Jon Contino on Rethinking Traditional Wellness Design

Nick Boever:
Jon, thank you for coming out today. Before we get started, why don’t you introduce yourself and give us a little backstory on you and your firm?

Jon Contino:
Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Nicholas. So I’m a designer, creative director from New York. And I run an agency called CONTINO, and we’re mostly a branding agency. But we do work on campaigns and stuff like that too and kind of all over the board from small to big. But a lot of what we do is we work in entertainment, sports, restaurants, hotels, basically a little bit of everything of places where people like to enjoy themselves. That’s kind of where I always try to keep us in that lane, where we’re always doing fun stuff.

Nick Boever:
So what first got you guys introduced into sort of the wellness hospitality aspect?

Jon Contino:
Well, it was actually pretty interesting. So we did the branding for the Independent Lodging Congress out of Philly. And what that is, it’s basically a conference and an organization that gets together, restaurateurs, hotel, anyone who’s doing kind of this … What’s the word? I’m blanking. You know what I’m talking about, hospitality.

Nick Boever:
There we go. The second you threw it off to me, I was just like, “Oh, God, no.”

Jon Contino:
I love when that happens. I’m right about to say something and I forget the word. So yeah, it’s a hospitality conference essentially. So we worked with them and they actually recommended us to the people who were reopening Dr. Wilkinson’s out in California. And I think it might’ve been maybe only the first or second time we really worked in kind of a wellness space. In terms of giving advice here and there and other companies that were doing it, that kind of comes with the territory, but to really dive fully in, it was the first time we really got a chance to go all in on something that was very, very heavily focused on wellness.

Nick Boever:
Okay. So was the opportunity to go all in, as you say, what really drew you guys into the project?

Jon Contino:
Yeah. And I mean, particularly for me, I’ve done plenty of lectures and stuff at conferences where I’ve spoken about kind of mental health and kind of trying to keep your brain straight, especially during these crazy times. This was all pre pandemic too, and so I can only imagine now. But having that kind of opportunity to work in that space was really exciting for me, so I forced us right into that. So as soon as the opportunity popped up, we jumped on it.

Nick Boever:
Yeah. I mean, my first introduction to you guys was obviously from just kind of talking to you about Dr. Wilkinson’s. And that in and of itself is kind of a very interesting project to look at, just because I feel like the hospital space is this weird intersection of so many different areas right now, where you have so many different … You have the wellness angle, obviously, hospitality. A lot of people are starting to pull from more residential design now. And then even on a another end of the spectrum, you have people pulling in from healthcare design almost, to sort of bring everything together. So I guess before we really dive into it, I’d love to go over basically what your approach to Dr. Wilkinson’s was, seeing as how you had this full creative rein over it.

Jon Contino:
Well, it’s really interesting. We mentioned the pandemic briefly, but this whole project started before all that, so that was kind of the introduction. I think it was actually, I had a trip out to Calistoga where they’re located, just right around Napa Valley in California, and then a quick trip to Tampa, Florida for another client. And those were my last two trips, literally days before all hell broke loose. So it was one of those things where we were out there and it was just like, “Hey, this place is going to be fun. It’s going to be casual. We’re going to have all these great community spaces and where people can get together.” And people who are already in Calistoga, it could be a destination. They could be all these different things.

And when we started working with them, it had a very, very particular mindset. It was this place that’s been around since mid 1900s, so true mid century. It’s been around since then. I think it was ’52 maybe. And the idea to kind of refresh it, revitalize it, and make it just a really fun space. We had all these quirky, goofy, fun things that people could laugh about, and these games and stuff that people could play. And of course, there would be the spa there as well. It was just going to be this really fun, quirky experience. And then the pandemic hit, and you’re a couple weeks in and it’s not ending, and people are starting to change their mind about how they’re approaching the world. And then everyone went remote. Everything just changed.

So in the process of doing that, the company who was reopening it, they were thinking, “You know what, maybe we have to rethink this as well. Maybe this is a good opportunity.” Maybe it’s a sign for us to say, “We have to focus a little bit more on kind of the wellness and being happy, and kind of appreciating more of what you have and less of kind of this really loose party type of vibe,” more of just kind of taking care of yourself, enjoying yourself, just kind of really settling in and just taking some time to kind of make sure that your mental health and your physical health and everything is kind of aligned, so that when you’re there, you can just truly relax.

And that was a big shift, and that was the whole first few months of the project was basically just shifting gears and then having to re-understand a world. I mean, it’s literally like, “Hey, let’s open up a hotel here on Earth. And then wait, we’re switching to Mars.” You have to totally shift gears and just readjust the whole plan. The whole beginning of that project, that’s where it started.

Nick Boever:
That’s really incredible to hear that though, especially considering from what I’ve seen from a lot of wellness design nowadays, where there’s this one organization that I follow, the Global Wellness Institute, that put out their list of trends recently. And two of the big main trends that they see for wellness design is this idea of number one, introspective journeys, that’s a big thing for a lot of people nowadays. And two, interestingly enough as it pertains to Dr. Wilkinson’s, just like this sort of, they termed it dirty wellness, but it’s this idea of reconnecting with the Earth in a very physical way in some respect. And so it’s very interesting that all of this played out, and now all of a sudden, we have these people that are really getting into these aspects of wellness.

Jon Contino:
Well, it’s interesting you bring that up too because when we were doing kind of the fun version, there was still Dr. Wilkinson’s is famous for their mud baths. So we still had a lot of that grittiness in there, but it was done is a very different way. It was a lot more … I mean, it was goofy, but in a fun, relaxing kind of way. But then when we kind of shifted gears, we went away from kind of the funniness of it, and we leaned more into kind of the naturalness of it, of kind of when you think about people talking about relaxing, you think about picnics, you think about going to the beach, you think about going on hikes. All these things that people do to relax, it’s always kind of removing themselves from society a bit and getting back into nature and feeling the wind, feeling the leaves, feeling the grass, feeling the dirt and the sand and all those things, the textural qualities of what nature actually provides.

So that’s what we started leaning into, was just kind of the coloring of the mud and the warmness of the mineral springs that they use in their pools even. So thinking about heat and warmth and texture and grit and smoothness and all of these things, and the way that they kind of contrast one another to us was kind of the key into that new world that we had to redevelop for Dr. Wilkinson’s. And that was a big part of it. Instead of being kind of this generic spa, where everything’s white and everything’s kind of pristine and clean like a hospital setting almost, we leaned more into warmth and to these comforting tones, where there’s pinks, and there’s browns, and there’s greens, and little hints of oranges and things like that, where it feels a little bit more like you can reach, touch, and you can feel the gravel and all that kind of stuff, very textural, very kind of tangible. We wanted it to have a tangible quality to it.

Nick Boever:
Yeah. I like that you brought up the idea of contrast because I feel as though even just from a wellness perspective, contrasts are always this element that are there almost integral for use in spas, especially when you’re talking about temperature as an element, because I know in a lot of cases, I was actually just recently talking to somebody about hydrotherapy, which is a big thing that’s used in a lot of spas. But it’s that idea of contrasting hot and cold, that shift between the two, where the actual wellness healing aspect really starts to kick in.

Jon Contino:
It definitely has that sense of you get into that steaming hot mud bath, and then you can go into basically an ice shower after it, or an ice bath, or something. It has such a refreshing quality. As soon as you try it, you know you can literally feel your skin breathe.

Nick Boever:
Yeah, no. It’s one of the reasons why I’ll always love to … I personally always love to go to the beach during the fall, exclusively in the fall. So I live over on the East Coast, so figure Boston, Maine, those types of beaches. I always like to go there during the fall because I like to go in, get absolutely frigid in the water, and then just throw on a sweater over that and warm up at a pub later on.

Jon Contino:
That’s so funny you say that because I do the same thing except I do it the opposite. When I was younger, I bought a … My dad, my brother, and I, we all bought jet skis. We bought these used jet skis. And I grew up on Long Island right on the ocean. What I would do is, we would all say, if I was working, or my brother was coming out of school, or something, whatever it was, we would all make plans to go meet somewhere, and we would bring the jet skis out or something. I would, especially on hot summer days, I would drive there with all my windows closed, with all the air conditioning off. We’re talking 90 degrees, and I would just bake. And I would just bake as hot as I could be until I couldn’t take it anymore. And then I would get there, because I knew that as soon as we got on the water, as soon as you got sprayed, you would get that cold ocean water would hit you in the face and it would just feel so amazing.

Nick Boever:
So yeah, there’s definitely a lot to … Yeah, I mean, that does sound like complete opposite end of the spectrum, but it’s … God, I can’t imagine being cooped up in a car like that for that amount of time, but I do, I vibe with it. I really vibe with it. But just getting back to this idea of contrast, and also, I like that you brought up earthen tones because when you look at some of the design you guys did for Dr. Wilkinson’s, it still manages to be very colorful. And I feel as though that it might just be my own preconceived notions of when I hear earth, I am so used to beige, varying levels of beige.

But then like you say, it’s like you’re pulling from clay, you’re pulling from water, you’re pulling from mud, so it’s like clay has all of these nice rich reds and oranges. You have the browns and the grays with mud. You have the blues with the water. And you guys really do a good job of kind of pulling that up out of the earth and kind of splattering it across the walls.

Jon Contino:
Yeah. I appreciate you noticing that too because it’s one of those things. There’s a lot of design standards. Like you said, when you hear something, you know it means this. But as soon as you start to dive deep into it, you really look at it, and especially with earth stuff. If you just go out into a yard somewhere and start digging, you’re not just going to see brown. There’s going to be so many colors in there. And there’s a lot of things, the earth gives us all of these colors to work with. And it’s just because some of it is the majority, so that’s where your brain instantly goes. But there’s so much in there that you can really …

If you pull out a neon color at some point, or you pull in a crazy, weird contrasting color, when someone looks at it, they’re not going to feel like it’s alien. They’re going to feel comfortable with it. You might not know why, but you’ll be like, “I’ve seen fertilizer before, and I’ve seen this and this.” There’s always a bright green, or a bright blue, or when the leaves change color, you get those sharp neon reds almost. Nature does provide these colors. It’s just sometimes maybe you’re a little too nervous to kind of make that leap and use it because it doesn’t fit into what we as humans kind of project as standard earth colors, but they are there. And if you go under water and you look underneath the ocean, there’s a rainbow of colors under there that are just absolutely amazing. It’s not just blue and green.

You have to make sure that you explore it delicately and you use them in a balanced way, similarly to how they are in nature. So you let those weird little colors pop when necessary, but you don’t overwhelm with it because otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. Right? And that’s where your brain goes to browns and beiges and greens or whatever. But those pop colors are there and it’s not wild to suggest that it’s something that people can feel comfortable with because I think if anything, it gives you a sense of kind of a refreshing feel of something that you’ve already known from all of your life.

Nick Boever:
Exactly. So before I guess moving on, I wanted to talk about the fact that … I did want to eventually touch upon the fact that you guys also did … You guys didn’t just do the design around the property, but you also worked on the rebranding for the property as well. And I feel like that had to have been a perfect storm for you guys because in shaping … Because usually, the brand is what defines the space in a way.

Jon Contino:
Right.

Nick Boever:
And so since you’re working on both of those two at the same time, did you feel that gave you a lot of freedom in the design of the space?

Jon Contino:
Yeah. If you can kind of set up visual cues and tie everything together in such a way that it feels uniform, you want this to feel like it’s a natural entity that exists. You don’t really want it to feel like it’s like these building blocks that you kind of, I took one from here, and I took one from here, and I took one. You just want it to feel like its natural own organic being that just kind of flows with itself. So the wall colors should match the colors in the stationery, and the T-shirts and the retail portion should match the glasses or the signage in the parking lot. All those kinds of things I think really help to bring something together in such a way that when you get there, it’s not even jarring. It just feels like you’re in just this natural environment that’s supposed to be.

Nick Boever:
Now I also love the fact that your team comes from such an eclectic background. That’s probably a little bit because you have so many different people with so many different viewpoints that I feel like it’s almost … I feel like firms like that are almost designed to break the mold of most concepts in a way, so I wanted to ask. Did you get to experiment a lot while you were on the project, as far as testing out new ideas.

Jon Contino:
Totally. 100%, and that was really great. Charters is the company that rebranded and refreshed Dr. Wilkinson’s. They were awesome. They were absolutely awesome. They were really great about letting us just explore a bunch of things. And it was so funny, they joked early on because we had, I don’t know, there was maybe eight, sometimes nine or 10 people from their side that would hop on a call with us to go through everything. And they would joke, good luck. There’s a lot of people that have opinions. But they were super collaborative and they were really open to all different types of ideas.

If I had a wild idea that I wanted to throw out in the middle of a call, they would listen. And it would be really pleasant to have a partner in that situation actually let us explore all these different types of things, so we were able to experiment. We were able to kind of try different things. We were able to do some really weird stuff too that other corporate partners would be like, “Why would you ever do that?” But they were just like, “Let’s try it. Why not?” And I think that openness and the way that they kind of approached it from a more kind of …

Obviously, it’s still a business, but they were willing to bend the rules a lot. To be able to do that was a lot … It was very comforting for us because it allowed us to know that we could try to do something different and not feel like we were going to get chastised for it, which a lot of big time corporate stuff, if you try something different, you get slapped on the wrist immediately. You can’t do that. That’s not part of this. You can’t do this. It doesn’t speak to our brand, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we were rewriting the brand story. We were doing all that, and we were doing it together. And we were having fun, and they were having fun. And it was the perfect storm to be able to tell that story in an interesting and fun and casual human to human type of way.

Nick Boever:
So I guess talking about that, what were some of the ways in which you wanted to rethink wellness design for the place? Because I know we kind of talked about it, mentioned it very briefly earlier on about the traditional kind of way you design a wellness space. What were some of the ways that your team wanted to sort of rethink the way that’s done?

Jon Contino:
Well, a lot of it kind of really goes into the stuff that we kind of talked about already. First of all, making sure that we didn’t just look like a hospital, which even though some of these spas are absolutely beautiful, it’s still a lot of times, stark white, minimalism, cold. You’re kind of in this open space that has no real definition or no opinion on anything. And it’s kind of up to you to kind of experience it how you want. The only problem with a space like that is it can be very lonely. With this, we wanted to go in the complete opposite direction of that. We wanted, I mean, even with the pandemic, we still wanted to design a place that felt like it had a nice communal effect to it.

So even in the spa, there’s the spa, there’s the hotel rooms, and then there’s also the cottages too, kind of encircling the property. And right in the middle of the property is basically what we call the backyard. And in the backyard is also a restaurant. And it’s basically a little takeout restaurant with seats and areas for games and things like that too. But in order to kind of go from place to place, you need to kind of experience all of that. You can’t really kind of section yourself off into this random cold, empty vault. You need to kind of experience the whole thing.

And throughout the whole experience of walking through the property and going from room to room, or room into space, or to the pools, or to get a drink, or some food, or something like that, there’s a lot of this warming, comforting, the signage has … There’s educational quotes. There’s some quirky personality trait type things. There’s some historical aspects to it from the founders and things like that. But we tried to do it in a way that didn’t feel cheesy. We tried to make it subtle enough so that if you want to look at it, great. If you don’t want to look at it, it’s there, but you recognize it.

And then it also just kind of allowing it to feel more like a lifestyle rather than just a hotel, or a business that you go and you pay for something. We wanted it to feel like if you bought a shirt, or a robe, or something like that, and it had the Dr. Wilkinson’s logo on it, we didn’t want it to be like a T-shirt that you would get at a 5K that you would run, where here’s just a shirt, I’ll wear it when I paint my house, or my apartment, or something like that. We wanted it to feel like everything that you did there was something that spoke to you in a way that felt that you could connect it to a part of your own personality, so that if it’s the T-shirt, the T-shirt is printed on a beautifully printed material.

If it’s a robe, the robe super soft. A beach towel, all these different things, we wanted them to feel like something that people genuinely could love and could bring home, and they could bring a little piece of Dr. Wilkinson’s back with them. So that experience of kind of the wellness, the community, mixing kind of the quirky mud baths with the really great cocktails, and the lawn games, and all that stuff, being able to kind of have a great experience, and then take part of that home. Even stuff like, we did products where you could kind of bring part of it back, like bath salts and all sorts of things like that, where you could bring it back and put it in your own tub and kind of enjoy a similar feeling.

We wanted people to really have a soothing experience, but to be able to bring it back and to talk about it in a way that not necessarily sounds like a commercial to their friends. Just be like, “Hey, I did this really cool thing, and I had so much fun, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” not let it feel so markety. We wanted it to just feel like if you loved it, you loved it, and that’s the end of it. If you want to talk about it, great. And if not, we hope you had a great time and you come back. But it’s just a very natural, no forcing anything, just kind of let it be. And that was kind of really the whole goal. And I think we did a good job of achieving that.

It’s almost, I hate to say it because it was so terrible, but the whole pandemic thing allowed us for this particular project at least, was to kind of rethink who we were and how people should maybe enjoy themselves, and other ways to relax and to talk to each other about relaxing, to be more open to letting yourself have time to heal from things. And a lot of that really went into it. I hate to say that was kind of a benefit, but out of all that suffering, this project was kind of cathartic for us, for them, hopefully for the people that go. That was a big deal. I mean, for me personally, to have that kind of experience and to think about that, and to think about how to mentally kind of reset. And how could you do that? To me, it was a big deal, so kind of it meant more to me even personally, even working on it.

Nick Boever:
Yeah, no. I really like the whole branding aspect of it, as you said, because for me personally, that feels like it’s a … For me, I used to work in marketing a little bit, so I kind of understand the storytelling that you want to do with the branding and all that sort of stuff. And again, for me, branding almost feels like it’s the lifestyle that you take home from the company, where it’s all … I mean, I feel as though no matter what company you’re talking about, if it’s a company that has consumers as kind of the people that they’re directly selling stuff to, there’s always going to be that lifestyle aspect where it always plays into the lifestyle of these consumers.

And one of the key elements of building up this idea of sustainable wellness is making it, turning it into a lifestyle so that people aren’t just exclusively coming to these facilities to feel better about themselves. You don’t want somebody to be miserable at home, go out to this facility, feel better while they’re at the facility, and then go back to being miserable at home. You want them to go out to these facilities, say, “Wow, there’s a different way I can do things,” and then basically be like, “Yes, and you can bring this home with you.”

Jon Contino:
Right. It’s like when someone says that they want to get in shape because I feel gross, I need to get in shape, and then go for a mile run and come home. You’re not better. You have to change your mindset. It’s a whole process.

Nick Boever:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess one of the things that I wanted to ask you, and this may be a little bit out of the blue. But when it comes to, if you had another opportunity to design a wellness hospitality space, how would you do it? What would your ideal way of doing it be? And it doesn’t even have to be … We don’t even have to get into specifics about it. I can just be talking about your general approach, your general philosophy, maybe even some lessons learned working with previous projects.

Jon Contino:
I mean, that would be really fantastic because I think with this one especially, having the partners that we did, and to be able to really explore the quirky traits of what this particular property was and what it had to offer, and thinking about everything that we went through from the beginning to the end, and how all of it felt, and what we got to do, and how we actually really needed to think about it. Some brands are the same product over and over again. If you’re talking about craft beer and stuff like that, it’s just have fun, beer, blah, blah, blah.

But this was definitely different in the sense that it was the mud and it was this, and the history and the town and the way all the stuff integrated. It was great to be able to be fully immersed in all of that, and to think about it, and to see and to visit competitors, and to see what their spaces were like and everything. And I would venture to say, if I did this again, I would take Dr. Wilkinson’s and amplify it by 100. There would be really exploring kind of the natural integration of earth and life and all these types of things. And obviously, it would depend on the theme of the hotel, or the spa, or whatever.

Nick Boever:
I was going to say, I feel like it would be a wild concept. Just talking to you, just hearing you talk about Dr. Wilkinson’s, it definitely feels like it’s something that you almost want to be hyper aware of what kind of space you’re walking into when you’re thinking about these sorts of things.

Jon Contino:
You think about it, when you are designing a home, and for people who really want to lean into the homes thing and really want to capture their essence, their family, their interests, their all those things. It’s almost like: How do you hyper design a home for people who were there for a few days? How can you capture that so you just feel so comfortable, but so excited to be there? What are the interesting things that you didn’t expect? What are the things that you just … My favorite is when you go to a place that has a super comfortable couch that you’re just like, “Man, this couch is so much better than the one in my house.” Little things like that, stuff that’s stuff that you like, but it’s so much better.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more expensive. It’s just it takes what you think that you like, but kind of expands on it because maybe it has the opportunity to, or it has the space to. There’s these other places where you can do more than maybe you can do in your own space. So I think that kind of whole thought process and where it is, and who’s running it, what’s the history of it, all those things, being able to integrate all that stuff, and really pushing it so that people can come in and just really have an experience I think is the way I would do it.

But again, you don’t have to be overwhelming. You can still do all those things and not smash people in the face with these ideas. They can just be there and create this unique space where you’re just like, “Wow, I’m in a world that’s transformed and I’m so comfortable here.”

Nick Boever:
Yeah. I really like that. I’ve never heard designing for hospitality before. It’s just kind of like this hyper condensed home experience. That’s really a good way of describing it in a lot of cases, where it’s that idea of stuff that you want to be able to do at home, but you are either limited in your resources of what you can actually do, or you just don’t generally have the time for it at home. I think that’s a good approach.

Jon Contino:
Think about the worst hotel or travel experiences you’ve ever had is when you go someplace that’s so much worse than where you live. I’m just like, “Oh, man. This is terrible. I could’ve stayed home. It would’ve been better.”

Nick Boever:
It’s like one of those, whenever I stay at a … I mean, I love to go hiking all the time, and so there have been more than a few times where I’ll be driving four or five hours to get to a mountain. And I don’t want to have that turn into an all day sort of thing. So I’ll just rent out a motel for an evening, so I can stay up there. But yeah, it is just a matter of that is the only time where I really don’t care about the quality of it. I just want something where I’m going to be able to go to sleep at night. For these wellness hospitality experiences, yeah, as you say, you want to go out there, and you want something that is better than your home environment.

Jon Contino:
Right. And at the very least, again, it doesn’t necessarily have to come down to money. It has to come down to the focus. Right? If you have kids and you want to go to a place to kind of relax and take a break from the craziness of kids, you want someplace that clearly is catered to people who want to relax without having the reminder of the chaos of what’s at home, when your kids are yelling and screaming, or breaking things, spilling stuff, or doing whatever. It could just be as simple as that. And I say it for all design too. It’s not necessarily, you don’t have to spend a lot to get better. You just have to think about it differently.

And if you can think about it differently, you can solve the problems differently. And that’s how you can find a better and even maybe more creative solution.

Nick Boever:
Now I’m really glad that you brought that up because when I was doing the research for this, and actually trying to … I wrote it down somewhere on here, and I want to make sure that I get it right. But when I was doing the research on this, I was going through all of the different projects you guys have worked for on your site. And I was very curious to see, since you’re a multidisciplinary design team, very curious to see how you guys sort of categorize yourselves. And so one of the things that really stuck with me was saying that you’re a team that specializes in getting into the heart and humanity of a project. And doesn’t matter what project it is, it could be you’re designing content for a brand, or you’re going all out into architecture and interior designing. I have to imagine that translates to a lot of collaboration and conversation, not just between the members of your team, but the members of the teams that you’re going to be working with on projects too.

Jon Contino:
Yeah. I think I attribute a lot of that to the fact that I’m self taught, and I kind of just worked the hard way to get to where I’m at, and making mistake, after mistake, after mistake, epic failure after epic failure, to the point where after a certain amount of time, it became so normal feeling that it was just like, “Well, why don’t I just say what I think? Or why don’t I just work the way I feel?” And the people that we work with, whether it’s clients or internally for our own team, they’ve all experienced things that way and to certain extents.

But I always like to try and bring that out of everybody that we work with. I sat in a meeting with a board with a brand that we were redesigning with the owners and the vice president and this and that. And we were talking and we’re thinking about demographics and focus groups and all that stuff. But the owners had started this business themselves out of basically their apartment and the trunk of their car, whatever. And it got to the point where I was just like, “Listen, it’s one of those things, we’re all going to die one day. Don’t you want to have a good time before?” Even if it’s your business, don’t you just want to love it? Everybody’s business gets to a point where you’re just like, you worry about accounting. You worry about all these things.

But who’s to say you can’t love and enjoy what you do if you have that opportunity to? So I always try to put that into the brains of every client we work with, every person on our team. Let’s just enjoy ourselves. We can solve this problem and still have a good time and not worry so much about the things that you’re taught to worry about. We can do this a different way. And I like to think that we’re a pretty good model of proving that, where just because there are rules out there, doesn’t mean we have to follow all those rules. We can still do things a different way and people can still feel it. And it can still resonate with them, and they can identify with those things. Again, it’s always about just speaking human to human, not business to human.

We’re all people. We’ve all experienced ups and downs. And I feel like that’s how you can really tap into these things and really just kind of have your consumers, your customers, your guests, whatever, really understand where you’re coming from and feel comfortable there.

Nick Boever:
Yeah, no. That’s very, very well said. I feel like that kind of … I mean, obviously, I come from a different background because you’re more into the visual aspect of art, and meanwhile, I come from a very writing background. But I kind of approach it somewhat similarly on my own writing projects, where even in a corporate setting, my main strategy a lot of the time is I’ll go with whatever choice has the most character, the one that pushes the boundaries the most. And then I’ll kind of throw it out there. And then I’ll just wait to hear a little bit of feedback, and then I’ll adjust based on that feedback. So it’s always a matter of push the envelope immediately and then if you might be thinking, “Oh, I’m pushing the envelope with this,” but then they might say it’s like, “Oh, we love it. We’ll have it. We’ll take that.” And it’s just like, “Okay then.”

Jon Contino:
Yeah. I mean, it’s the funniest thing too. Everybody notices it. People will call it out, I’m sure. But it’s one of those things where it’s like when a brand, or a company, or whoever is trying to deliberately feel either edgy, or they’re trying to feel very human, but they’re coming at it from a very corporate perspective, it feels the most fake.

Nick Boever:
Hey, I feel like-

Jon Contino:
Those aspects.

Nick Boever:
Yeah. I feel like that’s … I’m very immersed in the online culture, and there is definitely … I mean, there is a culture in and of itself that has developed based off of those behaviors that people have noticed.

Jon Contino:
It’s so true. At that point, you’d almost rather just have plain corporate robot talk, because you’re like, “Well, at least I know what this is.”

Nick Boever:
Oh, yeah. Exactly. It’s even worse when it’s just coming from a marketing perspective too because you have that behind the scenes knowledge, so you see somebody doing that and you’re just like, “All right. I know the exact conversation that went down during the designing of that.”

Jon Contino:
Can’t we make this appeal more to 21 to 23 year olds?

Nick Boever:
But yeah, no, it’s all about like you said, getting to know, not just … There’s so many different elements at play, where you’ve got to get to know the history of the place. You’ve got to get to know the people that are running the product and the brand. And then you have to know the people that are going to be coming there as well, and why they want to come there and what they want to do while they’re there.

Jon Contino:
Right, right, exactly. I mean, there’s a purpose for it. Right? There’s definitely some people who’re just like, “I want to open something because I want to make money.” And sometimes those things make money and sometimes they don’t. But for the most part, a lot of people want to start something because they have an interest in it, and they want to do it the better way than what they’ve experienced. So the people who started have a mindset, the people that are going to want to experience it will have a mindset. And then you have a mindset of kind of like, “Well, maybe I’m familiar with this or maybe I’m not. But either way, I’m going to be immersed in it. I’m going to learn about it. And I’m maybe going to learn more about it, figure out what I like and what I don’t like about all these things.” It’s just about taste and the opportunity to experience something different than your normal day to day.

Nick Boever:
Yeah. I love it. I love all the work that you did with Dr. Wilkinson’s regarding that. And I really hope to see more of that in the future from you guys. Just from looking at all the projects that you’ve done with CONTINO, I really … Like I said, I’m just a sucker for the branding, coming from a brand marketing perspective, so it’s always nice to see these really creative, obviously a lot of conversation and discussion went into the design surround these, where it comes out feeling like there’s a character at the end of the day.

Jon Contino:
Especially you as a writer, you understand that. When I talk about branding, I always try to describe it as creating a brand is like writing a novel. It has to have character. It has to have depth. It can’t just be one thing that goes the whole way. It has to be well rounded and it has to be able to speak to happiness and sadness and anger and excitement. It has to be able to encompass all these things because that is what the human experience is. So you can’t always be excited to go somewhere. Sometimes you’re not excited. Sometimes you have to convert people.

Sometimes you’re super excited and you need to welcome them and warm them for being so excited, for being in that mindset. So there’s a lot of … You need to develop the voice, and the thought process to developing that voice is the most part. If you can understand who that brand is as a character, as a personality, then I think everything else falls really easily. It defines itself after that.

Nick Boever:
And then it just fits in so well with the wellness aspect of things because at the end of the day, wellness is a lot about character. It’s a lot about people kind of finding something that speaks to their lifestyle. And the only way they’re going to be able to find that is through something that has a lot of character, is able to kind of tell this story that really speaks to other people’s experiences. So I feel like … I don’t know if you guys originally intended to ever get into wellness when you first started CONTINO, but it’s something that strikes me as it’s just something that’s so well suited to wellness design as a whole.

Jon Contino:
From where I first started to where we are now, it’s definitely not something we ever intended, but looking back and looking back on all of my personal experiences and the experiences of my team members and stuff like that, it’s such a natural progression, especially as you get older, I have kids and I’ve experienced so many different … I’ve re-experienced so many different things just from being a parent and seeing what they go through, and remembering how I went through it and how I dealt with it, certain ups and downs and all that kind of stuff. And it’s just like I’ve learned so much about my own personal wellness and mental health and things like that that getting thrown into that environment and working with it felt like a natural fit. So hopefully, we get to do a lot more of those in the future because it was a lot of fun. And like I said, it was pretty cathartic at the same time too, especially with the timing.

Nick Boever:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It was great to talk to you more on this, and I really hope we’re able to meet up in person at some point. I don’t know where it may happen, but there might come a day.

Jon Contino:
It’s so true. Likewise, Nicholas. Thanks again for having me. It was a really fun conversation. It’s something I really enjoy talking about, and hopefully we get to talk about it more in depth in day two.