Onsite event experience in Nashville with Sr. Designer Collin Herko

 

Mikey: [00:00:00] Everyone's simmered down now. Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller Study Club. This is your co host, Mikey Meduski, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design agency. I'm joined by my co host, your favorite, Molly Gagan, straight out of Inglewood, Colorado. What's going on?

Molly: What's up, Mikey? How's it going, Presentation Nation? As always, pleasure to be here. Mikey, who we, who we talking to today?

Mikey: Alright, well, this person, he's in the spirit of fall, like, you know what happens in the fall time, Molly? Autumnal. In corporate America?

Molly: Well, the leaves are changing. Fall, fall

Mikey: [00:01:00] conferences.

No, it's like a, It's the time they travel, they fly, they migrate to places like Orlando, not Orlando that time of year. They, they'll go to places like Las Vegas and I don't know, Arizona, but in some cases they go to really cool places like Nashville, Tennessee. And that's where senior presentation designer, Mr.

Colin Herko just got back from an onsite event experience and we wanted to get a glimpse of what he encountered. With this big annual summit Colin, welcome to the show.

Collin: Thanks so much. I love that callback. Everybody simmered down We'll call back to the karaoke stage a couple years ago Remember things got a little too rowdy and we had to tell the crowd or rather I had to tell the crowd to simmer down So it's nice.

It's a nice fine to with live music. So I do all you know, yeah her You're a musician too, right? No, I don't want to go that far. Okay. You dabble with the guitar. I strum a little guitar. I used to play a saxophone [00:02:00] in high school band. Let's vote it. Yeah. No surprise. Okay. You're cool with that.

Molly: Colin, I have too many things to say, but I'm so excited, but I want to say to the listeners, Presentation Nation, if you recognize Colin voice and or name, he was the host of Pump the Breaks, one of our amazing Lunch and Learns from earlier this talking about breaker slides and you have such a unique.

Style to your design column and so I'm really excited to like hear about your experience for on site designing You're seeing your presentation designer and you had lived in Nashville for how many years

Collin: about a little more than seven almost eight years Yeah, and

Molly: like huge cool music influences there and like I'm just I think you can really tell in your design that that really comes out.

So we're excited to hear about your experience being in your favorite city for an onsite client event.

Collin: Yeah, it was really nice just to be back to, you know, it's, it's a second home for sure, and it's so rapidly. Jane, I know Molly, you were there recently, too. It's just a, It's a [00:03:00] vibrant

Molly: place.

Collin: So it was fun to be back and fun to kind of come full circle with doing some event stuff there.

I'd kind of started my career doing, doing event things locally, especially with like live music. So it was really fun to be back.

Molly: We're going to ask more about the saxophone and the spice. When you're not traveling

Mikey: to cool places to do events, what is your role here at go strange? Like what's the, what's your day to day kind of look like?

Collin: Yeah. A senior designer here. So Yeah, again, I'm sure everyone knows, uh, we're a registered agent agency. So, uh, just a wide variety of clients. So, you know, day to day, um, could be working on one or we could be working on five different clients. So yeah, it's, it's unique cause we have to be, you know, we have to be chameleons.

I know, you know, again, looping it back to that music reference. We, we sort of referred our internal design studios as. Music studios, right? We have like a Shangri La referencing the famous Shangri La recording studio, and then also a sound city in California. So, so we kind of think [00:04:00] of ourselves as right, like session musicians.

So, you know, one day we're, we're playing, you know, we're playing R& B and then the next we're, we're playing. Um, you know, monkey tongue country or something like that. Right. Right. It's a great reference. I love that. So yeah. And then the same with our, with our visual work. So it could be, it could be doing something for a biomed company in the morning and in the afternoon we're, we're working with food and Bev or something like that.

So yeah.

Mikey: Yeah, keeps it fresh and you're such a talented designer, it comes naturally to you.

Molly: Have you always been a designer, Golan? What's your, what's your, um, background? I don't know if I, I mean,

Collin: professionally, I don't know. Do you want to hear my full like,

Molly: yeah, design pedigree? Yeah.

Collin: Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, I wasn't, I mean, if you want to roll way back, I wasn't really in much of a, Uh, Koran and Paper did.

I was, I was definitely, you know, I, I grew up thinking I was gonna be either a professional hockey player or I was Oh yeah. Or I was gonna be like, bill and Twister. I was gonna be a storm chaser. So those were like my two options way [00:05:00] and, uh, incredible. I don't think neither of 'em worked out incredible.

And then I kind of thought I was gonna be photojournalist maybe in high school doing like sports topography. And that's kind of how I stumbled on, you know, Adobe creative suite and stuff back in like the CS two days. And then I realized that, yeah, you can make, kind of make a career out of messing around and Photoshop, you know, for the luck of a better way to put it.

And yeah. And also my dad, my dad's an architect, so I've, I've kind of grown up, you know, being around sort of. Design styles, you know, the Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright, things like that. So I've always kind of been interested in that

Molly: CAD software.

Collin: Then I went right. Yeah. And then went to school for, yeah, I went to school for graphism.

Yeah. It wasn't like a fine art or anything like that. And then professionally right up out of college, moved from New York to Nashville and landed an awesome job working for a, a large format print company doing event stuff, which is cool. Cause I was in Nashville doing stuff for like CMA and Bonnaroo and NFL and stuff.

But uh, yeah, kind of started going [00:06:00] on my own. And then eventually when I was doing freelance, got into presentation design. Did that full time for a while and then eventually, yeah, almost three years ago, found, found Ghost Ranch. So it's been an incredible three years to the least. So, yeah.

Molly: You found the ranch.

Collin: Yeah, but

Mikey: we, we have to like, expose the elephant in the room, which like, Okay. You're a designer probably doing like really red for Bonnaroo and moves music posters and, and then you like start doing PowerPoint for a living for like corporations. Like did your body resist this at first? And like,

Collin: yeah, well, you know, I mean, there's, there's many reasons why that, that happened, but I love sort of that space, but also, you know, you know how it is.

Agency work can be stressful and certain environments can be stressful. You know, even like. The 40 minute commute, you know, it gets to you after a while. And, and, and I know we sort of take working remote for granted, but you know, it catches up to you after a while. So I, I did go out on my own for all Dean freelance was, was mildly successful.

And then [00:07:00] eventually found presentation. I was like, wow, this is really, really interesting. You know, PowerPoint, we all know gets that, you know, it gets a bad rap, I think, but I think anything you can do in PowerPoint, you can do, or rather anything you can do in like InDesign, you can, you can basically do in PowerPoint or at least bring it over, fake it.

So

Molly: you heard it here, folks. I've never,

Collin: yeah, I've never felt handicapped by PowerPoint at all. So it's been also fun to be able to be. You know, still in the agency setting are again, being like that, that chameleon and being able to adapt to who we're working with at the time. So I love that.

Molly: I think there's, like you said, there's a stigma around PowerPoint.

Like there's so much, so many ways you can push brand narrative if you've got a willing person, you know, and. When you're a good senior designer as yourself, you can help the client sometimes push them a little bit, offer them something they might not have expected. That's what we're here to do at The Ranch.

Speaking of client projects, you were in Nashville for an onsite, we won't, you know, name what was going on, [00:08:00] but what was the, you know, what was the type of Work you were doing? Mm-Hmm. What was the ask of the project?

Collin: Sure. Yeah. So it was a franchise conference, um, for this company where they were doing sort of just like a state of the company, you know, getting, getting the folks hyped up.

And it was really unique because a lot of times when we're working with our clients, we're adapting their branding. And this was a unique one and where we were basically given license to, to run with art direction, which was awesome. So. We, because it was in Nashville and we could talk about this more later, we were instructed to go with like a hat show print style, which is this like vintage letterpress.

And again, we could talk about that a little bit if you want, but was really, really neat that we get this like license to just say like, Hey, we trust you. Take the style adapted to what ended up being, you know, like hundreds of, of slides going on, you know, 40 foot screens in front of 500 people. So that's so cool.

Yeah. And it's also [00:09:00] nice being on site too. I know, you know, sometimes when you, when you're working in your own office, you forget that this eventually is going to be shown to a live audience somewhere, somewhere down the line, you know,

Molly: it's like, it's

Collin: not just like 11 inches wide on your computer screen in your office.

I don't know. Yeah.

Mikey: You see and feel the, the impact there's a lot there. So first of all, yeah, a lot of times, like a client, their brand team is pretty amped to create the event styling and that's totally fine. They'll kind of give us, here's the styling. Maybe you can make a template for it in PowerPoint, or maybe they make the template and we just work with the keynoters.

But you're saying in this case we started so early that we got to adapt and like actually come up with The theme for the show and adapt the brand into that What was that process like did we like you come up with some options have to talk them into one one route or another? How did that go?

Collin: Yeah, so they definitely knew in advance that you know I don't think I don't think this style is necessarily like You [00:10:00] know, this like hidden thing, you know, many people have been to Nashville.

They've probably seen this style before. If you Google hat, show, print, you'll know exactly what we're talking about. And it's also like right there, downtown in the country music hall of fam. We probably, you know, if you've been in Nashville, you might have seen this, but so they knew what they wanted. They knew they wanted this natural style, this hat, show, print style.

So that being said. It had its challenges because it is a vintage analog letterpress, you know, printing process. It's not this like digital thing. So we had to sort of overcome that as far as. You know, creating our, you know, our mock ups. So yeah, initially, yes, we were, we were tasked with some, some options and we'll see, you know, Hey, this is what you're asking for.

Here's it pushing a little bit, maybe, maybe sort of like a, a crossover style of something a little more digital. And then here's like this like kind of wildcard that, uh, is a little more contemporary, but still in line with like, you know, a country music or like. A little bit more modern [00:11:00] feel or, or even like a, like plonky talk, like Broadway, plonky talk, gritty, you know, rock and roll sort of feel that's kind of the toughest part to get off the ground.

Right. So I was, I was in that like. Making something out of nothing. That's sort of the hardest part. And then once they're like, yep, that's the direction we want to go. Okay, now we can start turning the engine on and rolling, so.

Mikey: So, I want to hear what that means. Cause so first, you've established the global aesthetic.

You've captured the vibe that they wanted universally. But now, like, you're helping now the speakers on a pretty bespoke, like, white glove. You know, these are some executives. Who, as I understand it, they run sort of this big corporate company brand, a national brand that we all know. And then people, these franchisees, throw up a restaurant and slap that logo on it.

And they come to this annual conference every year to learn, Hey, what the, what is this brand going to do for us to help us run thriving, uh, restaurants? So from what I gather, the relationship between corporate and [00:12:00] franchisees can be fraught. It can be really good in good times and it can be absolutely turbulent in down economies and stuff like that.

So it seems like the stakes are kind of high. Like, was that your take on this? And, and can you tell us a little bit about the executive keynotes that y'all Supported.

Collin: Yeah. I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, there was, you know, without getting like too deep, you know, the state of like eating out these days is like not the same as it was like 10 years ago.

Right. So this event was definitely a pepper alley, you know, it was trying to fire up people and convince them that, you know, you've made the right choice. Let's, let's stick with it. Um, so that being said, we were, you know, tasked with making these like really optimistic. Slides, you know, making it seem fun.

They're in Nashville, right? We're here, they're here for business reasons, but also to wine and dine too. So like there wasn't a whole lot of convincing that needed to be done with the executives to like make it to like dive into this [00:13:00] style, which was really nice, you know, and, and probably unique. I sort of have like a survivor's guilt.

Because there's, you know, there's, you know, how these events go, there could be horror stories, whether it's with technical issues or personnel issues. And this was really nice. Everyone was really on board with, with getting that vibe across, for lack of a better word. Yeah.

Molly: And to add extra context, I mean, this is year three ish of working with this particular client.

And so it just goes to show that if you have, like, maintained a good relationship with a client, like you, That door, more doors can be opened in that way. Cause this is the first time we've been tasked with universally choosing the design style, right?

Collin: I believe so. Yeah. I think that in the past, and I'm not a higher person sure on this, but I believe that it's sort of been a little more, more in line with their branding.

I, and I'm not going to say that this was like totally out of left field because we, you know, there's, there's colors and fonts that need to be correct on logos. But yeah, this was definitely a change of pace where. Yeah, we were given sort of [00:14:00] like that freedom

Mikey: and Colin too. I, I will say from what I know about this client compared to a spectrum, you know, we work with tons and tons of events.

We know this one, you guys did like two proper remote rehearsals prior to the event. So virtual, and then once you got on site, you did another rehearsal. So I think that as you said, Yes, it went really smooth, but I also think there's something to be said about preparation and top level leadership sort of forcing their team to go through the motions and thrash early rather than late.

Can you tell us like, what was the rehearsal and the prep process like?

Collin: It was, yeah, you're exactly right. It was incredibly thorough and, you know, went beyond maybe what we were expecting. But that being said, it paid off in the fact that we, when we got there. The details just needed to be ironed out. You know, there was nothing major that needed to be addressed when we were there.

Again, that's my survivor's guilt of like hearing those horror stories. Uh, we didn't have a single, [00:15:00] we didn't have a single, you know, large task when we were there, but yeah, the rehearsals and the thorough note taking and, you know, having a couple of days of just all hands on deck to work on these things.

Paid off in the end. And I'll just say this styling is very difficult. You know, again, we're adapting like this printing Analog style to a digital space and it's not easy to like make things look accidentally, you know distressed or you know To kind of fake it. So I just you know a hats off to our team for being adaptable, you know again being chameleons and those like studio musicians and Adapting to this new style on the fly Yeah, without much more than just a 30 minute rundown and some googling, you know, so a testament to our art for sure

Mikey: Yeah, I don't know if hatch print shop ever did banged out some like line charts, you know and like bar graphs To the corporate world Sure.[00:16:00]

Molly: Yeah, it's amazing Mikey. We've said it. I think we even said it on the last the previous episode We said it a lot of times In the presentation world and certainly in the event space, which has presentations, you can't practice presentations, you can only like prepare. And so I just think that speaks to the process.

It has to be iterations, and it's not true for every instance that you'll get that time to have like full tech rehearsals. We've heard from every tech related person that we've had on Mikey that like, it's all about the rehearsals. If you can't get, Rehearsals for getting people familiar with the technology they're going to be using and what it like renders at and on site like looking at how the projector does it.

Collin: There was, yeah, the most like technical issues we had was just some like color testing, and even that is a relatively minor to what could have been or what has been before, you know, again, I, I have a background in the printing world and that would have been a much bigger headache, you know, after the fact, but when you're there, you got your laptop and you can solve it in five [00:17:00] minutes.

So it's really nice. And again, the rehearsal is paramount. So for an aspiring

Mikey: presentation designer, maybe listening, like. What, what is it actually like to be on site? Like there's you and our creative director, Jeff, shout out Hefe. Were you like hanging out in a separate room? Like what was the day in the life like?

And like, were there any people, like what was the cast of characters that you were working alongside as well?

Collin: Yeah. Uh, well they have a production company that, that handles all things, we're all working hand in hand then. So they're handing, you know, lighting, sound, you know, the visual graphics, fog machines, all that good stuff.

The cameras. So we're working alongside them to make sure, you know, things are working smoothly, but yeah, day in the life, I think, you know, they had again, some more onsite rehearsals, dress rehearsals, whatever you want to call them. And by that point, I would say most of our heavy lifting was done and we were just observers and really just more on call.

Hey, listen, this, this name spelled wrong or something, or, Hey, listen, we got to swap out this photo, you know, 30 [00:18:00] seconds before this slide comes up.

Molly: Did that happen?

Collin: Yeah. I mean, there was some, there was some like last minute things. Hey, oh, we, we forgot, you know, a slide number here, you know, nothing major, nothing major that was going to disrupt.

So again, we were very lucky in that regard, but yeah, the, uh, the cast of characters, there's some, some graphic folks that were hanging back out back. Stage with, and you know, the incredibly talented people who run like the teleprompter, you know, and the same, same skill

Music: that you never think of

Collin: even just like copyright, you know, people happen to write their, you know, your copier that can't even, I can't wrap my head around just, just, just farming, you know, those presentations on the fly.

So yeah, it was a really neat experience. Luckily, no late nights, some early mornings, but no late night. So that wasn't,

Molly: yeah. And you're just carrying, like, you're at the conference. Was it like a conference center or what kind of venue?

Collin: Yeah, yeah. It was like a, you know, event space within this really nice hotel.

Like a, like an insane night night. So they're all unbelievably nice. You're just

Molly: carrying around like your laptop ready to, ready to like pull it open and pull up the [00:19:00] file, right?

Collin: Yeah. Yeah. We brought our laptops. We brought our gear, our chargers. So. Yeah, yeah, we had our, just like a notepad and that was about it.

I can, we maybe had like an external hard drive in case.

Music: Yeah, the space

Collin: was really nice brand new hotel down there. Yeah, we were gonna go get like a 5, 000 steak, but never can never came to fruition. So

Mikey: I told you to dang, it's your chance. I said, treat yourself, put it on the

Music: card.

Mikey: Yeah. Oh man. That's pretty sweet.

Were there, was there anything like if you were to go to your next one, anything you would tell yourself that you learned from this one to like to bring, or maybe you didn't need to bring,

Collin: you know, I don't, I don't know. I thought that I was, we were fairly well prepared. I don't think that we like. Yeah. I don't, I don't really have a good answer.

I think that

Mikey: you probably did just have a lot of, yeah, you

Collin: know, thinking ahead, they, you know, they, they feed you well, they give you good snacks and plenty of coffee. So yeah, we were, we were happy campers back there. It was a nice, calm, dark space backstage, you know?

Molly: [00:20:00] Yeah. Yeah.

Collin: I was going to ask the backstage vibes.

Yeah, it was nice. When we've

Molly: talked to the teleprompter, Jill Richardson, who we've had on the cast, shout out Jill. She says that she spent, I don't know if she knows exactly, but like she's done teleprompting for so many years that she's like, I've definitely spent days of my life in the dark, like backstage, you know, area of event spaces.

And she's like, it can be really, really nice if it, If

Mikey: it's

Molly: not too air conditioned.

Mikey: Yeah, but if it's like during a winter month, cast call or whatever is at 6. 30am when it's dark, you get out of there. If there's late changes for the next day's stuff, which teleprompters are often the ones who are locked in, they have to work with them until the script is just right.

They'll be out by 8 p. m. It's pitch black. You never see daylight. So yeah,

Collin: it's a crazy life, but shut up Yeah, we got buddy buddy with some some of them back there just because we're locked down for a few hours But uh, yeah everyone, you know, it's um, it reminded me of like high school [00:21:00] theater almost, you know You're backstage and everyone's kind of you know, you know, everyone's on the same team back there.

So it was great I want to put on a good show. So you did

Molly: Yeah, show must go on. What would you, Cullen, what would you recommend as a senior designer for someone, anyone listening, Presentation Nation, you know, we have like presentation designers, designers of all kinds, and product marketers, but for people that might be interested in leveling up in their presentation design career, why would you recommend or not going on site and getting this kind of experience?

Collin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it was nice to kind of get thrown into that environment, stressful or not that you kind of know you're signing up for, but you know, we talk about this all the time of this idea of like kind of worshiping the big idea of like our clients, you know, what are they trying to achieve here?

And it's sort of. Um, a tough one to connect when, again, you sit in your home office and you're working on your 15 inch MacBook and you forget, you know, the stakes at play sometimes. So going on site, it all kind of, it makes sense, you know, what's the pressure

Music: here.

Collin: So that was [00:22:00] my takeaway, like, Hey, it's nice to kind of buy into their messaging, whatever that may be.

You know, I'm this client, like I'm, I'm not a franchise owner. They're not talking to me, but. You know, it is inspiring to want to get it right for them when you, you're sort of buying into why they're presenting. Right. Yeah. And it's a tough, it's a tough thing to do.

Mikey: Molly. That was a theme of our, our retreat this summer.

We called it more than just a pretty slide, you know, and exploring all the reasons that communication objective is, is a lot more than just, you know, Slapping some lipstick, you know, on a, on the pig of some PowerPoint slide. It's like, they're really trying to get a message across and it can have a significant impact.

And so I appreciate that calling. Like, I remember too, for me, it was the first time seeing something that, you know, 500 people are looking at and you're looking at them. Like, are they tuning out? Are they engaged? Whatever, you know, like you feel it in a different way when you actually. Have the context and you're sure.

Collin: And it's, it's a nice feeling to just kind of seeing work come to fruition anyway.

Mikey: Yeah.

Collin: You know, a lot of times, [00:23:00] especially with us being a digital agency, you know, you forget when you hand up the files that it's going somewhere. Right now it's just, it's just kind of in your mind. It's almost like digital dust.

Right. But it's nice to kind of see it's fruition. Yeah. And, and, and see it on the big screen. And, and also. This, this company we worked with was taking our styling and, and turning it into, you know, collateral for print, you know, printed collateral. So like signage and merchandise and, you know, it was on like these awards that we're handing out and also, you know, email footers and all of this stuff.

So it was really nice. Yeah. Motion graphics. Yep. So it was really nice to kind of see that collateral in person and, uh, and also speak to the folks that were creating that product. So yeah. Yeah. That was really, really nice. Yeah. Did you feel

Mikey: sort of that event high

Collin: afterward when you're like, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it was a success, so you can't, you can't help it like feel that way. But it also helps that I sort of like enjoyed [00:24:00] the aesthetic of it. You know, I don't know how to say this. Like not every client is my favorite, you know, design aesthetic to work with. And that, that being said, you know, we're going to, you know, we're going to do our best to make it look great, but it helps a lot when it's like, wow, I really, I really like, like this looks like I would wear a t shirt with this, you know, I would, so,

Molly: yeah, that's cool.

Collin: And that was, you know, that's a great experience. It's a

Molly: rare alignment, but cool when it happens. Without a doubt,

Collin: yeah.

Molly: And with that being said, yeah, talk to us. You've, you mentioned it earlier, but for those that don't know, what is the, give us a little hatch show print style. Oh yeah.

Collin: Um, you know, I'm not, I'm no expert.

And like I said, it was sort of a full circle moment when I first moved down there, like we went off like an interview. That was like one of the first places I went and got to see it. Cause it's sort of like a graphic design, you know, tourist spot. Right. And there's still an active, like this style is still like an active print shop.

So yeah, again, had show [00:25:00] just to back up. It's this letterpress printing press shop, downtown Nashville. I don't know, like 150 years, something like that. And they just do the answer posters and it's become like its own kind of Nashville style, right? So it's like evolved past the point of just being like a print shop.

Like it is like a design style now, which is really, you know, it's a really interesting place to be. I mean, you think of other designers where. You know, you're buying into like the style, right? Like someone who's getting their poster printed there, you know, they're not exactly, I don't, at least I don't know their process, but they're not exactly inputting like creative direction.

They're like, all right, hat show print. You go like, make, make a hat show print for my band. Right.

Molly: And it's like, was traditionally really used for like literally shows and like concert posters.

Collin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you look at like the oldest, oldest ones, yeah. They're like early country music. I mean, like I said, I think it's like.

It's been 150 years. So it's well before that, even

Molly: if you think you don't know the [00:26:00] style, if you will link it in the show cabinets, you'll recognize

Collin: what we're talking about here. So the thing that's like tough about it too, is like I said, you know, it's this analog process where they're using this, this hand carved typography.

So it has like

Molly: thick letters,

Collin: decades and decades of. Scratches and nicks out of it. And like the letters are mismatched. It's one font here and another font here to make up one word. And, oh, we need to fill some space. So let's just add like. The star or an arrow or, you know, whatever. So it's, it's really kind of, I don't want to say free form, but it's, you know, they're, they're kind of using what they have to make what they need.

That said, we have like the magic computers. We can make whatever you want. Right. And yeah. Off to like, okay, how do we constrain ourselves? It'll work within the style. You know, if we start removing these constraints, well, we're not really in the hat show style. So had show print, it's always, you're always going to have like white paper with ink on top, right?

Cause it's a, you know, now printing process, you're not going to have for the most part, you're not going to have like a dark piece of paper with like. That [00:27:00] doesn't really make sense. Right. So we, that, that's tough to adapt to, you know, a digital presentation. So, but the constraints are nice. I don't know.

I've said this before, and maybe this is like a tangent, but like the constraints are like kind of what makes it makes you be able to like break those rules. So yeah, we did break those rules a couple of times. You know, without those constraints, you have something else besides Hadshoe Burn, you know, I mean, you want to bring it back to like music, like jazz, jazz, isn't like jazz without, you know, constraints of like music theory, right?

Like, so I don't know. I mean, that's a weird analogy, but no,

Molly: it's true. You have to like operate within a certain kind of space and

Collin: factors. Yeah.

Molly: And it's cool. Like, I mean, normally when you're working with the font, obviously things just fall into a line on a computer. So I think Hadshoe. So analog as you're saying, and isn't necessarily even in a line sometimes.

Because the fonts could be different per letter, so it presents a really unique challenge, but then obviously delivers a very unique Stylistic and yeah, it's a

Collin: quite a bit of [00:28:00] effort to make it look effortless Yeah, you know when they're working with these wood blocks there's nicks and chips out of them when we're making on a computer We have to kind of have those in or like oh, it's a little too much like oh That's like Yeah, so it's, it's delicate for sure.

And again, hats off to our team for being so adaptable, uh, and figuring that out on the fly, cause it all, it all turned out so good. I'm excited

Molly: to link it.

Collin: Yeah.

Molly: I think this is a perfect segue, Mikey, to get us into the spice cabinet. Nashville is a very spicy city.

Mikey: It is.

Molly: First of all, for this hatch style, is there, I mean, we can link the press shop itself, Colin, but do you have any like favorite hat show, uh, Prince of all time.

And he like artists that have produced it or any favorite concert posters. You could link up.

Collin: Yeah. Uh, I mean, I have, I have quite a few at home. There's a really great one that you could probably just look up Johnny cash at show brand and it's like, it's just one plate of him and it's kind of overlayed three times.

[00:29:00] So I don't know. It's just a really simple way to. Create. Oh yeah. Kind of vibrancy. I recommend one. Oh, I see that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like yellow and red. Right. Beautiful. That one's really nice. So, but I think you could there, I think if you go on the country music, all of fame website, they have the full, what do you wanna call it?

Archives of every hat, show print that's ever made. So you could, you could probably spend hours in there looking through like tens, tens of thousands of 'em. Yeah.

Molly: Right. He needed some inspiration. Mm-Hmm. . And on a similar note, outside of the Hatch style, do you have any favorite, like people you follow podcasts, you listen to books?

Person design inspo or resources for presentation design that you would recommend to people

Collin: maybe not for I'm trying to think for maybe like, well, if you want to bring this back to music, I watched a documentary the other night. About this guy named storm, storm Ferguson, who's started this agency called hypnosis, who did all of the like album covers and like the seventies.

So we did like all kind of floated it. I think it's called square square circle or sport in the circle or something like that.

Molly: Okay. Okay. Square the circle. [00:30:00] Yeah. Inspiration can come from anywhere. So I love, I love. Yeah.

Collin: So yeah, more of a, uh, you know, I wouldn't call them a presentation designer, but you know, to tie it back to, to tie it back to music, that was, That got me pretty, got me pretty stoked.

Squaring the circle. Yeah, rockstar kind of graphic designer.

Mikey: Yeah. And people sort of came to like the dark side of the moon album cover.

Collin: Yeah. And I mean, if you go look at his catalog, he, he probably, if you like an album from like the seventies, he, there's a chance that he had a hand in it.

Music: Yeah.

Collin: But you know, people were coming to him for his style.

That's like also a unique thing. Again, that's like had show print. People are coming to him. They're buying the style. I think a lot of us know Aaron Draplin, right? Yeah. Aaron Draplin. Like. He's in sort of a unique position to, I think, where people are like buying his style, right? So not that he probably can't do other things, but when you're buying him or when you're buying like a hat show print as, or this, this, uh, hypnosis as like your designer, like you're buying into their style [00:31:00] and it's kind of a unique place to be.

Mikey: That kind of reminds me of. Paul Rand, like, you know, graphic designer back in the day. He did like that original, like the IBM logo. He definitely, he, he gets cited. Who knows if it's true by like freelance graphic design coaches. They say, like, he told Steve jobs. No. When Steve asked him for like some options for the logo and he's like, true, this is what you get.

Here's what you're getting. So who knows if that's like urban legend or whatever, but there you are buying a style. Tattoo artists, same deal. I think people line up for, you know, they get on waitlists because they want that one artist's rendering or their, their pen

Molly: style. I mean, when you establish a style, it's a brand, it's a brand.

People follow that.

Collin: Yeah, I'm jealous. I, I, I don't know if I, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but yeah, you know, we're our agency. Obviously that's not our, our bag. We're, you know, again, we're adaptable. And yeah, or these, you know, bring it back around where these, like these session musicians who can adapt to the different, different [00:32:00] genres, but it's unique for sure.

I don't know.

Mikey: And then there was that, the Shangri La reference, like Rick Rubin, what I, I read some quote from Flea. The drummer for Red Hot who said like, you don't go to Rick Rubin to get Rick Rubin sound, but like, the musicians go to him so that he can like pull their, their sound out of them.

Music: Yeah. And their ideas out of them.

It's a consultative process.

Mikey: Yeah. So he sort of removes his own self, which I think is a unique take and probably why we named one of our studios after his approach

Collin: too.

Molly: Yeah.

Collin: It's interesting. I don't know. I feel like, I can't wrap my head around that. You know what I mean? I'm not, you said I'm a musician and then you talk about stuff like that.

And it reminds me that I'm definitely

Molly: your

Collin: fan.

Molly: Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's, which I think is so, I know all of the ghost ranch designers are really unique and adaptable, as you said, but I can tell who's made what sometimes having worked with you guys for a long enough time. And I think that's, I mean, even in like the most corporate of like brand styles.

So I think that speaks to, you know, everyone. When [00:33:00] you get closer to your, like, artistry and stuff, you understand your style more.

Mikey: What tools are you working on these days? We know you're a PowerPoint ace and came up from the Adobe suite. Anything, anything you're using now that you weren't five years ago?

Collin: Well, you all know that I'm, you know, I love my Figma too. That's right. I do love Figma. Yeah, I've been, I'm still continuing keeping up with that because they're always, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of on the edge, but it's also unique that it's kind of a UX thing. So I've, I've done my best to try and make presentations in there.

I don't know if it's a replacement for PowerPoint, but it is nice.

Music: Yeah.

Collin: I also like that they're going up to the, up to the fat cats at Adobe too. It's nice. Yeah, I know. Shake it up, man. It's

Molly: good to see.

Collin: Yeah.

Molly: Presentation Nation, uh, Herco put on Figma Fridays. Pretty consistently for a while there. We're internally just teach us something new about Figma each Friday.

Is there a good resource or like YouTube channel you were looking to when you kind of self taught Figma stuff?

Collin: Yeah, honestly, like the [00:34:00] Figma, Figma themselves, they're like putting out incredible tutorials. You know, so like, I mean, that program is so nice because there's so many plugins that are, that are just like user made.

So people, this tool doesn't exist. And so these developers are like independently making these things to help program. Work for whatever their needs are, you know, there's like a presentation plugin, right? Where you can create like, you know, different transitions and animations, et cetera. So that's kind of cool.

Molly: Yeah. I use it for content planning, different than presentations, but it's a freebie tool if you need something to go doodle around with, I definitely recommend. Um, you are basically a Nashvilleian having lived in Nashville for seven years. Give us your top two or three thing, favorite things about Nashville, places to eat or spots to visit.

We're a void.

Collin: Yeah. Um, well, you know, you were, you were just there Molly. It's, it's a, it's a fun town to visit for sure. I always say that like, you know, people are like, Oh, you gotta go [00:35:00] to the Broadway area. Like as, as a resident, no, I didn't really go there much, but if you're visiting, like There's a time and a place to go and you, you definitely going to have fun for sure.

That being said, like when you leave that area, there's there, it's also a great time for just other genres of music besides like contemporary country. So, you know, like the black keys and other, like other contemporary rock bands sort of like post up there. We used to go to Friday night happy hour at our local, our local bar and we'd see Reeves the Braille plan.

He's the lead guitar player from the cure. So he was playing for like 20 people, just, just keeping his chops up because he lives in the neighborhood. Yeah. And then just, it's, you know, incredible food town too. I have a cousin who lives there and a ramen shop. So when I was down there and I think we went twice when.

I love it. Oh yeah.

Molly: Yeah. What is it called? Duck?

Collin: Black Dynasty Ramen.

Molly: Black Dynasty. So

Collin: it's, if you're in there, you gotta go. It's incredible. What part of town is that? It's like on the, I think they call it like [00:36:00] West End, I guess, or Sylvan Park. Yeah, somewhere around. Yeah. Kurt, did you ever go to the stadium inn for wrestling?

Like Oh, the stadium inn's kind of like an inside joke. You're talking about like that crappy hotel downtown? Yeah. No, I never went there, but I've heard the tales for sure. It's since been torn down for the make way for the new Italian stadium that they're building down on the 4th

Mikey: street. Oh, okay, okay.

Collin: Yeah. My buddy would drag me there for

Mikey: some, uh, some amateur wrestling. Which is just incredible and and then on Broadway if you did go to one honky tonk, which one

Collin: would you advocate? Oh, yeah, I could write a paper on all my Broadway recommendations. And you did.

Molly: Colin gave me a full Google Doc of recommendations.

And honestly, I was very helpful. I was there for a bachelorette party. So it was very unique kind of experience that I didn't have a ton of control over where the group would, would end up. So I still, we didn't make it to your favorite honky tonk, which please. Yeah, sure. Okay.

Collin: Yeah. Well, like I said, if you're asking my recommendation for a, for a bachelorette party, it might be [00:37:00] different than what I would recommend just on my own, but yeah, on Broadway.

It's called Layla's and it's, it, it's one of the few that plays kind of other, other than contemporary country. And then there's a second one that actually I may favor more than Layla's and that's called Robert's, which is I believe right next to Layla's. And that's one of the last ones that really still plays like old school, like Patsy Cline and Williams, old time, early honky tonk country, barter family type stuff.

And it's right behind like the famous Ryman auditorium. So the stage door is right there. So you always hear the stories of like. You know, XR is getting off the stage, going back, slipping through the alley and then going into Roberts to like play a song there. So

Mikey: I'm definitely, I'm on team Roberts for sure.

That's I've been there and what stood out to me was. Would they call it the recession special? A fried bologna sandwich piled high with chips, a moon pie, and an ice cold PBR for six dollars. The moon pie is a new addition, I think.

Molly: Incredible, [00:38:00] incredible price. You won't see anywhere else on Broadway.

Mikey: Yeah.

He's loading it up, that's dope.

Molly: And moving out of Music City, but right into, still on our music here, Colin, you know this is coming, what is, you know, next time maybe you show up to the event and you give a presentation yourself on Hatshow Prince style, what is your walkout song that's playing?

Collin: Yeah, well, you know, whenever you ask me this, I always say Bruce Springsteen, but I felt like I had to change it up.

I'm gonna go with Ray Charles, Mess Around.

Music: Everybody doin the mess around. Everybody doin the mess around. Everybody was

Collin: dreamin I love it. I think it's just such a jolly song and also it's in one of my favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, so.

Molly: Is that Steve Martin in that?

Collin: Yeah, Steve Martin jockeying, so good.

Molly: That's so fun, Colin. Thank you so much for joining us. I think, you know, any presentation designer will have something to learn from this episode and just really unique design [00:39:00] perspective. Any parting shots you'd like to share with Presentation Nation?

Collin: Oh, no, enjoy it. If you ever make it down there and enjoy it, it was so much fun being back.

So it's like, I live in Pennsylvania now in the Nashville sky always been second time and, uh, it's still fun. It's not any less fun than when I was there. Fine job.

Mikey: Thank you for coming on and yeah, Molly, let's link up his. Webinar replay too, cause breaker slides are a thing. And I have to imagine calling you or maybe the first person on earth to do a whole webinar about breaker slides.

And it was awesome. And

Collin: really beautifully done. It was a fun one. I'll have to revisit it. It was especially, you know, especially after this event where we were doing. Lots of eye candy breakers slideshows. Yes. Yeah,

Molly: exactly. It was a great time. All

Mikey: right, gang. Well, Presentation Nation, thank you for listening this far.

Be sure to tune in next week. We're going to have another awesome episode. Right, Molly?

Molly: Every Thursday.

Mikey: Yeah, let's do it. Sweet. And until [00:40:00] then, keep on pitching.