With Nick Pattison: Pentagram Boot Camp, Productizing Design, the Birth of Brand Sprints, and What AI Still Can’t Replace

Works But Makes Noises

David McGillivray interviews Nick Pattison, founder of Primary Studio, about his journey from design boot camps at Pentagram and Milton Glaser's studio to building a productized

Key takeaways

• Nick Pattison started his career interning at Pentagram under Michael Garicke and Paula Sher, where he designed restaurant logos for the Arizona Cardinals stadium as an intern.
• After working at Milton Glaser's studio, Nick transitioned to solo freelancing under the name Volume before rebranding to Primary Studio to appear more established.

Main topics

• Design education and agency boot camps
• Scaling a solo practice into a productized studio

Notable quotes

The only way out is through for sure.

Conclusion

The episode offers actionable strategies for designers seeking to productize their

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) you Speaker 1 (0:05) you Speaker 1 (0:23) You are listening to Works But Makes Noises. Welcome. So right about now, I'm normally saying hello to my good friend Jacob, but right now he is traveling somewhere in the rural regions of Singapore, I believe. I know, I know, we're all going to miss him, but if we band together, we can get through this episode without him. What we figured we'd do, rather than make you all wait another couple of weeks for the next episode, is we'd bring in a friend of mine, Nick Patterson. Now, Nick is... He is the founder and the executive creative director for Primary Studio, who have been responsible for some amazing brand work of late. They have been pioneering the whole brand sprint model. Nick got his start designing at Pentagram with Paula Sher and then went on to work at Milton Glaser's studio for a few years. So he's got a really interesting backstory there before going on to found Primary Studio. We're going to bring Nick in and have a chat. Speaker 1 (1:39) Hey, Nick, how is it going, my friend? It's going well, David. It's great to be here. Great to have you. I feel like I've seen you on a few other podcasts recently. You've been doing a bit of a circuit, in-demand man these days. How is that? Is that Speaker 2 (1:57) fun? Is that weird? It's Speaker 1 (1:58) a Speaker 2 (1:58) good question. Just because it's so relevant to what's going on with me right now. I've been an introvert for most of my life. And, uh, recently I've been, yeah, I've been on a bit of a circuit. Uh, I, you know, as you know, I was on like the TV show couples therapy and they were actually just, they were just here on Saturday for 10 hours, uh, you know, filming our lives and asking us a lot of questions. Uh, and then yesterday I had, uh, Speaker 2 (2:28) I had like a three hour live demo of our process with primary with like a YouTube channel. And here I am with you today. And so going from being a super introvert to starting to have this happen has been, has Speaker 1 (2:42) been good actually. Like Speaker 2 (2:44) I feel like having the cameras, having the cameras here with, uh, Paramount on Saturday, like I was a little tight to start off and then I loosened up and just getting used to cameras and microphones and stuff. And, um, Speaker 1 (2:57) It's intense. And Speaker 2 (2:58) realizing that I like it, you know, and that I can sort of ease and settle into it and make this more a part of my life is cool. Speaker 1 (3:05) Do you think that, like, the way through is just to push through? Do you think you get comfortable through, like, immersion therapy, basically, just, like, do Speaker 2 (3:15) it? Speaker 1 (3:16) Absolutely. Speaker 2 (3:17) Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That's part of why I'm just making it happen. Yeah. Immersion therapy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true for, uh, for like clients too. Even like, I think back to when I was, uh, I don't know, 13 years ago or something when I was really nervous to be on client calls and then you just do enough of them and it's second, it's second nature. And now I'm not intimidated by meeting anyone on a client call. So you got it. The only way out is through for sure. It Speaker 1 (3:45) makes me think I have a good friend of mine who went to design school with, and I remember, you know, we'd have these. you know, you have these crits and these presentations in design school and there'd always be a couple of people and I'd feel bad for them, but there'd always be a couple of people that like go up to the front of the class and they're just like terrified and they're mumbling. They're barely speaking. They're barely saying words. And, you know, my friend kind of turned to me and was like, man, that sucks for them. I just find it easier to just pretend I'm confident than outwardly just exhibit that I am just terrified. And I guess if you're so scared to the point that you're almost frozen with fear, you can't push through. But if you're borderline, you can fake it till you make it, right? You can just be like, yeah, I'm shit scared of this, but you know what? They don't know that. I'm just going to like... puff up my chest a little bit to myself and just like push it through right right Speaker 2 (4:48) totally totally yeah i i've been in both seats uh yeah because i do have like uh i'm just naturally not good in front of cameras all like i grew up with friends who were actors and i tried it and i just it wasn't it wasn't natural to me yeah and so that's that fear i've been on that side of things where i've like totally frozen before um But yeah, you got to get past that level and then you got Speaker 1 (5:12) to get past like being in front of the class and then you got to Speaker 2 (5:15) get into your level of confidence. And then it just more and more naturally it comes. Speaker 1 (5:21) Yeah, for sure. For sure. So for those that don't know your background, you early days, almost like straight, you went to Pratt, right? So pretty classical kind of design education. But then pretty much if I'm right, like straight out of college. You worked at Pentagram and then straight off the back with Paula Sher, right? And I think another team? Speaker 2 (5:41) Yep. First with Michael Garicke for a year and then with Paula Sher for a year, year and a half. And Speaker 1 (5:46) then off the back of that with Milton Glaser, his studio as well. That's right. That's like a wild first couple of places to work out of college. I'd imagine once you've got Pentagram on your resume, the Milton Glaser thing, although obviously that's a... you know, it's impressive. It's sick. But like with Pentagram on your resume, that's an easier get. How'd you land the Pentagram gig first off? Speaker 2 (6:10) Yeah, I landed the Pentagram gig as an intern. So I was at grad school at Pratt and yeah, I had a great teacher named Kevin Gatta who really liked my work. Also, incidentally, I got into grad school at Pratt without having done any graphic design before. So I was very new to design and it was only a two-year program. So I really had like a lot of... learning and catch up to do while I was at grad school. And I think that, I mean, I've always been an artist of various sorts, painter, drawer, photographer. And so graphic design felt like a natural thing for me. So I think that I had something, I had some juice, even being new to design that Kevin saw, my teacher saw, and he recommended like six of us for an internship. And then three of us got internships. Uh, so I started with, as an intern with Michael Garakie at Pentagram, uh, on the signage team. Um, and the teams are pretty small there. Uh, you know, it's like, there's like a couple, you know, it was an associate and then a couple of designers upstairs. So like really like a team of four. And then, uh, they had like two of us who were newer, like an intern and maybe a junior downstairs. Um, so I just worked my way up. there and I, you know, working on huge projects right away. I think the first project I worked on was, um, the Arizona Cardinals football stadium. And again, it was only, only five of us designing that whole thing. So I got to play a pretty big role in, I actually designed the logos for all the restaurants inside of the stadium as an intern. So like, I was just thrown into the fire very, very early. And, uh, You know, they have a lot of projects going on. So it wasn't just that we were working on like Port Authority signage and some other bigger things. And yeah, I did well there. And then Paula's team needed a designer. So I started working for Paula on a variety of things, Powerade and Citibank and stuff like that, similar size team. But yeah, Pentagram is boot camp for real, especially at that age. yeah uh six days a week usually going in on saturdays usually there till 11 p.m eating every meal there so it taught me a lot damn Speaker 1 (8:26) were you also because i think you're pretty similar kind of age and generation as me like when i when i talked to like younger designers like when i was interning interning in in london or brighton or these agencies like my intern tasks were involved like spray mount they involved like like foam board i was like i remember spending multiple days printing designs spray mounting them to foam board and then scalping them all that and i mean now yeah i'm sure there's not a bottle can of spray mount in in you know in the whole of the pentagram studio curious what was your were you you were doing similar similar vibe for your intern tasks yeah Speaker 2 (9:09) definitely i think i think like 50 of the tasks were around that kind of stuff. There's a room in the basement of Pentagram with spray mount and with the boards. And I remember like slicing my finger, like you're just constantly down there doing things that are not design related. There was a lot of that stuff going on. And yeah, a lot of like very manual grunt work that was also not that just like PDFs and especially since it's signage, like just super technical. boring work that was like less creative for sure Speaker 1 (9:42) yeah yeah i mean there's some soul nourishment in that kind of specific grunt work like i don't know the equivalent now like doing the digital equivalent now it sounds so much less uh Speaker 1 (9:57) Not that what you just described sounds romantic per se, but do you know what I mean? There's a certain quality to going into that cutting room. There's another intern from another team in there. You're both trying not to die from the gases and cutting your fingers up. There's a certain rite of passage feel. hands-on kind of grunt work has versus like the equivalent i don't know what the equivalent would even be now like compressing video files or like do you know i don't even know or like updating the like you know the agents you know the agent markdown file or i don't even know what the equivalent would be right yeah Speaker 2 (10:43) you definitely earn your stripes i feel like i actually i mean we can get into this but i do think that like a lot of the later success in my career is due to so much of that. Just like putting in your out, my hours and my time and earning my stripes and just absorbing those environments. And even if you're not doing like the most creative work, you're, you're in that environment doing the work and, and yeah, earning those stripes. I'm still friends with a lot of people from Pentagram because I created like a camaraderie and you all came up together after that. Trauma bonded. Speaker 1 (11:16) Trauma bonded Speaker 2 (11:17) in the basement. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And that, that continued on at Milton's a lot more because, you know, Pentagram's pretty big. Yeah. Milton's, Milton's studio was, uh, four designers total. So every day it's just one room, four of us and Milton. So we really had that bond, like super close. That's amazing. Pentagram's like 80 people. Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:41) It must've been. Speaker 1 (11:44) um, amazing working in such close proximity with him. What was the, what, what, what was the pace? Like, what was the style of work like working with him? Um, yeah. Curious what the, the culture was in that sense. Speaker 2 (11:58) Yeah, totally. Um, yeah, very different from pentagram, a lot slower. Milton was like later in his career. So late seventies, early eighties. Um, and so he didn't have the pressure to, prove himself or push himself, I think in the same way that pentagram was. Um, and he was like, he was in a phase of his career where he had a lot of client work, but he was also exploring, um, his ideas like that. And that's who Milton is. It's like, I want to, he's just constantly trying to create things that don't exist. That was his real, you know, creative MO. Um, so a lot of our work, I mean, aside from the client work, I remember Speaker 2 (12:41) Years of working on all these rugs, these amazingly beautiful rugs that we were, he had a partnership with ABC Carpet, which is a big place in the city that has beautiful furniture and rugs. So we were doing some of that work. I also had a connection at Supreme, which does, you know, the skateboarding kind of streetwear company. And we were taking some of that art and converting it to skateboards. like more artistic there was a whole like artistic wing of that business that wasn't necessarily true at pentagram um amazing yeah i guess Speaker 1 (13:18) i guess that's like when it's Milton Glaser studio, right? It's his, it's his, it's his baby. He can do what he wants to. It's Pentagram. Obviously they have the teams, but it's still, you're a commercial studio in a very different way. I love that he had that whole more, almost more like creative outlet side, non-commercial, commercial, but leaning more non-commercial side. Yeah, Speaker 2 (13:41) totally. Totally. And also, you know, Milton didn't know how to use a computer at all. So all of our, Like the majority of Milton's working way was that so there was a one long table in his studio where the four designers all sit together on that. You know, you have your computer, but you sit next to everybody. And then he has his desk like kind of back behind with just a light and his pencils and his paper. And so when he had ideas, he would he would draw them out and then he would bring them over. to us. And so we were the conduits in a way between his ideas and having them be there. So, you know, you talk about. People being like, oh, I get nervous when I see