Creative Figures

Radim Malinic has been a role model of mine for years. He's a designer, a writer, a speaker, he runs the agency Brand Nu, he hosts his own podcast, and he's built a whole philosophy around the idea of daring creativity. I expected this conversation to be about all of that output. Instead it became one of the most honest talks I've had on the show, about the cost of the work and the years he spent hiding inside it.

He told me he once thought he was the happiest person in the world while crying into his birthday cake from overwork. We talked about creativity as escape, growing up in Czechoslovakia and wanting to blend in as an immigrant, reaching therapy at forty, and the philosophy he built out of all of it: become more of who you already are, because everyone else is taken.

In this episode:

• What daring creativity actually means
• Becoming "singular" and refusing to compare yourself
• Doing things before he knew how, an agency before he'd ever worked in one
• The immigrant who wanted to be called John Smith
• Looking like the happiest person in the world while burning out
• Creativity as a way to hide from himself
• Reaching therapy at forty, and unlearning the stigma he grew up with
• Radical accountability and the anger he didn't know he had
• Why he'd happily delete all his work and start the next mountain

Find Radim here:

• Website: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/
• Podcast: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radim.malinic/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandnu/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This week's Friday bonus: Radim and I go deep on fear, why you can't unlearn it, and why your brain treats sharing your work with strangers like a sabre-tooth tiger in the bushes. It goes to newsletter subscribers first, a week before it's public. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful.

his is the first-ever bonus episode of Captn OffScript. CJ Cawley and I recorded the main S02/E32 conversation for over an hour and twenty minutes, and somewhere around the hour mark it took a turn that didn't belong in the main episode and didn't deserve to be cut either.

So we held it back. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too.

This is the more personal part of our conversation. CJ talks openly about growing up on a council estate in London, leaving home at 16, and cutting ties with his family two to three years ago. I share my own parallel story for the first time in public — Bosnia, a relationship with my mum that I'm grateful for, and most of the rest of the family almost non-existent.

It's a conversation about the scripts we were given as kids, the partners who helped us rewrite them, and finding home far from where we started.

If this is one you needed to hear, I hope it does for you what it did for us when we were having it.

In this conversation we talked about:

• The script you're given by your parents as a child
• Leaving home at 16 and living above a pub
• Cutting ties with family after years of trying
• The partners who saw the good part first
• Finding home far from where we started
• Why we wouldn't change it, even if we could

The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E32 — CJ Cawley: Getting Cloned, Getting Married & Showing Up Anyway https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e32-cj-cawley-showing-up-anyway

Find CJ here:

• Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesign
• Sticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotes
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

This was the first-ever Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Martyna Wędzicka is a Polish graphic designer from Gdańsk with one of the most distinctive styles working today. She's a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, a two-time winner of the Polish Graphic Design Awards, and she built her entire body of work on something most designers are taught to avoid: mistakes.

"I really wanted to destroy something," she told me. "That was my main goal."

We talked about what that actually means, why finding your style takes ten years and not ten hours, and what it's like to be a designer from a part of Europe the rest of the world keeps overlooking.

In this conversation we got into:

• Why she builds her style out of chance, error, and "organising mistakes"
• The truth she tells students about how long style really takes
• Leaving her own studio because she'd become a project manager, not a designer
• Why being "not Western enough" turned into her biggest strength
• Keeping a Polish name on purpose, and her mission to make Polish design visible
• Being the weird kid in a Polish village, and why that's where style is born

🎙️ This week's Friday bonus: Martyna shares where she's heading next — the reinvention pattern she's spotted in her career, why she's knitting now, what she's making with her hands in an AI-driven world, and why graphic designers don't retire. Newsletter subscribers get it first, as a private link. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 04:35 A Polish name, and making Polish design visible
• 07:33 Leaving the studio to design again
• 10:41 Why her style never stops shifting
• 13:38 What recognition actually took
• 16:37 Turning mistakes into a style
• 19:34 Why style takes years, not hours
• 22:27 Breaking into the global design world
• 32:27 Visual identity through an art-history lens
• 35:14 Finding what makes you different
• 39:55 Weirdness as the source of style
• 43:31 What nine years of art school did to her
• 47:04 Teaching, and how to give good feedback
• 50:24 Why she'd rather open minds than teach software

Find Martyna here:

• Website: https://www.wedzicka.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedzicka_com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyna-w%C4%99dzicka-obuchowicz-69343252/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedzicka

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

If you liked this episode, listen to: Marta Cerdà Alimbau (S02/E26) — another European designer with an unmistakable, art-led personal style and a deep relationship with craft.

For the conversations behind the episodes, including the occasional Friday bonus, subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

CJ Cawley is having the strangest year of his career. Someone built a pixel-for-pixel clone of his website and replaced his face with theirs. A parody video of him triggered a wave of hate inside the design community. He's getting married this weekend. And through all of it, he keeps showing up on camera.

This is one of the episodes I've been most looking forward to publishing all season. We recorded for over an hour and twenty minutes, and the conversation went so deep that the most personal part is going out as a separate bonus episode. The main one is here.

The bonus drops Friday as the first-ever exclusive bonus episode of Captn OffScript, available only to newsletter subscribers for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

In this episode we talked about:

• The website clone called Delwox and his perfect retaliation
• The parody video and the pile-on inside the design community
• Getting married this weekend with a surf simulator and an aerial hoop
• Psoriasis, the camera, and why no one cares what you look like
• Sticky Notes and four years of private calls with Jack before pressing record
• The McDonald's theory of AI
• Knob head tax and interviewing clients before saying yes
• The loneliness of going freelance, and the friend who pulled him through it
• What he's most grateful for in the year before his wedding

🎙️ The bonus episode on Friday: CJ and I share the most personal part of our conversation, about childhood, family, and rewriting the script you were given as a kid. Newsletter subscribers only for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

Timestamps: [Awaiting confirmation]

Find CJ here:

• Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/
• Studio (Seeside Studio): https://www.seesidestudio.com/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesign
• Sticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotes
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/

Find me here:

• https://captnoffscript.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

If you liked this episode, listen to... Andy J. Pizza (S02/E30) — another deeply personal conversation about showing up on camera, working with what you've got, and cultivating yourself instead of trying to fix yourself.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

Kristof Devos answered the call from his studio in a small town in rural Belgium, with a cat wandering in and out and his daughter's eighth birthday party happening that same afternoon. It felt like the right way to start a conversation about slowing down.

Kristof Devos is an illustrator, a children's book author, a watch designer for the cult London brand Mr Jones Watches, and an art teacher in Bruges. For tax purposes he has two jobs. For himself, it's all one job.

This one stays gentle the whole way through and still lands somewhere deep. We talked about a watch that tells you to slow down, a car crash that reshaped his entire idea of a life worth living, and why he'd rather write a long newsletter that takes fifteen minutes to read than chase likes on a platform he's come to distrust.

In this episode we talked about:

• "A Perfectly Useless Afternoon" and the watch about doing nothing
• How a ten-minute window of confidence led to Mr Jones Watches
• Leaving art direction for a slower life in rural Belgium
• The car crash that changed everything, and the book that came from it
• Why he takes two years on twelve spreads
• His new book, Big Brother and Little Sister
• Quitting Instagram and building through newsletters
• Why AI might be a gift to human-made art
• What he hopes survives him in a hundred years

Find Kristof here:

• Website: https://kristofdevos.com/
• Newsletter (Brief uit het Atelier): https://kristofdevos.com/brief-uit-het-atelier/
• Podcast (Podlood, in Dutch): https://kristofdevos.com/podlood/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristoftekent/

Find me here:

• https://captnoffscript.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript/

If you liked this episode, listen to... Luis Mendo (S02/E29) — Luis appeared on Kristof's podcast, and they share the same instinct: leaving social media behind, building through direct connection, and choosing a slower, more deliberate creative life.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

Episode 30 of Season 2. The 80th episode I've recorded since starting this show. And honestly, I couldn't have picked a better guest to mark a milestone like that.

Andy J. Pizza is the host of Creative Pep Talk, an illustrator, a children's book author, and one of the people who has quietly shaped how thousands of designers think about their own creativity. He's also the guy who chose to call himself "Pizza" because his real name made for an ugly URL.

We started this conversation talking about goat cheese pizza in the UK. We ended it somewhere very different — talking about the cave you fear to enter inside yourself, about why his ADHD diagnosis at 25 first devastated him before it freed him, and about a line from his second podcast Right Side Out that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since.

At the end of the recording, Andy told me this was the most personal interview he had ever done.

In this episode we talked about:

• Choosing his own name and disobeying Yoda
• ADHD as a lens, not a deficit
• Cultivating yourself instead of overcoming yourself
• Right Side Out and the line that stops you
• The cave you fear to enter, Joseph Campbell, and self-acceptance
• Taste as the palette of your soul
• Why AI is ending the era of perfect — and why that's a gift
• Working with his wife Sophie, the Beatles, and why fighting makes the work better
• His dad's lesson: hard and bad are not the same thing
• The most personal closing of the season

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction & Three Illustrators in a Row
• 03:12 How Andy J. Miller Became Andy J. Pizza
• 05:53 Pizza Toppings, Goat Cheese & the Best Fries in the World
• 08:36 ADHD, Mental Health & Creative Work
• 09:44 Moving Around as a Kid & the Identity Crisis It Caused
• 15:30 The Seventh Grade Friend Who Loved Boy Bands
• 22:00 On Popularity, Connection & Being Less Cool
• 27:45 Taste as the Palette of Your Soul
• 32:29 Why Follower Count Doesn't Equal Success
• 33:33 Why Instagram Doesn't Taste Good Anymore
• 36:36 How Taste Changes Over Time
• 39:25 Collaborating with His Wife Sophie & the Beatles
• 47:20 Perfectionism, ADHD & the Case for Doing Things Imperfectly
• 58:51 AI, Human Creativity & Why Perfect Is Dead
• 01:01:49 Cultivating Yourself Instead of Fixing Yourself

Find Andy here:

• Website: https://www.andyjpizza.com/
• Creative Pep Talk: https://www.creativepeptalk.com/
• Right Side Out: https://www.andyjpizza.com/rso
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andyjpizza/
• Substack: https://andyjpizza.substack.com/

Find me here:

• captnoffscript.com
• @captnoffscript

If you liked this episode, listen to... Sophia Yeshi (S02/E22) — another deeply honest conversation about self-acceptance, rejection therapy, and unlearning the fear of not being good enough.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

He grew up in Salamanca. Spent 20 years as an art director in Amsterdam. His father died. He boarded a plane to Japan for a sabbatical — and 14 years later, he's still there.

Luis Mendo is a Spanish illustrator and the founder of Mundo Mendo — a personal membership project built on illustrated stories, shipped directly to readers with no algorithm in between. This is a conversation about finding your value, choosing happiness, and refusing to make salami for Zuckerberg.

What we cover:

• His father's death and why it led him to Japan
• 20 years in Amsterdam — and why he finally chose to leave
• Almost Perfect — six years of welcoming artists into his Tokyo home
• Why social media is dry disgusting bread — and the salami analogy
• Building Mundo Mendo on Ghost, the anti-Substack platform
• Biking numbered, signed books to the post office himself
• Why he's building something that survives him
• Finding the value in your work — advice for young illustrators
• Japan's exploding independent print and zine scene
• AI is for laundry — and what he actually uses it for
• What he wrote in a letter to his daughter growing up in Japan

Connect with Luis Mendo:

Website: https://www.luismendo.com/

Mundo Mendo: https://www.mundomendo.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luismendo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luismendo/

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/captn-offscript/id1837469433

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nJ5dKTP2dQN5OwICKjTY5

More from Captn OffScript:

Website: https://captnoffscript.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CAPTNOffScript

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

Newsletter: https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter

If you liked this episode, listen to: Elliot Jay Stocks (S02/E25) — on building a direct relationship with your audience through newsletters, why human connection matters more than algorithms, and creating work that lasts.

If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

He wakes up at 4:30am. Two kids under two. Three hours of work before the house comes alive. This is how one of the most sought-after artists in America currently operates.

Temi Coker is a Nigerian-American artist and creative director based in Dallas, Texas. His work has appeared in campaigns for Adobe, Apple, ESPN, AT&T, and the Oscars. He launched a home collection with Walmart in 2025. And he will tell you, clearly and without drama, that none of it happened by accident — it happened because he kept making the work he wanted to be hired for, long before anyone asked him to.

What we cover:

• Growing up in Lagos — limitations, bottle-cap football, and a love of colour
• Moving to Canada and then Texas at 12, navigating two Black identities at once
• Leaving biomedical engineering to pursue design — and why he doesn't regret either
• Seven years of head-down work before the Adobe Creative Residency changed everything
• How a pillow he made for fun led to the Walmart home collection
• Apple said no four or five times — he now has 20+ collaborations with them
• Financial literacy for creatives — the conversation nobody is having
• Running a photography studio, a clothing brand, and raising two kids under two
• Learning to actually accept a compliment

Connect with Temi Coker:

Website: https://temicoker.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/temi.coker

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/captn-offscript/id1837469433

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nJ5dKTP2dQN5OwICKjTY5

More from Captn OffScript:

Website: https://captnoffscript.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CAPTNOffScript

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

Newsletter: https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter

She chose graphic design over photography because she couldn't afford a camera. She chose it over philosophy because her teacher said get work first, study ideas later. Now she runs a studio of exactly three people, plays guitar in an all-women punk band with no expectations, writes articles on the bus, and has just started her philosophy degree.

Ingrid Picanyol is a Catalan graphic designer based in Barcelona — and one of the most quietly profound conversations of the season.

What we cover:

• Growing up in the "Catalan Liverpool" — small town, punk band, leaving home at 16
• $12 a day in New York, sleeping on couches, investing in a career
• Why she keeps her studio to exactly three people — and why that matters
• How a developer noticed her design process is basically poetry
• Writing articles on the bus — and the Set Margins book coming from it
• Why design can't satisfy every creative need — and what to do about it
• Sending voice messages to ChatGPT asking what Plato thinks about difficult clients
• Studying philosophy in her forties — and why now is finally the right moment
• What she'd say to her 8-year-old self, who always felt like a stranger

Connect with Ingrid Picanyol:

Website: https://ingridpicanyol.com/

Instagram (personal): https://www.instagram.com/ingridpicanyol

Instagram (studio): https://www.instagram.com/ingridpicanyolstudio/

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/captn-offscript/id1837469433

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nJ5dKTP2dQN5OwICKjTY5

More from Captn OffScript:

Website: https://captnoffscript.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CAPTNOffScript

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

Newsletter: https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter

If you liked this episode, listen to: Marta Cerdà Alimbau (S02/E26) — another deeply personal conversation with a Catalan designer about creative identity, surviving the hard years, and why the work is worth fighting for.

She designed a Vogue cover during COVID while riding her motorcycle through Barcelona without a helmet. She made over 300 logos before landing on the one for a Nike Haaland campaign. She survived a pandemic across two countries paying two rents simultaneously — and ended up in a farmhouse with bats, eagles, and rats for four months.

Marta Cerdà Alimbau is a Catalan graphic designer, AGI member, and author of Surviving Design. This is one of the most honest, funny, and deeply personal conversations of the season.

What we cover:

• Studying psychology before design — and what it gave her
• The Vogue Spain cover created from chaos and a deep need for resilience
• Designing Barcelona's Christmas street lights from the iconic panot tile
• Over 300 logos for a Nike Haaland campaign — and the hidden arrow
• COVID across two countries, two rents, and four months in a farmhouse with bats
• Surviving Design — what the book is really about and why it's actually optimistic
• Comic Sans, context, and what Vincent Connare taught her in 2004
• The tobacco brief, karma, and the projects she wishes she hadn't taken
• What she'd say to her 10-year-old self

Connect with Marta Cerdà Alimbau:

Website: https://martacerda.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martacerda/

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/captn-offscript/id1837469433

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nJ5dKTP2dQN5OwICKjTY5

More from Captn OffScript:

Website: https://captnoffscript.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CAPTNOffScript

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript

Newsletter: https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter

If you liked this episode, listen to: Sophia Yeshi (S02/E22) — another deeply personal conversation about identity, building a creative career against the odds, and staying true to yourself through everything.