Design Icons – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, we speak with professional illustrator and lettering artist Mary Kate McDevitt on how she's built a fulfilling career stemming from personal design projects that snowballed into dream clients. She’s worked with major brands like Target, Nike, Panera, New York Times, Johnson & Johnson, and AT&T (to name a few).

Many creatives feel like they struggle with getting a foot in the door in the industry, especially in an era ruled by the pressure of algorithms and chaotic news cycles. Mary Kate shares why returning to analog methods can reignite artistic joy that translates to paid work and how freelancers can confidently price their illustrations to win new business. From her Vermont barn studio, she reminds us that creativity thrives where curiosity and real-world making meet.

We’re chatting with Tom Froese, an Award-Winning Illustrator, Top Teacher on Skillshare who has led over 120,000 students, and the host of the podcast Thoughts on Illustration. Tom has illustrated for clients like Yahoo!, Airbnb, GQ, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s best known for his brightly colored maps and illustration work made with expressive shapes and printmaking-inspired textures.

In this episode, we cover finding a unique career path as an illustrator in a crowded space, how to develop a signature style, and ways to increase visibility towards getting more work. Tom shares how he deals with burnout, leans in on what comes naturally to maximize his talent, and shares ideas for young illustrators to get a foot in the door.

In this episode, we're talking with Evante Daniels about Cultural Physics and how to build resonance that's felt, remembered, and trusted through design and marketing. Evante is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer at SEEQER, a cultural intelligence firm. His professional background spans industrial design, brand strategy, and marketing leadership.

For many creatives, the concept of “culture” feels like something that moves independently of us, making it difficult to gauge its importance in strategic decision-making. But it’s not guesswork. Evante shares how we can define and work intentionally with the forces shaping collective perception. We cover what cultural physics is, why it matters to designers and marketers, and how to actually work with culture instead of trying to get lucky.

Grace Ling is the Founder of Design Buddies - a massive design community hosted both online and in-real-life events. She is a UX designer, product designer, illustrator, community builder, content creator, competitive runner, and a world traveler with visits to over 40 countries stamped on her passport.

She’s built a huge personal brand across various social media networks, spoken at over 100 events, and has been featured in New York Times Square and Wall Street Journal. Her career also includes several design roles at Electronic Arts (EA).

This episode features a live conversation with Grace where over 100 attendees joined to listen in. We cover how to get started with building a personal brand, what to focus on as you grow, and what to avoid as well. 

Frank Bach is a Staff Product Designer at Instagram, formerly at Headspace. He's interested in the relationship between mindfulness and creativity: how meditation can empower you to be a stronger designer and more engaged contributor. His work spans product, growth and brand design – and on the side, he also runs an online store and tours with his punk band, Monk.

Mick Champayne is a designer on the Google Doodles & Delight team, who moonlights as an illustrator. In a nutshell, she loves internet culture, navel-gazing about the future, and connecting people through visual storytelling and concept-driven design.

From her roots in experience design agencies like Huge and Critical Mass to her current role as a designer in big tech, Mick has mastered the art of injecting personality into playful user interactions. 

In this episode, she discusses the professional shift from agency life to in-house creative leadership and shares the collaborative process behind creating viral Google Easter eggs for global cultural moments. 

Mick also reveals how she leverages AI as a creative partner to streamline her illustration practice and explore new mediums like 3D design. 

We talk about how embracing your "inner weirdo" can define your designer identity and help you find a fulfilling balance between professional brand guidelines and personal passion projects. 

For junior designers entering a competitive market, she offers advice on building empathy muscles and reframing career challenges as vital learning opportunities. Her design career illustrates that the relationship between personal art and professional design is an infinity loop, where each side constantly fuels and validates the other.

In this episode, we chat with Eric Wittman, CEO of VSCO, a platform that gives photographers the tools, community, and exposure they need to expand creatively and professionally. VSCO offers products to capture, edit, display, and share visual content with a global community of creatives and brands. Eric’s career has centered on building technology products that help people be more creative, and includes leadership roles at Adobe, Atlassian, and Figma.

Eric explains how AI is a paradigm shift that’s changing the entire creative process rather than simply introducing new tools like past photography disruptions. With AI capable of generating photorealistic imagery, we discuss the unique advantage of the human photographer and how soul, intention, and style cannot be replaced. Eric shares how photographers are using technology to speed up business tasks like invoicing, marketing, creative exploration, and post-production editing. He offers essential advice on the most valuable skillsets for photographers to double down on—storytelling, empathy, and relationship building.

In this episode, we chat with Khyati Trehan, an internationally awarded designer who currently works at Google Creative Lab developing visual systems and experimental tools. Khyati has built a career that illuminates the intersection of design, creativity, and technology. She's worked with major global brands, including Apple, Instagram, Snapchat, Adobe, Samsung, Vogue, and the Oscars.

Many creatives feel uncertain about the future of the industry, particularly concerning the impact of emerging technology like AI. Khyati shares an optimistic perspective on the bright side of these new tools, explaining that designers are essential for adding human value, empathy, and context to these systems. She explains how she is embracing new methods of creation, like vibe coding, which allows her design to become more malleable. Ultimately, Khyati reminds us that the key to preparing for the future is focusing on novelty over efficiency, and embracing play to make experiences that we couldn't before.

In this episode, we speak with Phil Garnham and Damien Collot, both Executive Creative Directors at Monotype, the global leader of fonts including Helvetica, Futura, Ariel, and Gotham. Their collaborative work involves exploring how typography, font, and graphic design reflect our shifting culture and how type serves as a brand’s essential visual voice in real-life contexts.

Phil and Damien share what makes font and design culturally relevant, how designers impact and reflect social perception, and the ways design can make the world better. We also discuss Monotypte's new Peace and Conflict project—an open-source collection of icons created to provide a universal code for communicating hope, empathy, and humanity in times of increasing conflict, which is available to the public domain at Noun Project.