Once upon a sunny Monday, I woke up to find two new design shops across the street. The first shop is junk; copy and paste everything, uninspired creative and bundles of bogus all over the place. The second shop gets it; they have great work, tons of talent and insight, everything is thought out and built with love.

The bad shop hurts everyone. Clients are robbed of their hard earned marketing dollars, potential clients are scared away, and we all miss out on baptizing a new believer to the power of design and the business that their evangelism brings. After a while their unintentional campaign of scorched Earth has leveled all the good design shops and soured local companies on what creative marketing can do. All those business owners and marketing directors, squeezing the juice out of their shrinking budgets, only to find out they bought lemons – work that doesn’t engage, just a hodge-podge tossed together like an overnight scrapbooking project. Lack of traction shrinks the budgets more and now those business owners have to wear the hat of in-house creative, further watering down the brand and robbing the good design shop of a successful campaign, a happy client and Referral Business that walks side-by-side with a Job Welldone.

The good shop helps everyone. Folks are inspired to push their marketing. And yes, you have to step up your game when shops around you are doing good work but it’s a small price to pay to be part of the buzz. Everyone gets stoked on good work and it slowly becomes a necessity for area businesses. A bakery with the sweetest sweets in town goes unnoticed, saves their pennies and hires the good shop for a campaign. The good shop gets to work, distilling what makes the bakery terrific into a tangible idea and then packages that idea into an entertaining little campaign for the bakery. Before you know it, cupcakes are cruising out the door as fast as the oven timer will let them.

Competition from a good business isn’t something to be feared anymore than a tax audit. Sure it isn’t fun and it would be easier without it, but it forces you to keep things in ship shape and above board. Competition from a bad business on the other hand is toxic – it puts your potential customers out of business and leaves a legacy of unmet expectations, undelivered promises and anemic creative – all burdens that you and your bottom line will bear.

So I packed it in hauled 3 hours up to Columbia, Missouri to go see Aaron Draplin and hear the Tall Tales for myself, first person. He didn’t disappoint. Go see him. Go. I mean it. Two kids from St. Louis were there to see him for the second time; the first was when they drove 6 hours each way to catch The Man in Detroit.

I could do my best to paraphrase and share pieces of all that wisdom but that would be a waste of both our time. However, as I was flying down the highway, one thing rang in my ears pretty loud:

Focus on making cool shit, without worrying about how many zeros are on the check (or even if there is a check at all). The man made 3 logos for his dog, the late great Gary. And they were great marks. Just terrific. He had marks for all kinds of Small Time shops in Portland, logos for his friend’s wedding, just a library of little logos standing strong.

Anyway I left with a new outlook and for a guy who has been making shit for 12 years, that’s a pretty good feeling. For a tiny taste of what the shindig was like, enjoy this touching bit chalked full of wisdom and colorful languages.

America Is F*cked…….(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

Proof that the man’s work is bigger than the man (no small feat in that, btw), here is an excerpt from a little chat a couple Mizzou students were having before the lights dimmed:

Gent: So who is this guy?
Lady: Aaron Draplin. He uses a lot of Futura Bold.
Gent: What is his famous for?
Lady-pointing to the Field Notes the dude was carrying: Those.
Gent: Oh! I love Field Notes!