I did something illegal

I’ve been doing design in one way or another since about 1999, for brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Febreze, Swiffer, Red Bull, Nike ACG, and a ton more.

But before I knew what design was, I was obsessed with graffiti for a solid decade.

I never turned it into my entire life like some people I know, but I did get pretty deep. Or at least deep enough that I had some… interesting experiences like:

→ Getting chased by gangsters in Passaic NJ

→ Hanging off the side of an abandoned auto parts factory in Columbus, 4-5 stories off the ground

→ Meeting the legendary GKAE in Seattle right before he went to prison

But mostly, I just spent a lot of time drawing letters. Easily 10,000 hours from 1993 - 2009 or so, like this old sketchbook I just found.

In hindsight, I’m not sure I’d recommend other people spend their teens and 20s on graffiti, but it worked out OK for me.

And I got to see, do and learn a lot of things from it that ended up making a huge difference in the trajectory of my life and career.

First of all, coming up in the era I did (mid 90s) was a cool time because it when graffiti broke out of the New York hip-hop scene and crossed over with West Coast skateboarding, punk.

And randomly, some of the founding members of a very well known graffiti called BTM went to my high school who brought the Bay Area/San Mateo county style up to the Seattle area.

I also had cousins in Palo Alto, so between the two it made me a lot more connected to the Bay Area than I otherwise would have been, which is part of why I got into tech so much earlier than most.

And it ended up being some of the best design education I could have wished for (and I also went to college for design, which was the perfect compliment).

Typography is arguably the important part of design, and graffiti is just a really specific (and illegal) form of typography.

And if you spend 10+ years drawing the same 4-6 letters again and again, you get really, REALLY deep into the details:

How do you make an L and an A fit together? How much you can you stylize an R before it stops looking like an R? What's a good color palette you can build around 6 cans of leftover baby blue?

Etc etc.

The biggest thing you learn is that there are NO SHORTCUTS to mastering anything.

The only way to get really good at drawing Rs is to draw 1000s of Rs. You have to put in the work, period.

Yes, even with AI... ESPECIALLY with AI, because the most important variable is knowing what "excellent" looks like, and how to describe it with words and images.

As Charles Eames said, "The details are not details. They make the product." And there’s no easy or fast way to hammer out the details.

You just have to PUT IN THE WORK.

→ Now here’s the CTA:

I may have room for another client starting around June. If you’re interested, reply to this email and let’s talk!

Or if you just want to say hi, that’s cool too. I always love hearing from you all!