[CLIP] The art of telling a story in chapters — A branding masterclass | Gia Kuan (GKC)

**Gia Kuan** (0:00)
Using fashion as a traveling medium to think about something a little broader. I think that was quintessentially what I was always really interested in. Why did you move to New York ? I always wanted to move to New York. I was craving something else that was a little bit more maybe underground. Pierre is really hard to explain these days because it changes every year or so. Because if you think about it, us as human beings are born to communicate, and it's basically the art of communications.

**Adrien Garcia** (0:24)
What is the state of fashion in New York ? Is it still buzzing, is it still bubbling ?

**Gia Kuan** (0:29)
And you come here and you're still weirdo, but it's okay because everyone's a weirdo.

**Adrien Garcia** (0:32)
So what makes a good show ?

**Gia Kuan** (0:34)
You're really making me think with these questions. What makes a good show ? A lot of interesting people in the field are non-linear. A lot of us have many different interests, have many different paths. We want to get a little funky and creative with it. If you're looking for something of the big box agency approach, then maybe we're not the right agency for you.

**Adrien Garcia** (0:52)
What has been the nice turn up to the opening of your own bureau ?

**Gia Kuan** (0:55)
In my mid-twenties, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, and I just ended up taking a bit of a risk.

**Adrien Garcia** (0:59)
What drives you ? I mean, on a daily basis and in your business ? You think you could have done what you've done in your house ?

**Gia Kuan** (1:08)
Sometimes you see substacks or newsletters break the news more than websites itself. I get really excited when I see whether an artist or a designer doing something completely on their own that they're not caring about, or how others are projecting themselves to the rest of the world. Stay curious, just don't be too comfortable.

**Adrien Garcia** (1:32)
When you start working with a brand, with a young designer, like super young, and you find him interesting, or you find it interesting and the story very interesting, and you think you can do something out of that, can we go through the process of putting this together to be coherent and strong ?

**Gia Kuan** (1:55)
How to tell the story for the brand ? I think the number one challenge, I was saying it's hard to be a designer, an artist these days because with social media, you have to not just know your craft, but also understand how to tell your story. Some people have it instinctively, sometimes it just comes naturally to them, sometimes it doesn't and that's what we're here for. So, when we first speak with them, we just get to talk to them the way that we're talking now and understand their craft a little bit more, and I try to get the sense of what their objective is, whether it's short-term or long-term, how do they communicate their craft ? Sometimes, even like myself, when you're doing so many different things, there's so many compartments of the story that you want to tell. So for me, it's like listening. We try to kind of dissect it, listen to what the fuller story is and be like, okay, how do we think about these in different chapters, like in a novel, and what does that timeline look like in terms of how you want to communicate that ?
How many times do we tell it until people get the message ? Is there a repetition ? Is there not ? How much is too much ? So there's a lot of things that we want to assess. And then depending on the brand, whether it's an independent brand to something a little bit bigger, a bigger brand usually have various marketing departments and social media that will take care of other things, like the copy for their social media captions, the marketing newsletter language, but an independent brand might not have that. They're just like a one or two people team. So our roles are a little varied in the way that we kind of have to work pretty nimbly depending on the size of the brand. If it's a smaller brand, then sometimes we even have to look at their newsletters or their social to being sure like what we're saying sounds like it's coming from the same voice or it's the same tone of voice. So it feels a little bit more cohesive.
Just little things like that, you know, it's, it's, it comes very naturally. For some, but not naturally for some others. And that's something that we work closely with the designers and artists who just like craft and make sure that it sounds clear.