Tyler Pate – The Creative Pain, Nickelodeon, and Corporate Design Misconceptions – Ep48

Tyler is a creative leader, art director, and illustrator born "in the sticks" of South Carolina and now based in Los Angeles. You might be familiar with his personal brand, The Creative Pain, an outlet that he uses to process the hurdles, burnout, and doubt that come with the creative journey. Luckily, Tyler grew up with his cousin, Darby, and they competitively pushed each other's creativity. Obsessed with skateboarding culture, Tyler collected graphics and stickers, and even made his own skateboarding wax without burning the house down. Lol.   Like most creative professionals, he studied design in college, Francis Marion University in his case, and he's taken risks throughout his career, like leaving a full-time agency job to move across the country and become a full-time freelancer. His work is full of illustrations of donuts, 90s cartoon characters, and his dog, Iggy, and he's partnered with Adobe, Wacom, POSCA, and StickerApp. Tyler has also created artwork for The Black Keys, Jack White, and Paul McCartney, and he's no stranger to the corporate design world, having worked as an art director on Nickelodeon's consumer products team. At Nickelodeon, he created product guides for some of the network's biggest IPs, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Tune in for a talk about growing up in a town of 750 people, learning to look at design through a consumer-product lens, corporate design misconceptions, and the difference between isometric, dimetric, and trimetric perspectives. Follow Tyler on Instagram @thecreativepain, and check out more of his work on his website: thecreativepain.com. “There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.” Questions for this interview. How do you think your workshop at Crop Conference went? How did the reaction make you feel? As someone with over 160 thousand Instagram followers and who has worked with some of Nickelodeon’s most recognizable IPs, how does a conference like Crop inspire you, and what kind of value do you get from it? What’s your favorite thing to teach people that isn’t related to illustration and design? Do you ever think about how much different your career would be if you had grown up in a city instead of a small town with fewer opportunities? What steps did you take before leaving your full-time agency job, and how much money did you save beforehand? How did you feel when you found out Nickelodeon wanted YOU? Did you notice a change in your confidence? Can you break down how Chris Groll taught you to look at design through a consumer-product lens, and explain why that’s still helpful today? Can you think of any misconceptions or opinions you had about working in corporate design that turned out to be false? How long did it take you to learn when to stop adding texture to your illustrations, and how do you know when an illustration is complete? Can you explain the difference between isometric, dimetric, and trimetric, and then talk about how you create perspective with a custom grid? If you could only keep one, would you keep the ability to create mood boards or the free transform tool in Adobe Illustrator? What are you seeing enough of in the creative industry, and what would you like to see more of? ---If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at [email protected] @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.studentsofdesign.simplecast.com