Art Department Automation // Brian Saetre - Founder of TaskOS and ArtworkIQ / Better Sign Shop

00:00:00Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Learn how to build a better sign and print shop from a few crusty sign guys who've made more mistakes than they care to admit. Conversations and advice on pricing, sales, marketing, [00:00:15] workflow, growth, and more. Your listening to The Better Sign Shop podcast with your hosts, Peter COIs, Michael O'Reilly, and Bryant Gillespie.

00:00:30 jump into the episode, I'd like to give a shout out to our sponsor, GCI Digital Imaging Grand Format Printer to the Trade. We talk a lot about outsourcing on the podcast and the importance of. Good partners and GCI Digital [00:00:45] Imaging is a good partner to have owner TJ Bak and his team focus on providing killer customer service just the way grandmother used to make it.

00:01:00 episode nine where the guys and I interview TJ about customer experience. So if you're looking for a high quality trade printer for banners, wraps, and other printed graphics that your customers throw at you, check out [00:01:15] GCI Digital imaging@printgci.com.

00:01:30 and I've got, uh, some colleagues of mine, well, just one colleague today, Mike, the Sign Design Samurai. Riley, are we, are we going with Sign Design Samurai? What are we? Hey, nobody sent me [00:01:45] any nicknames between the two, so now I'm kind of pissed, but just grasping

00:01:49Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: up straws at this point.

00:01:51Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah. Why is no one sent us any more nicknames for you? Maybe we just call you, I'm gonna call you like the mike, the sign [00:02:00] industry Mercedes-Benz or something, since that's been on my mind. I don't, I don't know. I was just trying to figure out how to tie it back to a car, but

00:02:08Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: whatever. Let me think about that one.

00:02:13Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: welcome Mike. Welcome to this [00:02:15] episode. We are, I, I don't know, this is like the 15th episode. Let's, let's do like a, a quick little, like, recap how, you know, how are you, how are you feeling about everything that we've done? So,

00:02:27Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: You know, I'm actually amazed.

00:02:30 sounds terrible to say, but I'm kind of amazed we made it to 15 episodes. I mean, I, it's, I don't know about you, but I sometimes tend to not stick to things very well. So I'm, I'm, I'm proud of this that we've, we've made it this far. I mean, I think it's pretty cool.

00:02:43Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Let's, let's preface [00:02:45] that with Yeah, yeah.

00:02:58Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: no. Uhuh, that's been, that's [00:03:00] been

00:03:00Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: nothing. Not

00:03:00Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: in the slightest. No. But hey, you know, small victories though. We, we made it to 15.

00:03:15 see like random people on one of the sign industry, you know, Facebook groups like. Hey, check out this podcast. We found like, this is great. Like, it's, it's really weird to see that.

00:03:30 there are people out there that actually like, listen to this and, and maybe even want to hear what we have to say. It's, it's a, it's a strange thing. It's new to me, so I guess it's, it's pretty cool.

00:03:40Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: You're not sure what to do, what to do with all your fans that are like stalking you [00:03:45] out in Portland? Yeah,

00:03:49Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: it's just a crowd of people gathered in front of my house waiting for me to come outside to get the mail. Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty cool. I, I'm pretty proud of us. I think that it's, it's pretty neat.

00:04:00 the conversations that we've had and I think that it's just gonna get better over time as we can continue to grow, have more listeners and more people that want to be, you know, guests and talk to us. And it's been pretty neat, neat thing to be a part of.

00:04:12Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. That's a great way to sum it up.

00:04:15 know, I, I don't think he, and I'll speak for Peter here just because he's, he's not here, but I don't, I don't think any of us thought that, uh, we would get the response that we have. So if you're listening to this, know, first and foremost, we appreciate you. We plan to continue doing [00:04:30] this. We enjoy it. We need more nicknames.

00:04:45 keep listening, send us nicknames. Not specifically in

00:04:49Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: that order, but yeah, and if anybody has any, you know, topics or things that you'd like to hear us talk about or discuss, uh, let us know too, cuz some, sometimes we struggle to come up with things to talk about.

00:05:00 it's a lot of topics, but at the same time, there's not very many topics in this industry after a while. So we're always looking for new subject matter to, to beat on. If anybody has any ideas, roll ears.

00:05:10Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I, I think we're scared to do the customer horror story episode at this [00:05:15] point, but maybe, maybe around Halloween next year

00:05:19Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: that'll be, yeah, they'd make it really great Halloween episode.

00:05:25Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: percent. That's a great idea. All right, so the topic today, we'll, we'll just jump into [00:05:30] it. The art department, streamlining the art department. How can we improve efficiency? I feel like efficiency and design is, are not two words that go together, but how can we streamline the art [00:05:45] side of this?

00:06:00 like a, a sign designer, like a freelance one per se. But I digress. Um, very big piece of the puzzle. Uh, how can we make that better?

00:06:15 got some thoughts here. Um, I'm xDesign at this point. I don't, I don't even touch, I don't even open the illustrator on a weekly basis

00:06:24Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: anymore, so I'm so envious sometimes of you, you, you escape that, that [00:06:30] black hole that just sucks you in and doesn't let you out.

00:06:45 your designer what you need, whether that's an in-house designer or you know, a third party freelancer that you use.

00:07:00 that actually. Like, you know, some people just like, I'm gonna design a sign without putting any thought into it. And then four hours later they're still struggl.

00:07:15 be what you envision in your head. Every, you know, design is very, very subjective and, and every designer is going to approach something a little bit differently.

00:07:30 design is trying to solve, I think are really important. Uh, I think that last point is probably the most important, and it's probably the least understood, but, but really, really drilling down.

00:07:45 time to, you know, I probably sound like I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but we're, we're in the marketing industry. We're in the advertising industry, and even though we're designing, you know, what could sometimes be a fairly utilitarian thing, like a, a channel letter sign, it's still that business's primary means of advertising.[00:08:00]

00:08:15 to the designer.

00:08:30 really drop the ball too.

00:08:45 I need a sign on this wall.

00:08:48Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Uh, make it happen.

00:08:50Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I mean, I can, I can definitely put a sign on that wall, but, uh, more information would probably be helpful so that that sign does what it's intended to do and doesn't waste your clients. That's money. Yeah. [00:09:00] I mean that's, that's a big

00:09:00Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: thing for me. I, I think that's, yeah, I think that's great advice.

00:09:15 which is, uh, like design automation. I'm sure he'll tell us more about it. Brian has built a large artwork provider. Um, so they provide artwork services at artwork iq, like, uh, redrawing [00:09:30] setup, artwork, automation, vectorization conversion, kind of all those things.

00:09:45 of what goes into that. You know, there's like the Yeah. I'm really the creative side of design and then you have like the production aspect as well. So I, I think this will be a good conversation.

00:10:00 point as well, but I, I wonder if there's some more tips

00:10:02Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: we can get out of it. Yeah, I'm really excited for this one. I mean, design is a weird animal because it does require you to be efficient and come up with ways to do things faster and quicker and, and, and, and easier.

00:10:15 time, because it is wholly creative as well, you can't really force that or rush that. So you k you're kind of weird and there's this weird, like middle ground between like, I've gotta be as efficient as I can to get this done fairly quickly. But also I, I also need to take my time so that the design looks good.

00:10:30 excited to see how this guy's kind of like married those two together. And especially like you said on the production, uh, end of things. I mean, you're, you really can't automate just, you know, creativity, right? Like that's creativity. That's not something that will, yeah, yeah, you can't do that.

00:10:45 design. Suck up a lot of time. Um, and that's really where the efficiency comes into play. Like, like recreating a logo, like, I mean, on a daily basis I get low quality, you know, screenshots and, and, and JPEGs of somebody's logo. And [00:11:00] I've gotta figure out a inefficient way to recreate those.

00:11:15 creative. So automating that, right, coming up with a process for it, I think is really cool.

00:11:20Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, let's, let's bring him on without further ado. All right guys. So we are back with Brian Seder, our guest for today to talk about streamlining the [00:11:30] art and design department. Brian has like three different companies and I would not introduce you in the proper way, Brian, so why don't you give us like the, the 5 cent introduction.

00:11:44Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: All right, thanks Brian. [00:11:45] So I guess I can start. I, this could be a history lesson actually. Uh, this story sort of starts after World War II in, uh, 1947. My grandfather got back from, I like where this is going. Yeah. My grandfather got back from the war, and my [00:12:00] understanding is that at the time, because of the war and also just because of technology advances, uh, there were a lot of new innovations in plastics.

00:12:15 uh, and my, both of my uncles getting into the printing world as well. Uh, and then that led to me growing up with it, like basically being surrounded by a bunch of, uh, bunch of printers.

00:12:30 my grandfather, who was pretty short, would only hire people who are like 6 4, 6 5, because they need to have arms long enough to like move the squeegee across the huge, um, huge pieces they were printing.

00:12:45 Yeah, so

00:12:47Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I'm sorry. I definitely fall into the, the short category, so I wouldn't have made, it wouldn't have made

00:12:51Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: the cut? No. Not as a, not as a screen printer, but, uh, yeah, so I guess my dad has like, memories of these giants that would just like, kind of throw 'em up [00:13:00] in the air and like play catch with him in the screen printing shop.

00:13:05Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: uh, that

00:13:06Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: sounds awesome. Yeah, so I definitely grew up with that in my family's culture. Uh, so yeah, both uncles worked there and actually my dad [00:13:15] and, uh, my uncle Ray ended up buying it from, from their dad. So they owned it and about 1996, they sold it to a manufacturing company that they're working really closely with.

00:13:30 myself and asked me if you, if we wanted to go in the business together. So this was like when I was in, I think I was in eighth grade, I was like 14, 15. Was I in seventh grade? Yeah, something like that. This was like right at the beginning of when people were using the internet for business and it wasn't just like academics and.[00:13:45]

00:13:58Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Lyco and likely we

00:13:59Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: [00:14:00] were way up there on Lycos.

00:14:15 cool. Uh, pretty cool way to get a company started. So this was infographics.

00:14:30 Menards racing team really early on, which was kind of fun.

00:14:45 on their badges. That's cool. Um, so just reminiscing a little here. Maybe I'm getting into too much detail, but, um No, no, no, that's

00:14:51Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: fine.

00:14:57Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: noticed your podcast tend to be on the long side [00:15:00] actually. I was like, I'm kind of good at rambling, but am I gonna be able to ramble for an hour and 15 minutes or more? It goes quick. I think I'm probably up for it actually. So, uh, kind of digitize the place.

00:15:15 that they're still using today, which is crazy scary, but it got pretty into programming, uh, coding. And then when I went to college, I started what would become artwork at Q, which is one of the companies that I'm like actively participating in right now. And what we do is we work with [00:15:30] lots and lots of different industries, but a big part of that is the sign industry.

00:15:45 and different programs like that, which probably isn't relevant to this, but, um, yeah, we kind of got our start and we still do a lot of, a lot of work for sign makers and graves, that sort of, that sort of industry.

00:15:56Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: problem. Was always our biggest headache at Yeah. [00:16:00] Uh, our shop. Was it like getting proper files or, you know, like if we've gotta create something, so mm-hmm. Totally understand you there. Mike was just saying before you came on that like, his creative time is reduced every single day [00:16:15] because of like crappy files that he's gotta recreate or, or

00:16:18Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: something like that.

00:16:30 and all the tolerances. And we'll make sure that like every image comes through just the way you need it for that particular process.

00:16:45 I had to build, um, an e r p, like an enterprise. What does that even stand for? Enterprise resource.

00:16:51Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Enterprise research Planning.

00:16:53Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: There you go. Yeah. Sorry for pointing at you. Like that isn't kinda weird. Uh, yeah, we That's alright. Yeah. I [00:17:00] built one of those, I guess that's the best way to describe it anyway. Uh, to handle all the orders, take all the payments, keep track of all the orders, built an API so bigger customers of ours can, can integrate with it.

00:17:15 organized. So lots of standard operating procedures and lots of scripts. And what we found in time is that that became pretty difficult to manage because the standard operating procedures were in one place and our e r p and the scripts and the [00:17:30] automations.

00:17:45 for each one. But the fact that this, the scripting, the automation and the the SOPs were separate, I think was kind of a problem.

00:18:00 software, you create your, uh, SOPs in the software, and then instead of having people manually go through and follow those, all of the steps, which you can do, is you can automate certain steps.

00:18:15 artificial intelligence software like Open ai, Dali Chat, G P T. Um, and, and other systems there. So, uh, it's kind of this what what about Corll Mike is, uh, thinking about it, thinking about it. Uh, a lot [00:18:30] of our customers do use Corll draw, especially the, uh, it's quite common at the screen printing customers and pretty common at sign makers too.

00:18:39Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: a whole different tool set on the back end though, right. For it is like

00:18:43Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: making it work. [00:18:45] It is very d. There are ways of scripting things in there, but I haven't actually done it yet, honestly. But it is definitely pretty high on our list of, of apps to integrate because it is, it is used in the, in the graphics industry and that's sort of where we're starting out with our, uh, offering our automations cuz it's [00:19:00] what we're most familiar and can kind of offer the most value, I think.

00:19:03Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. It was like, it was interesting how we ran across each other. Like, I think it was James Sours that introduced us. It was, I, I had done some work with James. He was like, Hey, [00:19:15] you gotta check out this guy. I know you're in the sign and print space. Like, he's doing some really cool automation stuff.

00:19:30 talked about this before and it's like some of the things that we're doing at Better Sign Shop is like, let's bring all these pieces together, like you've got, instead of having the SOPs over here and then like the, the business in like the scripts, like you mentioned, or like, I, I don't want [00:19:45] to have a, a dock up with the s o p and then try to follow it over here.

00:19:56Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: And a nice side effect is if you're using like, template-based workflows, it'll pull up your [00:20:00] templates automatically and it'll even switch apps for you. So if you have a step that's happening in a different app, it'll pull the app up for you when you need it.

00:20:15 Yeah.

00:20:16Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Mike, what's your initial impression? What's your initial take here?

00:20:21Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I mean, I'm just a lowly designer, so a lot of what you guys are talking about is a bit above my pay grade.

00:20:27Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: about design. I I'm not a [00:20:30] designer, so I really appreciate what you do. It's like magic.

00:20:34Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: It, it actually, it mostly is magic in witchcraft. There's, there's, that's about the truest statement you'll ever hear about design is, it is mostly magic. No, it, it is really, it's really fascinating, uh, how you're, [00:20:45] you are trying to tile that together.

00:21:00 reality is Corra is just, Hey, Mike's significantly better. I keep trailing

00:21:04Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: off the mic. Oh, sorry.

00:21:12Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: really am. I know. It's like I'm, [00:21:15] I'm trying not to, but it's just, it's awkward and, and it's not a natural. Do you want me to go back and say that again? No, no, that's

00:21:22Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: okay. Okay. I think, I think I followed, yeah.

00:21:28Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: gains up all the way too. [00:21:30] Yeah. Yeah. I, I was a, an adobe, you know, power user for years and years, but, but the reality is, especially when you enter into the, the, like the larger electrical sign arena, which is where most of my work is Corral draw, just objectively beats the pants off of [00:21:45] Illustrator.

00:22:00 commonly used program on, on the science side of the industry.

00:22:03Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: it used a lot, but I, I guess I know a little bit less about, about why, why for electrical science. Is that something that's, um, appealing?

00:22:11Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: It's almost more, it's like rolling a cad [00:22:15] design software like AutoCAD or something into Illustrator. It does a lot better with, you know, multi-page documents than Illustrator and templating pages.

00:22:30 you can do natively and corral. You've gotta use Illustrator, you have to use Photoshop, InDesign, and also a third party plugin called CAD Tools, which is horrifically inefficient if you have to start using all those side by side.

00:22:45 puzzle there is CAD tools, which is the plugin which gives you scaling and dimensioning and illustrator. And it's, I'm hesitant to like shit all over a piece of software, but it deserves it. It's, it's truly awful. It works half the time. It doesn't [00:23:00] work half the time.

00:23:15 the, a kind of technical drawing is mm-hmm.

00:23:30 every second, you can save counts and Absolutely.

00:23:45 and they will argue with you to your blue in the face that you're

00:23:47Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: wrong.

00:24:00 that. But I, I just know too many very, uh, fervent cor draw supporters to write it off completely.

00:24:14Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: the [00:24:15] clunkiness will never go away either. Like it's annoying to me. Make

00:24:18Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: it clun, don't they? I I seem to remember older versions being less clunky. Yeah. Every

00:24:22Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: version's clun than the last.

00:24:30 it. And I mean, if, honestly, if Illustrator had native scaling and native dimensioning tools built into it, and, and managed multiple page documents better, I would abandon Carr draw on a heartbeat.

00:24:45 focuses the creative side, the drawing side of things. Right. And it's where

00:24:49Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Carll draw focus, simple dimensioning plugin actually, cuz it's Yeah. Lacks what I needed.

00:24:56Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: If you came out with like a full suite of tools for Illustrator that had scaling and [00:25:00] dimensioning and, and like real CAD level mm-hmm.

00:25:15 You would switch. I would, yeah. I, I actually would, I totally would.

00:25:19Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: That's a challenge. Too many, yeah. Too many

00:25:21Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: business ideas in the head right now. I, yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll insert that one in there for you, but, uh, I don't know if it's gonna make it to the top. [00:25:30] It's just what you wanna mess with. Right. Also, I, I do have experience with cad, but it's like, I might not be the man for the job.

00:25:45 creating stuff in cad. I mean, back in high school I took a CAD class, but that doesn't exactly make me an expert.

00:25:51Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: That's actually, that's how I got into the industry. But I, I think like the first que Yeah.

00:26:00 teacher in the CAD class had a large format printer and I had just done like the graphic design class the last semester. We made it through the CAD book and he was like, oh, like, hey, let's go cut some vinyl and print some stuff on [00:26:15] this large format printer. Uh, so I actually did more graphic design in the CAD class than I did in the graphic design class, but I haven't been able to shake it since.

00:26:30 Brian, is. How did you transition from like, hey, we're, we're doing a print shop or a print business, so, you know, signs and graphics and stuff like that into like, the artwork IQ side? Well,

00:26:42Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: I went to college, uh, pretty far [00:26:45] away, so I couldn't bring the printers with me.

00:27:00 uh, it wasn't really much of a transition. I just sort of learned it as I went and really, really pretty natural, uh, switch when I went to college and started Artwork iq.

00:27:12Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Ok. Yeah, definitely. So you're just like started [00:27:15] slinging artwork in like the dorm room or something?

00:27:18Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Uh, yeah, it was a couple years after I started, but, um, okay. Yeah. I think I just set up a website, uh, some Google AdWord and printers started showing up.

00:27:30 It's really unfortunate our work they've received from customers. What

00:27:33Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I, I don't know, I hate to date you and us as well, but like, what's the, like the timeframe on this? Like, like year wise?

00:27:41Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: I started this in [00:27:45] 2003 or four, I think four. 2000,

00:27:46Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: 2000. Three or four. Okay. I was just trying to think of like what, like the internet situation looked like.

00:27:56Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: stuff. I remember like going between classes and, and looking at my flip [00:28:00] phone and trying to use the internet on this flip phone, which was like a pretty advanced feature at the time. Yeah. Um, and also back then, no one, no one not, not no one, but most people had no idea what, like, even Photoshop was, uh, people, they [00:28:15] didn't know how to use illustrators.

00:28:30 work out there and I think these days most professional designers hopefully are making vector files, but you still find, he's find ones who don't.

00:28:38Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Mike can speak of that, I'm sure. Yeah. He's got that nervous grin on his face.

00:28:43Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Oh, uh oh. Did I just call you out? [00:28:45] Oh no, I

00:28:46Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: don't. I'm calling out as clients. I'm all for punching designers in the throat that do that. But no, I get, I get logos designed and Photoshop fairly regularly from like big agencies. I don't boggles [00:29:00] my mind, but you know, you gotta

00:29:03Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: roll with it.

00:29:06Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: how long, oh,

00:29:07Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: go ahead. I just, I find I'm seeing that less and less these days, but that might also be the fact that, you know, we have a lot more competitors. I think when we started we have like three [00:29:15] competitors anybody heard of, and now there's, I mean, there must be hundreds. Like maybe a

00:29:19Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: thousand.

00:29:30 like, folks international, like, Hey, we could digitize your stuff. And I'm like, I don't even, I don't even do embroidery anymore. Like I don't do it, you know, but hey, like how soon or how long did it take before you were overwhelmed and you're like, okay, like I've [00:29:45] gotta, like, how, how does the scale?

00:29:47Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So I got pretty fast at this work, so I'm trying to remember, I think I hired my first, hired my first employee maybe two years later. Uh, that didn't work out super well. Tried again. That

00:29:59Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: didn't work out. [00:30:00] Super. It turns out I was pretty bad at

00:30:01Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: hiring, but the one after that, this is a

00:30:05Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: sign guy, Mike, like he, he,

00:30:07Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: is this a common story and

00:30:09Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah.

00:30:13Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Just, yeah. I just need to [00:30:15] start making more signs. But I, the next, the next employee I hired, he's still with me. So he is, been with the company for 14, 15 years or something. Um, how many

00:30:27Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: employees total do you have now?

00:30:28Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So I [00:30:30] have four.

00:30:41Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: like how many pieces of, how many pieces of [00:30:45] like art do you guys like process on a, like a single day?

00:30:53Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So at our peak we were doing. Something like 80 a day, I would say. Wow. Uh, these [00:31:00] days it's, it's much more complex stuff. Like one of our big projects we're working on now is digitizing all of the, the blueprints into data that can be used in, uh, Microsoft business analytics software.

00:31:15 like, how many do we have in the queue? I dunno. Maybe 250 more facilities to do or something. So on a daily basis, we might only do like 30, maybe on a good day, 40 projects now. But they tend to be much more complicated. Like some [00:31:30] of them are used for manufacturing.

00:31:45 colleges, gyms, probably we had a hand in. Helping them decorate the, uh, the weights and cut the logos and need equipment and stuff like that.

00:32:00 there's like metal fabrication involved, which is sometimes the signage thing as well. Yeah, definitely.

00:32:05Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Mike, you got any questions at this point?

00:32:06Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I'm trying to think of questions. Yeah, I'm trying to think of how this ties into automation and how, but like I said, it's not really my area of expertise, so I'm not sure what questions.

00:32:13Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Well, [00:32:15] so, hey, like, here's what I think is interesting of like the, and I, and I want to hear like Brian, like, okay, like what are your tips for like automating this? But like the thing that we were talking about before you jumped on is this [00:32:30] intersection of like, like producing signs and graphics at the end of the day.

00:32:45 number, uh, a fixed limit of time that we can spend on any one project. Mm-hmm. So like, how, how does creativity and efficiency, like, how do those come together?

00:33:00 recovering designer is what I like to call myself. Yeah. Like, I was never, I could never be like super creative and super efficient. It was like, it was usually like one or the other like, Hey, you need a logo today? I can, I could slap you together something that's gonna look [00:33:15] okay.

00:33:20Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. That's a, that's a good question because, you know, there's that, that old kind of saying in the sign industry, you, you have, you have a, you can have a good fast or cheap, but you can only pick two. Mm-hmm. You know, [00:33:30] so I want to. I want it fast and cheap, but it won't be good.

00:33:45 with good, fast and cheap, cheap is the terrible word. I guess. Cost efficient, I guess I should say.

00:33:50Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Well, I, we have the same saying in the, uh, the coding industry.

00:34:00 with design, like where it's mostly you being creative and thinking and playing around the, the efficiency really comes from, mostly comes from like the export process. So if you need the logo and a whole bunch of different formats with or [00:34:15] without backgrounds, uh, after you make a tweak, if you want everything to be edited, like all the different versions you've created, like maybe the black and white version or the bug or whatever to be edited, to go along with the main logo, you can automate that sort of stuff.

00:34:30 process can be handy, but I'm not a creative myself, so I'm mostly working with other creatives doing this work. And um, and

00:34:38Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I think that's why this is very interesting to me is like, like you have built a set of tools and a company [00:34:45] around enabling other like designers to be more efficient.

00:35:00 like two different takes on the, on the similar topic. I think that's, that's, that would be interesting for me to, to hear you both kind of expand on.

00:35:09Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So when you're designing for signage or designing for print, a lot of times the design [00:35:15] part itself is, it's, it, it does tend to be a little, a little harder to automate because, um, you're not following the same steps every time for occurring process.

00:35:30 automatically pull from a template, you pull in your customer's information. Uh, for example, we, uh, work with a clothing company that's using, uh, task OS right now to pull templates and then create variations for like, I think more than 200 NCAA [00:35:45] teams, uh, based on data they have stored in a, like a database spreadsheet app called Airtable.

00:36:00 automations happen. And then at the end of the process of creating all the different, uh, variations, the, the automations then help with things like putting the images on t-shirts and uh, getting it ready for showing to a licensing department.

00:36:15 Also actually submitting it to the licensing department and keeping track of whether they say yes or no and, uh, uploading images, uh, for a website for like to Shopify or some other other system like that. Uh, so that's kind of where the, that's [00:36:30] kind of where the automation tends to come in, although that's changing a little bit now that we're able to integrate with, uh, software like Dolly.

00:36:42Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I've been also looking at, uh, mid Journey [00:36:45] is the other one that I've looked at. I spit out a couple renders for Mike from it. Mid, mid

00:36:49Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: journey is amazing. It creates really, really beautiful artwork. Yeah. Um, like the kinda artwork you would've five years ago paid a designer.

00:37:00 to do, and it happens in like two minutes. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

00:37:04Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Uh, let's, let's save that one for, I think that could be like a, a, a good, uh, closer there, but like, Mike, like, is, does this track for you? Like, where are [00:37:15] you, where do you spend your time? Like, do you sit down, you're designing a sign, like where is most of your time spent?

00:37:22Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: no, it definitely does like a, a, a really good example that I could, I could see. This applying to is when I do like [00:37:30] large interior sign packages, like ADA signs with braille and everything on 'em. You know, if you have a large office building, say with 200 rooms, the Americans with Disabilities Act says that every single door in that building must have a a sign on it, right?

00:37:45 designing one of these large interior sign packages, you've got say, six or eight different sign types, restroom signs, and general room signs, conference rooms, office right there. So the creative process in that is designing how each one of those signs looks and feels. And that, I don't know that there's any way [00:38:00] to automate that process, right?

00:38:04Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: you know, with this artificial intelligence, we're not, it's not there yet, but I probably look out down the road pretty soon actually. Uh, but you still have to know how to use the software, [00:38:15] which is not particularly straightforward.

00:38:17Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

00:38:30 because there's a lot of guardrails in place, uh, with the ADA code that says this, you know, it's gotta have, you know, this type of background, it's gotta be this finish, there's gotta be this percentage of contrast.

00:38:45 mean, AI can. You know, achieve something that complies with the rules, but whether or not it's gonna look good, i, I question if it'll at least get there

00:38:56Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: soon. You won't do it with like, off the shelf, like [00:39:00] going in the mid journey and say, Hey, make me an ADA compliant.

00:39:15 gave me a number of months, I could probably make that more or less happen. The

00:39:22Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: he's, he's too much like me, Mike. Like, gimme two weeks, I'll, I'll build it.

00:39:28Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: but, yeah. Yeah. [00:39:30] But like, so, so designing the individual signs, like what they look like is the creative process, but then once that's approved by the client, then you've gotta go in and you've gotta lay out each individual sign. So in a, in a. In a building, a large office building, you could have say, 5, 6, 700 [00:39:45] total signs, even though there's only, you know, six or eight designs.

00:40:00 type and the sign message and, and automate that process of laying out each individual message or each layout for each sign.

00:40:15 uh, if, if I'm just designing the look and feel of the sign family, that can be anywhere from five to, you know, 30, 40 hours to do that. But then to expand that, depending on the size of the, the, the full, the full scope of the project to, to actually do all the individual message layouts, then [00:40:30] could add another 20, 30, 40 hours to the project to do that.

00:40:45 but it's. It's carll draw and it's not, it's not that good. And is it,

00:40:49Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: is it like, is it something you get straight template, Mike, or is it like, okay, like here's the, the restroom sign.

00:41:00 on it and like I gotta manually tweak that?

00:41:03Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah, having to manually tweak them is kind of rare. I mean, usually in every sign package there's a few that you've gotta, you know, kind of manually mess with a little bit, but, but 98% of them are pretty straightforward and, and, and could be [00:41:15] templated.

00:41:30 something like that would, would save an insane amount of time for, for me.

00:41:39Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: could potentially be, that's a very, a very good example because, You know, no artist is gonna [00:41:45] be mad that you're taking that work away from them. You know, when you automate it, you just, you just sit there and watch it happen on your screen, depending on how you wanted to set it up, using one of our systems or even some other systems that are available.

00:42:00 plop them all out into a folder. Mm-hmm. And then you can go through and edit them if you feel like it. Our system will allow you to like edit them as they're being generated if you would like to. Uh, so if there's any tweaks you need to make in this case, it may just be almost completely automatable and you could kind.

00:42:15 Just dump the output into a folder and do quality assurance on 'em real quick. Now the trick

00:42:19Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: is it has to be compiled into like a full drawing set for approval. Cause once, once they approve the, the design of the signs, then they've gotta go through and they wanna see. And then sometimes it can be a hundred plus page document of every one of these things laid [00:42:30] out.

00:42:45 Obviously on top of that becomes, uh, you know, another headache and hurdle. But just creating that, it's basically a proof Creating that proof document that has every, every sign message laid out to scale, uh, is, yeah, it's, it sucks. That's,

00:42:59Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: that's pretty [00:43:00] straightforward. If you wouldn't mind, uh, the artwork, uh, going into Adobe Illustrator real quick and then popping back into draw.

00:43:15 that's pretty typical of most of the work we're doing with this plugin. Interesting.

00:43:19Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah, that kinda automation, I mean, that's, that's kinda automation that I, I think would free up designers to be much more creative.

00:43:30 always racing the clock and we're trying to split the difference between being creative and being efficient and, and, and really like the only, when we're talking about, you know, true creativity in design and, and not like, you know, busy work and, and, and production design, but like, you know, [00:43:45] actually trying to be creative and designing something, the sacrifice there is you, you've gotta, you've gotta think down the line and, and say, okay, when I get done with this, and I've gotta do this, this, and this, so I've gotta really hurry on the creative and maybe cut corners.

00:44:00 that remove. You know, that those other tasks from a designer's plate, so the designer is freed up to just focus solely on the creativity. I, I, I think would, would be huge. Not just from a time thing, but also from a time standpoint, but also from [00:44:15] quality of design standpoint.

00:44:18Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: better the design's gonna be. If you finish creating all the variations and then they decide, oh wait, oops, sorry, we forgot. We need a reg, a registered marker trademark in this corner, or we need something else tweaked. You [00:44:30] probably had that happen, right? Oh, I,

00:44:34Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: uh, that's a sore subject.

00:44:45 and ready to go to production. Like, oh yeah, we, we need to make this one minor. And, and like in the customer's mind, it's like a really simple tweak, right?

00:45:00

00:45:00Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: I, that's it. It's tons of time. What? It's bad when you have to just click a button to say rebuild. Right. And then it rebuilds it. Maybe, maybe it takes 15 minutes or something, but Yeah.

00:45:10Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm looking at a week's worth of work to do it manually. Yeah. [00:45:15] And that's, you know, and it's, it's billable time for me. So on one hand it's like, well, cool, I get to charge you more and, and I'll take your money all day long. But on the other hand, it's like, that really, really tanks your schedule as well, and it really spreads you [00:45:30] thin as a designer for something that it just doesn't move the needle.

00:45:45 door than it is just keep grabbing hours outta the air cuz they're

00:45:47Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: there. Yeah. Um, I, I think where I, I, one of the things that I'm really curious about is like, when do you reach for the automation versus just like, knuckling under and like getting it done?

00:46:00 know, like I, I dabble in development. I'll, let's say that Mike, I, that's probably pretty fair. Mike would say I'm like an actual developer. I'm kind of like on the fence. Like if somebody was like, Hey, I want to pay you to develop this, I would be like, eh, [00:46:15] I don't, I don't, I'm not comfortable with that.

00:46:30 Really, it wouldn't take too long to automate and then I wouldn't have to do it again. But there's also this balance of like, I'm just overthinking it, like it's gonna take me like 20 minutes to do this and then I probably won't have to do it again for like six months.

00:46:42Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Yeah. Yeah. So if you find [00:46:45] yourself doing the same thing again and again, that's when you wanna take a look at automating it. In the meantime, it might be worth writing some notes, like a, like a skeleton of a standard operating procedure if you think it might come up again. Um, but if it's just a one-time thing, uh, we will automate [00:47:00] projects like that, like that I was telling you about that, that blueprint product for the data analytics software, uh, just because there's hundreds of them and, uh, the automations are pretty easy to do and doing them without the automations is you're almost always gonna [00:47:15] screw it up a little bit.

00:47:30

00:47:31Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. Like it's really what's been your experience in the past, like as you're growing like the artwork IQ side of like, you know, when do we develop the s o p and then like, can you like, speak to like a [00:47:45] specific example beyond like this blueprint project of like, okay, hey we, we noticed we were getting X, Y, and Z every single week.

00:48:00 automation for this. Yeah.

00:48:01Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Let me see if I can think of a good example. So there's one I've been doing for a while. Uh, it was, I've had this customer, I don't know, like 15 years or something. So I've been doing this process for, you know, like quite, quite a long time [00:48:15] and I've gotten really, really, really good at it, really fast.

00:48:30 only to realize that there's like, I don't know, 47 steps or something like that. It's just I've been doing it so long, I don't have to think about it

00:48:37Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: anymore.

00:48:40Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: something that my employees can do, and it's different enough for most of the work. Uh, what it is, is, [00:48:45] uh, we work with a ceramics manufacturer and, uh, they have custom monograms. So if somebody, if people get married, they might have their initials monogrammed on it, so it's like, like fine China, that sort of thing.

00:49:00 um, and then apply a cover coat, uh, because the, they have to be then, uh, applied to the, uh, to the China and then fired in an oven. So it's a sort of a repetitive process, and there's a lot of quality control involved. We also have to create the monograms in like one of, [00:49:15] uh, 24 styles or something.

00:49:30 manual. And then what we do usually is we have employees go through the manual process first a little bit so they understand it.

00:49:45 potential for like making errors, making mistakes. And then we automate those steps first. And what ends up happening is you take a procedure that started as like a 40 something step procedure and you like condense it down so that a lot of those steps, like become [00:50:00] one chunk of code that runs automatically that they deploy doesn't have to see.

00:50:15 project. It's like it takes too long to kind of master it manually. That that's kind of a, maybe that's not the.

00:50:30 and they're a printing company who's ordered something of few times, uh, we'll do more than just like write down the file format they need and what they're doing with it and we'll, we'll go into it and, uh, like export, set up exports and, and use templates, [00:50:45] uh, to get things a little bit automated there.

00:51:00 we, you know, if we find ourselves. I guess it, honest, honestly, it's when it starts to become annoying.

00:51:07Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: That's, that's kind of a rambling answer to your question. No, no, no. That's, no, that's great. Great to like watch you go through it because Yeah, and it kinda, to me that's sound [00:51:15] to it. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, that's, I, I feel like that will track with a lot of listeners of like mm-hmm.

00:51:30 where like, Hey, I could do this faster than anyone, but I, I'm trying to go on vacation, or I don't want to do this anymore. And yeah. Hey, like, like Mike, maybe you could speak to this, like your, your design business is exploding.

00:51:45 other designers, like how do you, how do you codify what you do for somebody else so that the results, like the end result is similar? Like what are, what are you doing personally on that front?

00:51:59Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: [00:52:00] Oh, nothing. No. Any, any of my knowledge, any of my designers, like, they've gotta know what they're doing when it comes to sign design. I, I can't, I can't hold anybody's hand and tell somebody how to design a pile on Z or channel letter sign. Like, you just, you gotta [00:52:15] know, you know, and I'm using, you know, many requests, which is an online, you know, kind of project management app that, that.

00:52:30 turn any of that into an s o p. Um, yet, it's something that I haven't put any brain power to and probably should. So thank you for that.

00:52:40Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yep. Thanks for calling you out.

00:52:45 all the time, right? Like, or, well, I, I won't say I see it all the time, but how many des, how many shop owners have we talked to Mike, where it's like, Hey, I want to like, measure and get more out of the design department. Like how, you know, like production. Okay.

00:53:00 could go in and measure like, okay, throughput, like, Hey, you made a hundred thousand dollars worth of signs this month, or you made 50 signs this month. But like on design, it, is it being a creative process, but also with a production focus, you [00:53:15] know, like you still gotta get it out the door.

00:53:30 produce repeatable results, right?

00:53:32Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. And I don't, I don't know how that's a, other than, other than just like purely talented designers doing what they do best.

00:53:45 probably had the most efficient art department that I've, you know, kind of seen. And they used a Smartsheet tracking tool that they built to, um, you know, to put a few KPIs and metrics on, on what's going on. The design director would review every [00:54:00] incoming project and she would determine a, you know, an estimated amount of time it would take, that'd be put on the, the, the Smartsheet, and then the designer would have the track actual time.

00:54:15 types of signs, they're taking this amount of time, so we need to allot this on average. And, but, Design is so subjective at the end of the day, especially when you're talking about the creative and the design, there's a limit to what you can, I don't know, standardize and, and [00:54:30] turn into a process with it.

00:54:45 sense? Um, yeah. That, I mean, that tracks

00:54:47Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: with me.

00:55:00 Brian, like what, what metrics do you guys track? Like, like every piece of artwork that you guys work on, on the artwork IQ side, like, do you.

00:55:11Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: really, I should be better at tracking these metrics. Okay. Uh, so if [00:55:15] tasks, that's a feature we're adding, um, okay, cool. We do have like some rudimentary time tracking for projects that are billable by the hour. Um, oh, okay. And then we have ways of looking at the data in the database and seeing how long, like when someone started a project, when they fulfilled it and when it [00:55:30] went to qc.

00:55:41Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: well, I I it is more just like a gaze. If like you're processing [00:55:45] 80 pieces of artwork on a, a given day and you don't have this data, then I'm just trying to, like Mike, make Mike feel better about, so Oh, situation

00:55:54Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: should

00:55:54Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: be clear.

00:55:55Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: have, mostly have the data. It's just we don't look at it. Right, right, [00:56:00]

00:56:00Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: right. That's probably the problem with data collection in general. I mean, I mean, I wonder how many companies out there track those kind of data points and KPIs, but don't actually do anything, whether it's design or production or anything else, like mm-hmm.

00:56:15 in, collecting the data is one thing, but actually analyzing it, putting, putting the results of that into action is probably where most people fall

00:56:23Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: short. That, that is one of our goals for Task Os is to make the data available. Because you can see exactly, you will be able to see, we don't have [00:56:30] this implemented yet exactly how long it takes people to do each step.

00:56:45 time. So those are the steps maybe to like focus on automating, or you could use that data for other business purposes, like estimating, that sort of thing.

00:56:56Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: or driving home the value of your tool, I, I use Loom quite a [00:57:00] bit for like sending videos. Mm-hmm. They send me a report every week or every month that says, Hey, you saved two meetings this week, or like two hours a time or four hours a time, or whatever it is.

00:57:11Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So yeah, I, we, we did look at [00:57:15] some of the data recently, uh, with one of our customers who's using PAs os and they're, they're a big, pretty big clothing company, but uh, in the five and a half months they've been running it, they have saved, uh, 240 something person days.

00:57:30 labor. Days, days, days. Well, like 24 hour chunks too. Not just work days. Maybe I need to have a better way of talking about that statistic, but like, it's kind of mind blowing, isn't it? Like that's, yeah. I, I would've led with that on your website. Uh oh. Don't, we're working on a new one. [00:57:45] Yeah. Yeah. If anybody's impressed by this, what I'm talking about now, look at the website.

00:58:00

00:58:00Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: It is an impressive metric though. I mean that's, that speaks volumes about. The value of, of automating things like that. I mean, that's, and I'm, I'm sure that's a fairly decent size company to, to save, you know, yearly year [00:58:15] in, in, in man hours.

00:58:25Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: This feels like a, a pretty good spot to like transition a little bit. Do we wanna hit [00:58:30] on like ai Mike? Uh, if I'm happy to talk about it, I, I, it's also new

00:58:38Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: that unless you're making it yourself, you can't really be an expert.

00:58:45 can talk about it a little bit in a sort of a, yeah, yeah. Semi-educated manner.

00:58:51Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Listen, like how do you see AI affecting design, Brian, over like, the, let's, let's, let's like constrain it to [00:59:00] like the next two, three years. Like I, I think we can all see where it goes long term, but yeah, like side guys are like, we're short term focused, like how is this gonna affect me over the next couple years?

00:59:14Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: [00:59:15] think it's pretty powerful for quickly generating ideas. So, you know, you could just think about it like, oh, okay, well, like what are some ideas I have? Think about it for a little while. Or you can go to Mid Journey or Dolly and throw in some prompts about what you want [00:59:30] and have it generate, you know, 30 different designs for you.

00:59:45 logo, bird, a bunch of keywords, whatever you're looking for. And it'll just spit a bunch of sometimes pretty, pretty interesting, um, logo ideas out at you, which you can then turn into a proper logo.

01:00:00 our focus, our job, but when we do run into something like that, that we need to do, it's, it's a pretty fun tool. And then you can actually use some of these language models, which are, uh, which is AI that will, uh, you, you ask it a question and it'll [01:00:15] answer the question, try to come up with a good human sounding answer to it.

01:00:30 in mid Journey. Here are some examples, prompts in Mid Journey. Please, like, copy these prompts. Some prompt is like how you, uh, tell Mid Journey what to make.

01:00:45 then it'll go ahead and like, give you a whole bunch of prompts that you can then feed into Mid Journey or Dolly. Where you can get a bunch of, uh, a bunch of examples where you don't even have to think too hard about what you're even asking it to do.

01:01:00 Did you follow that at all? I, this people are hard to picture. Okay. But as far as like, what it, so I'm not like, I'm not super, super, super plugged into design like you are [01:01:15] Michael. So it's a little hard for me to predict exactly how things

01:01:19Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: might go down. But

01:01:20Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: I could tell you these tools are becoming scally useful.

01:01:30 is to people who make fine art. Mm-hmm. And I think they should be very, very scared, like now.

01:01:34Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. I, I definitely agree with that for sure. Yeah. I, I think that it's, it's a long way off.

01:01:45 design or just. You know, any sort of technical design, engineering, architecture, you know, product design. I don't, I think it's, like you said, the ideation side of it. Making something looks, it looks pretty or coming up with really neat [01:02:00] ideas.

01:02:15 future it's ever going to be able to replace that, that, that technical vector cad engineering side of design, because there's, there's so much nuance to it that.

01:02:30 term. It's, it's, it's very subjective in a way. And, and oftentimes there's only one right way to do something, but it's not necessarily the way that a book would tell you it has to be done. I mean, it's, it, you know, there's a lot of situational context that [01:02:45] has to come

01:02:45Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: into play.

01:02:48Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: exactly, there's a lot of experience that comes into play that I, I don't know that a machine could ever fully grasp. Does that make sense?

01:02:56Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: I think Yeah. Totally makes sense. To play devil's advocate a little bit, this [01:03:00] is where machine learning might come in.

01:03:13Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: just a minute and like, yeah. Sorry. Am [01:03:15] I getting too? No. Like what's, what's like the. The fifth grader, machine learning versus ai.

01:03:24Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Oh, okay.

01:03:30 more narrow. Jeff Fox,

01:03:30Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: where they show or something, it's, and then like, teach me like I'm a fifth grader or something.

01:03:35Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: So I have a pretty good definition from machine learning. AI is a little more nebulous, at least in my head, but, um, machine learning is when you feed examples, when you feed a bunch of, there's [01:03:45] a few ways to do it and it, I don't wanna sound like a professor here.

01:04:00 like, Hey, this is how something should be done. It might be something that's very hard for a computer programmer to like write an algorithm to do because there's just, there's just too many variables involved and it's just something that a human like programmer wouldn't really be able to figure out, at least [01:04:15] not efficiently.

01:04:30 produce that output sometimes fairly reliably. Um, and I'm not a machine learning expert. Uh, we've been exploring it a little bit with our product.

01:04:45 manner. Yeah. Uh, but, but it, it, you can teach machines to do very human, like make very human-like choices. However, that's like one choice. It, uh, for like, there, there's so many choices to be made for something like a d [01:05:00] h or uh, ADA compliance signage.

01:05:15 for that purpose, and they train a bunch of machine learning algorithms. How to do all the pieces and then put it together, which I'm not sure that's gonna happen in the next couple years because the, the niche is a little bit specific.

01:05:29Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: It's [01:05:30] not, not that expensive of a problem. Well, it, it's probably expensive to solve, but it's not, not that valuable of a problem to solve at this

01:05:37Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: point. The, you can get many of the gains of the automation by just, you know, automating the, uh, well, we've already talked about using [01:05:45] Task Os or other, other, any other template based, um, automation system there for exporting the, yeah.

01:06:00 is pretty hard to come by. So, um, right. It's hard to train something if you don't have the data to train it, and that's, that's really the problem most of these machine learning scientists run into when they're trying to train these.

01:06:10Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: was thinking that in my head as you're talking through that. I was thinking here, do I understand [01:06:15] machine learning? And, and there's probably a lot of applications for it where the data exists, but I'm thinking in the, in my little world of sign design, everything lives in everybody's head. There's, there's very little like, yeah.

01:06:28Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: could feed to a, you need [01:06:30] to talk to Tom and get like all the, like, digitize all the back issues of sign craft. Like, that

01:06:37Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: would be pretty interesting.

01:06:38Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: It'd be interesting to see if that could, you could talk about reviving what, what was once old and making it new

01:06:43Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: again.

01:06:45 Robot sign pairs.

01:06:46Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah,

01:06:49Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: that wouldn't be the kind of data you'd need for machine learning algorithms. So you're probably safe for a bit. Yeah. Yeah. You might be able to get, uh, like a language model to like talk like a sign maker though, [01:07:00] pretty easily using that data. Yeah. Yeah.

01:07:03Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: All right. I just wanna try this.

01:07:11Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: about, um, automation and sign design. [01:07:15] Let's write

01:07:16Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: a poem about automation and sign design.

01:07:30 a place for art and style where signs can catch our dreams. That's,

01:07:45 to create a what, what kind of signs do you have on the plate, Mike?

01:07:51Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Uh, let's, let's see what it does with a, an ADA sign. I want to create a i, an ADA compliant. Restroom [01:08:00] sign. Restroom

01:08:02Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: sign. What's a prompt I can use to generate, uh,[01:08:15]

01:08:28Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: That's, is, this is the worst [01:08:30] user interface of any product I've ever seen in my entire life. Indeed. Yeah. Like everything scrolls by at a hundred miles a minute, like just creates,

01:08:40Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: oh, no, I thought I had a

01:08:42Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: subscription.

01:08:45 Shoot? Uh,

01:08:46Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: probably. All right.

01:09:00 of credits, I

01:09:00Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: guess.

01:09:01Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Um,

01:09:02Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: if you want, I can, uh, do a little screen

01:09:04Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: recording of, uh, in my, um, in my mid journey. Uh, yeah, yeah. You guys afterwards, if you can, maybe the podcast.

01:09:13Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, we could just drop it in. [01:09:15]

01:09:15Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I played around with, I haven't played around with Mid Journey.

01:09:30 some of the ideas are really cool. All the, you know, the graphics and text are total gibberish, you know, they're like mm-hmm.

01:09:40Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: yeah. Yeah. The, the lettering is kind of weird, isn't

01:09:42Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: it? If I wasn't busy with other stuff, I would [01:09:45] set up an agency. Maybe there's somebody listening will do this because, uh, set up an agency that just fixes the fingers on otherwise fantastic mid journey artwork.

01:10:00 belong. Uh, and, and you have an, you have a pretty, you have an agency that's gonna get a lot of work. I think that's hilarious. Boom.

01:10:06Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Done. I love it. Cool. Well, um, let's wrap this one up. Brian, I appreciate you coming on, man.

01:10:15 what, tell everybody how they can find you, where you want them to go. Like which business do you want them to visit?

01:10:21Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Oh my gosh. Okay. Uh, so if, if anybody wants to buy, uh, a printing company in the Chicago area, please [01:10:30] let me know. Uh, but uh, no, seriously, um, you can reach me at brian@artworkiq.com and my, uh, other business is, uh, Businesses.

01:10:45 artwork iq.com, task os.com. And then if you wanna reach me on Twitter, my it's uh, at Brian sat. And, uh, you'll have to look up how to spell that. It's not very obvious.

01:10:55Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Oh, I've, I've been pronouncing it wrong the whole time. Everybody's

01:10:59Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: sat. [01:11:00]

01:11:00Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yes. Why didn't, oh dude. Now I

01:11:01Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: feel like an asshole.

01:11:15 Unfortunately,

01:11:15Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: no. But I want to be terrible podcast host

01:11:17Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: here. Life goal.

01:11:18Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, what an ass. Well, I'm sorry, I, I've got it wrong. Brian Satre. Satre. Is that better?

01:11:27Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: say it wrong? When we uh, when you invited me on? I don't, yes. [01:11:30] Or when you introed me. Yes. I didn't even know this. I

01:11:32Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: it just, yeah, I probably did. You you got like the Brian Ryan thing going on too though. So like anybody's around me if they say Ryan or Brian, I'm just like, yeah, yeah.

01:11:43Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: in the class with the [01:11:45] Brian and the Ryan in grade school. Like there's always like to just pack

01:11:48Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: them together. Like,

01:11:49Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: this will be fun. This'll, this'll add some humor to this class. Everybody answering at once or nobody answering. Yeah. It's wonderful. Uh,

01:11:57Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: exactly, exactly. Well, we'll [01:12:00] make sure we drop all the links here.

01:12:07Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: It is, it's, well, it's not really beta, um, but we're just bringing on customers very slowly and deliberately. But if you're [01:12:15] interested, please go to our website and sign up for the list and we will let you know when it's more generally available.

01:12:29Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, [01:12:30] I think, I think it's very interesting what you're doing with it. I look forward to like following along with the progress.

01:12:45 It's sounds like you, well

01:12:46Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: it sounds like

01:12:47Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: we have one especially good use case. Like that would be a fantastic use case for it. And, um, I think you'd, uh, you'd find the development costs would, would, would not be, uh, would be money well spent, I think.

01:12:58Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Cool. Fascinating.

01:12:59Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: [01:13:00] Excellent. Yeah. Mike, any pardoning shots?

01:13:04Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: AI freaks me out and I'm scared for my future.

01:13:12Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. [01:13:15]

01:13:15Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Um, yeah, this is really fascinating conversation. I, I appreciate

01:13:18Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: you coming on for, for sure. I'm glad I wasn't just a nervous wreck the whole time, cuz I thought I might be, but yeah, you uh, you too are good podcast host.

01:13:28Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: you. No, this was, this is really

01:13:29Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: cool. [01:13:30] Yeah, we're, we're, we're good ramblers. Yeah. We, we get good at that Yeah. Ourselves. Yeah. If this is a good conversation, um, definitely stay in touch and appreciate you coming on Brian.

01:13:41Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Thanks. Absolutely.

01:13:42Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Thank you very much. All

01:13:43Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: right guys.

01:13:45 thanks for sticking around. That was, that was an awesome conversation. I don't know, um, how many tips that we gave, but let's, uh, let's sum this up and, and like try to distill everything that we talked about. [01:14:00] Like, do you wanna go first, Mike, or you want me to go.

01:14:03Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I'm still processing a lot of it. No, I think it's, I think it was a really fascinating conversation to, to talk to somebody who's, who's kind of eyeball deep in the, the ai, [01:14:15] uh, automation world like that and how it relates to graphics.

01:14:30 concept though, that it's really hard to really wrap your head around and, and, and understand and, and I think there is like a legitimate fear there from people as well.

01:14:45 that's, that's terrifying. But he, he made a good point that it's, it's not gonna come after and take people's jobs. It's just gonna change the way they, they work and. And, you know, forward progress dictates that we have to adapt to that change.

01:15:00 humans to do. But I think if we're able to, uh, some of this technology is gonna make our lives a lot easier and, and make us all a lot more money. So I'm, I'm, I'm going to reluctantly embrace this technology and.

01:15:12Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Reluctant embrace [01:15:15] Sounds like a, a cologne.

01:15:17Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I might be ushering in the apocalypse.

01:15:23Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, I mean, we're all like supporting this even if we're like watching from the sidelines and like cheering it on or Hey, like [01:15:30] hopping in chat G P T and typing dumb stuff in there, like sign poems, like,

01:15:36Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: right. Yeah, no, like the other day I used chat, G p t i I, I just asked to create me, um, a, a playlist of obscure, you know, [01:15:45] seventies Vietnam era rock and roll that I'd never heard of.

01:16:00 mature along with it, I think, I think we'll really find a, a balance or harmony there between it and, you know, old school manual.

01:16:09Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. I, I like, you can't forget, the other side though is like this thing, it got [01:16:15] extremely popular. I'm talking about chat, G p T. Mm-hmm. Right. And that's what Brian was saying, like, you gotta have data to feed this thing and mm-hmm. Like at this point, like, we're just happily feeding this thing all the data because it's, it's entertaining, but [01:16:30]

01:16:30Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: yeah.

01:16:33Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to me it is a little scary at times. But, um, yeah, we gotta roll with it like the, back [01:16:45] to our like, topic of, of streamlining the art department. I, I think we probably do like another episode of like structure and SOPs and things like that. Uh, I know you've got some thoughts on that.

01:17:00 tried to tackle like a guide on. Managing art files and dealing with customers and stuff like that. So I, I think that would be an interesting episode, but

01:17:09Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: I, I agree. I, I think we should do that. I mean, there's a lot of structural and process things that, that relate to the, the design [01:17:15] department that really don't really even have anything to do necessarily with automation or, or, or, or AI or anything.

01:17:30 that's, you know, sorely overlooked in most shops.

01:17:32Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I, I think the biggest takeaway for me today was just say, and I heard you kind of say it, and I also heard like Brian dance around it a little bit as well, is just [01:17:45] like design efficiency.

01:18:00 efficient. So if you're trying to streamline your art department, you're trying to make your designers more efficient, take away the boring, stupid, mundane stuff that they have to do so they can focus more on the creative part of it.[01:18:15]

01:18:30 formats. Like if, if you've got Onyx, things like that, use the hot folders and phonic Onyx. Those were some of my best friends where you set up like a preset, uh, drop your file in there and it does like the imposition and everything for you.

01:18:45 as much of that stuff, which is just like tedious, you know, mistakes can occur. Anywhere in that chain. Like you forget to apply the proper color profile, like the output's gonna be screwed up. But that's, that's all [01:19:00] stuff that computers are, are really great at. Mm-hmm.

01:19:04Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

01:19:08Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Just don't feed it like you're bank account information or any of that.[01:19:15]

01:19:15Brian Saetre: #c50000;">Brian Saetre: Yes.

01:19:17Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Or guns. Don't give us guns.

01:19:20Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: Don't arm the computers. People you want terminators cuz that's how you get Terminators. Yeah.

01:19:27Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. Cool. All right, let's wrap this one up. If [01:19:30] you are interested in being a guest on the podcast, we love interesting stories, so shoot us an email. Hey, at better sign shop.com. We are suckers for good stories, so check that out.

01:19:45 you are a sign shop owner, make sure you check out our Facebook group. You can find that somewhere down below this episode. Or if you're listening, I, I don't know how you're gonna find it if you're, if you're just listening, but it's in the description somewhere. [01:20:00] And big thank you to our sponsor, GCI Digital, your large format.

01:20:15 wholesale provider. These guys are awesome. They do customer service the way that grandmother used to make it. So if you want somebody who is willing to spend $5,000 on a flight to make sure that [01:20:30] you've got your stuff on time, those are your guys.

01:20:38Michael Riley: #583e31;">Michael Riley: TJ Rocks. Great guys over there.

01:20:41Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I think that's it. That's it. Send us your nicknames. [01:20:45] Mike needs nicknames. Yay. And And that's a wrap, Mike. Pleasure. I enjoyed it today as the day keep, keep doing the Mr. Rogers thing [01:21:00] till next. If you liked this episode, make sure you hit subscribe to get all the latest episodes and check out our website, better sign shop.com.

01:21:15 Thanks for listening.