Jens Bringsjord

Hi. How how’s it going? So, Megan and I have an affair, and we've been talking because we have some exciting news. We're in the same room right now, recording at the same time.

Megan Luedke

We're in the same place at the exact same time.

Jens Bringsjord

I have flown back from Norway to just meet up with Megan to do the recording.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, and I flew. Back from New York just for this. Yes.

Jens Bringsjord

That's the only that's going on in our life. No, no. But it's exciting, and it's. It's quite fun. And, like, we can have a real conversation.

Megan Luedke

A real conversation.

Jens Bringsjord

Record. Like, I don't know. It's pretty cool.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

So yeah. So, we're really excited, hopefully. You guys also really enjoy this episode. Today we're going to talk a lot about how season two, how we kind of created it, what we all of the things that we had to do behind the scenes to get all of the amazing guests that we had in season two. And yeah, so I hope you guys really enjoy this one.

Jens Bringsjord

This is a little bonus episode today, so hopefully you like it.

Megan Luedke

All right. Okay. What are we doing? I don't know. Have a record of it. Yeah. All right. Well, in real time, I don't know that we know how to do that. We don't. So exactly.

Jens Bringsjord

So, I think I mean. Yeah, and actually that's one funny thing to maybe start with is like we've been doing Google Hangouts and like using that to record all of our episodes and like completely different time zones, like totally remote. Yeah. And this entire show has literally been built on that exact. So, this is, this is why it's kind of weird for us to record.

Megan Luedke

No, but it's exciting. Yeah. It's, it's, you.

Megan Luedke

Know, something new. And I think this whole podcast has just been something new for us to do all of the time. And the timing and coincidence is worked out just well enough for us to be able to meet up in person here. Johnson And so, yeah.

Megan Luedke

It's very exciting. Mm hmm.

Jens Bringsjord

All right. So, I think, like, just to start off, like, you know, beginning of season two, we really didn't know what we were going to.

Jens Bringsjord

After the first season. It was just like, well, we need a little break because that was a lot of work. Like just learning about everything and setting everything up and like buying microphones like everything I swear on.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Megan Luedke

It was all very new and very time consuming. I mean, the season two was consuming too, but, you know, we needed that little bit of a break and we needed to kind of figure out what our next direction was and what we were going to do for this next season. And so, we had a little bit of a break, and we started planning and started talking and season two evolved and.

Megan Luedke

Here we are. Right, exactly.

Jens Bringsjord

And I think it was like, what was it, December of 2020 that we actually started to really set up kind of our theme and what we wanted to kind of show.

Megan Luedke

Yes. When we started talking about it and over the holidays, we took a little bit of a break, I think, right away in 2021, I think January, we started having regular video calls and brainstorming sessions like what are we want to do next? How do we want to go about this? And, and what are our goals for this season?

Megan Luedke

And so, I think we really ran with the interviews because that's kind of how we ended season one and we really wanted to go and reach out to more people and start doing more content just like that. And it turned out really, really well.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

So, I guess to your point about reaching out to more people, right, because we, we had us like we kind of we knew that we wanted at that point and like end of January, we really knew we wanted to find people around the world. So, like that was kind of our goal. And because we're called design outlets, we're like, oh, let's run with that idea.

Jens Bringsjord

That's fun. Like it's a global thing. Like everybody is, you know, if, if we can get like different people with different accents and like all that.

Megan Luedke

And we had.

Megan Luedke

A lot of success with the couple of interviews that we did with our friends and that whole season in season one. Yeah. And so, I think that sort of sparks that transition into what we did for season two. And eventually, you know, we reached out to a bunch of people, we had a couple of no responses.

Megan Luedke

I don't know that we ever got any like direct nos, but we, some people never message us back. We had a lot of people say yes and we're very excited. We even have some people on our waitlist.

Megan Luedke

Interview.

Megan Luedke

In the future. So, it turned out to be a really interesting time where we had to do a ton of research to find out.

Jens Bringsjord

Find ours.

Megan Luedke

To find all of these amazing people that we interviewed because we didn't know hardly any of them. We are really.

Jens Bringsjord

We didn't know any.

Megan Luedke

We knew. Alex Oh.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. We actually we didn't know, and we knew Bashar.

Megan Luedke

And Bashar Island of Bashar. So, we each had one person from this season that we did know personally, but the rest of the.

Jens Bringsjord

You know.

Megan Luedke

Nine people.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, yeah. Because there.

Megan Luedke

Was 11, nine people we didn't know. We reached out to that out of the blue and really like sucker self out there. And I got some really great responses from them. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. And, and like I think, you know, we used a variety of sources to really find our people because we, we looked for I mean, we went on like LinkedIn and we checked like dribble.

Megan Luedke

Or hands.

Megan Luedke

And different designs, tick tock.

Jens Bringsjord

We literally went all over the Internet and yeah, tried to find people. I think I found one, one of them. I don't remember who right now, but it was like on a website for like their website that.

Megan Luedke

Yes, it was Jose. It was either Jose or Julia, one of us who um, yeah, we and then there was two of them, Nolan and both Saskia and Colin I found on Tik Tok just randomly scrolling through my TikTok feed as one does, and it was really cool. Nolan I actually asked to be on the show during one of his Tik Tok lives, which was really exciting.

Megan Luedke

And he even said, he said during the live.

Megan Luedke

Live in front of a handful of people, which was really cool. I remember how many people were in his life then, but I mean, it was really cool. I mean, Saskia and Colin, they came up on my feed right after events and I had the conversation of like, well, let's get somebody who's been to Antarctica before. And we were having some issues trying to find people and look up people, and then they just popped up on my TikTok feed and I was like, these guys, these are who we need to get on the show.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

No. And I mean, everybody stories like we obviously did our research to make sure that we got quality people. And I think when we started to email them or DM them or write them on LinkedIn, like telling like conveying what we were trying to do really helped us like to just tell them like, yeah, we don't know everybody yet because that was at the time that we were looking for people, but we did kind of it was easy to find or like just convey the project and like kind of get more people on board on the project because of like speaking of the global perspective and like getting different international designers in our, in our episode. So that was really, really fun.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, we definitely had that like goal of trying to get a certain number of people from certain areas. So that helped us in our search. It wasn't just we had a whole world to find. We're like, no, we want at least one person from this area and at least one person from this area and somebody who can talk about this subject.

Megan Luedke

And so that helped us narrow our search down. And then, you know, once we found these really high quality, like amazing people, it was really easy to just reach out to them and say, this is what we love about your work. This is why we think you need to be on our show, and this is why you should be on our show.

Megan Luedke

And it was really awesome.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. And then we also like, I think with everybody, we, we sent the questions like once we got everybody saying yes, we sent them the questions to kind of prepare a little bit and kind of think about what they wanted to answer those questions. I mean, when we did the interviews themselves, we didn't like go word for word.

Megan Luedke

Oh, yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

One, two, three, four, five. Here are the questions. Here are the answers. But it helped. I think everybody kind of prepared a little bit so that they kind of came with an answer then instead of liking just stumbling along.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. And I don't know that our listeners are really can gather that we had questions lined up for them anyway because based on how we edited it afterwards, like you really couldn't tell that we really s almost everybody else the same questions which you know, and then we had a few very curated questions were based on what they project, their projects and you know, especially just sort of getting it about, you know, Antarctica dove into that, but it was also like each interview really like was just a conversation with that person to get to know them.

Megan Luedke

And that's all those questions where it was just a how to transition into Let's get to know you and then we would go off from there.

Jens Bringsjord

Exactly. Yeah. So, it was it was it was a lot of fun. And then, you know, having asked them all the questions, hearing everybody's very different and unique answers like that was quiet, quite cool. But then editing and afterwards, because we really wanted a bit more of that narration style in season two, we, you know, kind of edited each of those responses to kind of fit their story instead of just like.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, read.

Jens Bringsjord

The question off and have them answer it in the episode, right?

Megan Luedke

So yeah.

Megan Luedke

So, it was really awesome just telling their story.

Megan Luedke

In a nice, packaged way. Yeah, exactly.

Jens Bringsjord

So, so yeah. And then so once we did the interview, which we did like on Google Hangouts and like I guess we should mention though, because everybody was all over the world.

Megan Luedke

Oh, yes.

Megan Luedke

The scheduling.

Jens Bringsjord

You maybe you want to enlighten us how we did that, because I think you were a bit more.

Megan Luedke

I think.

Megan Luedke

Eyes on that more. On that front. So of course, Jenna and I split a lot of our tasks as you as I do with the podcast. I think scheduling was on my plate for this and after reaching out to everybody, after they said yes, now it's that I was like, okay, let's, let's get them on the calendar or let's have specific days.

Megan Luedke

We're going to do interviews and things like that. But Jens is in Norway and I'm in New York and our guest is somewhere else in the world, one in particular that was really difficult for us to even find a time at all that was going to work for any of us. Was Jose Young in Australia? Yeah, we are quite literally in three different spots.

Megan Luedke

We were like over the wall, three different quadrants. Oh yeah, exactly. Like somewhere.

Megan Luedke

It's kind of like.

Megan Luedke

One hour.

Megan Luedke

And one or 2 hours that aligns on all three quadrants of the world where it's not like super early, are super late for any of us was nearly impossible, but we did it.

Jens Bringsjord

I stayed up till I think we recorded until ten my time. So, I.

Megan Luedke

Think your time, Jose.

Jens Bringsjord

Was 7 a.m.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Megan Luedke

I was at the office in the I was in the afternoon for me. So, it was like a really good time for me. But I was like 7 a.m. in Australia and it was like for you.

Megan Luedke

Oh man, that was and what?

Megan Luedke

And that was like pretty much the only way we could do it. It was one person was going to be in the afternoon, somebody was going to have to have a really late and someone was going to have to be in like really early in the morning and there was no getting around it.

Jens Bringsjord

But it worked.

Megan Luedke

And worked out. Jose is a morning person.

Megan Luedke

I love that coffee.

Jens Bringsjord

Before and she was ready to go. So

Megan Luedke

Exactly, exactly.

Jens Bringsjord

So yeah. So that was that was fun. But the scheduling itself, like we, we, I don't remember what tool we use, but we had some vague schedules were.

Megan Luedke

Like cowardly or yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're too scared. So, we picked some dates that worked for us and said, over this month, these are the dates and times that are going to work for us. Very specifically, like Jose, that didn't necessarily work for her.

Megan Luedke

But for most.

Megan Luedke

People it actually worked out. We picked sometimes during the day like a window on Saturdays and Sundays that would work for both of us. And so, it helps that some of the people we were going to be were in both our time zones. So, they just picked a time slot and then we went from there.

Jens Bringsjord

You just had the call had gone.

Megan Luedke

And in the interview.

Megan Luedke

Sometimes we had more than one in a day.

Megan Luedke

Which is a lot of fun.

Jens Bringsjord

On the weekends. Did we? I think one weekend we actually pushed three interviews.

Megan Luedke

We did like three or four interviews in one week because it was crazy. And I think maybe it was the same week we did like Nolan because Nolan was on a Thursday afternoon or something really random, and then that weekend it was like Saturday and Sunday, but like back-to-back interviews on both days. It's like crazy. But it worked out because we got all of our interviews done in a matter of a few weeks.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, he's like, because, you know, batching out how we were going to do it.

Jens Bringsjord

And I mean, just like as a side note, where we're at right now was like having had like done all the interviews before editing, all of them actually made it a cohesive season that we knew kind of the style we wanted to go with when it came to the editing afterwards. So, we really did like edit everything after we did all of the interview recordings and everything.

Megan Luedke

Definitely the last.

Jens Bringsjord

One, and I may have already started like Alans or something. Yeah, knowing kind of what we were going to do. But at that point, the majority of them were like interviewed and done. And yeah, we just needed a few months to like compile everything and edit and yeah.

Megan Luedke

And then get everything ready to go.

Jens Bringsjord

All of our narration parts and everything.

Megan Luedke

So yeah, we really like sort of chunked it all out and matched the whole season and sort of in one go. So, we did all of our planning and early like January, February did the reaching out and scheduling and, and actually doing the interviews, you know, February, March and was March and April was hard core editing for Jen's.

Megan Luedke

Chats almost every weekend.

Megan Luedke

You know? Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

It was intense.

Megan Luedke

I mean.

Megan Luedke

Editing, it was like on the.

Jens Bringsjord

Ten episodes in about two months is.

Megan Luedke

You did almost a handful of them in one whole week.

Megan Luedke

And. It was pretty crazy.

Jens  Bringsjord

But I once I got like a few down. Yeah. Editing wise like you kind of set patterns like you got kind of like, yeah, I don't know. It became easier as it went. I think the beginning I was kind of like, oh, this is going to be like.

Megan Luedke

A lot like.

Jens Bringsjord

It's going to take longer than two months.

Megan Luedke

Like for me with like narrations and stuff like that, like you, you know, you'd get the episode all done, I'd listen to you and all your parts and then I go back and just batch you all my narrations for a handful of episodes in one day. And so, then we get all those done, and it was really.

Jens Bringsjord

And.

Megan Luedke

Then you edit it again.

Megan Luedke

And put it all together and set it and we review.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. Speaking of review though, right. Because then so like once we, Megan and I were happy with it right then, then it was like, okay, well now we have to send this to the actual Hari.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, sure.

Megan Luedke

That what we are trying to like to convey in the message we're saying is in line with what they actually.

Megan Luedke

They are.

Jens Bringsjord

Right.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. Who they are making you sure that some of her facts are right because you know there's sometimes you get things wrong in an interview.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. And sometimes people say things that maybe they don't want on the actual episode. So, I think we had a few, you know, points when that happened, and it was good that we corrected that before publishing it.

Megan Luedke

Right? Right, exactly. And then I think also with everybody I mean, nearly everybody that we spoke to English was their second language. There's only a handful of people who, you know, English is their first language. And so, they also were just nervous about their accents and things like that, even though we absolutely loved hearing the accents.

Megan Luedke

I love the writing. I mean, accents, you know, people are very just conscious of it as you would be because it's not your native language.

Jens Bringsjord

But so yeah. So, once we kind of made their changes and then I listen to it one more time and made any changes that needed to be made on our own. So, then we just scheduled it, and it went out when we kicked off the season.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, well, I mean, we had to make some ultimate American.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. I wanted to do social media and all of that.

Megan Luedke

I think once the episodes were really like done and recorded and we knew everything that was going on with the episode and what the story was going to say. But I think we went about.

Jens Bringsjord

We had scheduled all of the podcasts before the season started and to be sure I was pretty happy about that.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, as.

Jens Bringsjord

An achievement in and of itself.

Megan Luedke

They were in anger and ready.

Megan Luedke

To go more or less exactly like.

Megan Luedke

The actual audio is any good. The rest of the album or the descriptions, right?

Megan Luedke

The actual audio is definitely an anchor ready.

Megan Luedke

To go like before with even before.

Megan Luedke

We launched like the trailer.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like the first week of.

Megan Luedke

April.

Jens Bringsjord

Or April and then we kicked it off in May out me.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, we keep in in May, but the trailer was.

Megan Luedke

We were.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah. We were basically done with them.

Megan Luedke

I mean yeah. Yeah. And at that point it was all just, you know, getting those little details left. And as the, you know, the descriptions and.

Jens Bringsjord

The links, making.

Megan Luedke

The links and the socials album art and then the website.

Megan Luedke

And well.

Jens Bringsjord

I'm speaking, right, because we kicked off our website.

Megan Luedke

Right around the same time, right around then. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

And like season two started and our website was up and to be, to be fair, like little behind the scenes disaster we had originally in our episodes had said like our email and everything, like Hello at Design Outlets podcast, and we were like, oh, well, now we really need to have this domain.

Megan Luedke

Because actually it.

Jens Bringsjord

Added into all the recordings because they didn't have it at that point.

Megan Luedke

We really wanted to do it. But then, you know, we.

Megan Luedke

You know, we were planning on doing the website and whatever, but then all of a sudden, I think it was April and we're like, we.

Megan Luedke

Still need to get it done.

Megan Luedke

So, we did a I guess you'd call it a soft launch. We really didn't like to launch it too big. And it's definitely version one. It's a work in progress, you know, it's just our next project that we're going to. It'll be better for season three and just, you know, keep, keep looking at it. But we had a good time with the website.

Megan Luedke

I think that was a ton of fun and really awesome trying to learn web flow and getting everything organized.

Megan Luedke

And I think.

Jens Bringsjord

Also just having a domain is like is.

Megan Luedke

The next.

Jens Bringsjord

Step. As a professional like podcast. So, I was pretty happy about just getting our domain and that it was available and everything too. And like thankfully nobody had snatched it while we were still recording. To be fair, that would have been another.

Megan Luedke

I'm sorry. You know.

Megan Luedke

What? I had to rerecord something.

Megan Luedke

But we didn't. That's good. It's good to see you.

Jens Bringsjord

But also, I wanted to mention, though, the album art thing because that was pretty fun or like I guess the branding of season two.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, just kind of.

Jens Bringsjord

Changed a bit of our brand identity in season two, right? And like using Figma I think was pretty cool because we were able to just like we, I think we spent, I don't know how many hours we spend, but one of those Saturday evenings, one of.

Megan Luedke

Those Saturday.

Megan Luedke

We were, you know. Yeah. On video call. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

We, we've worked on like figma and we're just like talking about the album art for hours.

Jens Bringsjord

Like we tried so many different versions for album art and but like I think after like collectively working on that for like literally talking about like getting that feedback like instantly while we were doing it.

Megan Luedke

Like, yeah, it was like so helpful, like being able to work on it together. And also quite honestly, I haven't worked on a project like that with another designer, like actually working on a design like in the same file together in such a long time as like the only designer at my company. Like, so it was such a great time to really just be, I was like work in a file with somebody else and actually like, you know.

Megan Luedke

Not the point.

Megan Luedke

Is it being. Yeah, exactly. Not the.

Megan Luedke

Kind where we're both.

Megan Luedke

The client and we both have, like the same vision and the same, like, style. We knew what we wanted. And so, it was really fun. We each took like our old branding and our old album art, and we said, here, take like 20 minutes. We're going to just sit here silently, more or less alike, and work on our own designs for like 20 minutes or so or make a couple of versions of it.

Megan Luedke

And then we go from there and we combine them and then all of that. It was really kind of fun.

Megan Luedke

It's like.

Jens Bringsjord

A work, like.

Megan Luedke

It was like a workshop. That's fun.

Jens Bringsjord

But yeah, so, so yeah. That's actually how our album Art came about. And then we had to get photos from everybody to kind of. Yeah. So, who. Yeah, they were. And so on. So that was kind.

Megan Luedke

Of more coordinating on my end and you know, getting photos and also just getting some more resources to use for social media. Like obviously Saskia and Colin have some amazing and incredible photos because their photography is.

Megan Luedke

Exactly. Thank you. Love them.

Megan Luedke

All. The little penguins.

Megan Luedke

And.

Jens Bringsjord

And the sound effects.

Megan Luedke

And the sound effects. That's right.

Jens Bringsjord

They sent me what would I mention at the beginning of that episode? But they sent me the sound effects of like every, you know, all of the different animals and the wind and the boats. And it was right. It’s kind of really makes that episode. Really. Yeah. Like next level because of that, the sound effects are actually coming from like Antarctica.

Jens Bringsjord

They're not just like random sound effects. I found mine like that is actually from there. So that was pretty cool.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Megan Luedke

That one. That was such a fun. I'm so happy that we decided to ask them for those like assets because it really sort of elevated the whole episode and something totally else because yeah, that was cool because they, they have the video files, and they have.

Megan Luedke

Like it was a, it.

Megan Luedke

Was after our interview we were like, wait.

Megan Luedke

They have video files, you know. Yeah, I mean they have audio, and they can. We really do. Yeah. But it turned.

Megan Luedke

Out so cool. Yeah. But in terms of the rest of the assets and all of the different things that we got from everybody else, uh, you know, social media I got, I don't even know, like, different files from Nolan and, and bizarre photos from him and Alan. Some sketches like I got all kinds of stuff from everybody, and it was really great to kind of connect with them afterwards because they at that point had already had their interview and they'd already probably almost heard like the episode and stuff as well.

Megan Luedke

So, it was good to reconnect with them and be like, hey, we're still working on stuff, and this is where we're at.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah, definitely. So, like with what's next though, like because now we're kind of at this point in time where it's like season three.

Megan Luedke

Is.

Jens Bringsjord

Coming.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

And we're still planning on it. So, I'm not really going to give a lot of spoilers here, but we are planning to do season three, I think in the fall at some point like late fall and we will definitely be announcing more of that on like social media and you know, publicizing a bit more like when the kick off will be.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah, we don't have the date yet sent and all that.

Megan Luedke

But we will.

Jens Bringsjord

Very soon.

Megan Luedke

We'll keep you posted on that one. I don't think we even know.

Jens Bringsjord

That's why I'm like being nice.

Megan Luedke

Like.

Jens Bringsjord

We don't know. But we will know and we'll.

Megan Luedke

Let you know eventually.

Megan Luedke

We'll let you know. It's we're not going to.

Jens Bringsjord

But this fall definitely.

Megan Luedke

Something.

Megan Luedke

It'll be this five that's the general goal is this fall.

Jens Bringsjord

And also, we might change up our style I think that's yeah that's a bit too of I mean not to really throw too many spoilers out there, but we are not probably going to do like all narration episodes.

Megan Luedke

Going forward. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah.

Megan Luedke

So yeah, because you know, we will transition of us not just like what we've learned, but I think what's next, you know, it's another step for us to change up what we're doing. Designers, we.

Megan Luedke

We iterate, we iterate.

Megan Luedke

We're just iterating upon this. What's next? Each season is the next version of the podcast, so it's not going to be the same as the last, and it'll hopefully just be better. And that's, I think the goal.

Jens Bringsjord

So yeah, and I mean that is kind of the inflection point of what we learned here because like what we want, we want to take everything that we've learned now and make Season three oh even better than what we did in season two. And when we did the editing and, and then all the narration, after listening to all of that, we kind of felt like our voices, like Meghan in my voices were a little bit muted.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah, per se. And I don't. And that was not a bad.

Megan Luedke

It's not a bad thing, I think. And we kind of, you know, we could have anticipated that happening because we do. We were doing interviews about of other people. Right. And that's you know, we were telling their stories. And so, we wanted their voices in their stories to shine in this season. But because of that, we lost some of our voice.

Megan Luedke

That we had. Maybe the nine.

Jens Bringsjord

Both felt.

Megan Luedke

The first.

Jens Bringsjord

Season. Yeah, we both felt this way and it was. Mm. Yeah. And I think one thing we definitely want to do whether we don't know yet how we want to do it in season three, but we're definitely going to do more like this exact type of vibe of episode that we're doing right now, right? It's like we're talking and having a conversation, just Meghan and I and then do interviews kind of intermittently, but not entire.

Megan Luedke

The interview is certainly not going away because being able to share the stories of other people, especially like designers who really may not have had their short story shared before there really was out of this season, only two or three of the last few people we interviewed were the ones that had maybe a larger audience and were maybe a little bit more well-known.

Megan Luedke

But our first, you know, a handful of interviews for the season, they're not very well known in the industry or, you know, in their local area maybe. But, you know, we get to share these stories that no one else around the world is hearing. So, it was really cool to kind of connect on that point of it. So, I think that's not going to go away.

Megan Luedke

But we're going to come back.

Megan Luedke

We're coming back. Coming back.

Jens Bringsjord

It is our show at the end of the day, right, Meghan.

Megan Luedke

So, I mean.

Megan Luedke

The number of video chats we had over the last year or so of us doing this exact same thing, this is this riffing, this being able to talk for.

Megan Luedke

Hours.

Megan Luedke

And hours. Like we say so many great things. We wish we could share it with you guys.

Megan Luedke

And know exactly. And you know, we.

Megan Luedke

Missed that a little bit. So, we're going to bring it back.

Jens Bringsjord

Yes. Yes. When it came to feedback, we got some feedback from the people that we interviewed. And, you know, it was really helpful, I think, when it came to that because I mean, Meghan and I like gave each other feedback like what we could improve, you know, as we went, but also just having like that external source or like the persons interview that we told through with their story in that episode, like just getting their feedback before we launched it.

Jens Bringsjord

I mean, it was great, but like at times it was also like a lot of work.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. Well, I mean.

Megan Luedke

At the end of the day, we are designers interviewing other designers and as designers we all have opinions which we love to hear and always. But it's, you know, one of those things where you learn to take an opinion or not take it. And that's, you know, we had to figure that out this season. I think we didn't experience that on season one at all really, because we were still trying to figure it out with ourselves.

Megan Luedke

Our friends are really nice and.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, exactly. And so now we have like this different level of dynamic. Is there almost it's not necessarily a client, but like, yeah, sort of that same level of, you know.

Jens Bringsjord

And we, but we did want to make like all of our interviewees really happy about the episode. I mean, that was part of our goal. I mean, we didn't want somebody to be like, oh, we don't want my story published. Not because you guys aren't making my story sound great. So, our intention was always to make everybody sound great.

Jens Bringsjord

I mean, yes, it just ended up that some of the feedback additionally that was coming was like, like we wanted to keep our show. Our show.

Megan Luedke

Yes, that. Yeah. So that's.

Megan Luedke

Why.

Jens Bringsjord

I didn't want to lose that, right.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Megan Luedke

Because there is a point where it's their show or it's our show. And so, yes, we're telling their story, but it is our show too.

Megan Luedke

And I don't know if there's a very nice no way to say that, but we're going to go with that. But I don't know. But that's my point.

Megan Luedke

That's that point. That's what.

Jens Bringsjord

About. But also, there was a lot of writing that was involved in.

Megan Luedke

Yes, writing. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

I felt like a writer. Yeah. Audio.

Megan Luedke

I believe you're way better at the writing. Something I am. I don't know, like what I when it comes to like writing like a social media post, like that's totally different realm.

Megan Luedke

Yeah.

Megan Luedke

Like it's one or two sentences and I half the time.

Megan Luedke

I'm working off of whatever you wrote.

Jens Bringsjord

Or the theme of the episode or whoever, whatever somebody.

Megan Luedke

Said, like.

Megan Luedke

It glitters. I'm doing.

Megan Luedke

So, I've been kind of yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

No, there was a lot of brainstorming and I think to when I like the way the method of editing because it kind of goes with the editing thing like writing. It was first obviously we did the interview and then I was like, okay, this is what they said. I took out the parts like that. I thought, okay, this, I will use this.

Jens Bringsjord

And it's like it's too much or too much info. I mean, we spent like an hour in each interview at least, and the episodes are maximum 30 minutes. So, we did a like a lot of.

Megan Luedke

A lot of cuts.

Megan Luedke

Cut, unfortunately.

Jens Bringsjord

Yeah, but, but I think it just, you know, we used the best parts out of it, and I think everybody was just happy about that because, you know, yeah, we do riff about random stuff at times like.

Megan Luedke

Oh yeah, there was certainly conversations that we were totally left out of the episodes that I'm sure are funny or interesting to other people.

Jens Bringsjord

But in light of time.

Megan Luedke

In light of time, I mean, we I mean, you condense nearly 2 hours’ worth of an interview down to 30 minutes. Granted, some of that is technicality stuff. Some of it is ours.

Jens Bringsjord

Questions being.

Megan Luedke

Asked, questions being asked. Exactly. And so, once you get down to it, there still is still a lot to like to condense down. And there are certainly topics that I think we, you know, eventually edit out. But I think, you know, in the end it worked out great. You wrote like a really great narrative for everybody. And then you, you know, narrations on top of all of that were thank you just, you know, an added level.

Jens Bringsjord

So nice, Meghan.

Megan Luedke

So nice little thing I know.

Megan Luedke

But I always loved reading like the narration. So, when you send them over, I'm like, okay, what do we know?

Megan Luedke

What are we doing?

Jens Bringsjord

What is the story here?

Megan Luedke

What is the story here? But really, I could.

Megan Luedke

Say I get serious about the thought process about like all of, like the narrations when I am reading them like, like this is great. Like I totally get us.

Jens Bringsjord

But like it did the story because it was really like what the interviewee said. And then I just had to like back up or edit something out that they had said and then revise it in the way I would say it. Yes. And that I think by doing those multiple times, I got better as I went. But like that was definitely the way that helped me like create the story more effectively than being like, oh, I have to randomly write something now and then hope it makes sense of what they're saying.

Jens Bringsjord

Instead, I took what they said, took it like basically cut it out and then set it in a different frame, right?

Megan Luedke

Because a lot of what they, you know, whether it was a topic transition or, you know, whatever, like we were really just setting the stage for whatever it is they're going to talk about next. Right. And so, either during the interviews they sent it, or we had asked questions.

Megan Luedke

Exactly.

Jens Bringsjord

So, and yeah, I think at some points too, I actually rephrase the question as just a like sentence for them.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, exactly. Or they talked about a topic that we needed, you know, additional information on like jiu jitsu. Like, does anybody know anything about jiu jitsu? No. But we learned. We learned about jiu jitsu.

Jens Bringsjord

I read something that make a narration about.

Jens Bringsjord

And there were multiple types of jiu jitsu just.

Megan Luedke

Saying, oh, that.

Jens Bringsjord

You didn't even know that.

Megan Luedke

Yes. Yeah, we.

Megan Luedke

Had to like totally.

Megan Luedke

Like change their age and.

Jens Bringsjord

Then so yeah, that was kind of a lot of things on like my part, like, you know, editing a lot, writing a lot, getting a lot of feedback and iterating on it. And where I had to for the episode itself. But you also did a lot of things when it came to kind of more after the episodes were in anchor and scheduled and ready to go like it was kind of your turn.

Megan Luedke

Yesterday was really kind of the next three.

Jens Bringsjord

Weeks to.

Megan Luedke

Really think, yeah, on running.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, yeah. This is at a break for the last few weeks, and I've been like every single.

Megan Luedke

I've been hard at work here every single week. But no.

Megan Luedke

I really kind of took over. I ended up having to like to learn new tools during this season. So, for the website, obviously we are two people and.

Megan Luedke

We are both designers, but only one person can really kind of build something inside.

Megan Luedke

Right?

Megan Luedke

Especially like a website. And so, Jen's ended up designing a lot of the website and then I built it out. Yeah, the mock-ups obviously in Figma because we're designers. Why we have not designed the website before we built it. So Younes and I worked on, you know, the designs and stuff, but I actually did the hard work of understanding and learning web flow in order to actually build our website.

Megan Luedke

And on top of that, I also had to learn Figma because I don't use Figma.

Megan Luedke

No.

Jens Bringsjord

I introduced Figma. Imagine this.

Megan Luedke

In fact.

Megan Luedke

I don't use Figma for my job. And so, I because I technically I guess I'm a graphic designer. Graphic designer mostly at Adobe Illustrator and such. And any time I do prototyping or mock-ups and stuff, I use XD because that's what I have and.

Jens Bringsjord

It's in Adobe so.

Megan Luedke

And it's easily or.

Megan Luedke

I use sketch because that's what we had previously or whatever and so I I'm familiar with XD and sketch. So Figma was really not a hard thing for me to learn. I don't think it is for anybody once you've learned those too. And so, it was pretty quick for me to figure it out and actually I really enjoy Figma I absolutely love it.

Megan Luedke

I love it because I use and then I ended up using PHP for the content planning and social media stuff. So, all of our graphics ended up making and in figma throughout the season so that I could keep practicing on Figma and keep using it because you got to use your tools in order to be an expert in them.

Jens Bringsjord

And so yeah, one sign out on Figma. I quite like working, you know, in different time zones and kind of just remote leave for all of this except for today. Yeah. Basically, by using Figma we were able to really work collaboratively on the assets and everything together. And so like you could add comments or I were made a mock up and then you like just changed some things that made more sense and web flow and like just being able to it didn't matter really what time zone we were in because I would just do something, go to bed and Megan would work on something in her evening and then I would come back.

Megan Luedke

Certainly helpful. It was really.

Jens Bringsjord

Great, though, right? And so, like having to send you a file and then yeah, email it back and like all that.

Megan Luedke

And we're sharing the exact same file, we're working the exact same thing. So, like at any point in time, you know, he'd go in and take a look at the social media files and see what's up or, you know, I could same with like the website. You know, when I was building the website instance, I didn't make any changes on, you know, the content or whatever.

Megan Luedke

I could go in and take a look at that. But yeah, it was really cool kind of learning those two products and also web flow. I'm obsessed. I don't know anybody else knows what that flow is, but I'm going to just give it a plug because I love it.

Jens Bringsjord

It's not sponsored by.

Megan Luedke

It's not sponsored, and we wish it was. But someday. But I use it now for my personal website as well. But it's probably one of the coolest website builder products out there, I'd say without having to actually I can code a website. It's a no code tool, but if you understand code, I think it makes it really easy for you to understand the, I guess the mechanics behind all of it and what you're doing.

Megan Luedke

And there's so much. Yeah. Classes and the way that you work with it, if you understand, see as, as you totally understand web flow and it's just without actually you don't actually have to write any code.

Megan Luedke

And it's just really great to compress the buttons and it's a good time. But you have like the full flexibility to do whatever it is that you want to do, which I think is the biggest downfall when it comes to like any no code website builders because you get stuck in a template or a theme or whatever. And what? Well, as a designer, you can literally just take your figma file and just start designing it.

Megan Luedke

Right. And web flow, you can make your whole website look exactly you want it to and do exactly what you want to do. And even more than what you could do in like Figma or XY or whatever. Like I designed my website in, and I have like half of the things in it, but I actually ended up putting in my blog because once I got into web flow was like really cool.

Jens Bringsjord

So, you can add a bunch of animations.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, the animations and.

Megan Luedke

After scroll effects.

Megan Luedke

And I did all kinds of fun stuff and there are like Web Flow University, they have like a learning content platform as well and they are just so entertaining. I could sit and watch their videos like.

Megan Luedke

All day long learn, learn how to use.

Megan Luedke

My flow and also just be entertained at the same time so you don't know what flow. You got to go check it out.

Jens Bringsjord

Um, and then also when it came to bunch of the social media posting and everything like you created all of the assets and like all of the posts in Figma which like I think you previously mentioned, but it was really cool to just see like how you were working in Figma and all of the things that you made, but like you also had to use some tools to schedule.

Megan Luedke

Oh yes. So, we previously were using there's, you know, a million different social media scheduling tools up there.

Megan Luedke

And.

Jens Bringsjord

You didn't notice there were a lot of bad.

Megan Luedke

Ones. There's a lot of bad advisors. I did a lot of research on these guys.

Megan Luedke

You know, we’re doing this for free, like, oh.

Megan Luedke

This is for the Wall Street is doing this for you guys’ money because.

Megan Luedke

We love you. And so, we don't want to spend a ton of money on like subscriptions and things like that. One day.

Megan Luedke

But someday we'll be able to pay for a better scheduling platform. But right now, it's not. It is definitely use like a combination of a lot of things, but I think this season I had to decide on a new platform that I want I use last season because what we were using before was Hootsuite. They changed their requirements and then we couldn't schedule out like hardly anything anymore on their free version, which was really sad.

Megan Luedke

So, I went and looked at all of the other free versions of all kinds of other things, and I settled on one called Paul and it is really nice. I like it a lot. It's, you know, could be better their paid versions I'm sure are a lot better than the free one. But for the most part, the free one is pretty great.

Megan Luedke

And so, I use and learn how to use that one. They're all pretty similar. I'd say Do the same thing, but I also, you know, using like Facebook creator studio, studio for Instagram and Facebook sometimes as well. But yeah, I mean definitely had to learn about all of those. But I also use air table to manage, I think, and plan out my pulse.

Jens Bringsjord

Well, speaking of air table quality, we do a lot of our episodes of stuff. Yeah, it's not just.

Megan Luedke

Me like. I think that social media helps, but it's good that you keep it in there because we also do our episode.

Megan Luedke

Yes.

Jens Bringsjord

That you know, priority.

Megan Luedke

Is or to I think the living breathing everything about.

Megan Luedke

The podcast. Exactly one.

Megan Luedke

Database is our podcast database.

Jens Bringsjord

It really is also having our guests who are on our waiting lists.

Megan Luedke

Yeah, it's.

Jens Bringsjord

Upcoming, you know, season three ideas and.

Megan Luedke

Has ours.

Megan Luedke

Like episode description. Yes, it has. Yeah. Like the show part, Walmart, everything we need for what episode you can find in like one place. As long as all of the episodes and the season and the social media are attached to those seasons and eventually the data for our website. So, there's a ton of stuff happening in our table.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. Also, one of my favourite products just ever. Um, but it's definitely like how we've organized all of our stuff and yes.

Jens Bringsjord

And I think, you know, the quality of our show is a, it's positive because like, yeah, it's a, it's a good thing that's come out of all of the organizing that we've done to then create good quality content and awesome. Our episode is just better because of it, so right. And because of where remote like, you know, it's we need these tools to keep track because otherwise this would probably not be possible without like keeping, you know, who is doing what, what is done.

Megan Luedke

There's a ton of information being passed behind the scenes and that you guys just don't see.

Megan Luedke

And so, it's.

Megan Luedke

It's great to kind of keep it all in one place and connected and being able to do it digitally at any point in time and not have to say many files like.

Megan Luedke

Oh, that's brilliant, brilliant.

Megan Luedke

Brilliant. We love the cloud.

Megan Luedke

But we have some.

Jens Bringsjord

Really exciting news.

Megan Luedke

We do.

Jens Bringsjord

You want to do the honours. Honours roll.

Megan Luedke

Everybody's okay. So, at the beginning of this well okay I say the beginning of the season let's say may the actual beginning of like the releasing of the season. In May we discovered this pod podcasting competition called road are my road cast.

Megan Luedke

Yeah so, this podcasting competition called my road cast and we decided that we wanted to enter the competition and so a little bit about the competition, I think it's just a competition that road microphones do in combination with. They also did with Anker and them.

Jens Bringsjord

Just as a side note, we were a bit attune to it because we actually use road mice.

Megan Luedke

We also have an anchor.

Jens Bringsjord

And we use anchor. So, it was like a perfect combination of the tools and the platforms we're using. Yes. And then they were offering this contest as well, which was.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. So, it's just a contest for podcasters to be creative and innovative and whatever small content creators is, not certainly for big creators. There wasn't a ton of really big names that I saw. No, there's so many podcasts out there.

Megan Luedke

There were a lot of.

Jens Bringsjord

Submissions.

Megan Luedke

Though, but there was, you know, 1623 submissions for this competition. But it was we submitted in early May, right around the time that we already had our season out. It was another avenue, I guess, of advertising.

Jens Bringsjord

And to anybody who voted, yeah, when we kind of announced that we had submitted and got accepted into the contest. Thank you. We appreciate it. And thank you very much because.

Megan Luedke

Because we landed in the top 100 out of all of these podcasts, we ended up becoming highly commended, winner and it was very exciting.

Jens Bringsjord

The fact that there were that many episodes that were submitted and that we made it into the top 100 list. Again, it's just like, Yeah, so amazing. We've only published 20 episodes in a row already, you know, winning awards in the top 100. So yeah, to me, just like this has just been such a great journey and I think something that both Megan and I never thought would ever happen.

Megan Luedke

Honestly.

Jens Bringsjord

And yeah, and we a lot of hard work into it. So, we're also really happy that what we are doing actually is being noticed. And the way that they actually did the contest is they had a variety. They had like People's Choice Award, and they had a variety of other types of awards that you could win based on the criteria of how it was voted on.

Jens Bringsjord

But the top 100 majority of those were voted on by judges. So, I don't remember the judges.

Megan Luedke

Yeah. So, they had a panel of judges. I quite honestly don't know. I think there was a handful of judges like maybe, but they were only like five or six.

Jens Bringsjord

They were quite notable people. And like the audio podcast space, I think they weren't just like random people.

Megan Luedke

Yes, they were. Yeah. Very specific people that they chose to judge this competition. You had to like in order to enter, you had to be accepted. You didn't have to like it wasn't just you can enter and whatever, you had to be accepted. Is there a certain criterion we had to meet? It could only be up to 2 minutes long and this is.

Jens Bringsjord

Where our trailer. Really?

Megan Luedke

Yeah, it had to be 2 minutes long. And it had to be a small podcast with big ideas and wanted to leave the listener wanting more, which is exactly what our goal of the trailer was in the first place.

Megan Luedke

And so, it was really like a.

Megan Luedke

Perfect fit and perfect.

Jens Bringsjord

Timing.

Megan Luedke

For the beginning of the season because we submitted right in early May and right when the season had started, and we had more coming, and it was really kind of cool. And it also just the timing in the end worked out really well because we found out just.

Megan Luedke

This week that we won and right.

Jens Bringsjord

Before we were about to meet and do this record.

Megan Luedke

And.

Megan Luedke

We've just wrapped up our season. So, like that's just really exciting. So, the timing on the whole thing was really exciting. And so yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

And just as a side note too, there were over like within these like over 1600 podcasts that were submitted, they come from over 60 different countries. So, it's literally a global like.

Megan Luedke

And the contests, the entries from the U.S. alone are I mean, crazy.

Jens Bringsjord

But yeah. So, thank you again, everybody, for voting if you did. And we look forward to hopefully winning more awards in the future and we'll definitely keep you posted. And we really just appreciate you guys for voting and getting us noticed and just keep sharing the love.

Megan Luedke

Exactly. And thank you for tuning in this season and really just like listening to our show and joining us on this wonderful journey. Yeah.

Jens Bringsjord

So, stay tuned for season three because we are going to announce some really exciting things really soon.

Megan Luedke

Yes.

Jens Bringsjord

And yeah, I guess that's all for now. So, thanks again for tuning in, everybody. And we'll talk to you guys again.

Megan Luedke

See you.

Megan Luedke

Soon.

Jens Bringsjord

Outro Music Don't forget to join us for our next episode by subscribing to the show and leaving a positive review. We really appreciate it.

Megan Luedke

To learn more about Design Atlas and to sign up for updates, visit our website at Design Atlas podcast. If you want to get in touch with us or have topic idea for our next episode, feel free to send us an email at Hello Design Atlas Podcast or DM us on Instagram at Design Pod. Thanks for listening.

Megan Luedke

I'm Megan Luedke.

 Jens Bringsjord

and I’m Jens Bringsjord.