This Is
For You

Stories about the experiences that shaped me as a designer

What is design? That’s a good question. It’s the kind of question that can cause a designer to spiral into an existential crisis. It took me a long time — from elementary school to grad school — before I had my own definition. In a way, that’s what it takes to develop a personal practice. For me, that meant trying out a whole slew of things — music, film, writing, computer science, theater — that would eventually inform a single creative discipline called “design.” In this chapter, I’ll share stories from this early period in my life — growing up alongside the Internet and video games, bearing unpaid theater internships, finding my footing as a freelancer, and choosing to go to design school.

What does a degree in computer science get you? In my case, a single technical interview that you’ll absolutely and utterly fail. For a long time, code didn’t seem like it was my thing. But once I began studying design, I realized that code was extremely useful even if I wasn’t an expert in it. I could use code to make interactive and generative experiences — things that felt uniquely performative, sort of like theatrical performances on a computer screen. In this chapter, I’ll share stories of how I finally learned to use code after struggling for years and make it a fundamental part of my creative practice.

There are great teachers, and there are absolutely terrible ones. Both types inspired me to teach — I think the impact of a good teacher is just as resonant as that of a bad teacher. I felt I owed it to the good teachers to pass on the lessons they taught me, and also to the bad teachers to make right where they went wrong. What I discovered was that teaching was much harder than I expected, but also the clearest way to make a real impact as a designer. In this chapter, I’ll share stories from my experiences as a teacher, as well as from my time spent making tools for teachers and students alike.

An all-too-common tragedy: you devote yourself to developing a creative practice only to discover that no job exists for what you do. This is especially frustrating if you’ve freelanced and know that there’s a market for your skill set but not a matching job to apply for. Creative coding is a bit like this — agencies typically split design and code into two distinct jobs even though a single designer-developer can do a ton on their own. So, as a designer-developer facing this reality, I decided to start a studio. In this chapter, I’ll share stories of how I found the confidence to make that jump and how it played out.

Projects that taught me how to design

Let’s say design is about communication. In design school, you learn a lot about visual communication. But there are other kinds, too — aural, experiential, written, performative, and so on. I now realize that the years I wasted before design school — years spent fumbling through potential careers that didn’t pan out — were actually years spent finessing my communication skills in other mediums. Once I had built that foundation, I was ready to hone in on visual communication, and that meant going to design school. In this chapter, I’ll share the projects from my formative years that set me up to study and practice design later in life.

For its size, Rhode Island has a lot going for it. That includes a major bridge at risk of collapse, drivers that don’t understand the concept of right-of-way, and a little school of design. That was my school for three years as I was a graduate student studying graphic design. I spent those years creating close to a hundred projects and sleeping very little. Those projects — well, some of those projects — would go on to serve as the foundation for my professional practice. In this chapter, I’ll share the projects I made while studying at RISD to reveal the ways in which the school helped me grow as a designer and start my career.

In design school, your audience is often very small — often just your teachers and peers. Meanwhile, your audience afterwards is quite a bit bigger — literally anyone and everyone. That change in audience means your work needs to change, too. Plus, it helps to create work that makes money, and that reality also changes the kind of work you create. So, what happened when I left design school? In this chapter, I’ll share how my output evolved to meet these new challenges.

Conversations with the people that helped me along the way

Teachers teach you things. But how do they teach you things? I’ve had great hands-on teachers that kept a tight-knit circle of superfans. I’ve also had terrible teachers that instructed through counterexamples. I’ve even had teachers I’ve never met, whose work I tried to emulate. But over time, I’ve learned that the most effective teachers shared a common trait — instead of giving students information, they guided them to it. In this chapter, I’ll share conversations I had with several teachers that I’ve seen as mentors and guides, leading me down my own path to become a designer (and a teacher, too).

School is a place to learn alongside other people. When you learn together, you also end up learning from each other — through the conversations you have, friendships you foster, projects you share, collaborations you, uh, collaborate, and the many successes and failures you see through (whether you want to or not). What you might not realize during this experience is that by studying, you become part of a new generation of designers that have the chance to push the discipline and industry forward. In this chapter, I’ll share conversations I had with the peers I’ve studied and worked alongside.

You learn from your students. That’s a rule. You have to. If you’re a teacher and you’re not learning from your students, then I’m worried for you. It was bell hooks who helped me realize that teaching isn’t the act of passing down knowledge. Instead, teaching happens somewhere between the teacher and the student. If all goes right, both parties grow in the process. In this chapter, I’ll share conversations I had with my students about their experiences as students — the good, the bad, the ugly, the pretty, the things they’ll never forget, and the things they wish they could forget.

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