388 - Shop Talk with Billy Baumann and Mitch Putnam

Bang. The. Drum. Shop Talk is here and we have special guest Mitch Putnam in the James Flames chair doing his best guido accent to keep up appearances. There is a lot of business advice and sales strategies to digest as this Shop Talk spans everything form delegating amongst your team to multi-tiered pricing structures that span multiple audiences. We get  first hand look at the administrative perspective with Billy overseeing so much at Delicious and Mitch as one of the many predominant hydra heads of the media monster that is Mondo. Taking your career to the next level is a lot of persistence, networking, and gut instinct and these three masterminds of strategy have a discussion that continually touches back on how to keep your head up and not get lost in the day to day grind of creation. Antics definitely ensue.

Talking Points

• Creating a four foot wide lion's head.
• Collecting power tools.
• Knowing your team to know what to delegate and to whom.
• Mitch's move to Minneapolis.
• Updates on DDL's Threadless Shop.
• How safety has changed across the decades and design's influence on it.
• The three tiers in the Star Wars universe and how C3P0 did on Mondo's timed edition release.
• Expanding into alternate forms of merchandise.
• Cinema sticking to its guns and the future in TV.
• Mitch hates Howard Stern.
• Compartmentalizing the departments of Mondo for better work.
• Missing Anne and the timesuck of kids.
• Efficiency in time management on a project.
• Critiquing the history of logos for DC Comics.
• Potential Tony Mendez Whalenamel.
• Getting the best work out of people when you're not paying the best price.
• Creating value in posters to a whole new audience.
• The passing of Darwin Cook and his imprint on the comic world.
• Actual Proof that Billy regularly listens to the show!
• Mitch's opinion on Aaron Horkey's next career moves.
• Leveraging your talent across multiple markets to make property dependent work that sells.
• Who are we making art for?
• Pricing tier models that straddle the fine art and poster worlds.
• Growing as an artists and becoming a commodity.
• Breaking down Variety's Top 10 Cartoon Characters list.
• Is Adventure Time influentially the next Simpsons?
• Winnie The Pooh as The Sandlot or Queer As Folk.
• Will Hollywood look the other way at your sordid past?
• Snoopy, Joe Cool, and Mark Brickey.
• Parenting advice on showing your kids classic cartoons and managing your own connections to them.
• Mitch's public defamation and the potential legal case of a social media share.
• Overcoming Instagram envy.
• Do you want to be remembered for your work or do you want to be remembered by your kids.