I think you ended up on my radar because the internet is small and you work at Wistia. But when I visited your website it was like “I need to follow this dude”. At what point in creating something–like this face builder thing– do you think “yeah the right people are going to love this”?
So small! I had a similar reaction to seeing your site for the first time—oh, this guy is interesting. He MAKES stuff. He has IDEAS. It seems that’s becoming an increasingly difficult thing to run across on social media. So many people’s digital footprint is a string of thought leadership posts on Linkedin or hot-takes on Twitter. To see someone making things that have a point of view, in their own little digital playground, is always so refreshing. I love that feeling of running across someone’s site and thinking “Ohh, this is a real human being.”
I think that’s what I’m trying to do with a lot of my work—is this going to make people feel something? Is it going to ask them to pause and consider an idea for a moment? To be able to do that every once and a while is pretty incredible.
By the way, I think we might have been mortal enemies at one point—I haven’t crossed checked dates, but I might have been at Mailchimp while you were at Constant Contact. I’m glad we’re meeting now!
Let’s say it’s 8pm on a Saturday in July. What are you up to?
I hope I’m walking on a beach. I think that’s one of the things I missed the most when I was living in the midwest and the south, was being close to the ocean. I grew up in New Jersey, and being able to drive down to the beach on a hot summer night makes me feel like a little kid again. It’s hard to worry when you’re sitting next to the ocean.
Why Boston? Are you from there? Stuck there? A lifer? I grew up in southern Maine and have lots of love for that place.
Boston wasn’t intentional! Moving back up to the northeast was intentional, but Boston was just where I found work, back before everything was remote and you actually moved for jobs.
We were living down in Atlanta, which is an absolutely amazing city. I loved it there. But Georgia, and most of the south, is a tough place to live right now if you’re a person who needs access to reproductive healthcare. I have a kid who had rights that were being curtailed, and we decided we needed to live in a place where that wasn’t actively happening.
We were looking all over New England, and we’re pretty thrilled to have ended up outside of Boston, in the Somerville / Cambridge area. I live within walking distance of a neighborhood movie theater, our kid goes to an awesome public school, and the food is… honestly just mid. I miss Atlanta’s thriving culinary scene. It’s an amazing food city.
What’s the weirdest compliment you’ve ever received about your work?
I recently told this story to a coworker.
Fairly early, maybe four or five years into my career, I had the chance to design a screen printed poster for an event my workplace was sponsoring. I had a concept I really liked, but the execution of it was beyond my limited illustration skills and it wasn’t coming together well. The creative director there stopped by the day it was due and said “This is terrible. We’re not printing it. I’d rather not have a poster at all than have people see this.”
I was obviously pretty bummed. So I went home and stayed up that night designing a completely different poster. Brought it to him the next day, got a “Great, this doesn’t suck,” and it went to print. So I’d say “This doesn’t suck” is one of the best compliments I’ve received.
It was honestly a watershed moment for me. It forced me to grapple with the limits of my own skills, understand how to give up on directions that aren’t working, and push myself to do good work. I’m not recommending that approach to all the CDs out there, but that kind of abrasive feedback works well for me. I’m pretty laid back, but I have a strong “Don’t tell me what I can’t do” streak.
If you had to teach a group of strangers something that you wanted them to remember for years, what do you do?
I’d want people to remember to be kind to themselves. I carried around a fortune from a cookie for years that said “Your kindness will lead you to happiness.” For a long time, I thought that meant my kindness towards others. But I came to realize, via a lot of therapy, that it also had to include being kind to myself. I’ve always been pretty good at giving other folks the benefit of the doubt, providing them leeway and letting their mistakes slide. But I’ve rarely been able to apply that same sort of kindness to my own shortcomings. So I’d like to teach people to be kind to themselves.
Since I only have these strangers’ attention for a moment, and I want them to remember this lesson for years to come, I’m going to have to make it extremely traumatic. So I’d beat one of them with a huge stick for making a tiny mistake. “You don’t think that was OK, do you? So why are you doing that to yourself, emotionally?”
I’d get arrested for assault, and the strangers would have to attend my trial as witnesses. I bet they would remember it all for a long, long time.
Where he lives
In Massachusetts, only thirty minutes from a short walk from Alewife
Passion
Cutting up paper and gluing it back together.
Hot drink
Hot black coffee, all year round.
Comfort Content/Third space
Both: our apartment is a quarter mile from a movie theater.
