Unpacking Design

In this episode, Mike and Tim talk about the importance of mentoring others to bring up the next generation of designers so that they can lead and continue the cycle of helping others. Having a mentor allows you to focus and get ahead in your life and career by learning from the experiences that they’ve gained over their lifetime.

In this episode, Tim and Mike answer 5 questions about their early careers as designers starting with how they got their first jobs when they graduated from school. They move onto talking about what they would’ve done differently to get their first job and other critical thinking questions about their careers.

In this episode, Mike talks about an app called Evernote that allows the user to organize their notes, research, photographs, and other important information in one place. We talk about how it can be used as an individual as well as in teams where project based information can be shared with clients and colleagues.

In this episode, we talk about the Marvels Cinematic Universe (MCU), which is an ongoing series of movies based on the Marvel comic books. We discuss the influence that all of the movies by MCU have on designers from CG artists to fashion designers and architects to comic writers.

In this episode, we talk about discovering our personal fashion preferences and its evolution with our careers and lives. We get into a discussion about the differences between our fashion style at work versus our daily lives.

In this episode, we talk about what it means to fail as a designer working on a project and in general. We discuss the mindset of people who focus on failure versus the ones who think about design as taking steps to achieve a goal. Within those steps, we’re bound to make mistakes that we learn and grow from.

In this episode, we talk about online design communities and the benefits of joining one as a designer. We discuss the different kinds of communities out there, how we would recommend getting involved, and the fulfilling feeling that comes with helping others.

In this episode, we talk about Ulysses which is an iOS app designed to help writers stay organized and focused on one task; writing. We’ve all had similar experiences creating folders filled with text files for blog posts that we expect to write and chapters for books that are in the works.

In this episode, we talk about the influence of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It!, which has influenced both Mike and Tim’s careers and lives. We talk about what it means to hustle, caring about what we’re putting out into the world, and pursuing our dreams.

In this episode, we talk about Trello which is an app that helps keep us and our teams organized through the use of boards which are the overall projects, lists which are the major headers, and cards that are specific tasks within the lists. These boards, lists, and cards are flexible and could be arranged in any way that we decide.