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-: It never is. -: Yeah.
-: We have a production team (laughs).
-: Timelines are a big thing.
Like that's also when I know like-
-: I didn't want to say it.
-: If you ask the creative director, never.
I know Kapsick for example,
he could be giving feedback forever
and sometimes you need to say,
"Man, we have a week."
-: I could like noodle, do little things
until the cows come home,
but I don't know if that would make it like better.
-: It's probably only gonna get worse
'cause then we're gonna start overthinking it,
you start looking into details a little bit too much,
and you've also just gotta believe in what we've done,
the steps we've taken,
the care and effort we've put in
and trust in ourselves that the work we've done
is as good as it could be.
-: You know, the polishing sometimes
doesn't make it necessarily any better.
-: I think there's definitely a point
where you do have to walk away sometimes.
-: Someone like pulls you off normally.
-: Yeah. -: Say right,
you gotta do something else.
-: But there's like these nagging little things that you see
where you just really wanna go back and change it.
-: It feels like it always lives on forever,
even when it's out the studio.
I never feel like, "Oh that's that."
-: There're three things.
When the work is good enough for us internally,
when the work is good enough for the client,
and when the work serves the people
that we've created it for.
Internally, there's never a moment that you know
because the nature of being a creative
is that you're never satisfied,
but in the moment you've done all that you can
and I think the value of that
is that you you have creative people that care so much
that they're always thinking about
how the work could be better.
I think the moment that you know with a client
is when they say very little (laughs).
-: Yeah, when the client's on board and they're like,
"Yeah" -: Exactly.
-: Then you're like, okay cool.
-: There is a thing to learn of being like,
okay, like I don't need to do anymore to this,
like it's there.
And I think learning where that point is
is actually really, really hard.
-: Easy for us to forget, you know,
as we are talking and spending time
with some of the more junior team members,
is that sometimes people may not even see
that it's not good enough,
or they may not understand what great looks like.
-: For me it's when you feel uncomfortably excited.
-: The problem is that like,
yeah, I have it like twice a day,
and like all the time is like,
yeah maybe like there wasn't any reason
to be that excited about this.
-: What we try and do is kind of ask someone who's, you know
not on the project
and just kind of be like,
"Do you get it?"
Like, "Oh yeah, I get it."
Like that's I think that's, yeah.
-: It's so easy to get trapped in familiarity.
Once you've been on the journey with everybody
and you know the start, the middle, and the end,
it's easy to think that something's right.
-: Yeah. -: But only if, you know,
if someone gets it with no context, with nothing,
then that's a far better job.
-: I have like a really basic thing that I do,
which is if you are looking at a piece of work,
on a scale of one to 10,
how close to 10 is it?
And if you ask somebody that and they'll go,
"Oh, it's an eight."
Say, "Okay, great, now turn around,
"look back at it objectively,
"where is it?"
And it'll drop a bit.
Then you say,
"Turn around, look back,
"now look at it as the audience,
"not you, not as a designer.
"Look at the person who's gonna use that design.
"Where is it on that scale now?"
It'll drop to a six.
Turn around, look back and it's your mom,
she's looking at it now.
Does she understand it?
Does it work for her?
Same thing.
So if you can be objective about your work
and look at it differently,
you'll remove some of that kind of blurriness
and you'll go,
"Okay well maybe I'm not an eight, I'm a six."
So how do I get from six to eight?
What's missing in the work to get to the next level?
-: I think you know when something's not there.
-: Yeah.
-: And you know when something's not done,
and you know it 'cause we've all got a gut feeling about it,
but also cause people will tell ya.
-: I think it's a bit of a leap of faith.
I don't think there's ever like a moment of realization,
I think it's like an ongoing kind of process,
it gradually kind of unfolds.
If you've got like buy-in from everyone,
and you've managed to kind of sell in a really, you know,
a really great idea or, you know,
like a really interesting kind of brand system,
I think there's a confidence that comes from that
that makes you kind of think that
this is getting to where it needs to be.
-: There's no one answer that we're all trying to find
because that doesn't exist in our industry.
But there's like a feeling down here and up here
when it like feels right I think.
-: When the kind of team collectively
can kind of come together
and support the decisions that are getting made,
debate the creativity that's on the table,
and hold it back up to the brief
and the strategy that's created, you know,
does it answer the strategy that we've set for ourselves?
If you're answering your own brief and your own strategy
then it's a massive step.
-: If there are doubts
and the doubts are not disappearing along the way,
that's probably a sign that something is not right.
-: You can ask yourself questions around,
you know, originality. -: Yeah.
-: And robustness of thought.
But I think once something really gives you
that feeling of excitement,
that's when you know.
-: That moment when you actually look at something and say
"Actually this isn't like anything else,
"I'm actually a bit excited to see this in the real world
"and it's making us uncomfortable,
"and we know it will make the client uncomfortable."
-: It's a case of then like really like doubling down on that
and refining it to the point
where it's kind of where it needs to be
to go out into the real world.
-: We actually dunno the work's good enough really
until it's out in the world
and people are actually using it.
-: Yeah.
-: That and when Paul cracks open a bottle of whiskey
after a presentation. -: Yes.
-: Or Simon gives you a emoji-
-: Yeah or. -: On Slack.
Or that. -: Yeah, that one.
-: That's when you know.
-: I guess maybe it's when you feel a bit tired
at the end stage.
Okay, there are little things that I could tweak,
but it wouldn't affect the general look of it.
-: Yeah.
-: Like it wouldn't change the functionality
or how good it looks,
it's just tiny little things
that we as designers would like to tweak
to make it even better,
but it doesn't really matter actually
and you're getting tired from working sometimes.
-: Yeah, that's true. -: It's like,
okay it's okay, move on.
-: Yeah, let's move on. -: Yeah.
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