Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Russell Toynes:
My name is Russell Toynes, and I am the creative director and owner at Studio Dzo. I’m also a design educator. I teach portfolio design at Austin Community College. And I am a core member of AAGD, which is African American Graphic Designers. And I’m a mentor to a lot of either previous students or folks that wish they were a student of mine.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Russell Toynes:
I’m also a dad and a husband, but those things, those are all day, every day. And those are some of the best things that I do. We’ll see. We should ask them.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s 2022 been going so far?

Russell Toynes:
2022 has been good. We’re actually really excited. 2021 was a banner year for us, and 2022 is exactly the same. Our books are full, and the work just keeps coming in, and we have a good team. We had a little bit of an upset in 2021 where we had some folks get, what’s that bug that they caught? The great resignation?

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Russell Toynes:
Some of them got some of that, you know? And so that left us in a little bit of a bind. So we had two new team members start in January, and so we’re still training them. So it’s a little challenging with that, with some new team members, but 2022 is starting out great for us.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there anything in particular that you really want to try to accomplish this year?

Russell Toynes:
Really, we have a good processes, but I always want to get right and tight, right? So I really, really am looking at how do we streamline our business? My goal… Well, with the pandemic, we’re really… Before pandemic, we had a studio on East Sixth Street and it was great. We were there for three or four years, and we just moved into a new place. We did a $10,000 build out. We moved into a new place on South Lamar on February 17th on 2020. And then March 17th, 2020, we said everybody, “Hey, so this thing’s going on. We’re going to send you home. You’re going to work from home and we’ll check in every week or two, and we’ll figure out when we’re going to come back.” We were really naive, right? We just didn’t know. And I was scared. And we have a little blog on our website.

Russell Toynes:
And so, I just wrote a blog of just like a cathartic, being a small business owner during a pandemic is fucking scary. And so, I wrote this blog post just talking about like my biggest thing was just thinking about, not only do I have to keep food on my table, but I got to keep food on five other people’s tables also. And so, not knowing what that was going to look like was really scary.

Russell Toynes:
But what I realized was when we were in the studio, we were really locally focused. We did some state, some things outside of Austin. Lots of things outside of Austin, but lots of things in other states, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and places like that. But we were really just thinking, “Oh, we’re Austin, we’re Texas.”

Russell Toynes:
When we went remote, all of a sudden opportunities just started just coming in different directions. And now, we really see ourselves as global. We have done work in Singapore, we have done work all over the United States. We have partners all over the world. So really, thinking about… we just wrapped up a project in Canada… just thinking about what we have done in the last year, it’s amazing that when we opened our minds up to thinking beyond our local borders, what we’ve accomplished.

Russell Toynes:
And so, really 2022 is just about, how do we keep this momentum? How do we move forward and continue to have a global presence?

Maurice Cherry:
That’s really good to hear. I mean, the pandemic, it’s changed business for so many people. I mean, I’ve talked to several studio owners, big and small, that have all had to really adjust because they weren’t able to come together physically in an office like they did before. I mean, for the team, was it a big shift to make that change?

Russell Toynes:
Yes. So, we have team members of various ages. So we have seven team members. Seven in total. So me and my wife, and then we have five other team members. And they’re all employees of ours, but we call them team members because I don’t like the idea of people being an employee.

Russell Toynes:
So they’re all in different places in life. Some have families, some are single, some have partners. And so obviously, the pandemic hit everybody. So if you’re a family person and you have a spouse at home and children, they’re all affected. And so, that changed a lot for our team member in particular who has kids. It’s just, how do you work when his escape was getting in the car, driving to the studio, spending six to eight hours there and driving back, and having that decompression time and that transitional period?

Russell Toynes:
And now it’s get up, feed, clothe, put them in front of whatever Zoom classes they have, then get in front of his work Zoom and do work. And then their kids, they’re various ages. And so, that was the biggest challenge. Our big thing was, we wanted to focus on their mental health. We wanted to make sure that they had the freedom to take whatever time they needed just to process what the hell was going on. Because for all of us, we just didn’t know. It was scary.

Russell Toynes:
Especially in the very beginning when we just didn’t know what it was, but people were getting sick and people were dying. As time went on, the adaptations change. It went from, “Okay, let me just figure out just how to keep people, my team healthy and somewhat productive,” to this, “Okay, we can’t talk about going back. We got to talk about moving forward.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, it was like, “What do you need to be effective? What do you need to be efficient?” So, the team came back to the studio, we gave them their desk, their sit-stand desk. Then we got everybody… Our designers have desktops. Actually, almost everybody had desktops. And so, we were like, “Look, we can’t say you work remote, but then basically chain you to a desk.” So we got everybody all new laptops, and we were like, “Look, we don’t know what this is going to look like, but you have the freedom to work from wherever you’re at. So if you want to travel somewhere, you can work from there. As long as you’re able to be productive, work however you want to.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, for us, we really just had to figure out what was going to work now that we were in the long haul for this. So really it was just changing our work model. So changing it from in the studio to being remote. But then also from a clock in, clock out like you had in the studio where people come in and they’re expected to be in at 9:00, expect to stay till 5:00, and you had a good culture there. Where now it’s like, “We have to go to dentists, we have to get our car inspected. We have to do all the things while being at home.”

Russell Toynes:
So we switched to this get it done model, where it’s like, you know what you need to do. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, first thing in the morning, we talk about what we need to do and then you just go do it, however you’re going to get it done. So if you want to take out in the middle of the day to hang out with the kids, cool. You know what needs to be done when it needs to be done. I don’t need to babysit you.

Russell Toynes:
And so that’s worked out really, really well, both for my wife and I, Elizabeth, because sometimes we’re just not feeling like sitting in front of a desk. And so, we can sit with our laptop. And plus, we can do a lot of our work via our phone if we’re just calling or setting up meetings or reviewing work. So for us, this whole get it done model has really helped us all tackle life’s responsibilities along with work responsibilities.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, it sounds like you and the team are really able to make a agile shift pretty quickly. Do you think that was just because of your tight-knit nature of the team? What do you really attribute to that?

Russell Toynes:
I was a creative… Oh sorry, I was art director at Dell for five and a half years, and I learned quite a bit of what to do and what not to do. And so, very, very quickly I knew that I wanted everything that we did to be cloud based. And so, I didn’t want the opportunity for someone to have anything on their local drive that we needed, or for a laptop to get stolen and work that I had paid for over months for them to do got lost.

Russell Toynes:
So we were already very equipped to work remotely, because everything was already backed up to the cloud constantly through Google File Stream. And we had been using all the Google suites. So everything from the calendars, to email, to everything. So we were already well-equipped to just work from devices, whether that be iPads, phones, or computers, or something like that.

Russell Toynes:
I think being that we’re a small team and it was seven of us, I think that allowed us to be nimble. And we’ve always prided ourselves on being nimble and being able to fail quickly. So we’ll try something. If it doesn’t work, let’s adapt. But honestly, I attribute it to having just a damn good team who really has a lot of faith in Elizabeth and I to just guide them. And they’ll follow us in whatever direction we ask them to.

Russell Toynes:
And we have an open-door policy. We ask people, there’s no hierarchy other than the fact that I’m responsible for making sure they get paid and everything. Everyone has the opportunity to make a suggestion. Everybody has the opportunity to talk to me or Elizabeth and say, “Hey, this isn’t working, or this could be better, or I ain’t dealing with something.”

Russell Toynes:
And unfortunately, during the pandemic, things happen. People die. Maybe it’s pandemic related, maybe it’s not. And we have to be adaptive to that. And so, we can’t just sit there and go, “Well, we’re running a business here, sorry.” It’s like, “No, we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.” And we just have a killer team that just everybody has everybody’s back. So it really has helped us move, and shift, and be nimble during this time of uncertainty.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you talked about going from being more locally focused with your client base to now having this global reach. What are the best types of clients for you to work with?

Russell Toynes:
So we work with architects, interior designers, and developers, and business owners. We work with everybody, but those are the best. Our ideal client… We don’t call our clients, clients. We call them partners, because this is a partnership. We have to work together. I don’t work for anybody. And so, we are working together to meet a goal and to create an experience. And so for us, we love working with interior designers because, A, they know the budget, and they’re realistic.

Russell Toynes:
They’re not developers who have a stake in how much money the project makes. And they’re not designers who are like, “Oh, I think I know how to design a sign or an installation,” and they have no idea. So when we work with… And architects are good, but architects always hire interior designers, and interior designers love us and we love them. So, they have a vision. We bring their visions either to life, or we just… They say, “This is an area that we don’t know what to do, but that’s where we call you.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, interior designers are great. So we work with lots of different agencies that have wonderful, talented interior designers who rely on us to do what we do well. And the crazy thing is, is maybe it’s the same in design, I don’t know, but there’s a lot of turnover. I don’t know if it’s just like, they go to a place, they’re there for a year. And then they want to just go to somewhere else or they move or whatever.

Russell Toynes:
So like pollinating, we make great relationships with one studio and then five of their interior designers over the course of a year or two go to five different other places. And then those five other places call us too. And next thing you know, we got 15, 20 interior design agencies all around the United States and whatnot that are calling us for project after project. So, I love them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I like that spread effect like that. I mean, I think you mentioned the great resignation a couple of times now. It’s interesting how because the pandemic has forced a lot of people to now work from home or work from remote locations, that a lot of companies before are just having to open themselves up to talent from a lot of other places.

Maurice Cherry:
And so, I think that can be both good and bad. Of course, for the company, I could see the downside of it because now that they’re working with employees from other states, they’ve got to think about, “Well, can we legally hire people in this state and what does that mean?”

Russell Toynes:
Exactly. That’s my wife. We had a team member in Atlanta, and she jumped through so many hoops with the comptroller there in Atlanta to just get this person to where we can offer them insurance and everything else. Yeah, it’s a huge undertaking when you bring on somebody outside of your state, and it’s a new state that you haven’t been in already.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And then for the worker, it can be easy because now so many gigs that before were just landlocked to a certain city, now you can work from everywhere. I’ve been working, personally I’ve been working remotely since 2009. And like you, when I had… I had a studio for nine years, from 2009 to 2017. And we did some work locally. We did a lot of national work, some international work. But I’d say for the past two years now, on and off for the past two years, I’ve mostly been working internationally. It’s worked out that I can now take my skills and I can work in Amsterdam. I can work in Paris, which is where my current job is headquartered at.

Russell Toynes:
So how do you deal with the time difference?

Maurice Cherry:
Not well.

Russell Toynes:
I was going to say. I went to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii in January and I didn’t think that was going to mess me up. But boy, did it.

Maurice Cherry:
Not well. I mean, so when I worked for the company in Amsterdam, I think it was a six hour time difference, five to six hour time difference. Because you know, daylight savings time eventually creeps in. But it was rough because by the time I’d start in the morning, it would be in the afternoon there. There would be some times I would have to be up at 4:00 AM for a meeting. And thank God they were not anal about having the camera on with anything. So I could just be halfway in bed on Zoom, like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” For the current job, it’s not that bad because we’re split. Where my time zone is, eastern time zone is sort of split between where the company is. So we’re between San Francisco and Paris.

Maurice Cherry:
So in the morning I work with the Europeans. My boss is in London. And then in the afternoon I’m working with more of the creative team that’s here in the US that are in California. So my day is split in that way. We do a lot, a lot of async communication just to pass the baton back and forth. But it can be brutal sometimes. Sometimes I am working a 12-hour day from 5:00 to 5:00. Sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes it happens, and it’s a lot.

Russell Toynes:
That’s our goal. That’s our goal is… My wife and I, I have a 20-year-old daughter, and so she’s very much into living her own life. That’s something I’ve been trying to adjust to. But we have aspirations to basically be digital nomads. And really set up our team to where we can… We have aspirations to make either a home or a temporary home in Portugal.

Russell Toynes:
And so, it’s the idea of, how do we do this? What would it look like? What time would we get up? What time would we be on? What time would we be off? And really just thinking about that. And we haven’t really put it to the test. The pandemic hasn’t really given us the comfort that we want to travel. Hawaii, like I mentioned, they had a really good COVID response.

Russell Toynes:
So, you have to have your vaccination, you have to have a 72-hour negative COVID test. You got to have everything right and tight or they won’t even let you on the island. And so we felt comfortable with… That was a trip we’ve been planning since 2019 for my daughter’s graduation. So, we did go to Florida during Delta. And so, we’re big Disney fans for the service and the attention to detail. And so we go to Disney World as much as possible. And we went in 2020… Or 2021, August. And that was not a vacation.

Russell Toynes:
That was like going to a neighborhood you know you don’t want to be in. It was like that. It was just, head was on a swivel. Everybody, I mean, Disney did a good job, but people do what people do. And so, people weren’t wearing their masks right. People were just being too close and all that. But it was really dead there. The crowds were nothing like they would normally be.

Russell Toynes:
So, we made the best of the trip, but now we’re trying to get back to the swing of things. And we want to travel more and see what it’s like to work in foreign places and make that adjustment. So I envy you. I might have to call you up and get some tips on how to adjust with jet lag.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I do a lot of… It’s a lot of async communication. It’s a lot of scheduled emails. It’s a lot of, at least for me, and I don’t know if this is probably just like a general tactic, but I do a lot of managing up. So, I have a manager, but then I also manage someone. So for my manager, I give regular, regular updates like, “I just did this. This is what I’m working on now.” Because we may only get… Our schedules only overlap for 30 minutes a day. So we don’t have a ton of time to really get together and talk.

Maurice Cherry:
So I’m always letting him know, “This is what I have to do. This is what I’m working on. This is where I have a blocker or something like that.” And so then he can work on those things when I’m not at work. And it’s kind of passing the baton. I would say also the benefit is that he and I have worked together at two other companies now, so we know how to work together well, as opposed to having to figure that out with someone new.

Russell Toynes:
And that’s exactly. That’s what you were asking, how did we make this adjustment? Our team consists of, like I said, five additional to me and my wife. And so, three of those five… So the two new ones are the newest. But three of those five have been with us for years. One of them was a previous student of mine, he’s been with us the longest. He’s been with us for five years now.

Russell Toynes:
And when you work with somebody that close, there’s a trust there, but also there’s just this ability to understand what needs to be done and there’s not a lot of conversation necessary. And so, that’s why it’s always hard for us when someone decides they want to leave and go to something else is just that, the onboarding time’s a headache. But there’s a lot of just energy and gaining of trust and all that that has to be built with somebody brand new that you can’t do in your typical onboarding window of 60 to 90 days or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And with this particular thing, and hopefully I’m not telling too of much my business by saying this, but he and I, we started working together in 2017 at one startup. And then he left, and then a couple, I think maybe a couple months later they eliminated our entire department at the first place we worked at.

Maurice Cherry:
But then he got a job at another startup and was like, “Do you want to work here?” And I didn’t have a job, so I was like, “Sure, let’s do it.” And then he left there to another startup, which is where he’s at now, and then was like, “Yeah, I need help and I want do these things. Do you want a job?” I’m like, “Sure.” So for him, I mean, it’s just like, “Come on with me and make these things happen.” But also has increased my salary tremendously.

Russell Toynes:
There you go. There you go.

Maurice Cherry:
So for that I am very thankful.

Russell Toynes:
It makes dollars and sense, huh?

Maurice Cherry:
Exactly. Yeah. So just to switch gears a little bit, we talked a lot about Studio Dzo. But let’s focus on you, because you’re the subject, of course, of this interview. Tell me a bit about where you grew up.

Russell Toynes:
So I grew up in Austin, Texas. I’m one of the few Austin Knights that are OOG. Not these people that came in from outside or from California. So I’ve seen Austin change tremendously over the last 38 years.

Russell Toynes:
I was born in Houston and we moved here as a kid. I remember the ride here. But yeah, I’ve grown up in Austin, and South Austin in particular, and still live in South Austin. And I have a love/hate with the city, because this is my city. And I say that because I’ve spent a long time more recently just trying to retrace my roots, and you know that can be challenging for us. And so, realizing my entire family is from Austin.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
My dad was born here in Austin. My great, great, great-

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, I was born here in Austin. My great, great, great grandfather was born in Austin and crazy thing was, just recently, a random phone call came to the studio, right? This woman’s like, “I’m cleaning up my property and there’s a headstone with Toynes on it, on my property.” And she was like, “I don’t think anybody’s buried here but there’s headstones here.” And it’s my great grandfather’s headstone. And so, he has a headstone in Evergreen Cemetery so I’m like, “What is this about?”

Russell Toynes:
And so, but we’ve always joked because the headstone in Evergreen cemetery’s incorrect, it makes him 150-years-old when he was dead. So whoever made that one, the numbers are wrong. But this one had the correct numbers with the wrong spelling of his first name. And so it was just all … I don’t know the story behind this but just to reiterate, my family has been here and everything about my family is Austin and East Austin, in particular. And so it’s hard for me to see East Austin different.

Russell Toynes:
It’s hard for me to see it where I don’t know what our black population is but it was 8%, I think, at its highest and it’s three maybe now. I don’t know, but it’s not what it used to be and the communities now are so transient. It’s starting to feel a little bit like New York where you just don’t know who’s going to be here for how long. So it’s been sad for me to accept what’s happening to Austin. And I think it’s also been hard for me to accept that maybe this isn’t my forever place. Even though my family has been here forever, this may not be my forever place.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I think that’s something a lot of people are realizing particularly over the past two years. Not just because of the pandemic, but because of gentrification, inflation, everything is more expensive. Atlanta is very much a transient city like that, as well. I’m originally from Alabama but I’ve been in Atlanta now for 23 years. I think I came in ’99. So I’ve been here for about 23 years now and even seeing how much Atlanta has changed when I came as a teenager to now being a full grown-ass man and seeing how things have changed, even just different parts of the city.

Maurice Cherry:
I remember when I first got here, I’d say maybe I was a junior in college. My first apartment was like$600 a month in Buckhead. That’s impossible now. And then I stayed in another place in Buckhead, it was a two bedroom. One room was my office, one was my bedroom and it was right off of Peachtree Street in Buckhead proper for like $750 a month or something like that. Now those are like $2.5 million condos. It’s wild seeing how the city has changed over the years. So I totally get what you mean.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. It’s a hard pill to swallow and then also to see who gets pushed out and who comes in, right? And it’s not like everybody’s just winning, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
So it’s hard. It’s hard.

Maurice Cherry:
Especially here because Atlanta, of course, has a reputation of being a city that’s really … There’s a lot of prosperous black people here. A lot of affluent black people here, which is true. I totally don’t think I would’ve been able to accomplish what I was able to accomplish entrepreneurship wise in any other city but Atlanta because I had a lot of support from the black community here. But yeah, rents are getting more and more expensive. Everything is just more expensive. It’s tough to move here now and start out fresh than you could maybe even like 10 years ago because everything is just changing.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. I love Atlanta. Me and my wife, we have friends and … We don’t have any family but we would like to think of them as family. But we have a lot of people that we know in Atlanta and we love going there and it’s just a huge, huge city. People think Austin, they think, “Oh it’s such a cool city.” It’s a small … When you talk about footprint wise, the city is small. And Atlanta, you got like seven lane highways and I don’t even know why you have a speed limit. Let’s be honest, right?

Maurice Cherry:
That’s true. That’s true.

Russell Toynes:
Everybody, even the police, man, they’re out there 80 on the highway and it says 65, 55. You’re like, you can’t even legally go this limit. Yeah, and I love what y’all have done unlike Austin, right? What y’all have done with Ponce City Market, how you took an old building and instead of tearing it down like they would do in Austin, you utilized it and I know they’re not at all affordable in any way. But they used to utilize it for housing in a development instead of just tearing it down and creating something brand new, which is Austin’s mode of operations here.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, we have a couple of places like that in Atlanta. There’s Krog Street Market. There’s a couple other places probably further outside the perimeter but Atlanta is good for tearing shit down, too, and just starting anew. I tell people, because I used to work in the tourism industry here and I tell people Atlanta’s a city that every seven years tries to find a new identity. It tries to find like what’s the new thing that we can latch on to and really make our thing. Because I was working in the tourism industry from 2005 to 2007.

Maurice Cherry:
And so during that time Hurricane Katrina happened. But when I first started in 2005, Atlanta was really trying to distinguish itself from say, Orlando or Vegas or New York because people like to come to Atlanta. But the reasons that they like to come to Atlanta were not … How can I put this? Family friendly reasons for wanting to come. Like, they’ll go to Orlando because of Disney World, they’ll go to New York City because of the culture. But there was no distinguishing thing that people would come to Atlanta for. At least not ones that you would put on a tourism pamphlet.

Russell Toynes:
Other than the World of Coke and the aquarium.

Maurice Cherry:
Look, we didn’t even have the aquarium then. This was pre the aquarium, yeah. I was at the groundbreaking for the aquarium. But this was even before then, all we had was World of Coke. We had the zoo and Turner Fields. That’s about it. There’s not a lot of places, really. People came to Atlanta back then because, one, it carried over this reputation of being a party city from the 90s but you’ve got hip-hop, you’ve got all kinds of entertainment. You’ve got clubs. That’s why people came to Atlanta to have fun, to have a good time. But none of those things … They’re not going to put strippers on a pamphlet and have that at the airport. Is that a reason people would come? Sure. But that’s not one that the Atlanta Convention and Visitor’s Bureau would get behind because they’re trying to get-

Russell Toynes:
If Vegas can do it.

Maurice Cherry:
Well. But see, they’re trying to get multi-million dollar shows to come here. And we had a huge show pull out in 2005 called, Home Builders. Something happened with like, somebody said the wrong thing to somebody and this million dollar show pulled out of Atlanta. And then there was another big show, T.D. Jakes, the evangelist, the preacher. Yeah. He used to do this big thing called, MegaFest and he would bring it to Atlanta. And it was basically like a two week, I don’t know, MegaFest. I mean it had carnival rides, it had speakers and panels and all this sort of stuff and they pulled out, as well. And so Atlanta was like, “Well, we don’t have any reason for people to come here.” Because the other thing was these conventions would all be downtown and downtown is a ghost town after five o’clock.

Russell Toynes:
Yes, yes.

Maurice Cherry:
People commute downtown and then they leave and the only thing that’s really downtown at night are homeless folks. And so because of that, conventions didn’t feel like they wanted to have people down there because they were getting accosted by people on the street and they didn’t feel it was safe and everything. And so, one of the things that happened was the aquarium opened but then Hurricane Katrina happened and a lot of conventions had to relocate to Atlanta.

Maurice Cherry:
And so we had a big boom there for a while but then that died out as New Orleans tried to rebuild and conventions went back there. So then the Georgia Tourism Department basically worked with the state to get all these tax benefits for movies and television shows and studios and stuff to shoot here. So now that’s the big thing that Atlanta is for. Atlanta is like quote, unquote, “Black Hollywood.”

Russell Toynes:
I love it, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Because you have so many movies and shows and things that are here that people come and shoot for. I mean it’s rare now, well it used to be rare back then, but now it’s super common to watch a movie and be like, “Oh yeah, that’s in Atlanta.” Like I’ll watch Black Panther, that scene at the museum. I used to work at that museum selling tickets.

Russell Toynes:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Maurice Cherry:
So, I’d look at stuff and be like, “Okay, that’s …” But even now that’s starting to die off because politics, now politicians here have certain views and then that goes against what the companies are here that are giving them … It’s a whole … Atlanta’s complicated, man. Really it’s Georgia, but Atlanta itself is a complicated blue dot in a very red state.

Russell Toynes:
That is, yeah, that is a whole message right there. Exactly. I mean, we’ve even talked about moving to Atlanta and they were like, “But it’s in Georgia,” you know? And I’m in Texas, so I can’t really say anything because both states are sitting in the same spot. But just like Atlanta, Austin is that blueberry in the tomato soup.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
But unfortunately, like you said, the politics of both states have gotten a bad reputation.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I mean, if you’re in Atlanta, it’s so funny. I remember this from, oh, I know what the show is. It was, Sex and the City. And there’s this episode of, Sex and the City, where Carrie and Miranda are double dating these guys. And one of the guys says something about how he’s never left New York and Miranda’s like, “Oh, he’s a weirdo if he’s never left New York.” There’s people here that have moved to Atlanta and have never left Atlanta. They’ve stayed right in the perimeter or right in inside the metropolitan area because anything outside of here is deliverance. It’s a totally different thing, if you go an hour in any direction from the center of Atlanta, like good luck.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, it is strange also. But the thing is y’all can travel for three or four hours, maybe not safely, but you can travel for three or four hours and be in a whole other state. With us, it takes eight hours to get to El Paso.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah. That’s true.

Russell Toynes:
It’s like, you want to get to the coast, that’s a three hour trip. You want to get to Dallas, that’s a three and a half hour trip with no traffic. And so, Houston, same thing, three hours. And so everything just takes a long time and you’re still in the damn state.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So being from Austin and growing up there, were you exposed to a lot of design and everything growing up?

Russell Toynes:
Short answer, no. For me, designer was exclusive to jeans and fragrance. I didn’t know, no one ever told me. I think this just happens to being an 80’s kid. Having someone sit down and point to you in the library like, you see that crappy poster, somebody designed that. You see this book, someone designed it. No one ever did that, right? So you really only knew the jobs that you saw people do, you know? So my dad worked in restaurants and then basically did sales for Circuit City. That’s dating, right?

Russell Toynes:
My mom’s always been in insurance and then pretty much every single person I knew either worked for the post office or for some insurance company or had military history or just worked some random office job. So no one ever sat down with me, ever and said, you could be this. I was talking to my wife and I was like, “The first time I ever met somebody at a career fair or something,” and then that person was like, “This is what I do.” And then I said, “I want to do that.” The very first time that happened, I think I was in fourth grade and it was a lobbyist and I was like, “I want to do what they do.”

Russell Toynes:
I have no idea what was compelling about being a lobbyist. But I think it was the idea of convincing people, right? And so, no. No one ever told me. So design wasn’t ever presented to me. And it wasn’t until I realized when I went to school, that design is problem solving. And that’s all I have ever done as a kid, is I was that kid that woke up at five o’clock in the morning with a problem, right? With a problem that I manifested in my dreams and I had to find a solution. So I was constantly taking things apart, re-imagining things, putting things together, just making up shit for myself to do and I was always solving problems.

Russell Toynes:
I’ve always been a natural leader, too. I just managed to convince people to follow me in some direction. And thankfully I never started a cult but it probably wouldn’t been too hard for me. But I always had the knack of being a loner but having no problem getting followers, but never wanted to be a follower. So I was that kid that was cool with everybody, but really was kind of a loner in a way. Everyone knew me. I had lots of friends but I only let certain people in.

Russell Toynes:
So as a natural problem solver, I just found myself into lots of things, but no one ever gave me the design word to call it. And it wasn’t until my older brother graduated from school from ACC also with a design degree and a degree in politics, that I even understood that designers had software and they did things and it just wasn’t like … I don’t know, it wasn’t a word or it wasn’t painter, you know?

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you went to Austin Community College and you studied design and visual communications. How was that experience?

Russell Toynes:
Like a lot of black designers, I had a very unconventional journey into design. So as I mentioned, I didn’t know what design was. So my original entrepreneur efforts started when I was catching shoplifters for four years. And then my daughter was born and she needed round-the-clock care at home. So me and my wife had to decide who’s going to stay at home and take care of her and who’s going to go to work. And she had the better benefits so it was like, “Okay, I’ll stay at home and take care of her.”

Russell Toynes:
Well, money still needs to be had and so I always had aspirations to be a film director. So I started writing little films and things like that, but that doesn’t pay but I had the knowledge and understanding to cut video. And so I started out just cutting people’s home videos, taking people’s crappy home videos and removing all this stuff where mom left it on the table recording nothing and all that and just started doing that. And that led down to a very strange path to me working with lots of people, one being Vanilla Ice and-

Maurice Cherry:
What?

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, random. So yeah, I did a really, really crappy music video for a friend. I did it for $6, too. That’s just how you helped your friends for back then. And so, and then a promoter for Vanilla Ice saw it … I’m embarrassed to say that. But saw it and then they called me up and they’re like, “We have a whole bunch of raw footage from a concert in ’99 or 2000.” They’re like, “Can you cut it and put it to DVD?” And I was like, “Yeah.”

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
And so that got things started. So that got me out of doing the home videos. And then that’s when people were like, “Oh, can you do a music video for me? Can you do that?” And I ended up working on a big project for Text Dots, a training video for them. And I saw the future of me being in this film video game but I had no education. I had no knowledge, I didn’t know anything about anything. I was just doing whatever, how it worked and it worked okay.

Russell Toynes:
But then in 2006, I guess it was 2005, I was working with a rapper and they were less than honest with the people who were giving them money. And then basically, I always tried to operate with contracts. And basically he was trying to get out of the contract and made it quite dramatic. I’ll spare you the details. But let’s just say that, I had to act less than professional because he was acting less than professional, you know [crosstalk 00:39:51]-

Maurice Cherry:
Got it, got it. No, no, I know what you mean.

Russell Toynes:
… when you get grown. And so, I was just like, “I’m done with this shit. I’m done with this shit” And I just woke up January 1st, 2006 and I was like, “I’m a designer. That’s it, that’s it.” I just put that shit out in the universe, right? And so, my older brother gave me a bootleg copy of CS2 and I just started working in Illustrator. I had already been designing DVD covers and things like that for the stuff that I had been doing, but I didn’t know anything about it. And so, but what was crazy was like I said, I have never had a problem getting people to follow me.

Russell Toynes:
I just told the world I was a designer and the world just said, “Okay,” and the world just like, “so can you do this for me? Can you do this for me?” And so I had a nice little nest of construction people and concrete people who were just like, they didn’t know anything about anything but they could just pay me and they’d get their carbonless forms and business cards and mailers and their trucks with vinyl on it and things like that.

Russell Toynes:
And I was doing the worst design on the planet and it was awful, but it was paying barely any of the bills I had. And I was just making it each day. But I thought I was balling, too, I got myself a little … This tells you the time, too. I got myself a little one room office on Burnett Road in central Austin for $250 a month. That’s all it cost.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
So I thought I was balling. I was like, I got an office and this and this. I didn’t need no office, I could have worked from home, but this was just my excuse to give myself the tools to feel like I have arrived. And then I started mentoring young people at LBJ and I had gone to LBJ Science Academy at the time. It was called Science Academy at the time. Now it’s called Liberal Arts and Science Academy. But I started mentoring young people there and they were learning Illustrator Photoshop in design all in one semester.

Russell Toynes:
And I was like, these damn kids are going to take my job. I got to get more education. So I went to ACC and I was 27-years-old. I had a five-year-old daughter at the time. I was divorced. And I just saw that I had a lot of passion, I had a lot of drive, but I had no education. And this just winging it was proving not … I wasn’t going to be able to sustain myself if I wanted to make a life for myself at all in design. So I went to school and that was the best damn decision I ever made in my life.

Maurice Cherry:
So after you went to school and you graduated, what was your early career like? You mentioned earlier, you had worked for Dell for quite a number of years.

Russell Toynes:
You know, I still freelanced while I was in school and I very much have always been a person to take advantage of every single opportunity. And I meet somebody and I’m like, if I want to work with them, I’m going to make them work with me. I just have the ability to just manifest a lot of what I want. And so for me, I stayed very involved in design and design community and everything. And I had a great, great portfolio professor who later became a mentor, Owen Hammonds and, yeah, still is a friend of mine. I mean, I call him my mentor. He says, we’re just friends.

Russell Toynes:
But I still see him as a huge, huge influence to me. I attribute almost all of my success to him and it was honored to have him in my wedding. It was an honor to have him in my life and call him a friend. And we’re both very, very busy, but whenever we get on the phone with each other or see each other, it’s just an honor. So, but yeah, he really took me under his wing. He was my portfolio professor at ACC and he just saw this hustler in me and he was like, “This dude’s going to do it.” And he just plugged me in and just stayed on me and never, never bullshitted me, never gassed me up, always pushed me to be better.

Russell Toynes:
And so right out of school … I’m sure you have them in Atlanta. I’m sure you’ve heard of them, like various talent head hunters, right? Like Aquent or Liaison Resources or the Creative Group and all of them. So Aquent had come to one of our classes and talked about, they’d find jobs for creatives and all this stuff like that. So I just graduated, I mean, literally the day we finished class. So I hadn’t even graduated yet, just the class was done. I just was on in the car driving. I just called them up and I was like, “Hey, heard you can get me a job.” And they were like, “Send me your portfolio.”

Russell Toynes:
And then the next day they called me in. They’re like, “Hey, let’s talk.” And they’re like, “We have these jobs.” And so I started interviewing for people and I interviewed at Dell and it took them a little bit of time to see my magic. But after four months, basically interviewing with them two or three times, I interviewed with them for lunches and all this stuff. And I was like, “You like me, I like you. Let’s do this,” right? Like dating. I got put on at Dell and I started out as a designer and worked my way up to senior designer, art director, senior art director.

Russell Toynes:
And really, I tell people I got my degree in Visual Communications at ACC, but I got my Masters in the Business of Design at Dell. I had an amazing creative director, Tommy Lynn, who really, really, really taught me a lot, gave me a lot of autonomy, really trusted me. And I still see him as a friend and a mentor, even now. And we’ve both been gone from Dell for many years, but I learned the business of design. I understood how to handle clients, how to give them the level of service that brings them back. And I know it sounds weird because I’m was on the brand team, so we only answered to the brand.

Russell Toynes:
We developed the brand, we evolved the brand, but we had internal clients who used our team to create resources that promoted Dell’s brand. So it would be a corporate responsibility team. It really wasn’t marketing, we didn’t do anything about selling product. It was about selling the brand as a whole. And so having both Owen Hammonds, having the education, helped me land Dell but Dell helped me really take this entrepreneurial energy that I’ve always possessed and really, really hone it into-

Russell Toynes:
… kind of possessed and really, really hone it into where my next step was, was, and I didn’t really realize that I wanted to go back to being an entrepreneur, but they set me up tremendously and gave me a fat paycheck to learn over the course of five and a half years. So I’m not going to complain about that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, there you go. I mean, when you had your time there working at Dell and learning about the business of design, was that the impetus for you to start your own studio?

Russell Toynes:
No, honestly, no. I saw myself like everybody else. You go from one place, you do three to five years, then you go to another place. And honestly, I didn’t see myself going back into entrepreneurship, because I had never had a nine to five salary with benefits and all that. I had basically worked an hourly job until my daughter was born, and then basically just like hustled in the worst way possible to make crumbs doing video and design and whatnot. So when somebody was like, “Here, here’s a paycheck and here’s some benefits and here’s a lifestyle you’ve never had.” I just figured this is it. I’ve just landed the jackpot. But then over five and a half years, you start to realize there is a ceiling, and it depends on who your manager is. It depends on who your executive is, and you start realizing, people start leaving and you start wondering, am I the last ship… Sorry, am I the last rat on a sinking ship?

Russell Toynes:
And so all my team that I had been with over the five and a half years, only one other person was with me. And so we had watched like 20 people over the course of the time come in and out that it was just like, okay, the writing’s in the wall, you either going to be a lifer here or you got to find something else. It was really my wife who said… She’s always been my greatest supporter, and I had talked about owning a business and her father had sold his business and was kind of always envious of design and wanted to do something with me. And so I said, “Look, we’ll do something, but we’ll do it on my terms.” And he was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And so after basically I tried to bluff my executive at Dell to give me more money and to give me a promotion, basically I tried to bluff and be like, “Well, I’m going to have to go find something else.” And they were like, “Look…”

Russell Toynes:
So I was like, “Look, I just can’t blow smoke. I got to do this.” And so I left on September 7th. And I thought I was going to take the whole month of September off. And like two weeks later, started the laying the ground work for Studio Dzo. With my father-in-law and mine to be my partner, long story short, we realized quickly we cannot work together. My wife realized that before we realized that.

Russell Toynes:
And my wife was like, “Look, if… Because we were about to get married, she’s like, “If we’re going to get married. We can’t have this. I got to have a relationship with my father. I got to have a relationship with my husband. Y’all can’t be at each other’s throat.” We had very different mindsets of what this business was going to be. So we had a negotiation with him, had a conversation and we said, “It’s time for you to retire. Go and do your own thing.” And, and he’s a restless person anyway. So he had a software business. He’s now able to dedicate himself to that. And so he was with us for about the first seven months of Studio Dzo.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. I mean, I guess you didn’t want it to be that much of a family business.

Russell Toynes:
He really wanted that. He only has girls. So he really wanted this family business with the son-in-law and all this stuff like that. And I think he had this idea, but in his head that he really wanted. But yeah, now it’s just me and my wife and it’s good. We have the same interests, both financially and the goal of the business. So we are in sync where if you have different people who have different lifestyles and different households, it gets complicated. It’s like, well, if you’re eating steak, I need to eat steak. Where it’s like now we got to afford two steaks, versus me and my wife having a steak kind of thing. And so, yeah, it’s really complicate when you have different households and the family business is obviously complicated, but me and my wife very much, we have professional backgrounds so we always operate very professionally, at least on camera.

Maurice Cherry:
What were those kind of early days like with the Studio?

Russell Toynes:
Oh man. So really it was… Like I said, I got the business of design from Dell, so I knew what I wanted, but it was scary. I’m not going to lie. But I knew that I had set myself up financially thanks to Dell that if I failed, I was going to fail quickly and I was just going to go and work some at some other place. So I knew what I wanted. And so thankfully I was aware that couldn’t do it all. So I had hired a friend of mine to help me develop the brand. I had hired a student of mine to just basically be like the hands of things. I had really just put people in the right places so that way I can focus on the development of the business. Thankfully, my wife had already been doing books for her father’s business and she’s an accountant, that’s her education in accounting.

Russell Toynes:
And so she does all things like money side. So she’s thankfully was able to do all of that. So all I had to do was basically sell and do the work and that’s kind of what I’m really, really good at. And so it was scary at first, but we also were a smaller team. I guess we were five at the time, but I just didn’t know what it was going to be. But honestly like people have just trusted us and I hate to kind of keep hitting it over the head with it, but I’ve never had a problem with getting people to follow us. So being able to sit down with somebody and tell them what we do and why we do it and why they should choose us wasn’t difficult.

Russell Toynes:
What was difficult was disrupting design business, design industry. So we’re designers who design signage, wayfinding, and physical experiences. But the problem with the sign industry is they’re like the bastard child of construction. So what typically happens is a developer gives their general contractor a budget for signage. And so the general contractor is just trying to find somebody to stick something’s up on the walls so that way they can get their certificate of occupancy. And so no one is ever talking about brand. No one’s ever talking about experience. No one’s talking about that. These sign shops, some of them, not all of them, are just trying to basically put a piece of acrylic with ADA beads on and in whatever default typeface they can in the cheapest way possible. It’s like a race to the bottom. It’s like everyone’s trying to be the Walmart of signs.

Russell Toynes:
And so I knew that I did not want to do that. And after listening to my father-in-law, who owned a sign company for like 20 years and he owned Sign Tech International, which at a time was like one of the biggest manufacturers in Texas. He was like, “No, no people, that’s not how it works. We design it. We sell it. We mark up the price and that’s how we get paid.” And I was like, “So what happens when you design it and then they go and take it to somebody else and they get a lower bid?” And he’s like, “Well, that just happens.” And I was like, “No, it doesn’t. Not here. It’s not going to happen here.” I was like, “We’re designers. We get paid to solve problems. We need to be paid or we’re not going to do this.” And he is like, “You’re not going to get people to pay for design before they see it.”

Russell Toynes:
And I was like, “Well, then we’re going to be out of business real quick.” That was the weird thing is going into people who are used to basically, “Well, show me something. And if I like it, I’ll buy it.” We’re going to walk through this together. We’re going to talk about your problems. We’re going to talk about opportunities. You’re going to pay me up front and then I’m going to show you what that is going to look like. And that’s like I said, me and my father-in-law butted heads quite a bit. It was over that, because he was like, “Oh, I’ve been working with this person for years. We don’t need to charge him for design.” I was like, “No, you’re setting a precedent with everybody if you do that.” So we would butt heads and that’s when he was like, “Maybe this isn’t good for us to be in business together.

Russell Toynes:
And that’s when I was like, “Let’s do it my way.” My wife was already on board and we now have, that’s all we do. That’s what we do. And people know us for that is that we solve our problems with design first. And then if you like what we design, and we’re all done with the design process, we’re going to give you a quote for fabrication, installation. But because you paid for that design process, you can take those files and share them with anybody else. You’ve already paid me for my work. This is now in your hands. So if you want to go out there and get a quote from somebody else, you can. No sweat off my back. I just keep it moving and go on to the next project. But if they do go with us, then we’ll fabricate and we have partners all around the world we fabricate with. And then we have partners both locally and all around to install.

Russell Toynes:
And 90% still go with us. I would say more than that. 95% stay with us to do the fabrication, installation process because we don’t cut corners. And so they know that if we spec this particular material, we spec this particular lighting temperature, whatever, that’s what’s going to be. It’s not going to get in the hands of somebody else that then chops it up to make more profit. And then gives them a subpar product. We don’t do that. And so we have no problem getting people to commit through the whole entire process, but we put those breaks, because some people have to get multiple bids. Some people think that they’re not getting the best deal. And we tell people, we will never be the cheapest, but we’re the best, is what I say.

Russell Toynes:
We do good work. That’s our motto. We do good work for good people with good people. And so first and foremost is that, like I said, I don’t work for anybody. I work with people. We call all of our clients partners because I pick and choose who I want to work with. If they’re not a good person, we don’t work with them. And there’s been times where I’ve had to dig in on somebody just for a second, like they call us up and want to work with us. I Google everybody, and if I find anything that doesn’t agree with our values, I just say, “Hey, I don’t think it’s a good fit.”

Russell Toynes:
Because we believe that everyone should be treated equitably, fairly, and that this world is unfair and we’re not going to contribute to that in any way possible. We want to support all those, especially those who are not supported. We want to support the weirdos, the people who are aren’t typically accepted. And we want to support obviously our black community, our underrepresented community. And so we do a lot to make sure that our good work extends beyond what actually earns us money, but also we do a lot of work with nonprofits and we donate a lot of hours and times to people in organizations.

Maurice Cherry:
And I have to say one of the best things about having your own business is running it exactly how you want it. Like if it’s a bad client experience, you don’t have to work with them. You can fire the client. Or if you have a certain intake process where you know exactly the kind of people you want to work with, that’s the best part. That was the best part back when I had my studio of really picking and choosing the clients that you want to have, knowing that just because any work comes across your desk, you don’t have to take it if it doesn’t feel good.

Russell Toynes:
That’s the freedom. And that’s what I tell people is that I left Dell to have that freedom. And a lot of people think freelance comes with freedom. I say, there’s nothing free about freelancing at all. You have to decide, do I want this money or do I not want this money? And for us we’re not dollar driven. As long as we’re able to pay all of our team members and pay ourselves a salary that we have dedicated, that’s it. Anything extra’s great, and we really typically roll it into the business one way or the other, but I don’t want to have to say yes to every project and know that it’s bad work, but it’s paying the bills.

Russell Toynes:
And so I’m a firm believer that just like free work leads to more free work, same thing with bad work. Crap work leads to more crap work. And so if it’s not a right fit for us, the project’s not a right fit. If the timeline… That’s the biggest thing is some people just don’t understand the process and the timeline. And if they don’t want to adhere to our process and respect our process, that’s a big red flag. So exactly, being able to pick and choose who you work with is really the reward for owning the business. The rest of it’s still work. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s work. It’s not called fun.

Maurice Cherry:
But the best thing you can do though, because you know it’s still work is at least shape your own ideal work conditions.

Russell Toynes:
Exactly, exactly. And that’s the thing too like I said about what I learned about Dell is, I had a great creative director who taught us the work life balance. And I will say that Dell actually has a really good work life balance throughout the entire company. So never did I feel like I had to be… I was on the edge of burnout or anything like that. When it was weekends, no one called you. When it was holidays, no one called you. You didn’t get woken up in the middle of the night having to do this or that. So there was a really good work life balance. So I knew I did not want to take that away from myself. And I didn’t want to create an environment where my team felt that way. We offer 27 plus paid holidays to all of our team members. Doesn’t matter if they’re part-time or not. We just went through the holidays today or yesterday, they get two weeks off at the end of the year. I’m like, “I’m paying them for two weeks?”

Russell Toynes:
But we want them, and that’s on top of their PTO too. They get two weeks PTO on top of the 27 holidays and for us, and then they still have the get it done model. So if they want to travel somewhere and work three days and then be off for two days, then they only use two days PTO. And so for us, we really just want them to have a reason to be with us. And that do good work motto is really what it’s all about is that we want them to do good work, but we have to do good work by them. And we have to treat them fairly. We have to give them a reasonable salary. I can’t compete with the Googles and the Apples and these people who are throwing stupid money at all these people.

Russell Toynes:
I can’t compete with that. We’re a small business. But what I can say is I can give you a work life balance that’s fair, treat you like a human being. You’re going to speak with another human being who’s also a father, who’s also a husband, who’s also an educator, who’s going to understand what you’re going through, and we’re going to make a compromise. If you got to take some days off, let’s figure out what it’s going to work. If something’s got to be moved around, let’s figure out how to make it work, so that way you can be efficient and we can be efficient.

Maurice Cherry:
With Studio Dzo, I mean, of course, clearly you’re doing a ton of great work, but you also do a lot of community work as well. And one organization that you work with is one that our listeners, I’m sure, know about. They’re probably members of it. And that’s AAGD, which is African American Graphic Designers. Tell me about that. How’d you get involved with them?

Russell Toynes:
So it’s funny. So [Owen Hammonds 01:00:55] had kind of twisted my arm. So I’m a designer, I’m not an artist. And I make that very, very clear. I don’t express myself through art or at least through design. I don’t. I doodle, I do some things to be creative, but I’m not an artist. But Owen kind of put me up to this challenge. They were doing a gallery thing at [St. Ed’s 01:01:16], and he kind of said, “Hey Russ, I want you to participate.” And like I said, he’s a mentor of mine, so anything he asked me to do, I’m going to say yes. So he was like, “This is a self-portrait gallery and you have to basically draw or create an image of yourself.” And it was like the worst project ever for me to have to do.

Russell Toynes:
So in there, we’re presenting our work at the end and it’s a gallery opening and everything. And [Terrance Moline 01:01:42] was also part of that gallery. And so I hear him talking and he’s from New Orleans and he tells a little bit about his story and all that. I, like I said, I’m kind of a person who just says, I’m going to make this happen. I immediately looked at him and I was like, We’re going to be friends.” I’m going to make this man my friend. And so I introduced myself and he told me a little bit about AAGD, I think we followed each other on LinkedIn or on Facebook or something like that. And then we just kind of bumped into each other a little bit off and on. And I was really, really interested. And I think I pinged him a couple times about it and asked him about it.

Russell Toynes:
He had had the Facebook group for a couple years. I think 2006 is when he started it, maybe. Katrina forced him to move to Austin. So he had had it for a while, but it was just like a social thing. It was just a community based thing that was more about sharing the work. But he had visions of it being kind of a business model, but didn’t really know where it was going to go. So I guess probably 2019, he really started doubling down on it being a business model and creating more benefits for its members in exchange for a membership fee. And so pandemic hit early 2020, and I don’t know how we kicked off, but we just like, we hit the ground running. He was just like, “Hey, you’ve been really involved in AAGD like with me, I’d love for you to look over some of this stuff and just tell me what would you do?”

Russell Toynes:
And I had been involved in AIGA, quite a bit. I was the vice president. Owen Hammonds being the president at the time, too, when I was vice president. I had kind of understood like basically AAGD is kind of like a black AIGA. So I understood what was working for AIGA, also what wasn’t working for AIGA, and what I saw could be an opportunity for AAGD. So we just kind of like together just worked on how do we build this out to be a membership model. So another core member is [Dave McClinton 01:03:40]. And me and Dave met at that gallery too. And I looked at Dave and I was like, “We’re going to be friends,” too. So Dave got really involved. So it was just one of those things, like these two gentlemen that I met one night, and I said, “I want to be friends with them,” fast forward a couple years here we are we meet every Tuesday. We joke around. We hang out, and it’s just it’s an absolute honor to call these very, very talented, passionate creatives friends of mine.

Russell Toynes:
But then meeting all the people through AAGD, that I’ve met, it’s just amazing. It started up with just the need to create community for himself because transplant from New Orleans to Austin, not finding the black community that he had New Orleans wanting to find those, he needed to find it online. Now to this international organization that the one thing that we have in common is that we’re all black in some varying degree and that we are all creatives. And the creativity spans from film, digital UX UI, all across the board. And just as a design educator and as a person with my experience, I am constantly sharing my knowledge about both the business of design and then also helping them empower them with the confidence to charge more or to get contracts or to understand this idea of freelancing sounds great, but you have to set goals or you’re just going to work yourself to death.

Russell Toynes:
You got to set a salary. You got to tell yourself this is how much money I want to make. And then divide that up by 12 and then divide that up by a day and figure out how much money you got to make every single day to make that salary. So a lot of people don’t understand that right off the bat when they’re like, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” And then unfortunately too, a lot of black creatives don’t see themselves in the work space. And so they think entrepreneurship is the only path for them, because they’ve never seen anybody like them at a major creative agency. And so, a lot of them have no understanding of the business of design, because they’ve never worked at a agency, they’ve only done it freelance, they’ve only done it their own way.

Russell Toynes:
So I try to meet them where they’re at and share with them both my experience from Dell, but so my experience as a owner of Studio Dzo, and just try to tell them, if you are finding these challenges, these are some of the solutions. So AAGD has been a great endeavor of Terrance’s and I’m just honored to be trusted with some of it.

Maurice Cherry:
And so kind of bring it back to education, we sort of alluded to this before we started of recording the interview, but you’ve talked about being a design educator. You also now teach at where you learned design, which was at Austin Community College, that you’ve kind of had this full circle moment. Talk to me about that.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. So really, again, I’m no stranger to anything. My whole life has just been like this one long story of, surely you’re going to be a designer, but I have always taught in some capacity. So while I was freelancing back in like 2005, I needed additional income because freelancing wasn’t doing it. And so I started working with an organization called No Kidding, Straight Talk from Teen Parents, which was funded by the Attorney General’s Office, which was a nonprofit organization that basically utilized the stories of teen parents to use a teaching tool for middle school and high school students. And so I technically didn’t fall under the category of teen parent. I was 20 years old when my daughter was born, but we had a very unique story. My daughter needed lots of medical care. And so my story was unique in the sense of as much as you thought you had everything planned, plan for the unexpected.

Russell Toynes:
And so I go to middle schools and high schools and give presentations and talk and that ended up putting me on national stage at the National Child Support Conference. So I’ve always had presentation and teaching opportunities. And then while I was in school to supplement my income, I used to teach defensive driving. So I tell people, if you can take a room people and for six hours and make them enjoy it, you could do anything. Because they don’t even want to be there. They bought tickets to a show they don’t even want to be at. But everything I do, I do 113%. That’s my motto. And so no matter teaching defensive driving or talking to young people, I just pour my heart into it, because I’m just kind of one of those people that just, I can’t half-ass anything.

Russell Toynes:
And so it was just only natural for me to see myself as a design educator, but really what it was, and I attribute this 100%, was Owen Hammonds. To see another black man teach and to be passionate and understanding at the same time, but also pull no punches and really give it to you straight and push people to be the best designer they can be. He gave me that vision of like, “I could do this.” And so I made it my goal after starting at Dell, I said, “In five years, I want to teach,” like that’s my next rung. And it only took me three years later after saying that, that I started teaching. So I started teaching in 2015, I think, 2015. I’m like, man, we’re going up on seven years now. I can’t bel-

Russell Toynes:
Man, we’re coming up on seven years now, and just I can’t believe it’s, yeah, 2015, I started teaching, and I started teaching Portfolio. I have been teaching Portfolio for seven years.

Russell Toynes:
I started a new course because I was finding that my students had no knowledge, including myself. When I left school, when I graduated, I started at Dell, I never knew what a project manager did. I thought they were just like the pretty people who sold our designs. I didn’t know what they did.

Russell Toynes:
Then when you get an amazing project manager who has your back and is that buffer between you and the client and really helps elevate your design and keeps you on track, but keeps them focused and not, “Oh, I want to see this. I want to see that.” When you have a really good project manager, it just changes your life as a designer. So at Dell, I had the whole kit and caboodle. I had great project managers, and I had terrible project managers at various times.

Russell Toynes:
So I was finding that my students were getting into Portfolio, which is a capstone class. They graduate after my class with no knowledge that there were other roles other than designer and creative director. For some reason, they all know creative director, but they didn’t know like associate creative director, senior art director, art director, senior designer, junior designer, production designer. They didn’t know anything about those. Those roles didn’t even pop up in their heads.

Russell Toynes:
So I had basically harassed my department chair that I’m, like, these students have no idea the various areas of design that they could find themselves in, and a lot of the project managers, the best project managers I ever worked with, all had degrees in design. They just didn’t have either the passion or the skills to hack it, but they understood design, which makes a really great project manager.

Russell Toynes:
So along with Rachel Wyatt, colleague of mine, we wrote this course called Studio, Design Studio. Basically, it’s a simulation course where students come in, and they play the role of a project manager, or an art director, or senior designer or creative director, or something like that. They change roles throughout the course, but it gives them a real-life experience. Then they have three projects over the course of that semester, and all those clients are real clients so they have to deal with somebody not liking their work. It’s not about the grade. It’s about did you solve the problem? Did you meet your client’s expectations?

Russell Toynes:
I remember the first time I taught that class was 2020. We wrote this course during the pandemic, and we delivered it in the fall of 2020. I had two teams. I have eight students, and I had two teams of four. One had their presentation buckled up, and it was right and tight, and they knocked their socks off. Then the other team, they just couldn’t get their shit together. They presented, and it was just falling apart and everything, and it was all over.

Russell Toynes:
I meet with them, the teams, and I was like, “How are you feeling?” And they’re like, “Shit, this is an awful feeling.” I was like, “Remember that.” I was like, “Get your shit together, get it right and tight. When you’re presenting in front of a client, this is the opportunity for you to sell your design. This is everything. You’re building trust and all that.”

Russell Toynes:
So this course is really doing what it’s designed to do is to give them that experience. That way, when they go out and get their first job at an agency or at a studio, these roles, these requirements, these things that they’re going to be asked of aren’t foreign to them that they’ve like, “Oh, I presented my work.”

Russell Toynes:
Because a lot of designers aren’t forced to present and sell their work. They just hand it to a project manager or to a creative director. They don’t actually get to engage with the client and be able to talk of about and articulate their design thinking. Instead, they’re just like, “Do you like it or do you not?”

Russell Toynes:
So I explained to my students like, “You have to be able to sell your work,” and so by the time they get to Portfolio, they’re able to talk about their work in a much better way because of that Studio class. Now we have Studio One and Studio Two, which just is kind of a repeat, but just more responsibility and more expectations.

Maurice Cherry:
What do your students teach you?

Russell Toynes:
Man, patience. But, honestly, like I tell them, I get paid to learn from them. They teach me more than I could ever teach them.

Russell Toynes:
What I’ve realized more than anything is that we often only see life through our own lenses, and you asked me how did I get started in design? Did I know about designing? I didn’t. To this day, I meet people in 2022, who they’re the first person in their family to pursue a creative career or got college degree, and so I meet so many people from so different backgrounds.

Russell Toynes:
I’ve had students as young as 19 and as old as 65, and what I’ve realized more than anything is that age, experience, life experience makes you a better designer. You can be these 30 under 30s, or these kids that are just like designing the heck out of stuff and are just killing it, and these young guns, and I think there’s like a whole young guns thing or whatever. I can appreciate that.

Russell Toynes:
But if you just haven’t seen enough design solutions, if you just haven’t been around the world enough, no matter how talented you are with the software, you just can’t be a great design problem-solver without that time. You’ll get better every single day, but it’s the people who are older in that sweet spot of like their late 20s, early 30s, early 40s, new collars who are going back to school that I’m starting to find out they have just enough life experience, they’ve seen just enough shit to say, “I don’t want it to be like that.”

Russell Toynes:
But also I’ve learned quite a bit from them of just the resilience. I’ve had students who school was the only safe spot for them. When they went home, they had to deal with outside real-world problems, whether it be addiction, whether it be homelessness, whether it be a number of things and school was a place for them.

Russell Toynes:
So it really taught me to kind of understand that we are all coming from different places, but we all have the same goal, and that is to be financially independent, hopefully, but to pursue a career in a very scary, scary realm where I tell my students, “You have the greatest job in the world. We get to create something that never existed, and we get to solve problems.”

Russell Toynes:
But it’s scary to pick a career where it’s like, “I’m going to do something where every single day I’m going to be judged, judged by people who have no education in this, judged by the masses.” That’s scary as hell, especially if you’re an artist who’s trying to pursue design.

Russell Toynes:
I tell them what makes me feel comfortable as a designer and not an artist is that I can objectively defend all of my work and all of my design decisions. That’s kind of my security blanket is that as long as I know why we did this, as long as I know the problems that we’re solving, I can defend that all day long, but it’s the subjective. It’s the stuff that just because I like it, because it feels good, because it’s me, because of this stuff, that’s the stuff that’s hard because it’s just judgment, and you have to accept that somebody just doesn’t like it.

Russell Toynes:
So I try to help them kind of create a bigger gap between those things and I said, “If you don’t want people judging your art, don’t put your art into your design.” Leave that for the special people that you choose to share that with, but use your design as a tool and do your problem-solving objectively. Then if you want to add a bit of your spice on it, do that, but understand that they may not like it.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a word. That’s a word right there, that last part. I hope people caught that about if you don’t want to be judged for your… What’d you say? Say that again?

Russell Toynes:
Judged for your art, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
I mean, I think that’s the thing. I mean, I don’t know about you, but a lot of people get into design because someone told them that you’ll never make a career out of being an artist, and so they hear the word design and they think that. So I got a lot of artists in front of me every semester, and I’m like, “Separate your art from your design.” So that way you can be a better designer, and you don’t have to worry about changing who you are as an artist.

Maurice Cherry:
Something that I think I realized kind of early on with my studio was that a lot of designers design for other designers. Like, they’re not necessarily designing for the client. They’re designing because they want to be featured on Brand New, or Under Consideration, or something. Like, they’re designing for awards. They’re designing for accolades for their peers when the client may hate it.

Maurice Cherry:
Like, I’ve seen, oh, God, I remember, especially in like the late 2000s, there was so much design that was just the client hated it, but I did blank doing these kind of wild out-of-the-box stuff. And yeah, if it’s not in service of the client and that’s what the actual thing was for, like, yeah, it is arts that you’re kind of trying to put out there and then you’re putting this design sheen over it in that sort of way.

Maurice Cherry:
But that’s a word right there. When that clicked for me, that’s when like, honestly, the business and the work just became so much easier because it’s like just design for what the client is looking for. It may not look the best, but then that client is going to keep hiring you, and you’re going to keep getting paid, and your studio is going to stay in business so you kind of have to like… It’s a compromise in a way. I mean, I think once you get that relationship working, you can then sort of add a little something here and there, but it’s tricky. But that’s a real word right there about judging.

Russell Toynes:
I mean, you hit it on the head. Designers, especially in school, start designing for the approval of their peers, and they want to get these awards. They want to get recognized in design community, and at what cost? At the cost of, like you said, the clients or the vision?

Russell Toynes:
Sometimes if you’ve ever had to do something like wedding invitations, doing your own wedding invitations is the hardest damned thing. I went through like a whole existential mental breakdown designing my own wedding invitations because I started designing them, thinking about all my design friends that were going to be at the wedding, and what are they going to say when they get this in the mail, and you start really questioning yourself. I had to stop for a moment and just realize, “You’re designing it for you and your wife on this moment and this day. This is what you’re capturing. You’re not trying to get the approval of somebody else.”

Russell Toynes:
But you’re exactly right, and the problem with that is, is that if you forget who’s paying you. It’s not in that way of like, “I’m going to do bad work because this person’s writing me a check,” is “Are you solving their problems?” If you’re not going to bat for them and you’re only going to bat for yourself, then it’s art, and you’re doing it only for you. It’s selfish, and you’re asking them to pay you to do something that makes you feel good at a disservice to them.

Russell Toynes:
So, first and foremost, you have to serve. Like I tell people all the time, design is a service. Just like waiting tables, just like anything, we have a duty to serve them with the best solution possible, and sometimes it’s telling them that they shouldn’t have something.

Russell Toynes:
I give the analogy, forgive me for the crude analogy, but it just works, I tell people if you owned a restaurant and someone came to you and said, “I want a shit sandwich,” you wouldn’t serve them a shit sandwich. Not because you don’t make shit sandwiches. It’s because that if they ate a shit sandwich and you know it’s going to taste bad, they’re going to tell all their friends that you served them a shit sandwich and what people won’t know is that they asked for that.

Russell Toynes:
So the same thing goes with design is that if your client ask you for something that you know isn’t going to solve the problem, but you just give it to them, they’re going to blame you for when that problem still is there, and you just took their money. Where if you sit down with them and you say, “Hey, let’s go back real quick. Are you hungry?” And they go, “Yeah.” “Well, we serve a lot of other things. Have you tried this?”

Russell Toynes:
So I try to always reiterate to my students and my team and to anybody that we, as designers, have a duty to serve our clients, first and foremost, and to solve their problems. Sometimes that means pushing back on them and some of the design decisions that they want, and then sometimes it’s swallowing our own pride and realizing maybe this isn’t what we want it to be, but it still does solve the problem and in a different way.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look at where you’re at now in life with the studio and everything, is this how you imagine your life would look like when you were a kid?

Russell Toynes:
No, it’s way better. I am making 13, 14, 15-year-old Russell just, I mean, I’m just killing it. Like, 13-year-old Russell is like, “Dude, who are you? Who are you?” And I never would’ve saw this life for myself because I never saw it, to be honest. We grew up in a middle class-ish household, played with financial illiteracy and a lot of things that unfortunate that I never saw anybody doing the things that I do, living the life that I live so I couldn’t even have imagined it.

Russell Toynes:
So to look at where I’m at now… My nephew, today is his 13th birthday.I called him up and I said, “You remember what I told you when you were little, I said what happens when you turn 13?” And he goes, “I get to go to Disney World?” I said, “Yeah,” and he’s like, “You remember that?” I was like, “Yeah. You think I was just bullshitting?” I was like, “You know what I mean when you can talk about it, you can be about it.” I was like, “Yeah. It’s still pandemic right now so we got to figure out a date when we all feel comfortable.” I said, “But, yeah, you’re going to Disney World.”

Russell Toynes:
The fact that I can do that for my nephew and the fact that I can take my daughter and my wife and… We just went to Hawaii, and I took my whole family, 10 of us to Hawaii, and me and my wife, we were very appreciative of all the work that we have done and all the support of our family to be able to do this for them. The life that I live now and the team that I have and the work that I’ve done and the amazing people that I’ve met and the opportunity to teach and the opportunity to get up every day and create something new, I could have never imagined it, and I am so very thankful.

Russell Toynes:
I honestly attribute it all to design. Design, literally, saved my life and made my life. Like I said in the very beginning, going to school at ACC, literally, was the best decision I ever made. It set the trajectory of my life and set so many things in motion that, had I’d never gone to ACC, had I’ve not had the people in front of me and had the mentors and the educators in front of me, I would’ve never gotten to where I’m at now. So yes, in short, no, I would’ve never been able to imagine this life and, yes, design, I give all of it to.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing either through the studio, or personally, or anything like that?

Russell Toynes:
I mean, I don’t want to work, but I have plans and, hopefully… I love teaching. I really do. I think that I’m a natural educator and a sharer of information and experience, and so I hope to continue teaching on a wider scale.

Russell Toynes:
I mentor a few people now, and I’ve toyed around with the idea of professionally mentoring and offering those services on a regular basis. Right now, my mentees, I feel weird taking money from them so they just pay for my coffee. So I’m like, now it’s pandemic so they just send me… they’ve been owing me money for coffee.

Russell Toynes:
But I think that I have a lot to share with young professionals and budding entrepreneurs. I mean, designers, I think that through a longer relationship, a mentor relationship that I can help really guide people who might feel like they haven’t received the education and knowledge of the business of design and where to go and how to capitalize on opportunities.

Russell Toynes:
Then with the studio, as we were kind of talking about this kind of international work model, me and my wife have goals of finding a place that’s a little less tumultuous for people of color. Where that place is on earth, I’m not quite sure. I don’t think we found Wakanda yet, but we don’t know if the United States is necessarily our forever home. But our goal would be to really take our business global, honestly, so wherever we end up being, creating a team there, a local team there that would continue to do the work that we are doing and then have our current Studio Dzo team basically lead that team.

Russell Toynes:
So that would be less of a requirement of me and Elizabeth on our day-to-day, and then take this very seasoned team that has been with us for five years and turn them into leaders to guide maybe this international team to create the good work that we’ve been known to do. So that’s where I hope to see ourselves in five years is where I have five or six other people somewhere else in the world who Zoom in with my team here, and we’re just cranking out the same good work, both night and day. One team’s working while the other one’s sleeping.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about the studio, about your work? Where can they find that online?

Russell Toynes:
Well, you can always find us at studiodzo.com. That’s studio, D as in dog, Z as in zebra, O as in Oscar, the D is silent, and you can find us on Instagram, studiodzo.

Russell Toynes:
You can follow me on Instagram, Russell Toynes, that’s Russell, two SSs and two Ls, never trust a one L Russell, and you can follow me on LinkedIn.

Russell Toynes:
Please, please, please check out aagd.co and see all the good work that we’re doing for our community there.

Russell Toynes:
Check out Austin Community College also. I know community colleges get a bad rap, but I have personally hired more designers from ACC than any other school from UT, from Texas State, from St. Ed’s. ACC, hands down, has a better design program and the designers come out stronger. So if you’re curious about that, if you’re looking to change careers, ACC might be an opportunity for anybody who’s local to the Austin area.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, Russell Toynes, T-O-Y-N-E-S. There’s only a few of us out there. So if you just Google that last name, you’ll be sure to find me.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Well, Russell Toynes, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, I’ve heard of you for years. I probably didn’t mention that before we started recording, but I’ve heard about you for years, just like you were saying, my name has been kind of bandied about in the design community. I’ve heard about you for years. I was really excited to do this interview and really just kind of hearing your story, hearing your passion for design, and really even just your passion for just giving back to the community that has given so much to you is just super inspiring.

Maurice Cherry:
So I hope people, when they listen to this, they really can kind of feel where your passion comes from with this, and also see how they can maybe pay it forward in their own communities as well. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Russell Toynes:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, Maurice.