Jason is an independent Senior Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Muralist in Augusta, Georgia. This guy's been through the trenches and has worked at 24-hour sign shops, agencies, and everything in between. Even though he's worked with HBO, Nike, and the Atlanta Braves—Jason doesn't shy away from working with the local burger joint or the hardware store down the road. Small businesses are a part of his DNA. Tune in for a talk about recognizing opportunities, building trust with your clients, and genuine Augusta chicken bones. You can find Jason's work on his website, follow @jasonthe29th on Instagram, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Questions for this interview.

• Can you talk about the impact the game Paper Mario had on you?
• What are some of the things you do in your life to streamline your workflow?
• You encourage young designers or recent grads to "mind the gaps." What do you mean by that?
• Do you have advice for someone who's an illustrator but wants to be hired as a graphic designer and is having trouble deciding what to showcase in their portfolio?
• After reflecting on your work, what's the most vulnerable thing you can say about it?
• What have you learned from rejection, and how do you keep moving forward?
• April 13, 2019, was a significant day in your journey. What can you tell us about that day?
• You changed how you do business, and you're taking a more aggressive approach this year. What does that mean?
• What specific things do you do to build trust with your clients?
• Can you talk about your three-mood board strategy?
• You once packaged and sold chicken bones at a design conference. I'm dying to know. Where did those bones come from?
• When was the last time you wore a pair of JNCOs? What about a Michael Jordan jersey?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Matt is an Austin-based graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer. You probably know him as StayGray Ponyboy, and even though he has a new logo, he assured me he's still the same PonyBoy. Matt has worked with big-name clients like Disney, Jeep, Adobe, Under Armour, and the Atlanta Braves. He's also the founder of Crop, an annual creative conference showcasing real stories from real people. Tune in for a talk about focusing on quality, updates to his logo, and the problem with the phrase "Fake It Till You Make It." Follow Matt and Crop on Instagram and find more information about the conference at cropcons.com.

Questions for this interview.

• (Listener Question) As the founder and creator of Crop, what do you hope people take away from attending Crop?
• What do you look for when putting together the lineup of keynote speakers for the conference?
• Can you think of a friendship that wouldn't exist without Instagram?
• In your Medium article titled Designer Dysmorphia, you mention feeling inadequate. Do you still struggle with that feeling today?
• In your opinion, what's wrong with the phrase "Fake It Till You Make It?"
• What do you think about current graphic design content trends on Instagram?
• You recently redesigned your logo. How did you decide it was time for a change?
• You switched hosting platforms for your portfolio website. Why did you move from Squarespace to Wix Studio?
• How do you decide which projects to feature in your portfolio?
• Did you place a cap on the total number of projects to include on your website?
• You create a lot of designs that revolve around analog audio. Where does the inspiration for those designs come from?
• Is the design for your typeface, Zilker, based on a specific source of inspiration?
• (Listener Question) Do you have beginner tips for someone interested in designing a typeface from scratch?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Daphna is a designer living in Austin, TX, focused on visual design, product design, and illustration. Known as the Queen of Occult, her illustrations draw inspiration from traditional American tattoos, the occult, and mysticism—expect lots of skulls, snakes, and hands. Despite having close to 100K Instagram followers, she experiences some of the same struggles the rest of us do, like the difficulty of building a portfolio and the fear of sharing your work online. Tune in for a talk about leveraging social media, licensing your artwork, and people who use your designs without permission. You can find Daphna's artwork on Instagram, merch on her online store, and more work samples on her website.

Questions for this interview.

• Is Queen of Occult a nickname you embrace?
• Do you ever feel any pressure from being labeled that way by other designers?
• Does the thought of your work being too consistent ever cross your mind?
• How much of your independent work comes from platforms like Instagram and Dribbble?
• What advice do you have for people who want to leverage social media for independent work but are worried their work isn't good enough to share?
• How do you typically move communication with a potential client off social media and start to onboard them?
• Does the response to your work and comments about your work on social media make you more confident as a designer?
• How do you maintain such a high level of output for your artwork?
• Does the style of your independent work ever creep into your designs at your full-time job?
• Can you explain what a Tattoo Pass is and tell us the story behind it?
• Do people steal your work often? How does it make you feel when that happens?
• Do you have any advice for someone who might find themselves in a similar situation?
• How do you handle ownership of the artwork you create? Do you license the artwork for specific uses and a limited time, or do you transfer all ownership rights to the client?
• What are some of the things that made you weird as a kid?
• If you had to give up one thing from your illustrations, would it be snakes, skulls, or hands?
• Do you know the name of the typeface used on your portfolio website?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Wendy is an Owner and Creative Director of Lewis Carnegie, a multi-discipline design studio in Austin, TX. She's created work for The University of Texas, The Harry Ransom Center, Home Slice Pizza, Austin Batcave, and many others. She's also recognized as a FELLOW by AIGA Austin and served as vice president for the chapter. Wendy and her husband (Sean) are pillars of the creative community in Austin, and Lewis Carnegie has a long history of hosting fantastic design events—and that is exactly where we met. Tune in for a talk about making yourself valuable, getting involved in the creative community, and women in design. You can find samples of Wendy's work at lewiscarnegie.com.

Questions for this interview.

• (Listener Question) How do you know when the project you're working on is complete?
• You met your partner Sean in Maine—how did you end up there?
• What are some of the big takeaways from working at Pentagram?
• Ideally, what do your relationships with clients look like, and what do you care about most when choosing to work with someone?
• Why is it important to you for Lewis Carnegie to host events for the design community and welcome people with open arms?
• What do you think students and young professionals can do to feel like they belong to the design community?
• Do you have any advice for someone struggling to combine typefaces successfully?
• What are the essential skills you're looking for when you hire someone?
• How do you think the design industry has changed for women since the late 1990s?
• Are there any areas where you won't compromise or allow yourself to settle for something less than a specific standard?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Oen is a Distinguished Design Executive at IBM. He's also held titles like Visual Designer, Creative Director, and Design Principal. However, at his core, Oen is a Designer, an Advocate, and an Educator. He's served on several AIGA Boards, is recognized as a FELLOW by AIGA Austin, and has taught at Austin Community College for over 15 years. I met him in 2010 while he was my Portfolio Development Instructor. You can connect with and follow Oen on LinkedIn and see work samples on his website, visualnotepad.org.

Questions for this interview.

• Can you give us a quick summary of all the places you worked before IBM?
• How did you know it was time to leave Y&R and move on to something new?
• How many people do you think you've interviewed at IBM?
• What does someone need to have or need to do to get hired at IBM?
• Is there a portfolio piece or a specific interview moment that has stuck with you until now?
• (Listener Question) What do you think is important to showcase in a portfolio in 2024?
• What's the driving force behind your involvement with education?
• How do you approach failure, and how do you react to it?
• Is the way you process failure influenced by where you grew up?
• What do you think a successful mentorship needs to have?
• What impact does international travel have on your design work?
• What do you think makes a typeface great?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Matt is an independent visual designer—based in Austin, TX—primarily focused on brand identity, package design, illustration, and custom typography. He's done work with Helms Workshop, Canales & Co., The Butler Bros, and more. Matt is also a metal guitarist, DIY to the bone, and if push came to shove, he'd give up custom typography before music. You can find his work on Instagram @mattthompson and delicious pricing information on his website.

Questions for this interview.

• In December 2023, you posted a graphic on Instagram that said, "Design Pricing...Let's talk about it." What's the story behind that post?
• Can you talk about how you charge your clients for work?
• Can you tell us about your connection to the music industry and why you have messaging specific to musicians on your website?
• Do you think music creeps into your designs or influences your professional work? If it does, how so?
• Do you ever get pushback on your prices? How do you respond to clients who want your services for less money?
• What advice do you have for someone who understands they should be charging more for their work but doesn't know where to start?
• (Listener Question) How do you find new clients? Is it just who you know?
• What characteristics do you look for in a client?
• Which would you give up, playing the guitar or custom typography?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Nick is the Owner of Longo Designs. He's a brand builder, a design instructor at Cal State University Northridge, and a mentor. He's also a Co-Host of The Deeply Graphic Designcast (The DGDC), the ultimate podcast for creatives, and you can watch him weekly on Adobe Live: Office Hours. I met Nick at Crop 2023 in Austin, TX, and we've been friends ever since. Tune in for a talk about package design, portfolios, resume design, and typography.

Questions for this interview.

• How do you think students can benefit from going to their first design conference?
• What is it about the package design process that keeps you going back to it?
• What advice do you have for someone struggling to find their first packaging client?
• What are some (important) questions to ask the client during the kickoff meeting?
• (Listener Question) Is there anything you felt unprepared for once you entered the professional workforce?
• "If it ain't a HELL YES, it's a HELL NO." Can you talk about what that means to you? 
• What are some common mistakes you see designers make with their resume designs?
• How do you think students can safely take more risks and still create effective designs?
• (Listener Question) How do you balance your creative vision and still meet client expectations?
• (Listener Question) Do you ever get cold feet before starting a project? What helps you get past the hesitation?
• Do your students use Dafont.com? What do you say to convince them to source typography from somewhere else?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Russell is the Owner and Creative Director at Studio Dzo, a Black-owned and Woman-led multi-disciplinary, design-build studio based in Austin, Texas. He's also a Design Educator and teaches Portfolio Development at Austin Community College. Russell is a longtime friend—we went to school together, worked together at Dell, and were roommates for a while. Check out work samples at SudioDzo.com and follow Studio Dzo on Instagram.

Questions for this interview.

• (Listener Question) What makes a strong portfolio? What specific things do you look for?
• What can you remember and tell us about your first portfolio?
• Do you consider yourself a confident person? 
• (Listener Question) What advice do you have for graphic designers who struggle with self-doubt and imposter-like feelings?
• What were some of the considerations you made before leaving Dell? What emotions did you experience after making that decision?
• What has Studio Dzo taught you that you didn't know before?
• Can you explain the meaning behind the phrase "pulling taffy"?
• What's the story behind the thought, "Get your mind right, get your grind right"?
• What kind of value did you get from going to AIGA events?
• What can students do before they take a portfolio class to help them be more prepared?
• Do you have any words of encouragement for people of color in the design industry?
• Where should designers go within themselves to find inspiration for their visual identity?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Zaine is an independent Illustrator & Graphic Designer located in Austin, TX. She's completed work for Yeti, June Shine, Kammok, and Corvus Coffee. Zaine is also a former student of mine, and I'm proud to feature her as the first guest on the podcast. You can see more of her work on Instagram and her website.

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Questions for this interview.

• Think about what you knew when you graduated vs. what you know today. How much of a gap is there? Is it significant?
• Is there something you should have learned in school but didn't?
• How do you use nature for inspiration? Specifically offline inspiration. How do you repurpose what nature has to offer?
• (Listener Question) What do you think defines success as an illustrator?
• Can you tell us how you landed the 2024 Parks Project calendar project?
• Do you share sketches or process work with clients before you show them a finished illustration?
• Which design application do you use in your workflow for illustrations?
• (Listener Question) Have you ever felt dissatisfied with a final design that a client approved?
• How much value did you get from your internship with The Young Jerks? What kind of things did you do during your internship? Do you have any advice for someone looking for an internship?
• Have you learned any production lessons the hard way?
• Do you ask clients for a percentage of the total project cost upfront?
• Were you ever intimidated by typography as a student? What would you say to help someone who is?
• How is your process for working with clients different today than some of your earliest paid work?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Welcome to Students of Design. My name is Joseph Israel Raul Bullard, and I'm a Logo & Visual Identity Designer based in Colorado. I'm also an adjunct professor at Austin Community College and have taught there since 2017. As you can imagine, I've seen a lot of student work—the good, the bad, and the trash. But more importantly, I've heard a lot of the same questions. This podcast will provide interesting perspectives on some of them.

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Jesse is an Associate Creative Director at Marketing for Change, a research and creative agency propelled by behavioral science. He's also the tallest designer I know, plays in a volleyball league on Wednesday evenings, and will tell you the best chicken tender in Colorado Springs is from Ivywild Kitchen. When Jesse isn't winning ADDY or Telly awards, he's pushing passion projects—like T is for Tattoo—to new heights. Ha, new heights, lol. Tune in for a talk about working with a team, graphic design tattoos, and including passion projects in your portfolio. You can find some of Jesse's funny internet videos on Instagram, see more of his work on his website, and learn more about where he works at Marketing for Change.

Questions for this interview.

• How does the team you work with—or the people you collaborate with—help you handle feeling like an imposter?
• Have you learned anything working with a team you don't think you would have learned working alone?
• Do you enjoy presenting your ideas or designs to clients? Do you ever find the process intimidating?
• What percentage of time do you spend planning and thinking vs. actually making?
• Can you tell us how your remote working days look and how often they happen?
• Are the people you meet with also designers, or do they have different roles?
• Do you have any tattoos directly related to graphic design?
• How do you decide or choose the subject matter for your tattoos?
• Can you explain the concept behind your "T is for Tattoo" project?
• Where did the kids in the video for T is Tattoo come from?
• Were you surprised no one backed the "Your Name Forever" reward tier?
• Do you regret getting any of your tattoos? Do you have any cover-ups?
• How would you respond to students asking if they should include a passion project in their portfolio?
• You became a design educator in 2023. What was that experience like?
• Were there any takeaways from your first semester of teaching?
• Do you have any words of encouragement for designers looking for more impact or meaning in their work?
• Can you tell us about the book you made in memory of your dog, Dylan?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Kendrick is a Creative Director and VP of Creative at Shepherd, a full-service ad agency in Jacksonville, Florida. He surfs and skates, and you can find him at Kona Skatepark with his kids on the weekends. Kendrick is just an all-around swell guy, and his work is fantastically textured, smooth, slick, cute, gnarly, or literally whatever it needs to be. Despite working at the same agency—Shepherd—for TWENTY YEARS, Kendrick does plenty of independent work for clients like Nickelodeon, Target, ESPN Magazine, Billabong, and Reve Brewing. Tune in for a talk about agency life, typographic taste, and his work for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. You can find Kendrick on Instagram, Dribbble, and LinkedIn.

Questions for this interview.

• Kendrick, are you a leader?
• What do you think great leaders in the design and advertising industry do well?
• You've worked at Shepherd for 20 years. Why stay at the same agency for two decades?
• Have you ever worried that staying in one place for too long could lead to stagnation or cause you to stop growing creatively?
• What's the role of a Creative Director at Shepherd?
• Can you think of a misconception that people (with no agency experience) have but isn't true in your agency experience?
• You watched a lot of people come and go. Why do you think agency life didn't work out for some people?
• Imagine a recent grad wanting to work at Shepherd. What would you recommend they focus on to prepare for the interview?
• Art Director vs. Creative Director. Has one of those roles been more stressful or complicated than the other?
• How do you feel when someone says you're their design hero or calls you a legend within the industry?
• Where is your comfort zone, and how do you define it?
• You designed a modular typeface called Snips. Where did the idea for the typeface come from? Is there a story to tell?
• Do you think good typographic taste can be taught or learned?
• Who's your favorite SpongeBob character? Were any characters more fun to work on than others?
• What did you use as reference material, and where did you pull inspiration?
• Did working on such a high-profile IP (SpongeBob Squarepants) come with extra pressure?
• Have you outgrown falling into the comparison trap?
• Who's your favorite droid in the Star Wars universe?
• Is there any part of your process or technique that you turn to often enough to consider a crutch?
• You've had a long and successful career. What have you done right to get yourself to that point?
• Would you have stayed at Shepherd for 20 years if they didn't allow you to take on independent clients or support you the way they do?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Bryony is a designer, author, and co-founder of UnderConsideration—a graphic design firm in Bloomington, Indiana. Over the last two decades, Bryony has managed the behind-the-scenes of various initiatives with her husband, Armin Vit, including Brand New (the blog), Brand New Conference, First Round, a bunch of other blogs, a podcast, and they've published five books including Graphic Design Referenced. Bryony is the type of person who comes up with a wild idea that seems impossible but always finds a way to make it a reality. It (legit) could be magic, but I bet it's because she has more follow-through than anyone I've ever met. She's serious about most things, like enough to know she's usually TOO serious, and she's the mastermind behind the ridiculously well-crafted conference materials at the Brand New Conference. IYKYK. Tune in for a talk about the perfect combination of confidence and self-doubt, designing for a critical audience, and the most dangerous day of her year. Check out UnderConsideration on Behance for excellent examples of how you can document your process, and visit UnderConsideration.com for more information about everything she does.

Questions for this interview.

• Why is quality so important to you?
• Who has a more critical eye between you and Armin?
• What are some of your considerations, or how do you decide it's the right time to conclude a project?
• Why archive and preserve all of your concluded projects? Why do you keep them all intact online?
• Can you talk about the perfect formula of being confident in your abilities but having self-doubt?
• I heard you say the fear of failure is your biggest motivator. Do you still feel that way today?
• In 2016, you held the Brand New Conference in Amsterdam. Do you consider that event a failure according to your standards?
• How does designing for a critical, tough crowd like designers inspire your work?
• You believe one specific day of the year is more dangerous than the rest. Can you tell us which day it is and explain why for you?
• When a vendor can't help you bring an idea to life, you always find a way to do it yourself. Where do you think your drive comes from?
• How difficult is it for you—someone who obsesses over the details—to let go of perfection and allow yourself to accept and embrace the final output when there are imperfections?
• What are the speakers you choose for your conferences doing to stand out? Are there any common threads or characteristics you look for when making those decisions?
• Between you and Armin, who has more technically sound InDesign files?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Sarah is an illustrator, lettering artist, and muralist living in Austin, Texas. In 2019, she gave her two weeks' notice, left the corporate design world (USAA), and started Wild Vine Creative. For the past few years, her focus has been creating murals, and her artwork features organic shapes, an earthy color palette, and wildflowers like globemallow, fall aster, and bluebonnets. Don't be surprised if you spot some food and plant puns, too! Tune in for a talk about growing up in a military family, deciding to leave a full-time job to become an independent illustrator and muralist, and tips for lettering with a paintbrush. You can see her artwork and process videos on Instagram and buy stickers, cards, and prints on her website.

Questions for this interview.

• You grew up in a military family and moved a lot. Was art (or making art) important to you during that time?
• Did you grow up with siblings?
• Hypothetically, do you think you would be more or less creative if you didn't grow up with a brother?
• Did you have a good experience at Columbia College Chicago?
• Did you feel prepared to find an entry-level design job after you finished design school?
• For many of us, one design professor changed how we view the world. Did anyone make that kind of impact on you?
• You started Wild Vine Creative in 2019—why did you decide to branch out of your own?
• What do you remember about giving your two weeks' notice? How did you feel about taking that leap?
• Did you have a mentor or ask anyone for advice before making that decision?
• Why do murals draw you in and make you want to create them?
• Can you explain some of the art transfer methods used to create murals?
• How intimidated were you by the idea of painting large murals?
• Is there anything about murals that you still find intimidating or makes you nervous?
• Did you find Lauren Hom's course "Mural Painting for Designers" helpful?
• Do you have beginner-friendly tips for achieving clean lines and smooth curves when painting letterforms with a paintbrush?
• You added two new colors to your color palette. Where did the inspiration for those colors come from?
• What are some of your favorite native wildflowers or cacti?
• Is there a story behind your mural inspired by Otomi patterns?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Michael (aka Fugstrator) is an "illustrator who illustrates with design principles." He's the "People's Homie"—I made that up—and is a Senior Design Evangelist for Next Gen Creative Pros at Adobe. We all love his work, and I'm jealous of all the "space stuff" he creates. He's worked with aerospace clients like NASA, Blue Origin, Boeing, and other big companies like IBM, Oracle, and Skillshare—AND he's been on some of the biggest stages in the industry, like Adobe MAX. Tune in for a talk about getting expelled from college, living by the Pirate Code, and speaking to a crowd of 10,000 people. Look for Fugstrator on Instagram, Dribbble, LinkedIn, and Adobe MAX.

Questions for this interview.

• Do you know where this text is from? "After months of tenacious enemy attack, only one ship has survived..."
• Who's your favorite Street Fighter character?
• Do you have a favorite video game-inspired illustration you've created?
• If you could only choose one, which series would you keep around between Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man?
• Something went wrong during your last year of college. Can you tell us what happened?
• Did that event lead you to design school?
• What did that experience teach you? What lesson did you take away from it?
• What's something important to you that you think everyone should learn in design school?
• Does creating and sharing short-form tutorial videos scratch your educator itch?
• Are the reactions to your Instagram videos what you were hoping or expecting?
• (Listener Question) In an industry that's constantly changing because of technology and trends, how do you keep up and feel like an "advanced designer?"
• You say, "Think Like an Artist; Execute Like a Designer." Can you elaborate on that?
• Do you think someone needs to be good at drawing to be a great illustrator?
• Do you still create all your illustrations with a single light source in the top-left corner?
• You've spoken at Adobe MAX. How would you weigh your level of confidence vs. nervousness when you were on that stage?
• When working with engineers who demand precision, how do you acknowledge their feedback, and how do you typically try to implement it?
• Who do you think will win the F1 Drivers Championship this year? Max Verstappen or Lando Norris?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Rick (aka Skeeletor in the competitive Skee-Ball world) is a lot of things—a Dark Artist, Creativity & Leadership Coach, Inner Monster Wrangler, Author, Educator, Podcaster, and World Builder. I met Rick around 2014 and have followed and supported his work since. Some of the best conversations I've ever had about self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and monsters have been with him. As a coach, he's helped thousands of leaders confront their fears, wrestle their inner imposter monsters, and find more within themselves. Most of all, he prioritizes creating a space for people to become their most authentic selves. Tune in for a talk about the inspiration behind his work, imposter syndrome, and why you should embrace the bog witch life. Visit his website for more info about his coaching practice, art shop, newsletter, NFTs, screenplays, and more. I recommend giving The Inner Monster Podcast a try.

Questions for this interview.

• Why are you an artist?
• If you created a pie chart to visualize your identity, how would it look?
• How would you describe your artwork to someone who's never seen it before?
• Do you know where your inspiration comes from?
• Across everyone you've worked with, roughly how many of those people experience a form of imposter syndrome?
• Can you talk about the phrase "Face It Till You Make It?"
• When facing our inner monster (imposter syndrome), how can we succeed in the long and short term?
• If the feelings of imposter syndrome were a monster, which monster(s) do you think represent those feelings the best?
• What is a bog witch? How do you think creative people can tap into their inner bog witch, and why should they?
• Can you tell us about the highs and lows of streaming on Twitch?
• How much of your digital painting style resembles your traditional painting style?
• What advice do you have for someone who wants to sell prints, illustrations, or merch at an art convention or event?
• In moments of self-doubt, what's a question you always ask yourself that helps keep you going?
• How do you define authenticity, and why do you think people get hung up on it or have trouble being more authentic?
• Why do you think it's important to focus on the process instead of the result?
• Why should people be more generous with themselves?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Hank is an Art Director, Designer, and Illustrator originally from the muddy backwoods of Mississippi. He's created work with Instagram, Netflix, and Adobe, and he's the force behind Hank Designs Studios and Fuzzies Co.—a culture-focused illustration project. Our friendship goes back to 2019 when I met him at Design Week Huntsville in Alabama. He gave a fantastic presentation, and afterward, I taught him some of the secrets of competitive Skee-Ball—then we made it rain redemption tickets on dem fools. Tune in for a talk about avoiding math in Adobe Illustrator, finding inspiration for Fuzzies characters, and speaking on the main stage at Creative South. You can find Hank's brand identity work on his website, and check out his gallery of culture-focused illustrations at Fuzzies Co.

Questions for this interview.

• What kind of impact did Jamal Collins have on your career?
• What kind of design work are you primarily looking for?
• Which Adobe Illustrator tool or feature do you think people sleep on the most?
• What helped you get the hang of the pen tool? Do you have any tips for using it more effectively?
• Custom lettering—are there situations when you start from an existing digital letterform instead of a sketch?
• Can you explain what Fuzzies are for anyone who doesn't know?
• What kind of impact do you eventually want Fuzzies to have?
• What are the elements or components that make a Fuzzie a Fuzzie?
• Are Fuzzies always based on specific people, or do you create some from your imagination?
• What's your approach to color when bringing a Fuzzie to life? Do you have a core set of colors, or start from scratch with each character?
• Can you tell us about the lead-up to Creative South and how you became a speaker?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Ash is a Co-Founder and Creative Director of Six Cinquième, a Montreal-based Strategic Brand Consultancy. She's created work for organizations like The National Black Canadians Summit, On Est Là!, a BIPOC-focused talent agency, and The Centre for Canadians of African Descent. Many design agencies say they're selective about the people they work with—but Six Cinquième proves they are. Their work uplifts Black creativity. It represents and has the power to inspire young, underrecognized designers to enter the design industry. Tune in for a talk about shifting your mindset, setting boundaries with clients, and trusting everything will work itself out. You can find more of Ash's work on her agency's website, follow Six Cinquième on Instagram, and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Questions for this interview.

• What is your agency, Six Cinquieme, proof of? At this point in your career, what have you proven to yourself?
• You started your agency because you didn't feel like the design industry was a space made for you. What was missing from it? Why didn't you feel like it was a space for you?
• Do you feel responsible for encouraging and attracting young, underprivileged people to the design industry?
• What does operating with a "scarcity mindset" mean to you?
• Can you tell us about the moment in your career when you realized saying yes to everything wouldn't be sustainable?
• Do you think your clients' perspectives (of you) have shifted since setting healthy boundaries?
• How have you and Miro grown since establishing those boundaries?
• How do you encourage clients to think about design on a deeper level when they're stuck on the surface?
• How do you make sure you don't get consumed by your work?
• You said you no longer fear hitting a creative standstill or mental block. Why is that?
• What do you think design leaders, seasoned creative directors, or people who own a design studio can do differently to help young designers feel like the industry is a space for them, too?
• What can people attending Circles Conference and Creative Works East expect to take away from your sessions?
• Can you share some thoughts on the visual touchpoints you experienced in Paris before the 2024 Olympic Games started?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Adam is a designer and illustrator from Orlando, Florida. For the past 4.5 years, he's been working as a Senior Brand Designer at Acorns—basically, he draws squirrels for a living, lol. But, before the squirrels, he worked independently for a long time and created designs for big names like Disney, Target, Dunkin' Donuts, William Sonoma, and Cartoon Network. Eventually, his world started to fall apart. He lost some people close to him, Disney cut him off, and the social media demons got the best of him. Since then, he's picked himself back up, and 2025 is his redemption tour. Tune in for a talk about growing up without understanding financial wellness, making critical mistakes with a huge client, and how working in-house at Acorns provides the stability to move forward. Look for his work on Instagram, Dribbble, and his website, studiograson.com. Also, start investing :)

Questions for this interview.

• Can you give us some examples of the types of design assets you create at Acorns?
• There's a lot of green in the Acorns color palette. How's that treating you?
• Has working at Acorns changed how you think about money or plan for your family's future?
• Can you share what growing up in Pine Hills was like?
• How did your grandmother impact your creativity?
• Is there any time when you feel like you legitimately hit rock bottom?
• Can you share some encouraging thoughts for anyone in the trenches who feels they might be experiencing their lowest point?
• Can you tell us what happened between you and Disney?
• What is your non-professional relationship with Disney like today?
• What did the situation with Disney teach you about respect?
• How did you start rebuilding yourself and your identity after Disney cut ties with you?
• Why are you so willing to share personal information about yourself?
• How are you navigating your work and the design industry differently than you were before?
• Has working in-house for the last 4.5 years helped you refocus, rebuild, and work on yourself?
• Do you still take on a lot of independent work?
• How does being represented by Arthur and Elias fit into everything?
• Can you tell us how the relationship works?
• Who do you think this kind of relationship is for?
• Is there a level of quality or experience someone needs before applying for representation?
• Can you tell us about the family Instagram account your wife (Christina) manages?
• How close are you to being the happiest you've ever been?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Jacob is a Dingbat—MR. Dingbat to you—a designer and art director who runs a tiny graphic design studio in Austin, TX, also called Dingbat. His studio specializes in brand identity, packaging, illustration, and typography. Once upon a time, he worked at IBM and then Helms Workshop, and he's partnered with selected clients like Duolingo, Cratejoy, Emojibator, Kammok, and Fifty-Nine Parks. Did I mention he designs typefaces, too? Yeah, you can find them at Dingbat.xyz! Tune in for a talk about collaborating with other designers, tips for maintaining readability, and which typeface designer he would wipe from history. See more of Jake's work on Instagram and Dribbble, and browse his typefaces on Gumroad. Who knows, if you get into his inner circle, he might serve you a cortado from his coffee cart, Lil Dingus.

Questions for this interview.

• Do you typically collaborate with people you already have a relationship with?
• Do you actively look for opportunities to collaborate, or do you prefer to take them on whenever they fall into place on their own?
• What would you say to someone afraid to ask another designer to collaborate on a project?
• What did you realize you took for granted after leaving IBM?
• Since going independent, what do you miss about working with a team of people?
• Did you move to Austin for IBM, or were you already living in Austin when you started working there?
• What was your experience working at Helms Workshop like?
• Do you think an internship is worth the time and effort?
• What were your thoughts when you transitioned from using your name to using the word Dingbat?
• Are you happy you made that change?
• Were there any other names you seriously considered before settling on Dingbat?
• What's something you're into that isn't directly related to design?
• Has design ever ruined your passion for anything?
• If you had to teach a random person one thing about typography, what would you teach them?
• Which is worse? Poorly justified text or bad typographic hierarchy?
• Which is worse? A poor ragged edge or (slightly) misaligned text frames?
• Can you give us some tips for readability when working with body text?
• Are there any typographic treatments that get under your skin or you won't put up with?
• How often do your type designs start from a specific source of inspiration vs. a custom letterform you designed or a sketch?
• Was the name of your typeface, Marston, inspired by Red Dead Redemption?
• Which part of the type design process is the most complicated?
• If you had to choose Helvetica, Futura, Clarendon, or Garamond, which typeface would you erase from existence?
• If you had to choose Matthew Carter, Jonathan Hoefler, Adrian Frutiger, or Erik Spiekermann, who would you erase from history?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Kilian is a Sacramento-based illustrator, designer, educator, and pixel wizard behind Great Raven Design Co. Take one look at his neck—you'll understand how much The Lords of the Rings means to him. I'm jealous of his Middle-earth-themed wedding a few years ago, but I think I could take him in a lightsaber duel. Kilian cut his teeth designing labels, t-shirts, and logos for the craft beer industry, and his artwork is ferocious and packed with intricate linework. If you have the coin, he'll draw mythical creatures, skeletons, and snakes until his eyes dry out. In addition to teaching Photoshop classes at Sacramento City College, he's a founding member of Tap in Creative Club and part of the "Sac Boys." Tune in for a talk about getting the most from a design conference, growing up in a family with two best-selling authors and a famous actor, and the turning point for his independent studio. Follow Kilian on Instagram @greatravendesignco and check out even more of his work on his website, greatravendesign.co. Live By The Lance.

Questions for this interview.

• What went smoothly and what didn't go smoothly for the Fox of the Foothills mural you painted?
• Can you share your best tips for someone going to their first design conference this year?
• Have you set specific goals for the Crop Conference this year?
• How do you like to break the ice with people at a conference?
• What was difficult between 2018 and 2022? What challenges did you face?
• Did you struggle with undercharging for your work or have difficulty turning down projects with low budgets?
• What was your support system like while (you were) trying to get your foot in the door?
• Who won the lightsaber battle between you and Raylakin at Hunter and Erica's wedding?
• What convinced you to pursue illustration and design instead of a career in climbing?
• Who's a more impressive climber? Chris Sharma or Alex Honnold?
• Can you talk about the Tap in Creative Club and tell us how you got involved?
• What was it like growing up in your family?
• Has your mom's journey and perseverance impacted you and your career?
• Do you and your sister push each other creatively?
• (Do you know) what happens if you say "die a thousand deaths" when casting Scattercips?
• Was partnering with Burning Barrel Brewing Company a pivotal moment in your career?
• Is your hard work finally paying off?
• Do you still tie your self-worth to the success of your business?
• Do you find teaching at Sacramento City College rewarding?
• Who do you want to hear on the podcast?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Kirk is an illustrator, animator, and art director, and he runs a small independent studio called BoneHaus with his skeletal sidekick, Skully. Unlike most of us, he didn't go to art/design school, but that's a good thing because he probably wouldn't be doing what he does today if he had. Why? Kirk isn't good at drawing—a weakness he's turned into a superpower. He's an expert with shapes and great at breaking things down to their most basic forms to build them back up again through relatable details. His illustration style has attracted clients like Apple, Google, Adobe, Facebook, Amazon, Rocket League, Disney, and MANY more. But his portfolio is also filled with kickass characters like Sub Zero, Doug Funnie, Gerald Johanssen, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Reptar. On top of great work, Kirk also has live streams on YouTube and is among the top 1% of teachers on Skillshare. Tune in for a talk about being an independent illustrator for over 10 years, collaborating with friends, and being six months away from (almost) hitting rock bottom. You can see more of Kirk's artwork on his website, bone.haus, Instagram @bonehaus, Dribbble, YouTube, and Behance. You can also level up by taking his courses on Skillshare.  

Questions for this interview.

• You converted a barn into a studio. What did it take to retrofit that space, and what do you use it for?
• How long did it take to transform, and how much money did you invest into making the space usable?
• Can you describe your daily workstation to us? Besides a Wacom Cintiq, what else do you have in your build?
• Sometimes, people let hardware and software keep them from reaching the next level. What are your thoughts, and what would you say to someone feeling that way?
• You've been working independently for over 10 years. But do you (even) know what you're doing yet?
• What scares you about the creative industry?
• What did Meg Lewis's self-discovery workbook help you understand about yourself?
• You told Meg Lewis your specialty is how your brain works. What did you mean by that?
• You didn't go to art school. Did that turn out to be the best thing that could have happened when you consider your approach to illustration?
• In your eyes, what makes your illustration style and character designs relatable?
• Simplifying a complex subject into abstract forms is a big part of your process. Is that a technique you learned over time, or have you been doing it for as long as you can remember?
• What does collaboration look like in your life?
• It's different for everyone, but who should people collaborate with?
• Can you tell us about your Adobe Live show, Collabie?
• Was setting up a livestream a steep learning curve for you?
• Why does the way you share your work matter?
• How do you decide what to share on your website vs. Instagram and other platforms like Behance and Dribbble?
• How long do you typically wait before resharing an image or reel on Instagram?
• Can you give us an example of a commercial post from BoneHaus vs. an intimate post from BoneHaus?
• You made fan art for Rocket League to get their attention, but they didn't hire you. Or did they?
• How did you find out how much their budget was? Did they give it to you flat-out, or did you have to dig around for it?
• Is there an amount of money you consider too low for a project and say no because it doesn't feel worth the time it'll take to create the artwork?
• Where are you when it comes to finding work? Are you working with the most clients you ever have, constantly grinding to find new projects, or somewhere in the middle?
• Can you share a weakness you've turned into a strength?
• How can someone who's waited tables for 7 years turn that experience into something that can help their creative career?
• Why did you return to school, attend the University of Hartford, and earn your Masters in illustration? Was it worth it?
• What's your favorite 90s or millennial-era cartoon?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Lisa is a Cleveland-based creative consultant specializing in lettering, murals, illustration, and graphic design. She's created over 125 murals in 9 US states AND 1 in France. She's made art for clients like Amazon, Meta, PepsiCo, Mercedes-Benz, Harley-Davidson, Aveda, StubHub, and many more. Lisa's obsessed with Lana Del Rey and tiki bars and has a creative crush on Gemma O'Brien. Once, she said, "If you throw a stone, you get a mural." I don't think she meant to say THAT, but you get the point—she loves making murals. Lol. Also, Lisa has been called the LeBron James of lettering, and in 2024, she was voted Best Artist in Cleveland. Tune in for a talk about lettering some of her favorite song lyrics, taking inspiration from William Morris and Jason Carne's Lettering Library and her approach to pricing murals. Lisa's easy to find on Instagram @lisa_quine, lisaquine.com, and other places like LinkedIn, Behance, and Dribbble.

Questions for this interview.

• What do you think is the most important thing you learned as a student?
• What do you remember about the Panic! At The Disco CD booklet, and why was it special?
• Lana Del Rey inspires you a lot. Why is it important to you to have a muse who isn't a visual artist?
• What comes to mind when I mention airline barf bags and puke puns?
• Who made more of an impact on you, Paula Scher, Gemma O'Brien, or William Morris?
• Can you share some thoughts about your Rilo Kiley hand-lettered book?
• Do you remember which book you chose as the canvas?
• Was that project your Instagram breakout moment? Is that when your follower count started to take off?
• Which project led to more social media followers? The Rilo Kiley lyrics you hand-lettered or your Dream Big mural?
• You hand-lettered on leaves for Inktober. How much experimentation went into finding the right leaves and choosing the right tools to draw with?
• How often did you destroy one by stabbing through it or need to start over for a different reason?
• How did your mural for GBX Group change the career path you were on?
• Did you charge them 10K for that mural?
• You completed 30 murals in a single year before. How much money did you make from those murals that year?
• About increasing your prices. Did those increases align with milestones or reaching goals throughout your career? Or did they happen more organically?
• Can you share those rates with us?
• How much would you charge for the same mural today?
• How do you typically communicate the visual differences between the three options you offer your clients?
• Have any of your murals been covered up or painted over?
• Is the Cleveland Guardians you painted the largest surface area you've covered in a single mural?
• Is it true that before you were married, you used a dating game to fuel your hand-lettering hobby, and you said yes to some of those dates just because it gave you a reason to hand-letter song lyrics inspired by how those dates went?
• Can you explain what Jason Carne's Lettering Library is?
• How have you specifically used those photos to inspire your work?
• You've become more patient after having children. Can you think of ways that patience makes you a better artist today compared to the time before you had children?
• Since going independent, where have you seen the most growth? Has it been personal growth, technical growth as a lettering artist and muralist, or growth as a business owner?
• You've completed over 125 murals and plenty of design and lettering projects, and last year, you were voted Best Artist in Cleveland. How does all of that make you feel?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Dan (aka Destiny Child, I meant Destiny Kid) is an artist, writer, illustrator, and designer specializing in hand lettering. His Instagram account @dandrawnwords is his creative sandbox, and he's created thousands of lettering compositions over the past decade. Phrases like: "Your Failures Fail to Define You" and "Tomorrow You'll be Glad You Did It Today." Those are shorter messages, but he's also created compositions with a hundred or more words, too—because why not when you love torturing yourself with FromSoftware boss fights? Like the rest of us, Dan is "working" on his professional portfolio (Destiny Kid Labs), and he's also the Art & Design Lead behind a moto lifestyle brand called Go Fast Don't Die. Did I mention he didn't attend design school? Tune in for a talk about creating cohesive compositions, closing the door on his chemical engineering career path, and varying the priority of words in his lettering. Follow Dan on Instagram @dandrawnwords, check out Go Fast Don't Die, and keep your eyes peeled for updates to Destiny Kid Labs.

Questions for this interview.

• Why do you create layouts with 20 or 30 or more words? What's appealing about those pieces?
• What are the challenges of lettering five words vs. lettering thirty words?
• Can you talk about ways you keep all those words organized and readable?
• What does a piece of lettering artwork need to look and feel like a cohesive composition?
• Are those reasons also why our brains can digest a (visually) complicated design and make sense of it?
• How do you start a composition? Do you loosely sketch the entire phrase to figure out word placement first?
• During the sketch, do you experiment with weight and stroke contrast? Or does that happen after you've locked in the placement for each word?
• Do you change brushes or drawing tools when transitioning between sketching and refinement?
• (Within a single design) do you ever swap brushes when bouncing between different letter styles?
• Have you ever felt like an imposter because you didn't attend design school?
• What do you tell yourself when you feel like an imposter?
• When did you decide to close the door on the chemical engineering career path? How did you come to that decision?
• How have you leveraged your engineering experience throughout your creative career?
• Do you feel a push-pull between scientific objective truth and the subjectivity of the art world?
• Unlike the engineering field, creativity doesn't have mathematically proven formulas. However, if there were basic creative equations to live by, what would they be?
• Tell us about your first design job at the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia. How did your boss, Lucy, make an impact on you?
• Back to lettering. How do you decide which words to prioritize, and how do you like to emphasize them?
• Where—or what—are some of your favorite sources of inspiration to pull from?
• How do you balance choosing messages that resonate with you vs. messages that will resonate with others?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Erikas is a designer and illustrator who specializes in making playful geometric illustrations. He's also a boneheaded bird brain, and he knows it. Driven by his love for birds, he demands respect for pigeons, grackles, and sparrows, and he especially loves the Red-bellied woodpecker and the Scissor-tailed flycatcher. Originally from New York, Erikas has called Austin his home for the last decade and has created artwork for Austin FC, Half-Price Books, Oregon State Parks, Star Wars, HP, and many more. He's also been on the big stage and given presentations at Adobe Max and Creative Jam, and he will be a workshop leader at Design Ranch 2025. Erikas even has a course on Domestika—check it out here! 

Tune in for a talk about Dribbble shooting themselves in the foot, his fascination with birds, and why creating posters for Austin FC was so significant to him. Follow Erikas on Instagram @erik_as_erik, and check out fantastic artwork in his online shop.

Questions for this interview.

• How do you feel about Dribbble's most recent Terms of Service update?
• Have you ever connected with a client on Dribbble and completed the entire project on their platform?
• Is being a Dribbble Pro member worth it?
• When did your fascination with birds start?
• Do you know what a Chicken-cat is?
• Which bird is most likely to be wrongfully accused of a crime?
• Why is Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba one of your favorite books? What can you tell us about it?
• How did Matt Kaufenberg inspire you?
• Can you briefly summarize what you cover in your Domestika course?
• How much of the video production were you responsible for?
• Can you share some limitations within your artwork and how they help define your style?
• How do limitations tie into your Design Ranch workshop?
• You gave a presentation at St. Edwards University. What message were you trying to get across to those students?
• How did it feel to be invited to present at Adobe Max—one of the biggest design conferences in the world?
• You created a set of posters for Austin FC. Why was that opportunity so significant to you?
• Jolby hired you for an Oregon Parks & Recreation Department project. When did Jolby bring you into the mix?
• How confident are you that another designer can pick up where you left off and be successful with the style guide you created?
• You've painted on canvas, rocks, paint swatches, and wood. Do you have any ideas for what might be next?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Andrew is an Independent Designer in Colorado Springs who runs a studio called Impossibly Awesome Design Co. He specializes in logo and brand identity design, packaging, and illustration. Many of you know him from attending Crop Conference, and if you've been to The Springs within the past few years and had a beer at Bristol Brewing, you probably came across his work.

I met Drew on October 15, 2022. Trust me, I found the calendar invite for our very first coffee hangout shortly after I moved to Colorado, and he's a big reason I was able to get involved in the local design community so quickly. Drew was also on my original shortlist of potential guests for this podcast, so interviewing him has been a long time coming. If you hang out with him long enough, you'll start to learn things about competitive volleyball, bourbon, the Rubik's Cube, and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. One of the most fascinating things about Drew's creative journey is that he's completely self-taught. He didn't attend school for design, but he does hold degrees in marketing and finance. Finance? Yeah, finance.

Tune in for a talk about the pros and cons of being a self-taught graphic designer, curating his (own) design curriculum, cherry-picking the best ideas from the people he admires, and tips for getting started on a project when starting doesn't feel impossibly awesome. Follow Drew on Instagram @impossiblyawesomedesign, and check out his portfolio website: impossiblyawesome.design.

Questions for this interview.

• Why was the Bristol Brewing project the one that helped you feel like a true professional?
• You asked Nick Longo for help on that project. What kind of help were you looking for, and what advice did Nick give you?
• What kind of impact has Colin Christie made on your design career?
• What gaps or challenges have you encountered as a self-taught designer that you think could have been addressed in design school?
• How has being self-taught helped you as a designer? In other words, what are the advantages of being self-taught?
• Were there times when you seriously considered enrolling in a formal design program? What ultimately kept you on the self-taught track?
• How do you like to invest in yourself, and what are some examples of things you've spent money on to help you level up?
• Have you ever purchased a design course or a resource and felt like you didn't get your money's worth?
• Did you do anything differently this year in preparation for the Crop Conference or during the event compared to previous years?
• Do you remember which presentation at Crop was your favorite?
• Do you find it challenging to stay creative and consistently generate great ideas?
• Do you think working in-house or at an agency full-time would make it easier to stay creatively locked in, or do you think it would be even more challenging?
• When did it finally sink in for you that you can say no to the projects you're not super excited about?
• Do you have any tips for getting started on a project when you're feeling overwhelmed?
• Why is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield worth reading, and how can it help us break through creative barriers?
• Since getting married recently, is there a possibility that combining your incomes could expedite your decision to leave your day job and focus on Impossibly Awesome Design Co. full-time?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Marisa is a Chicana woman and the Creative Director behind If Only Creative, a Bay Area creative studio she founded in 2022. Her studio offers brand identity and packaging design, social media strategy and management, content creation, and trend-setting commercial photography. After serving ice cream, burgers, and coffee, and changing her major three times in college, Marisa attended the University of Huddersfield—which she claims is an amazing place, but I don't believe her—and earned a degree in Marketing. After living in England for seven years, holding roles at creative agencies and breweries, and spending thousands of hours listening to Miley Cyrus, she moved back to sunny California to focus on working with women- and POC-owned businesses that are impact-driven. Along the way, Marisa turned her frustrations surrounding the way people celebrate Cinco de Mayo into a special dinner series highlighting and honoring the ingredients and flavors found in Puebla, Mexico, called El Otro Lado.

Tune in for a talk about her connection to the food and beverage industry, the effects of defining your core values, and how forming an advisory board of creative people she trusts has helped her grow her business. Follow Marisa on Instagram @ifonlycreative, and check out the delicious-looking work on her website: ifonly-creative.com.

Questions for this interview.

• First things first. Have you met Miley Cyrus yet?
• What was your childhood like, and what can you tell us about how you grew up?
• Why did you pivot away from saying "Latina-owned" and start saying "Chicana-owned," and can you talk about the nuances of that decision?
• IF you consider your career, are you finally doing what your heart tells you you should be doing?
• Why does the food & beverage industry have such a firm grip on you, and why does your passion thrive in that industry?
• How did defining your core values provide clarity and direction for your creative work and your business goals?
• How do you check yourself to ensure that your approach to a client project is grounded in authenticity for both you and your client?
• How can you quickly tell if a client is more interested in the community or the competition?
• What does the phrase "impact-driven" mean to you, and can you give us an example of an impact-driven client you've worked with and how they make an impact in the world?
• Could you explain what El Otro Lado is and provide a better understanding of what frustrated you when you came up with the concept?
• What is your ultimate goal for the event, and what do you hope people who attend one of the dinners will take away from the experience?
• What are you looking for, and what are some essential qualities a designer needs to showcase when you're searching for someone to partner with on a project?
• Why did you create an advisory board, and how does it help you grow as a business owner?
• How did you discover you were charging at least four times less than the amount you should have been charging for your services?
• What can you do differently that you believe would make you a better leader?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Nicholas—Nick—is a Graphic Designer and founder of Miner Design Co., located near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He specializes in identity design, illustration, and packaging design, and works with restaurants, food and beverage companies, hospitality, and retail clients. Embracing discomfort has been a recurring theme throughout Nick's life, and much of his work ethic stems from his experiences living with his grandfather. He's a firm believer in "People Over Projects," and building relationships with his clients is more important than the dollar amount tied to each project. But, don't get it twisted, Nick's just like us. When he was younger, he wanted to build things with K'NEX for a living. He has a bookshelf full of design books that he doesn't reference often enough, he sent a job to print with a watermarked Shutterstock image in the layout, and he worries about where his next client will come from.

Tune in for a talk about running his business, screwing up his taxes, and good old fashioned printed self-promotion pieces. Follow Nick on Instagram @minderdesignco, connect with him on LinkedIn, and see award-winning work on his website: minerdesignco.com.

Questions for this interview.

• What does the phrase "People Over Projects" mean to you?
• Have you ever had a client demand a refund during a project?
• What conversation do you have with yourself, and how do you reframe rejection when a pitch or one of your proposals gets turned down or maybe even ignored?
• Would you recommend a troublesome client to a close design friend? How would you handle that situation? Is it something you've run into before?
• Your grandfather once said, "There may be men out there stronger or smarter than me, but nobody is going to outwork me." How do these words shape you and Miner Design Co.?
• Do you struggle to find balance between honoring that work ethic and knowing when to step back?
• Can you tell us the story of how your grandmother helped you redefine how you were marketing yourself and how she helped you get a job after graduation from LSU?
• You had a rough and uncomfortable childhood, and you moved seven times in high school. How did that volatility shape your ability to adapt and persevere in your career today?
• Surprisingly, you left your full-time agency job when your daughter was born. Why did you make that decision, and how did you and Katie prepare financially and emotionally for that transition?
• Have you ever made a mistake with your taxes?
• What was your biggest "aha" moment in your first year after going all in on Miner Design Co.?
• What part of the business still intimidates you in 2025?
• You recently posted a video on Instagram about your latest self-promotion piece. Can you talk about how it works, who you're sending it to, its versatility, and the cost of producing each one?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Daniel is a dad, designer, and speaker who specializes in letterpress design and printing. After 14 years, he lost his career in 2020, so his family relocated back to the 5th-generation farmland he grew up on in rural Indiana. There, his growing interest in typography turned into a small letterpress studio called Hoosier Type Company. Daniel does everything. He sources antique wood type, carves new letterforms when he can't find what he needs, and creates prints of his designs, which he eventually sells on Etsy—from the same garage where his grandfather used to paint. Also, all of his designs are handcrafted in small batches and proudly made in the Midwest.

Tune in for a talk about wood fonts and their measurements, locking up a design on his flatbed letterpress, and how working with antique materials comes with compromise. Follow Daniel on Instagram @hoosiertype.co, buy one of his prints on Etsy, or book him for a type talk or workshop on his website.

Ink, Paper, Sweat, & Hope.

Questions for this interview.

• Does speaking to an audience about your career and what you do become a bigger part of your journey?
• You're introducing a new wood font to your collection. Can you explain what you're doing to those blocks and why you're treating them before you print some proofs?
• Can you help us understand what terms like '8-line', '10-line', or '15-line' mean?
• What does the term "scheme" mean in the context of wood type?
• Why would you want multiple blocks of certain letters in a wood font?
• Can you explain why the "type high" measurement is essential and the exact measurement you're looking for?
• Can you tell us what else is inside a chase besides the wood type?
• How do you make sure the placement of woodblocks is level, straight, and aligned?
• How do you explore ideas with digital fonts before setting wood type?
• When you create digitally, and the final output will not be letterpressed, what specific features or characters do you look for in a font or font family?
• Do you think good typographic taste is something that can be taught and learned?
• What are some of the compromises you make with letterpress, and how do they influence your designs?
• Why should people care about wood type? How can the everyday average designer benefit from learning about letterpress design and printing?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Fiorella—or Fio—is a designer, illustrator, and content creator from Lima, Peru, living in Toronto, Ontario. She's a lifelong basketball player, so it's no surprise she's worked with organizations and sports brands like the WNBA, NBA, NFL, PWHL, and Asics. Not only was Fio named MVP of her high school basketball team TWICE, but she also played guard for the University of Toronto, and her mother played for Peru's Women's National Team. So, yeah, basketball (literally) flows through her veins. Fiorella has always been passionate about blending the intersections of design and sports, and she's on a mission to find meaningful work that allows her to share that passion with women around the world.

Tune in for a talk about designing Canada's first outdoor WNBA court, why she left the world of architecture, and putting yourself out there on social media. Follow Fio on Instagram @fiorelladoodles, connect with her on LinkedIn, and see more of her work on her website, fiorellagranda.myportfolio.com.

Questions for this interview.

• When people ask you about your visual style, how do you like to describe it?
• Before designing Canada's first outdoor WNBA court, what was going through your mind, and what were you struggling with?
• How did you feel when you learned the WNBA was going to play its first game on Canadian soil in 2023?
• Transitioning from architecture, what was missing from your life at that time, and was there a catalyst that convinced you to pursue graphic design and illustration full-time?
• How does your online presence benefit from appearing alongside your artwork?
• What's your advice for someone who wants to build their brand or business like you, but they're holding themselves back because they're intimidated by the idea of being face-forward on their social channels?
• Have you ever felt like what you're doing on Instagram and TikTok is cringeworthy?
• Is there a silver lining when you pitch ideas to big brands, even when you don't hear back from them?
• How do you feel when you notice someone on Instagram or TikTok is doing the same thing you're doing, and their videos are taking off, but yours aren't?
• You adopted a Why Not Me mindset. How and when has that way of thinking helped you in your career?
• How have people you look up to in the creative community helped you get to where you are today?
• If you consider your professional experience, your cultural background, and your strengths and weaknesses, what do you believe gives you an edge?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Josh is an art director, illustrator, and author in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He's a sucker for LEGO minifigures and thought he'd never get a chance to illustrate a Little Golden Book—until he worked on four of them for LEGO! Josh has also worked with Scholastic, Highlights for Children, Discovery Education, Orion Telescopes and Binoculars, and other EdTech companies. He's spoken on stages like Creative South and ICON: The Illustration Conference and knows a thing or two about classic cartoons like Loony Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye. One of the most fascinating parts of his story is the parallels with his great-great-grandfather, Von G. It turns out that writing and illustrating kids' books is (literally) part of his DNA.

Tune in for a talk about exploring his ancestry, being strategic with personal projects, and the difficulty of bringing LEGO minifigures to life in a kids' book. Follow Josh on Instagram @joshjlewis and LinkedIn, and see more of his work on his website joshjlewis.com and Dribbble.

Questions for this interview.

• How do you approach giving constructive feedback to someone early in their career?
• Which do you weigh more heavily, concept and process, or execution and craft?
• Have you ever received a review that changed your feelings about your work?
• Would you be an author and illustrator of kids' books if you had never had children?
• How and when did you learn so much about classic cartoons?
• How did you discover Oscar Hunt Von Gottschalck is your great-great-grandfather? Was that information passed down to you by your mother, or did you find it yourself?
• Is Von G the oldest ancestor you've uncovered in your family tree?
• How did it make you feel to learn about your great-great-grandfather?
• Can you explain the idea behind Bite-Sized Books?
• How does treating a personal project like a real project help you, and how can someone do that for themselves?
• Which do you want to learn how to be the most? A pirate, a knight, a unicorn, or a ghost?
• Do you remember how you felt when asked to illustrate your first Little Golden Book?
• How difficult was bringing LEGO plastic minifigs to life in those books? Especially their expressions.
• What kind of feedback have you gotten about your book, Ray's Big Day?
• What makes a good picture book? What should it have, and what does it need to do?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Rebecca (she/her) is a queer woman of color born in Trinidad and Tobago. She's the Creative Director of Planthouse Studio, a queer-owned design studio built on the foundations of collaboration, inclusivity, and growth, dedicated to growing good things with good people. Bex is also the co-founder of Queer Design Club, the hub for LGBTQ+ creativity, and until recently, the Design Director at Ghost Note Agency. Some of my favorite works in her portfolio are for Hip Hop Caucus and the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard University, and she's also worked with the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum, Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, Grammarly, and many more. Bex loves dim sum, Coca-Cola, Scrabble (like, on a competitive level), lives by the phrase "Be Good," and Maurice Cherry, Antionette Carroll, Debbie Millman, and Vanessa Newman inspire her.

Tune in for a talk about building a community for creative people who identify as LGBTQ+, growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, and how we can all be better allies. Follow Bex on Instagram @beccabrooker, find more of her work on her website rebeccabrooker.com, and learn more about Queer Design Club and the Queer Design Count at queerdesign.club.

Be Good.

Questions for this interview.

• How can I, or anyone, make space for people to present themselves the way they perceive themselves?
• Can you briefly introduce us to Queer Design Club and explain what The Queer Design Count is?
• What message does the world need to hear right now?
• Can you share how growing up in Trinidad impacted your ability to discover your identity freely?
• Is it true that when you were 16, your parents sent you to speak with a nun after you came out to them?
• Queer Design Club has 1800+ members in its talent directory and over 5000 total members across 72 countries. How do these numbers make you feel?
• Can I get your thoughts on his quote from the 2019 Queer Design Count? "As a Black LGBTQ+ designer, I find the industry to be more welcoming to LGBTQ+ individuals than to Black designers."
• Can I get your thoughts on his quote from the 2019 Queer Design Count? "It's hard for me to tell if I have to fight harder because I'm a lesbian or if it's just because I'm female on a male-dominated team."
• What steps can cis-gendered, straight people take to view identity more fluidly?
• How do you apply the phrase "Be good" in your life?
• Can you suggest something we can work on to support people in design who identify as LGBTQ+?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com

Being open and transparent about my process is part of my DNA, so I want to bring you behind the mic and share some of the decisions that shape the tone and personality of this podcast. Small things about the show have changed throughout the first 25 episodes, but my intentions and the purpose of these interviews have stayed the same. It's still about inspiring people, helping them make fewer mistakes, and giving back to the creative community. Also, it's STILL a lot of work, lol, but it's also still a fulfilling and rewarding passion project to work on. Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening.

Tune in for a talk about my podcasting guidelines, how I prepare for an interview, and a glimpse into the recording and editing process. Here's to the next 25!

Cheers, y'all. 

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Adam is the Principal and Creative Director of Vicarel Studios, an artful branding and graphic design studio in Denver, Colorado. He loves avocados, even though he was willing to cut them (and feta) out of his diet early on in his career to be more frugal. RESPECT. Adam has worked with notable clients like NBC, lululemon, New Belgium Brewing, SYFY, and Native Roots Cannabis Co., and he believes "If you're thinking about doing a thing, you probably should have already done it." We hung out in Austin earlier this year, had some drinks, I told him about the biological father I can't find, and then he snuck off to the restroom to take a sip of whiskey from his flask—frugal. I'm kidding, the flask part didn't happen, but it's 100% believable. One of my favorite questions I asked him in this interview was about how our work expands to fill the available time we allot it.

Tune in for a talk about four near-death experiences in four years, why he rebranded and repositioned his studio in 2020, and the most significant amount of money he billed for a single project. Follow Adam on Instagram @adamvicarel, connect with him on LinkedIn, and subscribe to his almost weekly newsletter at vicarelstudios.com/newsletter. Yeah, dawgie!

Questions for this interview.

• Can you tell us why someone held you up at gunpoint and how you felt in that moment?
• You were involved in a car wreck. How would you rate the safety of your 2019 Kia?
• Could you explain Parkinson's Law and share your thoughts on it?
• There was a time you described your work as an artful implementation of strategic design. Why did you decide that wasn't working, and how have you refined the way you talk about your studio since then?
• Can you share why you felt the need to rebrand in the first place and what your objectives were in trying to reposition yourself?
• Which templates or practices would you implement sooner if you could go back in time?
• If you think back on your life and your career, what are some of the reasons you were resistant to taking action?
• What's the budget or dollar range you hope a majority of the projects you accept fall within?
• How fearful have you been that you'll present finished ideas to a client and they respond in a way that makes you believe they feel like they're not getting their money's worth?
• Will you share the most money you've made on a single project?
• What does the phrase "chasing the fog" mean to you?
• Why do you view perfectionism as a form of procrastination and ultimately an excuse that many creatives use?
• Can you think of a time when giving first (without expectations) came back to you in an unexpected way?
• Can you tell the story of how you fucked up on The Real Housewives of Dallas, and talk about what you wanted to do on the show, but you didn't do?

---

If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Brooks is a SoCal-born and Colorado-raised Independent Designer and Illustrator based in Denver. For the past 10(ish) years, he's been the driving force behind Nowhere Land, an outdoor and adventure-inspired apparel brand and design shop. You can recognize his work by its bold colors and stylized landscapes that transform into the shapes of animals.

I met Brooks this year (2025) at Crop Conference in Austin, TX, while we were reviewing student portfolios, and we almost got into a fender bender on our way to Via 313 for lunch. Luckily, the other driver recognized Brooks as the Skatepark Gremlin, and everyone calmed the hell down. Lol, I made that part up. We didn't talk about this, but I love how the compositions of his designs remind me of tattoos. However, something we DID discuss was what it was like for him to live and work out of his RV full-time.  

Tune in for a talk about reaching milestones by setting smaller goals, how he shifts his perspective when he realizes he's complaining about working for himself, and some insight into his process for making color palettes. Follow Brooks on Instagram @nowherelandsupply and consider sketching in the color pink, because Brooks does, and because it works.

Questions for this interview.

• You're great at many things. What do you think you don't do so well?
• What was it like working for yourself full-time out of an RV?
• I'm pretty sure Starlink wasn't around in 2016, so how did you access the internet when you needed it?
• You thought you would work for The Duck Company forever. Why did you think that, and why didn't you stay there forever?
• You said you would rather struggle working for yourself than for somebody else. Five years later, do you still feel the same way in 2025?
• Can you explain what the phrase "short steps, long vision" means to you?
• When you find yourself complaining about working independently, what perspective or mindset helps you step back and appreciate the freedom that working for yourself offers?
• Baseball was your life until 19 or 20—how did the shift away from pursuing pro baseball open the door to art and design for you?
• What kind of inspiration and techniques have you pulled from different designers and illustrators?
• Do you still use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator for your illustrations? If so, how do you split the work between those two applications for a typical project?
• How often do you lose work because of Photoshop or Illustrator crashing? Is it easy for you to remember to save frequently, or do you still get caught off guard?
• How much direction from a client do you need to feel comfortable getting started, and how do you push back when a client says "do whatever you want"?
• Can you walk us through where you like to sample colors from, or where you look for inspiration?
• How have the compositions of your illustrations improved over the years?
• The 10th anniversary of Nowhere Land is in 2026. What does that mean for you, and how does it make you feel?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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James is an author, type designer, and the founder of OHno Type Company, a digital type foundry based in San Jose, California. You might license some of his wildly imaginative fonts, including Beastly, Ohno Fatface, Degular, Polymath, Regrets, Obviously, and Hobeaux. Before he got his start in the bowels of graphic design, James studied design at California College of the Arts. Then he learned how to cast typographic spells while attending the Hogwarts of type design, AKA Type Media at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague, Netherlands. James is also an educator and a podcaster—check out his podcast, Ohno Radio—and swears that Canson marker paper is holy in the world of sketching. If you geek out over naming, you'll be excited to learn that James almost named his foundry "The Spaghetti Factory" or "The American International Type Company." I don't know how to make those options make sense, but hey, man, back OFF, Life's a Thrill, and Fonts Are Chill.

Tune in for a talk about James's number one rule of letterspacing, his father's love for toasters, and the dominance of low-contrast sans-serif typefaces. Follow James on Instagram @ohnotypeco, purchase his fonts on his website ohnotype.co, or add them on Adobe Fonts, and read this blog post if you want to get started in type design. THEN, read his book, The Ohno Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Type Design, to level up even more.

Questions for this interview.

• Why do you design a specific set of characters before others, and how does that make you more efficient as a type designer?
• Can you explain the “Counterspace Equals Letterspace Technique,” also known as your “Rule #1 of Spacing?”
• Another technique is something you call “Three at a time.” Why three, and what do you mean by that?
• Which of these do you think is less important? Spacing or drawing good vectors?
• Why shouldn’t someone digitize their letterform sketches in Adobe Illustrator, and what makes applications like RoboFont and Glyphs so much better?
• Can you tell us what you learned from Jesse Ragan and his process for vectorizing a typeface called Showcard Stunt?
• Your father was an English teacher for 40 years. What did he say he should have been instead?
• Do you think you’re following your passion in the way your father didn’t follow his?
• What you do as a type designer is very specialized. Have you ever felt like you backed yourself into a corner or regretted not becoming a more well-rounded designer?
• Selling fonts on your website generates around 50% of Ohno's revenue, and Adobe Fonts accounts for another 40%. Is this still accurate? Can you explain how Adobe tracks sales and how that works?
• Why wouldn’t a type foundry choose to distribute with Adobe Fonts?
• How do you decide which ideas to pursue and actually turn into digital fonts?
• You recently released a book called The Ohno Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Type Design. Who’s it for? What’s inside it? What are we gonna learn by reading it?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Maya is an author and multi-hyphenate creative leader based in the San Fransico Bay Area, specializing in art direction, brand design, and illustration. Today, she's a Brand Design Lead at Yahoo, but she also worked at Lyft, Asana, and Square. WAY before working at any of those places, she spent the weekends at her grandmother's playing Sonic the Hedgehog and drawing Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon. She's also obsessed with 80s, 90s, and early 2000s pop culture, and has an affinity for hard edges, shapes, color blocks, and vibrancy. Recently, and in response to the murder of George Floyd, Maya spent three years writing and illustrating her book called The Anti-Racist Vocab Guide: An Illustrated Introduction to Dismantling Anti-Blackness. An excellent resource to learn more about terms like assimilation, blackface, privilege, tokenism, and white supremacy.

Tune in for a talk about her career as an in-house designer in the tech industry, showcasing culture in your work, how writing grounds and influences her visual directions, and the salad bowl theory. Follow Maya on Instagram @mayaealey, find brand design on her website mayaealey.com, and buy her book, The Anti-Racist Vocab Guide: An Illustrated Introduction to Dismantling Anti-Blackness, online.

Questions for this interview.

• In general, how were you able to string together such a solid list of companies to work for? (And) Looking back, is there anything that you believe you did (really) well that helped you get those jobs?
• What would you say to a college student who’s hesitant to take an in-house job or a mid-career designer considering a transition from agency life? What’s waiting for them in the in-house world?
• If you had to start looking for a job tomorrow, what signs would you look for that tell you a company truly cares about creativity and design?
• You often start your process with words and emphasize writing over visuals. Why do you do that, and can you explain how that approach helps you shape your visual direction?
• What about the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s still speaks to you emotionally or visually?
• What advice would you give someone who wants to showcase culture in their work but doesn’t quite know how to incorporate it?
• Your mother emphasized the importance of your education and self-sufficiency. How have those ideas influenced your creative career over time?
• Can you give us some context behind why your book exists, what it’s a response to, and what you hope people take away from reading it?
• How did you balance clarity with depth, especially when simplifying terms that carry so much history and weight?
• Can you help us understand the difference between the salad bowl and melting pot theories?
• Suppose someone’s in the middle of an interview process and they’re concerned about a company's commitment to diversity. What can they do to figure out how important diversity is to the company they’re interviewing with? Or what would you do?
• What have the most inclusive environments done well to make you feel seen and supported?
• Are you still holding yourself back? Are you still on the journey to authenticity?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Olga is a Ukrainian-born and New Jersey-based muralist and lettering artist. Thanks to her godfather, she began painting at the age of six and has been an artist ever since. She has created artwork for notable clients, including Crayola, Snapchat, Tillamook, Coca-Cola, Trader Joe's, and others. Olga spent nearly a decade working in the magazine industry, and she reviewed a lot of resumes during that time. One time, someone's father called Olga to ask why she hadn't hired his daughter for a job opening. YIKES! After branching out on her own, and after hundreds of murals and lettering projects, she has a basement full of paint and way too many pens and pencils to know what to do with them. She's also a firm believer that Alphacolor makes the most buttery and saturated chalk you will ever find. Some of her book recommendations are "In Progress" by Jessica Hische, "The Lettering Manual" by House Industries, "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg, and "The Body" by Bill Bryson. Once upon a time, she was afraid of dogs and highways, but has replaced those fears with a love for bunnies, hiking, and typography.   

Tune in for a talk about fundraising to support those affected by the invasion of Ukraine, how to use toothpicks, tweezers, and paintbrushes to refine food lettering compositions, and what to do when a client tells you to create whatever you want instead of giving you any type of direction. Follow Olga on Instagram @olgamuzician, and check out more of her work on her website: olgamuzician.com. If you're interested in learning how to make art with food and objects, you should take her tactile lettering class on Skillshare!

Questions for this interview.

• Did you ever think lawn signs would help lead you to such a meaningful mural in your career?
• Regarding the invasion of Ukraine. How're you doing? How're you holding up overall? Can you share some of your feelings about what's happening over there?
• How did it feel to see your work take on that kind of public and emotional significance?
• Can you explain what tactile lettering is for anyone hearing that term for the first time?
• What's the most surprisingly cooperative food you've worked with, and which one made you want to quit halfway through?
• Can you walk us through how tools like tweezers, toothpicks, and a paintbrush help you refine food lettering compositions?
• How often do the foods you want to work with influence the words within a design? Or do you usually come up with the messaging first and then select the most appropriate foods to match those words?
• What went wrong when you tried to add the finishing coat to your hand-painted skateboard?
• You painted a challenging set of murals for HoneyStash. Could you elaborate on the challenges of that project and explain how the viewer's vantage point made it difficult to paint those murals?
• What questions do you think we should ask ourselves before agreeing to a project with a low budget? Or, in other words, how do you decide if it's worth it?
• Is your mural minimum still $3,500?
• How do you handle a client who doesn't have a clue what they actually want and just tells you to do whatever you want to do?
• What made you feel successful, or what would make you feel that way? Is it a particular income amount? Is it a specific type of work or a specific client? Is it something else?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Kory is the Creative Director and Founder of Park St Studio, a design studio based in Phoenix, Arizona. His wife, Kasey, is also his business partner, and she played a significant role in establishing the processes and practices that streamline the studio's operations. They have a great story of how they met, and together, they've worked with apparel brands, breweries, coffee shops, and the Phoenix Suns, among others. Their focus is on branding, packaging, merchandise, and custom illustrations, and Kory's come a long way since his childhood days of spray painting on particle board in his backyard. He's a fan of DKNG, David Walker, Benny Gold, I Am Sloth, and Wacom products, and he would love to have dinner with Ellen DeGeneres because he thinks she's hilarious. Here's his favorite quote: "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

Tune in for a talk about taking your design business to the next level with a CRM, learn precisely when he talks to his clients about how much money they should pay him, and he breaks down how he handles discouraging feedback without losing his confidence. Follow Kory on Instagram @korymiller and his studio @parkststudio. You'll find more of his work on his website: parkststudio.com. Party on!

Questions for this interview.

• Can you explain what Kasey does for the studio, talk about her expertise, and describe how her skills complement yours?
• Eventually, Kasey stepped away from her job to devote all of her energy to Park St Studio. What was that transition like for both of you? Was it stressful, exciting? How do you remember feeling?
• How do you interact with clients so they feel like you're a part of their team, rather than just a person they've hired to create something for them?
• How did you feel when you realized you weren't the only person who didn't have it all figured out?
• What is it about the way you approach those conversations, and why do you think clients feel comfortable with the thought of working with you?
• How quickly and at which point in the process do you start discussing money if the client doesn't bring it up first?
• What advice would you give to someone trying to determine the value of their work?
• Is there a process, a technique, or an approach you've picked up from another studio or agency that has helped you run your business more efficiently and better overall?
• So, when a client lets you know you've missed the mark, how do you process discouraging feedback without letting it shake your confidence?
• You painted a mural in the middle of an active construction site. What was that experience like, and what was your biggest takeaway from it?
• Can you explain how your use of Instagram has evolved, and also touch on how you've used the search feature, hashtags, and other accounts to help you find new people to work with?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Nathan is a seasoned Illustrator, Artist, and Designer living in Austin, TX, and surprisingly, we never crossed paths while I was living in Austin. But I bet we were in the same place at the same time and never even realized it. His artwork draws inspiration from urban culture, graffiti, street fashion, and sports. At the same time, his use of texture and exaggerated character features adds a gritty New York City vibe to his illustrations. Nathan's list of clients includes the NBA, NFL, New Balance, Under Armour, Nike, Timberland, and other well-known brands. Besides reminiscing about cartoons from the '80s and '90s or classic G.I. Joe packaging, he enjoys sitting down for a meal at Jeffrey's Grocery. He's also the only person I know who has participated in a 4-hour design competition on YouTube for a chance to win $10,000.

Tune in for a talk about why he was afraid to label himself as an illustrator early on in his career, why a part of him belongs to New York City, and how he almost derailed a design competition by asking to use the restroom, lol. Follow Nathan on Instagram @atpcdesign and check out more of his work on his website: alltheprettycolors.com. Also, "Don't Never Not Give Up".

Questions for this interview.

• Do you think most people have the perception that you're only an illustrator, and do you feel like the rest of your skills are underrecognized?
• Having lived in Dallas for a bit, is any part of you a Dallas Cowboys fan?
• You've created artwork for the Dallas Mavericks. Can you explain how you got your foot in the door with the Mavs and describe what you made for them?
• When illustrating basketball players, how do you decide which details to emphasize to make a player recognizable?
• How do you break down movements like a crossover or a reverse layup into something static yet still dynamic in your illustrations?
• What is it about New York City that captures your attention, and how does the city influence you?
• Could you explain the concept behind the Trio of Time series, and then tell us about the inspiration behind the idea for your timepiece?
• Did that project teach you anything new, and what challenges did you encounter when designing for such a small mechanical footprint?
• You were on a design competition show called Card Stars. What did you know and what didn't you know about the competition before it started?
• Was the competition the first time you've ever sat down to create within such a strict, uninterrupted block of time?
• How stressful was the experience of working within a strict time limit on your slow-ass laptop, with cameras rolling, people shuffling around, and the weight of trying to do your best work for a chance to win 10,000 dollars?
• Making your family proud was essential to you. Do you feel like you did that?
• Which collaboration felt the most like a true reflection of your own voice as an artist, and why?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Ram, aka Oversettext, is a graphic designer and content creator in Fresno, California. Shoutout: Lucena. He's probably best known for his 365 project; he designed one poster a day for an entire year. However, I discovered him through his "You know what font that is?" videos on Instagram.

He loves Futura Condensed Bold, like LOVES, and he's an advocate for our rights to use Comic Sans without career-ending judgment. Fun Fact: Way before Ram designed vinyl album packaging for Kings of Leon, he worked for a newspaper called The RAMpage. Shoutout: Dympna and FCC. I know, it sounds made up, but it's true. It's as true as his recommendation to start listening to Alan Watts's lectures, and his current beef with illustrations of characters with rubberhose arms and legs. It's even as true as the fact that Ram will be a presenter at Crop in 2026. Get your ticket at cropcons.com.

But, fr. What I respect most about Ram's work is the messaging behind it. The best way to experience it is to scroll through all 365 of the posters he designed from 2021 to 2022. You'll find an Air link to all 365 posters in his linktree. Some of my favorites are No. 204, 254, 263, 296, 302, 336, 349. UGH, there are too many to list. Seriously, go check them out.

Tune in for a talk about how much "fixing" other people's designs sucks, what he learned from his 365 project, and the weight of responsibility from over 250,000 social media followers. Follow Ram on Instagram @oversettext, watch his videos on YouTube, and buy a shirt on oversettext.com.

Fun Fact: Photoshop doesn't crash if you're pure of heart.

Questions for this interview.

• Is there something happening in the design industry right now that’s lingering on your mind or getting under your skin? Feel free to destroy a design hot take if you want.
• What do you want to say to the people who think you’re trash at playing Fortnite?
• How did your technical skills as a designer improve, and in contrast, how do you think you grew as a person by completing your 365 project?
• Why did you almost quit 11 days into the project?
• Why was your design for poster No.27 specifically the one that made you stop and think, “WOW, now THIS is ME?”
• Was it difficult for you to come up with a design for the final poster, number 365?
• Do you think they’re just lazy, or do you think they’re scared? Why do you think they’re holding themselves back?
• What’s a legitimate regret you’re living with or something you’d do differently because it haunts you to this day?
• What kind of gravity or responsibility do you feel as someone on the internet with over 250,000 followers? Does the thought of that many people consuming your content affect what you choose to say?
• Is it nitch or niche?
• Where do you rank the “I Can Has Cheezburger” meme on the list of greatest designs of all time?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Jen is a Nashville-based independent type designer and resource creator for creative business owners. You might be familiar with some of her best-selling typefaces, like Perfectly Nineties, Editor's Note, and Founder's Hand. However, long before her formal education in type design from Type@Cooper, Jen got her start on Creative Market. She created and uploaded font after font, even though she didn't know the rules and guidelines of type design. The best part is IT WORKED, because people bought and used her fonts, and that was enough to inspire her to keep doing it. Surprisingly, Jen only wanted to make enough money to pay her water bill and eat at Chipotle once a week. But now, brands like Sprouts, Victoria's Secret, Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sweetgreen are using her typefaces. She's come a long way from wanting to be an orthopedic surgeon in Colorado; her love for type design has gone from hobby to career, and she's LITERALLY sold a digital product every single day of this year.

Tune in for a talk about getting started on Creative Market, her struggles with tying her self-worth to her income, and finding the balance between making type that's accessible for everyone and becoming a world-class type foundry. Follow Jen on Instagram @jenwagnertype, and explore her typefaces on her website jenwagner.co. If you sign up for her email list, you'll get 20% off your first order!

Questions for this interview.

• Which of these options do you think affects readability more: a combination of font size, leading, and line length, OR a combination of color, weight, and stroke contrast?
• Jen, who the hell do you think you are, thinking you could get accepted by Type@Cooper with no formal education in graphic design or typography?
• So, if you compare your designs from a few months before and after attending Type@Cooper, how did they change, and how are they better?
• Can you think of something you learned from being a type designer that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise, that is also something you believe every regular-ass graphic designer should know?
• How bad were the first 25 fonts you made and uploaded to Creative Market?
• If you knew just a little more about type design when you were getting started, do you think you would have gotten in your own way and held yourself back from releasing your first 25 fonts?
• What changed with Creative Market around 2021, and why did you feel it was the right time to explore different options?
• How many of the last 30 days would you say someone licensed a typeface or purchased any kind of digital product from you?
• You've struggled with your self-worth. Have you gained enough experience and confidence to grow out of that way of thinking, or do you still find yourself struggling with that perception of yourself?
• How difficult is it to balance making type that’s accessible for independent designers with a desire to be known as a world-class type foundry?
• How often do you design a typeface and think, “This is it,” this one’s gonna be my new best-seller, only to realize, nope, no one’s interested in buying it?
• Can you identify your typefaces immediately when you encounter them in the world? Have you ever come across a typeface you thought was yours but turned out to be someone else’s?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Blake is a designer and art director in Minneapolis with over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of brand strategy and identity. He's the most heavily tattooed person I've interviewed, and he literally traveled across the world to Australia to get tattooed by one of his tattoo heroes—RESPECT. After growing up with computer games, doing kickflips, and helping his grandfather tap trees for maple syrup, he studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. After college, he found himself working in corporate packaging design, and a year later, he took a calculated risk by leaving his full-time job for a design internship at Sussner, a branding firm in Minneapolis.

Like us, Blake's been through burnout, low-paying gigs, and he's sacrificed more of himself along the way than he realized. Thankfully, he has a portfolio of strategic design work that helps offset those sacrifices. Blake's stepfather is a tattoo artist, so tattoos have always been a part of his life, and they are quite literally THE reason he pursued graphic design—more on that in the interview.

Tune in for a talk about Crop Conference, the benefits of using Framer vs. Squarespace to build your portfolio, takeaways from designing brand identities for private clubs and golf courses, and the story behind a logo he designed for a former mobster. Follow Blake on Instagram @blakespiegel and check out his Framer website spiegeldesign.co.

"Deep down, we're all just a bunch of bones. What really makes us different is what we do with them."

Questions for this interview.

• Have you ever been to a design conference?
• What're you hoping Crop Conference will be like, and what do you want to get out of the experience?
• Which National Park was the highlight of the 4,000-mile road trip a few years ago?
• During your junior year of high school, your dad said something that changed your career path. Can you tell us what your dad said that day, why you trusted his advice, and why you haven't regretted it since?
• Why do you look up to Sam Clark? Then, can you share the story of meeting him, and tell us what you made for him?
• You made the jump from Squarespace to Framer. Can you talk about the learning curve, why you made the switch, and the advantages of using Framer over Squarespace?
• What is visual rhyming? Can you explain what you mean by that?
• Looking back, how did you grow beyond low-paying gigs, and what advice would you give someone experiencing that right now?
• Can you give us an overview of your role at Sussner and talk about what you enjoyed most about working in the private club industry?\
• I read that the strategy and design for Thunderbird Country Club took 3 months. What did you do during those three months, and how did you balance honoring the club's past while creating its future?
• In general, what are some of your biggest takeaways from working at Sussner? Did you learn anything from Derek that you'll remember throughout the rest of your career?
• What do you wish you had learned in college that was missing, and what would you add to the program if you had that ability?
• You designed a logo for a former mobster, George "Cowboy" Martorano. What's the origin of that relationship? How did you get involved, and what can you tell us about George's story?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

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Dora is the Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director of Hybrid Design in San Francisco, and the Co-Founder of Super7. Over the past 25 years, her studio has worked with some of the most recognizable brands on the planet, including Nike, Apple, Google, YouTube, LEGO, Amazon, TED Conference, The North Face, and many more. Interesting, it all almost didn't happen because she originally chose to study film instead of design at The University of North Texas. Luckily, she met her husband Brian, was exposed to the world of graphic design, and switched her major. I'm glad she did, or else I wouldn't be holding a copy of her studio's monograph, Hybrid: Curiosity in All Things. It's an absolutely beautiful book, filled with amazing work, insights, behind-the-scenes content, and the purpose and inspiration behind everything they do. It's so packed with thoughtful material that it made the interview prep MORE difficult, not easier, because there's SO much amazing work to discuss.

Dora has many influences, like Charles and Ray Eames, punk rock, Swiss design, Star Wars, and so much more. Hell, she even listens to Slayer while driving her kids to school, lol. However, one of my favorite things about Dora is that her approach to creativity and her work sits at the intersection of design, content, and culture, guided by the belief that curiosity and play are essential tools for solving real business problems.

Tune in for a talk about collecting junk mail, why curiosity is an organizing principle for Hybrid, grid "mathemagic", and why working for Nike in the mid-90s was such a special time in her career. Follow Hybrid Design on IG @hybriddesignsf, and check out more of their work on their website hybrid-design.com, and buy a copy of Hybrid: Curiosity in All Things from victionary or your local bookstore.

"All projects change. All projects are fluid. All problems are different. Asking questions is the only way forward." 

Questions for this interview.

• Can you tell us the story about saving all your junk mail before meeting with the CEO of The North Face for the first time?
• Can you shed some light on the planning process for The North Face printed catalogs and discuss some of the considerations your team had to make before stepping onto a photoshoot set?
• Why is curiosity an organizing principle for Hybrid Design, and how does curiosity show up in your studio and the work you do?
• What were Hybrid's internal conversations like about the destructive nature of the perforated pull-tab on the front cover of the Mohawk Maker Quarterly #13?
• Do you struggle with feeling like every new thing you make has to be better than the last thing you made? If so, how do you manage those feelings and keep them from becoming a distraction?
• Can you explain "Grid Mathemagic" and give us your best PSA for grid systems?
• Can you tell us what Object Quality means, and explain why we would do better to think of our print work as object design?
• Why was your time at Nike so special, and how did working there during that specific time shape the creative person you've become?
• What's the difference between a campaign that simply solves a problem and one that stops us in our tracks?
• How can we connect inspiration to our work, and how do we leverage it to strengthen it?
• What happens if we loosen our grip and share creativity instead of trying to own it?
• Which aspect of the business of design were you awful at 24 years ago, but great at today?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com

Martina Flor is an award-winning lettering artist, author, and educator living in Berlin. She also hosts the Open Studio podcast with over 200 episodes, and she's spoken at over 70 conferences across the globe, including TEDx, Adobe MAX, TypeCon, and many others. She's a lettering POWERHOUSE and has helped thousands of creative entrepreneurs become lettering artists and take their creative businesses to the next level. However, she wasn't always the super-confident person she is today, and it's taken her over a decade to fine-tune her creative business. Way before specializing in lettering, she was a creative director, but eventually hit a breaking point and needed a change in her life. So, she moved to the Netherlands to study type design at the Royal Academy of Art, and moved to Berlin after graduating. There, she started calling herself a lettering artist, joined a group of typographic aficionados, opened her lettering studio, and hasn't looked back since.

Martina's an avid reader; in fact, she's written many of her own books, like The Golden Secrets of Lettering, The Big Leap, and Make It! Her favorite letter to draw is "M," and she can tell you all about the 3 main groups of letters: rectangular, rounded, and triangular. Like so many of us, she thrives within constraints and believes that no brief is the worst brief.

Tune in for a talk about why an email list is the most powerful asset for a creative business, how trying to become Ken Barber helped her discover herself, and why printing a set of new business cards changed her life. Follow Martina on Instagram @martinaflor, download free lettering resources on her website: martinaflor.com, and sign up for her FREE annual workshop series, The Lettering Design Roadmap, at martinaflor.com/masterclass.

"If not now, then when?"

Questions for this interview.

• Can you tell us about your Free Live Workshop Series, The Lettering Design Roadmap, and talk about how that series is different from your signature course, The Lettering Seminar?
• How can someone who considers themselves a graphic design generalist benefit from learning how to draw letterforms?
• Can you give us a better understanding of your revenue streams and, if possible, a rough percentage breakdown of the overall income they each contribute?
• Will you explain the importance of an email list and talk about how you use your list to support your business?
• So, considering lettering didn’t have the following and support it has today, how much pressure did you feel to create lettering that met the typographic community's standards in Berlin?
• Why did Ken Barber's workshop make such an impact on you, and what can you remember about his visit?
• Where does your confidence and positivity come from?
• You saw your mom become a successful teacher and school principal. How does it feel knowing your kids have a similar opportunity because they can see you’ve built a successful lettering business?
• How can someone use the four cardinal directions to improve the balance of their lettering compositions?
• Where does readability fall on your priority list when you’re lettering or drawing letterforms?
• How did something as simple as printing a new set of business cards change the way you felt about yourself?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com

Deja is the Founder and Creative Director of Dejamakes Creative Studio in Chicago. Her focus is on the brand and web design, and she primarily works with small business owners and founders who've DIY'd themselves into oblivion and have realized they're ready for a brand experience that combines strategy and storytelling. But before starting her career in sports advertising and eventually working for her dream company, Twitter, Deja played D1 basketball for the University of Pennsylvania, so she's a hooper, y'all, don't get it twisted. Since evolving from an athlete to a designer and saying "peace out" to Elon and Twitter, she binged-watched everything on Bravo (shoutout to Dorinda Medley lol) and is out there making things happen on her own. Between lattes and walks with her dog, Goose, she's crafting thoughtful brand identity systems, wedding invitations, and short-form content to help you get to the next level.

Tune in for a talk about how a "fork in the road" led to her decision to leave the corporate girly life behind, how saying yes to design changed everything, and how she measures progress and success for her design studio. Follow Deja on Instagram @dejamakes, and check out more of her work on her website: dejamakes.com.

Remember. Quality over quantity, and the numbers don't lie.

Questions for this interview.

• Can you tell us about the kind of small business owners and founders you typically work with?
• Who's the GOAT between Jordan, Kobe, and LeBron?
• If you look back on your time playing basketball at UPenn through a professional lens, how has being part of an organized, competitive team helped you run your design studio today?
• Thinking back, what convinced you that you could make it on your own? Had you already done something to prove to yourself that you could?
• Can you tell us about the time you tried selling merch featuring famous people and got a cease-and-desist?
• How do your live mood board sessions work? Do you do that with all of your brand identity clients?
• Can you walk us through your approach to writing your website copy? What do you feel is the most important thing to communicate to potential clients visiting your site?
• Why do you limit the number of projects you take on? Do those decisions have anything to do with quality over quantity?
• You also design wedding invitations, but don't advertise it. Did you intentionally bury that information on your site? Why is that information so hard to find?
• How has your intake and onboarding process changed over the past 4 years, and how has it improved?
• Can you tell us about your shift to a "Numbers Don't Lie" mindset and what that means?
• Which aspect of the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program do you feel best aligns with an area of your business where you find yourself struggling, and how do you think you'll benefit from participating?
• Can you share information for a few women of color we should be following and paying attention to?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com

Tad is an illustrator, designer, author, and self-proclaimed BBQ snob from Kansas City. He co-runs a design and branding studio with his wife Jessica called Carpenter Collective. Their team has worked with companies like Macy's, Publix, Adobe, Hallmark, Coca-Cola, and MTV, among others. You've likely seen some of the illustrations from his SUNday Suns series, and if you've heard his Midwest vernacular, you might know the meaning of "Ope," "Alrighty, well," and "All good, no worries."

His father, a Creative Director at Hallmark International for 41.5 years, is his biggest inspiration, and his mother is also an artist who works with fiber, so it's safe to say Tad would probably have been thrown out of the family if he hadn't pursued a creative career, lol. On a lighter note, he loves photos and videos of dogs driving cars; he believes the sausage biscuit is one of the most fantastic fast-food items ever created, and he won a drawing contest for season tickets to the Kansas City Chiefs when he was in the 3rd grade.

Tune in for a talk about Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, why he thinks you should work for someone before working for yourself, his studio's ping-pong approach to design, and the gigantic hole left behind after completing his SUNday Suns series. Follow Tad on Instagram @tadcarpenter and @carpentercollective, and buy his book, SUNday Suns, art prints, and gig posters on his website carpentercollective.com.

"Happiness is not a function of what you achieve. It's a function of how you spend your time."

Questions for this interview.

• What was your best or favorite piece of advice to give students on the first day of the semester?
• Why do you think it's essential for recent grads to work for someone before they work for themselves?
• How do you and your wife, who is also your business partner, manage client work between the two of you? Do y'all work on everything together, or do you each direct your own projects?
• What do you say to a client, or what do you ask to find out if they are willing to take risks?
• Can you tell us about your Two Pizza Rule and explain why it's important to you?
• You once said, "Complacency breeds death. I want that fire, I want the pressure, I never want to stop climbing." Do you still feel that way?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com

Tyler is a creative leader, art director, and illustrator born "in the sticks" of South Carolina and now based in Los Angeles. You might be familiar with his personal brand, The Creative Pain, an outlet that he uses to process the hurdles, burnout, and doubt that come with the creative journey. Luckily, Tyler grew up with his cousin, Darby, and they competitively pushed each other's creativity. Obsessed with skateboarding culture, Tyler collected graphics and stickers, and even made his own skateboarding wax without burning the house down. Lol.  

Like most creative professionals, he studied design in college, Francis Marion University in his case, and he's taken risks throughout his career, like leaving a full-time agency job to move across the country and become a full-time freelancer. His work is full of illustrations of donuts, 90s cartoon characters, and his dog, Iggy, and he's partnered with Adobe, Wacom, POSCA, and StickerApp. Tyler has also created artwork for The Black Keys, Jack White, and Paul McCartney, and he's no stranger to the corporate design world, having worked as an art director on Nickelodeon's consumer products team. At Nickelodeon, he created product guides for some of the network's biggest IPs, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Tune in for a talk about growing up in a town of 750 people, learning to look at design through a consumer-product lens, corporate design misconceptions, and the difference between isometric, dimetric, and trimetric perspectives. Follow Tyler on Instagram @thecreativepain, and check out more of his work on his website: thecreativepain.com.

“There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.”

Questions for this interview.

• How do you think your workshop at Crop Conference went? How did the reaction make you feel?
• As someone with over 160 thousand Instagram followers and who has worked with some of Nickelodeon’s most recognizable IPs, how does a conference like Crop inspire you, and what kind of value do you get from it?
• What’s your favorite thing to teach people that isn’t related to illustration and design?
• Do you ever think about how much different your career would be if you had grown up in a city instead of a small town with fewer opportunities?
• What steps did you take before leaving your full-time agency job, and how much money did you save beforehand?
• How did you feel when you found out Nickelodeon wanted YOU? Did you notice a change in your confidence?
• Can you break down how Chris Groll taught you to look at design through a consumer-product lens, and explain why that’s still helpful today?
• Can you think of any misconceptions or opinions you had about working in corporate design that turned out to be false?
• How long did it take you to learn when to stop adding texture to your illustrations, and how do you know when an illustration is complete?
• Can you explain the difference between isometric, dimetric, and trimetric, and then talk about how you create perspective with a custom grid?
• If you could only keep one, would you keep the ability to create mood boards or the free transform tool in Adobe Illustrator?
• What are you seeing enough of in the creative industry, and what would you like to see more of?

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If you LIKE what you hear, please subscribe and keep listening. Sharing this episode with someone is the best way to support the podcast. 

If you LOVE what you hear and want to help me keep the interviews coming—consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi.

Also, I'm always looking for questions from listeners. If there's a burning question you want to hear answered on the podcast, please email it to me at studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

Follow @studentsofdesignpod on Instagram for updates, episode drops, and behind-the-scenes content.

The music you hear on the podcast is Accident by Timothy Infinite and PUSH !T by Nbhd Nick.

studentsofdesign.simplecast.com