Monday Meeting

In this open discussion episode, host Jen Van Horn facilitates conversations about technical workflows, education platforms, and professional organization practices within the motion design community.
This episode covers:
Contra platform for freelancing: Commission-free alternative to platforms to Upwork that's gaining traction for motion design work, including interactive sports graphics for NBA broadcasts and March Madness using Rive.
Rive's growth and applications: The tool has evolved significantly with full scripting capabilities and multiple runtime environments, making it viable for web, mobile apps, Unity games, and interactive broadcast graphics—positioning itself as "the new Flash."
Overlord workflow integration: Battleaxe's subscription-based tool enables seamless transfer between Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, and After Effects while maintaining editable text and shape layers, though gradient handling remains imperfect.
School of Motion's subscription model: The shift to all-access passes provides better value for students taking multiple classes and companies purchasing team slots.
Project organization best practices: Color-coding systems for layers, markers, and timelines save significant time in collaborative environments; treating every project as if another person will work on it prevents future workflow bottlenecks.
The importance of keyboard shortcuts: Mastering hotkeys and custom workflows dramatically increases efficiency—editors working entirely from keyboard without mouse contact demonstrate the extreme end of optimization.
Storytelling over technical skills: As AI tools improve at composition, motion designers' value increasingly lies in editorial sense, timing, tension-building, and emotion—skills that complement rather than compete with automation.

Upcoming Events:
Gartic Phone Game Night is scheduled for TONIGHT! (Mar 25th) 
No meeting Monday, March 30th 
Next month: Kendall will be hosting -stay tuned for the theme!

Visit MondayMeeting.org for this episode and other conversations from the motion design community!

SHOW NOTES:
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Color Palette Cinema instagram
Color Theory Book: "If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling"
Universal Audio

This episode continues March's focus on branding and marketing strategy, with host Lee Smalt chats with Mary Hawkins about her journey as a NYC-based art director and animator.

This episode covers:
Career evolution and intentional pivoting: After decades of broadcast and network work for clients including MTV and Food Network, a deliberate shift toward nonprofit and non-fiction documentary animation reflected a desire for more meaningful, durable work over high-volume commercial projects.
The "art director" title debate: The group explored how titles like art director, creative director, and generalist often fail to capture what motion designers actually do, and how the right title can open or close doors depending on the client.
Process as strategy: Thorough pre-production — including mood boards, decks, and research — isn't just organization; it enables the right creative conversations with clients and keeps complex projects coherent from brief to delivery.
Unconventional research methods: For a documentary project tied to Back to the Future, digging through physical record crates for period-accurate visual artifacts produced more authentic reference material than standard Pinterest or stock-image research.
Personal work as a portfolio strategy: Passion projects like Love Letters for the Subway — a short film about NYC's subway lines — consistently generated inbound client interest, reinforcing that showing the work you want to do attracts the projects you actually want.
Animation's role in documentary filmmaking: When archival footage doesn't exist, animation provides narrative coverage that's both flexible and stylistically distinctive, as demonstrated across multiple documentary projects.
Real-world impact of design work: A water safety campaign for Rising Tide Effect — including subway, ferry, and bus ads — contributed to zero drowning deaths at New York City beaches in its first year.
Personality as a differentiator: At a senior career stage, leading with who you are — not just what you can do — increasingly drives meaningful project inquiries, especially for clients seeking a long-term creative collaborator.

Upcoming Events:
Next Monday, March 23rd: Open Discussion episode
Game Night: Gartic Phone on Wednesday, March 25th
No episode Monday, March 30th
Visit MondayMeeting.org for this episode and other conversations from the motion design community!

SHOW NOTES:
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Mary's LinkedIn
Portfolio
Company
Love Letters From The Subway

In this episode, host Lee Smalt welcomes Ashton Hauff, co-founder of Bismarck-based branding studio The Good Kids, for a conversation on brand strategy and its role in the creative process.
This episode covers:
Strategy as the foundation for creative work: Building a strategy phase into every project — before any visual work begins — gives both the creative team and the client a shared vocabulary and a clear framework for decision-making, reducing subjective disagreements and last-minute surprises.
The "Slingshot Method": The Good Kids structures their process in three phases — strategy, creative, and activation — with strategy serving as the launch point that makes everything downstream smoother and more intentional.
Four pillars of brand strategy: A thorough strategy examines the company, its customers, its competition, and the broader cultural context, ultimately distilling those findings into a singular brand idea and an emotionally compelling brand story.
Distinguishing brand strategy from marketing strategy: Brand strategy defines who you are, what you believe, and how you look and sound; marketing strategy builds on that foundation to determine where and how you show up to reach your audience.
Clients want to be passengers, not drivers: Most clients want confidence in the process more than control over it. A structured strategy phase helps clients trust the creative team to lead, while still feeling involved and heard throughout.
Handling pushback on strategy: Rather than selling strategy as a separate service, bundling it into core packages reduces friction. When clients push back, asking about their business goals and long-term investment in things like signage or websites often helps illustrate why upfront strategy saves money down the road.
Knowing when to walk away: Maintaining an internal red flag list helps identify difficult client relationships early. For borderline situations, adding a percentage to the project bid can offset the extra friction — but some clients simply aren't the right fit.
Applying your own process to yourself: Using the same strategy frameworks on your own business — even if it takes longer to prioritize — leads to clearer positioning and stronger client alignment over time.

Upcoming Events/Schedule:
Game night was postponed — a new date will be announced in the Monday Meeting Discord
Next week's guest: New York-based art director Mary Hawkins, continuing the conversation on strategy and visual branding
Visit MondayMeeting.org for this episode and other conversations from the motion design community!

SHOW NOTES:
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Ashton’s LinkedIn
The Good Kids

In this episode, host Lee Smalt leads an open conversation on branding and marketing strategy.
This episode covers:
Starting with strategy before branding: Before investing time in logos, fonts, or website platforms, freelancers benefit from answering foundational questions about who they serve, what problems they solve, and why they do what they do — a step many creatives skip when entering freelance work.
Defining your "why": Revisiting your core purpose regularly helps clarify which clients and projects to pursue. Completing a brand discovery questionnaire at least twice a year can surface insights that feel redundant but reveal deeper clarity with each pass.
Niching by client personality, not just industry: Your target market doesn't have to be defined by a vertical like fintech or healthcare — it can be defined by the type of people you want to work with, such as those who are collaborative, appreciative, and reliable.
Qualifying leads with intention: Rather than broadcasting availability on LinkedIn, focusing on building genuine relationships with people at target studios — starting with peers and working up — tends to yield stronger results than cold applications.
Authenticity over polish in self-promotion: Showing your face, sharing your process, and being genuinely enthusiastic about your work outperforms highly produced content. Audiences and clients can sense when enthusiasm is real versus performed.
Networking as a long-term practice: Consistent, low-pressure outreach — commenting on posts, sending connection requests with personal notes, attending speed networking events — builds visibility over time and is more effective than sporadic high-effort pushes.
Overcoming executive dysfunction and inertia: Breaking strategy tasks into smaller steps and using body-doubling or co-working sessions can help creatives who struggle to start, especially when facing something as broad and open-ended as defining a personal brand.
Upcoming Events/Schedule:
TONIGHT (march 4th) Community Game Night (Gartic Phone) at 6 PM Pacific / 7 PM Mountain / 9 PM Eastern — details in the Monday Meeting Discord
"March of Robots" drawing challenge running throughout March — jump in anytime, no daily commitment required
Next week's guest: Ashton Hauff, CEO of The Good Kids (Bismarck marketing company) — discussing her approach to strategy
Visit MondayMeeting.org for this episode and other conversations from the motion design community!
SHOW NOTES:
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Lee’s Brand Discovery Form
March of Robots Drawing Challenge
Austin Saylor’s 200K Program

In this themed discussion episode, host Jen Van Horn leads a wide-ranging conversation about defining "good taste" in the creative industry.

This episode covers:
"Good taste" as a buzzword: The phrase has become overused and under-defined, leaving emerging artists frustrated with no clear benchmark to work toward — especially as it increasingly comes up in conversations about standing out from AI.
Taste is subjective and cyclical: What's considered good taste today was often criticized or rejected in the past, from the Impressionists to flashy gradients finding their way into major brand campaigns. Taste shifts constantly and no single standard holds forever.
Taste vs. experience: Rather than an innate quality, taste is better understood as accumulated experience — the ability to discern, articulate, and connect creative decisions to context and audience over time.
Soul over technical perfection: Technical correctness gets work into consideration, but distinctiveness and personal voice are what make it stand out. Pursuing perfection at the expense of finishing and sharing work can actively hold artists back.
Don't chase trends: By the time you arrive at a trend, it's already moved on. Learning from trends is valuable, but building a point of view is more sustainable than following someone else's agenda.
Good taste in client work is a conversation: In freelance and client contexts, taste is less about personal aesthetic and more about listening carefully, mirroring client language, and aligning creative vision with their goals through the discovery process -but also recognizing when you’re not the right fit!
Artist vs. designer distinction: Personal artistic expression and client work operate by different rules. When working for a client, the job is to solve their problem — separating that from personal art practice is a healthy and necessary boundary.

Upcoming Events/Schedule:
Next week: Open discussion on branding and marketing strategies, hosted by Lee Smalt
Game night: March 4th (Gartic Phone)

Visit MondayMeeting.org for this episode and other conversations from the motion design community!

SHOW NOTES:
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“Good Taste” LinkedIn Discussion