Chapter 1: What does it mean to build a creative practice based on curiosity?
Because we've all seen people spend a ton of money on terrible work, right? You can do that. You can spend a ton of money on terrible work, and I tell people all the time that you can make beautiful things with small budgets, and here's proof. It's nice to have a mixture of budgets. I'm not courting all the small budgets in the world, but you can make beautiful work with small budgets.
It absolutely costs the same to print ugly and to print beautiful, right? When you're putting, just say, four-color ink on paper, Running it, taking the time to run it through a press or build a website or whatever, it's time, right? You're paying for time.
So if you think about it and if you've done all the homework and the years of learning, right, you're carrying all that, all those experiences with you, it shows up, right?
Yeah.
Welcome to the Daring Creativity podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic.
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Chapter 2: How did the founders' experience at Nike shape their design philosophy?
I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?
My guest today co-founded one of San Francisco's most influential design studios, and she spent 24 years proving that the refusal to specialize is not a liability, it's a superpower. Dora Drimalas is the co-founder of Hybrid Design, a studio she's built alongside her husband Brian after five formative years at Nike, where fearlessness wasn't a value, it was just how things got done.
In this conversation, we explore what it takes to keep creativity alive across decades of real client work, why curiosity has to be a studio-wide practice, and the monumental effort behind Hybrid's debut monograph, Curiosity in All Things. This conversation is about designing without fear and why the best creative work starts with a very good question. It's my pleasure to introduce Dora Trimalas.
Laura, it's great to see you today. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
You're most welcome. I am so excited to talk to you today because your new book that you guys released, even the title got me really excited because I call myself Eternally Curious Human.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Hybrid's monograph 'Curiosity in All Things'?
If I speak to my friends, I say I'm an eternally curious idiot because I try to discover the things that we cannot find in many places. But your book is called Curiosity in All Things. And it's a wonder of design, color, shapes, thinking, philosophies. So I'm glad you're here so we can talk about your book.
But for those who may have not heard of Hybrid, your design studio and your book in yourself, how would you introduce yourself?
I'm Dora. And my studio, Hybrid Design, was started 24 years ago by my husband and myself in San Francisco. And the title is a reoccurring theme in our studio ethos in how we explore new projects and what influences us and inspires us. And it's truly 24 years of all of it, the process, and the process of design isn't A straight line, as anyone who's in design knows.
I like to say the design process looks like a plate of spaghetti. There's phases. There's the beginning of the meal, middle of the meal and the end of the meal. But if you truly get to explore, right, and you follow that spaghetti around, that's what the creative process is like, at least in my head. And it's beautiful that way.
Chapter 4: How does creative biodiversity impact the quality of design work?
You said it was you and your husband who started Hybrid. And in your description of who you are, you guys say that you are problem solvers, improvisers, artists, craftspeople, thinkers, collectors, adventurers, roll-up-out-of-sleeve doers, and many other things. How did you get up to be at the helm of such intricately beautiful output that you run right now?
I think to be really curious, you have to let it all in and you have to follow the inspiration. And the beauty of being, I've worked in-house and I've worked at an agency on the outside. And the beauty of being on the outside is your clients are different. Different clients are going to come in through the door. And we've never wanted to specialize.
I feel like our lives would have been a lot easier as business people if we focused on one thing, if we were a branding shop only, if we were a web studio. But our clients have more complicated problems. Our clients have campaigns with multiple touch points. And our interests are varied. So as a creative person, I can't understand why I would just want to do one thing.
It just seems like a great way to kill creativity.
I've been thinking about this for a very long time because I admire people who can do the one thing.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do clients face in keeping creative possibilities open?
Potentially, they might be more happy and more content because they know what they want. They've got it and they're doing it. But as you said, design is a bread of spaghetti. The complex things produce so many more complex things. solutions or possibilities that we just, you know, if you do just that one thing, it might potentially be more predictable.
But I like that when you say to be curious, you have to let it all in.
You have to let it all in. And some people embrace change. Brian and I very much have different design styles. So when we first started, I'm the Swiss grid designer. Brian is the mad scientist illustrator brain. So where I have a love for typography, Brian has a love for illustration and chaos. But we both love telling stories in those two different ways.
So the studio from the beginning was this blend of styles, was a blend of clients. And then as we brought on employees, we hired in these two buckets, right?
Chapter 6: How does stepping back as a leader contribute to creative satisfaction?
And made sure that we were balanced. And everyone who came in wasn't a copy of somebody else. They had their own unique voice and their own unique point of view and their own unique weirdness, which made everything better, right? And then we all I think those are the conditions to create good work for us.
And I have a good friend, we spoke about this earlier, you need fertile soil to plant a lot of different seeds and see what comes up. If everything is the same, that's one crop. That doesn't work for us.
How would you keep your soil fertile?
It's that diversity of interests, ideas, points of view, people from different countries, guys, girls, right? If anything gets too much of one thing, it just throws the whole thing off completely. You don't have the same mixture of ideas. And it just gets boring.
I guess that's why we would call it biodiversity in the world out there, right? Again, I feel like the nourishment comes from that curiosity.
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Chapter 7: What lessons were learned from the process of creating the monograph?
As a creative person, you have to, right? And we have crazy standards in our industry where... The client wants to know what's new, what's beautiful, what's the latest thing. And there's only so much of that chasing the trends and whatever, but there's like solid foundation, good design, right? You got to have the solid foundation of a brand. Is the brand behaving as it should?
Is the brand doing all the right things? And then if it is, then you can start telling stories. Then you can start activating on the good things that are already there. It's not about chasing trends. It's not about, oh, everyone's using this illustration. Let's do that. It's about challenging yourself every time. And it's not efficient.
From a business point of view, it doesn't make sense at all, right?
Chapter 8: How can curiosity drive innovation and creativity in design?
You have to get up to speed every time. New client, new process, new homework, new skills, new technology. But we do it, right? That's what it takes to do something new.
I think there's a time and place for the work like that to happen because it's not to everyone. Because as you said, it's not always the best for business. It's not always the best for time and speed. But this sentiment has been echoed on this podcast before by other people that, you know, you need to do your best work and do it afresh.
Otherwise, you're just repeating your best hits, if at all best hits. When I look at your book and I see your profile, it just says change, change, and more change. And to some people, change is scary because you've established, hypothetically, someone's established motive. God is working. Why break it? I am with you. Change, change, and more changes is uncertain, but it's so thrilling.
It is thrilling and you get one pass at this, right? And some people need comfort from rinse and repeat, right? And that stable world and others that is not satisfying, right? And for us, I feel like it's not satisfying. Like I can see the look on the designer's face. If we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again, it's this I'm dead on the inside face that I get.
And then we have to have a discussion about what are you doing outside of work? What are you doing right now to keep it fresh? Because if work isn't giving it to you creatively, then where are you going to find it? And I say that also because the work in the book is this much of the work that we've done as a studio, right?
And part of including the inspiration and the essays and the thinking in there is that it takes work and you do a lot of really, I say ugly work. You do a lot of work that you don't want to put in a book to get to this. We'll be back after a quick break.
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And I really want to talk about the curation of the book and how you guys put it together because I know the feeling when you've got so much and how you curate it. But before we get there, I still want to trace it back a few steps back because you've co-founded Hybrid with Brian. How did you guys meet and how did you decide to start Hybrid together?
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