What led you into design?
A girl on a bus taught me how to make a clay pizza the size of a thumb, and my eight year old self thought she was a genius. I dove into drawing, painting, sculpture, and the traditional forms at first.
In college, I couldn’t take my art materials with me. I didn’t have a studio. I had a laptop. Tried Sketch. Learned Figma. Studied Computer Science and Visual Art at Stanford University, interned at Adobe, worked at startups that gave me high agency, and eventually helped friends and their startups on brand design. Design gave me a degree of freedom in how I expressed myself through code and a degree of lightness in iteration I had yet to find in fine art.
What does a typical day look like?
As a founder, my days are different almost every day. Last week I was tuning my Instagram algorithm to find me under-the-radar creative accounts. Yesterday I was checking the App Store Reviewer’s feedback, praying he would approve our latest build from his Irish chambers. Tomorrow I’ll be setting up a zine workshop with San Francisco’s design engineers. Next week I’ll be back to code and Paper.
When I get lost in the sauce, I go to Shack15 and catch up with my co-founder. The people and community you surround yourself with matter.
What's your workstation setup?
Where do you go to get inspired?
Lately I’m finding inspiration in 2010s TV shows and the K-pop labels. They have bold aesthetics that embrace risk and personality. Without guidance, coding agents can create rather structured and sterile designs, so what gets me inspired today are styles that break layouts, mix textures, and take risks for a particular moment, person and event in time.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
1. Believe it or not, a real cake from Thomas Chou and no Photoshop or Figma was used for this design:
This event invite was made in Playful Design App. I’ve seen it 10+ times and still love it.
2. The mascots and doodles for Townies! I would much rather a world with this kind of tech.
3. Old City Mailroom fonts
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
Our recent Playful merch box and stickers! ft. a Milk Magazine intern showing off the “made on playful” DS.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Find the balance between observation and being high agency. From the art world we learn to observe, from the engineering world we learn to do. Don't neglect one for the other. I find flow by cycling between the two.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
Playful Design, philosophically and literally:
Insta @playfuldesignapp
X @playfuldesignco
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