Hey Posse 🧪, and welcome to the P4SD Creator Series—where we bring you next-level creative insight straight from the minds of the world’s most inspiring creators. In this first episode, Joe sat down with Chuck Anderson: the man behind No Pattern Studio, a Possessed holder, and all-round creative genius. Clocking in at an hour and a half, their conversation covered a whole bunch of interesting topics—so we've sliced it into three parts for you to enjoy at your leisure 👉

📧 Part 1: Chuck on Email Hustle, Chicago Life & Lupe Fiasco 🛑 Part 2: Chuck on Creative Boundaries, Crash Report & Trying New Media 🏅 Part 3: Chuck on Virgil Abloh, Sports Photography & Unleashing Your Own Creativity

In Part 1, they start at the very beginning. Chuck gives us some insight into his early days in the industry—explaining how the internet played a massive part in his career, and how he mastered the art of email hustle to get his first gigs. The two also chat about the creative scene in Chicago, broach the age-old question of ‘college or no college’, and finally dive into how that iconic Lupe Fiasco Food & Liquor album cover came about.

But enough from us. Over to Joe & Chuck ✌️

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Joe: Hello, everybody! Thank you for joining us. This is the first of our Creator Series Talks. I'm really excited about this—it's going to be a series of talks we do with a bunch of the world's most interesting, creative, and prolific minds. We're going to be getting stuck into what makes them tick, how they work, and their process. We are extremely excited about our first guest today. This intro could go on forever, so I'll try to keep it short, but he's an artist, designer, photographer, creative director, and a Possessed holder. He's the man behind No Pattern Studio and he's worked with an enviable list of brands and individuals including Apple, Nike, ESPN, Chicago Bulls, Lupe Fiasco, Virgil Abloh, and Barack Obama. Of course, it's none other than the great Chuck Anderson—Chuck, thanks for joining us today! How are you doing?

Chuck: I'm doing well. How are you guys?

Joe: We're very good! So, before we kick off, a bit of housekeeping—the space is being recorded, so, if anyone's phone dies, or your house is burning down, you can always catch up with us later. Do you have a hard stop on the hour or are we okay if we run over a few minutes?

Chuck: No, I'm good if we run over a little bit.

Joe: All right, sweet.

Chuck: I'll let you know—as soon as you start hearing my kids yelling for me, then that's probably time, but I'll let you know.

Joe: Okay, great. That leads me onto my first question. I think it'd be good for all of our listeners to have a bit of a picture of where we're each at. Can you give us a little description of your immediate surroundings? Are you in the studio? It sounds like maybe you're at home?

Chuck: Right now, I'm sitting in my brand new backyard. We just bought a new house about two months ago. I'm in Chicago, and there's my dog; my kids have no school today, so we're all off. I just got home from taking my daughter out to buy Halloween decorations. And, yeah, it's a very family day. This is actually my only thing on the schedule for the day besides [mic feedback] so I’ve got a five and a one-year old, and like I said, I'm in Chicago. I’m on the North Side, and it's beautiful here today—a lovely fall day. I just got back from Memphis yesterday, I was speaking at a [mic feedback] so I’ve got all the interview and career questions in my mind from my presentation. So, yeah, that's, kind of, to situate everyone.

Joe: Awesome. By the way, I think I'm getting some feedback from your mic. I think it's you rather than me. Just to give you a heads up as you speak, but we'll crack on

Chuck: Yeah, if it's still a problem I can change over to just use the phone.

Joe: Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Chuck: Okay. All right, let me switch off from the AirPods. Give me a minute. Keep talking. I'll mute it. Joe: All right, sure thing. I mean, to give you all a view of where I am currently right now, I'm at my flat in London and we're due to have a baby this week. So my space is becoming increasingly crowded with baby paraphernalia taking over…I think running an NFT project wasn't enough to keep me on my toes…I think having a newborn is going to be very entertaining.

Chuck: Let me know if this sounds better, by the way.

Joe: That definitely sounds better. Amazing. Okay, so let's jump in. So I think I’ll start at the beginning. I watched one of the videos you have online, the TEDx Talk, and one of the things I thought was quite interesting that you and I have in common is that neither of us went to college. And I always thought that was quite an interesting background; I was at a kind of cross junction where I didn't know whether to go to university here in the UK or go out and just get started. And I know you sort of hustled your way to get your first paid job with—I think it was ESPN? I'm really interested: looking back, how do you reflect on that? And in particular, how do you think that not going to college has impacted your creative career? And do you think it would be different if you'd gone in a different route?

Chuck: Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is not having student debt. To be honest with you, I'm grateful for that quite often. That's probably the non-work-related answer. But as far as the impact on my life, the fact that I have not had to pay down student loans is obviously huge, and something I'm very aware of and grateful for. I was able to bypass that, because I know that it's such a burden for so many people. Careers in art and design don't always balance and reflect the burden that people have to bear in order to pay for their education. So, I try to be really grateful for that aspect of it.

(By the way, you’ll have to enjoy the nature sounds you hear, it may sound sort of idyllic right now, you might hear some chirping in the background.)

But yeah, it's interesting. I'm 37 now, so it's been 19 years since I graduated high school, and the decision not to go to college was a financial one. I didn't have the money or the resources and know-how to even explore college the way that I felt some of my peers did. So the thinking was to take a year off and go back to college eventually, after I saved up and kind of figured out what I might want to do. It was really that year off where No Pattern took on a life of its own that I hadn't anticipated.

But yeah, I was just in a position of living with my parents, and it was 2003 at this time. The internet was still very nascent, and it was an early time where it was a lot harder. There were pros and cons at that time. On one hand, it was far less competitive, but on the other hand, it was much more difficult to connect with people directly. Hence, my infamous email story that I tell every time I speak at a conference.

So, I would basically go to bookstores—for anybody my age or thereabouts, if you're in the States, you'll remember a bookstore called Borders. I spent a lot of my teenage years in Borders. I just really loved being around art books and magazines and things like that. I remember just loving magazines and seeing artists and designers in them and wondering how they got connected with the magazine. So, one day, I remember the first time I did it, I would go get a stack of magazines and go to the masthead of the magazine where all the credits were and find the art director's name. Usually, there was no email associated with it back at that time. I would go home and send these really short, sweet introductory emails, but I would have to guess their email addresses. So I'd be like, first name dot last name, first initial underscore last name, last name dot first name. I had this text file of all the different possible combinations, and I would send something like 20 out and get 19 error messages back, and then one of them would go through.

That was how I got my first work with ESPN Magazine. It really worked well with magazines, a couple of agencies, things like that. That was just a back-up-against-the-wall, if-I-don't-do-something-no-one's-going-to-do-it-for-me, kind of feeling. And without college, I didn't really have any structure or plan, so I started to figure some things out and was getting enough good feedback and opportunities as a result of doing this that it sort of took on a life of its own. I kept growing No Pattern in my aesthetic until it started to become something that felt like the start of a career.

I mean, I'm very aware of some of the things I maybe missed out on by not going to school, but I don't dwell on it. I accept what I went through and how I did it. I have to be mindful of it when I'm invited to speak at schools, but I'm never the type to tell people to do what I did. I think I was definitely the exception to the rule.

I think there are a lot of people who should probably opt for college first, and if they find that's not for them, that's fine. The safe route is usually to test the waters of school. I'm a testament to the fact that it's not always necessary, and I know a lot of people who do that, but it depends on what you want to go into. I don't think an architect could make it without school, though there are a lot more resources now to learn on your own. As a parent with a daughter and a son, I think a lot about how I'll talk to them about this. My wife went to school, so we'll have that split down the middle.

Joe: Yeah, it's the same for me, actually. My fiancée went to university, and I didn't. We've had quite different approaches in life, but I think it's given us insights from two different ways of doing things. But yeah, I think the hustle of getting people's emails, while it's a different time now and you probably don't have to rifle through magazines anymore, I think that strategy still works.

Chuck: If there's someone I want to work with and it's not happening, I still use the same technique, and it still works. The thing is, no one really talks about the power of email even now in 2022—everyone still uses it, it's still how I interact with most of my clients. I've even had people reach out to me on Discord or DM, and I tell them that I don't do any business over these channels. If you want to work together, that's got to be over email. And I'll still use that technique. It's how I started my relationship with the Bulls about seven years ago, and I feel like it would still be effective now, to be honest with you. So it's less that I have to use it, but if there's someone I really want to work with, that's usually my first course of action: trying to find their email. There are a lot more easy ways to find it now!

Joe: Has anyone reached out to you in that way and then you've worked with them because they've hustled and guessed your email address?

Chuck: They don't have to, just because I'm so public, right? You can just go and find me. It's all there. That's what we want, as artists and designers looking to be hired. You make it as easy as possible for people to find you. So no one's ever had to do that because it's just there.

Maybe not quite the same, but I've definitely had people find me through very surprising avenues in ways that I wouldn't have expected, or just the chain reaction of people meeting each other, and things like that.

Joe: Okay, cool. I know you're from Chicago, and you live in Chicago now. I was there a few years ago on a brief visit. I got the sense that it seemed like a place that really values creativity. There's a lot of public art, you have the Chicago Art Institute there. I was actually with my brother in town doing a very uncreative thing—I think we were filming at a tech conference—but even then we had the camera set up and the mic set up, and a random passerby came over and was like "yo, can I do a freestyle?" And he spit this freestyle in front of the camera and gave us his Instagram. It was kind of crazy, and it just felt like Chicago was bubbling over with creativity. I'm curious, do you sense that too? And do you think it cultivates creativity in any way? And do you feel like your environment influences your work in that way?

Chuck: Yeah, Chicago is a very unique city for creativity because it has a lot of history and amazing artists who have come from here. But there is also this energy of everyone wanting to go off to New York or LA, which is probably true for a lot of Midwestern and smaller cities where people aspire to work in these industries. But I think I have really used the city to my advantage. I feel like I'm the only person in the city that does what I do, which I guess for anybody who feels confident about their work, you might feel that wherever you live. But in Chicago, there's not a lot of small independent design or art design type practices. I know most of the people in the city who are doing that, whereas there are so many people like that in New York or LA. But it's easier to stand out in Chicago just because it's a big city for sure, but not a lot of people put down roots here and wave the flag of Chicago and stick around.

So many people that I know have moved here and then decided to leave for LA, towards where it’s warm. But I'm here for the long haul. I have a family here, my parents live nearby, and I've bought a house. So, I feel very comfortable allowing myself to get close to the city and calling it No Pattern Studio Chicago.

So, yeah, it's really a what-you-make-of-it type city. The attitude in Chicago is always very much "put your head down and work", and not a lot of people are always looking to stand out, I guess? But maybe that's changing a little bit. I'm also not speaking for the entire city—there are lots of different pockets of creative communities, and a ton of creativity in the world of food, coffee, beverages, and fine art. SAIC, the Art Institute, has a lot of amazing people coming out of it all the time.

And those of us who have been here doing our thing for a while all know each other. For example, myself and another artist named Cody Hudson. Obviously, someone like Virgil really made Chicago his base, but then would obviously be all over the place and continue to use Chicago as a kind of anchor for where he learned and honed his craft. But yeah, it's great here for family, there's never a lack of things to do, and there's great public art, museums, music, and everything like that.

Joe: Whilst we're on Chicago, I've got to ask you: I'm a big hip hop fan and I didn't actually know this until I saw one of your tweets a few weeks ago: you designed the Lupe Fiasco Food & Liquor album cover, and I listened to that album on repeat. When was that, like, 2006? I'd love to hear about how something like that comes about?

Chuck: Sure, it's a pretty straightforward story. I met Lupe through a project I did for a magazine called LTD. It was a trade magazine for streetwear and sneakers, and they were doing a feature on Lupe and needed photos of him. The person who hired me was a guy named Mike, who knew my work and he was like “hey, we need photos of Lupe, this up-and-coming rapper in Chicago. And if you're down, I'd love to introduce you. We want to have the photos taken at St. Alfred” (which is a legendary clothing store in Chicago). And so we met up and had some mutual friends and just kept in touch.

When it came time for him to think about the artwork for his album Food & Liquor, he reached out to me to see if I was interested in working on it. He had been speaking with Futura, but he wasn't available. So I was the next choice. To be the next choice after Futura isn't the worst thing in the world! He had a concept, and he had this skateboard that had an illustration of a guy floating with all this debris and garbage and stuff around him. The details about that are somewhere; there was a whole oral history that we did, a big interview about the album cover. I can't remember off the top of my head who did that original illustration that inspired it—but yeah, we did that! I shot the photo of Lupe and all the individual objects that are on the cover, then composed the artwork and cover, did the inside, and then the back panel for the CD. Row Star, an artist from New York, did the typography.

The album was nominated for a bunch of Grammys and Lupe performed on Letterman and late-night shows. That album has aged really well. I feel like people have really gone through cycles where it felt maybe a little irrelevant, like ten years later. But now I think people who were around when it came out are quite fond of it and think it was an incredible, ahead-of-its-time album. Lupe has toured on that album pretty recently, too.

But yeah, when it comes to how a lot of stuff came about, I just felt like I was really good at the Internet early on. If you were making noise on the internet in 2002/2003, you could stand out because everyone was paying attention to everything, the community was quite small, and there was no social media yet. And so it was a good time to be loud, I guess? So many of the opportunities I got early in my career I think happened as a result of me just trying to be noisy and really good at self promotion on the internet.

Joe: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I actually find that kind of time to be when my relationship with music synthesized at its strongest. I remember album covers as well. That album cover was really cool. You had the streams of light, and around that time, Kanye was doing stuff with Murakami, and he dropped a mixtape—I think it was called the Can't Tell Me Nothing mixtape—and it was really cool. It had similar streaming lights and stuff. I always really loved that as well.

Ready for more? Head over to Part 2 to continue the conversation 👉