Ep. 177: Baronfig Founder Joey Cofone on the Laws of Creativity

Oct 4

Baronfig founder, Joey Cofone, grew up in New Jersey learning to speak his mind from his strong, single, adoptive mother. A systems thinker, his lens on the world has always been adept at zooming way in and way out with an alarming self-awareness. This has served him well, both in designing “tools for thinkers” and in recognizing the patterns of invention for his book, The Laws of Creativity.

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever, and today I’m talking to designer, author & entrepreneur Joey Cofone. You are probably most familiar with Joey as the Founder and CEO of Baronfig - a company he founded almost 10 years ago with a design for a perfect notebook and a massively successful kickstarter campaign. Now, Baronfig has evolved into a successful purveyor of “tools for thinkers” including notebooks, pens, workspace organizers, bags and books. As a multidisciplinary designer, he’s designed and art directed over 100 products from zero to launch - including books, posters, packaging, websites, apps, and physical goods. His work has been featured in Fast Company, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Bon Appétit, Quartz, Mashable, Print, and more. On top of all that, Joey has just written and published a book: The Laws of Creativity: Unlock Your Originality and Awaken Your Creative Genius. The book is a revealing and practical exploration of creativity: what it is, how it works, and how you can harness it in your everyday life. As you’ll hear in our talk, Joey is deeply thoughtful, powerfully perceptive, and adept at both recognizing value and taking risks… here’s Joey

Joey Cofone: My name is Joey Cofone. I live in New York City and I’m an entrepreneur and a nearly minted author. I founded Baronfig, a company that makes tools to help you do your best thinking and I wrote The Laws of Creativity, a book that teaches you how to master your ideas. I’m a designer under the hood. I’ve designed and art directed over 100 products from zero to launch. And in a nutshell, my work focuses on helping people turn their ideas into reality.

AD: Damn! That’s pretty important work. In order to figure out how you got good at all of that, I like to unpack the whole package. We’re going to go ‘under the hood,’ as you say. Can you take me back to the beginning?

JC: I was born in Newark, New Jersey, a lot of people know it because of the airport. I was actually born to two people who were deemed unfit to take care of another human by the state of New Jersey. We’re going right from the beginning. So I was put into foster care and then I got adopted when I was around one by a single woman who was actually instead of a mom age, was somewhere closer to a grandma age. She was a little bit older than everyone else, all my friends’ moms. And I called her mom and she raised me and we had a great time. Because she was a single woman. She had so much strength and she taught me so much about everything. I think she tried to play the role that maybe two parents play, all-in-one. She gave me a good footing. It was great right up until fourth/fifth grade where I came home one day and her friend was in the car, Jean and that was odd right off the bat. No one had ever come to pick me up and my mom was crying. She said she had cancer and I’m maybe 11 and I don’t really understand that. The next few years were pretty tough. I started to have to do more and more around the house and she passed away when I was 13, in seventh grade, and that was tough. I didn’t have another parent to lean on. I didn’t have anywhere to go and I ended up going with her ex-husband and I lived with him and I called him ‘grandpa.’ That’s where the age and title are righted again, I suppose.

AD: There’s so many, probably questions of identity and heredity that come from not knowing your biological parents. But then just the orphan feeling of losing your adoptive parent at such a young age too must have really made you… how did you not feel completely alone in the world?

JC: I did feel alone and I felt alone, what would turn out to be the next 10-15 years. And the best way I could describe it to someone who has never been in that place is, there are maybe a handful of people in the whole world that treat you like number one in their life, right? Your parents, maybe [0.05.00] a sibling or eventually perhaps a significant other. And so what happens is, in most people’s lives they go from their parents treating them that way, they get in a relationship, and then the parents unfortunately eventually pass away. And so you can go your whole life without not having that. And I did not have that. And even though I was surrounded by people and I would express this and aunts and uncles would say, we love you, it’s present in small ways. It gave me an incredible gift, I think, which is to be my own cheerleader. To be my own source of strength. There’s no safety net, and that has just really delivered quite significantly for the rest of my life. I’m terrible at math, but this is, I guess, 20+ years later.

AD: Just following up on the identity question. Do you know much about your bio parents and did you have issues with that?

JC: I did eventually come to understand who they were. I found out I was half Italian pretty early and my family is Italian and everything, so it was an easy fit. But I didn’t know the other half until last year.

AD: Oh!

JC: It’s like brand new news to me, I’m hanging out with a bunch of buddies and we’re sitting around the table. We meet once a year, college friends, and one of them had done the DNA test to figure it out. And so he was like, you guys should all do this. And they were all doing it and I’m very comfortable with these guys and I aired my concern, is my identity going to be shaken by learning that my background is something of a surprise? And they encouraged me and they talked with me and they were like, we’re in it together, let’s do it, if you’re comfortable, we’re here to support you. And I did and I found out the other half. So actually the other half is majority Italian and then in order of size, I guess, in relation to the whole is Greek, Egyptian, African.

AD: That’s a nice cocktail though.

JC: Yeah, random.

AD: I don’t know, I think all those flavors mix together nicely.

JC: I was almost disappointed that it wasn’t more dramatic, because it ended up being like 88%, I think Italian and then the other 12% was all these things sprinkled through. I kind of hyped myself up, all right, I’m ready, I’m ready, and then it was like, well, you are Italian. (Laughter) Mostly.

AD: This is the part where I normally ask about your teenage years and how you found yourself and you navigated the awkwardness and also maybe if you were rebellious and your teenage years were marked with a very traumatic kind of shift in your family structure. But that doesn’t stop life from happening. So how did you navigate all of this grief plus growing into an adult human that’s unformed and needs to, I don’t know, rebel against the status quo and make out with people?

JC: Yeah, well, there was a lot of that, so I didn’t lose out. I was a trouble maker before anything bad had happened, mostly through talking in class and detentions and I was always on the wrong side of those things in school. And another gift is that I learned pretty quickly that getting in trouble is not really a big deal. I get in trouble all the time, still, there’s always someone [0.10.00] who is going to say something. And it doesn’t matter most of the time if you get detention. Anyway, I entered my teenage years with a little bit more wisdom than most perhaps and I got in a lot of trouble. I had already figured out that optimism was the key to general survival and leveraged it heavily. And there were tough times. I have a genetic disease/disorder, it’s not so serious, it’s something that basically makes all the tissues in my body weaker, so they didn’t let me do gym class. And so I was in an all-boys school and it was torture. They made me sit in the gymnasium and watch everyone play. The teacher wasn’t looking, I’d get up and play basketball, because I’m 6:3 and I love basketball. Honestly, my high school years were more normal than I think one would expect. I put myself back on a path and I had incredible people around me to support me, so I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot, made trouble.

AD: Do you think the underlying nature of trouble making in your case was about being opinionated and seeing the systems of the world and needing to voice yourself? Or just needing to call attention to yourself in order to get, I don’t know, whatever the resources or care that you needed?

JC: Right, it wasn’t an attention seeking thing. Being tall, I always got attention from everyone anyway. I was six foot two when I was entering high school, I was a big kid. There was no way not to get all the attention, almost always. So I was satiated for sure in that regard. I think I just pretty early on, had opinions and for some reason, maybe my mom, she was quite a, she was a very strong woman, quite outspoken. I guess I learned from her, if you have a thought and it doesn’t hurt anyone, speak up. And I did all the time, in class, man, there was one time the teacher, he was shorter than me and I think this was the reason and I’m sitting there doing absolutely nothing wrong. Just sitting there leaning on my desk. And he goes, all right, who wants to tell us about last nights reading? He goes, “Cofone, I’d ask you, but you didn’t read it.” And I know, I was the tallest kid in the class and he was a former soccer player…

AD: That’s unfair!

JC: I know. And so I think this is where, this was a… it’s a tiny formative moment and I looked at the teacher and I said, “Actually I did read it. I don’t appreciate what you just said, it’s not true and I don’t think you should make that assumption. I’m happy to tell you about what I read.” And he kicked me out the class! (Laughs)

AD: Oh my god, this… oh! (Laughs)

JC: It was fine, I wasn’t upset, I laughed, I was like, that’s great, now I don’t have to… and I just wandered the halls and chilled until the next class.

AD: I feel like I’ve heard a lot of stories of authority getting misplaced in situations where it probably would have really behooved the teacher to say, “Oh, please, continue, I’m so sorry I made that assumption about you.” The teacher would have looked a lot better in the eyes of the other students. But weirdly he bestowed a lot of credibility on you by kicking you out of class. And also belied his own insecurities. I guess teachers are human too, but man, Assumptions are a killer! I like that you’re opinionated, it seems like it’s stayed with you and I am not surprised that a single woman who adopted a child on her own is a strong and opinionated woman too, so go mom! You mentioned that you learned how to leverage optimism as a survival skill early on. Can you get a little granular with that? Like how did you actually leverage optimism?

JC: Optimism in general is a tool, it’s like one tool… there’s gratitude for the past and perspective for the present and optimism for the future. And I read a little bit about that at the very end as like a parting gift to the reader. And the optimism is you can’t predict the future, of course, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless because you can envision it. And if you imagine the positive potentialities, you feel better, number one, and you tend to attract or almost accidentally align yourself with what you envision. You see and make it true. And I figured that out pretty early on through trial and error. I would get down on myself and then I’d have a crappy day. Something good would happen and I’d feel good and then I’d say wow, I could choose this and then I did. It’s such a minor thing, but I did learn that happiness is a choice, not a circumstance.

AD: That is not a minor thing at all, that’s a major thing and it requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness that not everyone gets to at that young of an age. That’s pretty powerful. It also seems that you picked up on things that you needed to in order to make your life more tolerable/better and something to look forward to and you figured out how to systematize it and practice it, like you would a sport or a discipline of anything.

JC: Yeah, I had an uncle, Uncle Ralph, my mother’s brother who everybody loved this guy. And he always lit up the room and he was entertaining and he was always reading. Everyone would always say, man, you could talk to Ralph about anything. And I think he was a good first role model. Oh, I would like to be like that, and I would just pay attention, as we all do, and you kind of pick it up.

AD: Well thanks Uncle Ralph, we’re still benefitting from Uncle Ralph through the filter of Joey Cofone.

JC: There we go!

AD: All right. Walk me through the college years. From what I’ve read it seems like the college years for you were very much an exploratory expedition. Did you have expectations for the college years or were you still just excited to learn and figure things out?

JC: Yeah, my life in general for better and for worse, I’ve always focused on how can I have the most fun. And there are times, professionally, that that’s got me to do some really great things where I’m enjoying what I do, awesome. As a kid, what you’re supposed to be learning, that’s not necessarily so good. In college I ended up failing like 15 classes. I would either get A+ or F. I would either show up or go play volleyball with the girl’s volleyball team. Unfortunately my grandfather passed away, my mother’s ex that I went to live with passed away in my freshman year. My step-grandmother kicked me out of the house a few months later and she came in and she sat on the bed and she said to me, I’ll never forget it. “This isn’t working.” And I said, “Okay.” And she said, “You have to leave.” And I said, “Okay.” And then I picked up some stuff and left. And that was it. I was in my car for a little while, not because I needed to be necessarily, I mean I had friends and family,I was in shock. Is this where I am right now? Almost like, is this real? How do I tell people this? I don’t have an embarrassment function, but I think that was the one time in my whole life [0.20.00] where I probably was like, how did I get myself here? Even though it wasn’t my fault. Eventually someone, one of my friends caught on and I stayed on the couch for a long time and I’ve never loved sleeping on a couch as much as I did at that point. I was like, man, this is amazing! And I picked myself up, I got a job, I worked full day and then I would go to college and school the rest of the time. Learned a ton and again, this is like at the point where often people say, hey, if you could undo all that, would you go back and change it? And the answer is no. I would of course loved to have saved my mother’s life or my grandfather, keep everyone alive. But if that’s not an option, it’s just an undo and it’s about me, no. I learned so much. We’re talking about optimism, hard work, perseverance, just like bloomed and taught me everything. So I was okay, college I did terribly in general. I actually did not graduate, even though I did four years, including summers because I was trying to catch up on all the stuff I failed. College in general was such a great time, sophomore year I met a group of guys I mentioned earlier who were all into philosophy. And we would sit down from 11:00am when the cafeteria opened until 2:00pm and talk about philosophy. So four hours, three hours every day. And that changed my life. I didn’t know that there were ideas and questions that didn’t have answers. It blew my mind and changed me.

AD: And oh how wonderful also to find your tribe, your people, that are similarly expanding their minds and challenging you to do the same and you’re developing a kind of closeness and camaraderie through it all. That must have been really therapeutic.

JC: It was beautiful.

AD: Foundational in a major way?

JC: I would show up early and I knew the lunch woman, I got tight with her, so she would let me in first. I would claim five tables, I’d push them all together to be like, just King Arthur’s long table, not a round table, a long table. And I would sit at the head of the table with my food, wait for everyone to come. And then what would happen is, the guys were only… there were only six of us, six or seven of us, but then all these other people started to come and we would invite, sit down, come and talk to us about this idea, about… what do you think is life after death or one of my favorites, we spent four hours. This one guy said, “I am immortal, prove me wrong.” And we couldn’t prove him wrong. If we killed him, it proved it to us, but not him. And it was a whole sort of thing. But we ended up three years having like an iconic table conversation with people, I would say, of the things I’ve created in my life, that was one of the most beautiful accidental creations of that table with people, it was amazing.

AD: Wow, I love that! And that feels not only foundational to your development, but also kind of emblematic of the kind of person you are.

JC: It taught me that I could do that. I think that was the first time I brought people together in a certain way.

AD: Like the trials in your life have been with caretakers evaporating (laughs), learning that you can bring people together around you to form a really sort of generative support network is probably really important.

JC: Yeah, I treasured it and I think about it and ways to recreate it. I have recreated it over the years and I guess starting Baronfig, the company, I get to bring people together is also a wonderful thing.

AD: You said you never graduated from college, clearly it was still a really growth oriented period for you. At some point you needed to decide, okay, I’m not a student anymore, I’m a professional, how did you start getting your footing in the professional world?

JC: I had been working. I discovered design by accident.

AD: Like so many people.

JC: I was doing data entry and when I was done with my data entry, I type fast, I would get the incredible pleasure of stamping thousands of postcards, back before social media was big. And I stared at this postcard so much that after hours of doing this, weeks of doing this, it became apparent that the card was inefficient. So I traced it, cut it out on this yellow legal pad, I’ll never forget, I re-positioned everything, added a few things and I brought it to my boss and I said… again, another formative moment, and this person did me solid. I held it up and I said, “Your postcard is not as good as it could be, you could sell more with this.” And I’m a 19 year old kid telling a 45 year old boss about this. And he was like, okay, what do you need to do it? And he paid… back then Photoshop you had to pay every year and so he was like, it was like 600 bucks for Photoshop, he was like, you got it. And I did it, I was right, he upgraded me and never did data entry again. I designed all the marketing materials and that was like where design came from for me.

AD: Whoa! You’ve always been a systems thinker and an opinionated, outspoken person. You can tell that you’re looking at the world and exploding the systems that you’re seeing in front of you.

JC: Definitely, definitely, all the pieces come together. I finished that four years of English and philosophy and then I didn’t know what I to do. I went home, drank a bunch of beers and had some sharpies and a white wall in my bedroom and I drew all over the wall. And then I went to sleep, the next day friends came over and they said, “Who did this?” And I was like, I did. They said, “This is amazing, you should go to art school.” So then I went to art school. I applied to art school, I got in using a high school portfolio that I’d never used for anything. Got in as an illustrator, teacher realized that my illustration was weak, but my design thinking was strong and she, Lara McCormick, and she said, “I think you’re a designer, not an illustrator.” Changed my life, and I thank her every time I can, everywhere I can, like I’m doing now, I’m sure she’s so tired of hearing it. (Laughs) Then I did four years of design in New York City at the School of Visual Arts. And that is where I figured out that if I take all these incredible ideas, the philosophy and literature ideas from the greatest thinkers in history and I integrate them into something more than they originally were, I end up making things people really like, that people haven’t seen. So I ended up doing eight years of school, including summers straight. I’m not that person at all. It was just like, I needed a place to live and if I go to school I had a dorm and I was able to work to pay and it was just much more efficient to do this as a unit. Then I started my career. And I started… I actually wanted to be a book cover designer. So I interned at Random House and then the Kindle came out while I was there. And these legendary book cover designers, I won’t name names, but you would know them, my desk was, sitting next to the copy machine in the utility room and I loved it because people would come and chat with me all the time. So I learnt everything and these legendary designers were standing making copies and they were worried about their jobs. And I’m like, if these people are worried about their jobs, I’m screwed, like for book cover design. So I changed immediately to my second favorite thing which was branding and…I was at an agency for maybe a year, then I just started doing it for myself and I had my own thing. And then I ended up starting five different endeavors, with Baronfig being the fifth and then it stuck [0.30.00] and that was about 10 years ago.

AD: Okay, this is also (laughs) the lesson in adaptability playing out in real life.

JC: Yes.

AD: If they are worried about their jobs, you were already thinking how to future-proof yourself and branding, I’m glad it was your next favorite thing because branding is something that may change form, but will be there for as long as we can imagine.

JC: Right, it’s not going anywhere and I enjoyed it. Making a logo was what I really enjoyed, like how do you take a lot of ideas and make it into this tiny thing is fun.

AD: Clearly you tried four different things before Baronfig stuck and you probably learned a lot through those four different things. But can you tell me the origin story and the founding of Baronfig and maybe weave some of those stories in throughout it?

JC: Yeah. So back in the day when I made my way to design school I quickly noticed that fellow students had two tools, a laptop and a notebook. The laptops were always MacBooks, the notebooks were always different brands and sizes and all sorts of shapes. And I thought, why is there ubiquity in one and not in the other. And it stuck with me. And three years later, after I had tried these other things such as a flight website and drawing school, online, I created a partnership with these three guys, myself included, me, Adam and Scott. And it was a designer, a finance person and a programmer. And so we committed to splitting a year evenly and serving the other people’s needs. And so I did their two projects first and it was cool and I learned a lot. We did a Kickstarter for them, raised money, awesome, designed a website, cool. Then we got to mine and that’s when I finally took the idea of hey, how do I make a notebook that could be as ubiquitous as the MacBook? So I spent five months designing and doing all sorts of research and talking to people.

The very first one, to help them understand, I basically duck taped painting canvas onto an existing notebook. I tossed it on the table and I was like, a notebook with cloth. And they were like, oh! So that story is in the book, about how you can bring ideas to life very quickly and very rough to help others understand. And so I did that. We ended up putting it on Kickstarter, with the idea at the time was, I’m looking at all these notebook brands that were popular in the range that I want it to be and they all focused on showing what artists were doing in notebooks. They wanted to be beautiful. Even though most people buy notebooks and just use it for grocery lists and notes at school, they weren’t speaking to what people actually did in notebooks. So I said instead, guys, we’re just going to show the ugly beautiful stuff we do in notebooks, which is diagramming, sketching, notetaking, list making, and we’re going to make our photos full of that, what people actually do. And that’s what we did. Put it on Kickstarter back in the day, when Kickstarter was still new. And we were asking for 15,000 bucks and we did 168, I think, so 11 times the goal and then we were off, and that was it.

AD: So Baronfig started with a notebook and I can see through your experience, you have a lot of things in place, I can see that you can design a product, I can see that you’ve partnered with some people who can help with finance and programming. But now you’ve got to be an entrepreneur and how did that come for you?

JC: I remember the very first moment that I made that decision because really I had been chasing what’s interesting and what’s fun, like I mentioned. Make a notebook, awesome. And then all of a sudden there’s responsibilities now and I remember we were a few days from launching the website, as a designer I did not like the website. As an entrepreneur I needed to do everything else to prepare [0.35.00] for the launch and that did not include refining the design of the website. And I remember sitting there thinking, this is the moment where I have to decide who I am and what is more important and am I going to be a designer stuck in thinking design is the most important thing in the world all the time. Or am I going to be an entrepreneur saying that the ecosystem and how everything fits is above that? And so I made the decision to favor the latter and I published the website that wasn’t pretty at all. And I remember catching wind of designers that I knew, being like that is so stupid and so ugly. And that actually made me feel better about the decision that I’d made. I don’t know why, but it felt like, huh, they hated it and I don’t care, I guess. And that since has stuck with me because there are things right now, the site, I don’t… we’ve just transferred from one platform to the next and the site is not where it needs to be in my opinion, but you’ve got to keep going.

AD: But don’t you think that is being a designer? By actually being able to zoom out and prioritize all of the different inputs and needs in order to optimize the outcome?

JC: Yes, as like a system designer rather than as a graphic designer, yeah…I can see that. I feel better about myself now…

AD: I also really would like to know, not only what it looks like now, and how you see your role, but what are the current challenges and growing pains and how have you evolved throughout the years of Baronfig. How long has it been now? It’s been about a decade?

JC: Almost 10 years, yeah. We’ve had our high points and our low points and I definitely learned throughout the whole thing. Right now the biggest challenge is, I want to dramatically… I want to risk it, risk the company kind of risk it. I want to change…

AD: Your soul is getting itchy!

JC: Yeah, yeah, which I’ve heard people say, that’s around the eight year mark. So I guess I’ve gone a little bit beyond that. But there’s kind of writing on the wall to where I want to take the company and I want to risk it and I want to, by January, I want to present a new Baronfig that is somewhat dramatically different than the one now. And that’s been exciting. Because it gets stale doing the same thing.

AD: That’s a tease though, yeah, we’ll have to stay tuned. That sounds like a commitment, yeah. That’s your big challenge is you’re doing something kind of risky and you’re growing the company in a very, sounds like new direction. How have you evolved? And your role, I mean… because being an entrepreneur and a leader of a company is not just the prioritization that we talked about, being a systems designer, it’s culture. It’s community, it’s you know, actually re-evaluating whether what you’re doing is a service or a product and what the goals are and how humanity is being impacted by it.

JC: I think as a leader I went through that whole phase, many entrepreneurs do, where you have to let go and that was difficult because design is also something I do. There’s not a whole lot of designers as CEOs, as opposed to business folks. So the design goes under someone else’s purview anyway, that can do it better. And letting go of design, when [0.40.00]… I’m hesitant to say, it’s part of my identity, but I suppose it is in this context, is tough. Because the design we make still represents me, but I don’t necessarily do it myself anymore, I art direct. And that, I think as a person learning to trust others, learning to mentor, learning to teach, that was one of the biggest challenges that I faced since I started.

AD: I could see that. The trust part too, trust comes in so many different forms and shapes and sometimes it’s not even just trusting the person, you can trust the person and still see a car crash in the future, you know (laughs)?

JC: Yeah.

AD: Sometimes you just have to trust that it’s going to work out after it.

JC: I agree. How do you feel about… when you’re working with someone who is creating something that represents you, how do you interact with that?

AD: It’s been clumsy over the years. I think I’ve relaxed in terms of not taking my personal value from it so seriously. And instead shifted focus to thinking, well, this represents me, so it has to uphold a certain kind of standard, that I feel comfortable with. But it doesn’t have to take the exact shape that I would have made it myself. So how can I make sure that that standard is upheld without micromanaging people or clipping their wings in terms of their creativity? And I think it has to do with trust and explaining yourself. If I can go a little deeper, it means trusting that they want to do something as well as they can and then explaining your logic for why you make certain decisions so that they can deploy their own logic or their own way through that logic. But not necessarily being really prescriptive about how it gets done.

JC: Yeah, did that take… was that hard to come to or was that natural for you?

AD: It was hard to come to because so much of my work has also been really face forward. Like I worked in the TV industry for many years where I didn’t have creative control over a lot of things. And so then when it came to things that I did have creative control over, it was really hard for me to share that creative control because I felt like I needed to recoup some of what I lost in other areas. So no, it did not come easily. I think I fought it the whole way. But after a while the struggle just isn’t panning out (laughs) and you realize, I think there’s another more generative way to approach this. And I had to do a lot of work on myself too in order to see that clearly, as I feel like I see it now. But I’m still sorting through it.

JC: It is tough earlier on, logically I understood what needed to be done, but in the moment it is difficult to say, whoa, you know, while this isn’t the way I would do it, it doesn’t make it bad and that’s definitely a learned muscle.

AD: Yeah, yeah, and well, I think you can probably address this when we talk about your book and the present moment and being adaptable… and perspective, but all of this comes into play, right, and trusting somebody else’s perspective, and the power of maybe something you can’t envision, but trusting if all the intentions are in the right place that something good will come of it.

JC: Yeah, I’m with you, I’m with you. I feel good nowadays, I’m much more comfortable. That was the biggest challenge that I had for a while. Now I’m like, you do you and cool, it’s good, go, ship it, nice, I feel much better now.

AD: How did you arrive to the place where you are now?

JC: I think Ariana, my wife, has been instrumental in talking me off the cliff or whatever. Because there were times I would keep it tight at work, I’m not an angry boss or any of that, or aggressive or anything. But whenever I do face something that makes me stop, I do stop and I’ll take it home and talk about it first or talk it through before I go and make any rash decisions. I quickly learned… she’ll tell me like it is. Dude, get out of your own way, you’re causing trouble. You can’t have a great designer on your team if you don’t let them do their design their way. Who is going to do that? She’s like, would you do that? No, I’d quit… well, there you go.

AD: Nice, it’s nice to have that, to bounce that voice of, I don’t know, there’s something about a party that’s slightly more detached than you are, that can have a more neutral zoom out picture and kind of reflect that back to you. Who also you can trust has your best interests.

JC: I’m grateful, for sure.

AD: Okay, I really do want to talk about your creative process and about, which we’ve already been talking about. I’d love to talk about it through the lens of your book that you’ve recently written, and published and is coming out in October of this year, 2022. It’s called The Laws of Creativity: Unlock your Originality and Awaken Your Creative Genius. So what really impressed me about this book is how rational and organized it is. And it does demystify creativity by systematizing it in a way… first of all, that makes it make sense. Second of all, that isn’t prescriptive. And third of all, that illustrates it all with stories that help the brain wrap its mind around what the picture that you’re painting. So let’s start with the impulse to write this book and to become your own publishing imprint. I mean you seem like a very self-starter person to begin with and I can imagine wanting to coral all of these ideas, but why a book?

JC: I said at the beginning, I’ve designed and art directed over a hundred products and I’m in an interesting position where I get to be the person who is not only saying this is what the business is going to do, but then I go follow through and do it. So I’ve been able to make the decisions and make the partnerships and decide almost everything. And its put me in a unique position to see the process completely and we’ve worked with incredible creators, like James Clear, Roxane Gay, Netflix, so on, and whether it’s what we’re doing inhouse or what I see these people doing, it’s clearly, there’s a pattern there. Pattern recognition, I guess it’s the thing I like, I do call myself a systems designer. And I was taking notes on this for like 10 years, just on my phone actually, in Apple notes, take notes. And then I’d get a new phone and then it would be in that phone. And it wasn’t until the pandemic when we were stuck at home, I didn’t plan to write this until I was older. And there’s two reasons that I did it. Number one is, I’m at home and I’m talking about this book and Ariana says, “Dude, if you don’t write this now, you’re never going to write it. We’re in quarantine. We are doing nothing.” And I’m like, you got me! So I went and I made the table of contents, which is essentially my map and I got started. And as I was doing it… the other thing that tugged in the back of my mind is am I too young? Is it too early to do this? Where I’m essentially saying, am I a master of creativity or someone is going to challenge me to say who the hell are you? You’re only 35. And then I watched th Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, have you seen that?

AD: No, I’m gonna watch it now though.

JC: It’s great, I’m not a particular basketball fan, but watching it and then realizing that… do you know how old Michael Jordan was when he won his sixth championship?

AD: No.

JC: Thirty five, and I’m 35. I was like, you know what, you can do a whole lot by 35 and I don’t think anyone would question that Michael Jordan is still, not a master of let’s say what he’s up to. So I thought okay, I’ve perhaps got enough years under my belt to do this then. So I wrote it and I really was just going to do the middle section, the book is divided into three parts, mindset, the foundation, which is how to think creative and then the process is the actual process, and then excellence, which is what I’ve seen over and over in high achieving creators. I was just going to write the middle. And what I realized after preparing it and talking to people… I interviewed about a design non-creatives, what do you want to learn about creativity. And I realize that the mindset section had to be included because really, they had everything that they needed to do it and have done it in the past. But their perspective on how creativity works was the thing that really needed addressing. So the whole first part of the book came from that. And the final part that really was the lynchpin to this thing, I discovered that NASA had done a study, this blew me away. They did a study that found that 98% of kids are creative geniuses at age five, but by the time you’re adults, that goes down to 2%.

AD: We’re actually designing genius out of our kids. That’s terrible!

JC: Yes! Right. The fact that it goes from 98% to 2%, it’s not an accident.

AD: No.

JC: This is a reliable screw-up in the process of creating humans.

AD: Oh my god, that’s terrifying!

JC: Right. So then the book, I realized, okay, people will find solace in this, even if it’s a little depressing and then it’s really the book, I can say it’s not about teaching you these things, it’s about reminding you what you already know. If you were a creative genius as a kid.

AD: And that’s the perspective shift, I could see that a 35 year old might need, it’s not that I’ve mastered all of this and I’m now telling you what I’ve learned, as much as it is I’ve recognized this, I’ve arranged it, organized it, and then now I’m reminding you of these universal truths that you just need reminding of.

JC: Yes, exactly.

AD: And the book reads like that too, it does not feel condescending… it does feel very much like a companion as opposed to somebody dictating a kind of dogma to me, so thank you for that.

JC: That’s good, thank you. Thank you for reading, that’s cool.

AD: You have a way with words.

JC: I appreciate it. Yeah, for those out there, each chapter is a story from someone in history and then I go into… I break it down and then I talk a little bit later about why we talked about all of that and some principles.

AD: It’s an interesting anecdote that we can all relate to, that then you sort of break down and help us understand how that relates to the particular law that you’ve identified there. You’ve broken it down into 39 laws and as we said, the mindset is a really crucial part. It’s like priming the pump. Then there’s the process, which I think we’ve all sort of gained some of those tools, but where we can be our own worst enemy in terms of deploying them, if the mindset is not right. And then excellence is a sort of, as you said, you’ve recognized these kinds of patterns in excellent creators over the years. It’s a way to level up.How did you know it was done at 39?

JC: Yeah, everybody is like, dude, when didn’t you get one more, 40, like even number, what’s wrong with you?

AD: But 39 feels really intentional and 40 feels like it would have been more arbitrary because you would just kind of hit 40.

JC: Right, it feels like BS at 40. It was actually 37 and then in editing… I always thought in editing… my first book, I thought it shrunk by 10%. So I wrote a lot thinking that okay, there’s a lot to work with, we can shrink it. My editors loved what was there and had me add two chapters, which I was shocked, so it went to 39. But the answer is, Newton did not create the Law of Gravity. He observed it and he wrote it down. So I did not create the 39 laws, I observed it and it’s 39 and it’s as odd to you as it is to me.

AD: Okay. (Laughs) So when your editors told you to find two more chapters, how did you find two more laws? Was it a matter of extracting some from other laws and making them their own?

JC: The beautiful thing, they’re all writers and so familiar with the creativity and the whole process anyway. So they were pretty clear that Joey, you have talked about fear and you mentioned failure. Failure is enough to be its own chapter and of course in retrospect, yes, absolutely. So that was one and I forget what the other one was. But they ended up evolving pretty obviously when they had said them.

AD: That’s actually a great segue because I wanted to ask you about fear and failure. That’s a big one, that’s a big one that gets in the way for a lot of people and you say right off the bat that failure is directly proportional to success. So that right away, my mind does the calculation. It’s like if I want success I have to be willing to go through failure. What is your philosophy on that?

JC: Well, I’m spinning. It says failure and success are directly proportionate, the more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed and it’s the idea that every failure is not actually a failure, just a lesson. And so it’s really if you don’t… I have a hard time saying this stuff because sometimes I think it’s so obvious. I know you’re going to be like, of course, and it’s hard for me to imagine that sometimes this is not obvious.

AD: Failure has also become a platitude, like don’t be afraid to fail. And it seems obvious that yeah, of course you have to try a lot and not all those tries are going to be home runs. But the way that you break it down is less about the statistical odds of reaching success after failure. It’s more about approaching failure as something not to beat yourself up about, but to actually mine for its opportunity, to mine it for… because every failure is a lesson, you take something from that failure that makes the next try infinitely more likely to succeed. And therefore it’s not something to fear as much as it is something to embrace.

JC: Right, to leverage it, failure is actually, if you can ‘endure failure,’ you’re at a significant advantage to people who cannot. Just because it doesn’t stop you..

AD: It’s almost like you’re saying endure isn’t even the right word because…We set ourselves up to think it’s worse than it is and that makes it something that we fear more than we should.

JC: Right, I mean human beings are at times the most logical and then at other times the most illogical. For example, and I say this in the chapter, when we try something new, so many people get upset that they don’t get it right on the first try. That’s an absurd reaction and logically, I bet those same people would say yeah, it’s ridiculous if they stopped and thought about it. But not getting it right on the first try, the fear of that is what stops so many people from trying almost everything. [1.00.00] And that is what I’m speaking to in this chapter, is stop… you’re going to fail on your first try. It is ridiculous to think that you would not. I did not wake up and be a designer. I created crap for years and then maybe it was slightly less crappy and eventually it came out as something that I could be proud of. And I still look back and I’m sure that you and anyone who creates can say the same thing. If you look back at something you made two/three years ago, you can see so much of what you could do better already. And it’s just, you’re constantly getting better and that’s also something you need to accept as well. The whole journey of failure and improvement is intertwined in that.

AD: Yeah and I’m also thinking about, you have a chapter or a law on self-worth and I think it has to do with competition, what do you call it… it is…

JC: Measure against yourself, the law of competition.

AD: Can you unpack that a little bit because I think that is a nice one to build on top of this idea of enduring failure and working through it.

JC: Comparison is poison to so much of modern life. And with social media it’s so easy to compare. The law is essentially, don’t compare yourself to others, but compare today’s you to yesterdays and focus on that. Can I be just a little bit better than I was. Strive to be incrementally better and you’ll reach heights. I tell the story, this is the favorite, but in the chapter a student misses the beginning of class, his name is George Dantzig. He goes and he sees a couple of problems on the board, he writes them down, then he splits before class ends so the teacher doesn’t yell at him. He goes home and he’s like the hardest problems he’s ever gotten from class, but he solves them. Drops them off at the teacher’s office. A week later there’s a banging on his door, on the weekend and lo and behold the teacher is sweating and panting from running across campus waving his homework because George Dantzig solved the problems that were not solvable, so people thought. They were on the board because the teacher was explaining that some problems are too difficult or too challenging to solve. So George, not knowing, not comparing himself to others and the expectations given to him, was the only student, of course in the class, to even try, let alone solve it. And then we break down into how important it is to measure against yourself and where you can go. Eventually if you compare yourself to others, it can be useful, but then you are experiencing these pre-defined paths whereas if you just focus on yourself, you wander into your own lane and then that lane can create new and interesting and original things that you would not let yourself go if you were constantly saying, what are they doing, what are they doing?

I like that, that’s freeing and it’s also a powerful reminder that is self-worth is created through measuring against yourself, then it’s also sabotaged by comparison. It’s absolutely… it’s almost impossible to be a better version of you while looking to examples of other people.

JC: Yeah and this applies in all areas of life. Expectations, essentially is what this chapter is about, expectations for yourself and the expectations you think people have of you. It’s about managing that.

AD: Do you feel like in some ways your childhood presented you with a path that was maybe, had less expectations placed on you than a typical nuclear family with bio parents?

JC: Yeah, I do, I think I got to be a wild child and no one stopped me. Even my mom during that period, I guess she picked and chose her battles because I was not forced to be an incredible student. It was not like, let me see your homework, what did you get. She would get the report card and she’d look at it and say, “Why do you have a C in this?” And I’d say something and she’d be like, okay. I was never asked [1.05.00] to be something she wanted. Which is shocking, and I’m not even saying that’s the right approach because on the verge of… if I have kids let’s say, can I do that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m a pretty opinionated dude, I’m going to be like, “What the hell is this F?”

AD: I just think it’s an interesting comparison or example that we have because I know that even though my parents were incredibly supportive, it’s impossible to escape their own filters of life and those kind of seep into your DNA and set a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways. Not just parents, but the whole environment that you’re brought up in. And so sometimes, like the challenge is becoming aware of that and then making the choice to supersede and expectation that you may not have even realized was something you’ve internalized and are now placing on yourself.

JC: Right, these inherited expectations and beliefs about the world, just get passed on.

AD: So that story was really powerful to me because it also illustrated how the other students didn’t try to solve the problem because they were told it was impossible. So they just didn’t even give it a go. But due to ignorance, Dantzig thought it was homework, took it home, assumed he was supposed to be able to solve it right (laughs), and he was going to be checked against it and so worked on it until he figured it out. So there’s something about connecting to the present moment that you talk about in terms of its power, it’s potential and I wonder if you can elaborate on that?

JC: The hard part about talking about this book is that it’s not the book where I’m proposing a thesis statement and then the first two chapters are really the whole idea and then you just illustrate it. It’s like 39 individual essay almost as far as the present goes, there’s this stereotype of creatives, there’s this stereotype of non-creatives, creatives, the starving artist, smoking weed and chilling and…I purposefully do not have like a creative background here in my house, that’s like look at my doodles and look at all this silly… look how creative I am, oh my gosh. And then the other half is, the non-creatives which are rigid and the suits.

AD: But the real economic disparity between the suits and the starving artists is a big ass problem, I think.

JC: Yes, yeah, it is and that’s a thing that I really want to look at at some point in my life deeply, which is where have… the people who create the thing, then the other people profit the most off of that.

AD: Joey, this is a problem we need you to solve! (Laughs)

JC: It pisses me off, I’m not an angry dude, but that pisses me off.

AD: It pisses me off too and I think a lot of it starts with that expectation that we set up for society that creativity is not a lucrative endeavor or that creatives are not structured and organized enough to actually become an entrepreneur that’s successful. Or that creativity is not the most important part of running a business. When actually it is.

JC: You are creating something, it’s what a business does.

AD: It’s what allows you to envision a future, it’s what allows you to roadmap that and it’s what allows you to stay adaptable. So I will join this team Joey, if you’ll invite me.

JC: Cool.

AD: And we will.

JC: Let’s fight it. I don’t know how, but it really bugs me. We talk about expectations and we talked about that story of George Dantzig. You’ve got essentially creatives out there who make things, are being told… or the example in the world is you work for someone who then makes all the money off the thing you make, and we’ve normalized that. And it’s accepted because like the students in the class who are told, this is an unsolvable problem. Okay, this is how you don’t get paid, you get paid a salary, but then this person gets paid all the rest. That’s bullshit.

AD: Yeah, utter bullshit.

JC: Right, and venture capitalists, which one in 12 startups succeed, to what they want. So essentially but then you have a one in 12% chance of success. I’m terrible at math, you can obviously tell.

AD: But I see the point, yeah.

JC: You know what I’m saying? I have to be… I am just basically a dice roll, one of 12 sides where they roll the dice, so they’re going to win because they have all these options and they’ve made nothing.

AD: It’s like the house odds in Vegas.

JC: Yeah, I don’t know how to solve the problem.

AD: So much of it starts with changing expectations, but I also think part of the problem comes from needing to really, really reprioritize inhouse creativity. I think so many times businesses actually start to suffer when they rely on metrics and formulas to… they become stagnant and they can’t adapt to a future and they also can’t tap into a zeitgeist, when they’re actually designing the creativity out of a business.

JC: if you go by data, all you’re doing is looking at the past. And so you can’t come into anything new, because it’s only analyzing what’s already been done.

AD: And so then you’re just regurgitating that in some form.

JC: And Netflix is a great example of, I don’t know about you, but Netflix to me has shit the bed to me recently. It’s gone downhill. I’m not nearly as excited for what’s come out and they cancel a lot of things that people like and it’s all about the data and they don’t… I can understand as a business, but everyone I’m talking to is less and less excited about Netflix anything. And yet they’re following the data and this is what you get. In the moment or in the immediate future, the short term, you may get really good results from following your data, sure. But at some point you have to say, what are we going to do that we haven’t done that we don’t know if it’s going to work at all. Because there’s no data on it.

AD: Yes, yes, and this is kind of akin to your law that states that designing for everyone is actually designing for no one.

JC: Yes, make for yourself and you’ll appeal to many. Make for many and you’ll appeal to none, yes, law of specificity.

AD: Yes, this is something I use in the entertainment world, but specificity kills cliché. If you tell a story that’s deeply human, that’s deeply real with real specifics, you’ll resonate so much more than if you tell a sort of generic universal story without any texture, grit or actual detail.

JC: I agree, completely.

AD: That’s a little bit the same as just taking this data and then just using it to sort of ramp up and maximize the obvious without understanding why the number… it’s like not even interpreting the numbers with any nuance.

JC: If you don’t go into the unknown, you can’t create something new. So following the data is de facto. Following the known. To me it’s an inevitability. When you start to see… when Netflix starts to talk about the data like that, and where they’re going, it seems pretty obvious that oh, your viewership is sinking, now you have to… they’re raising the price, they’re getting rid of sharing, I don’t know if you’re familiar, no longer can I have my Netflix account with my buddy across town, he logs in and we have our profile, they’re getting rid of that. But to me that’s actually another [1.15.00] negative, short sight, because now what’s going to happen is if I’m not keeping my account for Chris and it’s only for me, I’m going to start to unsubscribe when there’s nothing. Whereas the only reason I stay subscribed now is because I don’t want to pull it off Chris’ TV.

AD: Not only that, but that means you and Chris are talking about something that’s on Netflix, so it’s an actual pathway to conversation, to cultural zeitgeist, to being in the popular discourse. But when you start to chop up the path in all of those ways, it’s harder to make that happen.

JC: It’s less sticky.

AD: Yeah, but we started this… we got on our soapboxes, which I love, love, love, but we started this talking about the present moment. And actually maybe that was kind of a meta example because instead of sticking to the program and illustrating a chapter in the book, you and I went off in the present moment talking about stuff.

JC: Allowed it to happen.

AD: I think there’s something really difficult about being present and it’s getting more and more difficult with our distraction, with the level of distraction being pulled, our attention being such a commodity that it’s being pulled in so many different directions.The other thing that I want to talk about is how do you tap into the present? How do you figure out how to not be distracted and also not focus on the past or the future?

JC: I talk about the present and the non-present as essentially looking down and looking forward. So I started… this is what got us on that thing about the two stereotypes right? The suits are always looking forward and the creatives are always looking down. And the problem is the suits can’t look and see what’s right in front of them and then the creatives can’t plan well enough to get anything done without the help of others. And that’s all BS. But it is true that exclusive of what you actually do in life, there are people who have a tendency to look forward very well or look down very well and it’s hard to balance that quite often. I know people who are incredible planners, looking forward, but then when it comes to sit down and do something, it’s much more difficult and vice versa. For me, I realized that pretty early on when I heard the word, ‘getting into the flow,’ your flow state. I was like, what is that, how do I maximize that? This is a wonderful place to be. But it really is about sitting down and just telling yourself, this is what I do. I sit down and I’m like okay, the next X number of minutes, 30 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever I’m working on, I’m going to let the world fade away. And by saying it to myself and accepting it, it happens very easily. So I enter flow all the time, on demand because over the years I’ve been able to consciously decide it.

AD: Does that mean that you block out time for yourself?

JC: Yes, so this is it. It’s the looking forward and then looking down. When you look forward, and you plan well, it makes it easier to look down. And when you’re really good at looking down, you can appreciate looking forward, I think, if you turn yourself towards that. So I plan the hell out of… my day I block out my working hours from 7:00 to 7:00 or something and every minute has been assigned. What am I doing… even lunch, it’s all planned. And then I’m free. I do that first thing in the morning, I literally drag the thing on my calendar, I don’t know if this is obvious. I look at my task list and it goes to my calendar and then I’m like okay, cool, now I forget about what I’m doing and I just work until this says, oh, you’re doing the next thing. And that’s how I do it. I don’t know.

AD: That is what I’ve struggled with my whole life. [1.20.00] I wish that I could do it that way because I think it would free me up a lot. I feel like I’m extra sensitive to my environment and so I may have a task blocked out for a certain time in the day and I don’t feel like doing it. And then (laughs) I don’t and then the whole schedule goes out the window.

JC:Yeah (laughter)… that’s a tough one.

AD: Can you fix it for me? (Laughs)

JC: There is a chapter on discipline. I do talk about it. I hear you…

AD: I’m disciplined, I’m an incredibly hard worker. I just can’t make it conform to a schedule, like exactly right? So anyway, that’s my issues and I’m working on it.

JC: The blocks can be moved around, they can be swapped. I don’t know, sometimes I’m like, I’m not doing it now and I’ll kick it to later and then I grab that thing and move it up. Maybe if you have to achieve the seven things in this time, the sequence maybe could be adjusted.

AD: Yes, that’s also very helpful, thank you. (Laughter) I’ve noticed throughout this conversation that you’ve had some pretty important figures in your life. And not just your co-founders, but your mom, Ariana, the graphic design teacher who convinced you, or the illustrator teacher who convinced you you’re a designer and your Uncle Ralph. And I wonder if there’s any pattern recognition that you’ve seen amongst all of these really pivotal people in your life?

JC: That’s a tough one because it’s kind of like a hobby, pattern recognition, I love to see how things work. In terms of those people and my grandpa Lou who taught me a lot about hard work, he was a plumber and I worked with him for several summers doing plumbing, get your hands dirty. And is there a thread? I think the thread is in me and not them. It’s paying attention to what’s in front of me. I think we already have so many people in our lives that do this and how often do we listen or reach out or take the time to watch what they’re doing. I think that’s… when people ask me, what is your secret to success? First of all, I still have a good 20 years to fuck it up. So don’t give me that title just yet. But so far I think learning from other people’s lessons has been one of my biggest traits, abilities. A lot of people need to do it themselves. No matter what they hear, even if they heard the advice, they’ll do it and then they’ll say, oh, they were right. And so the pattern to me, I’ve learned that I can save a whole lot of time and energy and even pain if I learn from other people’s lessons. And these people, for whatever reason in my life, have been able to impart those lessons, probably because I sit there and listen and when someone is listening, the other person keep stalking, usually, yeah. Perhaps that’s the pattern.

AD: You’ve had some big challenges in your life that were not anything you created yourself, but were delivered to you, and then you’ve also created some big challenges for yourself. You set big goals and I’m just wondering, are there times when you almost, it’s too big, when it’s too big, too daunting. Is there another kind of support system [1.25.00], like spirituality or faith or something, or higher power that you have or therapy even, a trained professional?

JC: I definitely did the therapy thing over the years, for sure, when my mom passed away they sent me to the nun and she did not like what I said about… I was raised with a belief in God, but I did not keep that belief in God. I’m not anti or atheist per se, I believe in a spirituality and a connectedness with humans. But she did not appreciate what I was saying at the time and thankfully no one forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do. And over the years there’s been more… I think… we mentioned gratitude and optimism and perspective have really been my weapons against stress. I’m generally not a stressed out person, I’m not angry, but I went through all that. I remember as a kid, I was an angry teenager and I would yell and I would get in trouble and I realized that’s stupid, I shouldn’t do that. I guess just paying attention is serving me a lot. I don’t have a certain belief system; other than the belief system I’ve put together from experience. Once every couple of years there’s something that’s devastating. And I would say for a day I’m devastated and Ariana has been able to sit down and remind me of who I am and what I’ve done or how I should approach this, just like anything else, and pick me up. And that has been the… when shit hits the fan, that’s who helps out.

AD: That’s the beauty of the connectedness that you value and have gratitude for.

JC: Yeah, she’s a champ.

AD: But it’s not just that. I don’t think she could be a champ if you weren’t, A, reciprocating, I’m sure, in some way. But also letting that dynamic actually grow to its fullest potential. And allowing yourself to be moved by her in such a way that you’re not clinging to your devastation to make a point or to in some way oppose her. That’s symphonic. Yeah.

JC: It takes, like we said, it takes two and I’m glad I have her and thankful that… I don’t necessarily believe in free will, which is a whole conversation…

AD: That is, oh my gosh, we have to do another episode. (Laughter)

JC: I do feel lucky. Why I’m saying that, I feel lucky that the tendencies that I have, I don’t feel responsible, I’m just grateful that I happen to see the world in a certain way on a certain day, that gave me an idea of something that has luckily bloomed into a positive thing. Thank God.

AD: Oh my gosh, you’ve just cracked open a whole can of worms because if you don’t believe in free will, then what is creativity?

JC: All right, there’s order in chaos, right? We know what order is, it’s a pattern you can see. Chaos is not randomness; chaos is just the pattern you can’t see because there’s no such thing as random in the universe. It’s all about trusting the process, if you do the creative process and you put the right pieces together, the pattern you can’t see and possibly no one else can see, could unfold if you keep going.

AD: Ah, there we go, okay! You can still not have free will and deliberately exercise a sort of participation with the patterns.

JC: Right, because who we are as people is, you said it earlier is a result of parents and parents of parents and society. I’ll say this, why did you do this decision? Because I think this and this. And I’d say, why did you think that? And eventually if you follow that train of thought, it comes from an experience outside of yourself that you didn’t choose. And so you’re actually, the whole foundation of who you are, yes, you’re making decisions, but that’s the façade of free will. You’re actually enacting the pattern; this is like the whole thing.

AD: Yeah! (Laughter)

JC: Ariana is always like, don’t bring up free will, don’t bring up free will…

AD: No, I’m so glad you did, this is fascinating. (Laughter)

JC: So that’s my two minute philosophy lesson.

AD: Here’s my final question for you and if you can zoom as far out as you possibly can, on your life, or potentially on lives, if you believe that incarnations happen over and over again…

JC: I like that.

AD: What is the big pattern? What are you creating in the biggest, biggest picture you can imagine?

JC: Sure, for me, I think I was a dog in a previous life. I eat like an animal, when food is in front of me, I go nuts. And it solidified… apparently I shake my butt when I’m excited, according to Ariana. (Laughs) The day that I said, “I can play frisbee for hours,” it’s always the other person that stops. She was like, oh, you’re a dog! (Laughter) But in this life, in this life, I think the injustice of creativity, in creatives is what I want to take a look at. Both of us clearly have strong feelings. When I was younger there was a kid, let’s call him Bill, and he was an incredible artist. He drew at a 20 year old level at seven, and his parents forced him to be an accountant, that didn’t work out. Forced him to a be a nurse, and that was their jobs. And he’s not happy now and I remember witnessing this and trying to defend him. And there was no trust that he could make money doing this thing that he was incredible at and loved. And now as a professional, I see illustrators making $2,000 a drawing, doing three or four of them a week, making wonderful living, a joyous life, full of expression. It’s all about how can I just do… I used to think it was through being an artist, I actually think it’s through being a business. Do what Nike did for the body that Baronfig… could Baronfig do it for the mind? We’re pre-Nike, going out and running, what are you doing? Are you running away from something? Running became an activity of leisure and of wellness because businesses propped them up. And of course there’s gain in the business, this is not a public service. But how do we mutually benefit and do that for creatives, do that for the mind.

AD: So in doing that you’re creating tools for thinkers as a contribution to a greater goal of creative justice.

JC: Right, like Nike creates tools and an ethos and a culture of athleticism, how do we create a culture of thinkers I haven’t gotten it right. We talked about the dramatic changes I want to make. I will risk this company until I either blow it up or until I solve the problem, and I’m fine with either. The only thing I’m not fine with is not doing… not trying.

AD: All right, that’s a good place to be and a place for us to stay tuned, very exciting. Thank you so much Joey for sharing so much of your story and your philosophy and your specificity and for engaging me in the present moment, this was really, really enriching, thank you so much.

JC: Amy, there’s every once a while I hope on the mic with someone, doing an interview or a chat and at the end I’m really sad because that’s the end of it. And you’ve clearly touched on a couple of times on how important people are to me, just you’re awesome and there needs to be something else. You made me think about more things that I haven’t thought about, in certain ways that now I’ve got work to do.

Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening, for a transcript of this episode, and more about Joey, including images of his work, and a bonus Q&A - head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would be inspired by Clever - please tell them! It really helps us out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps - please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed.We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to.

What is your earliest memory?

Oddly enough, getting lost in a supermarket! I was separated from my mom, and I remember starting to get nervous. I wandered around a bit until a kind stranger brought me to the front of the store. They announced my name over the intercom and before I knew it—mom was back!

How do you feel about democratic design?

Great design should be accessible to all. I can get behind that. Is it feasible? That’s another discussion entirely, as ultimately the highest quality design is made by the most skilled designers, which inevitably command the highest salaries. And so we end up with only organizations that can afford those designers enjoying the highest quality design. It’s a nuanced discussion, and one I’d like to explore more. Personally, I design for myself (Baronfig, mainly), and so I exist outside of that ecosystem.

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

I was nineteen years old and working as a marketing coordinator. Mostly, I designed. One day, I hit a roadblock and rather than figure it out, I went over to my manager and told him I was stuck. Without looking at me, he said, “Don’t make your problems my problems.” And he was right. I hadn’t tried to solve the problem, I just ran to him to bail me out. I sulked back to my desk, in shock, but quickly recovered and figured out how to get past the roadblock. To this day, he and I are still close and talk on the phone regularly. He even made me a sweatshirt with his signature phrase on it.

How do you record your ideas?

In a notebook or on my phone. I get them out messy, unorganized, and worry about all of that later. Ideas are fleeting, and they’re cheap—but that doesn’t mean we should throw away free stuff!

Sneak peek of “Laws of Creativity” by Joey Cofone

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

Does my imagination count? Since I started designing, my number one tool is essentially designing in my head. Very often, I’ll lie in bed or hop in the shower and design version after version of something I’m working on. It’s kind of like how Tony Stark has the 3D hologram surrounding him when he’s in his workshop, but only I can see it. The reason I enjoy this so much is that anything I want to see, I see instantly. I don’t have to draw it in a notebook or whip it up in an Adobe program. There’s no waiting, and it helps me move very fast. I do about 80% of my design this way, and the last 20%—when I’m nearing time to bring the design to life—I move to paper and screen.

What book is on your nightstand?

Right now, The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. It’s putting to words some concepts I’ve been aware of for quite some time. I highly recommend it.

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity is important when self-expression is a desire. Do I need to be authentic while, say, designing a Coca-Cola ad? That’s debatable. But when I’m designing for Baronfig or when I designed the cover of The Laws of Creativity—ultimately I have to appeal to myself. The Law of Specificity (from The Laws of Creativity) states: Make for yourself and you will appeal to many. Make for many and you will appeal to none. First we have to tickle our own imaginations!

Favorite restaurant in your city?

The Chinese place around the corner, Pic Up Stix. No frills, straightforward service—and the best beef udon I have ever had in my life.

Product Design, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Graphic Design // Photography Design: Chandler Reed; Photography: Erica McCartney

Product Design, Creative Direction, Art Direction // Illustration: Kyle T. Webster; Graphic Design, Photography Design: Laura Toffolo; Photography: Erica McCartney

What might we find on your desk right now?

I’m looking around my design for something interesting—something that’s beyond the essentials of notebook, laptop, coffee mug, microphone, and so on. And you know what? There’s nothing that’s out of the ordinary. And I really like it that way. Everything that’s interesting is on my screen or in my head. I like to keep my spaces clean and simple so that there’s room for my thoughts to flow and expand.

Who do you look up to and why?

Bruce Lee and Leonardo da Vinci. Lee for his discipline and innovation, as well has his incredible ability to communicate. And da Vinci for his creativity and desire to learn, learn, learn! Just yesterday I happened to look up my first order on Amazon, and was happy to discover that it was way back in 2010 for Leonardo’s Notebooks.

What are the last five songs you listened to?

I’m going to be honest here. I rarely actually listen to music. It’s often playing, but I don’t really care what’s on beyond a certain mood or tone. And there’s a reason. My father is deaf, and because of that we didn’t play music growing up so as not to exclude him from family activities. (Imagine all of us bobbing our head to music while he just sits there. I’d be a constant reminder of what he doesn’t get to experience.) So, instead, we did a lot of visual things. I grew up with a fascination for seeing—and it’s no surprise that I became a designer as a result.

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

Visit joeycofone.com or follow me on Instagram and Twitter via @joeycofone.

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.