Knowledge sharing: Why smart creatives build in public with Alanna Munro

[00:00:00] Alanna: Thank you first to Ami and the entire Creative Pulse team. I know how much work it is to put together an event like this, and I super appreciate you guys having me. So I’m really excited to be here tonight talking about a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a few years. And designing in the open or sharing your process in an unedited way can feel really intimidating and honestly very scary.

[00:00:28] Alanna: But when I started live streaming my process as a pandemic experiment to reconnect with my community, I found firsthand that my fears were kind of unwarranted and there was a surprising amount of benefits to opening up your process and designing in the open. For

[00:00:44] crowd: those of

[00:00:47] Alanna: you who don’t know me, I am a type designer and lettering artist born and raised here in the greater Vancouver area, still here.

[00:00:54] Alanna: And. I went to Emily Carr University for communication design, [00:01:00] and then I worked at a studio as an interaction designer for for a couple years.

[00:01:08] Alanna: And I really remember that first job as an intense learning experience. I poured a lot of my energy into learning as much about designing in the real world as I possibly could. There’s a huge transition between going to school and then figuring out how it all works in the real world. And I had some great colleagues at my workplace that were very helpful, but I also wanted to expand on that a little bit.

[00:01:31] Alanna: So I started going to a lot of events, very much like this. I went to events like CSS Brigade, Styling Class, Creative Pulse, Creative Mornings, Type Brigade, and Lettering Club. And through these events, I found a lot of people with perspectives on design that I hadn’t really thought about. And sort of talking to those people and getting other people’s perspectives became a really important part of my [00:02:00] process.

[00:02:02] Alanna: So fast forward a couple years and I had always kind of known that I wanted to work for myself. So I gathered a few projects and I made the leap to freelance design. These are a few of my desk spaces in a corner of my house since about 2015. So a lot of working on my own and And this new way of working really made me rely on those in person events even more than before.

[00:02:27] Alanna: And, yeah, I mean, because when you’re freelance, you have to create your own community around you of colleagues. They don’t come baked into your workplace like when you work at a studio.

[00:02:40] Alanna: Plus as more of my work became type design, I had even less contact with people creatively. Working on typefaces by yourself can be a very solitary process just due to the type of work, and also the fact that there usually isn’t a client involved at all. And, you know, I don’t mind solitude. I’m a very solitary person.

[00:02:59] Alanna: But [00:03:00] I still need to connect to other creatives. So Queue 2020. No more in person events. Get rid of them. And as much as I tried to keep up with my community online, it just wasn’t the same. So even though there seemed to be more events that I could go to, you, they were missing something. They were missing that conversation that you have in the corner with one person, and you really get to know them and what they do and what they work on.

[00:03:32] Alanna: So, you know, I was really missing that from the events. Around the same time during the pandemic, I was getting through a lot of this solitary work time by listening to a show called Critical Role. This, oh, we got critters in the audience, awesome. So, this is a show where a bunch of voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons online.

[00:03:51] Alanna: And they live stream each episode in like a four to five hour unedited thing that you can sit and watch. And [00:04:00] they have a pretty huge following, even to this day, I keep up with their shows. And And I was fascinated how I and so many other people were happy watching a bunch of people play an unscripted game for hours every week.

[00:04:15] Alanna: The platform they use is called Twitch, which is a popular platform for streaming video games and interacting with people who are playing video games. During the pandemic, there was a movement to get more artists and creatives onto Twitch as a way to invite people into their process. There were and still are DJs, ceramicists, digital artists, painters, cooks, bakers, woodworkers.

[00:04:40] Alanna: So I thought, hey, I wonder if anyone’s sharing live tech design on Twitch and decided to give it a go. Live streaming design on, type design on Twitch rather, began mostly as a way for me to get what was missing from those online events. I wanted to connect a little better to my audience and [00:05:00] have those deeper conversations.

[00:05:01] Alanna: That I was kind of missing. So, live streaming might have begun that way for me, but in the process I found out a lot more about designing in the open and all of the interesting benefits that it brings to your creative process. So three of those are a more open design process gave me audience interaction that really helped make my typefaces better.

[00:05:21] Alanna: So, you’re getting product improvements, which is like, Who doesn’t want that, right? And then a strong connection to my community, both colleagues and customers. So I both had people who were fellow type designers coming to these, and also people who purchased my typefaces and use them in their work. And also the ability to add to the greater conversation of what makes a typeface valuable.

[00:05:44] Alanna: This is something that can be hard to describe. So being able to kind of show the work and, you know, push the aside and show people how it’s made. It really helps add to that conversation as well. So what is streaming [00:06:00] like? It’s very much like these two images, that’s exactly what it’s like. So for the audience members, they get a little notification that I’ve gone live, and they can open up their Twitch and see what I’m working on.

[00:06:14] Alanna: They also have the ability to leave, basically, text messages for me in chat, and see what others are commenting as well. As a streamer, there’s a little bit of a technical setup. I use a program called OBS, which is Open Broadcast Studio, and it allows me to set up a little screen layout kind of like this.

[00:06:33] Alanna: I capture my computer desktop so people can see what I’m working on, and I capture my front facing camera so they can see me and all my weird reactions to drawing letters. And I also know some streamers that don’t appear on camera too. Totally fine. Their streams are fun as well. I play some royalty free music in the background to help create some atmosphere, and I invested in a decent microphone so I wouldn’t drive my audience crazy with bad audio.

[00:06:59] Alanna: [00:07:00] But that’s really all I did to set this up, so not too much. OBS allows me to go live on YouTube or Twitch and manage visuals and sound while I’m live. So livestreams are usually me just sort of saying hello to people in chat and catching them up on where I am in the type project. And then and then I start designing while narrating what I’m doing, and also watching for messages in chat.

[00:07:23] Alanna: So it can be a lot to handle when you’re kind of trying to run it, and when a message pops up I’ll usually repeat it out loud and then answer it. So, I found that having fun with it and trying to be a little bit entertaining really helps people sticking around and interacting. I have a little highlight reel here of some of the more entertaining moments from my streams that I wanted to share with you guys.

[00:07:44] Alanna: Interpolation. Have you ever watched that? I found a stick. Ahhhh. Wrong[00:08:00] 

[00:08:00] Alanna: button.

[00:08:06] crowd: Right? And then? What letter is it? I don’t know. It goes with the O.

[00:08:12] Alanna: Interpolation. Oh no, it froze. I mean, it’s cold here, but it’s not that

[00:08:18] crowd: cold. Woooo! Santa Claus! Okay, I’m gonna have to hug you up. Hug

[00:08:25] Alanna: the dagger.

[00:08:25] crowd: Seriously? Seriously?

[00:08:39] Alanna: Watch me forget

[00:08:40] crowd: everything.

[00:08:40] Alanna: Here we

[00:08:41] crowd: go. Wisdom. Woo!

[00:08:43] Alanna: So that’s

[00:08:44] crowd: totally what every second of the stream is like. Definitely

[00:08:48] Alanna: not

[00:08:48] crowd: edited together the

[00:08:50] Alanna: best clips. But

[00:08:51] Alanna: so you know, having a lot of fun with it these things come out, you start telling bad jokes, weird stuff happens, it’s awesome. So, but also when I ended it there [00:09:00] with, I’m a professional designer, watch me forget everything in front of you. That’s, I said it kind of as a joke, but it’s also kind of like a sad but true situation, because there is a huge level of anxiety and discomfort that comes with showing your process this openly.

[00:09:15] Alanna: But the video also contained so many more of my absolute favorite moments that, you know, make me want to stay. So, I would like to get you guys, or just maybe convince some of you. to push past your discomfort and experience the benefits of opening up your process and your knowledge to your audience. I want to help you flip some of the common fears that people have when they think about sharing their unedited messy process with others.

[00:09:44] Alanna: Starting with this one. So the fear is, I’m not good enough at what I do. And you may think that because you’re not the absolute best at something that you have, that you have nothing to share. But that’s very far from the truth. And I’m just gonna tell you, it’s just far from the [00:10:00] truth. We all have something to share at every single level.

[00:10:04] Alanna: So if we flip that, people will learn from me, or I’ll learn from them. So some of your audience will know less than you, and you can help them learn and share what you know. It feels great to pass on your experience to others. You can have an impact on their lives and their work by sharing your knowledge and your resources.

[00:10:22] Alanna: Some of your audience will know more than you, and I’ve found that many want to share what they know as well. So I’ve had both of these types of people show up in my streams, and I learned something from both of them. For the people who know less trying to explain something in a clear way really sorts it out in my own head so I understand it better.

[00:10:42] Alanna: And then for the people who know more, they’ve been here before, and they’ll always have great advice for how you can move forward. The next fear I have here is a big one. I’ll fail in front of people and I’ll lose credibility. This is probably the main one that holds people back. [00:11:00] We’re really used to showing our best selves on the internet these days.

[00:11:03] Alanna: We’re carefully creating every post that we share publicly, and it can be really scary to mess up in front of people. But making mistakes while creating something is very human, and people will not think you’re an idiot when you mess up, because They make mistakes too, and they know that. So if we flip this, I’ll show the human, human, I’ll show the human behind the work and create a deeper connection.

[00:11:29] Alanna: So when you get stuck on something in a live stream, it actually helps you connect better with your audience. It creates a sense of coming together to get over this hurdle, and you’ll find that people are willing to offer advice if they’ve encountered something similar, or just cheer you on as you deal with the problem in real time.

[00:11:46] Alanna: It’s nice to have a little cheer squad when you’re dealing with something. You get to put your problem solving skills front and center, and also sell yourself as a real professional, because you can handle this, you can deal with it. So, [00:12:00] the next fear, it takes too much time to create and share my process.

[00:12:04] Alanna: This one’s more of a roadblock than a fear, probably, and it’s a little bit true. It does take more time, but that shouldn’t mean that it holds you back. It really can take more time when you’re sharing your process and trying to create at the same time. Most of the time I can definitely get more stuff done working on my own rather than answering questions and getting sidetracked by the conversations happening in chat.

[00:12:31] Alanna: Another fear, oh sorry we’re on flip it but let’s flip that around. It helps me show up and stay motivated to work on the project. So So, regularly sharing your process can also help keep you motivated and on track, especially if you’re the type of person to let a deadline slide. So if I said, I’m gonna be on, on Tuesday night, you know, doing some live type design, you can bet that I’m gonna show up for that.

[00:12:54] Alanna: Maybe I’d rather binge Bridgerton, but I’m gonna show up and I’m going to make some type design. I [00:13:00] have more accountability because I have more people following along.

[00:13:06] Alanna: Another fear I also, I encounter with this is that people will steal my ideas. This is an interesting one. Putting your process and ideas out there for everyone to see might not work in every case and might not work in every project. Please don’t work on your NDA projects on livestream. That’s, don’t do that.

[00:13:24] Alanna: But the fear that someone might steal your idea should really be no different for your published or unpublished work. People will always take your ideas, some just outright, and others will take them and build on them and remix them. So if we flip this, you actually have a trail of proof that this is your idea.

[00:13:45] Alanna: When you live stream, you end up with hours of processed videos that are all dated and witnesses, people who showed up. So if someone somehow steals your idea while you’re doing this, you have pretty good proof of when and how you figured this all out and got to where you did.[00:14:00] 

[00:14:02] Alanna: The last fear, the last fear I have on here is, I don’t have the right personality for live streaming. You might not feel like you have the right personality for appearing on video and making things entertaining but that doesn’t really matter. It’s a skill that can be learned. I’m actually not an in front of the camera type of person, even though I’m up here today.

[00:14:25] Alanna: Yes. Big surprise. I started behind the camera and I would definitely prefer to be there, but you can learn how to speak and be entertaining.

[00:14:40] Alanna: So, flipping it. People will get to know you, and feel more connected to your work. You can find strategies to make things more entertaining. Before I began streaming, I watched a bunch of game streamers, and just sort of paid attention to what they were doing. I figured out what they did to keep the audience’s attention from things that they would say during a [00:15:00] stream, and also through the interactive tools that the platform offers.

[00:15:05] Alanna: So, the platform offers something, point systems that you can add. So I added a point system called Currency. It’s a type joke. And people can earn these currency points by watching, and then they can turn them in for things like Lana, check your posture. Make sure you’re standing up straight. Okay. Or they can ask me to show them a typography book from my collection.

[00:15:26] Alanna: Or they can even turn in their points to switch the stream into running in the style of Bob Ross, which makes everything much more chill and fun. And all those happy little letters, just getting along real nicely together, and it’s just a lovely, lovely time.

[00:15:45] Alanna: So final advice here, that you are still in control. So opening up your process can feel like a loss of control. But keep in mind that you still have control over how much you show. You get to set a [00:16:00] boundary, and all the unedited mess happens within that boundary. So, start by showing the parts of your process that you’re most comfortable with.

[00:16:08] Alanna: I avoided drawing an S on stream for a very long time, because they’re super hard to draw, and I was afraid of messing it up. But I draw S’s now, on stream, live, in front of people. I still mess them up. Thank you, thank you. It’s a big step. So I also choose which typeface project I’m going to be working on, and sometimes I make some notes as well, of like, these are things that I might want to do, so I have a loose plan, so I’m not confused.

[00:16:34] Alanna: It also doesn’t need to be in the format of a livestream. It could be a newsletter or a blog, or a series of posts on social. Just keep in mind that the more live or real time it is, the more opportunities you’ll have to connect and engage with other people during the process. and allow them to have an impact on the project that you’re working on.

[00:16:53] Alanna: But not only that, you’ll also have more opportunity to impact them and their work. Creating in the [00:17:00] open allows you to have an impact beyond the bounds of your own project. A web designer named Brad Frost said it better than me, and I don’t have this one in my notes. So it took me a while to realize that it’s not about the work that I do, but rather So I just wanted to leave you with that thought that sharing your process in the open can benefit you and your projects, but also result in a greater impact on the communities around you.

[00:17:54] Alanna: What’s up next, Tommy?

[00:17:58] Alanna: Yes, we need to [00:18:00] transfer because now it’s activity time. So we have to move a few things around up here. And while we’re doing that and handing some things out to you guys, I would like you guys to think about and maybe discuss with the people at your table something that you’re good at that you could possibly open up your process to other people and maybe what that might look like.

[00:18:21] Alanna: So have a little brainstorming session with each other and talk about what skills you have and how you could share that with the rest of the world while we’re setting up. Sounds good? Five minutes,

[00:18:29] Attendee: guys.

[00:18:32] Alanna: Okay.

[00:18:33] crowd: Actually, yeah, this part is easier for me. This is the part you know. He’s fantastic. Oh, Your joke’s landed, that’s the reality.

[00:18:50] crowd: That was fantastic.[00:19:00] 

[00:19:02] Alanna: Just about there.

[00:19:03] crowd: That’s good. Is that good?

[00:19:07] Attendee: I’m just setting it up now for the I

[00:19:14] crowd: do,

[00:19:18] Alanna: thank you.

[00:19:24] Attendee: Is it better if the mic came from here? And then it would be like, in front of your face? Yeah, I think it’ll

[00:19:29] Alanna: get under the camera though. Oh. I know. I might just have to pick up the mic and draw while I’m holding it. Which is fine. I can do that.

[00:19:38] crowd: Yes. Okay, we’ll get the mic. Like, yes, I have no more. Okay. I have [00:20:00] nothing else to add.

[00:20:03] crowd: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:20:23] crowd: Okay. We are going to record the screen. Yeah, I’m recording. Well, I’m recording this part.

[00:20:35] Alanna: No, I don’t think so.

[00:20:37] crowd: The question is very simple. You’ll see I think I’ll stand here for a [00:21:00] second. No, I think that’s Okay. Looking pretty good. For those of you that are new to the channel, I am Trenton, and I am going to be talking about the first challenge of the summer. This challenge is the first challenge of the summer and this challenge is going to be a little bit different because it’s going to be on a different level than the last challenge.

[00:21:28] crowd: So let’s get started. I am going to be doing some kind of challenge on a different level. I am going to be using a lot of different things.

[00:21:41] crowd: Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:22:00] Yeah.

[00:22:19] crowd: So you’re just using your Macbook, your phone, and your iPad, and your iPad,

[00:22:35] Attendee: and your iPad. I

[00:22:41] Alanna: can talk to you about it after. I didn’t notice

[00:22:45] Attendee: the amount of

[00:22:48] Alanna: text here, but I didn’t really care. Alrighty, people. Who’s ready for

[00:22:55] crowd: an activity?[00:23:00] 

[00:23:00] Alanna: Okay, friends. There is a QR code up on the screen. This gives you access to our text chat. We’re gonna run a not live live stream live here. So you guys can scan this QR code and it’ll leave you, lead you to a page. I guess I can show you because I have a thing. It looks kind of like this and there’s a little teal plus button that you can hit and you can send messages.

[00:23:25] Alanna: So you could ask me questions about what we’re drawing. You could ask me questions about the talk. You could talk about your favorite socks, you know, whatever, all topics. Mostly. Keep it simple. You can put who posted it by, too, if you want me to address you. You can also call for a microphone if you prefer to ask your question out loud.

[00:23:47] Alanna: Put your hand up and one of the lovely volunteers here will bring you a microphone. And I will just answer questions while I am leading you through a drawing exercise. Just [00:24:00] to make everything super complicated. All right, so this drawing exercise is a little thing you noticed I talked about Dungeons and Dragons earlier in the talk, so I kind of tried to combine this a little bit, and this is randomizing letter drawings with dice, so, and then using the parameters that you get to draw something.

[00:24:23] Alanna: So, that’s why I have these little dice here, sorry please, to do that. So I’ll show you some examples first so we know what we’re doing. These are some examples that I’ve done previously. So this top one I got like a chonky font that’s like a regular width with high contrast serifs and it’s rounded.

[00:24:43] Alanna: So I kind of tried to put all those things together and I got this. This middle one is medium, narrow, extreme contrast, slab serif, concave. So I’ll explain what all these things mean afterwards But I just wanted you guys to see some of the examples of what can [00:25:00] kind of come out of this So we’ve got those, we’ve also got one that has waviness to it, very exciting So for you guys to roll and choose your drawing parameters You can either go, you can search for, there’s a website called Tactical Tokens Where you can like roll on your foam dice Or you can just do what I end up with, and you can just do the same one as me.

[00:25:25] Alanna: So, I will bring up the chart one more time. Let’s move that to the side. If you want to roll yourself, there’s a chart here for you, but I will roll here and get our parameters. You should all have pencils to work on this. So, I’m going to start with the weight, because that’s a good one. So, It’s covering my dice.

[00:25:48] Alanna: We don’t like that. You want to see the dice? There we go. All right, so Nerd. This is a nerd party, [00:26:00] didn’t you know? Didn’t you know when you signed up? Come on. All right, so weight. We have, let’s see, we got four. So medium, kind of right in the middle of everything. That’s fine. We can go with that. I’m just going to write that down because otherwise I will forget.

[00:26:18] Alanna: Okay, I’m going to use another dice just for fun. For the width, we’ve got a three on that one, so narrow. Okay.

[00:26:32] Alanna: And then contrast. Contrast is the difference between the thick parts and the thin parts of the letter. So, we got a three on that one, which is going to be high contrast. Ooh, that’s fun.

[00:26:50] Alanna: You should also have a sample sheet at your table of these, like what these kind of look like. I made a little sample sheet of like what a high contrast thing would look like. So you can [00:27:00] share those around for reference as well. Stroke ending. Oh, what is that? It’s a two. Slab serif. Okay. Slab serif. How many of you are trying something new today? How, have you drawn letters before? Anybody here? Drawn letters? Yeah? Some people have drawn some letters? Or worked with typefaces? How many people have worked with typefaces? That’s gotta be everyone, right?

[00:27:30] Alanna: Okay, awesome. The serif we got was slab serif. Very exciting. And then I have this wild magic category down at the bottom, which we have a D24. To add random stuff, like fish, or sparkles, or sci fi, or something. So, we got a six. Reverse contrast.[00:28:00] 

[00:28:01] Alanna: Reverse contrast is what we got for that. Okay. Does anyone want me to leave this chart up, or are you all just doing the same as me? I can leave it up for a minute. I’ll try not to cover it too much.

[00:28:20] Alanna: Too many things on the screen. Okay, so I’m just gonna go ahead, you guys have a guideline sheet that you can put underneath.

[00:28:34] Alanna: You got this lovely sheet with stripes, so you can put that underneath your sheet and it just gives you, you know, straight lines to work with. I’ll also show you, I have another fun little tool that’s like a lettering tool, although I forgot my ruler, so I can’t really use those. But it lets you kind of draw lines you can stick your pencil in these and then draw lines across the sheet and then across with a ruler. This is hard to do one handed you guys. New, [00:29:00] new territory. One handed drawing. All right. Oh, and I lost my chat. Of course I did.

[00:29:10] Alanna: We got, hello. You rock. Go Alana. Aw, thank you guys. Ooh, this is new. Twitch IRL. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Love that. We got a question here. What’s a good starting place for an aspiring type designer? Ooh, that’s a good one. Good type design resources. Maybe come talk to me after. There’s a couple websites I can direct you to that have like a lot of resources listed.

[00:29:38] Alanna: I’m self taught as a type designer. I didn’t go to school for it at all. So I can definitely point you to resources to learn that kind of thing. We’ve got heart hands. Let’s do this. This is so exciting and mind blowing. Get so simple. I’m geeking out. That’s awesome. Thank you. Loving the fingernails.

[00:29:57] Alanna: Yeah, this is accidental CMYK, you [00:30:00] guys. I did not plan it. I just picked colors I thought looked nice and woke up the next morning and was like, oh, cool. Print design. Awesome. I love this platform and can you let us know your tech setup and how OBS works with it? Detailed. Important stuff. How caught up are you on campaign three?

[00:30:21] Alanna: This is a critical role question, you guys. I am caught up. We can talk later about what’s going on because it’s wild. All right. So I’ll do a little bit of drawing and then maybe I’ll talk about OBS. But I just wanted to get started here on our medium weight, narrow, high contrast, lab serif, reverse contrast.

[00:30:36] Alanna: So I don’t know if that’s the best thing that we’re doing. I will try to talk somehow sideways. Two hands to draw.

[00:30:54] Alanna: Okay, get rid of some of the shadow. Oh, [00:31:00] we need a word. What word? This is the hardest part of any lettering thing. Pick a word. Call it out or put it in chat. Either one. What should we do?

[00:31:15] crowd: What?

[00:31:16] Alanna: Beaumont.

[00:31:17] crowd: Oh,

[00:31:18] Alanna: I’m going to spell that wrong. I can’t spell. Okay, I think we could fit that. Hang on.

[00:31:28] Alanna: Nice. B A U M O N T. Did I got that right? Creative Pulse? That’s a good one. I can do Creative Pulse. I’ll do Creative Pulse. Let’s do that. Let me get two capital letters, which is exciting.[00:32:00] 

[00:32:11] Alanna: So I’ll usually start with like, roughing in a first letter, and then I’m trying to incorporate all of these things. So, medium weight is probably gonna be, but we’re reverse contrast, so I should explain reverse contrast.

[00:32:26] Alanna: This is a regular contrast.

[00:32:32] Alanna: This romance lettering is a regular contrast, so the thick parts are on the sides, and the thin parts are on the tops and bottoms. So when we’re doing reverse, we reverse that. Our thick parts end up on our top and bottom and our thin parts on our sides. So it’s a little bit different in that way. So I can show you in this example here.

[00:32:51] Alanna: I’m gonna do more narrow as well, so I don’t want to go too

[00:32:56] crowd: Yeah.[00:33:00] 

[00:33:07] Alanna: So it might look a little something like that.

[00:33:13] Alanna: Remember that you can grab a microphone as well if you want to ask any questions out loud. Just point up your hand.

[00:33:20] Attendee: Yeah, if anyone has any questions, just raise your hand, I’ll bring the microphone over and So,

[00:33:35] Alanna: I’m going to start with something a little, like, bad, and then, to make things narrow, It’s a big contrast.

[00:33:47] Attendee: Okay, we have our first question here. Yeah, go for it. Hello. Hello. I had a quick question when it came, comes to [00:34:00] NFTs, AI And just being in the creator economy, like, where do you see from yourself, like, where you want to be in the future, and how you hate AI, or love AI, or hate NFTs, hate crypto, love just to hear you.

[00:34:17] Attendee: Your tea, spill the tea.

[00:34:19] Alanna: Alright, quick question. Yeah, super quick. Super quick. I was just worrying this morning about whether I would have a job in 10 years. So, you know I’m wondering what backup career can I start working on. But, I mean, I am excited for AI in particular, like what kind of tools it’ll bring to make our work easier.

[00:34:39] Alanna: Especially as type designers, we have a lot of repetitive tasks that if we can get some computer assisted help with that, then that would be great. And I think there’s hopefully a lot of that coming in the field and less of it taking over completely. I hope that we still leave the human aspect in a lot of this.[00:35:00] 

[00:35:00] Alanna: Especially in creative fields. I really hope that it doesn’t take over quite that much. I didn’t really get into the NFT and crypto stuff too much, so don’t have a big opinion on that one. But thank you for the question.

[00:35:23] Alanna: How’s everybody’s drawings go? Go in. Oh my god, I forgot the slab serifs.

[00:35:32] Alanna: Oh no. It’s okay. How do I do a reverse contrast lapse there? That’s going to break my brain a little bit. I guess we’d have, I guess they’d be kind of chunky. This is going to look very western.

[00:35:51] Alanna: Something like that.

[00:35:56] Alanna: We somehow ended up with a western theme here. I don’t know. [00:36:00] Oh, yeah, wood type, exactly. There we go. Something like that. It’s a nice little art. We like them. Let’s go down quite a bit here. And so we’ll keep it thin on the sides. Because of our high contrast. And then, bloop. We’ll bloop it. You may have noticed from my little teaser trailer that there are a lot of sound effects.

[00:36:31] Alanna: When I draw letters, for some reason, I don’t know why,

[00:36:36] Attendee: it just happens.

[00:36:41] Alanna: I keep those questions coming. I think somebody asked about OBS earlier and my setup for that.

[00:36:51] crowd: What was the exact question?

[00:36:52] Alanna: I forgot the wording.

[00:36:55] crowd: Oh,

[00:36:56] Alanna: my tech setup for regular live streams. Usually I don’t do the [00:37:00] drawing on paper in the live streams. I’m usually showing my digital type design. So I basically just fronted off my Macbook. It’s free software, OBS, Open Broadcast Studio. And then you can set up different slides to switch to.

[00:37:14] Alanna: So I have like a taking a break slide that just, you can create an image basically that just goes on there. And then I have a slide that’s like my live scene, which has. my desktop capture and then my little picture of me in the corner. I added a fancy gif that says live type design now and it kind of scrolls through.

[00:37:33] Alanna: So fancy. Yeah, but that’s about it. And then I got a Yeti mic which is a fairly common mic that a lot of people use. And I just put it in my airpods and a little bit of royalty free music that I found. And And yeah, just hit go. It’s just my MacBook facing me. Yeah, I’ve just used my MacBook for, for mostly the stream.

[00:37:57] Alanna: It’s a little more technical to set up today because I’m doing [00:38:00] drawing, but,

[00:38:04] crowd: yeah.

[00:38:04] Alanna: So I don’t do a lot of drawing on the iPad Pro, but I do sometimes.

[00:38:12] crowd: Yep,

[00:38:12] Alanna: yep, yep. And you can bring this into OBS as well. Hard to find a break here. So it just brings this to the computer, and it’s like another camera.

[00:38:20] crowd: Yeah. I gotta get moving on this. You guys are gonna get it done before me.

[00:38:41] Attendee: I was going to, I was going to mention as well, we’re going to have a question period after as well. So

[00:38:50] crowd: just

[00:38:50] Attendee: with just how much kind of room noise there is, it might be difficult for you to even be answering. So.

[00:38:55] crowd: Okay.[00:39:00] 

[00:39:06] Alanna: What I’ll do is I’ll finish the word creative, and then I will maybe we’ll have a pause for more direct questions.

[00:39:17] Alanna: Alright, for the A, we’re gonna go super western with this. It likes to have a little upturned tail thing on the end. Very cool.

[00:39:57] crowd: Getting lost in the drawing [00:40:00] a little bit.

[00:40:01] Alanna: The text, having so much fun, love to hear it. What letter character would you start with? I guess, like for type design? Or just what we’re doing now? For type design, I

[00:40:19] Alanna: usually start with an N and an O to get round shapes and straight sided shapes going. For this, I just start with whatever is first in the word.

[00:40:28] crowd: I’m going

[00:40:45] Alanna: to do a nice big eye dot on this. There’s another word for the eye dot, it’s called the tittle. The tittle. So you can, if there’s a typeface and you really like the eye dot, you can say it has nice tittles. It’s a real thing. [00:41:00] Oh wait, this is where the nurse comes around. So the thin is

[00:41:17] Alanna: going to be on this side of the V, which is backwards from usual. And the thick side will be the other side. I think. Oh,

[00:41:33] Alanna: my V is super wide, but we’re going to go with it. Cause this is live. I

[00:41:45] crowd: will fill

[00:41:52] Alanna: in my seat, and then we will ask some real questions.[00:42:00] 

[00:42:20] crowd: Alright, while I learn something

[00:42:21] Alanna: new, I can draw with one hand.

[00:42:26] Alanna: So, maybe, Ami, I don’t know, if you want to just maybe focus on any

[00:42:33] Attendee: questions now. You have to be assertive in this part.

[00:42:44] Attendee: Okay, if anybody has any questions for[00:43:00] 

[00:43:06] crowd: Sure,

[00:43:06] Attendee: I’m, I’ll just start off with one question and when people sign up for the event one of the things we have on the form is if we ask you if you have any questions or any kind of things that are kind of troubling you with things. And one of the questions that came up more than a few times or one of the answers that came up more than a few times was how to document your process.

[00:43:24] Attendee: So certainly I would say that because you’re working live. You’re documenting your process has probably gotten razor sharp. Has it changed the way that you Has it Check check. Okay, has working live changed the way that you document your process in terms of how you might go back?

[00:43:47] Alanna: Okay, I think I think I’ve got the gist of it Yeah, I mean, there’s lots of ways to document your process, and it definitely depends whether you’re working digitally or physically. Like we can see here, this setup, you can record with QuickTime [00:44:00] and your iPhone attached to your MacBook if you have these kinds of tools available to you to record your process.

[00:44:07] Alanna: Also, you know, Procreate on the iPad, if you’re drawing has that built in. It will keep track, and you can just export a process video at the end of it. So. It’s just finding the right tool for whatever you are creating, because it might require something a little different. As for if it has changed the way that I approach my process and recording it, Not really, other than the fact that it’s really nice that OBS because it has that full screen layout, you don’t really have to edit anything together at the end.

[00:44:43] Alanna: It records all the audio and everything, so you actually just kind of have a final video at the end. You can record it all. And you can even create a vertical video structure so that it’s recorded and you can take clips of it for social media also. So OBS really is a powerful tool for recording something if you’re doing it [00:45:00] digitally and not having to do a ton of editing afterwards to create something like that.

[00:45:06] Alanna: Thank you. It looks like we’re doing a battery mic switch over there. .

[00:45:12] Attendee: Okay, we’re back. Oh, timing. We have some fresh batteries in your house. Timing. So I think you had your, the first question here. Yeah. When you start doing your stream, how did you figure out how long you would actually stream for? Also, like how long generally do your students run?

[00:45:26] Alanna: Yeah, for sure. So. I have two kids, and I have to stream after they go to bed at night, so I would usually start my stream around 8pm here, and I would be tired by 10, so most of the time it was about 2 hours. But, you know, I’ve done 4 hour streams before as well. We do a yearly event called Fontathon on Twitch with a few other people who stream tech designs.

[00:45:49] Alanna: And we all get together and we try and all cover 36 hours of type design, and we all kind of switch off. So somebody will do two hours, another person will do three someone might do six or [00:46:00] something. And we kind of switch off and try and have 36 hours for people to watch if they want to. So that’s been really fun, and that’s probably been the longest.

[00:46:08] Alanna: Ones that I’ve done, but you can just kind of go till you get tired and then just be like, all right, calling in the night. You guys see you later. So but also figuring out where your audience is and what time zone would work well for that. It would probably be better for me to do it a little earlier so I can get New York people.

[00:46:23] Alanna: But I find that the West coasters anyway around 8:00 PM going, all right, what do I do before going to bed? Let’s watch some type design. Sweet. So, yeah. Thank you. Anyone else? Questions about designing in the open? Any of that kind of thing? Or you can tell me about what you’re good at and how you’re going to share.

[00:46:47] Attendee: I have two questions. One is about choosing your streaming platform. You mentioned OBS. But did you try like Ecamm or StreamYard, and why did you choose OBS? And then, a completely separate question, but related to streaming, [00:47:00] is what do you do when like no one, like at the beginning, no one’s on the stream, and you’re just talking to no one?

[00:47:03] Attendee: You’re like, hey, we’re gonna go for four hours, guys. Thanks to one person, who’s my mom.

[00:47:09] Alanna: Yeah. So I did use Streamlabs for a little while, but felt a little constricted by it, and it didn’t have the vertical video thing. So then I moved over to OBS, and I’m just much more happy with because it’s open source.

[00:47:22] Alanna: It’s like, there’s so many more add ons and things you can do to customize it, which is nice. So I moved over to that. Second question, you get really good at talking to yourself on the internet. I have a couple people who turn out to most streams They are not type designers. They just like hanging out with me.

[00:47:39] Alanna: So it’s good to find a couple friends that might just come and chat with you and it makes it a little bit easier. But I found that I just started really narrating everything that I was doing if nobody’s there. So I’m really talking about like, okay, we’re gonna work on this little E and we’re gonna make the bottom look like this because of these reasons and I’ll just sort of start there.

[00:47:56] Alanna: Spouting random type design knowledge until somebody talks to me. [00:48:00] That’s awesome. It’s like shit that’s be crazy on the street is like perfect for streaming. Good tips. Thanks. Thank you. I have one. I’m curious. First I was told not to hold the mic so close because I’d blow out of the thing. Anyway I’m curious besides live streaming, are there really great examples that you’ve seen of people who are, like, kind of creating in public with that sense of transparency?

[00:48:26] Attendee: Who do you look up to outside of the live streaming environment?

[00:48:30] Alanna: Yeah, for sure. That quote from Brad Frost, he’s a web designer Dan Mall also does quite a bit of it in the web side of things, so they’ll often use it there. For a project where. Maybe they need extensive feedback from the communities that they’re building this website for.

[00:48:45] Alanna: So they’ll introduce things slowly or, you know, get feedback on a certain part of the site on how it’s working and really keep that process open throughout and really engage their communities through it. So, you can also use this in creative pro projects [00:49:00] and actually Brad Frost, That guy that I mentioned in the last slide there.

[00:49:03] Alanna: If you look him up, he’s got extensive blog posts about it and stuff and how he works that into it, and also how you can convince your clients to get on board with that as well because that’s a big hurdle for a lot of projects is, you know, getting the clients to let you put, kind of, half done, still professionally stuff out there on the web.

[00:49:21] Alanna: Kind

[00:49:24] Attendee: of on that same topic what other live stream things have you kind of started checking out now that you’re doing this? Are you checking out? Like, more professional versions of it to try to up your game, or have you just kind of gone down a rabbit hole on any other kind of particular weird things?

[00:49:40] Alanna: I don’t mind being small for mine. Some of the gamers get tons of people, and you can’t even see what they’re, you can’t even really interact with them anymore. I mean, some people will YouTube, but it’s very similar in how it functions. I haven’t really tried going into Instagram lives yet, but that’s another way you can do it, is just kind of go live on Instagram or TikTok I think now [00:50:00] too.

[00:50:00] Alanna: So yeah, I haven’t really explored those ones too much. I’m kind of just, I’m happy on Twitch for now. Is

[00:50:07] Attendee: there anything on Twitch non type related that you’re checking out?

[00:50:11] Alanna: I watch Critical Role every week, and it’s mostly Critical Role. Occasionally I’ll watch someone gaming, especially if a new game comes out, and I’m like, Oh, what’s this like?

[00:50:19] Alanna: You can kind of go watch someone. It’s like a review almost, you get to see them playing it, so, yeah.

[00:50:26] Attendee: I was going to say, if anyone didn’t have any other questions, did anyone do any type that they kind of thought stood out, or was kind of interesting? Or you might ask for a tip on a particular thing? Or you got a question?

[00:50:38] Alanna: My Twitch handle? At Alana Munn I think I had it on my, It’s asleep

[00:50:48] Alanna: You can find me in most places under this handle. It’s like an elenema, and it’s like what my name would be if I was a Pokemon.

[00:50:59] Alanna: I think [00:51:00] Forrest has a question.

[00:51:01] Attendee: Actually, I was wondering about what was your learning curve like with glyphs? Because I came from Illustrator to that, and it was painful.

[00:51:09] Alanna: Yeah. Once I got into it, I can’t go back to Illustrator. Just the control you have over the handles. And Glyphs is so much more.

[00:51:18] Alanna: I love being mathematical about it. So yeah, but Glyphs is a great program to learn. They also have a huge tutorials section to take you through. Definitely the most user friendly. I’ve also used RoboFont, but I prefer to use Glyphs. So, but yeah, it is a bit of a, it’s a bit of a transition there from getting used to Illustrator and then making things a lot more mathematical and accurate in Glyphs.

[00:51:40] Alanna: Do

[00:51:44] Attendee: you have any sense of how much work or opportunities have come your way through either the live streams or I assume essentially your, your, your archive? And maybe a question as well of, of how you present [00:52:00] or otherwise like your compilations were super awesome. Do you, how you present your, your archives and think about that?

[00:52:07] Alanna: Sorry. So the first part

[00:52:15] Attendee: basically being like I’m Alana, I’m doing this awesome work, Asterix, here’s how you can pay me. Like, has that led to any of that?

[00:52:25] Alanna: So I think a large part was connecting with my community and colleagues mostly. But, you know, I’ve made some customer friends as well who because it’s sort of a deeper connection, once they find me, it’s like, now I have them randomly emailing me when something new comes out, or, You know, so they’re becoming a lot more of kind of like, you know, there’s that thing about the super fans, like you have a certain amount of followers who are actually like would give you anything if you put it out.

[00:52:53] Alanna: So I think it really helped in developing that a little bit more. And it, it did spread a little bit as well. I think when people [00:53:00] hear. I design typefaces on Twitch. They go, Oh, that’s novel. I’m going to look at her fonts. So I think that has happened a bit as well. It’s hard to measure that directly, but yeah.

[00:53:13] Alanna: Thank you.

[00:53:14] Attendee: Awesome, guys. Let’s have a round of applause for Lana.