All About Aaron Draplin: How He Became a Graphic Design Icon
In , he became a senior designer at Cinco Design Office of Portland. Here, he worked on accounts such as the Gravis, Helly Hansen, Nixon. Draplin Design Co. Aaron Draplin — Hello Andrew, Of course, man. The Logo Creative — What was the turning point in your life when you decided to become a design and how did you proceed. No joke 47 questions later!
The Logo Creative — Are you a morning person or night owl and is there a reason why. The Logo Creative — Can you describe or give an overview of your logo design process. The Logo Creative — What brands do you most admire and how do they influence your creative thinking. Roger Remington You know, personal goals, taking care of yourself, managing time off.
AD: Well, it can become a sickness. I have to be careful of all that shit.
Getting ahead - Graphic Designer Aaron Draplin - Being Freelance: I didn’t really even know what a graphic designer was, but I knew I wanted to be into art. It goes all the way back to skateboarding. We were making our own grip tape graphics, our own stickers and our own little goodies.
We had legos and everything, pizza Fridays, you know. It was fine, I had my buddy, it was cool. It is all up to me. Not chew myself up too hard. I have to make peace with that shit. I gotta ship some shit. We good? Aaron Draplin. Learn how to create a graphic design portfolio with style and impact in this complete guide to portfolio design.
Log in Sign up. Post date:. Design icon Aaron Draplin talks about the philosophy behind his influential career. All images courtesy of Aaron Draplin. Field Notes pocket notebooks. Pretty Much Everything by Aaron Draplin. AD: Of course, every day. City of Portland poster. Poster for Dinosaur Jr. Thanks for the time. This post was originally published on March 28, For science.
And often, for the people who get beat down looked over or disenfranchised. In the interstellar cosmos? A: What do you do when you suffer from creative block? What helps you get back into the zone? People use that term a little too much, when frankly, they should work a bit harder. Savour that, and be thankful for that simple fact. D Make design a hobby, and the rest will fall into place.
D: It went well! We wrapped up our fall tour last week! Seven weeks! A million wild-eyed designers! So fun. D: Scheming up the spring tour! Hitting the road in March and April for a romp across the rust belt, down the eastern seaboard and back out west through the plains states. Excited to get back in the van! So I've never lost that, you know, and this ability to guide myself and this ability to make my own hours and make my own time.
That's why I wanted to talk to you. You know, because I want kids to hear that this exists, you know,. Steve Folland: So you weren't, in-house in a studio for two years and then, you know, your friend said, you can do this, but how did you go about doing that? Like, were you still working on the side that whole time?
Aaron Draplin: It was a transition. Cause here's, here's what happens, you know, is, you know, all the way since I was a kid, I was always working on the side somewhere, right. What's paramount is that you have to pay your bills. In high school.
Aaron michael drazen biography graphic organizers for middle school pdf
When you're in school, you have to make sure your rent is covered and whatever the things are. And you know, and then of course, when I got on my own and you have to pay for an apartment and all that kind of stuff, I always had the focus to make sure that my bills were paid just whatever the day job was. But there was always some side hustle, always going on, either for fun or for some cash.
And what happens is, you know, when I got my first studio job, it was being paid 65, bucks a year, you know, and I don't know what the hell that is. I don't know what that is. How many Cadbury eggs divided by, you know, the Queen's Royal I don't know, but 65 grand was a lot for a kid who was 30, 31 years old.
It was a lot. And it allowed me to start to get ahead. Like when I got my job at this, this my only agency job I've ever had, they said to us, you're allowed to work freelance all you want, but just keep it out of the day job. No problem. But I started to do stuff at night there because listen, what the studio gave us. It gave us like ping pong tables, not necessarily to play.
And I had some killer moves by the way, but it wasn't necessarily just to play that ping pong table meant real estate for me. Aaron Draplin: I can print little GOCO cards and little screen print things and use this large surface to let them dry back in my apartment. You know, you've got cardboard boxes and things and stuff spilling, you know, okay.
So I would stay late and I would use that facility just to have space and real estate to play with. I would use that facility to plug my amp in and play my guitars as loud as I never could ever play inside. You know, my apartment, I get in trouble in my apartment. How there it's an industrial kind of area. It closes at night. No, one's around, it's secure and I'm in there hammered.
So I would take advantage of those facilities, right. And these extracurricular efforts, we'll just say, but what happened was those things that were, I was using either to print or just play. Aaron Draplin: I started to get jobs and then whatever I was making at my day job, those jobs kind of started to outweigh what I could make my own after seven o'clock, six o'clock when everyone went home.
And it basically tipped it tipped, and I could make more freelance than I could. And I have to be careful here because I love that job at Cinco design. You know, they gave me a shot. I've learned so much from the owner, Kirk James. I mean, this is a long time ago at 17 years ago, but he is to this day, one of the greatest designers I've ever been close, you know, watching him make things.
And I learned a ton, but to go out on my own, he did kind of say to me, you know, this is a natural step and you know, you're going to go do this. Aaron Draplin: We'd love to keep you here. Um, but we understand that you're going to go make this, you know, this leap and, and my first year on my own in , I just love to say this because I know you're not supposed to talk about numbers and, you know, measurements and just all this ages and all this kind of, but I'm 47 years old now.
But then in , I was 31 years old in my first year, completely freelance, independent from meetings about meetings and, you know, account managers who I miss. These are friends, you know, independent from everything. I cleared grand that first year. And that was amazing. So what that basically meant was I made three times as much, but smarter than that, I started to pay everything off.
I bought a house right before I went on my own. Aaron Draplin: I was still under this agency. I bought a house, you know, that next year I cleared a little more than and just kept on going up. And just hustling, taking everything some years, there were folders where, you know, 50 or 60 logo folders, right. Some were a hundred, some are 10 grand, all amazing.
And within about five or six years, I had paid my house off and had no debt. And that was , I guess that was about seven, eight years. No, , I was free of all debt and had money in the bank and have not looked back since, so. Steve Folland: Wow. Cause I mean, that was a lot of Cadbury's cream eggs. So you made the right choice. But how, how did you find, or how did those clients find you, you know, like those early clients and it built and built and built, how were you finding that work?
Aaron Draplin: Well we were snowboarders and skateboarders and stuff. And, and that is an insular weird little world and the same crew and characters that I moved out West with. Those guys kind of went home that at least those guys, they went home to start families and different things or go to school back and, you know, go start a business back in the Midwest.
But those were the same sorts of characters that I met in the snowboarding industry. You know, uh, when I went to work for the magazine and those people were working at brands and things and stuff, magazines, footwear, board companies, Burton, all the big names in the snowboarding world, right? Libtech and Ride and all the cool stuff. Well, I got to know the industry.
So when I went to work for the agency, that industry, let's just say the privilege that I knew some of those characters that helped me get on certain jobs at the agency because one of them was called Nixon watches, right. Aaron Draplin: And these cool watches that you can get at like a skate shop or something, or even bigger. But because I knew the world, you know, I had had the pedigree of actually being in the West and snowboarding and skateboarding around this stuff in the nineties, and then went to school and then went and worked in the magazines that I had some authenticity on the Hill.
And then of course, when I started to work for these things, here's how it happened. It was in my agency job. People would hit me up. One thing was to start a magazine with some friends. And another thing was to start a headwear company, Cole headwear. Another thing was a sort of little binding company called the union binding company.
So right there, those were three retainers, right? Not all that much. Aaron Draplin: I think it was five grand for the mag and maybe 10 grand for Cole and maybe another 10 grand for Union. I mean, what that 25 grand meant right there. That's what allowed me to get a down payment for a house and then allowed me to save and get ahead. And every year, those cut bigger and bigger and awesomer and more and more responsibilities.
And so when I went on my own, it was not a clean break as far as, you know, as those things kind of grew and the freelance outweighed the ability, whatever they could give me with the jobs and stuff, I made that transition, but I did it with some strategy.
You know, first of all, I had some money in the bank when I made that jump over to where it was just me. I want to say I had about five grand in the bank. Aaron Draplin: Now what that number meant was that five grand or maybe 10 grand. It meant I could fly home at any time to see my parents back in Michigan. And then I could loan a friend a little bit of money.
It meant I could pay my bills right away. Little things, cell phones and stuff, and insurance, car insurance, car payments, all that kind of stuff. Everything was always so practical to this day. It's still that way. And what it was, it was all a March towards some kind of precipice of freedom. You hammer all night long. So you can just get out of the agency sitch.
So you can start to pay off these things. You know, other buddies were out chasing young ladies, some were chasing guys, whatever you want to call it, they're going ape. I wasn't really doing that. Aaron Draplin: You know, I was working, saving, getting ahead, but I did it with the transition. Like there was like a gradation because I knew people that just jumped out.
And then I also knew people that jumped out and didn't quite get jobs. I knew guys from the snowboarding industry, they hit me up while I was still in the agency. Those were these budding little companies. And they turned into things and within, two or three years, , five, six, seven, those were proper retainers where I was, you know, making a living off of just those three big ones, the magazine, the headwear and the bindings.
And of course, littering in between all those cracks, logos, things, stuff, merch, when I started to go on the road right around or 12 or something, and talk about all this and share it, that was a whole nother little weird appendage that started to grow out of my five things like, you know, you do some logos, you work for a couple of buddies and before you know it, you've got like sort of your five fingers on one hand, right?
Aaron Draplin: Well, before I knew it, you know, things just kept, you know, field notes started somewhere there and that was self-initiated and then given to friends in Chicago, and that became a company , six, seven, something like that. So that suddenly there's another appendage that comes out of this. Suddenly you've got like 12 or 13 things on your one hand and you're, it's like, wow, man, this is starting to cook and starting to go, you know, but I guess what's important is that when I made that transition, the commitment I had made to myself was, first of all, I did not do broke.
I did it with a little bit of padding. It might've been five or 10 grand. So at least in the very worst-case scenario, if the work dried up, I'd have five, six months to cover myself to try to go find a job, try to find new clients. But luckily it just kept exploding, you know, into more and more things. Steve Folland: It sounds like a lot of stuff was coming your way and, but you're clearly loving it, but how did you manage the work-life balance side of it as in, how did you know how to manage your workload?
Even if you are loving it? Aaron Draplin: Well, there wasn't a lot of balance there. You know, I worked as much as I could because I understood that this is my shot to get ahead. What else am I going to do it? You know, I mean, what were my splurges? They weren't necessarily going snowboarding anymore. It might've been going to the record store, but I remember this, I remember this, you know, when you say work-life balance, you know, it's like when I got on my own, I started doing these road trips in the fall that were amazing.
Aaron Draplin: And I would go back and see my mom and dad in Michigan, I would drive all the way there and do loops and woopty dues and crisscrosses and all sorts across the States.
Free biography graphic organizers
And basically lived in my little Passat wagon sometimes, you know, but you would go to a town like St. Louis, Missouri, and get a little hotel on the outskirts. That's clean and safe and has wifi and all this. This was at the Dawn of wifi, or five, six, because it meant, my clients didn't know, but I was in Missouri kicking in some little hotel room.
And what I would do is I would work late nights in there.
Aaron michael drazen biography graphic organizers for kids
And then I would get up in the morning and I would go see the city and do stuff. So, to answer that question, there wasn't a lot of balance. Aaron Draplin: I took every job I could get. I mean, I try, there were a couple of things I had to let go, but that's how you get ahead. But I will say it, it opened up so much time that I could go to do things like those road trips.
That was amazing. You couldn't do that in an agency setting.
Aaron michael drazen biography graphic organizers
You know, you had to get time off and play all these games and paperwork and, you know, whatever, I could just go, I could just go. And I was free in a lot of interesting senses. And yet my commitment to my clients didn't change. As long as that was waiting for them in the morning, wherever time zone they were at, we were cool. So I always had a list.
This is what I'm working on. And if it means pulling over right now and going into some McDonald's, you know, you guys have heard of those, McDonald's has strong wifi anywhere in the nation here. Aaron Draplin: And if you just get, don't eat that, but if you get close to it, every now and again, a Big Mac, I guess I'll just have to, you know, just for full disclosure, but you get close to it.
You can get the wifi on my little laptop in And I'd sit there, whatever file I had just worked on the night before, off into the ether to my client. And then it was back on the highway. So that just took organization. And it took a commitment to like, tonight, you don't get to go to see the band that you wanted to see in this town, you know, or whatever it was going to be tonight, you're in a hotel room and then you're going to hammer until this thing's done.
And that's really no different now. But I will say people started to see signs of imbalance, you know, did you just say you worked for like three weeks straight? Aaron Draplin: And it's like, yeah, but I mean, you know, you're sleeping and you're doing things and you're going out with a friend to eat or whatever, you know, it's like, when I got a girlfriend, you ought to see this little, this little Moonbeam Hazel, we could turn the lights off in this room right now.
And she'd walk in here and light the place up with her radiant beauty right now, she saw it right away, you know, because she had balance in her life going outside, exercising, eating properly, being a nice human being, all sorts of things that I sort of wasn't, right. And that's always been a struggle because I'll just kind of look her right in the eye and just kind of go, you got it pretty easy with me, don't you?
Aaron Draplin: Because I just have to remind her, like, I worked hard for those thirties, so we could chill a little bit in the forties, but I've kept that pace going. In fact, just yesterday, we were talking with friends and it was like, how much more, Draplin. How much more? Remember when the thirties, when you started this stuff, how much more, you know?
And it was like, I don't know, three more years and I get to 50 and I'll change. I'll change some stuff, you know, and slow it down.