What led you into design?
I originally vowed never to be a designer. I swore off the profession entirely after a muddled attempt at using Photoshop in my first high school design class. Naturally, I’m now a senior designer at Amazon who works on apps and websites used by millions. I’m still just as good at predicting the future.
My background and education
My journey started with the fine arts and a mysterious act of kindness. I enthusiastically honed my craft at a high school for the arts with the help of a need-based scholarship and a gift from an anonymous donor to cover administrative fees. That selflessness is the cornerstone of my career and it’s one of the reasons I do nonprofit work outside of my day job now.
I originally went to university to study painting because I was very adept at making financial decisions. Despite my passion for the subject I had the sense to evaluate my work objectively after my freshman year. I wasn’t satisfied with my ability or finesse. My best paintings focused on composition, color theory, geometry, and abstraction. I realized these were all things I could pursue more directly through design and made the switch, eventually earning a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University.
My early career
Before coming to NYC I was a traveling one man band of design jobs. I tried every possible design role and at one point was working six different freelance jobs simultaneously. I did social media design for a new art museum, editorial design for a newsroom, advertising design for an agency in the Middle East, and design management of interdisciplinary teams at a nonprofit studio. I even did grant-funded research on generative design in the Netherlands long before generative artificial intelligence commanded headlines.
When I finally moved to New York City I got a night job selling sandwiches in Penn Station, a historically neglected place I can only describe as a literal low point. That held me over while I applied for design jobs during the day. One of my first formal design roles was at a startup called the Lowline which aimed to build the world’s first underground park in lower Manhattan. There I did community-based user research and designed pitch decks to woo investors.
Becoming a Senior Product Designer
My first corporate job was at one of the most important companies you’ve never heard of, a consulting firm in the top of the Fortune 500. I started with a simple role but eventually led design for their workplace products. I shipped experiences for their search engine, news sites, document libraries, databases, and global homepage, often after securing buy-in from resolute chief executives.
Now I’m a Senior Product Designer at Amazon. For the past 3.5 years I've been the primary designer for the selling app that powers Amazon.com. Working with a large team I’ve virtually redesigned the app by launching new navigation, information architecture, and home screen experiences. All in addition to dozens of other features such as a tool that allows sellers to create 3D models of their products using only their phone camera. Today the app has more than 10 million downloads on Android devices alone and a 4.6 star rating in the Apple Play store.
What does a typical day look like?
I work a standard 9am to 5pm desk job at an office in Midtown Manhattan. I take my work seriously. Due to the degree of focus it requires I make sure to set strong work-life boundaries. This practice allows me to take a weekly Spanish class during lunch or mentor junior designers at night. In the past 2 years I’ve led over 140 mentorship sessions and helped 3 mentees find roles at Amazon.
Pushing pixels doesn’t build muscle so when I get home I go to the gym for an hour. Then I shift my attention to personal tasks. I run a non-profit so I might be preparing for an upcoming event. For example, this week I’m connecting our committee members with a non-profit group fighting for trans rights in Cuba.
Call me a rumor because I love to travel. On a given day you may find me researching hotels, flights, or booking trains several months in advance. My next trip is a journey through Germany and France to visit people from various points in my life.
My career journey has left me with a bad case of busy hands. I’m often making minor updates to my website, archiving my work, or trying a new pursuit. Earlier this year I flew to my alma mater to share my career journey with students; I spent a lot of time creating those slides and crafting a narrative that would make an impact on young designers. In the near-term I’d like to teach students, take on more public speaking, expand a blog I run about contemporary queer design in NYC, and collaborate with other designers.
What's your workstation setup?
To quote Dolly Levi, “I’ve always been a woman who arranges things... like furniture and daffodils and lives.” Which is to say that I believe life happens in the details, including the details of a workspace. I work in a cubicle so I try to infuse it with personality by bringing in plants, books, warm lighting, and views of faraway places I’ve visited. I also minimize the visibility of anything that feels unhuman such as bulky monitors, charging banks, power cords, and even mechanical keyboards. I removed one of my cubicle walls so I have the option to chat with coworkers between calls or greet new people who visit the office.
The most notable part of my workspace is framed samples from my collection of more than 100 postcards. I started saving these mementos when I traveled as a student. I didn’t have very much money or space so a postcard was a perfect souvenir and design artifact to send to family and friends. Today I still buy and send postcards from the countries I visit. I organize my personal collection in a binder and have postcards from my recent trips on my fridge at home.
Where do you go to get inspired?
My favorite place to find inspiration is traditionally a place of treachery. The Greeks specifically have a myth about passing between the murky perils of the open ocean and monstrous cliffs in the story of Scylla and Charybdis. I’m familiar with their warning, but being where the sea and the mountains meet is what energizes me the most. Some examples are Los Angeles, Barcelona, Tokyo, Los Cabos, Hawaii, and Istanbul. The same power of nature that terrified the Greeks lets me cast the shadow of my life onto the scale of forces that will exist before and after me. It removes the stress I sometimes feel over daily decisions because it reminds me of how small they are. I think this comfort is rooted in my own childhood in the Appalachian Mountains. For now though I settle for jazzy canyons of steel and the puttering push of the Hudson.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
What a dangerous question! I believe in a very broad definition of design so I have to break this down into categories.
Interior Design
The last product I’ve seen that was great design was the Bangkok Standard Hotel with interior design by Jaime Hayon. His playful yet elevated tone entices me and I knew I had to stay there when I visited Thailand. What really made it stand out is his attention to a particular type of unfussy detail, from the custom luggage closets in each room to sewn tiger designs based on Thai puppets on the dining room curtains.
Fashion Design
I just saw the annual Met Costume Institute exhibition on Black style and dandyism. One of my favorite pieces there was a Virgil Abloh suit for Louis Vuitton. It recontextualizes a classic houndstooth pattern by replacing the iconic black and white checks with silhouettes of the continent of Africa. It’s a delicious conceit.
Performance Design
For dance and performance I enjoy anything staged by Justin Peck, resident choreographer at the Metropolitan Ballet. I recently saw a collaboration he did with Sufjan Stevens for Broadway called Illinoise, based on an album by the same name. The abstract tale was a refreshingly new take on what ballet can be and a hypothesis of how the art form could reach a broader audience in the 21st century.
Fine Art
For fine art I recommend Damián Ortega, whose work I saw when I was in Mexico City. He had a show called Pico y Elote that was fittingly arranged in the contrasting Art Nouveau Palacio de Bellas Artes, just paces away from Rivera murals. His pieces are a study in what it means to create a shared identity.
Literature
In literature I recommend anything by Isabel Allende. Her accounts of authoritarianism in Chile feel bitingly human and eternally relevant. The last book I read was The Thorn Birds, simply because I have made a habit of reading books set in places I visit when I travel. That novel is a sprawling family narrative set in Australia and it’s what you might call a cilantro book– soapy and scrumptious. It made for a fast read when I was in Sydney and Melbourne.
Graphic Design
The most design-specific work that sticks in my mind is an installation called Cosmos that I saw in Melbourne by the duo Craig and Karl. It consists of roughly two dozen personified inflatables suspended in a cavernous dome above Melbourne Central. Not only is it technically precise, but it makes an otherwise formal public space into something warm, inviting, and human all with a stunning economy of form.
Music
I’ll share music below. But I’d be amiss for not mentioning the stage design of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour. At face value It carries forward a geometric visual theme from the first part of her three-act opus. Beyond that it offers a different and meaningful experience to all concertgoers. The entire structure looks like an electric guitar from the left or right, a star from the center, and a triangle from the floor. It’s a close study in how to craft experiences that meet users where they are– literally. Oh yes, and the Grammy was worth the wait; this album is deserving of a hoedown.
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the work I do to lead a nonprofit called Out in Tech Digital Corps that builds websites for LGBTQ+ activists and organizations around the world. Over the past 9 years we have built 275+ websites in 15+ languages and 70 different countries. I became the head of the initiative in 2025 but have been involved as a volunteer, team lead, and committee member for nearly a decade.
I’m proud of this work because I know it saves lives. I’ve personally contributed to sites for organizations that track violence against queer folks, provide legal aid for cases that establish queer rights, defend trans people, educate about HIV/AIDS, and create safe spaces for queer youth. The activists behind these initiatives are heroes. I’m proud to do what I can to organize volunteers, website build days, and donations to support their work.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
The greatest challenge facing any big tech company today is: now what? Many of the tech giants in the United States have accomplished their core visions such as organizing the web, making it possible to get a ride from anywhere, or putting a computer in every pocket. The best evidence of this is how firms have latched on to parades of new fad technologies including blockchain, the metaverse, cryptocurrency, and more. I’m not saying that the kernel of the next platform shift doesn’t exist in any of these things. We’ve already seen wildly innovative tools such as autonomous vehicles achieve rapid adoption. However, in practice many of these new developments often pan out as solutions in search of problems instead of the other way around. I think big firms would do well to re-center on the human challenges they are uniquely suited to solve. When they start applying technology to those core human needs they will find sustainable success. That’s what I’m attempting to do at Amazon right now on a daily basis: center work on real challenges faced by real people.
What music do you listen to while designing?
Any advice for ambitious designers?
Life advice
Where I grew up there’s a saying that you should never talk about sex, politics, or religion in polite society. When I moved to New York to start my career I learned that the only things worth talking about are sex, politics, and religion. Doing so is crucial for creating just and empowered communities. My advice to ambitious designers is to ask the hard questions of those around you both directly and through your work.
Design advice
I offer free mentorship sessions to all designers. One piece of advice that I often give is to treat your own portfolio like a product or experience that you would design for a client. It’s the hidden extra piece in your repertoire. It can convey your personality and your own unique approach to design. I’ve iteratively tailored my own site with this in mind and I promise that the payoff to polishing your portfolio itself is there, even if you play the long game to make it happen.
Anything you want to promote or plug?
Yet another dangerous question! Yes, there are several things I’d like to promote.
Say hello in NYC
I’m always looking for other designers to collaborate with or just meet for coffee. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re based in New York City or if you're just passing through. My website is www.michaelwalker.co and you can message me via my Linkedin profile. Please include a note that mentions Lovers Magazine.
Volunteer for Out in Tech Digital Corps
I lead a nonprofit called Out in Tech Digital Corps that builds websites for LGBTQ+ groups around the world. We run roughly 4 website build days a year, both in-person and remote. Anyone can sign up to volunteer, join our committee, or request a site. I’d love to see you there.
Invite me to speak
I love to talk to corporate design teams, design classes and departments, and other professional groups. You can see a recording of the last talk I gave to students, ironically titled “How Not to Get a Job at Amazon” on Youtube. Message me via my Linkedin profile with a relevant note if you’d like to invite me to speak.
Sign up for a mentorship session
I offer free mentorship to other designers. I’m open to reviewing portfolios, websites, case studies, and other kinds of work. I also run mock interviews, whiteboarding sessions, and portfolio presentations. Or I can provide general Q&A on the tech industry, salary negotiation, and career guidance. You can sign up for mentorship via my profile here .
Invite me to teach
I love to teach design. An ideal opportunity for me would be teaching or assisting a recurring local night class here in New York City (but I’m open to a remote opportunity as well.) I can also visit your class as a guest designer. I see this as a great way to give back while working towards my overall career goal of eventually leading professional design teams.
People who inspire me
I’d like to promote designers and artists whose work means a lot to me. My hope is that anyone reading might find a new favorite, too. In order of last name (as close a possible): Maryam Al-Homaid, Isabel Allende, Natalie Andrewson, Annie Erin Clark, Craig and Karl, Bryony Gomez-Palacio + Armin Vit, Jamie Hayon, William Kentridge, Nicole Killian, Natalia Lafourcade, Jens Lenkman, Abraham Lule, Kerry James Marshall, Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, Toni Morrison, Joanna Newsom, Damián Ortega, Justin Peck, Tereza Ruller, Sara Sze, Salman Toor, Tomi Um, Celeste Epiphany Waite, Kara Walker, Jessie Ware, Ai Wei Wei, and Rachel Whiteread.
I also want to thank Sergio Neuman-Bustamante for taking my portrait photograph and the Lovers Magazine team for having me.
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