Talk About Talk - Executive & Leadership Communication Skills

Fonts are on our screens, on paper, on the products we buy, and on signs everywhere! When used effectively, fonts can significantly improve our communication. Patrick Griffin (“the font guy”) shares his advice about choosing the ideal font, considering the white space, and emojis!   References & Links Patrick Griffin Canada Type – https://canadatype.com Font references – https://typedrawers.com https://slashdot.org Fonts Referenced in this Podcast On Fonts The Unicode Consortium – https://unicode.org Emoji proposals – http://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html Fonts Researcher Frédéric Gosselin – https://recherche.umontreal.ca/english/our-researchers/professors-directory/researcher/is/in14360/ History of Helvetica (Wired magazine) – https://www.wired.com/2015/04/legendary-redesign-helvetica-reborn-30-years/ History of Fonts (FastCompany magazine) –https://www.fastcompany.com/90322896/who-was-garamond-anyway-the-people-behind-typographys-famous-names Fonts vs. typefaces FastCompany magazine) – https://www.fastcompany.com/3028971/whats-the-difference-between-a-font-and-a-typeface Talk About Talk Fonts BLOG – https://talkabouttalk.com/talk-about-fonts-and-emojis COLOUR Podcast – https://talkabouttalk.com/10-communicating-with-colour-with-daryl-aitken-jenn-purkis-lori-ryerson/ Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup Andrea – [email protected]   Interview Transcript Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: He has a business card, I’m really curious to see what fonts are on the business card. It’s very clean looking. Thank you so much, Patrick for being here. Patrick Griffin: Pleasure. AW: So let’s start if you don’t mind by talking about the font industry Patrick Griffin: Okay, let’s start with what I do. I make fonts on demand; I made fonts for retail and make fonts. I just make fonts. I’d be considered a font designer. And I’ve been doing this for about 19 years now. AW: How many fonts do you think you’ve designed or developed? PG: I stopped counting years ago. It’s quite a few. AW: So who are you designing or developing these font families for? PG: I do fonts for banks, I do fonts for publishers, I do fonts for the five major movie studios are like constantly customers of mine. AW: Really? PG: Yeah. AW: because I assumed that graphic designers or maybe designers of packaging, for example, for consumer-packaged goods or who are creating labels, or maybe even who are designing brand logos would be coming to you. PG: those company as well. Yeah. AW: so you can own a font? PG: Absolutely. Yeah, they pay good money to own a font for the simple reason is that, that they own it, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. And that’s one good way to stand out. AW: So if I have a font on my business card PG: So actually, Okay, I know the guy who designed it. This font was originally published by a company called Font Bureau based in Boston,… AW: you can tell just by looking at it – instantly. PG: Yeah, the shapes are very, very distinct, right. I mean, it’s like, there are people who are so into cars that they can tell, you know, tell which car it is, you know, half a mile down the road. Right. Okay, it’s coming towards you. I’m the same with fonts. When I grew up I had two local heroes in Toronto, and they were both type designers. AW: Really? PG: Yeah. I’m very good friends with them now. I grew up. Basically, I was fascinated by the fact that these guys, they just get to draw letters for a living. AW: Yeah, this is fascinating. I agree. Do you think of it as art? Do you think of yourself as an artist? PG: Not reall.? I don’t. I I’m a functionality guy. I make tools for people – I guess to have an easier time with their project to communicate. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s, that’s what I do I make communications. AW: That’s also why you’re here. PG: first and foremost, they are communication tools. Fonts. I mean, there’s a lot of history dates back. The moment we invented the alphabet, and the moment with the to reshape the alphabet, we have in effect decided that we want to change the way we communicate. And they’re everywhere. So they are everywhere. Yeah, they’re everywhere. Magic. Actually, something very interesting. In Sweden seven or eight years ago, one day, Stockholm woke up and their main street, all the signs that not have anything on them, the signs were all blank on one of their main streets. But it turned out to be some sort of stunt, that due to tell people that, okay, we are eliminating communication, try to live with that. Like even the street signs, they didn’t have anything on them to prove a point. Sure enough, everybody who was walking on that street was very, very disoriented. And it’s like, they were not sure if this is the shop that th

What do our possessions say about us? Award-winning marketing professor Russell Belk talks about how our possessions (including our clothing, cars, people, collections, gifts, social media pages,…) become part of our identity –or our extended self. Professor Belk highlights the significance of the sharing economy and de-materialization, cultural differences, and our evolving identities in relation to our possessions.   References & Links Professor Russell Belk Schulich School at York University – http://schulich.yorku.ca/faculty/russell-w-belk/ Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_W._Belk Professor Belk’s scholarly articles – https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=klSyVxYAAAAJ&hl=en “Possessions & the Extended Self” – http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.588.621&rep=rep1&type=pdf “The Extended Self in the Digital World” –https://www.msi.org/uploads/files/ATreview13-Belk.pdf Gift–Giving – https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/3/3/155/1792065 Royal Society of Canada – http://schulich.yorku.ca/news/professor-russell-belk-elected-royal-society-canada/ Papers & Scholars Referenced Ralph Waldo Emerson on a “True Gift” – https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/303 William James on Possessions – https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin10.htm Thorstein Veblen on Conspicuous Consumption – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption Healthy Avatars – https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2009.0130 “The Gift of the Maji” story by O. Henry – http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/GifMag.shtml Nicholas Carr (Atlantic Monthly) – “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” – https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/ Grant McCracken – clothing as language – https://amzn.to/2LtylZk Jerry Zaltman (Harvard) – https://www.hbs.edu/Pages/faculty-search.aspx?q=zaltman John Deighton (Harvard) – https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6446 Talk About Talk Possessions BLOG – https://talkabouttalk.com/talk-and-learn-about-our-possessions SOCIAL MEDIA podcast episode – https://talkabouttalk.com/7-social-media-with-volterra-founder-andrew-jenkins/ FASHION Podcast episode – https://talkabouttalk.com/16-s2-talking-fashion-style-with-toronto-fashion-weeks-carolyn-quinn/ STORYTELLING Podcast episode – Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup Andrea – [email protected]   Interview Transcript Russell Belk: Pleasure. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: I thought it’d be great to start with definitions. So maybe let’s start with self and extended itself. What do we mean when we say self? RB: You picked a difficult topic. No one agrees on what the self is, but I guess a simple way of thinking about it would be is what we think about who we are and what others think about who we are. And so extended itself is how that self is conveyed through the things that we own and the things that we do with them. AW: So I keep thinking the word identity, right? RB: Yeah, self and identity are pretty much interchangeable. AW: Okay. So I read in your paper, this quote that I just pulled out, because I thought it was interesting. The core self is a belief rather than a fact. Can you elaborate on that? RB: Sure. We’d like to think that we have an inner self that is unchanging, that is the same self we had when we were children. When we are old and die. But that’s not true. Our self is continually changing, continually evolving. There may be a few things. If I asked you who you are, you might say your name, where you’re from, what you do. It’s a little bit different in different cultures. In India, people would begin with who their parents and their grandparents were and where they’ve lived. And maybe eventually get around to themselves. But by and large, what we answer to that question is what we think about who we are. And as we think about ourselves, we begin to bring in places people and things as a part of that as well. That’s what I’m calling the extended itself. AW: And so there’s a layering… I don’t know if you want to call it a hierarchy? Does that vary by culture? RB: It does to some degree, some cultures are less materialistic. And some are more into lineage. In Chinese culture, for example, you owe a debt to your parents when you’re born for making the gift of your birth to you. And so you pay that back over a lifetime and even after they’ve died. For example, burning paper goods for them to use an afterlife. AW: Wow, wow. Okay, I want to get into materialism in a minute. But first, let’s shift now to the definition of possessions. If I just think about possessions and the extended self, the first image that comes to my mind actually is someone who’s driving a certain brand o

What’s your personal style? Carolyn Quinn, executive director of Toronto Fashion Week provides us with insights on fashion trends, environmental sustainability in the fashion industry, and tips on purchasing clothing and pulling together a great outfit!   References & Links Carolyn Quinn, executive director Toronto Fashion Week Toronto Fashion Week – https://torontofashionweek.to/ Recommendations: Retail Insider – https://www.retail-insider.com/ The Daily Beast – https://www.thedailybeast.com/ Fashion Talks Podcast – https://fashiontalks.ca/about-fashion-talks Designers Smythe… – https://shopsmythe.ca/ … designers who dressed Meghan Markle – https://whatmeghanwore.net/tag/meghan-markle-smythe-blue-coat/ Rosaria Lamanna – http://www.lifetoolsforwomen.com/b/rosaria-lamanna.htm Supreme – https://www.streetwearofficial.com/collections/supreme TalkAboutTalk Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup Andrea – [email protected]   Interview Transcript Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: Thank you so much for joining us, Carolyn. I really appreciate it. Carolyn Quinn: Happy to be here. I’m excited to talk about all things fashion. AW: So I wanted to start with a question that is a bit of a cliché. And hear your take on this. And the question is, what do you think about the saying, You are what you wear? CQ: I think it is such a true statement. I think that we all have to get dressed in the morning and I think we make a decision based on so many different factors. When it’s mid-February and it’s snowy and it’s cold. I find myself personally, I’m in all-black. And you see everyone sort of in this city and in the world dressed dark and I think it really impacts our feelings and now that it’s starting to get warm out you know, I’m starting to pull out all the bright colors and whites and you can see, you can feel that spring is in the air. We also get dressed in a way, in the mornings, almost like an armor. I think that if there’s something that is happening in our life, or you know, affecting our mood. It’s impacted by what we wear very much. And I think that what’s happening internationally in the world, whether it be economic, wars, whatever. Designers design collections based on what is what is happening globally. And it impacts what we what we wear. And again, it’s like an armor. You know, if there’s something negative happening, or positive, or weather, or economics, we outwardly project ourselves based on what we wear in the mornings. Yeah, yeah, very much so. AW: So armor is an interesting word, right? Because I feel like armor is something you put on to shield yourself from the outside. But you’re saying that may be true. It’s also true that you’re communicating from the inside out. CQ: It’s so much a communication piece, you know. There are designers now that are — and I’m sure everybody’s seen it — on either social or in the city. There are slogans on a lot of clothing, right? So whether it be “I’m a feminist” or equal pay, or don’t ask me to smile, and the whole #MeToo movement has really moved that forward. So again, it’s the armor, it’s the subtle, you know, wearing black or wearing bright colors. But then it’s also very much putting it out to the world, right? You know, your stance, your position on things. AW: Right. So there’s the style of what you’re wearing, there’s the color of what you’re wearing. There are the brands that you’re wearing. And people used to, I think, assume that that was communicating a lot. But now, we’ve really gone a step beyond that. And it’s literally having the sentence or the phrase or your motto or your mantra across your chest or on your toque…. CQ: You’re right, very much so. And there’s also the Make America Great Again. The Red Hat. Obviously, the famous Red Hat by President Trump. I’ve seen a number of different renditions of that with different slogans. Where it’s really a take on that and what’s happening in the politics of the world right now. Right? AW: I’ve seen those too. Basically reversing the message. CQ: exactly, AW: Exactly. There are so many things from what you said in terms of directions that we could go … but I actually think the listeners might be interested to hear what you’re wearing. I would be curious if I was listening to this! So Carolyn’s wearing a white short sleeve v neck t shirt, with no branding on it that I can see. And jeans and a lovely blue blazer that has nice piping on the inside. This strikes me as I love the red and white stripe. CQ: When I got dressed this morning, it’s funny… My husband said to me, “where are you going today?” because I’m dressed sort of differently than I normally am. I always I always wear Canadian s

Are you optimistic about our future with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? Avi Goldfarb (professor and author of “Prediction Machines”) shares a brief history of AI, various AI applications that are being used in the marketplace, and specific reasons why we should be optimistic about our future with AI.   References & Links Avi Goldfarb Rotman UofT – http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Goldfarb.aspx BOOK: “Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence” – https://amzn.to/2GoX6Ac LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/avi-goldfarb-46a7473/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/avicgoldfarb The Organizations Creative Destruction Lab – https://www.creativedestructionlab.com/ Marketing Science – https://pubsonline.informs.org/page/mksc/editorial-board NBER – National Bureau of Economic Research – https://www.nber.org/ AtomWise – https://www.atomwise.com/ OpenAI – https://openai.com/ Articles, Books & Concepts Artificial Intelligence – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence “Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence” –https://amzn.to/2GoX6Ac “It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens” by danah boyd – https://amzn.to/2PiorYK Machine Learning – https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/an-executives-guide-to-machine-learning Deep learning – https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deep-learning.asp Google Search + – https://www.fastcompany.com/90308480/40-incredibly-useful-things-you-didnt-know-google-search-could-do AI impact on trade – https://www.nber.org/papers/w24917 Wikipedia pages impact on travel – http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp12053.pdf AI & Communication – https://becominghuman.ai/how-has-ai-changed-the-way-humans-communicate-10369fc2453a AI & Communication – https://www.quantifiedcommunications.com/blog/artificial-intelligence-in-communication “The Matrix” movie– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) The People Ajay Agrawal – http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Agrawal Erik Brynjolfsson – http://ebusiness.mit.edu/erik/ Elsa Kania – https://twitter.com/EBKania Joshua Gans – http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Gans.aspx Geoff Hinton – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton Larry Tesler – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler TalkAboutTalk Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup Andrea – [email protected] COLOUR episode – https://talkabouttalk.com/10-communicating-with-colour-with-daryl-aitken-jenn-purkis-lori-ryerson/   Interview Transcript Professor Avi Goldfarb: Thank you. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki: Let’s start with some context. I think our listeners would love to hear how you came from studying economics and then working as a marketing professor at a business school to writing a best seller on AI. AG: Okay, so I was a graduate student in the late 1990s, in economics. And there was this crazy new technology called the internet. So, my dissertation was about competition between search engines before there was such thing as Google. AW: Just to remind some of us or to provide context for the younger listeners… What were those search engines again? AG: So AOL had its own search engine. There was Lycos, there was HotBot. And the dominant player was Yahoo! AW: right. AG: Yahoo! is still around. And I should say Google was in the final data that I use for my dissertation because it was from 2000. And Google had just come out of beta. And I had 20-something search engines in the data and Google was number 17. So they were there, but they were tiny. My teaching was marketing and statistics. And Ajay Agrawal, my co-author in the book, started this program called the Creative Destruction Lab. And the Creative Destruction Lab is a program to help science-based start-ups scale up. And we started in 2012. And in that first year, there was this company called Atomwise, which called itself an AI company. And we never really heard of AI outside of science fiction. And they were building AI for biotech. And then the next year, there were a couple of AI companies. And then the next year became clear that this was a big new technology, because there was a flood of companies doing AI. And pretty soon at the lab, we had more AI start-ups than anywhere else in the world. Because of some quirky history of Toronto, having an important place in that. AW: So Toronto is an AI cluster? AG: Yes. Or at least it started that way, it still plays an important role. But the core technology underlying current excitement of AI, something called Deep Learning. And the perhaps the core researcher and deep learning is man named Geoff Hinton, who’s a computer science professor emeritus now here at Univer

Are you the bossy eldest? The troubled middle child? The baby of the family? Or an only child? Does your personality fit with your birth order stereotype? What about your kids? Listen as Dr. Andrea and her brother, musician and sound producer Brian Campbell, talk about birth order effects, how the stereotypes fit with their family, and why the research is so inconsistent. References & Links Brian Campbell • Email – [email protected] • LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-r-campbell-2018b9b6/?originalSubdomain=ca • Photos – https://talkabouttalk.com/about/ Siblings • National Siblings Day – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siblings_Day • Qs to ask your siblings – https://www.rootreport.com/sibling-tag-questions/ Sibling Order Effects Communication Skills • https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1996.tb01755.x • https://www.jstor.org/stable/1128089?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents General • https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.00193 • https://www.pnas.org/content/112/46/14224.short • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656610001406 • https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED074426.pdf • https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/conscious-communication/201709/sibling-relationships-are-cradle-grave • https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/the-brother-sister-bond/ • https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/field-guide-families/201210/the-secret-powers-middle-children • https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/how-raise-happy-cooperative-child/201605/the-effect-birth-order-children Explanations for Inconsistencies • Ernst & Angst, 1983 • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691100345X TalkAboutTalk • Weekly Email Blog – https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup • Andrea – [email protected] • Cynthia Barlow Body Language episode – https://talkabouttalk.com/1-body-language-with-executive-coach-cynthia-barlow/ • Bradley Christensen Using Your Voice episode – https://talkabouttalk.com/2-using-your-voice-with-baritone-opera-singer-bradley-christensen/ Other Resources Mentioned • “Bond with Health” with Vanessa Bond – https://www.bondwithhealth.com/ • “Foothills Famous” with Jonathan Stoddart – http://foothillsfamous.com/ • “Portfolio Career Podcast” with David Nebinski – https://www.portfoliocareerpodcast.com/ • “Prediction Machines” by Avi Goldfarb – https://amzn.to/2X9LO9v • TEDTalks – https://www.ted.com/#/ • Toronto Fashion Week – https://torontofashionweek.to/   Interview Transcript Brian Campbell: Yeah, respect, absolutely. Agree with one another all the time, maybe not so much. Andrea Wojnicki: True. Where are you, Brian? BC: Currently, I’m in Half Moon Lake Alberta, in my cozy home just east of Edmonton. I’m sitting in my basement. This is typically the space where I do all my production work. Although once in a while I do come out of my cave and sit at our kitchen table. But I’m sitting in front of a couple of big KRK speakers with my trusty headphones beside me and my laptop. So and this is typically where I sit and do all the production, whether it’s the Edit notes with you, or the audio edits themselves. Yeah, I spent a great deal of time down here either working on my day job or doing the work for TalkAboutTalk. AW: You know, what I think would be cool would be if you took a photo, and we’ll post it in the show notes so that the listeners can see where the editing and mixing happens for each of the podcast episodes, I’m actually curious as well. BC: Okay, I will get my housekeeper on it. His name is Brian , and he’s gonna clean up the base on before he takes a photo. AW: Excellent. Anyway, as the producer and editor of the 13 podcast that we’ve recorded and released so far, you are intimately familiar with the TalkAboutTalk material. And I was just wondering if you have any comments regarding season one. BC: It’s been a journey and a really good one. When we started off I, I viewed it as an opportunity to support my big sister, it was viewed from my perspective anyway, as kind of the collision of our careers. And I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I’ve always been obsessed with communication and perspective, and to be able to be a part of a production where we’re doing the deep dive into how people affect one another, through their ability to communicate. And to, quote, talk, if they’re interested. The content is interesting. I think we’ve got a lot of great guests as well. And then looking at what we’re rolling into. And season two, I think we’re really just getting my feet under so some, some more taboo topics on the horizon, which I think is really important, because I think it’s important to speak to people and to speak to some of the more difficult topics. AW: Yeah, I agree. I’m really excited about those