Is Lo-Fi The New Hi-Fi?

This week on Overtime, we explore what design trends might look like once the pandemic is over, a DIY approach to producing quality video content on your own, and why paying attention and documenting your feelings during this time in history may just pay off in the future.

Subscribe to Overtime on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or download the episode via Simplecast.

Thanks to Patreon for sponsoring this episode! Visit CreativityOverEverything.com to see how Patreon can help you do your best creative work with the direct support of your fans.

Links mentioned in this episode

• Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
• Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella

Transcript

Meg: Hiya, buddy. It’s me, your host, Meg “It’s Fine, I’m Fine, It’s Fine” Lewis, and welcome back to Overtime. This is Dribbble’s weekly podcast where you know what? I continue to deliver the design news and give you the tips you need to create your best work or at least give you some tips to do something with your time. This week on Overtime, my eyes get so big that my dang eyeballs fall off because I wonder what the heck is going to happen to design trends while we’re all stuck inside? Plus, why the heck do my videos on Instagram always perform terribly and how do I actually film a decent quality video all by my lonesome? And why slowing down and taking in information during this dumb time in human history might do you some dang good later on in life.

The system for creative people is broken. It puts algorithms over ideas, quantity over quality, what’s easy to sell over what’s good, you know, money brands and just about everything else over the people who actually make the things. And people just say that’s the way it is. Well, Patreon says screw that. And here’s a wild idea. Let’s put creativity over everything because they’re your ideas. It’s your work that captivates audiences, inspires conversation, and builds community. So, it’s time to ditch the old ways and let your fans give you the freedom and stability you need to do your best creative work. It’s not rocket science, it’s just way better. Visit CreativityOverEverything.com and see how Patreon can help you do your best creative work with the direct support of your fans.

Meg: Alright, so I’m going to take you on a little tiny track through my mental space here. Fast Company released an article recently called “Can Direct-To-Consumer Brands Survive the COVID-19 Apocalypse?” And okay, so obviously we know that this article was coming. It makes total sense. Can they? Read the article, find out, because that’s not what I want to talk about. While I was reading this article, I realized I had sort of an existential crisis about the landscape in which DTC, Direct-To-Consumer brands, sort of exist in the, you know, design world. So, as we know, throughout the last couple of years, these DTC brands have really shaped the design landscape with 3-D environments in product photography, you know, there’s a very specific aesthetic that goes along with these brands when it comes to product photography. Okay, generally speaking, it’s like solid color blocking, there’s a cube with the product on it, maybe there’s a hole and a hand’s coming out of the hole, it’s got great nails. And so that sort of aesthetic has really shaped the design industry and trends over the past couple of years.

And so, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching what brands are doing during this time when they can’t spend money on studio environments and creating content. So, they’re repurposing old content or they’re going super low budget and using home video footage from their consumers and from the customers or from the team. We’ve all been seeing this stuff going around, and it occurred to me that if we’re removing new high production design and environments from the picture, and we’re going back to the past to grab what we already had, or we’re creating low-quality new stuff, what’s going to happen? Like, as we keep going, is the design industry in a way going to pause because we’re kind of just diverting to low quality? Or are we just going to like lo-fi is the new hi-fi? I don’t know what’s happening and what’s going to happen, I don’t really have an answer. I’m hoping somebody does.

But I don’t think any of us do know what’s going on or what’s going to happen there because, spoiler alert, I don’t really think that we’re going back to work anytime soon. I don’t really think we’re going to be in studio environments, coughing on the camera operator, you know, I just don’t see that in our futures. So, it makes me really curious to know what’s going to happen with design. And obviously, so much of design is digital, and maybe it’s not going to affect us at all. Maybe we’re going to create new 3-D environments digitally. You know, 3-D design is a thing that I don’t know how to do, but you might. So that’s good, good for you. What a skill to have right now. But I think that it’s important for us to think like, what’s going to happen, like, I think we’re all getting very innovative and very creative with what we can do right now. And I think that we’re going to come out of this with a new design style and a new set of trends that we never foresaw coming. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what actually happens with design and then going back and looking at some of those trend projections from before everything went south so that we can see the difference and what this new landscape of us all being inside all the time is, you know, what is it changing about the design industry and about trends.

And on that note, when it comes to being innovative and changing the way we operate, for me, a lot of this has been figuring out how I can do everything by myself. You know, in the past, maybe I’ve paid other people or collaborated with other people to create content and to do things that I wasn’t so great at. And a lot of it was about, you know, filming videos and being in the same room as people helping me to do that, because I don’t know how to operate a camera, I’m bad with lighting, all these things I don’t enjoy, and I’m not good at them, so I’ll gladly allow somebody else who knows what they’re doing and enjoys it to do it. But now I can’t do that, because it’s not an option. It’s just me alone in a room with a microphone all the time. And, you know, I think it’s fun to have visuals. So rather than just hearing my voice all the time, I think it’s kind of fun to be able to see my face. So, I’ve been experimenting lately with taking videos and I’ve realized a lot of things in the process. I’m bad at filming high quality videos because I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t have the right equipment, I don’t have good lighting skills. I have some lights I bought for pretty cheap that just stand there. They came with tripods, I pop those up, but they don’t seem like they’re doing a great job. And I’m assuming that’s my fault, but maybe it’s them. I don’t know, is it them or is it me? It’s probably me. And so, I’m trying to figure out all the stuff that I know a lot of you are also trying to figure out alongside me.

And this week, specifically, I’ve been trying to look into a lot more and luckily for all of us, a company called Wistia exists, and this is not sponsored, I promise, I’m truly a big fan of Wistia. By definition, they are sort of a video hosting platform, but they also do video marketing and brand development for your videos and blah, blah, blah. But the nice thing about Wistia is that they have a blog that basically tells you how to do everything you need to do when it comes to taking videos, whether you’re by yourself or whether you’re just learning, or whether, you know if you’re a beginner, intermediate, advanced videographer, whatever. They have a blog that helps you to know what exactly to do and so they’ve been so helpful for me, this week specifically, because this week, they’ve been doing a series on their blog called “(Out of) Office Hours” where they really just break down the topics of recording videos at home and all by yourself and what to do, what equipment you need.

So, I’m going to break down this information for you because I think it’s been very helpful for me. The first thing that I think resonated with me so much, and I know a lot of designers out there have fancy cameras, you have a DSLR at least and so you have this nice equipment. And because, maybe like everybody, you dabbled in photography at one point in your career, I sure did. And so, the important thing is to have a higher quality camera than maybe the webcam that comes with your laptop or the camera that’s on your front facing phone camera, you know? So, if you have a DSLR lying around already, if you don’t, there are other options, but if you have one already lying around that has autofocus or has face detection on it, you can just pop that in front of you and go to town recording because it’s always going to be able to detect your face and make sure that you’re in focus, which is great. And the nice thing is that if you get a special HDMI to USB adapter, you can just pop that baby right into your laptop and use the DSLR as your webcam. So, yeah, that’s going to make your video calls really luxurious, but it’s also going to allow you to take videos of yourself for whatever purpose whether you’re doing tutorials of you creating something, or if you’re like me, and you’re trying to take a video of yourself doing an improvised comedy meditation, there are a lot of reasons that you might need to record yourself, basically.

And so, if you connect it to your computer, then you already have a monitor. So, it’s feeding into a monitor so you can look on your computer to see what you look like to see if you’ve set it up for yourself. It’s a great way to just do all of this on your own. So, it can be very helpful. And then whenever I’ve recorded videos in this way this week, it’s been nice because I pop open, I record all my audio in GarageBand, which is totally nerdy and very low tech, because it came with my computer and I don’t know how to use anything else. So literally right now, this podcast, I’m recording in GarageBand. I hope somebody’s chuckling out there, I should be embarrassed, but I’m not, I’m proud of it. So, what I like to do is I record my audio separately in GarageBand because I know how to edit it in GarageBand and then I just record the video with QuickTime. And so, the QuickTime records the audio as well, but I don’t really know, you can’t edit audio in QuickTime. I know how to edit audio in GarageBand, this is so sad. I think there are a lot of people out there that know more than me that are totally laughing at me right now, I’m sure. But I don’t know because I’m alone, so I can’t see you.

And so, I edit it in GarageBand and then bring the video over into Adobe Premiere and then slice it up and piece it together. And that works really well for me. I don’t know how to use Adobe Premiere at all, but I have a Creative Cloud license, so I have Adobe Premiere. And it’s like, the thing that I have that allows me to put graphics over my videos and kind of chop them up together, and at least figure out how to do a transition. I don’t know what I’m doing. So, it’s helpful for me to have a very limited amount of knowledge on premiere. And I’m assuming that most of the designers listening to this and the creatives listening have the Creative Cloud already. So, it’s also nice that I have a nice microphone because of the podcasting. I have a Blue Yeti mic, which is a pretty popular, very affordable microphone for podcasting. And it’s just great for all around audio so I can, again, I can plug that directly into my laptop and that’s what I use to record the audio. So, if I have a DSLR already, and I have the Yeti mic already, I have technically everything I need in order to create at least a high quality looking and sounding video which is very engaging.

But of course they also say the best equipment that you have is the equipment you already have, you know, like the best stuff you can get is what you already have, which I think is a really wonderfully inclusive message. And you know, most of us have smartphones, most of us have at least a computer with a webcam on it. So, if that’s what you have, then work it and that’s okay because hopefully your content is the best part of your video anyway. So, we have tools at our disposal, but I think for recording videos of yourself, it’s helpful to remember that you can utilize your desk, you can be that person that’s sitting at a desk talking. They recommend that you have your camera, your webcam, whatever you’re filming on, about an arm’s length away and make sure that it’s at your eyeline or a little bit above and tilted downward a little bit for the most flattering chin angle, which, you know, if you follow me on Instagram, you know I love a low chin angle, but I also equally appreciate a no-chin angle. I like 12 chins, or I like zero chins. That’s the sweet spot on either end of the spectrum there for me, but for most people, I know conventional beauty standards prefer a one chain approach. And that’s okay. And if you just want one chin, you’re going to go right above your eyeline pointed downwards about an arm’s length away. Okay, cool.

So, I relayed that information to you. You have it now. Now go do what you need to do with it. But my question for you now, and I don’t have the answers to this, and I wish that I could just sit with somebody in a room and have a conversation where they could give me actual answers. But something I’ve noticed about posting videos on Instagram, most of my audience is on Instagram, that’s where I communicate with most people, that’s where people follow me, it’s where I feel like I can be myself. I have created a safe space for myself there to feel comfortable being myself and feel supported, and I love that. So, I really rely on my Instagram community to show them everything I’m doing and allow them to support me, which I think is wonderful. But every dang time I post a video on my Instagram, I get like, no engagement, hardly any views. It is a bummer. And for a long time, I was blaming Instagram. I didn’t want it to be my fault, I wanted to blame somebody else. And obviously it’s fun to blame Instagram and the algorithm and so I was like, “Dang it, Instagram. How dare you not show my videos to as many people as you show my flat image posts to?” And then somebody who knows more than I do reached out to me and said it’s actually not Instagram’s fault. It’s because your followers aren’t used to enjoying videos from you. So, Instagram knows to not show videos to your followers, or your followers just don’t interact with videos as much so Instagram doesn’t surface videos for them. And what a bummer, because I’ve kind of dug my own grave there because I don’t post that many videos, so people aren’t used to seeing videos from me. So then whenever I do post a video, Instagram’s, like, “They’re probably not interested in this, so we won’t show it to them.”

So, I guess the right feedback here is to just hunker down and post videos all the time so that people and Instagram just get used to me being on video. I don’t know. But I’ve also noticed this other thing about Instagram specifically, is that the lower quality, the higher engagement. So if it looks like, you know, a super branded approach where I’ve spent a lot of money on this high production value video, I hardly get any comments, I hardly get any engagement or views, which is all that matters to me is that people are seeing the video. I hardly get any of it. And I think it’s just because it seems so clinical and impersonal because it’s so heavily branded, the quality is too high, it just looks high production value. And so, there’s no personal touch, there’s no authenticity there, and so, people are just less likely to look at it. But if I were to post a video of me holding up my iPhone, front facing camera on my face crying and talking about something, everybody engages with it, everybody cares more, they watch it, they watch it till the end. And I agree, I engage with content that is lower fidelity on Instagram than I do with stuff that’s more high production value.

But I feel like the opposite is the case with YouTube. So, it leaves me kind of confused and not really knowing where to start, and where to go because I feel like I can’t move. But the most important thing for me is to remember that doing something is better than doing nothing at all. So, what I’m trying to do now is just experiment. I’m going to post more videos on Instagram, maybe lo-fi, hi-fi, try different things, see what works, see what people like. And I don’t know, it’s kind of discouraging when I could just make an image post with the same content and the same message, and people will pay attention to it. But as soon as I post my face in a video, nobody likes it anymore, which is very discouraging for my self-esteem. But I try to remember that it’s like an algorithmic based situation. It’s not necessarily me. I’ve just got to get people used to me posting videos. But I also worry is it dumb of me to put all of my eggs in the Instagram basket and just, you know, not have a YouTube channel, which I don’t? Is it smart to, you know, sort of lean on Instagram for everything? I don’t think it is, it’s probably not great to lean on one platform all the time. I have so many questions. I’m not drawing any conclusions here. Are you drawing conclusions for me? Do you have the same questions for me? Please, you know, reach out to me because I’m confused. Send me articles, tell me what I should do. I’m just lost right now in videos. But hopefully you are too, so if anything, these Wistia tips have helped you and hopefully just me spewing all my worries on you has given you a little friend to commiserate with.

I am super excited about this next bit because I’ve been feeling a little blehh lately creatively, and I feel like I don’t know what to make or what to do or what. And a lot of the advice that I keep hearing doesn’t quite resonate with me that well because I think everybody just has really strong opinions in every direction, as always, this is what humans do. But I heard something recently that hit me hard and it hit me beautifully and good, and it felt really nice to hear. And it was a bit from a podcast called “Sugar Calling,” which is a New York Times podcast. A recent episode, which was a phone call conversation between two writers, Cheryl Strayed and George Saunders. And the episode title is “Everything Is Always Keep Changing.” And it’s a very beautiful episode. George Saunders has been Cheryl’s mentor for a number of years, like 20 something years. George, I guess, is an instructor in the MFA program at Syracuse University and Cheryl was a student decades ago and now they just have this one wonderful mentorship relationship.

And if you don’t know George Saunders, he is a writer who wrote, like his most recent is Lincoln in the Bardo, which I have heard a lot about, I haven’t read it. He wrote Civilwarland in Bad Decline, and he has written in a bunch of other publications, just a brilliant writer and very regarded and blah, blah, blah. But he’s also been teaching the MFA program at Syracuse University for a long time. And in this conversation in this podcast episode, he reads this email that he wrote to his students during, sort of at the beginning of the pandemic when the schools shut down. And so, I’m going to read you a little beautiful excerpt from this very long email. The excerpt is short, though, and I’ll kind of talk to you about why I think it applies to designers specifically, but here we go. The email says:

“We are, and especially you are the generation that is going to have to help us make sense of this and recover afterwards. What new forms might you invent to fictionalize an event like this where all of the drama is happening in private essentially? Are you keeping records of the emails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It’s all important. Fifty years from now, people the age you are now won’t believe this ever happened or will do the sort of eye roll we all do when someone tells us about something crazy that happened in 1960. What will convince that future kid is what you’re able to write about this. And what you’re able to write about it will depend on how much sharp attention you’re paying now and what records you keep. Also, I think with how open your heart is. I’m trying to practice feeling something like, ‘ah, so this is happening now.’ Or, ‘Huh, so this too is part of life on Earth. Did not know that, universe.”

And scene. Okay, this is Meg back again. I didn’t know how to transition from Meg reading a quote to Meg being Meg. But I’m back, think you understand that now. Okay, so George Saunders’ point here, his beautiful point is that for writers especially, we are going through a major part of human history right now. And when big, giant, important things like this happen, you know, it gets written about for decades and generations, hundreds of years. And it’s kind of like a wonderful creative process to gather information right now, right? Because we can do a lot with what we’re feeling, what’s happening around us, what’s happening behind closed doors and isolation, how you’re feeling, all of this information that you’re taking in.

And it could be potentially a very missed opportunity, if, you know, you’re just not paying attention. And I think it’s a wonderful thing for us as creatives to draw in this inspiration and to record as much information as we can get right now, because we’re feeling things we’ve never felt before, we’re experiencing things that humans, especially in the digital age, have never experienced before. And that is amazing. That is incredible and impactful. And there is so much, when this is all over, that we could do with all of this. And that is energizing to me as someone who has a very specific creative skill set that I could be channeling my abilities into something absolutely beautiful and amazing. Now, and or when this is all over and or 30 years from now, you know? I look forward to the day where I’m able to showcase something absolutely brilliant and beautiful that I made because of this terrible time. And I am looking forward to young people rolling their eyes at me when I talk about it because it seems like it was so far in the past.

And so, I hope that George’s words and my little, whatever you call this pep talk – I don’t know is it? I hope that it gives you a new perspective. I hope it gives you some energy because you have a skill set that allows you to create. It allows you to, you know, visually represent something that has been tragic and weird and beautiful at the same time.

Okay, hey, now I know when you hear a podcast and they say like and subscribe, review, cuddle, cuddle me, massage me, touch me, I want a hug. (Laughs) Sorry. It’s so easy to brush it off and say, “Well, they have thousands of listeners so, they’re not asking me to do it.” Well, let me tell you, yes, you are listening. Yes, there are other people listening but literally no one is writing reviews, rating us or nobody – you know what? Nobody’s calling the hotline. I think it’s because you think, “Oh, everybody’s calling the hotline. They’ll never hear mine or play mine.” Nope. Nobody’s calling it, no one is. (Laughs) So, I beg you, I’m begging you, please.

I think it brings me such joy to hear the hotline recordings that we have gotten, which has been like less than three. No, it’s been three, it’s been exactly three. It brings me so much joy to hear them and I think that it makes the podcast richer and I just really want you to interact with me. I’m lonely. So truly, if you do like this podcast, please review it. Okay. Yes. And you know, also mention my name so that maybe I don’t get, Meg Lewis, me, doesn’t get thrown in the dumpster. But most importantly, please call our hotline. You know why you should call the hotline? Let me tell you: because it is a place for you to just dump your thoughts, how you’re feeling right now, what’s on your mind, whether it’s good or bad or happy or sad, you can cry, laugh, just share with me anything that’s on your mind. It can be about being stuck indoors, or dealing with life as a designer, maybe you just got laid off, maybe you’re thriving and you don’t know how to feel about that. You should call the hotline and leave a voicemail. There’s nobody that’s going to answer so you don’t have to have an awkward conversation and you can just dump your voice. You don’t even have to say who you are, it’s anonymous, ah! The number is 1-833-DEZIGNZ, spelled with “z” in a weird way. So that’s 1-833-DEZIGNZ and leave us a voicemail sharing what’s on your mind. The number is 1-833-DEZIGNZ and leave an audio message and you know what? Your recording might be featured on the podcast with my response. It gives me something else to do with this podcast. It gives you something else to hear. It allows us to feel closer together. It’s a beautiful thing and I love it so much.

And that’s it for this week’s episode of Overtime. Please stay healthy, wash your hands, take care of your mind and body and do what you can to keep those around you healthy and safe too. And as a creative community, let’s still get together, let’s band together. Let’s lift each other up, not tear each other down. We can make some beautiful things during this time. Okay, bye-bye, hear me next week!