Mark It 2 Me: Podcasting about the Business of Creative Work

Francisco Reyes Jr. aka Never Made has a problem with design influencers and it is that the shortcut skips the part where you build a point of view.

He would know what the long way looks like as he's spent 11 years inside Shepard Fairey's Studio Number One, most of it he was pen-tooling references building a strong vector art library. Before that, four months of unpaid interning.

In Part 1 of this conversation we get into the case for gatekeeping, why nobody digs for references anymore, and what being in the room with someone great teaches you that no tutorial can. Plus, the 1000 fan theory, and why he tells every major brand exactly where he stands before he signs anything.

It ends with a stranger at demanding to know why his print said her anger was a gift.

In this episode

• The case for gatekeeping, and why the shortcut hurt the people taking it
• How Pinterest flattened everyone's references into the same board
• What four months of unpaid interning taught
• Pen-tooling elements from archives to build Shepard Fairey's library
• Why he will not sell a client his own color palette, and how that turned into collaborations
• The fork between calling yourself a designer and calling yourself an artist
• Bobby Hundreds' thousand-fan theory
• What he told students afraid of losing clients
• Why he discloses his politics before signing, and what brands keep saying back

Notable Quotes
"A million followers does not equate sales."
"Art's not supposed to tell you what to feel."
"To protect your brand, I'm just letting you know that this is my brand. And they're just like, that's why we want you."

GUEST INFO
Francisco Reyes Jr. is a Los Angeles artist and designer working as Never Made. After eleven years at Shepard Fairey's Studio Number One he went independent, and now splits his time between Never Made and his design agency, Design Bedroom.

Website - nevermade.com
Peace & Unity Tee as seen on Joe
https://nevermade.com/collections/shirts/products/peace-unity-tee-1

instagram.com/nevermade

Host
Joe Baron
Website brandedbaron.com
If your brand still looks like everyone else in your category, that is usually a sourcing problem before it is a design problem.

Start with the free Brand Refresh Checklist: brandedbaron.com/rebrand-checklist

Every episode of Mark It 2 Me: markit2me.com

Part two is next. Sign up for the newsletter to know when it drops.

Chapters
00:00  Cold open
00:47  Intro
01:38  The beef with design influencers
03:41  Bring back gatekeeping
06:27  Flea markets, Playboys, and crate digging
07:10  What Pinterest and AI did to inspiration
10:42  Advice for the 22-year-old creative director
11:17  Why nobody wants to intern
15:20  The pen tool, and eleven years next to Shepard Fairey
20:05  Why the colors are not for sale
20:51  Artist or graphic designer
21:45  Making work nobody asked for
24:36  The thousand true fans theory
26:27  Where the protest work comes from
29:45  Some Designers are vanilla
31:42  Telling clients who you are before they hire you
33:17  Do institutions want creatives to fail
34:26  When to explain your work and when to shut up
37:13  Your anger is a gift

Most business books tell you to fix your head. Guest Ryan Roghaar printed out a revenue goal, stuck it on his office wall, and read it every morning for a year. He ended the year exactly where he started and that's when he figured out belief was never the thing getting him into the room.

Back on Mark It 2 Me for the first time since Episode 2, the author of The Lid and co-host of Eggs! The Podcast breaks down the two halves of what stops people who are already good at what they do: the internal story you carry about who you are, and the structural piece almost nobody talks about (the information, the exposure, and the working model for how the next level actually runs.)

He walks through the Threshold Loop, the six-step pattern that quietly returns you to where you started, and he is the example in most of it: a subscription model nobody asked for, version two of a product nobody bought version one of, a website refined instead of a sales call made. He also names the Social Lid (the people who love you and are still wildly accurate about who you used to be) and the Proof Move, the one action that gets you out.

1. Belief does not get you in the room. A year of reading his goal off the wall changed nothing. Sales calls, conferences, and asking would have.
2. The lid has two halves, and most advice only treats one. Mindset is the half on every bookshelf. The other half is the map you do not have and the room you have never been in.
3. Substitution feels like progress. The most dangerous step in the Threshold Loop is real, useful work done in place of the uncomfortable work that would actually move you.
4. The Social Lid is well-intentioned. The people closest to you are not working against you. They are describing who you used to be — and pitching that version of you.
5. The way out is the Proof Move. One action this week that the current version of you would not normally take. Thirty letters to thirty agencies. One yes.

Guest Info - Ryan Roghaar
Ryan Roghaar spent two decades running the creative and brand-strategy firm R2 and has co-hosted Eggs! The Podcast for nearly 500 long-form conversations with founders, artists, and builders. He is the founder of RŌG Health, a commercial-readiness and decision-support firm for medtech and medical-device companies, and publishes The Path, a weekly business newsletter. His book, The Lid: The Invisible Barrier Between Here and What's Next, came out of a pattern he kept hearing in those conversations — capable people stalling right after things start working.

thelidbook.com Find more info on Ryan's book and download the free first chapter.
ryanroghaar.com
eggsthepodcast.com - Ryan's Podcast
thepathweekly.com - Ryan's newsletter
roghealth.com - Ryan's consultancy agency
linkedin.com/in/ryanroghaar - Ryan's LinkedIn

Host Info - Joe Baron
https://www.brandedbaron.com/ - Joe Baron creative agency site

Mark It 2 Me Website
https://markit2me.com/ - Catch up on past episodes or sign up to the newsletter for more info not included in the episodes.

McLaren changed its logo and the internet reacted like the company was going under. The criticism is fair — but a new logo almost never hurts a brand, unless it erases the thing people recognize you by. In this solo episode, Joe breaks down what McLaren changed and kept, answers a skeptic’s “how?” with five reasons, reveals the line Gap and Cracker Barrel crossed, and shares four lessons for smaller businesses.

Key takeaways

• Loud isn’t right — outrage doesn’t measure damage.
• Needing to explain a logo isn’t a failure. It’s the job.
• A logo change hurts when it erases what people recognize you by.
• The product is what people are loyal to — see New Coke.
• Don’t rebrand because you’re bored.

00:00 McLaren’s new logo and the internet’s reaction
00:50 When does a rebrand actually hurt a brand?
01:02 The rebrand outrage cycle: Jaguar and Cracker Barrel
01:43 Why designers complain the loudest
02:14 Why the McLaren critics have a point
02:51 What McLaren changed and what it kept
03:47 Needing to explain a logo isn’t a failure
04:23 Does a logo need to show what you do?
04:38 Telling the story: Ep. 11 and McLaren’s homepage film
05:40 Does the new logo hurt McLaren?
05:53 Answering “how?”: five reasons it won’t
07:03 Nobody outside the room knows the brief
08:41 When a logo change actually hurts
09:06 The line: Gap, Cracker Barrel and New Coke
10:39 What small businesses should take from this
11:10 Four lessons: product, story, consistency, positioning
12:24 Don’t rebrand because you’re bored
12:40 Honor the past + the Brand Gut-Check

Notable quotes

“The noise is loud, but the loud isn’t the same as being right.”
“Needing to explain a logo isn’t a failure. It’s the job.”
“A logo change hurts when it erases what people recognize you by. Evolving is fine. Erasing it isn’t.”

Brand Refresh Checklist - https://www.brandedbaron.com/rebrand-checklist
Episodes to check
Episode 15 - The Brand Gut-Check
Episode 11 with Jason Frostholm

Mark It 2 Me website — https://markit2me.com/

Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/mark_it_2_me_podcast

HOST - Joe Baron

Branded Baron — https://www.brandedbaron.com/

Follow on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/brandedbaron/

Follow on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/brandedbaron

Matthew Johnson has run Seventh.Ink by himself for nineteen years. Four years ago he moved his inventory into a warehouse. This spring he moved it back out. He breaks down why, what in-person sales actually look like right now, and how a monthly Patreon series became the only deadline on his calendar that cannot slip.

—   Scaling up is only a good decision if you are willing to reverse it. The warehouse solved a real problem in year fifteen and created a different one by year nineteen.

—   A subscription is a deadline before it is a revenue stream. The monthly pin and patch series is the only thing that cannot slip, so everything else organizes around it.

—   Quality is the through line, not the theme. Customers arrive for one series and stay for the blanks and the ink — some of them buying a yellow shirt they swore they would never own.

—   Convention sales came in at roughly half of last year across his entire vendor network. If your numbers are down, it is worth knowing it is not just you.

—   Make the call before the math makes it for you. Wait too long and it does not shrink, it implodes.

Chapters

00:00Cold Open

00:10Intro

01:26Haunted Collection 17

03:08Portfolio Book Archive

04:58Bringing back old graphics without killing sales

07:19Releasing Halloween in August

09:21The four releases a year

12:19The monthly pin and patch series

13:27Designing for fans vs everyone

16:20Promoting a Patreon page

18:24Magic the Gathering, Lord of the Rings, and more Fantasy

20:04Why pins and patches

23:01DTG vs Screen printing

24:59Color separation and why it matters

28:56Art books, collectibles, and an idea worth stealing

33:35The Warehouse - Having it then Giving it up

37:14The Call with Johnny Cupcakes

38:14Make the call before it makes itself

39:39The Dip in Sales - The economy and convention truth

41:54Wholesale, Retail, and a Brick and Mortar Store

43:09Rapid Fire Questions

47:40The Wrap up

Matthew Johnson is the artist and designer behind Seventh Ink, a one-man art and clothing brand he has run since 2007. A graduate of the Art Institutes International Minnesota, he is a graphic designer and web developer by trade and still freelances under Seventhfury Studios. Seventh Ink spans apparel, enamel pins, patches, prints, and original art, with an annual Haunted Collection now in its seventeenth year. He works out of Tampa, Florida.

Links - https://seventhink.com/

patreon.com/seventhink

instagram.com/seventh.ink

Host - Joe Baron

https://brandedbaron.com/

Social media- @brandedbaron

Show Website

https://markit2me.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mark_it_2_me_podcast

Most companies think they have a marketing problem. What they actually have is a brand clarity problem — and it shows up as fragmented messaging, shifting visuals, and campaigns that never compound. This episode breaks down why brand identity is a decision-making system, not a visual project, and what it costs when it's treated as the latter.

Key takeaways

1. Fragmented marketing is a clarity problem, not a creativity problem. Effort and budget are rarely the bottleneck. Undefined identity is.
2. A brand identity's real job is speed, not consistency. It answers questions before they become meetings and makes creative decisions directional instead of subjective.
3. Weak identity has four measurable costs: slower internal decisions, higher long-term creative spend, inconsistent customer perception, and trend chasing.
4. Redesigning every 18–24 months isn't evolution, it's resetting — and each reset costs you accumulated equity on top of the invoice.
5. Identity is a filter. New campaign, new partnership, new visual direction: does it build equity or reset it?

00:00 The Clarity Problem

00:11 Intro

00:38 Doing Everything Right, Still Fragmented

02:18 Systems That Scale Across Channels

03:03 What Consistency Actually Does

03:49 What Weak Brand Identity Costs

05:27 Brand Identity as an Operational Asset

07:04 Four Practical Principles

08:19 Brand First, Marketing Second

About the Host

Joe Baron is the Creative Director and Founder of Branded Baron, a New York branding and creative agency working with founders and business owners on brand strategy, visual identity, and content systems.

*Links:*http://brandedbaron.com  ·  http://MarkIt2Me.com  · 

Follow on Social Media - @brandedbaron  ·  @mark_it_2_me_podcast

*Download the PDF*

• Brand refresh checklist — brandedbaron.com/rebrand-checklist

• Episode 15 — Do You Need a Rebrand or Refresh? The Brand Gut-Check
Visit the site to grab your prompt pdf - https://www.brandedbaron.com/what-a-founder-shares

The Power of Core Graphics Article - Click here

Jimmy Bryant spent years trying to earn the approval of other designers before he figured out they were never going to be his customers. Now Atomicchild is in hundreds of retailers, he sells art on products for a living, and he just shut down a profitable airport store because it was eating his life. We get into stickers, markets, manufacturing, and what success actually looks like when you stop letting other people define it.

• The creative community is not the market. There are not enough creatives to support all the creatives, and the people who buy art on products are not the people critiquing kerning.
• Do not optimize before you validate. Ignore margins, minimums, and wholesale math until you know whether anyone wants the thing at all.
• Stickers are the cheapest market research that exists. Under a dollar to make, six dollars to sell, and they tell you what to build next.
• Apparel is the trap. A maxed four thousand dollar credit card and ten sales was his own first lesson.
• Markets are a real economy. People are earning six figures at them without posting anything online.
• Scale is a choice. He built the warehouse and the team, decided it was not the life he wanted, and dismantled it on purpose.

00:00 Cold open

00:28 Intro

01:38 What an Atomicchild shirt says about you

03:23 They create products, we create art

05:29 Keith Haring vs. Atomic Child

08:54 Graduating into a market with no doors

10:13 Five hundred cold emails a month

11:47 Watching them make his fee in two seconds

12:59 Why the client list stops mattering

13:43 Nalgene and Times Square

15:22 You are not designing for other designers

16:15 Stop trying to appease other creatives

17:22 Conventions versus the internet

19:25 I'm a commercial artist. I make art to sell.

21:42 Why you start with stickers

22:25 Two thousand dollars in stickers in a weekend

23:24 Listening at markets, and why apparel is a trap

24:45 What a booth actually costs

26:53 How he decides what to make

27:54 The bag line he never planned

30:32 Evergreen designs over drops

34:06 Finding your niche festival

35:22 Physical products in an AI world

37:16 Getting your work stolen

39:55 Trademarks and the cost of enforcing them

40:30 Has running a company made him a better artist

44:05 Scaling up, then scaling all the way back

46:15 Is the money worth your time

47:35 Sometimes success is survival

47:52 Five sources of income

52:27 Rapid fire Questions

LINKS

GUEST - Jimmy Bryant

• atomicchild.com
• Store: 179 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado — Thursday through Sunday
• Instagram - @atomicchildesign
• Tik Tok: @atomicchild

HOST - Joe Baron

• https://www.brandedbaron.com/
• Social Media - @brandedbaron
• https://markit2me.com/
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mark_it_2_me_podcast

Long summary

A ginger ale label sent Joe down a rabbit hole. Hal’s New York names a real person on the front of every bottle — and then describes him with five adjectives that would fit half of Queens. Hard-working. Straight-talking. Life-loving. Nothing you could picture, repeat, or remember.

That is not a soda problem. It is the most common branding problem there is, and the founders who have it usually believe their brand story is finished. In this solo episode, Joe makes the case that the failure is almost never a missing story — it is a real one, flattened into description. He lays out the three things a usable story needs, why specificity feels risky and costs you anyway, why comparing your life to someone else’s finished marketing guarantees you lose, and the three questions that pull the real version out. Plus the overcorrection to avoid: invented heritage always reads smooth, and real stories never do.

Key takeaways

• Adjectives describe. Details convince. If a customer can’t picture it, it isn’t doing any work.
• Specificity feels like a risk, so founders sand it down to include everybody — and land on nobody.
• A usable story needs three things: a specific person doing a specific thing, a reason to exist that isn’t market opportunity, and something a customer can repeat in one sentence.
• "My story isn’t interesting" is a comparison error. You’re measuring your actual life against somebody else’s finished marketing.
• Invented heritage reads smooth. Real stories have a weird detail nobody would have made up.

00:00  Who Is Hal?

01:02  Intro

02:01  The One Line That Gives It Away

03:15  Why Founders Sand It Down

03:42  The Three-Part Test

04:16  Why This, Why You, Why Then

04:47  "My Story Isn’t Interesting"

05:38  Three Questions to Find Yours

06:06  Don’t Invent Heritage

07:31  Go Put It Where People Can See It

HOST BIO & LINKS

Joe Baron is the Creative Director and Founder of Branded Baron, a branding and creative agency in New York, and the host of Mark It 2 Me — a show about the business of creative work: how people build a brand, make a living doing it, and what it actually costs to get there.

* Free download — The Brand Refresh Checklist:http://brandedbaron.com/rebrand-checklist

Companion — The Brand Gut-Check (Episode 15) https://youtu.be/m2Q8CQPgyvg?si=2FPBGA-fP7i535Ev

* Web:http://brandedbaron.com  ·  http://markit2me.com

* Social media: https://www.instagram.com/brandedbaron/https://www.instagram.com/mark_it_2_me_podcast

Affiliated Links
Every creative needs to hydrate while working.
Salty Water Electrolyte Drink - https://amzn.to/49jq4Q0

Join More Creative Academy - Receive mentorship from Michael Janda and connect with fellow creatives
https://www.skool.com/mca/about?ref=c88a1577acbe4b459b82a7cfd8a814ee

The voice asking “what if this goes wrong” isn’t protecting you — it’s rehearsing failure, and it ends up in the work you ship. In this solo episode, Joe Baron traces the question that shuts it down back to an 8th-grade production of The Music Man, and makes the case that letting fear make your decisions is the only wrong answer. Sometimes the smart move is to swing. Sometimes it’s to leave a good thing alone. The discipline is the same.

• It’s a location, not a warning. Imposter syndrome shows up when the work matters, not when you’re unqualified.
• The negative default has a bill. It feels like preparation, but it lowers confidence, narrows creative thinking, and kills your willingness to swing big.
• This isn’t optimism. Hope is not a strategy. You look at the evidence, then decide — and you already know where the answer is.
• Sometimes the answer is don’t. Rebranding out of boredom torches equity. Leaving a good brand alone is the same discipline as swinging big.
• Mindset ships. A brand built defensively looks defensive. Your brand doesn’t need to be new — it needs to be true.

00:00  Cold intro

00:23  Main introduction

01:11  The Music Man — trouble with a capital T

02:20  Preparation vs. doom-scrolling worst-case scenarios

03:26  Pitching the safe idea

04:16  You’re not alone in the room

05:27  When your brand stops telling the truth

06:39  Don’t rebrand because you’re bored

07:37  Responding to the voice: what if it goes right?

HOST BIO & LINKS

Joe Baron is the Creative Director and Founder of Branded Baron, a branding and creative agency in New York, and the host of Mark It 2 Me — a show about the business of creative work: how people build a brand, make a living doing it, and what it actually costs to get there.

• Free download — The Brand Refresh Checklist: brandedbaron.com/rebrand-checklist
• Companion — The Brand Gut-Check (Episode 15)
• Web: brandedbaron.com  ·  markit2me.com
• Social media: @brandedbaron @mark_it_2_me_podcast

  
  

Founder-led content is the cheapest brand asset in the building, and most owners either flinch on it or borrow a format they never thought through. In this solo episode, Joe Baron uses one very public bite — and the week of executive one-upmanship that followed it — to draw the line between showing up and being worth following. Committing is the price of entry. Saying something only you could say is the return. From there he lays out the three questions to run any trend through before it becomes an HR conversation, then gives the full list of ten prompts he originally wrote for a coffee shop owner: one post each, ten weeks of content, nothing theoretical. The close makes the actual argument — this is a branding problem, not a content problem. If nobody ever speaks for the company, the voice is a guess, and the market fills that gap with whatever it decides you are.

Key Takeaways

• Half-commitment reads like a lie, even when you're telling the truth. If the concept is the founder eats the burger, the founder eats the burger.
• Committing is the price of entry. Saying something only you could say is the return.
• Same clip, different letterhead. A joke that's fine on a personal account is a meeting with HR on a company account.
• Trends are a delivery system. They work when they're carrying something you already believe and fail when they're standing in for having something to say.
• Reasoning beats achievement. A finished piece of work proves you got it right once. Showing how you think proves you can do it again.
• A founder on camera is already paid for. It doesn't need a media buy and it can't be copied, because nobody else is you.

About the Host

Joe Baron is the Creative Director and Founder of Branded Baron, a New York branding and creative agency working with founders and business owners on brand strategy, visual identity, and content systems.

Links: brandedbaron.com  ·  MarkIt2Me.com  · 

Follow on Social Media - @brandedbaron  ·  @mark_it_2_me_podcast

Download the PDF

Visit the site to grab your prompt pdf - https://www.brandedbaron.com/what-a-founder-shares

• AI has a ceiling, & it is not a temporary one. Rocky's argument is that a system trained on existing work returns the average of existing work. Better models make average arrive faster. They do not make it above average.
• Using AI and designing with AI are different activities. He runs a dedicated machine for it hours a day, for admin, transcription, strategy, and structure. He will not use it to design, and he will not sell a client a logo they cannot own.
• The honest version of AI in a workflow keeps a person in it.
• Subscription design products are mostly production, not partnership.
• Set-it-and-forget-it is how you become replaceable. Without conversation, a client sees a queue instead of a partner. His longest retainer is coming up on four years, and it exists because of the relationship, not the dashboard.
• Seniority costs you the thing that got you here. Admin, content, and family crowd out personal work. His fix is small and unglamorous. doodle on the days the client work is light.

Part 2 picks up where the Creative South conversation left off, with stickers, which turns out to be the door into Rocky's other company. Slap Stickers became Slaptastic, ran a subscription model years before subscription models were everywhere, hit four hundred subscribers, never paid anybody including him, and sold in 2018. He gave half the proceeds to his mother and used the rest to clear the credit card debt the business had generated.

From there it goes to the thing most senior creatives will not say out loud, which is that the further you get in a career the harder it becomes to make anything for yourself. Rocky's answer when asked if he has found time for personal work is two words: short answer, no.

Then the AI segment, and it is the most specific one we have run on this show. Rocky uses AI for hours a day. He has a dedicated machine for it. He built a system for a client that generates on-brand decks to eighty percent before a designer finishes them. He also refuses to use it for design, will not sell an AI-generated logo, and argues that the ceiling is permanent — that a model trained on what already exists can only ever return the average of what already exists, and average is a losing position for anyone trying to raise money or win a category.

Plus rapid fire: three books, a fifteen-hundred-movie server, and the client from hell who ghosted for three months and then threatened legal action.

• 00:00 Cold Open
• 00:25 Introduction
• 00:58 Part 1 Recap and a Glimpse of Part 2
• 01:50 Slap Stickers becomes Slaptastic
• 03:32 Labor of Love, Subscription Model, and Getting Paid
• 05:06 Selling the company
• 06:10 The Challenges of Subscription Models
• 08:10 Burnout and hitting goals nobody sees
• 10:03 The harder it gets to create for YOU
• 12:22 Joe's Trading Card Project
• 16:49 The Role of AI in Design
• 17:15 AI doesn't make design worse, it makes bad design faster
• 17:41 What Rocky actually uses AI for and the Claude Machine
• 20:57— The Role of Designers in AI-Driven Workflows
• 25:44 Brand Consistency in the Age of AI
• 26:31 Using AI as a Content Creation Tool
• 31:23 Can't stand AI Designers
• 32:08 You cannot copyright AI work
• 33:52 AI Designer FAIL story
• 35:25 The Future of Craftsmanship in Design
• 36:21 The AI Film at the Cannes Film Festival
• 37:06 Verifying Podcast Guest Email
• 37:54 Rapid Fire Questions
• 44:57 Closing Notes