I started out co-founding an art collective in Seattle, where I was the person who designed the merch and also the person who sourced the blanks, argued with the printer, and worked out why the XXLs never sold. That taught me something a design education doesn’t: a design isn’t finished when it looks good. It’s finished when it survives contact with a printer, a budget, and a customer.
Alongside my own studio, I work in-house on B2B marketing teams. Currently with BitTitan and INRIX, and previously Blumira and Routeware. Four industries with nothing in common except that the product is genuinely hard to explain and the marketing team needs something ready by Thursday.
The most valuable work I do in those roles isn’t any single asset. It’s building templates and design systems so a product marketer can produce an on-brand one-pager at 4pm without waiting on me. Getting a team unstuck is worth more than any one deliverable.
Alongside my own studio, I work in-house on B2B marketing teams. Currently with BitTitan and INRIX, and previously Blumira and Routeware. Four industries with nothing in common except that the product is genuinely hard to explain and the marketing team needs something ready by Thursday.
The most valuable work I do in those roles isn’t any single asset. It’s building templates and design systems so a product marketer can produce an on-brand one-pager at 4pm without waiting on me. Getting a team unstuck is worth more than any one deliverable.
Small businesses need the same thing at a different scale. You don’t have a marketing team - you are the marketing team, between serving customers and doing payroll. What you need is a set of things that work without you having to think about them, and someone who’ll tell you straight what’s worth spending money on.