Cody and Isaac sit down to field questions from in-house designers, freelancers and marketing pros from around the beer industry.

Points of discussion:

Cody and Isaac remark on CODO’s 14th anniversary without much fanfare.

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Q1: Did design school prepare you for running a business?

Q2: I just got done listening to your podcast episode on naming a brewery. My question to you is how many names do you provide a client? I recently provided 35 to a client for their own personal brand. Do you think that’s too many or too little? I personally think I probably could have gotten away with just providing 15-20 But I’m just curious to hear what your thoughts and approach to the amount of names provided are.

Q3: Wanted to ask a business question (sorry, this isn’t beer related!) Do you enjoy sales? I struck out on my own back in 2020 and it’s been going fairly well since then. But I find sales to be the hardest part of growing my practice. Any help here would he appreciated.

Q4: Do you ever worry that by releasing books that deep dive into your process, breweries will no longer need your services?

Q5: Do you find that your team ever gets tired only working on beer branding projects? I run a small agency myself (currently 3 people) and we have an ongoing debate about whether or not we should focus on one particular industry like you all have.

Q6: How important has writing books been for your business?

Q7: What are 3 design/business books that every recent grad should read?

Q8: I’m an in-house designer at X. I recently brought an idea for a new product to our marketing director and head brewer and they basically laughed it off without any consideration. I won’t get into specifics, but I believe it’s a smart move based on what I’m seeing around the industry (including reading in your newsletter). So my question is, how can I get my team to listen to my ideas? I’m young, and new to this position and the beer industry (coming up on my one year anniversary), but I’m passionate and learning as much as I can. I figured you might have some insight here since you’ve previously talked about showing work and selling your ideas when you were a younger designer.