What led you into design?
In my early days, I was very into filmmaking and recording travel videos while on vacation. This inspired me to explore video editing software, such as Adobe Premiere, and experiment with the Adobe suite. During that time, like every 14-year-old, I had a YouTube Minecraft channel with friends from my high school, where we recorded and shared our in-game experiences. Unfortunately during that time, no one knew how to design a banner image or a channel avatar so I installed Photoshop and gave it a shot. This opened up a whole new chapter of creativity. While I was browsing the tools in Photoshop, I was astonished by the rich feature set that the software offered. I wanted to master every tool and shortly afterwards, I began combining Premiere with Photoshop to create my first animations and website concepts.
What does a typical day look like?
In the morning, I kick things off by brewing coffee, getting some fresh croissants, and playing Fortune Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival on maximum volume. I think it is important to get into the right mindset from the start and be excited to go to work. Next, I take the subway to Galaxy's office. The Venture team at Galaxy is small so it is great to connect in person.
On the train to work, I am checking Twitter, messages from my family, and emails to catch up on everything. At the office, a normal Monday consists of planning out platform operations, scheduling calls with founders, and exploring the pipeline of new potential investments from our team.
After work, the team sometimes meets with founders in the evening or attends community and networking events.
I normally get home around 8 and work out for an hour. Afterwards, I either go grocery shopping, finish up work or meet with friends for dinner to conclude the day.
What's your workstation setup?
Most of my time I am working from the Galaxy office.
Occasionally the home office is the way to go!
Where do you go to get inspired?
Every weekend I am exploring the city, bookstores, and furniture stores while relaxing the mind. In Greenpoint, there are some amazing places to get some fresh ideas and let the creative juices flow.
Another favourite activity of mine is going to classical concerts. I try to attend one every two weeks. Being away from the phone and immersed in the experience is very meditative and my best ideas come up during these concerts.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
I recently stumbled across this stunning table MADONNA DEL MONTE by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance. Inspired by the photography work of a small island of Venice lagoon called « Madonna del Monte » I think this table is beyond beautiful.
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
Swipsh was the project that kickstarted my career. It was a small startup I was doing after high school. The concept was a social media app that allowed users to share their travel and evening plans with their friends. The overall goal was to connect people in real life.
Another amazing project was an internal research case study at Galaxy about cross-chain asset fragmentation. The topic was very niche, but the overall goal was to introduce iconography guidelines to communicate different versions of USDC. We had a lot of fun browsing ideas internally and testing the different versions with users.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
Working with multiple startups at the same time can lead to a lot of context-switching. I am hands-on crafting the products with founding teams, so it can be challenging to handle multiple requests from different companies at the same time. Additionally, Galaxy is operating at the forefront of new emerging technologies which is exciting yet challenging - for most of the products there are no references, no comparable interfaces, or best practices. But this is exactly what makes it so fun to work in this space and team.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Try to stay on top of things! Our industry is very fluid and ever-changing. Concepts that worked out a year ago might not fit in the future, forcing you to recalibrate your skills and perspective. Find a mentor and put in the hours to become very good in a specific field - designing is like working out. Connect and collaborate with others to foster knowledge sharing and create amazing projects together.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
Galaxy recently launched its global redesign in collaboration with Pentagram! I had the honour to work with the team during the project and evolve the brand internally for the other business lines at Galaxy. I published a case study on Behance so feel free to check it out. Oh and happy to share my portfolio.
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