yazzie, and she’s going to talk about cultural issues. So what we do have here is a cultural heritage that isn’t elsewhere. We have the native American heritage that she is going to talk about, and of course the proximity to the Southern border, but I really loved what she wrote as part of her bio. She said, “For me, design is in my blood from the petroglyphs that our ancestors left behind for our story, to the rugs and baskets my grandmothers wove to trade for goods, from the silver and wood father learned to craft, to the systems we learned to navigate to keep our culture and language alive. Design is in my blood.” So I just really loved that and felt that she was speaking to that deep, deep heritage of living with the land and pattern and weaving and crafting and, and all of that.

Chris Stadler: See, that’s really interesting as we’re always trying to get to that in the Easy Brand Casts, like what, you know, what are the cultural contributions or what is it about Arizona that makes Arizona so interesting and how do we use that to lead, right? How do we use that to contribute to the rest of the world and kind of let our light shine, right? Cause that’s really interesting. There’s a cultural heritage. I wonder what the, I wonder if that an opportunity for design in Arizona.

Kathy Morgan: I think it absolutely does. It’s something that we have talked about as a chapter, is other than just saying, okay, we are representing designers, how are we going to represent design in Arizona specifically. What makes this place unique from any place else, and that’s something that we’ve taken on as a board and we hope to have that come out sometime in the next six months. We recently worked with Pam Slim, the consultant, to help define who we really are a little bit better, so yes, we will be working on that.

Chris Stadler: Cause we talked about having like a cowboy, like cowboy poetry, talked about that too, and no, but I mean all this stuff, right? I mean like how does all this stuff like create, not create a story but just like where is the story within all these things, right? And then how does that, you know, potentially inform, I mean, as designers, you’re always looking for inspiration, you know, like there’s a story there, I’m just wondering, you know, well, you know, what that might look like in the future as that gets developed and purposely approached like a story, the colors, the, you know?

Kathy Morgan: One of the things that is present for me is why all of this is really important. Why do we need to design to find what the line in Arizona is and so on, is when you have companies like Amazon deciding where they’re gonna put their corporate headquarters and they have in their RFP that they’re looking for communities that can think creatively. That’s why we’re here, is to show, stand up in a really visible way that there is a creative community here and that jobs can be created and we can all prosper.

Chris Stadler: What is interesting is so I’m probably the one of us who comes from a copywriting background and so I’m a big fan of the creative brief. I want to know what’s back there so I can be bold and clear, right? In what I say, and so what you’re talking about kinda reminds me of that process where, how do you stand on something, right? What do you stand on if you’re unclear about, you know, and so, unclear about how to lead even, right? So there’s a saying, there’s another saying too, it’s a little fog in the mind of the speaker becomes a gray, no, sorry, a little mist in the mind of the speaker becomes a great fog in the minds of the hearers, right? And so that’s what we’re up against, right? It’s trying to figure out how do we create like, not only like design the things, you know, and say, we’re kind of this and kind of that, but also create that brief in that story that underlies it so that when another company wants to approach us well we’re all on the same script and it’s a very convincing script, right?

Chris Stadler: How do we equip the ACA? I mean I’m getting into practical things, but I mean really this is kind of an interesting application that would be an interesting test. You can equip the Arizona Commerce Authority with a script, right? From AIGA or, you know, and then help them know how to talk about Arizona and then convince these Amazons or whoever the right fit is, and maybe through this process we even decide that Amazon is not a fit [crosstalk 00:45:14] for Arizona. Let me put it to you and I leave it to you.

Kathy Morgan: Well, Chris it’s just, I think it’s just doing this and having this conversation with you guys and bringing it to light. We’re making connections already just during this conversation, so-

Chris Stadler: And going to AIGA, the annual conference.

Mike Marinello: That’s right.

Chris Stadler: Cool. You guys have a theme this year, right? For the conference?

Mike Marinello: We do.

Chris Stadler: You usually do.

Kathy Morgan: Yes.

Chris Stadler: I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:45:48] for a while. The director [crosstalk 00:45:50]-

Chris Stadler: Mike, what’s the theme this year?

Mike Marinello: The theme this year is evolve design.

Chris Stadler: Tell me about that.

Mike Marinello: It is, Oh no, I’m going to have to-

Chris Stadler: Yeah, yeah. Bring up the [crosstalk 00:46:01]-

Mike Marinello: I gotta pull up the official-

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:46:02] pull up the website.

Mike Marinello: … official lines.

Mike Jones: You gotta have your [crosstalk 00:46:05] talk track.

Chris Stadler: You have to have your script.

Mike Marinello: We’ve got to be clear Chris, we all have to be speaking [crosstalk 00:46:08] from the same script.

Chris Stadler: Precisely. Your creative brief.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: She’s looking for your creative brief man. Always consult the creative brief. That’s my motto.

Mike Marinello: Evolve design. Yes. So we’re talking about, so the evolution of design, this year’s theme, you know, evolve design. We do not stand still. We change, we grow, we adapt and we embrace the ever morphing craft of design. We learn, we experience, we experiment and we never stop moving forward. We participate, we support, we engage and we contribute to our bold and diverse design community. We evolve, we evolve together. Join the evolution at Phoenix Design Week.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Chris Stadler: Now I want to join the evolution. If I didn’t before I heard that I would now.

Mike Jones: How has that kind of influenced you guys in terms of the planning and as you guys have looked for speakers and maybe thought about programming or other ancillary events around the main conference? Kind of how do you see that playing out this year?

Mike Marinello: We asked permission, all the speakers kind of share with us some of your story, your personal evolution, where you from, kind of some of the things that made you who you are today, what, you know, what were kind of some of your gaps, what were your successes? We, and for evolving design, we’ve got some, we bring in people from Adobe, we do tutorials, we help people evolve their skills. We’re doing breakout sessions that involve the business of design. We’ve got some, got a girl that’s going to be talking about how to bring in clients and we’ve got other people talking, just kind of the nitty gritty of it. So you can evolve your technical skills, you can evolve your personal skills, your interpersonal skills, we’re just focusing on kind of that growth that just our whole community growing. So community level, personal level.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Mike Jones: That sounds exciting. There’s a lot of good stuff. You guys have some kinda like big name keynotes or speakers you want to highlight that you think might help people kind of go, “Yeah, I want to go hear that person.”

Mike Marinello: We have got a couple of local greats. We’ve got Alison King who is founder of modern Phoenix. She teaches [crosstalk 00:48:50]. Teaches around town, she does tours, she does all kinds of stuff. We’ve got Bob Case who is the chief creative officer over at Lavage, one of the kind of big design firms here in town.

Mike Jones: He’s also a fantastic illustrator.

Mike Marinello: Yes. His work is amazing. He does [crosstalk 00:49:09]-

Kathy Morgan: Lavage is a big advertising agency.

Mike Jones: Yes.

Kathy Morgan: Not a design firm.

Mike Jones: Sorry.

Kathy Morgan: Clarifying that for them.

Mike Jones: Sorry.

Mike Marinello: [crosstalk 00:49:20] They do a few more things than just design over there. We’ve got Jack Morgan who is, was a product design lead for Duolingo, and he’s going to talk to us [crosstalk 00:49:34]-

Mike Jones: That’s really cool.

Mike Marinello: … about, they were looking at things and how they’re doing a deep dive into why are people using this app, why are people doing things? And they have this whole story that they discovered about why people are learning a certain language in a certain area and trying to break boundaries and better themselves. We’ve got Liz Jackson who is the founder of the Disabled List, who is a huge disability advocates. She talks about designing, including the people you’re designing for in the design process. You know, don’t just tell someone who has a disability, “Oh, this is what you need.” But instead asking them, “Hey, what can I do to make your life better? What is it that you really need when we design ramps? What is it, you know…” Not just, we put flames on your cane, but that’s bad.

Mike Jones: No, no.

Mike Marinello: Bling on your spinners on your wheelchair, and then we’ve got at least Bennon who is a marketing mentor. She’s going to be talking more of that business of design, how to find the clients, just coming at it from that direction. We’ve got a Robert Generette, he goes by RobZilla. He’s an incredible artist, he uses iPads to draw everything out. He does stuff for ESPN and sport, different sports franchises. We’ve got Tommy Perez who’s coming to us from LA and he does just some crazy cool design stuff, and then our MC this year, a buddy of mine, he’s kind of another local great, Rick Burress. He teaches classes all over the place. He ran the Phoenix InDesign user group for a long time. He knows anything and everything Adobe and he is just a huge character. It’s going to be exciting to have him on stage multiple days.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. You guys have a great lineup this year. It’s really cool. I’m excited. What are you guys excited for? Like what are you personally excited for? Obviously when you’re in the trenches, there’s a lot of work.

Mike Jones: Yeah. Have you even had time to think about that?

Kathy Morgan: Getting it all done?

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:52:08] Yeah, that’s a great feeling.

Mike Marinello: Oh man. I mean, you know, we were up very late last night. We’re proofing our program and everything and I was reading through all of our breakouts and looking at our stuff and I’m kind of sad that you know, we’re going to be running around during the conference and it’s going to be hard to really sneak in and see everything, and it sounds like we have just such cool, cool speakers, cool topics going on. You just can’t see all the stuff you want to go do. There’s just not enough time. There’s not enough me to go around.

Mike Jones: Yeah. That’s cool. What are the dates again for our listeners to remind themselves?

Mike Marinello: The conference itself is Saturday and Sunday, October 12th and 13th.

Mike Jones: All right.

Mike Marinello: The week, our first community event is happening on the 10th and that’s that, a biomimicry hike, our kickoff party and some other things are, start-up on Friday the 11th, and those community events run all the way through the 18th. We wrap up with our final party, our closing party.

Chris Stadler: Cool. On the 18th.

Mike Marinello: Yeah.

Kathy Morgan: And the closing party is being hosted by Artists and Color who is an official print partner and they are very busy with us right now getting all of the signage and the printed materials taken care of and they have been absolutely awesome as a partner all along-

Mike Marinello: They are fantastic.

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:53:47] Could not be better to work with and just happy all the time. They keep us balanced and sane and we’re really happy to partner with them this year. They’ve been great and thank you also Mike Jones for that referral to them.

Mike Jones: Yeah, no problem. Yeah, they were a huge partner for us with Phoenix startup week and I was like, “Kathy, we definitely need to, we need to make this happen somehow, some way cause they I think it would be a great partner for you guys and as it turned out they were-“

Kathy Morgan: [crosstalk 00:54:22] they have been and they’re so excited about hosting the closing party and having people into their shop. We’re calling it CMY Friday and declaring that print is not dead. They’re going to give tours all around their shop. We’re going to have a comedian there named Carrie Gallagher and a couple of other people that she’s bringing in to do a design trivia game.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Kathy Morgan: And that will also be the conclusion of the PHXDW poker crawl we’re calling it. So at every design week event during the week, the attendees will each collect a random playing card and then of course they will have to have collected at least five to make a poker hand by the end [crosstalk 00:55:13] of the closing party, and then we will have everybody lay out their hands and the person who gets the best poker, random poker hand will win a free ticket to Phoenix design week 2020.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome. That’s very awesome. [crosstalk 00:55:30].

Chris Stadler: What branded deck are you going to use for those? [crosstalk 00:55:35] I mean, just curious.

Mike Marinello: We have a custom deck being designed.

Chris Stadler: That is the best answer. That’s the right answer. Yeah.

Mike Jones: Their own deck, Chris. Their own deck.

Chris Stadler: No, that’s cool, I don’t know why, I was just curious, like just a bicycle brand. [Hoil 00:55:54], I’m a Hoil fan. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:55:57] I mean, I wasn’t gonna buy it in advance and like choose the best cards or anything like that. So October 10th kind of kicks, you got your first event going on, runs all the way through the 18th for all the different events during the week of the 12th and 13th-

Mike Jones: Correct.

Chris Stadler: … is the actual conference. If you want to find out more about any of that, they should go to…

Kathy Morgan: PHXDW.com.

Mike Jones: Yeah. PHXDW.com. They can get tickets to the conference, find out all the event schedule, where everything’s at, how to RSVP and do all the things you need to do to attend.

Kathy Morgan: Yup.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome. Cool, and then for, I think information about AIGA, especially AIGA, Arizona, where should people go for more information about that?

Kathy Morgan: And that is Arizona.AIGA.org.

Chris Stadler: Awesome.

Mike Jones: So thank you guys so much for coming on today-

Kathy Morgan: Thank you.

Mike Jones: It was a fantastic conversation-

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Jones: Can’t believe it’s already been an hour.

Chris Stadler: I know.

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:56:58] it just flies.

Mike Marinello: It’s crazy.

Chris Stadler: So we want to give a shout out to a few other people, obviously Conscious Capitalism, Arizona who supports our show and make sure it happens every single month. Huge shout out to Karen, our producer and amazing Phoenix business radio X-

Mike Jones: Yup.

Chris Stadler: … for letting us be on their network and making sure that these shows actually happen. Karen’s like, “You do all the stuff, I mean, you make sure it happens.”

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:57:24] All the things awesome.

Chris Stadler: And then our host Max Six, in this lovely co-working space-

Mike Jones: Yup.

Chris Stadler: … where we get to both office out of and host this show and just thank them for that. So for anyone who’s interested in hearing any of our other episodes of Easy Brand Cast, be sure to hit us up at easybrandcast.com, you can also find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify now and all of the other places that you like to find your podcast, we are probably there and if we’re not, hit us up, contact us at our website, easybrandcast.com and let us know where we need to make sure that our podcast is showing up so you can listen to it. You can also sign up for our newsletter on the website and get all the episodes and updates about what’s going on, and you can check us out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, maybe. I don’t know. [crosstalk 00:58:15]

Chris Stadler: I don’t know if we were really hanging out on Instagram much, but we’re on all the places so you can check us out there. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank you guys. Thank you Kathy. Thank you Mike-

Kathy Morgan: Thank you.

Chris Stadler: … for coming and chatting with us about design and Arizona and AIGA and Phoenix Design Week. I’m really excited for you guys for that and obviously I’m really excited for you for the 19th, when it’s all done. You guys, you’ll enjoy that deep breath that you can take. So-

Mike Jones: You guys are going to be on your sweats, like on the couch, binge watching like the sessions-

Kathy Morgan: Yes. [crosstalk 00:58:54].

Mike Jones: Eat ice cream, ordering in pizza. All right. Sorry. So, yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today. We had a great conversation.

Mike Marinello: And this is great. Thank you.