Why you don't need a personal brand (w/ Debbie Millman)

“If you’re a good designer in five or ten years, you’re gonna want to look back on your portfolio with horror and nostalgia and somewhat amusement… because you want to be growing,” says illustrator Debbie Millman. Debbie is the host of the longest running podcast, Design Matters, and the author of the book, Love Letter to a Garden. In this episode, authenticity and growth are at the forefront. Debbie talks about the loss of humanity with the rise of personal branding, how her fascination with origin stories and the universe led her to gardening, and her advocacy with the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization working to help sexual assault victims heal and reclaim their lives. Follow Host: Chris Duffy (Instagram: @chrisiduffy https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en | chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/) Guest: Debbie Millman (Instagram: @debbiemillman https://www.instagram.com/debbiemillman/ | LinkedIn: @deborahmillman https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahmillman/ | Website: debbiemillman.com/ https://debbiemillman.com/) Links Love Letter to a Garden (Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-letter-to-a-garden-debbie-millman/21716104?ean=9781643264981&next=t) joyfulheartfoundation.org/ https://www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/ Subscribe to TED Instagram:@ted https://www.instagram.com/ted/?hl=en YouTube:@TED https://www.youtube.com/@TED TikTok:@tedtoks https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks?lang=en LinkedIn:@ted-conferences https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences Website:ted.com https://ted.com Podcasts:https://www.ted.com/podcaststed.com/podcasts http://ted.com/podcasts For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Chris Duffy?

  You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. Today's guest, Debbie Millman, is one of the most acclaimed and talented podcasters around. You know her from her fantastic Design Matters podcast, but she's also an incredible artist, an author, an illustrator, an educator, and so much more. We're going to be talking with Debbie about how to stay curious, how to grow as an artist, and how to design the arc of a creative life. That is a question that Debbie has been investigating for more than 20 years on her show, Design Matters, and it's one that has lessons for people in all phases of their life. I cannot tell you how much I have taken away from listening to Debbie's show and from learning from her. So, to start us off, here is a clip from a Design Matters episode. This was a live event that they did at the Green Space in NYC.

• 0:47Chris Duffy?

  And at this event, Debbie is being interviewed by her wife, the writer Roxanne Gay, about what inspired Debbie to start Design Matters in the first place.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  You've been doing Design Matters for 15 years, which in podcast years is about 100. Why did you decide to do a podcast? And how have you sustained the interest in doing one for so many years?

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't really decide to do one. I was asked, I was offered an opportunity by Voice America Business Network, which was a fledgling internet radio network at the time. And I was offered the opportunity to pay them for airtime on their network. And at the time, I was doing very well professionally in a commercial realm. And I had surpassed any possible hope or dream that I'd had professionally in my branding career, but because it was all commercial, I actually felt that I was dying and that I had lost all of my creative heart.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  And, you know, I wasn't writing anymore. I wasn't drawing anymore. I wasn't doing anything creative. And I understood why. I mean, my professional success was the first time I'd ever been successful at anything in my life. So of course, at the time, I was like, okay, I'm not going to do anything but this because it feels so good to be successful at something finally in my 40s. But then that wore off, you know, that metabolized and I needed to do something creative. And this felt like a sneaky way to be creative, but still be able to justify it from a business perspective, because I could interview clients, or I can interview people in the design business. And so that's really how it started. It was

• 2:36Speaker 02

  really a hail Mary to my creativity. And because I have such generous friends, they were willing to come on the show. I mean, they had no reason to come on the show. I mean, Steve Heller is sitting in the front row. Steve is my mentor, my fairy godfather. He's been on the show 13 times. Every time he says, okay, he'll still be doing, because now I want to do with him every year, so we can create this oral history of design together. I'm shocked that he says yes. But why it grew, I think, is just because of the guests that I have and the generosity in their hearts. For me, I'll never, ever get tired of talking to people about who they are and how they've become who they

• 3:21Speaker 02

  are and how they make their lives and how they create and make things out of nothing.

• 3:29Chris Duffy?

  Okay, so from the Design Matters podcast to the How to Be a Better Human podcast, here's Debbie.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Hi there. It's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 4:20Chris Duffy?

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• 5:07Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Debbie Millman. I'm a designer. I'm an author of eight books. My new book, Love Letter to a Garden, will be out shortly. I am the Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the Editorial Director of Print dot com, and the host of the Long Learning Podcast, Design Matters.

• 5:28Chris Duffy?

  So Debbie, I once took a workshop from you that was about how to have a great interview. And one of the secrets that you taught all of us was to make sure that your first question revealed deep research about the person, that it was surprising and not something that they get asked often, and that it made them laugh. So my first question to you is, does having taken your class and remembering your lessons count as a good first question?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  It's a great first question. It's actually awesome because I don't even know if I remember teaching the class.

• 5:58Chris Duffy?

  It was so helpful. Genuinely, it was so fantastic. And you know, you're so wonderful at interviewing, which I think is actually quite unusual for someone who has a really illustrious and big accomplished career of their own, that they're also really interested in other people's careers and accomplishments.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Oh, well, thank you for saying that. I would like to think that I've improved over the years. I have been doing this now for 20 years and I...

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Feel that it is an acquired skill. The more you do it, the more you begin to understand how people respond to different kinds of questions, how humor is so helpful in creating rapport, and how showing deep respect with deep research is so appreciated and then, in many ways, rewarded because people become so engaged in sharing such meaningful conversation. And it's not opportunistic at all. It's really genuine. I am genuinely curious about people and I'm endlessly fascinated by how they've become who they are.

• 7:16Chris Duffy?

  I think that something that I've learned from you in listening to your podcast and in reading your books and hearing you talk is how everything is designed, in a way. Everything has a design to it. And I think it's fascinating to think about how there's the visual design, there's branding, there's all of that. But there's also the design of an interaction. A lot of what you've just described is putting thought into, how can I design an interview or a conversation so that it goes better? And these are often places where we don't think about design at all. Do you think you landed on that naturally or is that an outgrowth of your professional work?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  I've discovered over the decades now that it's not really random inasmuch as it's been serendipitous how I've gotten to certain things. But I do think that the common denominator in everything that I do is a search for identity. In the branding work that I do, it's about the identity of a product or an organization or an institution or a movement. In my writing, it's trying to understand human behavior and motivation. And Same with my illustration work. And in the podcast, it's a search for a person's identity through their origin story

• 8:35Speaker 02

  and their beliefs and the work that they make and create.

• 8:38Chris Duffy?

  That idea of finding the through line in your own work, I think that's something that people really struggle with, especially young people starting out in their careers. But what advice do you give people when they're trying to figure out what their thing is, what their brand or their self is?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Okay, well, that's going in a very different direction because I don't believe that people should be working on their personal brand. I actually find that to be somewhat reprehensible and really the opposite of what I'm talking about. I'm talking about discovering soul. And brands, by their very nature, are created by humans. Brands are not self-directed. We, as humans, have to direct them. And they don't have a soul, and they don't bleed and breathe and have a heartbeat. Whatever we project onto them is our own construct. When people ask me about personal branding, because I do so much work in branding, that's

• 9:41Speaker 02

  inevitably a question. And I've thought about it long and hard. And brands are manufactured. It's meaning manufactured. Humans are living, breathing entities. We're a species. And we're messy, and we change and evolve, or at least one would hope that we do. We grow. And brands are not self-directed. They're only directed by humans. Some humans are better than others in that direction and in their intention. But what I suggest that humans work on is building their character and building their reputation and building their body of work.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And doing those three things will help create or communicate, really, your persona and your intentions and who you are. But once we start to position ourselves as a brand, first of all, it is about positioning. It is about creating a manufactured meaning.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Then we begin to lose all the wonderful things that make us human. Now, we can own brands, we can direct brands, we can manage brands, we can design brands. But the minute we begin to see ourselves as brands, we become a commodity. And I find that really unfortunate and a little bit sad.

• 11:00Chris Duffy?

  I love that distinction. And I've actually, I've never heard anyone else make it, and I've also never thought about it that way, but it really rings so true.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if I thought of myself as a brand, I would, and as a brand consultant, I would say to myself, well, doing so many different things actually dilutes your brand because it's going to take a lot longer to master those different things and to create a reputation and a body of work. But that's, my passion is doing different things. I also would tell my podcast director, moi, that having the name Design Matters after 20 years is probably a bit of a misnomer because you're doing a lot more than talking to people about design. Given my expertise, I've sort of re-engineered the meaning to be more about how the world's

• 11:51Speaker 02

  most creative people design the arc of their lives. But if I was starting out now, knowing what I'm doing and the kinds of interviews that I undertake, I would never have used that name. But I also know, as a branding person, that there's a lot of equity in it. And so I'm just hoping my audience goes along for the ride.

• 12:10Chris Duffy?

  I want to go deeper on the three things that you talked about. How can someone build their character in your mind?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  By working really hard to be as transparent about who they are as possible, by telling the truth, by showing up, by living up to your word. I think that those are very personal, inner directives that shouldn't be done either opportunistically or for any other reason than just being, no pun intended here, a better human.

• 12:47Chris Duffy?

  And then what about reputation? I think that's also such an important piece of this, too.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  See, a lot- A lot of these things are about consistency, about doing things in the way that you feel is true to what you believe in consistently. And if you do that over time, then the reputation building and the character building happens organically. It's not something that's positioned or done for a specific reaction or for a specific reward. It's just who you are and standing up for those beliefs, whether or not they're popular. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, but if you start to shift in the wind with popularity contests, then that's the opposite of building a character or a reputation. Now, all of this takes time. I would tell young people to have some patience, to have some patience on building their reputation

• 13:34Speaker 02

  and their character, because if they work too hard at coming out of the gate all fully formed, they're not going to have the opportunity to evolve and to be able to move into different pathways. All the time, I tell my students, don't get so caught up in what your portfolio looks like now, because there is absolutely no question in my mind that if you are a good designer, in five or 10 years, you're going to look back on that portfolio with horror and nostalgia and somewhat amusement. Because you want to be growing, you want to be better than you were 10 years ago. And to be able to see the growth is actually a great thing. It's a great accomplishment.

• 14:18Chris Duffy?

  That also ties into the third piece that you mentioned, which is having a body of work. It's really easy to not build a body of work or to not put work out there or create it because you're so worried about it being perfect or it being good enough that in 10 years it will stand up. Whereas, I think everyone who I really respect as a creative person or an artist in any way, they get better by making things. They're not worried about each thing being perfect. It's the iterative process. It's not like the one golden statue that they've created.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  That's another thing my students often say is, well, I'll do this when I have more confidence. And I'm like, well, when do you think that's going to happen if you never actually try? Because the only way to get confidence is to do it successfully, repetitively, and if you don't start, you're never going to have the opportunity to get to that success. So what are you waiting for?

• 15:11Chris Duffy?

  Speaking of waiting, we are actually going to have to wait just a moment to get even more brilliance from Debbie because we're going to take a quick ad break and then we will be right back. Don't go anywhere.

• 15:27Chris Duffy?

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• 16:09Chris Duffy?

  environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:20Speaker 04

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• 17:18Chris Duffy?

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• 18:19Chris Duffy?

  And we are back.

• 18:23Chris Duffy?

  Debbie, when you're thinking about your own work, how do you think about art that is making money, that's paying your bills, that kind of functional art? Art that's healing, that's solving something or wrestling with something inside of yourself? And then art that is inspiring or building a community? How do you think about the lines between those different kinds of goals in your work?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Well, in many ways, they're created for different purposes. Art that is in exchange for money. And I'm not talking about art that's hanging in a gallery that's offered for sale. I'm talking about commissioned art, design, illustration. That generally is done for a client with a creative brief or very specific directions on what is required. And I think that's great and I love illustration. I think that especially satire right now is some of the most important creative work happening in our culture.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Work for self-healing tends to be more self-directed and as long as somebody is...

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Able to create something on their own terms. It's worthy and important and necessary as well. And then lastly, I think fine art is different in that your audience could be anyone. Anyone. And it's about creating some type of visual language that's never existed before. I mean, the great artists examining the world through a new lens. And that's what I would imagine is the highest aspiration for any artist, to examine

• 20:13Speaker 02

  the world through a new lens and share information about who we are or why we do the things that we do, really trying to understand, in its purest form, human motivation and expression and communication. And I think poetry does that, too, actually, the best poetry. As for what I make, I just have a hard time seeing what I do as, you know, offering a new perspective on the world or a new way of thinking about something. In my interviews, I'm trying to give my guests an opportunity to do that, I guess, but I'm not the one doing it. So it's different.

• 20:57Chris Duffy?

  I completely disagree. I so see you as doing that, as bringing a completely new perspective and a way to see the world. I think of that in everything that you do. I mean, I just think there is such a clear Debbie Millman vision for what art and what conversation looks like. And to me, that is such, it is such a work of art and it's so inspiring. So I really, I have to disagree and say, there is a way that you look at the world that's different than other people.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. Thank you. That means everything to me, coming from you. And I really, really thank you for that.

• 21:29Chris Duffy?

  Both of your TED Talks, they start with this big history in science, right? Like, we go back hundreds of thousands of years to when something is created. There is this thread in a lot of your work that is thinking about the specific and the personal in placement in relative scale, right? Like, in the scale of the universe or in scale of nature. So I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about why understanding our relative place in the world matters so much to you.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Thank you for noticing that about my work. I am, in another lifetime, I would have loved to have been an astrophysicist, a theoretical astrophysicist, to be specific. But I have, and I'm very willing to admit this and recognize this at a very early age, absolutely no mind for math.

• 22:22Chris Duffy?

  Same.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  I spend an ordinate amount of time thinking about how the universe was created, where did the hydrogen and the helium come from? Do black holes come out the other side and create other universes? I mean, I can't even begin to tell you. I have subscriptions to so many science podcasts and science sites and I just spend a lot of time wondering. And so, in the same way that I sort of go back to the very beginning of a person's life in my podcast, I am just obsessed with origin stories and understanding how we all got here, as well as understanding how an individual got here.

• 23:07Chris Duffy?

  That's a really interesting thread that you've been pulling on for many, many years. And to connect it to your latest work, this book that's coming out, I'm wondering, what are some of the ways in which a garden has made you think differently about origins or endings? Because when I work with plants, sometimes it's like, it seems like it's dead and then it comes back, or it seems like it hasn't started and it actually has. So how have you thought about origins in your own garden?

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Well, I have always had a relationship with nature, ever since I can remember. I was always happier when I was around trees and meadows and lots of different greenery. My family had a house in the Catskills for a very long time. I went to summer camps all through my childhood in the Catskills as well. And as I became an adult and started living in more urban places, always tried to have

• 24:13Speaker 02

  a little tiny piece of outdoors, whether it be a deck, or a terrace, or an actual backyard, and spent from my twenties to my

• 24:25Speaker 02

  50s, trying to have some sort of garden without really having any success, truly, any success. I was just ill-equipped to manage soil and sun and pH and all sorts of things that, you know, you have to think about. I just wanted a garden, so I planted things and hoped they'd grow. And, you know, when you plant roses in a shady environment, they're not going to thrive.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Then during COVID, I, at that point, I had gotten engaged to my now-wife, and she had a house in Los Angeles and I had a place in New York City. And we decided during COVID that we would stay at her house because we'd have a car and an ability to be able to travel more, get out of just sort of the house. And I started to turn her backyard into a garden. And suddenly, because I was there every day, and it's a beautiful environment to have a garden, it's nice and warm and very consistent in the weather, that I was able to actually have success for the first time.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  And was able to grow vegetables and flowers and shrubs and even a lemon tree. And so I began to think quite a lot about the way in which plants grow and then go into hibernation and then come back, you know, perennials, annuals. And I became really fascinated by how a seed can turn into

• 26:11Speaker 02

  everything, into a life system. And I started posting some of my

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Adventures in Gardening on Instagram. And I think Chi Perlman saw what I was doing, my dear friend Chi, and because she does a lot of work with Ted and is a chief curator, she asked me if I'd be interested in doing some interstitials the year that Ted went completely online. And I decided that one of those would be about gardening. And between that and seeing a piece that I did for a farm magazine on my expedition to Antarctica in search of a total eclipse of the sun, Timber Press, which is an arm of Hachette, reached out and asked me if I'd be interested in writing this book about gardening.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  And I said, well, if I wrote a book about gardening, gardeners would roll their eyes and kind of laugh like Snoopy, you know? Because I am by no means an accomplished gardener. I am at the very beginning of my journey with a teeny weeny bit of success. And by success, I mean like a salad. Like I grew everything that went into a salad. And they actually were interested in that angle. And so that's what I did. But it's very much about learning how to do something for the first time, overcoming many, many obstacles, whether self-imposed or real, and then having a modicum of success that I could celebrate.

• 27:45Chris Duffy?

  Uh huh. So many of the topics that have come up in this conversation already are also reflected in nature and in plants and in gardening, right? The idea of patience, the idea that when you're working like with a tree, you have to prune away excess. This idea of avoiding extremes, right? It has to be not too sunny but not too shady. This idea that there's this impossibility of perfection. These are all things that you you find in gardening as well as in all the other places we've been talking about it.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And then the rebirth. I walked outside of my apartment today and my neighbor has a hydrangea, large hydrangea in front of their house, and the buds are out. The buds are out. And I find that to be miraculous, that this plant...

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Grows these gorgeous flowers and they last for a really long time. And then they fall off and go to sleep. And then somehow, because of some change in temperature, because of some way the sun hits it, who knows exactly. I'm sure that people do, but I don't. There they come back again.

• 28:52Chris Duffy?

  We are also going to return in just a moment, right after these ads.

• 29:03Chris Duffy?

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• 29:48Speaker 03

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• 31:01Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. We're talking with Debbie Millman about how to design the arc of your life and how to find your own way to make art. I know that I have been really inspired by, and I know that many people, when I talk to them about you and your work, are really inspired by the ways in which you have taken things that are awful and painful and bad and found beauty and joy and love and connection despite those things.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  I do a lot of work and I'm on the board of the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is Mariska Hargitay's foundation. She started after starring in Law & Order SVU 20, over 20 years ago. Now the show is 26 years old, but she started Joyful Heart about a little over 20 years ago.

• 31:45Chris Duffy?

  And just for people who aren't already familiar, the Joyful Heart Foundation, the mission is to heal, educate, and empower survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, and to shed light into the darkness that surrounds these issues. And you are on the board.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Being on the board helped me make my life make sense. I had been severely abused as a young girl by my stepfather and spent a lot of years in shame and pain and secrecy. And then when I had the opportunity through a friend to work on developing the No More Movement, I had the opportunity then to be introduced to Mariska. And then Mariska asked me if I'd be interested in being on the board and then if I'd ultimately become chair of the board, which I did for five years. I'll be on the board for the rest of my life, but I was chair for five years. Given my background in branding and positioning...

• 32:45Speaker 02

  It felt very much like these two disparate experiences and knowledge of could come together in a way to try to help eradicate sexual violence in our culture, eradicate the rape kit backlog, which is what we were spending a lot of time and effort doing at that time, and really try to provide a way for people to feel safer about disclosing their own abuse, mistreatment, and so forth. The amount of people that have reached out that I've been able to point in different directions for their own either disclosure or help or support has been remarkable.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  And once again, helps me feel like something really terrible that happened has been, I've been able to use that as a way to help others and then work on my own healing in the process.

• 33:45Chris Duffy?

  Hmm. Something that I always feel like is a really important distinction to make too is, you know, there's this really very common, but also kind of awful idea of like, oh, there's a silver lining in every cloud. I completely disagree. Like some stuff is just bad.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, just shitty. Yeah.

• 34:04Chris Duffy?

  But there is this, this different, separate, and I see why sometimes people get confused, idea, which is that terrible things can happen and there can still be beauty. It's not like it required the terrible thing, but that doesn't mean that like there can't be beauty and joy, right? It's not now you're forever, your life is forever one way.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  You know, I thought a lot about what my life would have been like if these terrible things hadn't happened, because there were several sort of cumulative things in addition to the sexual abuse. And it's very hard for me to

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Know what that would have been like. Maybe I wouldn't have had more, as much drive as I do. Maybe I would feel okay as is. Maybe I'd have an ordinary life. Maybe, it's hard to say. It's really hard to say. And Seth Godin and I have talked about this quite a bit. You know, people like to ask the question, you know, what would you tell your 30-year-old self? And Seth once said to me, nothing. Because if I told them anything that changed where I am right now, then I, I wouldn't want to risk it. And I kind of feel the same way now. I mean, yes, I'd love to have, I'd love to be exactly who I am now with a little bit less self-loathing and shame, which I'm still working on every day.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  But other than that, you know, I'm married to the greatest person in the world. I do some of the most interesting things that I could imagine. And, and I'm still not done. I kind of just have to be grateful for that.

• 35:36Chris Duffy?

  There's a frequent myth in creativity that you have to be a tortured artist, that like suffering, that the more you suffer, the more your creativity will blossom. And it seems like, from what you're saying and from this conversation, that your most creative, your most flourishing periods have come when you've actually done more healing, that you've gotten rid of some of that suffering and been able to be more creative. Is that true? Or is there a connection between your well-being and your living a creative life?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  I do think there is. I do think that one of the best pieces I've ever made, from, from an art perspective, came at a moment when I felt very, very down.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  It's hard because I, I'm like, can I, should I get that energy back? I don't, I don't want that energy, but I really love that piece. It had a lot of energy in it. On the other hand, I think about what Elizabeth Gilbert says. In, I believe, her TED Talk about feeling like your best creativity comes from when you're fully relaxed into that creativity, where you're doing the work every day and you sort of let the muse come through you and you're open to it. And there is, I think, a bit of both. I do know that when I'm drawing, I have to go through a period of torture with what I'm doing before I get to ease.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  And I know when my work is tortured and it's dreadful, it's gruesome. And then if I get to a point of ease, there's a certain, I guess, for lack of a better term, flow state, almost effortlessness, that comes into doing the work. And that's my holy grail now. It's not a matter of being happy or unhappy because that flow state could actually come... You know, I guess it's like endorphins when you're doing, when you're working out. You have to get to a certain point for that to happen. You don't start doing something and then the endorphins come. Takes quite a while. For me, it's only happened a few times in my life, so I have to...

• 37:48Speaker 02

  I can only rely on those experiences to know they even actually exist. But they come after a lot of struggle. And I would say the same thing happens for me with art. And I can tell. I'm like, oof, that's tortured and that's free. That's easy.

• 38:02Chris Duffy?

  What was the piece that you said that was like one of the best things you've ever made?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Part of it is on the cover of my book, Self Portrait as Your Traitor. And so it was about my feeling at the time that I was being utterly duplicitous and how angry and sad and down and depressed I was inwardly and then trying to be...

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Cool girl, to use a Julian Flynn term from Gone Girl, you know, being the cool girl and pretending that nothing mattered. And I was in my studio and just created this piece called Self Portrait As Your Traitor, Self Portrait As A Liar, Debbie Millman, once again, being duplicitous. You know, that was the text all through it. And I just love that piece. I mean, it's one of the most honest pieces I've ever done, but I also did it like 30 years ago.

• 38:55Chris Duffy?

  Uh huh.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I did it in the 90s.

• 38:58Chris Duffy?

  Well, it's also interesting to talk about that piece and the process because I've kind of used the word art, like lowercase a, in a broader way. And you've really thought about art as like capital A art. Like, it's not just like a broad category for you. It is a thing that is worth being respected and taken quite seriously.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I agree, 100%. And Roxanne and I, my wife Roxanne Gay, we have quabbles over this. Is that a word, quabbles? Squabbles.

• 39:29Chris Duffy?

  I like quabbles. Quabbles feels right. That's a loving.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  She thinks that I'm an artist. I think I'm an illustrator and a designer. So, yes, I do feel like there is a big difference. And I mean, I said I'm an artist, but I said it in a lowercase way. I did not say it in an uppercase way. And that's a very important distinction in the way I consider my own work, my own body of work.

• 39:52Chris Duffy?

  What would it mean to be a capital A artist? What would it take for you to become a capital A artist in your own mind?

• 39:59Speaker 02

  To be much better at what I do, to have something to say through the work, to start a quest to create something original. I tend to love conceptual work, so I'd need to find a conceptual idea that I would want to explore and investigate. And I'd have to learn a lot more, I think. Which doesn't mean it's not possible. It's just quite a big commitment and an agreement with myself on what I would need to do to do it. I don't know that I could become an artist, capital A artist, and still do all the other things that I do.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I'm lucky that I've fallen into the work that I have as a podcaster, as an educator, as a brand consultant, mostly because I've just done them for so damn long. I'm lucky I actually got better at all of them. I think capital A art is different.

• 41:02Chris Duffy?

  Is that a standard, that standard that you've just described, some really high bar? Do you hold other creative people in your life to that bar, do you think?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Well, I know a number of other people at that bar. Like, they are considered some of the best in the world. I mean, you can tell when somebody is just at the very, very top of their talent. And, I mean, I just interviewed John Batiste. I mean, he is a genius. He is a genius. He is a genius. And there's no one else like him, no one. That is capital A R T I S T, artist. And when you are beholding that, you know it. You know it.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  They are the best. That's what I'm really talking about, when you have a completely original imaginative mind.

• 42:03Chris Duffy?

  That, to me, is also the trait that I see in all of the really, all of the people that I admire the most, is that ideally you would have this without the, and I'm not saying you specifically, you generally, ideally you would have that desire to raise the bar without the critiquing yourself overly harshly. But I think that the idea that like, I'm not just going to coast, I'm always striving for something more, those are the people that I respect the most, who that, you know, they're in their 80s and 90s and they're still making new work and they're still looking for something different in themselves and in their community. I think the quest is really the, I'm so much more inspired by people who are trying than by having accomplished.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. And to bring it all the way back to my gardening effort, that's part of why I also love it so much. You know, you can see, I mean, this is going to be very corny, but you see growth. You see there's evidence of growth. It's amazing.

• 43:02Chris Duffy?

  Well, Debbie Millman, thank you so much for being on the show. It truly has been an absolute honor talking to you, and I couldn't admire you more. Thank you for being here.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chris. Now we have to do part two on my podcast.

• 43:13Chris Duffy?

  Oh, okay. Well, the sticks are, the bar is really high.

• 43:21Chris Duffy?

  That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Debbie Millman. Her latest book is called Love Letter to a Garden, and she's the host of the fantastic Design Matters podcast. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of audio gardeners helping us to all grow and flourish. On the TED side, we've got the thoughtful pruning of Daniela Balarezzo, Benban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tansika Sundanivong, Antonia Lei, and Joseph de Brine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who know that a good podcast can only grow in accurate

• 44:03Chris Duffy?

  soil. On the PRX side, they are a team of audio design mavens with a killer fashion sense. Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. We would not have a show if it wasn't for you. Please help us spread the word. Please share this episode with a person who you want to keep in the creative arc of your life, whatever that means to you. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care and thanks again for listening.

• 44:36Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Hi there. It's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled. No extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 46:02Speaker 02

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• 46:32Speaker 06

  Places like AIM, they do it right. It's different than the whole college thing.

• 46:36Speaker 07

  Man, growing up, all my dad said was, you gotta go to college.

• 46:39Speaker 06

  But that was the thing back then.

• 46:41Speaker 07

  Right, so I went.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  And you're doing all right.

• 46:43Speaker 07

  I mean, yeah, but I'm not even working in what I majored in, still paying for it too.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  Have you seen where all the jobs are now?

• 46:49Speaker 07

  No, not really.

• 46:50Speaker 06

  Specialized fields. Boeing says we'll need over 100,000 aircraft maintenance technicians. Aviation companies always look for people with hands-on skills.

• 46:59Speaker 07

  Really? And here I am, sitting with you.

• 47:01Speaker 06

  Well, not a bad place to be. But at AIM, people actually train on real aircraft, real tools, real equipment.

• 47:07Speaker 07

  See, those are the kinds of skills the industry is looking for.

• 47:09Speaker 06

  Exactly. And it's usually much shorter than a four-year college.

• 47:13Speaker 07

  Man, I wish I knew that back then.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  It's not too late.

• 47:16Speaker 07

  True. Working on planes does sound pretty cool.

• 47:18Speaker 06

  If you like hands-on work, it's worth checking out. Visit fixjets.com.

• 47:23Chris Duffy?

  Objections from the Boeing Pilot and Technician Outlook 2025. FAA approved AMP school. Not all programs available at all campuses. For consumer information, visit fixjets.com.