Dare to bring creative poetry to every problem - Pablo Juncadella

So design is this big wheel that we have to try and move on every project that we do every time. And that is a, putting the standards of what you do very high and it's not related to what's going on today, but how do you contribute in something that moves the wheel to design so that somebody else can build on that? And I believe that this is something we have to try on every project and we will fail 99.999% of the time. Yet you have to have the courage to the next day with the new client, with the new project, think, OK, maybe on this one I can create something that not only is effective to my client, but moves the wheel of design. Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, the show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Rady Malinic, I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create? Today I was speaking with Pablo Juncadela, co-founder and partner at Muccio, the Barcelona based branding studio, who has been building for nearly 25 years. Pablo's journey started with dyslexia, which he actually understood as a gift. It's his ability to see the world from a different perspective. From redesigning newspapers in his mid-20s to building a global studio rooted in collective intelligence, his path has always been shaped by curiosity, humility and an insistence on moving the wheel of design forward. In this conversation we explore how limitations become superpowers, why every idea is only a prequel to a better one And what it truly means to bring poetry and not just solutions to every problem that lies on your desk. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Pablo Juncadela. Hey Pablo, it was great to see you today, how are you doing? Hi Radim, great to be here. I'm excited to have you here and I always am, I'm excited because what you have achieved, what you do, where you're standing in an ecosystem of creativity today, it's a very unique space and you guys do an incredible work and I really wanted to know today what it would like to be in the front of branding and design in the year of 2026. But let's introduce you first, why you what you do. Yeah, my name is Pablo Juncadela and I'm part of this collective called Muccio. I started my career in the city of Barcelona, from which I work and have the offices from and I'm part of a few partners who lead Muccio into, I don't really know what, really into projects and into making the best out of every opportunity that we get to work with clients. I would say that's a fair presentation of myself on the professional side. On the personal side I'm dad of a 15 year old daughter and has been to a lingerie designer. That somehow sounds fantastic. I want to know about both sides because being a dad to a 15 year old, we all find ourselves in this world where creativity is still what drives us forward, but our vision gets a little bit confused by the world of AI, the disappearance of junior roles. There is a cocktail of excitement and a nervous energy of what is going to be and what's going to happen. So what's it like to be a dad to someone who is finding their feet? I think connected to the idea of creativity and how you don't want to impose anything to your kids, but you of course you're related to a certain way of thinking and I've come to realize and this I think works as a dad and also we work with very young designers who are trying to find their way professionally. Part of the culture of mucho is almost helping the careers of others and in that sense I always come back to the idea that creativity isn't absolutely needed for anything but it's of great help to anything that you do. Regardless of it being a creative job, creativity is the capability of seeing things from a slightly different perspective to the majority and having the capability of making others go to that place. And I find that in fact works everywhere. We tend to confuse creativity to the capability of visualizing stuff but they're really two different things. I'm a firm believer that the best lawyers are creative lawyers, the best businessmen are creative businessmen and those are people who have or have acquired the capability of seeing things from a slightly different perspective and bringing people to that perspective. I love what you're just telling me, that's really good. You mentioned something really important which is you said as mucho, you're helping people find their careers, to find their ways and with the direction of your travel obviously you were once upon a time a young designer, you went into the world to find yourself, how much of help did you get on your journey that you're now trying to either pass on or try to do better to what you received? I have to say I feel like somebody who's been completely blessed by advice from others, from people making me better, whether those were my bosses or my colleagues, they've come from very different places but I've always since the beginning it was my partner Mark and I professionally and I would say that even back in the school days I was always part of a collective, I was very aware very soon of what the things that I was strong in but I had always a very clear idea of those areas where I wasn't that strong and I've always been very blessed in my professional career by advice, by people really being very nurturing you and to the contrary of the general vision of what the work of a designer, of the community of designers is perceived as, I think it's a very welcoming community and if you take the time to ask people about things and ask the right questions I've never found a single designer that I admired or that I really wanted to know things from that wouldn't give me an honest answer and would be nurturing and helping and in that same way I feel obliged to pass that on and be part of the community and build a community within my workplace and of course this is our competitive environment, an environment that lives with a lot of pressure of constantly having to deliver excellence but we never should lose sight of that part of the thing where we're all creative, we're all in this big wheel and we're all aiming to become better what we do and as long as we're all in that same place I think it's very important to be generous and share and that's exactly what you're doing here and no and then the reason why it makes sense to be having these conversations. Absolutely, I am loving the deep gratitude for the journey because not many people can say they feel blessed but I believe the reason why you say you feel blessed is because as you said you're always aware of what you're good at and what you need to learn and being part of a collective already seems to let go of that sense of identity because it's hard to know who you are and what you want to do at an early age but sometimes you've got the case of a lone architect, I'm going to build my career, I'm going to do this, this is what I believe the world should be like and that's kind of what I was and in your case you're like I am here for us and I think this is one of the what I would understand, I want to break through points that make you feel go after what you want with slightly more wider lens, being more confident even though it's still early days but you've got that gratitude because what makes me think that you've got space to actually learn and grow from people is because it was a slightly less noisy time and I keep repeating this on this podcast forever but now the world out there can make you feel that you need to be somewhat really quick like it's moving faster, we've lost the innocence but in your case would you agree that there was more innocence, there was more time, there was more space for conversations and it didn't feel as pressured? So I tell you what this is all coming from and I think when I say that I feel blessed is because I was also very very dyslexic and this is also coming around to many people who are creative and so it was very clear to me right from the beginning what things was I gifted for and one thing I was starting the race a few meters behind everyone and for that you very fastly realize there's a couple of things that you need, one is you're gonna have to end up that race at the same place that everyone so you're gonna have to put more hours in those areas where you're not as gifted and also the majority of people are just okay at everything they do when you're very bad at most of the things but you find out that you are fast finding shortcuts because that's the way for survival when you're very dyslexic and also that you have a visual mind precisely because of the limitations then you have a tendency to do the things that you're better gifted for and so in a way that selection to somebody like me was already done it was in the DNA and it's a question of being lucky enough to understand it soon and get through with it and then there's the contrary side which is the majority which is people who are like I said gifted to most of things and then making a call it seems to me that is the hardest thing to do and going back to being a dad I see that my daughter is more or less okay in everything that she does and I suddenly feel that I was very lucky that I was basically shit at everything aside from a couple of things and so the selection was done for me so I have a hard time giving advice because I feel also very lucky in that sense and I was in an environment where I was nurtured enough around me to make the best of it we'll be back after a quick break this episode is brought to you by Luxe Coffee Co the first creative specialty coffee company building a platform to shine the light emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond Luxe Coffee Co offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices and you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxecoffee.co.uk You can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order This is interesting about dyslexia because it does feel like you have a handicap and you said you feel like you start behind the starting line and you need to get yourself to the starting line because the most people are in fact to everyone I have spoken to who have openly talked about their dyslexia and their experience of it which was never fine like it was never like okay I'm dyslexic and everything else is fine it was like I'm dyslexic and I'm really struggling in the world all of those people have turned into superpower all of those people have managed to overcome it because I think even though it sounds like a crippling anxiety like a crippling handicap for some people it gives you almost extra sense of how do you go and succeed because you can feel that the world is a bit unfair that you've got this but ultimately it gives you a bit of a different drive as you said I feel I was shit at everything it can feel crashing that you feel like that and you know that what you've been given what I call the vehicle our bodies obviously our hardwired minds and brains and all that stuff no one is the same but I've had this condition can make you feel why is the world unfair it's interesting how you said it because I feel there was a way to try harder actually yeah and also the great advantage is that you're naturally placed in a different perspective to the majority so going back to this idea that creativity is the capability of seeing things from a slightly different perspective people who have certain conditions are in a naturally in a place that is different to the majority and that is the key if you become agile enough it's the key to creativity because you're naturally there that's really interesting I when you say I've seen things from different perspective when you think about you've been given that by nature because you don't see the things from the same way you have to find your way to see the things how other people see it would you say that yeah my first 10 15 years of my career were being an editorial designer doing newspapers I've had always a hard time finishing an article to read but I realized that I looked at text in a different way that I could see headlines from the shape of it and I was quite equipped to make headlines to smart connections that work in handy in the newspaper world so that's a practical example where somebody who's having a hard time reading can be a very successful editorial designer in territories like newspapers where it becomes very technical and hard to understand and hard to really deal with I'm curious about the shapes of headlines how did you see it what was that do you have a condition when you go let's say a condition for letters I have a way that certain collection of letters makes me feel something I don't know if that's a proper connection but yeah I have a tendency not to look at the words but look at the shapes and of course after you need to understand what the whole thing is about but really you have a natural inclination to shapes more than you do to content so you're less limited to being loyal to exactly what the words are saying but more inclined to understand or see tension compositions and that in magazines newspapers it is about how an image works with a certain work or a certain type phase and I think it's a slight advantage but it's advantage that in the visual world can work wonders. But when you talk about editorial obviously you got limitations you got your page sizes obviously you got font sizes which you need to stick to some hierarchy templates the editorial style how did you find it did you feel like it was a two-world pulling at each other it's not a cathedral in limitation with a disadvantage that gave you an expression. Yeah of course the newspaper days are long gone and only a few great designers in great organizations still get to do it at the best level but in the end it's the same thing with anything in design the limitations are there and it's making the best of those limitations that turned something from a good design to a brilliant one so the rules and regulations and the limitations in specifically on newspapers or magazines or editorial have been there for ages they've been tested and the beauty of it is that they're still creation there's still things that are added to from something whose rules and structures we've known for ages and of course they need to be respected they can be challenged but they have to be challenged always with meaning behind it. So it's small things and certainly having that superpower that you refer to somehow help but it's always within the boundaries and the beauty of it that is within those boundaries. My role here is to join the dots and I'm now curious how did a dyslexic designer ended up being working on the magazines and newspapers that is not a trajectory I was expecting to hear so let's get to it. To be honest I have a few legendary fack ups that I did that ended up being printed but I had the privilege to work for a designer called Fernando Gutierrez in Barcelona and Pablo Martín which had the studio that was doing editorial but also identity and graphics and so forth so we never really made a difference between one or the other it just so happens that from then Fernando was made a partner at Pentagram and we moved on and the biggest client he had was to redesign El Pais so I was age 22 and having to work in newspapers which are a very technical environment and my partner Marc and I used to be Fernando's team and we worked with El Pais for a couple of years so by the time we'd ended this process or this time at Pentagram where we were mainly doing this project we were expert in newspapers so yes I had certain limitations but again I knew I had those limitations too so when it came to writing a headline of course when you work at a newspaper everything's double and triple checked and it's very hard that your mistakes get through but I always found ways to go around it and editorial design isn't that different to anything I say that one of the advantages of having working for a few years with newspapers is that they're the kings of storytelling and design what we call corporate entity turned into branding by introducing narratives to brands and the fact that we came from that editorial background it was always about telling stories and to me there isn't a big difference between designing a bread of a magazine than it is to do a narrative for a brand so that was that was a natural post in between starting Mucho our first client was the observer so redesigning the newspaper at age 25 we were creative directors of the observer when you might remember this time where the all the monthly magazines the music monthly the sports monthly were in place so the last I think the last great area of newspaper so we got to really work with brilliant writers who could tell stories who and see the power of a narrative and graphics to it so I think that worked wonders to building Mucho and I think it's really much embedded in the way we understand brands in which it's the power of visualization of explaining stories in a very simple way in hierarchy of information where brands are also explaining in headlines and then full quotes and then text there is three or four levels of in depth that you can get to relating to a brand and it's no different to telling a story on a newspaper well and so that's interesting so I got to find out that you didn't actually choose to go and work on a newspaper actually that work came to you do you remember how you fell as a dyslexic designer going oh shit we're doing what newspaper now the thing is I didn't turn dyslexic I was always dyslexic these are things that I've looked back at it and thought no because when it came to being a graphic designer I seemed like somebody who was really gifted so my flaws I'd have ways of hiding them so I've always been dyslexic and it's something that I've always had to deal with and it's only after that I realized hold on why are certain things for me easy that seem to be very hard to other and my answer is that my limitations have created also my virtues and I just try and make the best of it I never thought much of I really like doing magazines and newspapers regardless of me having a hard time reading them or understanding them or having to read an article three times this is something that by that time I was already accustomed to it that makes perfect sense so you mentioned that you guys worked a few years in pentagram and then you started with marg you started mucho how long ago was it 20 years you guys worked mucho will be next year 25 years so I started very early I started working in my last year of design and I worked for a year with Fernando in Madrid and then joined pentagram stayed about two years and then from then went straight to start mucho and our first client was to redesign the observer so yeah I was age 25 when we got the observer job and I was working on redesigning El País age 22 so yeah very early so here's an interesting connection because normally I make connections between my guests work life ambitions stories but when you said you'd redesign Observe about 25 years ago it was Guardian newspaper and Observer that inspired me to get into creativity because one day I had that Eureka moment I was like I came from music background I was all into death metal gory images all of that what I see now is a tribalistic branding systems like you have them you never have a problem more knowing what niche music artists are because they stay within the category but he was remember I remember literally getting a copy in the UK of the Guardian opening the Observer and it was such a dynamic and interesting time I was like wait a minute this vastness of information has to be created every day there's a logic to it and all of a sudden when you talked about the newspapers or magazines being the kings of the storytelling it was the sum of many many many parts that came up with this overall feeling for me I was like I want to do this and of course it was the good time of halabatic I know everything was in heretic I love heretic a lot but so that's interesting because I can join the dots with what you did inspired me 25 years ago to get into what I'm doing now and it gives me a lot for typography because the way it was designed laid out maybe it was your shape for them all for headlines and you know the way you designed it came to me so here we go I didn't know that to be honest I think the Guardian the Observer had such an amazing design culture where they understood the superpower of design as a key not only to reading and not only to serve a purpose but also to being brightness and bring inspiration through design and the Guardian has had amazing creative directors and an amazing culture of design so has the Observer and I was very lucky to land that job at very early age and work at a very hard level but also I think one of the best takeaways that I got from that experience which seems to me almost like another life ago right now but it's this idea that not be too precious to ideas but newspapers force you into a pace where you might get it really right a couple of times and you might get it wrong another couple of times and there'll be another chance the next date and I feel that this is it's the right way to approaching our job where if we fall too much in love with certain ideas sometimes those ideas are they're prequel to a better one and it's really about doing the best that you can with the time that you have and newspapers have this pace where there's a moment where it has to go to print and that happens every week or in the case of the Guardian every day and you have to deliver the best that you have for that day and there'll be another day the next day and in terms of creative gymnastics that is a unique environment a unique way to train your brain again that's why I say I was blessed because this is something that when it happens to you at age 25 and you're having to lead a team of people who are from a very different culture than yours and you get that privilege then it's an amazing opportunity to build that gymnastics in your mind and take it to the places where you're curious about and you want to develop further I'm super curious about now 25 years later how do you reflect on that experience because as you said it's a collection of so many different moments this is a different culture different teams in a kind way you hadn't lived enough to know so many things about newspaper design you only been designing editorial for about three years or all of a sudden you're in charge of something that's been in motion for a hundred plus years so how did you feel that all of a sudden it's exciting but it's quite also daunting because there's a lot of weight on your shoulders to get it right but I think the comparison isn't fair in the sense that the beginning of your career years feel much longer than when they do as you go on and you will see this with your kids and then going back to being parents for my daughter three months is is as an ordeal of time was for us three months go really fast so yes it was three years but it was three years of being in Madrid working for El Baiz and working at a studio in Barcelona then going back to London and understanding the culture of pentagram spending two years at the culture of pentagram and then going to the observer at the same time I was starting my own company in Barcelona commuting back and forth so it was almost like dog years these were years where I was really immersed in my profession probably had very little time to anything else and I find that those are the years where you have the beginning of your career years is where you if you're lucky as I was to get opportunities to build that gymnastics then the rest is almost collecting new experiences working at a slightly slower pace finding that as years go by you learn less from what you do and then that becomes a different challenge where you're trying to find projects that become a challenge to your capabilities and it becomes harder and harder and that's when it's a different story because you will to keep in love with what you do in order to do it right but of course at the beginning of your career everything's a challenge every challenge is higher than your knowledge and it's an opportunity for you to catch up and I had the feeling that the first five seven years of my career was always me facing challenges that were bigger than my capabilities and I find that this is one of the reasons why you should probably start your career working for somebody else and make sure that that somebody else is very talented because it'll naturally give you the opportunity to work in challenges that are much bigger than your capabilities or your knowledge but you can catch up quite firstly. It's quite tricky to find someone who's who's good and generous and be able to learn from because sometimes you can have people who are very bad but actually that also helps you to learn a lot more to realize that's not the way I think you should do it but you've shared with me some incredible things and when I go back to the ideas because as you said about creativity, creativity is about seeing things from different perspectives and not to be too tight to ideas that an idea could be a prequel to even a better idea. How do you instill that in a culture of people who haven't had the chance to have five or seven years of dealing with things that are much much bigger because you have to work it out first hand? So how do you encourage people to let go and actually see the idea as a prequel rather than the final destination? So yes it really takes a very specific kind of person to understand this because at the beginning or at least this is the way I saw it when I was working for somebody else is you were providing those ideas and there was almost two layers. The first layer of judging which is your boss or somebody who's the creative lead and you're there to help them either have ideas or make those ideas grow. If the idea comes from somebody else you're there to make it grow and I find that the beauty of our job is that there is a reason for pride in everything that you do. So whether your chance is to look at the letting of text to you came up with a great idea to anything in the middle there's an opportunity to see yourself and feel proud of that piece and I always encourage people in our team to feel proud through the biggest of scales. This is something I learned at Pentagram. I come from a Latin country and you would hear people say we've done this and we've done that and I was like you haven't done this. We're in Patagon London this is something that happened somewhere in the US yet the idea of feeling proud of being part of a community is one of the things that are very important but there are also opportunities to feel proud about the little details and everything in the middle and I think this is one of the greatest things about our job is that creativity isn't just the idea or having that great idea but also making that idea shift slightly to the left or to the right to make it from good to brilliant or making sure that the details are at the right place so that nobody even pays any attention to it that there is pride there too. So I think pride is the most important element and you need people that feel that pride have that patience to see that their contribution might not be this time the big idea but there are other places where he or she is going to have an opportunity to have a contribution. I like it pride. Sometimes I can feel that people can be proud of the smallest things and you think is that enough but I want to go to the point when you said the longer I work the less I learn from what I do. Obviously 25 years is a long time to be running a business in always changing times. Say when you said for the first five to seven years the things were far too big for you to take them on. What does it feel like to have a 25 years of wealth and knowledge of running a business that is not always easy to run? What it is is that you learn from other places so it used to be that somebody would knock on our door and this was a very different project to what we'd ever done. If you look at our portfolio it's a lot of us doing a lot of projects in very many different environments and we on purpose after doing the Observer I could have done another three or four newspapers but we on purpose somehow went away from that world to learn from other types of projects, other types of clients, other types of challenges. So the challenges today aren't that much on the mechanism of design. I know for a fact that we're going to get there it might take us longer but we're going to get there. So I naturally use my time more on learning from other places. The great thing of working with people who are good at what they do and if you've got good clients it gives you an opportunity to learn from people who come from very different backgrounds to yours who are brilliant at what they do. So every project is an opportunity to learn about them. Of course you're not learning that much about what you are going to bring into the table but it's a great opportunity to learn about the other person that you have in front of you and that is the way I kept in love with this job. The point is that you told me at the beginning you said that you were always a part of a collective and you weren't aware of what you're good at and what you're bad at and now that makes me think that the way you work with people obviously you get the energy, you divide the information from the others that you would never be able to do it in seclusion because all of that made me think about the fact that you built an international business. Moutjo has got a global presence. What was that like to learn from other places and there's the intricacy nuances of different cultures, the ways of how the local requirements are different of course the language of creativity and design is almost universal but you've got the nuances that you sometimes need to adhere to. So how was that? I couldn't say how I did it because I didn't do it, we did it. It's a collective intelligence, it's not me, it's not my capabilities it's the capabilities of the sum of all of us and when I mean all of us I don't mean only at a partner level. Of course I have my partner Rob who's from the UK but has lived in the US for 30 or years and my partner Tilman whose origins are German but is Spanish-born, my partner Mark and I who are both Catalan born from Barcelona but from different environments and to that we've had people who come from very different cultures and the fact that we started working for different countries got us an opportunity to understand other cultures so by the time you get a second Italian client there are certain specificities and we spend a lot of time trying to say okay this is a project in an industry or a culture that we've never worked in and you said it I think the most international or global language that we all speak is the visual one so it needs ideas, visual ideas but it also needs us wanting to team up with the client to understand the particularities of their culture to be respectful to them and to learn from it to excel so they're bringing the local knowledge. One of my phrases that I see myself repeating constantly is when I talk to clients is I'm not going to give you advice on what you are, you are an expert in what you are, I'm here as an expert in visual language and I will try to get from you the elements that I think are needed to develop something that makes sense for you but it's very important to really get that shortcut to your knowledge and for that we need you, this isn't something that you do in isolation because it never is authentic enough or meaningful enough to the organization. When you mention pentagram or when you mention your business and a few similar businesses the reason why they have survived 30 40 years in some cases is because of the adaptability about that willingness to look around the corner because you can be hyping these businesses they can have a time in the sun you're doing some particular skill particular output really really well and then the world shows up and does it as well as you whereas the element of collective intelligence when you guys go where the curiosity goes seeing things from different perspective is the kind of way to have longevity in this because one type of food can feel really great for about 20 days and then you get bored of it and I think for types of people like you and I and many others it's like you need that variety you need those new problems because as you said you learn from other places that cross-pollination of ideas is that when you say it that client says you know who you are and we know what we can do for you it's like we can learn from others or have to connect things so how did you see the growth of mutual just for that curiosity was did you ever feel like you have to do one thing ever no I think we all had from the beginning a very clear idea of so here are our individual needs the things that Pablo needs as a designer as a human being but also mucho has to have a say on those things and do we coincide in what territories do we coincide we treat mucho as if it was another partner somebody who has its own life and in that sense I think organizations such as Pentagram ourselves have a very clear idea of individuals and community and it's funny enough that we earn our living building brands yet we seem to not be that great at building our own brands and often because if you're building a brand that is only your name and it's only about you it can only go as far as your ambitions your needs your energy and of course we go through faces and lives where our energies are in different places and in generating dependence on the individual that is very hard to be one thing or the other if you are projecting a collective or a brand that represents a collective of course it has its complications and it has its problems but it very rapidly becomes smarter than you becomes this thing that can be a beast that could eat you up but if you keep going back to what your needs are as an individual and what the needs of the organization are and I truly believe there'll be a day where I'll see my needs and see the needs of the organization I might say you know what my needs are no longer aligning with the needs of an organization and that's where Pentagram is brilliant in the sense that they've built a system in which they recycle the needs of individuals within an organization and I think that's one of the reasons and of course the way they do it is very different to the way we do it they protect individuals within the organization we try not to have and we have our reasons for that type of stuff but it really is about nurturing a brand and nurturing the individual needs of people and and again this goes not only at level at partner level but also at any stage of the company when you said it's Pablo's needs and there's an individual needs and there's a mucho as the fifth partner what are your needs what do you bring because as you said one day they will not matter anymore but what do you bring to the table personally that you stand strong behind I have the need to work in a community to be heard by my colleague to help others grow within the organization and I have a certain need to be useful as somebody who has developed a certain agility to do things so it comes naturally to me and as long as those things are being put to use in the organization I'm absolutely fine because of course it might be different for me because I was there the first day of mucho and I have partners that came at another point but to me the biggest project I've done or will do in my life is building this thing that has its own life I'll be very happy if this thing is growing and what I mean growing I don't mean becoming bigger I mean growing in the sense that you were saying you know that design goes different places and it learns from those places and there might be a moment where I'm less interested in those places but I'm still valuable to the organization and I'm hoping that somebody else in the organization is interested in those places that I might not be there's two words you mentioned quite a few times and sometimes you mentioned a word or the other word which is help or grow to another like this needs higher the idea needs either to help or to grow but when you talk about what you do is it's to helping to grow like it's helping to move it's keeping it on the trajectory and I think that kind of summarizes because summarizes what you do because it again takes us back to being around other people at the sort of earliest stages of your career and that's what you bring him back because as you say I want to my values and my needs are the community and to be heard it's like how can you allow your perspective with other people's perspective in actually creating something which to together add something to very meaningful and valuable so help to grow is a carry of this conversation because exactly what you do with Muto you guys create these brands that don't feel cookie-cut it like they feel very much you create a brand and it doesn't feel over time it feels actually more rooted in the brand heritage or creating brands that have got you their unique voices because I think part of the longevity of the studio like yours and the ones at the app as you mentioned is that sometimes they can seem a little bit in the view of the trend or from the view of the trend you can see that it's a bit more old-fashioned oh you guys are not doing this stuff you're not doing this you're not using 3d visualization you're not doing this you're not using the latest gimmick or tag so let's say once upon a time I was on that on that journey with my branding studio where I was like what is the next thing sometimes more in the view of the execution rather than in the view of the overall strategy or legacy so with the work that you guys do and I like that you guys claim that you bring unique perspectives to every project you bring more ways of looking more ways of thinking more curiosity more curiosity to discover what is needed now and imagination to create was never been seen before those values they're not old-fashioned but they can seem like you are rooted in the legacy of you because they're outward looking but very strong in a way starting right now yeah I happen to think that this is me more than I wouldn't say that everyone in the organization thinks this but I happen to think that we're there to contribute so design is this big wheel that we have to try and move on every project that we do every time and that is a putting the standards of what you do very high and it's non-related to what's going on today but how do you contribute in something that moves the wheel to design that so that somebody else can build on that and I believe that this is something we have to try on every project and we will fail 99.999 of the time yet you have to have the courage to the next day with the new client with a new project think okay maybe on this one I can create something that own not only is effective to my client but moves the wheel of design and and that can bring a lot of frustration because it's putting your work at the highest standards and not really thinking that much what's going on today what happened in the past it's really understanding where the client it's also making the client happy but as the base of what you do not as the objective my objective isn't to make our hap our client happy it is the beginning of what I do of course it has to be happy but I am the one who brings the standards of design and the standards of design are very high to the point where I will be frustrated with the result every time because I know this could have been better if I had another day if had another opportunity if my client was a little bit more ambitious if I had a slightly more talented or would have explored 3d or this or that I maybe could have done it better and I think that frustration we focus on trying to erase that frustration but that frustration is in fact the engine of creativity more or less it's the fuel of creativity the fact that you might have on the next project you will have another chance to try and move the wheel of design I don't know if that answers your question but it's the way I think about trends and today you've said many amazing things in there because I was going to ask you about if the meaning of failing because I always go back to a quote by a cycling coach called Charlie Vigelius when he was talking to his team before the race and told the France and he says we're going to lose a lot on a way to win a stage but we can't fail because to fail it means that you're not doing what you want to do in a way you want to do it so I think our way of working with clients it doesn't necessarily fail but we are losing the daily sort of stage of our work looking into it like what does the day we do because that relationship between winning losing failure success it's so fragile and fraught because you used to say that our creative industry is based on four elements ambition ego and insecurity and anxiety because it's just you think you're winning you think you're losing it's just you never know what it is but what you saw beautifully eloquently described in here is that it's a process it's a daily process because you not finished that day your idea is a prequel to a better idea and it's like how do you actually help people grow in a way to understand that this is a continuous journey because as you said for your daughter three months can seem like an ordeal of time and the project that's dragging on for a week might seem like an ordeal to a young designer whereas in your case it must feel different now and also I think if you think of designers the big wheel there are those who came before you it's very important to know where the wheel is and you might think you've done the most creative thing but if you put it on the perspective of the big wheel of design what is really honestly are you just replicating things that are now being done or that were done in the past or are you contributing somehow you're using this we have a lot of confusion about this new fresh this type of stuff when in fact scientists won't start from scratch they always base everything on something somebody who came before you and creativity is the same in that sense where you have to have a sense of what is happened who's explored what who moved the wheel of design in order for you to be conscious of are you actually moving the wheel of design by doing this and assuming that you're never fully successful that there's always if you think of this in failure terms you fail every time and you're going to be failing for the rest of your life because the day it's perfect the day either your standards aren't in the right place or it's the time for you to retire because you've managed to do it so to me failure is not a problem and I don't really see success as real success it might be success to somebody oh yes that one on a word it's only successful in one aspect of what you did or the client was happy yes it's only successful in that territory but it never is completely successful and your job is to really understand okay this is a place to learn for the next time and yes we can we can celebrate as much as you want and I'm not denying the celebratory aspect and in fact I think we have to be positive and I'm a very optimistic type of designer but you always fail at something you could do it better the next time and you could learn from it and to me it's a simple matter of fact and I believe everyone around me in Mucho has that same feeling where yes we've done right this here and there and of course I have to do talks and talk about my work and of course it's only the sights that shine but I know the hidden corners I know the places where it could have been better I love your honesty I love your honesty in a way that you put the discomfort the friction in the forefront of what you're saying but then you still say I'm a positive designer because you're a realist you're in a place where you've seen the inner workings of how to create these things you've had the experience of actually jumping through hoops as you said happen quite a few fuck ups just like everybody else because it's a continuous journey because when you try to see it I always say that the creativity is called marketing problem because it's on the outside it almost promises you like hey join this and you will be creating all of these things only to realize that behind all of the shiny veneers or the end results it's like it's a hard work it's not just like things just come together really not easily by a chance it's just to work behind it because you don't ever have a ads for a bus driver going hey drive this bus and it will make you happy or do this and that will make you happy we somehow feel that our expression of our being through creativity can somehow enable us to find something that we are lacking but in the way you describe it and what how the way it really is it's like you will find the happiness of creativity in the service to others I think we all feel that with the attachment of our success or egoism but okay hey I've created this I should be celebrated that's not a problem with creativity it's not for a therapist to find out what you're lacking in your life you need a validation from someone close to you not rather than hoping that the public will show up and give you that yeah I like it because what you say is the community aspect is the service to the others is it's kind of keep it moving and knowing that where you're standing today it's not the place you were standing 25 years ago this is a terrible analogy but you move it every day forward forward forward and being willing to come back and have your realistic onto things that might be hard to do but keep showing up and being obsessed about it every day I also think this is the way to be set to keep sanity because your job is to deal with other people's problems all the day nobody comes to you if they don't have a problem you're not needed as a designer and you not only need to deliver problem solving you need to bring poetry to the table and because it's not only about solutions it's about virtue too how do you do this and the way you do this is by still keeping hopeful and positive and this job can bring you down because you're having to be empathic to other people's projects other people's problems take them on yourself and add to that your ambition which you're projecting to the project this anxiety of wanting to move the wheel of design if you're somebody who's ambitious about the general picture of design and these things keep adding up and piling up and unless you find ways to keep a positive mind and find brightness where you're having to take on all these problems it's very hard to keep up on a profession for long enough you have nailed it on the head because if other people haven't got a problem you haven't got work and what happens they pass the problem on to you and our assumption is is not a problem is an opportunity but it's an opportunity wrapped in a problem if you think about it like the opportunity is there to create something but ultimately what you said beautifully is yade it's someone else's problem you have to deal with but we naively tell ourselves oh it's an opportunity I love this but one thing you said in the same answer was that you have to bring poetry to the table that's a lifelong commitment even to say that sentence to bring the poetry to the table is I can see things from a different perspective I have to say that honestly if you look at the work that we do and you mentioned it how it has somehow rooted in time somehow timeless ways of solving design and so forth the way the common ground between all of us I'm very mind that there's a lot of souls and energy put into the projects that you see in our portfolio that are very different is those two things the idea that okay there's a problem you're there to solve it but you're also there to solve it in style bring virtue bring poetry there's a certain visual poetry that doesn't mean beauty something can be very ugly and be the solution of a problem and somehow be poetical and I'm a firm believer of not only solving the problem but solving it with a hint of visual poetry well that something that is very hard to understand it's very hard to pass on very hard to explain but we designers see it you can see it where something that to somebody is only ugly for you has poetry. You said earlier that one day when my needs are gone I'll think differently about it but in this final answer what you just described you're in for a long run you're in it for the long run because to explain the way work and what you want to get out of it is very unique it's a very much a poetry in itself because if you care so much about the work you will always find a way to see things differently how you can help other people how you help them grow and what you can do with it so I'm very happy we had a chance to have this conversation because I've learned so much more about you about how you work and it's given me a different layer to see when Mucodas and look I'm excited or what's going to happen next so yeah thank you for being here hopefully now is an absolute pleasure spending this time with you and hope to see you soon we'll have more conversations very soon thank you for listening to this episode of daring creativity podcast I'd love to know your thoughts questions and suggestions so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels this episode was produced and presented by me Radim Maninage the audio production was done by Nier Makai from 7 million banks podcast thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode if you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity creative business branding and graphic design every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an e-book and audio book to make the content accessible whatever you are and whatever you do to get 10% of your order visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast have a look around and start living daringly