In this episode of JUST Branding, we sit down with Debbie Millman, one of the most influential voices in design and brand thinking, to talk about what endures when trends fade and platforms shift.

Debbie is the host of Design Matters, the longest running podcast on design, launched in 2005. She is the co founder and chair of the Masters in Branding program at School of Visual Arts, and spent two decades at Sterling Brands leading work for global icons like Burger King and Tropicana. She is also the author of multiple books, including Why Design Matters and Brand Thinking.

We go beyond surface level branding to unpack why personal branding can quietly trap creatives, how to define real brand DNA without freezing your identity, and how meaning is built honestly rather than manufactured theatrically.

We also explore why big redesigns so often fail, how to separate non negotiable DNA from executional style, and the fastest way to create meaning without faking it.

Along the way, Debbie shares what hundreds of interviews have taught her about creative careers, patience, and long term reputation.

This conversation is for designers, strategists, founders, and creators who want their work to compound with integrity rather than perform for attention.

And yes, we also touch on symbols, objects, gardening, and why the most powerful brands behave more like living systems than campaigns.

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Transcript

Brands aren’t personal. You can have preferences, but you don’t have a personal relationship with a brand that isn’t being handed to you. You’re not creating a relationship with another living being. You’re creating a relationship with a manufactured entity.

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding. Today, we’re exploring what really lasts in branding. And no, it is not a personal brand kit. It is character. And we have none other than the OG Debbie Millman here to set the record straight. But for those who do not know Debbie, Debbie is a designer, a writer, and the host of Design Matters, which is the longest running podcast show on design, which was started way back in 2005. That is crazy. Debbie is also co-founded and chairs the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

And before that, she spent two decades at Sterling Brands, leading work across household names like Burger King, Tropicana, and so forth. She has written several books, a couple of my books self back here, including Why Design Matters and Brand Thinking. And in this episode, we are going to get into why personal branding can trap you, what to build instead, and how to separate true brand DNA from executional style. And if we can fit it in, maybe discuss why big redesigns often fail and the fastest and most honest way to create meaning. But before we get into the show, I do just want to say it is an absolute honor for you to be here with us on JUST Branding, Debbie, with Matt and I, especially since we just had you as a panelist at the recent Brand Builder Summit with another Branding legend, David Arka. So a big thank you for coming back and trusting us again. And other than that, welcome to the show, Debbie.

Thank you, Jacob. Thank you, Matt. It’s really wonderful to be here.

Welcome. Welcome. We’re excited to have you on. Thank you.

I did have a little icebreaker and I just wanted to talk about your home, which is kind of like a part gallery, part sanctuary with little trinkets and collectibles and so forth. So my question to you, Debbie, and hopefully you haven’t had this one before, but what’s an object in your home that holds the most meaning for you right now and why?

What a good question. Well, it’s not really an object, but it’s my wife. She’s at home right now and she has the most meaning for me.

That’s no surprise.

Does that count?

We’ll let it pass. Is there any physical object that maybe not a human, that comes to mind?

Well, let’s see. So many to choose from. I’m a bit of a collector and so I have things from high school, junior high school, elementary school. I have all sorts of photographs of my childhood because I got them all. I received them all from the various parents that came and went. So I think I’m going to leave it at my wife.

Okay. All right.

Other than that, it’s like Sophie’s choice. It’s so hard to choose.

Totally. Well, transitioning from that, you once called brand manufactured meaning. I think we talked about this a little bit with David. Do you want to unpack that a little bit for us and perhaps share an honest way to manufacture it fast without faking it?

Well, I believe that brands are manufactured meaning because brands don’t exist unless we create them and imbue them with meaning. So we can create just about anything now, but in order for it to make sense to anyone, we have to give it a place. We have to give it attributes, a name, and it’s only recognizable and understandable when there’s consensus that’s built around it. So I could create what I hope is a brand and give it a name and a positioning, and attributes, and values, and a vision, but nobody believes or buys into it literally and figuratively. And then it dies. So there hasn’t been a sense of consensus building with that meaning. Brands don’t exist on their own. They aren’t self-directed. And so in order for us to be able to construct something, we have to give it meaning. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. Matt actually has his definition of branding talks about meaning.

Yeah, so I always think, well, just a definition that I think is helpful is that a brand is the meaning that other people attach to you and your offer, right? And branding is the attempt to manage that meaning, right? So exactly what you’re saying, it doesn’t exist.

No, no, no. I don’t think we’re saying the same thing. Can you say that first part again?

So brand is the meaning that other people attach to you and your offer.

I believe that branding is the belief in the meaning that you construct. That other people believe what you determined that meaning to be, but they don’t independently create that meaning. They either believe it or they don’t believe it. And so the process of manufacturing meaning is the ability that we have to project that meaning into something. The belief of that meaning is what other people bring to the table.

Sure. Sure. Exists in their hearts and minds, right?

I think it exists in their brains and then moves into the other organs. But yes, mind. Yes, it exists in the mind and then moves into every other place.

And you’ve also called personal branding like an oxymoron. So why do you see that? And how is that like limiting for brands?

Let’s let’s take it from the logic of or the agreement that brands are manufactured meaning. If brands are manufactured meaning, then why would anyone want to or seek to be manufactured? Humans can own brands and create brands and manage brands and represent brands. But to be a brand is a fixed moment in time. People don’t like when brands change very much, but humans change all the time. We want to be able to change and grow and develop. We also sometimes have missteps. And the only way to be able to really grow is to take risks. Brands tend to be very risk adverse. Most shareholders would say, manage your risk. People want to be able to be free and be self-directed. And brands don’t have that ability. So once you put yourself into the brand format and say you want to be a personal brand, you’re essentially taking all of the person out of yourself in order to be this fixed entity that people will be able to understand. And I think that’s limiting. I think people can, as you mentioned earlier, build their reputation, build their character, become known for certain ways of behaving or creating. And to limit that to a brand feels like you’re shortchanging everything that we are given in the magic of being human.

So, we often talk about definitions on here. So, maybe before we tuck in to the other option, like how would you define personal branding then?

Well, I don’t know that I would define it as much as describe it. And I would describe it as an oxymoron because brands aren’t personal. You can have preferences, but you don’t have a personal relationship with a brand that isn’t being handed to you. You’re not creating a relationship with another living being. You’re creating a relationship with a manufactured entity. So, if you want to call that a relationship, you can, but it’s really more of an experience than a relationship because it’s not two-sided. It’s only one-sided. It’s you and your relationship with this thing. How is that a relationship? That alone proves my point. It’s not something that’s tucking you in at night. Even if it’s a blanket, it’s not doing the tucking.

That’s an interesting way to look at it. Personal branding is very trendy right now and it’s in the limelight. Everyone’s like, build a personal brand, but with this kind of context…

Build your personal character. You don’t even need to say personal character because character is personal and building your reputation. I’m not saying that you don’t want to necessarily have a platform, hate that word, so that people understand what you believe in and what your point of view is and even what you stand for. I don’t have any issue with that, but the notion of being a brand takes so much of the humanity out of the experience of doing something, that it’s a bit flummoxing to me that somebody would want to be a brand, a manufactured brand. Because brands are not self-directed, feels sad actually.

What’s the better path for someone that is trying to grow an audience, for example?

By mastering your work, by providing a benefit to your audience, by offering a point of view that might enlighten or inspire them.

And are there any like principles or boundaries when it comes to character, you mentioned, that you would put when building, like building up that character or your platform?

Well, I think that that’s the key, is having principles that are your own. And so, I would suggest, you know, telling the truth, living up to your word, being honest. Well, that’s telling the truth, so that doesn’t really count twice. Offering something that is beneficial to others that isn’t necessarily beneficial to yourself. Like, you’re offering something with no expectation of return. And that’s what makes the whole notion of our experience with brands such a slippery slope. Because if you have a brand whose goal, its goal, the owner’s goal is for it to be profitable, then whose needs are you putting first? Are you putting the owner’s needs, the brand company’s needs, or the consumer’s needs? And depending on the structure of the ownership of that brand. So, for example, if it’s a publicly traded company that owns that brand, there is a fiduciary responsibility by that company to provide a return on investment to any of the shareholders that have invested in that company. And so once you have to start negotiating between what’s best for the shareholder and what’s best for the consumer, you kind of know where that pendulum is going to land. And so that’s what makes the whole brand-human experience or relationship so troublesome.

Do you think that depends on how short-term or how long-term the owner is thinking, right? Because it seems to me that we should always, I mean, I’m a brand builder, right? And I would always say, even if I’m asked to be doing things that are of value to the owner of the brand, look, this is going to potentially damage you long-term, right? Because it’s short-term thinking and you really want to build some longevity and put the customer at the heart of everything you’re doing because then the money will flow later. But you do get these tensions sometimes where everybody’s short-term, let’s get it over the line now, let’s ship it, ship it, ship it.

Yeah, that’s the financial world we’re living in. I mean, that’s being driven by Wall Street, not by the consumer. And look, I love brands. I don’t have any issue with brands representing certain belief systems that the company has or making me feel better or giving me a sense of confidence if I’m engaging with it. But I know these things and I know what the brand is doing. And so for me, it’s I’m opting in with the full knowledge of all of this, where I think things get a little bit dangerous is when people don’t know. And when people aren’t necessarily opting in willingly, but opting in for social cache that they’re not fully aware of what is actually happening in that experience.

Debbie, before you said something about, you know, the return on growth and I was just wondering, like when you’re growing an audience or your platform, there is part of it where you like you’re putting on a persona, right? Like this kind of public theater. And this is always this challenge of like how much theater do I put into it? Like where do you draw the line and how do you find that, you know, the fact that you’re building an identity, but it’s like it’s still a construct in a way.

Yeah. And this is the issue that I’m struggling with now in terms of how much do you put out there that is about you, as opposed to whatever it is you’re making. Because there is this tendency to sugarcoat one’s life and experience in social media. And I don’t know very many people that go to social media and hope scroll, you know, instead of doom scroll, or come away feeling better about themselves because they’re looking at tens or hundreds of people that are all in their own assessment living better lives. And I’m struggling with how much energy and effort I put into social media because it’s also a construct and it’s beginning to feel really itchy. And I’m not exactly sure where it’s all going to net out, but I’m not aware of anybody that’s like, social media is really making me a happier person.

You know, in Australia, they just banned it for people under 16, the first country. So yeah, it says something about it. Yeah, I also struggle with how much to show, like half my phone photos are just my kids. And you know, that’s where I spend the rest of my life. So it’s like, I want to share parts of that, but then it’s like, is their life. So do you share that or like, how do you build a connection with other people that may have similar interests? Like whether it be surfing or cooking or collectibles in your home, like, there is definitely a line and that’s always a big challenge of like, what is my personal brand and how much to share of that construct?

I’ve changed my algorithm really well. When I go to Instagram now, I’m fed peanuts, animations, little bit of cooking and fitness. That’s good. I like that. And of course, politics. And the politics would depress me no matter what. And so, whether I see it on the New York times.com or cnn.com or Instagram, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. I’m very cognizant of trying to stay up to date with what’s happening and that then becomes, you know, the de facto position because you have to look at it because you want to know what’s happening in order to be a responsible citizen.

And you’re very active with the politics side of things where Matt and I would definitely stay away from all of that on here. So it’s just like, you have to choose where you want to focus and you’re not going to be for everyone. You’re going to lose followers no matter what.

Oh, definitely. When I post, I go on these Instagram story rants and I don’t say anything verbally like I’m not writing. I’m just reposting and reposting and reposting all the other things that other people say far better than I do and yeah, I tend to lose a lot of followers, but you know, if they don’t know me by now, they’re never going to know me.

Do you ever tend to share any sort of stuff outside of work on your social channels, Debbie? Like, you know, family or yeah, you do. And how do you find that that works? Do you find that that does build up rapport with certain people and connects with them?

Let’s see. I don’t know how much. I know on Facebook, I do family stuff because we’re all connected. And it’s also a limited audience because it’s just people that I follow and follow me. Instagram. What Instagram? What do I do on Instagram? Instagram, I do talk about Design Matters a lot. I brag about my wife. I talk about projects. But it feels very one sided. Any time I’ve ever posted feeling down, I’m feeling insecure, you know, then I get like 45 phone calls from people that want to cheer me up and or are worried. And I’m glad that they feel that strongly about me, but I don’t want to worry them. Like if I’m that down, I am not going to go to Instagram. I’m going to try to get a booking with my therapist. So it’s hard because then you’re like, oh, am I humble bragging or am I outright bragging or am I performing? And that’s what I said. It’s like I really struggle with how much of this really matters and counts. And yet, you know, when you’re doing a project for somebody, they want you to do that. Or if it’s Giving Tuesday, then the organizations that I feel really strongly about or I’m working with, you know, want me to post something. Or if it’s a bill that I want to get through Congress, of course, I’m going to put something like that up there. But it’s a struggle.

It is. All right, Debbie. Well, we’re going to talk into brand DNA, which is something that’s a bit of like a non-negotiable in some ways. So how do you separate brand DNA from executional style when you start a project?

Well, deconstructing the whole question.

Yes, it’s a loaded question, yes. Well, maybe let’s start with a definition of brand DNA.

I mean, I just love how we all as humans, we anthropomorphize our pets, we anthropomorphize our brands. We are meaning makers and yet we elevate. There’s no question I do this. My dog is a person with fur. There’s no question about it. I wish Max could talk. Roxanne and I are always like, what do you think he’s thinking about? I’m like, cloud bubble bone. But we always give him so much more credit than what he’s likely really thinking about. We do the same thing with brands. In fact, in the 1920s, that’s what marketers were doing. They were creating these characters to be able to differentiate one brand from another. That’s why you see so many serial characters to be able to appeal to kids, to give them that sense of what that DNA was or is. We did that with so many brands. You can think about the little Morton Salt girl, or even with Sinclair dinosaurs for selling gasoline. I mean, really? I don’t know if that’s a brand that you guys have in your countries, but we have. But there’s so many brands, the Midas Man, the Michelin Man. I mean, there’s so many. And I think that we do that in an effort to create more of what you call that relationship. Like, oh, I have a relationship with a man who represents paper towels, strong paper towels, the brawny man. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. I don’t know. I think about these things all the time, of course. Sometimes I think it’s fun. Sometimes I think it’s a little weird. Sometimes I think both. But yes, there is a DNA or the building blocks. Maybe that’s a better way of putting it. The building blocks of developing brand meaning. And I think if I understand the question, those building blocks should be embedded in any stylistic choice that’s made for a brand. Although I would say that the building blocks is more like the sort of soul and the style is more like the clothing.

So is DNA and soul interchangeable for you?

Well, they are in this realm of comfort and in this conversation. But again, we’re conflating consciousness, which is what humans have, with something that is not alive. And so, we’re imbuing the soul into a fixed object without actual consciousness. That’s the big difference for me between this notion of a personal brand. Well, you have consciousness, right? So you’re making choices. Brands don’t make choices. People make choices for brands.

Yeah. So interesting to think like that, because I’ve never really thought of it like that. But that point that you just made at the end, because it seems to me that people manage brands, right? So they leadership teams, marketing teams, etc. So and all the way through an organization when you think about it, customer experience, the way that people are hired, and all of that stuff. It’s a management of a particular type of person that they want in the organization to represent that. And then at the very top, those the top people are making the decisions to govern that brand. So there’s kind of like this group think. So you could argue, and I don’t know if I’m brave enough to argue with you yet, Debbie, but you know, you could, we could argue that the brands are…

Let me tell you something. Let me insert something right here. One of my exes said, Debbie is always persuasive, but she’s not always right. And I…

Lovely, lovely. But you know, anyway, my point is, right, you could argue that the brands have a kind of a group think kind of scenario, right? Which if it’s manufactured in a way that everybody’s on board and aligned with, that group think can direct that brand and behave as if it is a singular entity, almost a person, right?

They can all be in concert with each other. I mean, that’s what the company is always trying to do with in the way that they manage brand teams or the way brand teams manage their brands.

Right. Yeah. So there is this weird kind of relationship between brands and people. You know, like Apple, I expect Apple to behave a certain way, even though I know it’s not a person. I kind of get the embodiment of Steve Jobs somehow throughout all the touch points. And then when I go into a genius bar store or whatever it is, you know, I expect the person there to behave a certain way. And if I speak to him on the phone or I put an order through. So there’s sort of expectations built over years of a reputation. Yes, not by one person, but by the people that have managed that over time. So, yeah, that’s an interesting thought to ponder. Like, I guess up and coming brands, they’re kind of looking for how do we get that group think so that we’re all aligned and it makes sense and it’s of high consumer worth and we can actually build something that looks and feels and has that longevity. And I guess that’s what Jacob’s sort of asking there. Like, how do they start to do that? Like, how do we get to that consensus, to that point where there’s structure in place to do that? But maybe there isn’t structure, but…

No, there is. That’s positioning. What you described is positioning. That is brand positioning. It is creating a foundation that everyone can then work from. So it’s the foundation of everything that exists in the world of this brand. And then that the positioning is the journey to becoming a brand. And then the brand exists when there’s consensus about what that positioning is. So you and I, all three of us believe the same thing about this brand. And that construct that we believe is manufactured by the very people that you just described.

Right. Yeah. Well, I think to go a little bit deeper on this, that may be an example. Like legacy brands, I know you often talk about. Is there any legacy brands that you think worth discussing about? Like how they’ve managed change, they’ve kept the DNA there, but like they’ve reinvented themselves to become more modernized, I guess.

Well, I mean, I think you just mentioned Apple’s done a really amazing job over the last 40 years, growing from essentially a souped up word processor to a way in which we could make design, to the way in which we now engage with our devices. And that’s almost unthinkable, almost unthinkable.

Do you think that DNA has always been there or they’ve like evolved and like protected parts of it and added parts or removed parts? Or like, what are your thoughts on that?

They had a very strong leader for a very long time. Actually, they had this really incredible triumvirate. You know, they had Steve Jobs, Johnny Ive and Evans Henke. So I think that the three of them were able to construct and manufacture not only an idea, but the delivery of that idea and the dependence of that idea that could be relied on. And so it was innovation, brilliant innovation, world-changing innovation, world-changing marketing, world-changing creative. Perfect storm.

And you said something there that it’s actually living that idea. And from the leadership, it’s going through the whole organization. So the idea lives independently. So the DNA is trickled throughout the organization.

I think the idea is protected by the leadership of the company. And if it’s protected and guarded and treated in the Holy Grail that it is for the organization, then it can be leveraged and grown and extended in ways that the audience, consumers, people really love and enjoy. Because the categories of word processor through to telephone, camera, calculator, everything else that’s in this device, there’s a lot of steps there. And that’s pretty brilliant. I thought that what Stanley did with their cup was really smart. And because it was so smart, I was really, really excited to see what was going to happen next and how they were going to leverage that into continued growth. And I’m really, really surprised that they haven’t done that.

Well, let’s talk about brands that fail. Like Apple is a great example of one that succeeded and innovated and all of that. But are there any brands that you think have failed that are worth discussing or any patterns that you see with large redesigns in particular?

Well, any redesign is always an interesting thing to talk about based on what the response in the culture is to that redesign. I don’t necessarily think that redesigns fail because of bad design, because there’s a lot of bad design out there and there’s a lot of brands that are badly designed that do perfectly well. I think it’s really more about the launch strategy that fails or succeeds because nobody cares about redesigns except designers. Like people don’t go to the shelf and think, hmm, let’s see what’s new today. Tropicana has been redesigned, Cracker Barrel has been redesigned, The Gap has been redesigned, yay! People don’t like change. People don’t like uncertainty. People don’t like when things aren’t predictable. And one of the most predictable things that exists in our lives are supermarkets. You go in, you know where the produce is, you know where the checkout lines are, you know how to navigate this space. And when things change, most people see change skeptically and they view change as something that they need to protect themselves from. So, oh, if this is different, is the recipe different? Is it going to cost more? Am I getting less? And brands have really failed consumers in that regard. Quite a number of brand redesigns are created to obscure the fact that the carton is smaller or the container is smaller. And so they’re actually paying more for something that they used to get at a certain price. And so there’s a little bit of smoke and mirrors there. Things like that are really terrible to do because you’re eroding whatever trust somebody might have had in something that they bought over and over and over and over for years or decades or a lifetime. So the thing that people don’t like is when change is made without understanding why. And if they understand why, then it helps to understand that there was a reason for this change.

Yeah. I was just going to say what you described there. I don’t know if you’ve come across this phrase, but in the UK there’s this massive phrase going around called shrinkflation. So it’s the idea of exactly what you were saying. Like we pay a bit more for inflation, but we’ll pay for a shrinked products as well. So it’s like this is happening. There’s loads of stuff on social media. So check that out.

Yogurt containers.

Yeah, it’s really bad. Shrinkflation. There we are. You heard it first.

But talking about the yogurt actually, what came to mind when you’re talking about the strategy behind the relaunch and the campaign behind it. Chibani did this really well here in Australia anyway. They had a transition of having like the old canisters and the new canisters, and then like a hybrid one that mixed like the two designs together, and they rolled out over several months, and that was an interesting way to launch, and because it was a pretty big shift in terms of the actual packaging design.

So it’s more of a migration, which companies often do when they join forces. So you’ll see a logo disappear, but the visual language remain if the owner is now different, which is, I think, also interesting and clever. Starbucks, when they got rid of the coffee in their name, I thought they did a really good job in the way that they introduced the idea. They had ads that showed four different cups, because the cup is such an ownable asset to them. They showed four, and each cup was slightly different, and resulted in the final just being Starbucks without the coffee in the name. And what that was telegraphically messaging was, we’ve been the same company all along, our names and our cups have changed. And I thought that they did a really good job. People didn’t get really upset about it. I don’t know if you have Dunkin Donuts in either of your countries, but they also did a really good job losing the donuts in JUST Dunkin. And I know, because I worked with Dunkin for years, how much they wanted to do it and how afraid they were of doing it. And I think it was JKR that did that redesign. They did it brilliantly. Nobody misses the donuts. And the donuts are still being sold, so it’s not like anybody’s lost anything.

True. All right. So I’m just going to jump ship here and maybe talk a little bit about your interviewing, which is, you know, you’ve done probably thousands of interviews over the years, and you described interviewing like billions. So what’s that look like for you in terms of like prep and the first few minutes, I guess?

It’s a lot of work. Right now, I’m celebrating the 20th anniversary, and so I’m doing a whole series of episodes that bring together similar disciplines, so that talking to five artists or five writers or five playwrights or five designers, and it’s been such a joy to just do the voiceovers and not spend the hundreds of hours to every month researching, and it’s been a lovely reset for me because it is so much work, and it is really nerve-wracking when you’re talking with some of the greatest minds of our time and you don’t want to f**k up.

I feel you on that, Debbie.

I never said that or I didn’t do that or what are you talking about? Which has happened and, you know, it’s not particularly me and my finest, but so I just really work to avoid those moments.

Is there a question that, you know, you always ask or like you always kind of breaks the ice or do you have any go tos?

Well, I never ask the same question twice as an icebreaker because the questions that I ask as icebreakers in the way that you ask me, they tend to be very specifically oriented to the person. And so I’ll find some tidbit that amuses me that I think would make my guest really happy to talk about. And then that puts them at ease and hopefully gets them to laugh. And then also I hope that it shows them that I’ve done enough research to know that, to unearth that. And so that gives them, I think, the sense that I respect them enough to do that. And that also then builds trust.

When you’re doing an interview, right? This is something that I often kind of ponder with Jacob, because I’m the worst at this. But you know, like someone says something you think, oh, that’s kind of interesting. I’ll go and meander down that road, right? There comes a point, though, where that probably wasn’t the best time to meander down. Do you have any sort of principles that you follow that you would say, right, I’ll follow that type of line of inquiry, but not those types? You know, when do you stay on track and when do you meander? I guess is my question.

It’s a great question. I’m constantly having to think about that, because I do create a narrative arc for my interviews. And you have to make split decisions about, am I going to continue down that path or am I going to stick with my script? So for example, if someone brings up something they did in college before I’m ready to talk about college, I have to decide, am I going to go there and leapfrog all of the questions that I had in between pre-college questions, or am I just going to go with the flow? And it really depends on the circumstances. Most of the time, I will go with them. But that’s only because I know I still have enough that I can pull from in my research because I always create way more questions. So I’m constantly having to do that in the live interview, like, oh, do I want to do that? Do I want to do that? Do I want to go there? Do I want to go there? And that’s the whole notion of the billiards. But sometimes you do have to kill your darlings and there are questions that I really wanted to ask. But I know if I go back, it’s going to change the momentum that we’ve already built by going in the direction that they’ve led me to. And that’s heartbreaking for me sometimes because, you know, I want to know that. And now I’m not going to be able to ask it.

Now, you know how I feel, Matt. You’re butting in and changing directions all the time. But, case in point, Debbie, like the first section, I have an outline and an arc here, and we pretty much skipped the whole first section, like which was the search for identity, because we just jumped straight into personal branding. I’m like, OK, well, we’ll just skip that section and go with the natural flow.

We can go back. I am totally flexible. I totally understand what that feels like.

It’s usually me absolutely wrecking everything Jacob’s planned for just by, like, throwing in some crazy meandering question and then off we go. And Jacob’s like, no, get back. And I can see fire light in his eyes, but no one else can see it. It’s just between us.

That’s a big challenge. I mean, being a co-host, you have to be able to be reading each other’s minds. You’re not even in the same room. So you can’t even do like footsies or pass notes.

You have to be able to find notes and do stuff like that.

I can’t even imagine how hard that is. And then also, the interrupting thing. When do you interrupt? When do you let somebody go first? That’s hard. You’ve made it much harder for yourselves by doing this as co-hosts.

There we are. Well, we do what we can. So, Jacob, what are we going to do as the leader of this? Are we going to go back or are we going to go forward? What’s your thoughts?

Let’s keep going forward.

Come on, let’s do that.

I’d love to talk more into the interviewing because that’s what we do on this show as well. Be curious, what surprised you after all these hundreds of interviews? Has it changed your view on anything or is any other big surprises that come to mind?

Well, I’m always surprised by how the most brilliant, creative, prolific, innovative minds still question their value and their worth. And I’m beginning to think it’s just part of the creative condition. And it makes me feel a little bit less lonely because I’m constantly doing that about my own work. And so I feel like, well, maybe it isn’t a personal flaw or this sort of bottomless pit of need. But it’s just the way in which creative people create meaning is through the making of things. But that does and it has really surprised me over the decades, how much really accomplished people still feel like they have to prove something to themselves.

Does that come up naturally or is this something you’re seeing between, like read between the lines or is this like the many conversations always comes up?

No, it’s just sort of there. It’s just there. The sort of longing for meaning. Okay.

All right.

You know, in thinking about what we’ve been talking about, you know, there’s genuine search for meaning, right? And then there’s manufactured meaning. And that’s, I guess, another, you know, just coming back full circle to the earlier part of our conversation. You know, that’s one of the big differences between humans and brands. You know, we’re searching for purpose and meaning. We’re not manufacturing it for ourselves. We’re creating. So it’s a big difference between creating meaning and manufacturing meaning.

Thanks for closing the loop, Debbie.

I’ve got a question on that, Jacob, because I think that’s an interesting way of thinking about it. But here’s my question to you, Debbie, right? This is my meandering question, right? If you think of it like that, do you ever think a brand can create an experience or a product that then generates genuine meaning in a consumer’s life? Like, for example, I was thinking… Religion. Religion, right? Okay, there you go. Or let’s just take it to, like, I don’t know, a theme park, right? There’s Alton Towers here in the UK. It’s a famous theme park that we’ve got. Disneyland, whatever, right? So you could say Disneyland. Let’s take that one. It’s a brand, right? Disney is a brand and Disneyland is a brand. And the Disney products and the Disney films and they’re all kind of manufactured. But then you take your kids and your wife or, you know, whatever, to Disneyland, and suddenly you’ve got an experience that is real, right? Tangible. Your family enjoy themselves. You go back again. You’ve had a great break. Is that just manufactured or is that real? Like, I would argue it’s kind of real.

That’s real. That’s absolutely a real feeling that you have. I mean, I can drink a Starbucks coffee and love the taste of the coffee. And I feel like that’s a genuine feeling. I think that what I’m talking about in relation to brands is Disney didn’t create their own brand. The brand was created by people. And when I say Disney didn’t create it, I mean that Mickey Mouse didn’t create Mickey Mouse.

No, I know what you mean.

They created Mickey Mouse. That’s what I’m saying. Mickey Mouse does not exist as a soulful, conscious entity, even though people might put on Mickey Mouse costumes.

Well, I always believe that. I know you’ve ruined everything, Debbie.

No, don’t. This should be a Not Safe for Kids podcast. This episode.

Trigger alert for everybody.

We don’t want to in any way ruin their experiences. But that’s difference. I’m not saying the experiences aren’t real. The experiences are absolutely real. That’s not at all what I’m saying.

No, I understand. Because I thought as well, what about an actual product as well? You mentioned Starbucks or whatever, but there could be other manufactured tools or something. The actual brand is perhaps the way it communicates, but it’s not until a workman gets those tools and uses them, then it becomes real and it becomes emotional. Then it’s like, I couldn’t do my job without these tools.

That’s how consensus is built. It’s not going to be built on just an advertising campaign without people buying into it, trying it. There has to be a sense of there being a benefit to this thing that you make, and if people believe that this is a better experience, then they’re going to want to repeat that experience.

Okay. All right. I think we will wrap this up with a last round of rapid fire if you’re open to it, Debbie.

Absolutely.

This has been great.

I could keep talking to you guys for hours. This has been so much fun.

Thank you, Debbie. All right. Well, we are mindful of the time, but yes, first rapid fire question. So can you name a recent symbol that’s moved culture and not just mirrored it? And why did it work?

I think probably the hashtag, because suddenly we understood that that was a symbol that was communicating a belief in something.

That’s a really great answer.

Right. Next rapid fire. Next one. One book you gift most often.

I’m so lame. I gift my wife’s books.

I thought you were going to say, I don’t gift anything.

No, no, no, no, no.

Which book is that? If you don’t mind asking, and we’d love to-

Yeah, Bad Feminist. It’s just the perfect book. It’s a book of essays. They’re funny, they’re insightful, they’re biting, they’re delicious. I mean, it’s a great, great book.

Thank you. All right. The next one. Where can AI help meaning making? Oh, meaning making, yes. And where does it hollow it out?

Well, I’m a big AI fan. I’m not, you’d probably think like, oh my God, she probably hates AI. But I think that AI, it’s another entity that is directed by people. AI will make nothing if it’s not directed. And so I think that where I worry is not so much the job loss, not that I don’t think that that’s real, but I’m old enough to remember in the 80s, designers saying that the introduction of the Macintosh was going to ruin the discipline, and that also would be taken out of our design work because it was being made on this machine. And a lot of elder states people at the time were adamant about this. And then 30 years later, I saw those same elder states people sitting behind a designer going, move that there, move that there on a big screen. And yes, there were some jobs lost. I don’t know that anybody is really lamenting the loss of the switchboard operator, or if anybody’s really lamenting the loss of a word processor. I think that hundreds of thousands of jobs were created, and this experience here right now would not have been possible. And so we, again, we’re afraid of the things that we can’t predict when we don’t know what the certainty is in the future, and that’s exactly what is being experienced now. I’m less afraid about job loss than I am absolutely shaking in my boots, and I’m just terrified by what the potential harm it’s going to do to young people learning, because it’s just too easy to ask AI to write an essay or figure out an answer to a problem that is crucial to our brains’ development. We write in order to think, we think in order to write, and it’s too easy to get AI to do that for us. It’s one thing when you already have a threshold of knowledge, to be able to take that knowledge and move it into different directions to make something else. It’s quite another thing to replace learning. And I see that as a teacher, I’m on the front lines of seeing this happen, where people will take a creating writing class to learn how to write more creatively and are using AI to submit an assignment. I see that in students that are using AI to write reports, that would reflect how much they learned about something they were taught. That whole equation coming out of the experience has enormous, enormous ramifications on the way in which these younger humans are going to be thinking in the future. That’s scary. That to me is the scary part. That’s something I actually want to, that I’m thinking about writing about.

Yeah, you should.

Yeah, it’s not design thinking or branding, it’s AI thinking, which that’s the challenge.

Well, it’s non-thinking, isn’t it, really? Because as you say, if you’ve got some knowledge and you use AI to, I don’t know, to help shape that, but then you are curating it and you’re saying, actually, that’s not okay or whatever it might be, because you can assess and you can look at what AI is suggesting and you can weigh that up against some framework of knowledge that you’ve got. If you’ve not got that, you’re just asking it and you believe everything it says, and as you rightly say, it’s being controlled somehow by some people who know too.

Yeah. Again, what makes us so special as a species, our imagination, our curiosity, our pattern recognition, you take all of that away, then you might as well be just a personal brand.

Love that. Full circle.

Yeah. The next title, like you have brand thinking for your book, I think the next one will be not thinking, as Matt suggested.

It’s just really weird.

I’ve got one last very quick question because I know we need to close out. But have you got an example of a design decision that you made, perhaps in the past in your career somewhere, that’s aged differently than you expected? And what was it?

This is really old. This is like one from-

Old is fine.

Me and Jacob are quite old.

In 1984 or 1985. At that time, I had graduated college in 1983. So I was still trying to pursue all the things that I was interested in, writing, design, illustration, photography. And I was given an opportunity to fly in a helicopter over the New York Marathon start over the Verrazano Bridge. And it was something that I was doing for the publicity team that was representing Greta Waits, the Olympic marathoner who was running the marathon in New York that year. And lo and behold, I took a photograph that ended up being chosen by Fred LeBeau, who was then the head of the New York Roadrunners Club. They wanted to see my footage and they chose it for the next year’s marathon poster, which was an incredible, incredible honor. One of my first early miracles. And if you think about the Verrazano Bridge, facing the direction I was facing was Manhattan. And so I got all the people across the bridge that had just started running. But in the background was the World Trade Centers. And so I took this photograph, you know, I never in a million years would have been able to understand what was going to happen in the world 15 years later. But there in this perfect moment, where all of these runners taking off, running across the Verrazano Bridge, the whole bridge is covered with people. And then in the background, you see the World Trade Center.

Nice.

Okay. Well, thank you for sharing, Debbie. And I think to wrap it up, where can people connect with you online?

All the usual social things, you know, Instagram, Facebook, blah, blah, blah. And but if they’re interested in my writing or the work I do at the School of Visual Arts, they can go to my website, which has sort of links out to anything that I am part of. debbiemillman.com.

Amazing. Too easy. Well, Debbie, thank you. We’ll wrap it up. Thank you so much once again from Matt and myself for carving out some time to come on our humble little JUST Branding Podcast. And I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope our listeners did too. So thank you, Debbie.

Thank you. Thank you both.

Thank you, Debbie.