Jeremy Weisz 18:20
What does the creative process look like for you?
Dylan Staniul 18:24
Well, we talked a little bit about it. It starts with some discovery sessions, which will sound familiar to people that know something about this field. That’s not special. But what we try and do, which I touched on a little bit, is to talk more about the client or the organization or the endeavor that a group is undertaking, then talk about what we do, and let’s say about design or branding in general. It’s really about understanding what are the pain points that this group is having with their brand? What are the misconceptions of a brand that what we do can help rectify? And learning what it is that we’re going to take as an approach to get them somewhere further down the road? More often than not, we’re working with organizations that are already wildly successful. It’s not like only startups and people that are having businesses that have hit some sort of rocky patch need to rebrand.
In fact, the opposite. It’s organizations that have done so well that their brand is now miles behind them in terms of where they’re going, and so they need to employ a group like us to say, can you get us up to speed? Because we’re going here. Those are the kind of projects that are great. And so what we’re trying to do is make sure that we understand what they want to do, what do they feel dragged down by, and then start to take them down that process. So you can see that sounds — doesn’t sound so. objective at all, and that’s what I really like to try and create as an environment where we get going people can say what they think. They don’t have to try and say something smart about design. We’ll get to that a little bit later. And then when we do get into that, they’re prepared to see some of those things we talked about brought to life in a brand exploration, like we were looking at a little bit there where they can start to weigh in and go, wow, that’s what I wanted to articulate all year, and I haven’t been able to.
This is a way we can get somewhere new in terms of the brand. And then we become a little bit more practical at a certain point and start to help them develop certain things, like brand items of different kinds, brand guideline systems, websites, etc, etc. So we do the full kind of brand package in that way, but the process is really one about helping people see that their brand can go somewhere new that’s going to reflect where they really intend to go.
Jeremy Weisz 20:58
From the discovery process. Let’s just take, since we’re on the Electronic Arts example, and you see, from the discovery process going back to literally the drawing board, I mean, you obviously created this. These are the end result, what we’re looking at here. But what did you take back to discover? Where did you start? Once you did the discovery process, and you kind of probably gathered data from different team members and people, where did you start with? Because this is the end result of all the work that went up to it.
Dylan Staniul 21:38
if you click in and we can start discussing this project, but there are some examples here of some early explorative work that didn’t make the cut. And if you go down, we can find those. Those are some early sketches right here. You could stop on this carousel a little further down, the one you’re just at here, go back out right blacker. Yeah, these slides here, yeah, there’s a few here. There’s six different slides of early explorer work. So you can see here we have a giant crit wall that goes for about 40 feet. And there are all kinds of different ways we could have gone. These are some of those. So if you click the arrow left and right, the six slides here, there’s all kinds of…
Jeremy Weisz 22:20
I feel like I’m doing one of those eye tests, can you say this or this? No.
Dylan Staniul 22:27
So keep going here. What else do we got? We are getting more and more into the weeds here, but that first slide, especially, or this one here, shows that there were many different concepts that we could have taken forward and then were considered.
Jeremy Weisz 22:43
This one here is very close to the end one. But this one is not right here.
Dylan Staniul 22:49
No, correct. These are different ways we could have approached it, where it became more of a word mark, something that was a little bit more elastic.
Jeremy Weisz 22:57
This one literally is an eye chart, I think.
Dylan Staniul 22:58
Is that what is? I don’t want to get too off topic, but we are pretty typographic in our approach to a lot of the work we do, and I think that that reflects some of our, some of our sort of philosophical approach to design. We really are trying to find things that have meaning within the work. We’re rarely decorating anything. So if you can find a solution with typography, it’s usually a good one. But the first stages are very much about meeting with different people, different groups, getting good input. It’s always better to have more input at the beginning than have things come in afterwards.
We really try to push to have the ultimate decision makers there at the beginning, rather than at some point far down the line where things have been solidified a little bit more, and then those individuals are like, hey, like, I didn’t hear about this, or that’s not what I imagine. So it’s much better to have, to beg for a little bit of time from that CEO or whomever, to be there in those first meetings, get their input, look them in the eyes, understand what the real concerns are, and then that’s so helpful down the line. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 23:37
No, thanks for sharing that. What about mistakes that brands make? Because you go in and you’re working on a current, existing brand, or you see brands in the wild out there. What are some other ways or things that you’ve seen brands in, maybe mistakes or different ways of thinking about it?
Dylan Staniul 24:38
I think that, I mean, you just showed some exploration and that we like to do a lot in terms of giving people a lot to look at, but in terms of ultimate outcomes, I think some brand efforts try and do too much with this particular part of their overall business, or organizational strategy. I think brand, and especially our specialty, which is visual identities and how those are representative of organizations can do certain things very well, but they can’t do other things. And so we really try to make a delineation between brand and let’s say marketing, brand informs marketing. It’s like the thing that holds the center. The brand is the thing that you can attach appendages onto, if you have different marketing initiatives and ideas, the brand is what holds that center. But it isn’t marketing.
There are two distinct things. And so many realize this, but some blur the line, I think, sometimes. And so when they’re thinking about making choices about a brand, it can get overly complicated or perhaps overly topical or overly the sense that needs to change quite often. And I think that can get in the way of a solid and recognizable and valuable brand. So sometimes we ask people to slow down, which surprises some, or to do a little less. Yeah. So that’s something that I think people sometimes make a mistake about, that I need to be wowed at every moment in this experience I’m having with this visual identity, or it’s not good enough, and that isn’t really the case. What we really try and do is make an impression, and then as quickly as you can get people onto the content that they intend to consume or to understand.
And so it’s an ushering in of people to their seats for the main content, which may be the marketing or some other kind of message, but the brand itself is sort of facilitating that beginning of that interaction, it isn’t every part of it. You see what I’m trying to describe. I think some people blur those things together, yeah. So I think some of our work can end up being on the quiet side sometimes, there’s a lot of type going on. It can be, it can be, it can be strong and bold, but it can be simple too. I think that’s important in all good branding.
Jeremy Weisz 27:14
What made you Dylan, at one point decide I’m going to start an agency?
Dylan Staniul 27:22
When I was in school, I was in history and classics especially, and I love that. I’ve been to Greece to archeological survey and a dig, and I love that. And I thought about that. And I thought about art school as well, but that didn’t seem as applied enough for me. And I visited a graphic design studio, just by chance, just with someone I knew, it was like, wow, this is an interesting combination of ideas and writing and visuals, which I liked, and put them all together. And then, I think soon after, I realized there wasn’t really anything else I could do like that, I thought that was something that interested me. And so, yeah, I worked at a bunch of studios.
And then I like that thing that we talked about at the beginning, there’s a little bit of that entrepreneurial thing that’s in Burnkit. And so, running your own studio is lots of that. So I enjoy that part of it, too. That’s what got me there. What’s kept me here for 20 years? I mean, that’s a different story. But, yeah, that’s what started it off. It was a pretty easy choice. I think, because that’s how some kind of good choices you make are, I think it was kind of clear at a certain moment, that this was something I could do well, comparably to other things I try to do.
Jeremy Weisz 28:57
How’d you come up with the name Burnkit?
Dylan Staniul 29:00
Ah, my business partner, Josh Dunford, he came up with that name. He was registering some just random URLs in ancient history. And just when that was a thing to do, and Burnkit was one of them. So that ended up being a contender for the brand name of the company, and it doesn’t have a real meaning. I guess maybe there is something you could attribute it to it. And there’s this idea of something. There’s some heat happening there. There’s something to be prepared. There, there’s something. But, and I do like the open-endedness, though it’s good. It allows us to kind of be and look however we want.
Jeremy Weisz 29:42
It’s hard to get a domain where, if it’s two words put together, you can spell them. So, what’s been a milestone, when you look at, from starting Burnkit, what’s like one of the first milestones, it could be a client milestone, or a hiring milestone, what pops out?
Dylan Staniul 30:04
I think that, to be honest with you, our mix of clients and the kinds of things we do, we’re such omnivores. We work in all different industries, and I think a milestone is that one day it clicked for me, was that being an omnivore was actually an asset. And I thought for a long time, we don’t really specialize in any one place, and we don’t specialize in this industry or that one. And what really distinguishes us. And then at a certain point, we realized, like people were coming to us and working with us, when we would go into, like, wildly different industries that we had no business being in because they’d seen what we done in several other industries, and we could apply that to it, and it was fresh there.
So this wide net that we threw over 20 years has given us this huge experience, like walking into boardrooms and talking with smart people that had no business being in other than that, we could do this one thing. And so that was a milestone for me, when I realized that that wasn’t a negative. I never had to make an excuse for that after that, it became part of what we felt made us able to do that job. We don’t know your business perfectly, but we know a lot about many businesses and many kinds of branding approaches, and I think by listening to you, we could figure out something that would be special and unique for this instance, too. So yeah, that was a turning point.
Jeremy Weisz 31:31
I remember listening to a talk by Perry Marshall, and I’ve had him on the podcast a few times. He wrote the book, 80/20 Sales and Marketing. He wrote several other books, and I don’t know if he really attributed, this quote attributes to him, I’m sure he may be repeating it, but that often innovation comes from outside industry. So, working with different industries, you can kind of seems like bring that different thought process into whatever industry you work with.
Dylan Staniul 32:19
I believe in that completely. We take most of our inspiration from businesses that we work with. Sometimes they might be in their design space, but it might be in industrial designer or furniture designer architects or even some of the arts groups that like ballet BC or Vancouver art gallery, Canadian arts groups like that, that we work with, but rarely other design firms, if you like, or branding companies. That’s not really where we’re looking for inspiration. I think we’ve always just been that way. I think that idea of putting two things that are maybe not expected together is where something special happens, something new occurs there, or the potential for that. So that’s the way we work on all levels. And I think that’s how we inspire ourselves, too, as a group, like, when you get to put your own spin on something that’s from outside your genre, that’s where you create something new. Yeah, so I agree with that completely.
Jeremy Weisz 33:27
There was before we hit record, you mentioned about classic principles, so I’d love for you to talk about that, but it reminds me, I think one of the examples Perry gives to that innovation comes outside industry was, he was talking how, with when Steve Jobs in the computer, the magnetic charger, he got the idea from, I think, a coffee plug, because they didn’t want the coffee to spill over, and so was like a magnetic something on the coffee. So he took that from an outside industry and put it into a charger on the computer, so that just sticks out to me as one of the examples that he shared. But classic principles?
Dylan Staniul 34:11
Yeah, well, I think those are the two things, right? You’re talking about, like an innovative, new idea that doesn’t seem to fit, and then classic principles. And I think you use them both at the same time. So by all means, I don’t want to come across in any way as a prima donna, because we’re not like that. We’re very much happy to speak in the language of our clients and to be practical about some of our conceptual work. But I think classic principles are important in terms of typography, in terms of classic graphic design, we make sure that everyone here does their homework and knows the history of great graphic design and what.
Works and what doesn’t. And so if you’re having those classic principles of great, solid typography, excellent presentation, really understanding how layout works and what is the right amount of content, and how to get people through content in an efficient way, and then mix that with something innovative and exciting, and that’s beautiful. That’s where you get the best work. So we’re getting into the weeds here a little bit about technical aspects, but there is that side of what we do as well. We’ve talked a lot about big ideas, but there are many instances where we need to then be quite precise about what we do and just like any design industry, there are times when you get down to having to know some practical, classic, technical things that have been worked out by others that came before.
So, yeah, we really are about great type and use of space, and those basic principles are always there. So just to dovetail that into, people often ask me questions about technology and how that’s changed business and those classic principles still apply. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with posters from the last century, from the turn of the last century or websites, or outdoor or anything, those principles still apply. They’re still good. And so, yeah, I think it’s important keeps dinosaurs like me doing what I’m doing as well.
Jeremy Weisz 36:37
Dylan, I have one last question, and before I ask it, I want to just point people. They can check out burnkit.com to learn more, more episodes of the podcast as well. Last question is about some of your favorite resources? It could be business books, leadership books. It could be a mentor, whether you know them or not, distant mentor, actual mentor. What are some of your favorite resources that other people should check out?
Dylan Staniul 37:14
I’m not sure if I’m going to have the status for factory answer for you that you want there. I’m really not someone that avidly reads about, let’s say graphic design or branding. I’ve done that in my past, and I haven’t really kept up on what the best seller list includes of those. I spend more time reading history and spending times with other things than that, in terms of that sort of information. My inspirations are really a lot about, yeah, different design disciplines, architecture, art, technical industries and things like that, and the clients we work with, not so much about me, kind of thinking more about something from a literary perspective in terms of design at this point. So I don’t have someone to go to and like someone that they should read right now.
Jeremy Weisz 38:20
It could be like something you drew inspiration from. It could be something in history or biography, or something, it doesn’t have to be necessarily just business related or graphic design related at all, but something that you just draw inspiration from, could be anything.
Dylan Staniul 38:35
Yeah. I mean, I think I get a lot of inspiration from just to hear it. I’ll give you a technique, rather than a name drop, I try and continually try new things, like, for instance, music. I’m always adding new kinds of music to my playlist and things I like to listen and then when I’m brave enough, even play it for others, because I think that type of experience opens your mind to new things. I think you have to continually apply new things to what you’re doing. Don’t always get the same thing the same way. Don’t order the coffee the same way. Don’t write in the same kind of notebook all the time, small changes like that every day keep your brain elastic, and don’t drive to work the same way things like that.
Walk a different way in your neighborhood, and look around and absorb things as kind of part of my daily routine. And so I’m not looking for self-help in books that way, if you get what I’m saying, I might find it in history books or something else, but in terms of how to approach, being creative in any field you’re in, I think just making sure you’re being creative in your other pursuits as well are going to help you do that. It’s just kind of exercising a muscle.
Jeremy Weisz 40:03
Love it. Well Dylan, I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone, check out burnkit.com, more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Dylan, thanks so much.
Dylan Staniul 40:13
Well, thank you. I enjoyed this a lot. It’s great. Thank you.
