Episode 199: The Design Legend, Aaron Draplin

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of commonsku.

Because here's the one thing that I'm trying to always show to any of my clients. When you see this kind of one design fits all kind of stuff, it just goes this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. On all this range of stuff, it's like those are all opportunities to get weird and it didn't take that much, right? Sure, go weird and let it go explode.

Aaron Draplin is a legend in the design world. In fact, if you used a Field Notes notebook, you would be holding just one of the many works he has created. And when we were interviewing Aaron, I thought, you know, this guy's like the Marc Maron of design. And little did I know, not only did Aaron design a project for Maron, he was on Marc Maron's show WTF as a guest. In addition to co-founding Field Notes, Aaron has designed for Bernie Sanders, Nike, Target, snowboard companies, musicians, festivals, even one of my favorite coffee shops in the world, the CC Motorcycle Coffee Company in Portland, Oregon, where he lives. Today we talk with Aaron about his love for branded merch. He sells a ridiculous amount of cool merch at draplin.com, and he's a huge fan of our industry. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he's one of us, but just a bit more extreme. Chatting with Aaron is like lassoing the wind, so you're in for a good ride. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Commscue's Chief Content Officer, and I'm joined by Mark Graham, Commscue's President and Chief Brand Officer, as we chat with Aaron about the world of design, including a special collab that we are doing with him for this year's SKUCON merch. SKUCON is our epic 2022 kickoff event. It's the conference for innovators, explorers, and dreamers in the promotional products industry. And Aaron Draplin is one of our many special guests. Aaron will jumpstart our morning. Other topics include building inspirational merch with Jeremy Picker, how to create a strategy for epic growth, an interview with Stephanie Leader of Leader Promos and Sammy Gonzalez with Made 2 Order. An inspirational new concept by Brittany Roller on discovering the creative collective and even more topics. Our day ends with a talk that you will not want to miss from Davis Smith, co-founder of Cotopaxi, on leading with mission and purpose. This year, the event is both live in person as well as livestream. So come join us in person, but be sure and have your whole team tune into the livestream as well. SKUCon is held January 9th in Las Vegas. You can learn more and register at skucon.com. This episode is brought to you by Commonsku, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commonsku.com. Now here's our chat with the one and only Aaron Draplin.

Aaron Draplin, welcome, buddy. I'm so glad you made it.

Hello, everybody.

My name is Aaron James Draplin. I'm 47 years old. On Friday, I turn 48, October 15th. I'm a graphic designer. I live here in Portland, Oregon.

You've heard this little racket before from me 62 times, but I'm in my backyard working on stuff that people don't really hear about. Sometimes it's a weird little product collab. Sometimes you know, with a buddy's brand. Sometimes it's something giant, like this week I have to— I have lawyers involved in a real logo design, um, back and forth agreement, not dispute, but just, you know, this is what it takes in the big leagues. And then other times I just work for, um, you know, myself. So I guess the things I get to do for a paycheck, um, are less and less. A lot more and more it's kind of from my hand. And from all this like fun merch I make and posters and things and stuff. I was just getting off the phone with the guy who, you know, a little bit ago who wants to get a poster order out to New York City. His shop is starting to open back up again, so he wants another— so that's basically a wholesale order. Now, people don't know about that with me, you know, but it's like, well, we sell this stuff to people that don't really know what I do, which is awesome, you know, because it's just showing up in their shop like any other little business and someone's getting it framed for their poster. It's a frame shop, you know, and it's like, that's That's really exciting to me because it sheds any sort of debris that might be attached to someone being confused. Aren't you a graphic designer that just makes logos for clients? Oh yeah, but it's one of, you know, a bunch of weird fingers on my hands, you know. So, right, but yeah, that's how I do it.

So, you know, I think we get the same response from folks that when they questioned us being in the merch business, right? There's websites like 4imprint, there's all these kinds of things. You have really differentiated yourself. To say you're a designer, is it potent enough to cover all that you're doing. How do you respond to folks when they say, oh, you're just a designer, or oh hey Fiverr, or oh hey Upwork? I mean, what's your response? And I just want us to speak to that entrepreneur in the audience who's selling merch, who's being compared to the 4imprints of the world and the other places where you can just buy stuff.

When I realized, like, I was being tasked from a client to say, hey, go make us a hat, go make us a t-shirt, make us this little promotional item a set of pencils or something, and it was my job to source the stuff, to work out a deal, have a budget to stay within, to get the stuff properly translated over to the little piece. And I was doing all of that for someone else. And that first time that I kind of did that for myself was this weird buzz of like, oh, that power is in my hands. Not necessarily to make a buck, but just to make my own stuff and to kind of cloud things up because it was exciting to say, you know, why are you making a hat with your name on it? It's like, it doesn't, you know, it's just dumb. It's from my friends. But the first time that I sold one to someone who didn't, who just liked what I did, something switched in me. So what I would say is like, you know, if anyone shits on anyone for like saying, oh, you're, you know, you're just a merch person. I know guys who do very well and they're, you know, she's just a merch person. She kicks ass.

She makes a mountain of cash.

I know people who are only, you know, graphic designer and that's okay, but the ones who are both, they're lethal, you know? If you add one more flap to it, if you understand the web and you understand not necessarily how to code, but how to work well with someone on the web, you are triple lethal because you're, you know, you need all those components to make this stuff work. Right.

So talking to someone in the crowd and saying, hey, hey, hey, This isn't a dirty word.

And the idea that this stuff gets relegated down to like, you know, some kind of slimy thing that's like a throwaway at a convention or something—

that's where I do my best business. I love messing with that stuff.

I love when someone shits on some little thing and yet I can create a story out of it.

And it might just be an American-made little envelope thing. This has not changed, and it says made in USA because they made one mold somewhere 42 years ago, and it just gets impressions on either side, right?

So I like when people discount this stuff, you know, as far as like, oh, it's another— like, I know I was saying something about it last week, but like, I have a black bristle toothbrush that I do.

It's the Halloween one.

And people love to walk up to me at my merch tables and go, oh, Draplin, come on, man, you know, you got the toothbrush, huh? And they shit all over it. I'll go You fidget. Here, take it, and you're gonna need that when you're camping. And then your tune's gonna change because there's this neat little sort of zone of like, I use this shit every day. That is not a novelty. That is not some trivial thing. I use it every day to open so I don't mangle paychecks. People always say to me, Graplin, why are you in graphic design?

I say, big paychecks.

You get them, you play with them, you smell them, you rag, roll around with them a little bit, and I open them with these little things right here, and it might say someone's band or my little brand. And what, they're $2.99 on my site? I love that. I love that. Like, why can't we do that? So, um, you know, there's a magic there.

Yeah, there's— I want to encourage everyone, by the way, to check out Aaron's Skillshare class. And as a distributor, I would have everyone on my team watching this because it's so inspirational.

You've taken—

you sort of drill down in the details like what you just did with an average ordinary product, and you created this little mini extraordinary experience. And you, in your Skillshare class, you use the words joy and charm. And in many ways, you go back to your DIY days as a skateboarder just fucking around with merch. You've sort of found a way to bridge that professionally. And I love what you said about website design, merchandise, knowing how— what to do with it makes you lethal. And I think there's lots of puzzle pieces you're putting together there.

Well, one of the things I ran into was these weird grand canyons between who gets to actually put the art on this thing and then me who's making the art. And what I really tried to do was try to make that a little bit less of just like a little like river to jump because it was like, tell me how to set up my file properly. Tell me how to, you know, put a little note inside your file, how not to tweak and mess with the art. Because really it's like, I understand 99 out of 100 are putting things on a napkin and saying, hey, you guys, you know, um, Mark, make this thing for me. I want 10,000 of them, you know, and they're not really concerned about that thing. I never had a big budget, so I had to make it work for the 100 I was going to make, right? So the idea— but I learned some stuff along the way that could make that process more streamlined.

I love sharing that stuff.

I love sharing that stuff because in the end, what it does— not first of all, it keeps all you guys in business on some reasonable level. But it diminishes some idea that like you're at the mercy of someone on a phone who's just like, you know what, we're gonna hand it over to our operator. Here's the deal, by—

so that's the wrong colloquialism when you say swinging a big—

I'm not going to say that, but by just swinging a big battle axe of saying, I know where it goes, I know what my file does, there's a little thing in there that says I have signed off, let the little counters and stuff fill in because I like that charm, I like that schmutz, I like that crust. It's a stupid little envelope opener. But you know, why does everything have to be so perfect all the time? You know, when they used to make all these bullet pencils and all that cool stuff back in the day, you know, there's a good chance there were some misprints in there. Those things, they still worked. They still worked. So with the Skillshare, that's just sort of like— I just want to license anyone watching that, like, hey, this isn't some big mystery. And by the way, it can just be Like, I was working on a record last night and in the end the guys come to me and say, "Trapp, you make all this cool stuff, you know, let me help you make some stuff for a merch table!" Like, there's nothing wrong with that but there's certain things that I've landed on, like the certain kind of— the sort of— there's a status quo to this stuff that you run into and then here's the fun part, you run into it and you make something cool out of it, you make a cool story out of it and the next time you talk to that person, they're like, "Wow! You actually made that coin purse fun!" Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. These things, like you said, charm. These things can just have a certain feel in your hand and feel good and make you just kind of go, oh, that's a cool band or a cool brand or a cool something. And what, you know, what's wrong with any of that? So like, okay, when those guys come up to me about the toothbrush and get on my case and say, come on, man, did you really— you know, it's like, you know who's looking at that's the most fun? It's the 7-year-old kid of that 47-year-old. That's who's looking at that stuff with the right eyes of like Wow, toothbrush with black bristles! So I want to stay there. 7 years old, new to the world, you know, and excited that this thing, you know, you know, if you break this thing, there's a little razor blade in there. So like, you know, I gotta watch the table because I have box cutters and shit. And you know how 8-year-olds come up to the merch table, they have $10 in their pocket their parents gave them at some little, you know, a little, you know, convention thing.

And I'll just, uh, listen, little bastard, back off. No lighters.

No, no, no, nothing with a razor blade in it.

Just back off.

I need you over here in the stickers department, you know, stuff like that.

So speaking of, why don't you two talk about this collaboration that's happening? Mark, why don't you explain what's going on, what kind of shenanigans you two are up to behind the scenes?

Well, before we get into that, speaking of shenanigans, I think like the word that I'm— that's coming to my mind is that Aaron, you're like massively subverting the process of promotional products, right? And it's like a sleight of hand to some extent. So you bring up that little, you know, envelope opener or the coin purse. In our industry, this is a general comment, our industry has almost been trained to think of those products as the thing that you get quickly that has a lame one-color logo of an insurance company or a divorce lawyer or whatever the case may be. There's no art there's no emotional connection to it. It is a sales transaction. And that's fine. That's fine. There's lots of those that are floating around North America right now. In fact, I think I have one from my like local courier company. It's like highly transactional, but there is zero emotional connection that I have with that particular brand. If I get one from DDC and I'm like, I love this guy, I love what he's all about. And I get this product that in another, with another logo in it would be super lame. But with you, it has this emotional connection. To me, I feel you're subverting the process because that product is not supposed to be loved. But the fact that you're getting someone to love it through the power of design and intention is amazing.

Well, thank you. I mean, some of my favorite stuff, what did we talk about last week? You know, the little, on your boat keys, the little floaty thing, that little key's floating with that thing. That little thing has not changed ever. It's a family that does that. That little chassis, we'll just say. So like, okay, Come back for a couple steps and say a pair of 501 jeans, a black sweatshirt, a white t-shirt, a pair of Chuck Taylors. These are sort of North American classics, right? North American classics. So when you come down to the merch world, which might be a coin purse, little foamy thing that floats on your keys, a bullet pencil, there's a bunch of these things that escaped the iMac craze of the 2000s. Remember there was all that junk where it was like Now they came out with this iMac and now those colors are available in squeezy balls and all these little kind of like, you know, throwaway things. There were some little things that escaped that sort of like toothpick holders escaped that little— the grasp of all that shit that was quickly forgotten. Yeah, weird kind of like, you know, bullshit. And I love those things because when it was a limited amount of stuff you could make back in 1977 or '87 or maybe even '97 and it exploded. You know, those things are like little, like, little, like, weird dinosaurs floating around that you can still go and get today. Because see, that— here's the thing, I love the idea that some— we're like hipsters in this shit, you know what I mean? Because we're thinking about it and we're wrapping our heads around it. But check it out, what about just some yahoo at a marina who's like, you know what, we need the stuff because if someone flips the boat, you know, their keys are floating. That is a perfect transaction. It's perfectly functional. It's met with that need. They give that thing out when they sell that boat or you park there. And that we need those things in our lives. We need those reminders of where you go get your bar, your boat to park, or where you get your parts at the marina, whatever the hell. Like, we need that stuff. And so I champion things like pencils that are made in America, you know, and like, you know, that's where our Field Notes came from because it was like You can't even make a simple notebook. I have boxes and drawers for these agricultural notebooks that used to go to a Bobby LaHue and say, hey, we're from two states away, the train stops at this thing, here's our picture of our big feed and seed, or here's our silo, or whatever you want to call it, here's our picture, here's our name and our logo. And then he would make them a bunch of products out of that, and that is perfect, you know. And by the way, that's still happening today out in some cornfield somewhere. There. We're just not looking at it with our eyes, you know? It's going down out there. So I like to find those things and yeah, kind of wrestle them over into our world, either make light of what I do and make fun of myself or apply it to some brand of mine who's like, you know what? That's a damn good pencil. And then it's like, I feel like a little like, like a little archaeologist or some sort of little like curator that's rescuing things, you know? I mean, by the way, it's a stupid pencil but here's what's funny. I work around all these little— what's the professional term— numbnuts who come after our field notes. And there are pencil nerds that only nerd out on pencils, and I would never ever share. I love that stuff, right? But yet they'll ask me, what kind of pencils do you use? And I just will say, this thing was 20 cents, man. It's been in my— it's been around my desk for like 10 years. I sharpen it once a year. That's amazing to me, you know. It's not this like supreme piece of supreme thing, you know, where they just— their ink is the same ink as everybody else's ink. It's like, so much is meant to work, and what's that little sprinkle, you know? How do you get to that quick?

So Aaron, I wanted to say that I think what you're really getting at is you're teaching our listeners and the people who will be at SKUCon and anyone that'll hear a recording of the session to how to fall in love with the product again, the product that we sell. And whether it's the, you know, sort of hipster Americana 1950s products that you're promoting and selling and putting great designs on, or it could be a standard issue t-shirt or a drinkware product. At the end of the day, it's all about how do you as a salesperson or a creative person or an account person at a promotional distributor fall in love develop this emotional connection with the product so that way you can tell a great story to your customer and put their logo on it and mean that it's not just a, just a letter opener with a one color, one location print. Like, where's the emotional connection? And that's what you represent to me.

Well, that's— thank you. I mean, you have to understand though, um, the goofy little things that I try to elevate, you know, with these funny little stories and stuff. I mean, I'll just say a buddy of mine gave me a Yeti tumbler thing with his graphic on the side of it, and I will use that thing for years. And the power of that— now, I don't know what he spent for it, $35, they retail at some other price, I don't— I'm not really concerned with that. It was a really cool gesture. That thing is nice, and I will baby it. And by the way, it works. It works. So, you know, it's exciting to me to see premium stuff out there. Not just these like, you know, squeezy balls and stress balls and people— things that people shit on and make fun of. There's gold to be had there too. There is. But there's something about like, you know, seeing people elevate this stuff to like, you know, we cut and sew sweatshirts and things like that. List of stuff we're making, man, there's some cool stuff in there. But I hope to get some things that just make you kind of like— you hold in your hand, you just kind of go, we're still doing these? Like, we should probably do like— so I can just throw them out to the crowd, those little like floaty things for the boats. Like, I don't even own a boat. I don't even like bathtubs, Bobby. All right, I don't even like to wash. So, you know, like, we should have some of that shit laying around because it's just sort of like— I have a set of earplugs from Dinosaur Jr. in 1993, my favorite band.

I bought them for $5.

It's that little thing that you pop open that get your— get to like your little— check it out. Every time you go to a concert, you— my sister's an audiologist. You need those little earplugs in your ears. That's it. Non-negotiable. And I hold that thing close as an artifact from my youth. By the way, those things still work almost 30 years later, right? That little coin purse still works because that plastic and that stuff— like, that's what I try to hand off to people and say, you guys, if you do this right, you are a rock and roll club. Why don't you have those things for $6 every time someone walks in? They're buying some stupid drink for $8. Why wouldn't they buy the cool one with your graphics and take the time? And by the way, the last time I made those little earplugs, the little cases, I had to go to a source that was like offshore drilling people who actually, you know, use those things all day long.

And those guys did not fuck around.

They did not want to hear about my little type schmipe and things and stuff and worries and concerns about the size and all this and color and Pantones and shit. It was just like Does the impression show up on the thing? And I really like that world too, you know, but you, you know, you have to quickly size up like, yeah, these guys aren't concerned about whatever little bullshit that we're nerding.

They're just trying to get them done, you know?

Yeah, well, that goes back to you. I think that goes back to your instinct, which is solving problems graphically. You talk about that in Skillshare a little bit, is you're—

that's what you're doing.

You're in the business of solving problems graphically and knowing your audience in that regard. We are thrilled you are going to be speaking at SkewCon on January 9th. Can you give us a little glimpse as to what we're going to be talking about?

Oh, well, you know, I hope to be alive still then.

It's so far from now and it's in the new year.

Right.

But there's always a roller coaster of like, you know, you have to understand when I show something that's for my buddy's band, that's in the muck. But when I show that I made some posters for Bernie, it just goes climbing all the way back up and people just kind of like, whoa, this guy's— he worked on what? You know, that kind of a thing. So first of all, there's going to be some curveballs. You know, where it's like, I'm gonna surprise you because some of those things I work on, I don't really even talk about them. I'm moving a little too quick to— I'm just worried. I'm more worried about making bandanas and all the fun little stuff, you know? Then when I get the call to the big leagues, I mean, I document it and I just try to— I'm more afraid just to get it all done. So I guess what I'm saying is I wanna surprise you and you'll laugh and you'll cry. And there might be a couple of you that walk out of the room.

You never know.

It really is sort of an explosion of like, You guys, I got away with this shit, you know?

Oh, and, you know, spread the word of the coin purse to all of your minions, because why aren't we doing that more?

Aaron, do you have like a—

do you want to talk a little bit about this design collaboration that we're working on for our attendees?

Well, you gave me the robot and I took that and just put it through the wringer, you know, put those little, you know, those little gears and stuff.

I've got a series of little designs and stuff. We're going to make some stuff. We're just going to celebrate your thing, but it's going to go through the DDC filter. One of the ways I like to think about it is I can just drop it through this little filter and out pops off this thing that it just shows how one mark can be used in versatile ways on its own, boiled down, but also with a cacophony of stuff around it, you know? So you'll see some of these designs I have where, you know, that's for the t-shirt or for the Frisbee or something. Maybe it only works best here because here's the one thing that I'm trying to always show to any of my clients. When you see this kind of one design fits all kind of stuff, it just goes, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. On all this range of stuff. It's like, those were all opportunities to get weird, and it didn't take that much T shirt go weird and let it go explode on the little embroidery and the thing. It only needs to be this on this thing, you know, et cetera. And I just always try to show that, like, with one Good idea. And one good You know, you guys already have your identity and all this cool stuff and the barcode and all that stuff, but you know, you're tricking me already, you know, by seeing some of the stuff you've already made where it's like, oh, I want one of those. That's the buzz. That's the buzz. I want one of those. We're not just here, we're not just here to take notes and shit, and you know, we're gonna be in Las Vegas. We're there to gamble and fight and do everything after we get done learning about merch. But, you know, I just want people to see that, like, whether or not I made a buck on any of this stuff, it helped me enjoy my brand, you know? Like, let's just say at the end of a lifetime or end of a career, you look back, all this fun shit I made, and it's like, you know what, your margins just weren't all that good. Because every now and again I get one of those cynics, it's like, you know what, I'm a day trader, I make real money. You don't like your job, is what I say to them. You know, I liked my job giving a handful of something to someone or a 7-year-old and explain to them like, you can put a guitar pick in that coin purse or some neat little thing and you can have it around your keychain. And watching them like light up like, who even uses pennies and nickels and stuff anymore? You know what I mean? But to a 7-year-old, a handful of change and Aaron Draplin means a lot. When I go over to the UK, I always take 50 of those little coin purses and I sell them for $8 apiece because over there the kids are jumping on the tube. It's kind of a thing. You need it. You need it. So over there it's functional. Over here it's a novelty. Over there they need it in their pocket. It's awesome. So, you know, we need to champion that kind of stuff, and that's what we're going to do while we're down there. And we're going to gamble and fight and drink and everything else I said and have a good time.

Casinos—

I'm not down there to make friends. I'm going to make a stiff paycheck on the stage with you guys and an even stiffer paycheck on the roulette table. Thank you, thank you, my friend.

This has been a fun ride, and I hope you join us on January 9th for SKUCon because it's just going to get better. Thanks, guys.

Awesome.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes, or to our blog at community.commsq.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.